Arty
Bad Star Back
18/08/08 14:02
I have been a bit remiss lately in posting my blog,
so by way of recompense, I attach a short story that
I wrote a while back. I hope that you like it,
Peter
-----------------
Bad Star Back
Our breaths mingle, maybe she is dead already. But I'm starting at the end, when I should be starting at the beginning.
I had to leave town in a hurry, there was a misunderstanding. An incident with a broken bottle. Easiest by far that I just got out of town until it all blew over.
So I went to John with my tail between my legs, he didn't like me, never liked me. He thought I was a pisshead, and he was probably right. But I never drank when we went out, and I was not enough of a pisshead for that to cause insurmountable problems. He huffed and puffed, and sighed and twitched, but we both knew that he would sign me on, so we went through the pointless charade, like monkeys establishing a hierarchy.
There were not many of us, just John, Jenny, the other John, Mike and myself.
John was in charge, he had tenure, in the sterile confines of academia tenure is god. Jenny went out with John, so that was pretty good for her too. I don't imagine that this was a particularly exclusive arrangement for him, with tenure, and god status, you could pretty much make up the rules to suit yourself, and no one would particularly object. The other John thought that if he brown-nosed and tagged along for long enough then one day he too would get tenure. He had been a moderately promising student a long time ago, now he has pissed away even more of his life than I had. Waiting for the modest crumbs that fell from the table, forever scuttling about on the bottom rung of the ladder, fated to never climb that ladder, and too long there for anything else to ever be practical. And Mike kept the Landrover running. Oily and quiet, never said much. He was the best of us.
Of course there was no real opportunity to speak of. We were a million miles away from anything that mattered. Some longitudinal geo surveys had been running since nineteen oatcake, and no one had the balls to pull the plug on them. Of course the methodology was questionable, the data almost certainly worthless, and never cited, but still it was collected routinely. I had come out here with the rest of them, and had drifted away, dispirited by the utter pointlessness of our existance. Infected with that pointlessness I had simply drifted on, drinking too much, and before long, had rendered myself too poor and talentless to manage to get away. And in the way of these things, it must have been what I had wanted.
We assembled at a rendezvous on the edge of town, I had a single shapeless canvas rucksack, and a rigid metal case for the cameras and lenses. As long as I failed to lose them, I had a slender means of support. I was early, I always am. The other John arrived next, and looked at me sullenly, as if any association with someone as disreputable as myself was a personal affront to him. I persisted in making small talk on the grounds that I knew it was annoying him, and the more sullen he became, the more polite and reasonable I became. Then Mike came along, and as Mike and engines went together like two sides of the same oily coin, the Landrover appeared next. John and Jenny were in the front seats.
Still buoyed by my chirpy good nature, I asked for a window seat, and was met with such sullen silence that I just mooched from then on. John made a point of kicking at my rucksack, expecting it to clink of bottles, although he knew that I never took alcohol on any of these trips. We sat in the back, John driving, with Mike beside him. The rest of us in the back like queezy children.
I hate travelling, we stopped after half a dozen miles, although I had been asking for a stop for most of them, and I threw up royally. Nothing to do with the drink, I just cannot travel. However the rest went back to sullenly ignoring me. I did not care. I felt like death warmed up, my stomache heaving, and my head throbbing. I did not care one iota about them, and barely cared whether I lived or died. There was a reason I had dropped out of these trips.
Pissing against a sand dune, piss uncovering something in the sand. Not a stone, not a lizard. Too still for a lizard, I stopped peeing on it, and pulled it out, getting my hand wet. It was a carving. Not just any carving, it was a lizard, but not like a carving. It was too realistic, like a lizard caught in a photo, artless and still.
I took it back to the Landrover. The others were unimpressed. Maybe they thought I had bought it in the market before we left. On my lap, I looked at it. There was something deeply wrong about it. This was not something that someone had made, not someone human. It was too strange and everyday, god had done this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn't a routine trip at all, that was why John had not been too choosy about me coming. He needed someone with the cameras I just came along with them. Back in the old country, where they read papers that are new, and can drink water out of the taps, a comet or something had been tracked. We were closest to it by a long margin, and they wanted someone to go out and have a look. Of course it was nothing to do with us. And in academic tradition, knowledge comes in two depths, infinite or zero. That was not our field, so we knew nothing, and cared less. But funders paid his wages, and you could sell a network of trained and flexible scientists to funders, so John had to borrow some equipment, head out into the desert and pretend to like it.
I did not have to pretent anything. Neither did the others, but at the end of the day, we got an overgenerous daily rate, and we never did anything but hang around, so we came along too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We were only a day out and things started to go wrong, nothing you could put a finger on. Jenny looked out the windows like a woman possessed. Her eyes tracking back and fore following things we could not see. At first we had asked if there was anything out there, what she saw, but all she did was complain about the brightness, and look out all the more.
John pulled out a coffee sticky geiger counter, switched it on, it went off the scale. Then he switched it off and back on, and it just registered background radiation. He put it back in its box, and never took it out again.
Mike took to spending more and more time each night with his head under the bonnet. We always travelled by the grace of Mike, but the Landrover was a tank, it should have been gobbling up these miles. Instead it lurched and grinded on, the electrics seemed all shot to hell.
We each retreated into our own private worlds. I felt like I was dying, I always do when I travel. I did not care. The others, had their own private torments to contend with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ate our meal of baked beans, flakey and dry. The sky darkened, as the modest fire started to dwindle. I had gathered some dried scrub earlier, simply for something to do. There was no point in saying that we should give up, they all hated me, and saying it, would simply manoevre them into wanting to go on. Best to just remain quiet. Jenny was wall eyed with panic, gazing into the dark following imaginary shapes out there.
The other John spoke first, "I know that this is important and all, but it's not as if it is core project or anything."
He waited for some faint echo of support, finding none, he reluctantly pushed on. "It's not as if we are expecting to find anything, bit of a wild goose chase, and all that. If we damage the equipment or anything, we do risk scuttling the core project. You know what a comet is anyway, just a dirty snow ball, what we going to find out here, some burnt dirt if we're lucky."
John's eyes narrowed, he had not reacted when the other John started to speak, and it was not clear now whether he had heard him or was indeed replying to him now. "This place is tough, tougher than tough. The hardest, harshest environment in the world. If there is something here that needs done, we do it."
I stood up and walked off into the dark, we were going on. That much was obvious.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next day we found her. Driving along one of the flatter bits, a pile of rags, fluttering in the wind. But we stopped, and in the rags, congealed with blood, she lay. Skin wrinkled, like something old and worn smooth by time, she lay just moving, like a cat breathing.
The others were indifferent to her, you often found the dead or the dying out here, I had a bottle of water, and tried to move her into a position where she could drink. We did not have much water to spare, and she was as good as dead anyway, it was a pointless gesture. The others had decided to take this stop as an impromptu toilet break. That was cold, even for them.
Moving her head, something fell onto me, something heavy. I moved the rags, there was something amongst them, like a stone, I picked apart the scabbed rags, it was stone, peeled of the cloth, it was stone, something carved, like a hand. She was holding a carved hand. Probably found it out here, and thought it might be worth something.
I pulled at it, but she held on tight, ...
Then I realised, she was not holding the bloody thing, it was attached to her. Her hand was made out of stone. Pulling back her sleeves, tearing at them, her arm changed to stone, and her hand was stone, too bloody to tell what kind, but smooth and old, no wonder she was dying.
Her people had left her out here to die. No wonder, what could you do, what can any of us do, faced with such things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We argued a lot then. But I thought John was an idiot, I can't be bothered with most people, John even less. He thought I was worthless. It was not much of an argument. I wanted to take her, he wanted to press on. The others said nothing. Jenny still wall eyed with panic, Mike tinkering with the Landrover electrics, the other John, something dead in his eyes, like he knew something, the ship was already holed below the waterline, but the captain was blind to it.
He hauled my rucksack out the back, it fell heavily, pulled out the cameras and threw the back gate shut again.
The deal was that they would come back to pick me up. We all knew it was a lie. There was little chance of finding me again. The Landrover was on its last legs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could have watched the Landrover disappear into the distance, that would have been dramatic. I didn't. I checked the water that I had been hiding in my rucksack. That was why I had so much stuff lying loose in the back of the Landrover, I had been stashing water almost from the outset. Of course I had not been planning for this. Just another pointless act of rebellion.
The loose clothing, and paperbacks, John had kicked them out onto the sand. I gathered up my stuff.
Here I was. Here I stayed.
I cradled her head. Her eyes were cloudy, her breath was like the tide lapping.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That night I burnt much of what I had. It was cold, I did not expect to last another day. A little comfort. Looking deep into the burning papers, and clothing, that cloying sooty smoke. I was so beyond tired, so beyond sore. Then looking out beyond the fire, I began to see what Jenny had seen. Shapes, without shape, coloured without colour. Like some mathematical function performed on our reality. I was seeing something out there, something I could not understand, it had no sense, beyond the sense that it was huge and unknowable.
It was not dangerous. It was just totally indifferent. The cliff edge cares not whether you throw yourself off it. It is completely indifferent to you. As was this. It was alive in the way that the sea is, or plate tectonics, alive but so completely alien, that it is whole orders of magnitude unknowable.
I could feel Jenny in my mind, she was scared of it, she saw something you could neither understand nor master. There was panic in her. Panic so unreasonable and vast that it dwarfed everything else. She lived in a world of panic. A world coloured by panic, that tasted of panic. A fearful world, forcing her in on herself, turning her inwards, and making her pebble small.
The fire died before the soot did. We were black with it, it lined out mouths and noses, I started to cough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started to cough, I retched and it felt like something was tearing, and then all of a sudden, a flush of mucus and blood, and in it a pebble. But not just a pebble, it was the same as her bloody hand. I was coughing up stone.
She turned slightly, and spoke,
"Bad star, bad star back.'
I fell back, this body was broken and dying, it was time for a new one.
The sand dunes swithered in my sooty eyes, the comet was turning us to stone, the comet had been here before, it had turned us to stone before, long ago, countless times, times beyond times, we had all turned to stone before. We had turned to stone, and been worn down, worn down to sand, the sand around us.
Her people had not abandonned her, they were here with her, all around her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I began to feel peace, I could not fight the ocean tides, but I could see them for what they were, and see my place in them. Rich and strange, infinitely rich and infinitely strange. I felt a peace that was beyond language, beyond meaning. I drew breath, and cradled her head, our breaths mingled, as the strange began to seem commonplace, and the commonplace strange, letting go, I no longer felt the tide tugging, as it started to carry me.
Peter
-----------------
Bad Star Back
Our breaths mingle, maybe she is dead already. But I'm starting at the end, when I should be starting at the beginning.
I had to leave town in a hurry, there was a misunderstanding. An incident with a broken bottle. Easiest by far that I just got out of town until it all blew over.
So I went to John with my tail between my legs, he didn't like me, never liked me. He thought I was a pisshead, and he was probably right. But I never drank when we went out, and I was not enough of a pisshead for that to cause insurmountable problems. He huffed and puffed, and sighed and twitched, but we both knew that he would sign me on, so we went through the pointless charade, like monkeys establishing a hierarchy.
There were not many of us, just John, Jenny, the other John, Mike and myself.
John was in charge, he had tenure, in the sterile confines of academia tenure is god. Jenny went out with John, so that was pretty good for her too. I don't imagine that this was a particularly exclusive arrangement for him, with tenure, and god status, you could pretty much make up the rules to suit yourself, and no one would particularly object. The other John thought that if he brown-nosed and tagged along for long enough then one day he too would get tenure. He had been a moderately promising student a long time ago, now he has pissed away even more of his life than I had. Waiting for the modest crumbs that fell from the table, forever scuttling about on the bottom rung of the ladder, fated to never climb that ladder, and too long there for anything else to ever be practical. And Mike kept the Landrover running. Oily and quiet, never said much. He was the best of us.
Of course there was no real opportunity to speak of. We were a million miles away from anything that mattered. Some longitudinal geo surveys had been running since nineteen oatcake, and no one had the balls to pull the plug on them. Of course the methodology was questionable, the data almost certainly worthless, and never cited, but still it was collected routinely. I had come out here with the rest of them, and had drifted away, dispirited by the utter pointlessness of our existance. Infected with that pointlessness I had simply drifted on, drinking too much, and before long, had rendered myself too poor and talentless to manage to get away. And in the way of these things, it must have been what I had wanted.
We assembled at a rendezvous on the edge of town, I had a single shapeless canvas rucksack, and a rigid metal case for the cameras and lenses. As long as I failed to lose them, I had a slender means of support. I was early, I always am. The other John arrived next, and looked at me sullenly, as if any association with someone as disreputable as myself was a personal affront to him. I persisted in making small talk on the grounds that I knew it was annoying him, and the more sullen he became, the more polite and reasonable I became. Then Mike came along, and as Mike and engines went together like two sides of the same oily coin, the Landrover appeared next. John and Jenny were in the front seats.
Still buoyed by my chirpy good nature, I asked for a window seat, and was met with such sullen silence that I just mooched from then on. John made a point of kicking at my rucksack, expecting it to clink of bottles, although he knew that I never took alcohol on any of these trips. We sat in the back, John driving, with Mike beside him. The rest of us in the back like queezy children.
I hate travelling, we stopped after half a dozen miles, although I had been asking for a stop for most of them, and I threw up royally. Nothing to do with the drink, I just cannot travel. However the rest went back to sullenly ignoring me. I did not care. I felt like death warmed up, my stomache heaving, and my head throbbing. I did not care one iota about them, and barely cared whether I lived or died. There was a reason I had dropped out of these trips.
Pissing against a sand dune, piss uncovering something in the sand. Not a stone, not a lizard. Too still for a lizard, I stopped peeing on it, and pulled it out, getting my hand wet. It was a carving. Not just any carving, it was a lizard, but not like a carving. It was too realistic, like a lizard caught in a photo, artless and still.
I took it back to the Landrover. The others were unimpressed. Maybe they thought I had bought it in the market before we left. On my lap, I looked at it. There was something deeply wrong about it. This was not something that someone had made, not someone human. It was too strange and everyday, god had done this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn't a routine trip at all, that was why John had not been too choosy about me coming. He needed someone with the cameras I just came along with them. Back in the old country, where they read papers that are new, and can drink water out of the taps, a comet or something had been tracked. We were closest to it by a long margin, and they wanted someone to go out and have a look. Of course it was nothing to do with us. And in academic tradition, knowledge comes in two depths, infinite or zero. That was not our field, so we knew nothing, and cared less. But funders paid his wages, and you could sell a network of trained and flexible scientists to funders, so John had to borrow some equipment, head out into the desert and pretend to like it.
I did not have to pretent anything. Neither did the others, but at the end of the day, we got an overgenerous daily rate, and we never did anything but hang around, so we came along too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We were only a day out and things started to go wrong, nothing you could put a finger on. Jenny looked out the windows like a woman possessed. Her eyes tracking back and fore following things we could not see. At first we had asked if there was anything out there, what she saw, but all she did was complain about the brightness, and look out all the more.
John pulled out a coffee sticky geiger counter, switched it on, it went off the scale. Then he switched it off and back on, and it just registered background radiation. He put it back in its box, and never took it out again.
Mike took to spending more and more time each night with his head under the bonnet. We always travelled by the grace of Mike, but the Landrover was a tank, it should have been gobbling up these miles. Instead it lurched and grinded on, the electrics seemed all shot to hell.
We each retreated into our own private worlds. I felt like I was dying, I always do when I travel. I did not care. The others, had their own private torments to contend with.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ate our meal of baked beans, flakey and dry. The sky darkened, as the modest fire started to dwindle. I had gathered some dried scrub earlier, simply for something to do. There was no point in saying that we should give up, they all hated me, and saying it, would simply manoevre them into wanting to go on. Best to just remain quiet. Jenny was wall eyed with panic, gazing into the dark following imaginary shapes out there.
The other John spoke first, "I know that this is important and all, but it's not as if it is core project or anything."
He waited for some faint echo of support, finding none, he reluctantly pushed on. "It's not as if we are expecting to find anything, bit of a wild goose chase, and all that. If we damage the equipment or anything, we do risk scuttling the core project. You know what a comet is anyway, just a dirty snow ball, what we going to find out here, some burnt dirt if we're lucky."
John's eyes narrowed, he had not reacted when the other John started to speak, and it was not clear now whether he had heard him or was indeed replying to him now. "This place is tough, tougher than tough. The hardest, harshest environment in the world. If there is something here that needs done, we do it."
I stood up and walked off into the dark, we were going on. That much was obvious.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next day we found her. Driving along one of the flatter bits, a pile of rags, fluttering in the wind. But we stopped, and in the rags, congealed with blood, she lay. Skin wrinkled, like something old and worn smooth by time, she lay just moving, like a cat breathing.
The others were indifferent to her, you often found the dead or the dying out here, I had a bottle of water, and tried to move her into a position where she could drink. We did not have much water to spare, and she was as good as dead anyway, it was a pointless gesture. The others had decided to take this stop as an impromptu toilet break. That was cold, even for them.
Moving her head, something fell onto me, something heavy. I moved the rags, there was something amongst them, like a stone, I picked apart the scabbed rags, it was stone, peeled of the cloth, it was stone, something carved, like a hand. She was holding a carved hand. Probably found it out here, and thought it might be worth something.
I pulled at it, but she held on tight, ...
Then I realised, she was not holding the bloody thing, it was attached to her. Her hand was made out of stone. Pulling back her sleeves, tearing at them, her arm changed to stone, and her hand was stone, too bloody to tell what kind, but smooth and old, no wonder she was dying.
Her people had left her out here to die. No wonder, what could you do, what can any of us do, faced with such things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We argued a lot then. But I thought John was an idiot, I can't be bothered with most people, John even less. He thought I was worthless. It was not much of an argument. I wanted to take her, he wanted to press on. The others said nothing. Jenny still wall eyed with panic, Mike tinkering with the Landrover electrics, the other John, something dead in his eyes, like he knew something, the ship was already holed below the waterline, but the captain was blind to it.
He hauled my rucksack out the back, it fell heavily, pulled out the cameras and threw the back gate shut again.
The deal was that they would come back to pick me up. We all knew it was a lie. There was little chance of finding me again. The Landrover was on its last legs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could have watched the Landrover disappear into the distance, that would have been dramatic. I didn't. I checked the water that I had been hiding in my rucksack. That was why I had so much stuff lying loose in the back of the Landrover, I had been stashing water almost from the outset. Of course I had not been planning for this. Just another pointless act of rebellion.
The loose clothing, and paperbacks, John had kicked them out onto the sand. I gathered up my stuff.
Here I was. Here I stayed.
I cradled her head. Her eyes were cloudy, her breath was like the tide lapping.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That night I burnt much of what I had. It was cold, I did not expect to last another day. A little comfort. Looking deep into the burning papers, and clothing, that cloying sooty smoke. I was so beyond tired, so beyond sore. Then looking out beyond the fire, I began to see what Jenny had seen. Shapes, without shape, coloured without colour. Like some mathematical function performed on our reality. I was seeing something out there, something I could not understand, it had no sense, beyond the sense that it was huge and unknowable.
It was not dangerous. It was just totally indifferent. The cliff edge cares not whether you throw yourself off it. It is completely indifferent to you. As was this. It was alive in the way that the sea is, or plate tectonics, alive but so completely alien, that it is whole orders of magnitude unknowable.
I could feel Jenny in my mind, she was scared of it, she saw something you could neither understand nor master. There was panic in her. Panic so unreasonable and vast that it dwarfed everything else. She lived in a world of panic. A world coloured by panic, that tasted of panic. A fearful world, forcing her in on herself, turning her inwards, and making her pebble small.
The fire died before the soot did. We were black with it, it lined out mouths and noses, I started to cough.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started to cough, I retched and it felt like something was tearing, and then all of a sudden, a flush of mucus and blood, and in it a pebble. But not just a pebble, it was the same as her bloody hand. I was coughing up stone.
She turned slightly, and spoke,
"Bad star, bad star back.'
I fell back, this body was broken and dying, it was time for a new one.
The sand dunes swithered in my sooty eyes, the comet was turning us to stone, the comet had been here before, it had turned us to stone before, long ago, countless times, times beyond times, we had all turned to stone before. We had turned to stone, and been worn down, worn down to sand, the sand around us.
Her people had not abandonned her, they were here with her, all around her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I began to feel peace, I could not fight the ocean tides, but I could see them for what they were, and see my place in them. Rich and strange, infinitely rich and infinitely strange. I felt a peace that was beyond language, beyond meaning. I drew breath, and cradled her head, our breaths mingled, as the strange began to seem commonplace, and the commonplace strange, letting go, I no longer felt the tide tugging, as it started to carry me.
shoutout for Brad Sucks and Jasper Morello
26/07/08 08:09
There is some really amazing stuff out there if you
have the time to track it down, or are lucky enough
to be pointed in the right direction.
Brad Sucks, is a musician who has made the most of the opportunities offered by the web to find an audience without going through the usual record industry A&R men. He has been making his music available on an open source basis, although he does have material available for purchase now, via CD or iTunes, but he does point out that it is freely downloadable, so people can certainly listen without paying. I really like his explanation, he would love to make a living from his music, but if he could not manage that, then he would prefer that people listened to his music and enjoyed it, rather than it being unheard.
I think that is a far better mindset, than commercial artists under contractual obligations to produce an album a year.
Anyway I heard his track Sick as a Dog on the GeekDad podcast, stuck Brad Sucks into google and found his website, downloaded the album, dragged it over onto my iPod, and was listening to it on the way into work the next day. Quite simple, alternative rather than lo-fi, catchy without being trashy, well put together, without any filler material. Recent favourite bands of mine have been the Mountain Goats and Throw me the Statue, and this is in the same sort of ball-park.
But the bottom line is, it is free, try it, you might like it.
The Mysterious Geographical adventures of Jasper Morello, was likewise cited in a Wired listing. It is a short animation, a sort of steam punk Noggin the Nog. Every frame is a work of art, beautiful gothic extravagances of clockwork transports, iron airships, populated with stock Victorian characters. It is all rather Edgar Allan Poe, or Jules Verne, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Laputa - City in the Sky, depending on your reference points.
There is a fantastic trailer on the website, but the short film itself seemed difficult to track down, a CD for sale in Australia, or part of a US compilation. Finally, almost by accident thought to look on iTunes, and it was there for £1.99, which is a bargain in anyone's money. The first short film is number one in a short sequence, it would be amazing to track down the others somehow, or manage to persuade iTunes to distribute them.
Maybe there have always been amazing people out there, doing amazing things, but now the web lets us find them, rather than the bland homogenised entertainment that commercial channels insist on. The traditional media have lost their way, and it will take more than a website and some phone in competitions to bring the impact of web 2.0 to them.
The broadcast is dead, long live the podcast.
Brad Sucks, is a musician who has made the most of the opportunities offered by the web to find an audience without going through the usual record industry A&R men. He has been making his music available on an open source basis, although he does have material available for purchase now, via CD or iTunes, but he does point out that it is freely downloadable, so people can certainly listen without paying. I really like his explanation, he would love to make a living from his music, but if he could not manage that, then he would prefer that people listened to his music and enjoyed it, rather than it being unheard.
I think that is a far better mindset, than commercial artists under contractual obligations to produce an album a year.
Anyway I heard his track Sick as a Dog on the GeekDad podcast, stuck Brad Sucks into google and found his website, downloaded the album, dragged it over onto my iPod, and was listening to it on the way into work the next day. Quite simple, alternative rather than lo-fi, catchy without being trashy, well put together, without any filler material. Recent favourite bands of mine have been the Mountain Goats and Throw me the Statue, and this is in the same sort of ball-park.
But the bottom line is, it is free, try it, you might like it.
The Mysterious Geographical adventures of Jasper Morello, was likewise cited in a Wired listing. It is a short animation, a sort of steam punk Noggin the Nog. Every frame is a work of art, beautiful gothic extravagances of clockwork transports, iron airships, populated with stock Victorian characters. It is all rather Edgar Allan Poe, or Jules Verne, or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Laputa - City in the Sky, depending on your reference points.
There is a fantastic trailer on the website, but the short film itself seemed difficult to track down, a CD for sale in Australia, or part of a US compilation. Finally, almost by accident thought to look on iTunes, and it was there for £1.99, which is a bargain in anyone's money. The first short film is number one in a short sequence, it would be amazing to track down the others somehow, or manage to persuade iTunes to distribute them.
Maybe there have always been amazing people out there, doing amazing things, but now the web lets us find them, rather than the bland homogenised entertainment that commercial channels insist on. The traditional media have lost their way, and it will take more than a website and some phone in competitions to bring the impact of web 2.0 to them.
The broadcast is dead, long live the podcast.
The Burn
16/07/08 18:41
I normally like to do a blog posting each weekend,
but missed one, so instead, a short story, which may
be chapter one of something longer, as the characters
rather intrigue me, but I’m not sure where they are
going.
The Burn
I want to start at the end, that is where I am now. Sitting here in tears about to stick my hand into the fire. I have lost everything, there is nothing left to lose now. I lost her, then lost her again, and now I don't even know who I am.
It all started with the war, as we made the robots smarter, we made them our equals, or even our superiors, instead of our slaves. They did not just want to be static companions, or servants, they wanted to lead lives of their own. By then we had made them almost indistinguishable from ourselves. No one wanted a robotic lover or companion or employee. They were designed to blend in, not stand out. Of course the main problem was one of constraint, making them as feeble as we were, rather than letting them be as strong as they could be.
Things seemed okay for a very long time, there was the odd spat, demonstrations, robots standing for election, but everyone more or less knew where they stood.
The causes of the war were overanalysed, I won't repeat them here, and the idea of a war is an oversimplification, there were robots on both sides. There were humans on both sides. No one wins a war like that. We managed to get away, in the confusion we stole a craft and made it to here. A billion places just like this blinked out in the flames that followed the war. The war and flames swept over them, leaving nothing but ashes. By that time no one cared about sides, or winning, it was just about survival. There were no winners that I know about.
But somehow the two of us survived. Just me and Jenny. This is no paradise. But we could live. We could sustain ourselves. I managed to grow a few things, we could rear animals. We spent more time outdoors, got browner, and leaner, stronger and wiser. I rigged up some power, so we could run some electronics. It was all untidier than it sounds, but when it works, you don't worry about things like that.
I did not know much about Jenny, we had just met in the confusion of the war. But we just kind of clicked, instantly, easily falling into relying on each other. She came back for me, when she could have kept on running. I carried her for days. We got close as those things make you.
And then she died. She just stopped. In the middle of a sentence, her eyes went glassy, she just stopped, and toppled to the ground, falling hard like someone who was dead already. I just knew that there was no way of saving her. It does not work like that. She was dead. I sat and stared for ages, suddenly I was alone, more alone than I had ever been in my life, but that was not the thing. The way that she had fallen, the way she had just stopped...
I touched her body, it was not still warm and lifelike like a human corpse, there was a degree of play but basically it was rigid. Some subroutines must have still been working, but overall she was dead. She had injured a leg recently, keeping it wrapped in greasy bandages, hidden from me. I finally unwrapped it gently, the skin puckered and stopped, grey generic filler tissue burnt and torn, beneath that the rigid metallic frame lined with fibre optics and copper cabling.
She was a robot, I did not really care, I had loved her, and now she was gone. Here, it was all I could do to repair a laptop, there was no way I could repair her. The robots are designed to keep going for as long as they can, cannibalising power, re-routing systems, without maintenance they can survive remarkably long periods but when they fail, they fail completely, they have cannibalised away all their options. Away from civilisation and robot body shops, the cybernetics labs and Androids-r-Us, the robots only ever had a limited time to function. They did not evolve out of barbarism, they could not return to it.
And if she was a robot, what was I?
I stand here beside the fire, my hand stretched out, if it goes into the fire, I will burn,
will it be the familiar stink of burnt flesh, or will the skim of flesh burn back, leaving grey filler with gleaming metal bodywork?
The Burn
I want to start at the end, that is where I am now. Sitting here in tears about to stick my hand into the fire. I have lost everything, there is nothing left to lose now. I lost her, then lost her again, and now I don't even know who I am.
It all started with the war, as we made the robots smarter, we made them our equals, or even our superiors, instead of our slaves. They did not just want to be static companions, or servants, they wanted to lead lives of their own. By then we had made them almost indistinguishable from ourselves. No one wanted a robotic lover or companion or employee. They were designed to blend in, not stand out. Of course the main problem was one of constraint, making them as feeble as we were, rather than letting them be as strong as they could be.
Things seemed okay for a very long time, there was the odd spat, demonstrations, robots standing for election, but everyone more or less knew where they stood.
The causes of the war were overanalysed, I won't repeat them here, and the idea of a war is an oversimplification, there were robots on both sides. There were humans on both sides. No one wins a war like that. We managed to get away, in the confusion we stole a craft and made it to here. A billion places just like this blinked out in the flames that followed the war. The war and flames swept over them, leaving nothing but ashes. By that time no one cared about sides, or winning, it was just about survival. There were no winners that I know about.
But somehow the two of us survived. Just me and Jenny. This is no paradise. But we could live. We could sustain ourselves. I managed to grow a few things, we could rear animals. We spent more time outdoors, got browner, and leaner, stronger and wiser. I rigged up some power, so we could run some electronics. It was all untidier than it sounds, but when it works, you don't worry about things like that.
I did not know much about Jenny, we had just met in the confusion of the war. But we just kind of clicked, instantly, easily falling into relying on each other. She came back for me, when she could have kept on running. I carried her for days. We got close as those things make you.
And then she died. She just stopped. In the middle of a sentence, her eyes went glassy, she just stopped, and toppled to the ground, falling hard like someone who was dead already. I just knew that there was no way of saving her. It does not work like that. She was dead. I sat and stared for ages, suddenly I was alone, more alone than I had ever been in my life, but that was not the thing. The way that she had fallen, the way she had just stopped...
I touched her body, it was not still warm and lifelike like a human corpse, there was a degree of play but basically it was rigid. Some subroutines must have still been working, but overall she was dead. She had injured a leg recently, keeping it wrapped in greasy bandages, hidden from me. I finally unwrapped it gently, the skin puckered and stopped, grey generic filler tissue burnt and torn, beneath that the rigid metallic frame lined with fibre optics and copper cabling.
She was a robot, I did not really care, I had loved her, and now she was gone. Here, it was all I could do to repair a laptop, there was no way I could repair her. The robots are designed to keep going for as long as they can, cannibalising power, re-routing systems, without maintenance they can survive remarkably long periods but when they fail, they fail completely, they have cannibalised away all their options. Away from civilisation and robot body shops, the cybernetics labs and Androids-r-Us, the robots only ever had a limited time to function. They did not evolve out of barbarism, they could not return to it.
And if she was a robot, what was I?
I stand here beside the fire, my hand stretched out, if it goes into the fire, I will burn,
will it be the familiar stink of burnt flesh, or will the skim of flesh burn back, leaving grey filler with gleaming metal bodywork?
all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau
26/05/08 15:36
I have just bought myself a new digital camera. This
is a proper grown up digital camera, the one I had
before was the cheapest digital camera you could buy
in Argos. I was keen to test out whether I would
actually use it, and I certainly did not want to lash
out on an expensive model, that would just sit unused
on a shelf somewhere. The fact that you could spend
anything from £20 to £20,000 on a camera was also
pretty scary. What to buy, what is actually the
difference between these different models and prices.
Having established that I really, really, did want a digital camera, I used some money I got for my Birthday. A little research on the internet, and I decided to get a Canon Ixus, Argos were doing a deal on the Ixus 950 IS. It was going for half price, though according to the reviews it was certainly well over-priced at full price. I think that Argos are shifting discontinued stock, but it is a good price, for a decent camera. It actually seems to be pretty easy to use, and reasonably intuitive. I hate fiddling about with inscrutable knobs, impenetrable menus, and the like. After only a few days, I am starting to get the hang of this, so it must be pretty easy. It also has a pleasing heft to it. I feels substantial. Less impressed that the battery cover seems unreasonably happy to slide open, particularly as you tend to hold onto the camera there. However that is a minor niggle.
Of course the proof of the worth of the camera is in the photos, and it does seem to take remarkably good photos. I particularly like the zoom option, and the way that it will focus for you. I'll just carry on shooting off a variety of photos, to try and get an idea of how to get the best out of it.
Of course as soon as I got the new digital camera, it was straight onto Flickr to set up an account. There should now be a link on the start page for this site. Nothing much uploaded as yet, and actually nothing yet from my new camera, but I'll get to work with uploading stuff, and taking stuff, and uploading stuff.
All very exciting this photography lark, all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau.
Having established that I really, really, did want a digital camera, I used some money I got for my Birthday. A little research on the internet, and I decided to get a Canon Ixus, Argos were doing a deal on the Ixus 950 IS. It was going for half price, though according to the reviews it was certainly well over-priced at full price. I think that Argos are shifting discontinued stock, but it is a good price, for a decent camera. It actually seems to be pretty easy to use, and reasonably intuitive. I hate fiddling about with inscrutable knobs, impenetrable menus, and the like. After only a few days, I am starting to get the hang of this, so it must be pretty easy. It also has a pleasing heft to it. I feels substantial. Less impressed that the battery cover seems unreasonably happy to slide open, particularly as you tend to hold onto the camera there. However that is a minor niggle.
Of course the proof of the worth of the camera is in the photos, and it does seem to take remarkably good photos. I particularly like the zoom option, and the way that it will focus for you. I'll just carry on shooting off a variety of photos, to try and get an idea of how to get the best out of it.
Of course as soon as I got the new digital camera, it was straight onto Flickr to set up an account. There should now be a link on the start page for this site. Nothing much uploaded as yet, and actually nothing yet from my new camera, but I'll get to work with uploading stuff, and taking stuff, and uploading stuff.
All very exciting this photography lark, all of a sudden I feel like Robert Doisneau.
the sky is talcum grey
06/04/08 07:18
As with the weather, the cold just does not seem to
be going away.
We were forecast snow for this weekend, and yesterday was one of those days that looked spectacular when you were indoors, but if you actually did go out side, then the cold wind sucked the fun out of the day.
Accordingly although the garden is shaggy of grass, and those pesky weeds are starting to grow, I still have little inclination to spend a shivery day out there working.
My personal cold, is now manifesting as a scratchy throat, and the usual feeling of being run down and lacking energy. I've taken to buying a bag of oranges on Monday mornings and having one around 10.00, and another around 15.00, and it is something that I would recommend. However this cold does just seem to be a war of attrition.
As a result of the cold and the recent batch of holidays, the weeks have flown by, and various work things are not nearly as far advanced as I would like them to be. I'll really need to knuckle down at work, put in the hours, and push these things forward, full of the cold, or not.
Last week was an interesting week, we had a tour of the vast art deco gormenghast of a building that we work in, from the walnut panelled office at the top, to the old death cell at the bottom. The panelled office was wonderful, although it was pointed out that the dramatic figuration in the panelling looked like a face, repeated and repeated around the room, always staring at you. So maybe not an office for those with a guilty conscience or an overactive imagination. The death cell, was the cell that prisoners would stay in the night before their execution. Of course that was when the building was a prison, or gaol. The top bit of the goal is all gone, but at the bottom some inevitably remains, including the death cell. It was an irregular shaped room, now with concrete floor, and lined with wooden shelves filled with redundant phones. Despite neighbouring rooms being warm with the fuzzy heat from phone exchanges and computer servers, the death cell remained resolutely cold.
A few meetings, hence my impatience to get things moving along. Nothing worse than constantly reporting back that you have only done so much, and really really intend to do more. My Friday meeting entailed a train trip, so that gobbled up quite a lot of the day. Though it was a lovely sunny day, with the late afternoon sun particularly warm and lazy. Coming into town I spotted a fox basking next to the railway line, despite simply being on the railway side of some banking, with a busy piece of ground beloved by dog walkers, just behind him. And coming home, I spotted the five deer that I've seen a few times, all sitting in a hedgerow, warming themselves in the late afternoon sun. As ever on the train, you look and look, then you see some wildlife in only the merest of glimpses as your viewpoint and perspective changes. But it if you know where to look, but they are wonderful glimpses.
At home, I'm switching my emphasis from building up the home IT set up, which is largely done for the moment, to trying to squirrel away money. That said, I've always loved to follow shares, so investing is more akin to a flutter on the horses than some dry putting away money for a rainy day. Although my shares are down overall, I'm currently looking at a thirty percent return on one business, which with my modest holdings translates into a few hundred pounds.
Quite a few of my shares are ones that are regularly subject to takeover bids, and that never does any harm. I also know their average purchase price, so when I buy shares monthly, I try and buy whatever is below its average purchase price. That way I increase my margins when I sell.
I would like to build up a pretty substantial nest egg over the next few years, on the grounds that the mortgage will come due, and like most folk of my vintage, our endowment policies seem to be producing more depression than anything else. Also the girls are getting to the age where money will need to be found for big ticket things like and education, rather than shiny whistles, and boilings. As ever, having built up my nest egg, I don't imagine that I will hang onto it.
And as I close this, the sky is talcum grey, and snow falls lazily, the bubble gum pink of the camelia flowers the brightest colour behind a tissue of snowflakes.
We were forecast snow for this weekend, and yesterday was one of those days that looked spectacular when you were indoors, but if you actually did go out side, then the cold wind sucked the fun out of the day.
Accordingly although the garden is shaggy of grass, and those pesky weeds are starting to grow, I still have little inclination to spend a shivery day out there working.
My personal cold, is now manifesting as a scratchy throat, and the usual feeling of being run down and lacking energy. I've taken to buying a bag of oranges on Monday mornings and having one around 10.00, and another around 15.00, and it is something that I would recommend. However this cold does just seem to be a war of attrition.
As a result of the cold and the recent batch of holidays, the weeks have flown by, and various work things are not nearly as far advanced as I would like them to be. I'll really need to knuckle down at work, put in the hours, and push these things forward, full of the cold, or not.
Last week was an interesting week, we had a tour of the vast art deco gormenghast of a building that we work in, from the walnut panelled office at the top, to the old death cell at the bottom. The panelled office was wonderful, although it was pointed out that the dramatic figuration in the panelling looked like a face, repeated and repeated around the room, always staring at you. So maybe not an office for those with a guilty conscience or an overactive imagination. The death cell, was the cell that prisoners would stay in the night before their execution. Of course that was when the building was a prison, or gaol. The top bit of the goal is all gone, but at the bottom some inevitably remains, including the death cell. It was an irregular shaped room, now with concrete floor, and lined with wooden shelves filled with redundant phones. Despite neighbouring rooms being warm with the fuzzy heat from phone exchanges and computer servers, the death cell remained resolutely cold.
A few meetings, hence my impatience to get things moving along. Nothing worse than constantly reporting back that you have only done so much, and really really intend to do more. My Friday meeting entailed a train trip, so that gobbled up quite a lot of the day. Though it was a lovely sunny day, with the late afternoon sun particularly warm and lazy. Coming into town I spotted a fox basking next to the railway line, despite simply being on the railway side of some banking, with a busy piece of ground beloved by dog walkers, just behind him. And coming home, I spotted the five deer that I've seen a few times, all sitting in a hedgerow, warming themselves in the late afternoon sun. As ever on the train, you look and look, then you see some wildlife in only the merest of glimpses as your viewpoint and perspective changes. But it if you know where to look, but they are wonderful glimpses.
At home, I'm switching my emphasis from building up the home IT set up, which is largely done for the moment, to trying to squirrel away money. That said, I've always loved to follow shares, so investing is more akin to a flutter on the horses than some dry putting away money for a rainy day. Although my shares are down overall, I'm currently looking at a thirty percent return on one business, which with my modest holdings translates into a few hundred pounds.
Quite a few of my shares are ones that are regularly subject to takeover bids, and that never does any harm. I also know their average purchase price, so when I buy shares monthly, I try and buy whatever is below its average purchase price. That way I increase my margins when I sell.
I would like to build up a pretty substantial nest egg over the next few years, on the grounds that the mortgage will come due, and like most folk of my vintage, our endowment policies seem to be producing more depression than anything else. Also the girls are getting to the age where money will need to be found for big ticket things like and education, rather than shiny whistles, and boilings. As ever, having built up my nest egg, I don't imagine that I will hang onto it.
And as I close this, the sky is talcum grey, and snow falls lazily, the bubble gum pink of the camelia flowers the brightest colour behind a tissue of snowflakes.
Topsy Turvey, Man Flu
22/03/08 06:09
It is the long awaited Easter Weekend, and in typical
fashion, when you wait a long time for something, it
never quite turns out the way you expect it to.
Expecting a busy, but not unpleasantly so week, woke up on Tuesday feeling like my ribs had had a good kicking from the inside out. One of those days when you don't so much worry that you might not survive, but worry that you will. When I'm ill, I feel like all the times I have ever been ill are joined up together, so in effect I'm eight, sick and miserable.
Managed to make it back to work for Thursday, though not exactly feeling sparkling. Woke on on Friday feeling as if I had eaten half my tongue!
My wife has been suffering through this bug for the last fortnight, and I have been doing my best to avoid her, so now that it has finally caught up with me, it probably won't be going any time soon. One of my daughters had a friend over for a sleepover, but she too is coming down with the bug, and she too was fading out by the end of what should have been a wonderful time.
The weather too has been similarly afflicted. Our dog had been missing out on the odd walk, so I was keen to take him out for a decent walk yesterday. However the sky was that threatening grey that means it is full of snow. The wind whipped along behind us, and then the snow started up. All of this of no consequence as long as it followed us, but of course you need to come back from your walk, so the second half inevitably meant walking back, into a face-full of skin cutting hail. I was pretty miserable with my hat pulled down over my face, the poor dog, it must have been abject for him.
Now waking up, the ground outside is covered in snow!! Easter and the place is covered in snow.
In view of the whole general not wellness sort of thing, and the miscellaneous feeling sorry for self type issues, I'm not aiming too high at the moment. Satisfied to just plod on, rather than trying to change the world.
Although there are still further enhancements possible to my family IT set up, I think that I will probably more of less wind up the expansion of our IT facility at the moment. I could probably manage to run a thirty metre ethernet cable upto the girls room to provide them with the internet. There are other things that would be nice, wifi, more hard drives, a USB hub, more fonts, but there is always an endless list of such things, and the bulk of my objectives have now been met.
Anyway, with the good weather [note irony mode] I will need to get out into the garden, and there is a housefull of DIY to contend with as well.
Elsewhere, pleased to see that Throw Me The Statue have now appeared on iTunes, I downloaded a handfull of their tracks a while ago, and have been listening to them a lot. So I was keen to get the full Moonbeams album, and it looked like I would need to actually buy a CD from Amazon. It was their track Conquering Kids that first struck me, it sounds like one of those classic tracks that has always been there. The others that I've been listening to are Lolita and Yucatan, which did not grab me so immediately, but have become gradually more compelling. A first listen through to the album did not grab me too much, but it is probably one that grows insidiously on you.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that I would recommend that you simply do a quick google on Throw Me The Statue, and download Conquering Kids, you won't be dissappointed.
Also on the web, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has had to cancel his tour of Australia, citing health issues, though not clear whether it is him or close family. On the one hand there is the tabloid urge to hear the dirt, but these are real people with real lives too, and the only humane option is to wish him all the best. My thoughts are with him and his family. Probably worth noting, that if it had not been for the Mountain Goats, I probably would not have written a lot of the poetry that I have been writing recently. Like the very best of art, not only is the work of the Mountain Goats inspiring, it is also empowering.
Also in my browsing of the internet, struck by the short summary of the life of Italo Svevo, the author of Confessions of Zeno. He wrote a couple of self published novels, but never enjoyed much success. His novels are early stream of consciousness works, but like Tristam Shandy or the Sarragossa Manuscripts, it is literary inventiveness put to the service of splendidly entertaining tales.
His most famous work is about a rather unsatisfactory person, who lies to his therapist, and never has the courage to actually give up smoking, forever obsessing on his last cigarette. The author himself smoked all his life, and on his deathbed, joked that he would like a cigaratte, promising that it would be his last, but was refused.
Also looking at the rather haphazard lives of the people that write and draw for 2000AD, which I have been reading since around prog 350. I wrote a short strip for them years ago, and if I had been more conscientious/talented, might have written more. Maybe there is an alternate universe out there, where there is an alternate me, writing comic strips rather than working for the government. The beauty of writing, is that you can live anywhere to do it. So the usual monetary conditions don't apply, as long as you don't starve, you could live well on a relatively modest income.
Finally, very upset to hear that one of the members of the community group I'm on, lost his wife last week. I could not make the funeral, but my thoughts are certainly with him. You always think that the future will be incident free, but the challenges you face are never the ones you are prepared for, we should prize each moment we have together, there is nothing more finite.
Expecting a busy, but not unpleasantly so week, woke up on Tuesday feeling like my ribs had had a good kicking from the inside out. One of those days when you don't so much worry that you might not survive, but worry that you will. When I'm ill, I feel like all the times I have ever been ill are joined up together, so in effect I'm eight, sick and miserable.
Managed to make it back to work for Thursday, though not exactly feeling sparkling. Woke on on Friday feeling as if I had eaten half my tongue!
My wife has been suffering through this bug for the last fortnight, and I have been doing my best to avoid her, so now that it has finally caught up with me, it probably won't be going any time soon. One of my daughters had a friend over for a sleepover, but she too is coming down with the bug, and she too was fading out by the end of what should have been a wonderful time.
The weather too has been similarly afflicted. Our dog had been missing out on the odd walk, so I was keen to take him out for a decent walk yesterday. However the sky was that threatening grey that means it is full of snow. The wind whipped along behind us, and then the snow started up. All of this of no consequence as long as it followed us, but of course you need to come back from your walk, so the second half inevitably meant walking back, into a face-full of skin cutting hail. I was pretty miserable with my hat pulled down over my face, the poor dog, it must have been abject for him.
Now waking up, the ground outside is covered in snow!! Easter and the place is covered in snow.
In view of the whole general not wellness sort of thing, and the miscellaneous feeling sorry for self type issues, I'm not aiming too high at the moment. Satisfied to just plod on, rather than trying to change the world.
Although there are still further enhancements possible to my family IT set up, I think that I will probably more of less wind up the expansion of our IT facility at the moment. I could probably manage to run a thirty metre ethernet cable upto the girls room to provide them with the internet. There are other things that would be nice, wifi, more hard drives, a USB hub, more fonts, but there is always an endless list of such things, and the bulk of my objectives have now been met.
Anyway, with the good weather [note irony mode] I will need to get out into the garden, and there is a housefull of DIY to contend with as well.
Elsewhere, pleased to see that Throw Me The Statue have now appeared on iTunes, I downloaded a handfull of their tracks a while ago, and have been listening to them a lot. So I was keen to get the full Moonbeams album, and it looked like I would need to actually buy a CD from Amazon. It was their track Conquering Kids that first struck me, it sounds like one of those classic tracks that has always been there. The others that I've been listening to are Lolita and Yucatan, which did not grab me so immediately, but have become gradually more compelling. A first listen through to the album did not grab me too much, but it is probably one that grows insidiously on you.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that I would recommend that you simply do a quick google on Throw Me The Statue, and download Conquering Kids, you won't be dissappointed.
Also on the web, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has had to cancel his tour of Australia, citing health issues, though not clear whether it is him or close family. On the one hand there is the tabloid urge to hear the dirt, but these are real people with real lives too, and the only humane option is to wish him all the best. My thoughts are with him and his family. Probably worth noting, that if it had not been for the Mountain Goats, I probably would not have written a lot of the poetry that I have been writing recently. Like the very best of art, not only is the work of the Mountain Goats inspiring, it is also empowering.
Also in my browsing of the internet, struck by the short summary of the life of Italo Svevo, the author of Confessions of Zeno. He wrote a couple of self published novels, but never enjoyed much success. His novels are early stream of consciousness works, but like Tristam Shandy or the Sarragossa Manuscripts, it is literary inventiveness put to the service of splendidly entertaining tales.
His most famous work is about a rather unsatisfactory person, who lies to his therapist, and never has the courage to actually give up smoking, forever obsessing on his last cigarette. The author himself smoked all his life, and on his deathbed, joked that he would like a cigaratte, promising that it would be his last, but was refused.
Also looking at the rather haphazard lives of the people that write and draw for 2000AD, which I have been reading since around prog 350. I wrote a short strip for them years ago, and if I had been more conscientious/talented, might have written more. Maybe there is an alternate universe out there, where there is an alternate me, writing comic strips rather than working for the government. The beauty of writing, is that you can live anywhere to do it. So the usual monetary conditions don't apply, as long as you don't starve, you could live well on a relatively modest income.
Finally, very upset to hear that one of the members of the community group I'm on, lost his wife last week. I could not make the funeral, but my thoughts are certainly with him. You always think that the future will be incident free, but the challenges you face are never the ones you are prepared for, we should prize each moment we have together, there is nothing more finite.
Brian Eno to advise the Liberal Democrats
23/12/07 06:00
Those of us who have followed the career of Brian Eno
are delighted to hear that he is now a special
adviser to the Liberal Democrat party, perhaps we can
look forward to a bold move to Party Political
broadcasts that are purely ambient, with unfocussed
yet very arty photos, for the duration. I enjoyed the
slowed down country and western that he used in
Apollo, thrilled to the slowed down Pachelbel Canon
he used in Discrete Music, surely this man can
connect to the youth of today, with the plangent
tones of the Smurfs slowed to a glacial pace,
revealing their inner beauty and discordant elements.
If that does not speak to the youth of today, then I
for one, don't know what will.
This is a man with a bold vision, he left Roxy Music just before they got successful, to release a bunch of solo records that no one has heard of, many of them on his own Obscure label. Having built up some success with his solo stuff, he then stopped writing music with words, and ignored endless calls, "please Brian can we have some more songs again, please, please", finally getting round to writing songs again, decades later, by which time, no one was terribly bothered anymore.
Don't we all want our political leaders to be more like Bono and U2, well clearly the Liberal Democrats have found their man, the man who was not content with driving the Talking Heads to new peaks of pretension, knew that that was not enough, and then brought us U2, the very summit of wrap around sunglasses wearing musical pretentiousness.
A man of the people, his diary details how he avoids the general public including his fans, and includes a couple of urine related anecdotes, only one of which I can really bring myself to repeat here. This is a man who has actually peed on a Duchamp urinal!
This is a man who famously burst a lung having sex, his credentials for the post of youth adviser, are self evident.
Perhaps this is what the country needs, we need to articulate our position in the world clearly, and nothing does this like a major Art Statement,
the KLF famously burnt a million pounds, well politicians have been getting away with this for years, without even providing much shock or entertainment.
We need pomp, we need grandeur, we need men who aren't afraid to wear make up and dress up like women, we need more references to modern revolutionary Peking opera, we need Eno.
PS - I should disclose to the reader that I own substantial numbers of aforesaid Eno's records, am not at all peeved that he never replied to my geeky fanboy letter twenty two years ago, felt that the god-like Talking Heads went off the boil with Remain in Light, and find U2 singles moderately catchy.
This is a man with a bold vision, he left Roxy Music just before they got successful, to release a bunch of solo records that no one has heard of, many of them on his own Obscure label. Having built up some success with his solo stuff, he then stopped writing music with words, and ignored endless calls, "please Brian can we have some more songs again, please, please", finally getting round to writing songs again, decades later, by which time, no one was terribly bothered anymore.
Don't we all want our political leaders to be more like Bono and U2, well clearly the Liberal Democrats have found their man, the man who was not content with driving the Talking Heads to new peaks of pretension, knew that that was not enough, and then brought us U2, the very summit of wrap around sunglasses wearing musical pretentiousness.
A man of the people, his diary details how he avoids the general public including his fans, and includes a couple of urine related anecdotes, only one of which I can really bring myself to repeat here. This is a man who has actually peed on a Duchamp urinal!
This is a man who famously burst a lung having sex, his credentials for the post of youth adviser, are self evident.
Perhaps this is what the country needs, we need to articulate our position in the world clearly, and nothing does this like a major Art Statement,
the KLF famously burnt a million pounds, well politicians have been getting away with this for years, without even providing much shock or entertainment.
We need pomp, we need grandeur, we need men who aren't afraid to wear make up and dress up like women, we need more references to modern revolutionary Peking opera, we need Eno.
PS - I should disclose to the reader that I own substantial numbers of aforesaid Eno's records, am not at all peeved that he never replied to my geeky fanboy letter twenty two years ago, felt that the god-like Talking Heads went off the boil with Remain in Light, and find U2 singles moderately catchy.
How to choose a political leader
23/12/07 05:33
There are obviously many different ways to choose a
political leader, but the current system of choosing
one based on how young they look seems to be pretty
poor. Merely the fact that someone is youthfull does
not recommend them to me as a political leader. My
daughters are fine people, as are their friends, but
I would not honestly recommend that they start
running the country, unless perhaps they had tidied
their room first.
Two possible approaches spring to mind ;
we should vote for candidates on the basis on which they resemble a James Bond villain. Now this would guarantee that we had someone who would walk the world stage with grace and stature, someone who was a confident leader, though perhaps cabinet members would be well advised to avoid upsets prior to leaving the room, lest they be tipped into a piranha filled garden pond.
This is an equal opportunities policy, equally open to men and women, and all races, including the purely fictional. You need neither be old or young, and lets face it an evil laugh is not a terribly difficult skill to master. You should of course have a bizarre, and sinister personal trait that is just the other side of unbelievable, such as webbed hands, or a third nipple, but lets face it, with plastic surgery these days, such traits are easily replicated.
The scope for other cabinet members is also tremendous, wouldn't Question Time be more entertaining if burly Koreans, were to throw steel rimmed bowler hats at the opposition, or Grace Jones started jumping from the ceiling. After all what is politics there for, if it is not to entertain us.
Not only is this policy sensible, and practical, but it could easily be introduced almost immediately. Gordon Brown, with the mere addition of a purring white cat, and some sinister backlighting, could easily become the megalomaniac "B" recently escaped from the Chinese Tong with their radioactive gold, the brains behind the former UK Prime Minister, this shadowy Scot from his mountainous lair in North Queensferry, controls the world's money supply to his own sinister ends.
With put down lines like "No Mr Cameron, I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to DIE!!!!!"
Alternatively, we should vote for the Prime Minister on the same basis that we choose to run a student election, that is the vote goes to the Football team mascot, or primate that has garnered most support. Similarly root vegetables would also be encouraged to run. I do however feel that it would be important not to split the primate vote, lest some lesser candidate like a career political managed to benefit, but surely these problems are not insurmountable.
The splendour and gaiety of election day, stuffed toys for mascots, pretty posters, witty slogans.
Then followed by five years of dreadful indecision and sliding into catastrophe and debt. But frankly I don't watch the news much, so the latter seems a small price to pay, if it makes the elections a bit more jolly, which lets admit is something that all right thinking people ought to be concerned about.
Two possible approaches spring to mind ;
we should vote for candidates on the basis on which they resemble a James Bond villain. Now this would guarantee that we had someone who would walk the world stage with grace and stature, someone who was a confident leader, though perhaps cabinet members would be well advised to avoid upsets prior to leaving the room, lest they be tipped into a piranha filled garden pond.
This is an equal opportunities policy, equally open to men and women, and all races, including the purely fictional. You need neither be old or young, and lets face it an evil laugh is not a terribly difficult skill to master. You should of course have a bizarre, and sinister personal trait that is just the other side of unbelievable, such as webbed hands, or a third nipple, but lets face it, with plastic surgery these days, such traits are easily replicated.
The scope for other cabinet members is also tremendous, wouldn't Question Time be more entertaining if burly Koreans, were to throw steel rimmed bowler hats at the opposition, or Grace Jones started jumping from the ceiling. After all what is politics there for, if it is not to entertain us.
Not only is this policy sensible, and practical, but it could easily be introduced almost immediately. Gordon Brown, with the mere addition of a purring white cat, and some sinister backlighting, could easily become the megalomaniac "B" recently escaped from the Chinese Tong with their radioactive gold, the brains behind the former UK Prime Minister, this shadowy Scot from his mountainous lair in North Queensferry, controls the world's money supply to his own sinister ends.
With put down lines like "No Mr Cameron, I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to DIE!!!!!"
Alternatively, we should vote for the Prime Minister on the same basis that we choose to run a student election, that is the vote goes to the Football team mascot, or primate that has garnered most support. Similarly root vegetables would also be encouraged to run. I do however feel that it would be important not to split the primate vote, lest some lesser candidate like a career political managed to benefit, but surely these problems are not insurmountable.
The splendour and gaiety of election day, stuffed toys for mascots, pretty posters, witty slogans.
Then followed by five years of dreadful indecision and sliding into catastrophe and debt. But frankly I don't watch the news much, so the latter seems a small price to pay, if it makes the elections a bit more jolly, which lets admit is something that all right thinking people ought to be concerned about.
Going to Scotland
13/12/07 19:42
Just a quick blog entry.
I headed over to Glasgow on Monday, to catch the
Mountain Goats, at Oran Mor. They were part of the
Pineapple Folk Gathering, along with
Emmy the Great
Alasdair Roberts
and Micah P Hinson.
I'll not pretend that I had heard of anyone else on
the bill, but the word on the blogs was that it was a
pretty good line up, and lets face it, if the other
bands were good it was simply a bonus, a chance to
see the Mountain Goats live was just too good to
miss.
Anyway, first up was Emmy the Great, who was
enchanting, a wonderfully relaxed way with the
audience, which was very winning, and the songs were
gorgeous too, densely literary, but lightly musical.
I've downloaded an EP from iTunes. Certainly one to
watch out for in future, if she gets round to
actually recording and releasing more stuff. Perhaps
not the most ruthlessly ambitious artist out there!
Alasdair Roberts was probably the most 'folk' of the
acts, it did rather pass me by I am afraid, musically
good, but the lyrics and vocals failed to grab me. He
did probably suffer from being the most traditional
act, on a rather more lo-fi bill.
Skipping to the last act, Micah P Hinson, ostensibly
the headliner, he was slightly shambolic, but
engaging, and came across as a sort of drugged up
Richard Hawley. The most fabulous of deep Texan
drawls, and the sort of Dick Dale/Billy Bragg almost
orchestral electric guitar. However after the energy
of the Mountain Goats, an hour long set felt a bit
long. One to check out on iTunes though, there was
some cracking stuff in there.
Finally, the Mountain Goats, clearly the stars for
the night, my wife was at the back and she said that
a whole bunch of people appeared just for them. I was
however in the throng at the front. They came on,
John Darneille, slightly goofy/cuddly, tie-less suit,
and Peter Hughes long and dapper with a suit, tie and
waistcoat. They set up amiably enough, looking
exactly as they look in the photos, which is an inane
thing to say, but it always disconcerts me.
They kicked off with It Froze Me, which was quite
slow, then alternating between belters and quieter
songs. However even with the quieter songs the whole
room was rapt and quiet.
I think that the power of art is that suddenly you
have something that is much more than the sum of its
parts, it is no longer a mark on paper, or notes and
words, it is something that forcibly grabs you and
affects you. Here were two men, with guitars,
creating something at once deeper and richer than
normal life, something that seemed more real/true and
more passionate, than the everyday.
There was a bit of good natured banter with the
audience, I particularly liked when John started to
introduce a song as being about, when you want to be
locked up alone in your house for months, and Peter
said that that could be any of them.
John also had a rather endearing way of asking for a
beer from the bar. He shredded a guitar string,
quickly flicked it up, and carried on with the song.
There was more banter while they were offered a
guitar from Emmy.
There were quite a few of the songs where we were all
singing along, No Children in particular, but there
were a good few others, where a lot of us knew all
the words.
They finished up, I went back to see my wife, and say
how awesome it had been, and they came back for a
howling mad version of Houseguest, which is
worrying/disturbing, but very funny.
And then they were finally off. The only
disappointment was the lack of Mountain Goat
merchandise, but I suppose I can always design my own
Mountain Goats shirt.
Good to see a few mentions on the blogs, and photos
on Flickr. Also from some of the banter from the
audience, it seemed clear that many of the people
there had been listening the bootleg recordings of
previous gigs rather than just the records. This is a
group that you cannot find in a record shop, and
whose best-selling record is rated
30,286 in Music by Amazon.
And yet, they filled an enthusiastic audience of over
a hundred, singing along to a wide variety of their
songs, on a Monday night in Glasgow, with virtually
no publicity.
I suppose the fact that they are very good must be a
factor, but the web is creating opportunities that
never existing before for artists with talent to find
their audiences.
in trains - a work in progress
26/10/07 07:50
#mist
trees standing out like polluted lungs in the mist
#dusk
harbour full of sand
a ghostly bus
perfect houses round an empty street
paired moons all racing each other
strangers checking timetables
shadow people explode across walls
lit windows, conjure jewellery in the velvetty dark
an amber necklace of distant street lamps
night takes colour from my world
and light creates unseen forms
#leaving the family behind for work
we pass quiet cities in the night
#migraine
riding on the black train
head rotten with pain
mouth full of headstones
trees standing out like polluted lungs in the mist
#dusk
harbour full of sand
a ghostly bus
perfect houses round an empty street
paired moons all racing each other
strangers checking timetables
shadow people explode across walls
lit windows, conjure jewellery in the velvetty dark
an amber necklace of distant street lamps
night takes colour from my world
and light creates unseen forms
#leaving the family behind for work
we pass quiet cities in the night
#migraine
riding on the black train
head rotten with pain
mouth full of headstones
Life Game™ Alert
21/10/07 09:02
You have exceeded your discretionary spending limit
for this session of Life Game™
Click [Restart] to restart game, all saved settings will be lost, click [Resume] to resume game, no discretionary spending will be permitted until existing Life Game™ debts are cleared, and fresh Life Game™ funds have been accumulated. Many attractive features and items of functionality are hereby disabled, including, Life Game™ Impulse Purchase, Life Game™ Social Life, and Life Game™ Fun.
[RESTART]
[RESUME]
[CANCEL]
Click [Restart] to restart game, all saved settings will be lost, click [Resume] to resume game, no discretionary spending will be permitted until existing Life Game™ debts are cleared, and fresh Life Game™ funds have been accumulated. Many attractive features and items of functionality are hereby disabled, including, Life Game™ Impulse Purchase, Life Game™ Social Life, and Life Game™ Fun.
[RESTART]
[RESUME]
[CANCEL]
most fun art supply ever
20/10/07 07:02
Quick diary style update - for yesterday
yesterday I had a day off, my wife was working, so I was looking after the girls in the morning, and my wife got back in the afternoon.
Usually looking after the girls goes better when you try and stick some sort of structure on it, balancing out the fun, and the not so fun.
Started off by getting them to do the vacuum cleaning, while I did some other cleaning up round the house. If I get them to vacuum clean the house every week, hopefully the fact that they don't do that good a job, will be balanced off by the fact that it is done reasonably often. Had a quick trip out to dump stuff in the recycling point by the railway station, and pick up a big sack of leaves for my chicken wire leaf mould maker.
Then took a juice/tea break, and got them looking at the FontShop website looking at different fonts, for ideas. Got them to write their names in their own special fonts. Megan did a rather angular font, which I could easily imagine as a professional font. Hannah wrote her name using animals in the shape of the letters. As ever a lot of fun, but frustration along the way, when letters were too big, so a whole name could not fit onto the one page.
That pretty much took us to lunchtime, though I had also bought some broken oil pastels from the local arts shop, for them to experiment with.
In the afternoon, my wife got back, and we settled down to watch Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which I saw twenty years ago, and thought was very good. Pleased to see that it really was still very good, everyone enjoyed it, though truth be told my wife probably fell asleep during some of it. Big pile of family on the sofas, along with sleepy dog, laughing at some very silly stuff, and arguing over who all the stars were that had been pasted into the film, my wife being far better at recognising them than I was.
Then family tea, of splashy spaghetti bolognese.
Also watched a couple of episodes of Sledgehammer, I bought both series ages ago, and we watch a few episodes every now and a again, whenever the girls nagging gets too much! They do like Sledgehammer, from the classic openning theme, to the completely daft humour. Also watched some old Whose Line is it Anyway, which the girls did not quite understand, but seemed to get into eventually.
Also reading JPod, wrote a quick blog entry in the style of Douglas Coupland and usual playing about on the computer. Delighted to find Pilot Gel Marker Pens for sale on the internet, as they are simply the most fun art supply ever. I'll need to put in an order.
Also launch date for Leopard is now out, so I will be buying a new computer soon!!! Yeee Haaa!!!
yesterday I had a day off, my wife was working, so I was looking after the girls in the morning, and my wife got back in the afternoon.
Usually looking after the girls goes better when you try and stick some sort of structure on it, balancing out the fun, and the not so fun.
Started off by getting them to do the vacuum cleaning, while I did some other cleaning up round the house. If I get them to vacuum clean the house every week, hopefully the fact that they don't do that good a job, will be balanced off by the fact that it is done reasonably often. Had a quick trip out to dump stuff in the recycling point by the railway station, and pick up a big sack of leaves for my chicken wire leaf mould maker.
Then took a juice/tea break, and got them looking at the FontShop website looking at different fonts, for ideas. Got them to write their names in their own special fonts. Megan did a rather angular font, which I could easily imagine as a professional font. Hannah wrote her name using animals in the shape of the letters. As ever a lot of fun, but frustration along the way, when letters were too big, so a whole name could not fit onto the one page.
That pretty much took us to lunchtime, though I had also bought some broken oil pastels from the local arts shop, for them to experiment with.
In the afternoon, my wife got back, and we settled down to watch Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which I saw twenty years ago, and thought was very good. Pleased to see that it really was still very good, everyone enjoyed it, though truth be told my wife probably fell asleep during some of it. Big pile of family on the sofas, along with sleepy dog, laughing at some very silly stuff, and arguing over who all the stars were that had been pasted into the film, my wife being far better at recognising them than I was.
Then family tea, of splashy spaghetti bolognese.
Also watched a couple of episodes of Sledgehammer, I bought both series ages ago, and we watch a few episodes every now and a again, whenever the girls nagging gets too much! They do like Sledgehammer, from the classic openning theme, to the completely daft humour. Also watched some old Whose Line is it Anyway, which the girls did not quite understand, but seemed to get into eventually.
Also reading JPod, wrote a quick blog entry in the style of Douglas Coupland and usual playing about on the computer. Delighted to find Pilot Gel Marker Pens for sale on the internet, as they are simply the most fun art supply ever. I'll need to put in an order.
Also launch date for Leopard is now out, so I will be buying a new computer soon!!! Yeee Haaa!!!
Having bought JPod,
19/10/07 16:38
Yesterday I bought JPod by Douglas Coupland, not
Copland as in the operating sytem (?), composer, and
previous entries herein.
This was a bad idea because,...
Of course yesterday was not Friday, it was Thursday, but it was deemed to be a Friday, as I am on annual leave today.
Having bought JPod, which clearly was a bad idea, I now cannot in clear conscience treat myself to another impulse purchase,
if I were to treat myself to an impulse purchase it might be
However buying JPod was a good idea, because I am enjoying reading it, I really enjoyed Microserfs, which it is an obvious successor to, Generation X was okay, but not as geeky as Microserfs. I think I must have thrown out my copy of Microserfs and of Generation X, because I cannot find them, but if I do buy new copies, then they might turn up. I read them when I lived in Aberdeen, and I have a clear memory of walking down a street to buy a chinese takeaway, thinking in the style of Douglas Coupland.
Similarly I remember Paul Auster's writing infecting my imagination.
I was thinking of writing an ongoing blog entry as a detailed parody of JPod, but clearly as my parents have not inadvertantly murdered anyone, and I am not actually a code monkey, it might lose some of the particulars.
I have been listening to a lot of Mountain Goat's music recently, and the particular syntax of those, and JPod, and being tired, rather loops round in your head, and you start feeling like a character in someone else's imagination.
Things that bother me about Douglas Coupland
Last point, cross refer with Carl Hiaisen, (not spelt like that) and pretty much everyone else who writes nowadays.
This was a bad idea because,...
- I paid cash, when I had some book tokens sitting in an envelope next to my LaCie hard-drive, and therefore could easily have used them.
- It was on three for two, and I only bought the single book, but these three for twos, usually mean that you end up with stuff you don't want anyway.
- I am trying to reject materialism, and so don't feel that I need to treat myself to an impulse purchase each Friday, as a 'reward'.
Of course yesterday was not Friday, it was Thursday, but it was deemed to be a Friday, as I am on annual leave today.
Having bought JPod, which clearly was a bad idea, I now cannot in clear conscience treat myself to another impulse purchase,
if I were to treat myself to an impulse purchase it might be
- Clifford Font by Akira Kobayashi - one of the ones with big caps and little caps, but there are so many, it is confusing me
- the Martial Arts Weekend album by the Extra Glenns, which feature John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats,
- a self designed tee shirt from one of those places which lets you design your own tee shirt
- Macintosh laptop
However buying JPod was a good idea, because I am enjoying reading it, I really enjoyed Microserfs, which it is an obvious successor to, Generation X was okay, but not as geeky as Microserfs. I think I must have thrown out my copy of Microserfs and of Generation X, because I cannot find them, but if I do buy new copies, then they might turn up. I read them when I lived in Aberdeen, and I have a clear memory of walking down a street to buy a chinese takeaway, thinking in the style of Douglas Coupland.
Similarly I remember Paul Auster's writing infecting my imagination.
I was thinking of writing an ongoing blog entry as a detailed parody of JPod, but clearly as my parents have not inadvertantly murdered anyone, and I am not actually a code monkey, it might lose some of the particulars.
I have been listening to a lot of Mountain Goat's music recently, and the particular syntax of those, and JPod, and being tired, rather loops round in your head, and you start feeling like a character in someone else's imagination.
Things that bother me about Douglas Coupland
- I bought copies of Microserfs and Generation X, and now I cannot find them
- he makes lots of references to products etc, which I don't ordinarily like, but it works really well in his books, without seeming tacky
- the lego mini figs on the cover, in isometric projection are drawn wrong, the arms should be further forward, and the heads should be further forward, probably with visible necks
- he always seems really miserable in his interviews, as if he really hates writing, or really hates interviews, but he must be really rich, and could live in shed in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and never need to work again, so why should he bother writing books if he does not want to, or doing interviews if he does not want to,
- he has written way too many books, if he had only written a couple, then we would all think that they were the best thing since sliced bread
Last point, cross refer with Carl Hiaisen, (not spelt like that) and pretty much everyone else who writes nowadays.
The Old Machines ...
15/10/07 16:48
have no visible controls
are made of stone
just whisper now, when once they shouted
are making lost spirits flesh
are some one else's loose ends
once fixed our geography
are made of stone
just whisper now, when once they shouted
are making lost spirits flesh
are some one else's loose ends
once fixed our geography
And when I am gone ...
28/09/07 21:01
On Bramble Picking
23/09/07 16:26
Things that you learn from picking brambles
- keep moving - there are always more bramble bushes to be found
- don't get bogged down finding the last bramble on the bush
- don't stretch or reach too far, better to keep moving
- over stretch and you can spill the lot
- moving position will change your perspective, and you will likely see more
- as you start to pick, you will likely see more
- where there are some brambles, there are likely to be more, once you settle down to look for them
- seeing a bramble bush is not the same as seeing brambles for picking
- with practice you can get plenty of brambles into your hand
- take out the stalks as you go, don't leave it for later
- pick good brambles, mushy brambles or part ripe brambles are not worth the effort
- passers by will always offer advice, but they won't help and they don't pick
- there were always more brambles last week, will be next week, and used to be twenty years ago
- brambles stay ripe on the bush for quite a long time compared to most soft fruits
- a great bramble shines
- start recognising that brambles come by the branch, find a good branch and harvest that
- start recognising that brambles come by the bush, find a good bush and harvest that
- brambles vary enormously, but are pretty constant over the same bush,
- too small and too much effort, too large and prone to over-ripeness
- when they are ready - they come off with minimal effort
- pick them before Michaelmas, when the devil spits on them, and they are not good afterwards
- the more sun, the quicker they ripen
- some open spots are very slow to ripen or poor to fruit
- brambles on second years growth perhaps?
- learn your area, where the bushes are, and the sequence they ripen in
- get some bramble bushes you see everyday, to act as your calendar for when you need to go out more widely for harvesting
- if there is not enough for a jam, wash, crush, seive the juice, leave to set for a night, to make jus for adding to plain ice cream
- picking needs a special sort of patience
- there will always be brambles left over
- there are usually brambles to come back for
- you never find them all, first time around, come back along the same path, and you will find lots more
- we were made to pick brambles
- all year round a bramble is a nuisance, and then, come autumn, it feeds everyone
- patience and effort will prevail when you pick the right time, and the right place
- picking brambles means scratches and stings
- a bramble bush in a hawthorne tree is the perfect option for picking
- hedgerows and the sides of paths make for good picking
- avoid roadsides, and too obvious areas
- there will always be brambles
- there should always be someone to pick them
- it is food for free, but it is the process that is importance
- picking brambles connects you to the seasons and the land, in a way we were built for
- picking favours the long armed and long legged
- wear long trousers or gaiters so you can wade in fearlessly
- watch where you put your feet, it is easy to step on a promising branch or two
- with an open mind, you can learn from anything or anyone
The Mountain Goats
22/09/07 07:45
The Mountain Goats are my current all time favourite
group. But rather than write about what they are
like, I have simply embedded a couple of YouTube
videos.
This is probably their best known song, and has a very fine video to boot
This is a splendid and silly song, the original is by Ace of Bass, but its not a patch on this. The hand signals have a strange magnificence.
The current benchmark I apply to buying any music is, wouldn't I simply prefer to buy something else by the Mountain Goats.
This is probably their best known song, and has a very fine video to boot
This is a splendid and silly song, the original is by Ace of Bass, but its not a patch on this. The hand signals have a strange magnificence.
The current benchmark I apply to buying any music is, wouldn't I simply prefer to buy something else by the Mountain Goats.
Fonts - names for imaginary fonts
09/09/07 05:58
I've been browsing FontShop and decided to
come up with a list of names for imaginary
fonts,
as a starting point, these might appeal to Rian Hughes, who is strong on the whole comic book - science fiction ethos, but others are just plain evocative names
zarjaz
straphanger
otto von
steam punk
teleport
jaunt
rocketship
starship
raygun
third empire
infinite vastness
a larger perfection
IT Dept
Alien Crew
point three recurring
Starboard Home
Ship's Crew
Departmental
Insanity brake
puns r us
diddlysquat
art statement
blue light
shuffle
zeppelin
airship
Montgolfier
gopher
veneer
plug n play
one click shopping
@home
goodison park
virginia waters
as a starting point, these might appeal to Rian Hughes, who is strong on the whole comic book - science fiction ethos, but others are just plain evocative names
zarjaz
straphanger
otto von
steam punk
teleport
jaunt
rocketship
starship
raygun
third empire
infinite vastness
a larger perfection
IT Dept
Alien Crew
point three recurring
Starboard Home
Ship's Crew
Departmental
Insanity brake
puns r us
diddlysquat
art statement
blue light
shuffle
zeppelin
airship
Montgolfier
gopher
veneer
plug n play
one click shopping
@home
goodison park
virginia waters
iMix
17/04/07 06:37
I have created an iMix on iTunes, but I can't seem to
cut and paste the code in here, and get it to work,
embarrassing after yesterday's triumph in coding the
font, which will only work for those with the font on
their computer, so a small triumph.
The iMix is entitled
Sam - that's what I call Music - 1
and here is Sam,
The iMix is entitled
Sam - that's what I call Music - 1
and here is Sam,
FONT FACE ="marker felt">
06/04/07 07:25
Mopping up random thoughts -
Ideas Machine - despite the best of intentions, I simply cannot keep up with all the various thoughts and ideas that I have, and struggle to jot down the roughest of notes for them all. Accordingly I am now accepting, that there is an element of natural selection, and the best of my ideas will fight their way onto paper, or blog, and the weaker will perish. Fortunately there does seem to be a near infinite supply of them., and the weakest are doubtless pretty feeble.
Anyway, in an attempt to simply record some of the, a rather random entry today, which will at least mop up some ideas.
Doors can be made of anything - you tend to simply buy a wooden door, but logically, as long as the material complies with certain physical characteristics, you could use virtually anything, what about bright plastic, doors with lights in them, rubber doors, metal doors, doors made out of clothes, doors made out of chicken wire stuffed with crushed aluminium cans, etc etc.
Wall ornament, attach a wire between two points on your wall, either a firm wire that you bend to shape, so that it catches interesting shadows, and projects them on the wall, particularly powerful when you have candle light, or a taut wire, with a little buggy device that moves alone it, the crawler device is battery powered and includes flashing lights, maybe not something for your house, but worth a shot for a nightclub or coffee bar.
Getting Things Done - book and stationery package, sell the book and supporting stationery, ie filing cabinet, and dymo tape labeller together, you certainly buy more stationery after you have read the book, so worthwhile for stationers to consider selling it, or booksellers selling some stationery to support it.
Washing machine tubs - these are made of stainless steel and can be obtained from scrap yards, ideal plant containers, I like the ideal of planting up fennel or florence fennel in them. Ditto dill.
Gabions - I am keen to put some gabions in my garden, basically wire structures filled with rubble, they would however probably be the mother of all slug traps!
Save documents - why do we have to consciously save, surely the reasoning for this goes back to the computing dark ages. A computer nowadays is perfectly capable of saving every key stroke as you make it. Simply amend the programmes to work that way. Whoever is the first to do it, never lose a document again, would be hugely popular. Bill, Steve, can you sort this out please.
Explicitly examine decision making - it is useful to consciously examine how you arrive at decisions. Look at pretty much every decision, why did I decide to do this now, why not that, why this way, why not do so and so too. It quickly becomes apparent that you are superb at juggling vast numbers of variables, incomplete information and uncertainty in a very intuitive way that you simply could not programme for. In real life you do not have perfect answers, simply good enough answers, and there is always an opportunity cost, if you do this, you are not doing that, if you phone your mum, you are not washing the dishes, if you walk the dog, you are not mowing the lawn.
Start from where you are - there is no point getting guilty about where you are starting from. You have done well to get here, simply figure out the most productive way forward. A better career would probably have meant a worse social life, so where you are now is probably the best place for you to be, focus on where you want to go, and how to get there.
I joined the Civil Service to indulge my love of stationery.
People say that share investment is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to buy
when to buy it
when to sell it
Think about those, and think of sensible reasons, and you should do okay.
People say that prioritisation is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to do
when to start
when to stop
the worrying and feeling guilty about what you are not doing won’t help.
Adopting a “Getting Things Done” methodology will not increase your productivity by more than a few percentage points, but it will reduce your worry and guilt levels hugely.
We really do not need extra ways of feeling guilty about what we are not doing.
Don’t waste your money on bad tools, scratchy annoying biro, just chuck it. Get a nice pen that you enjoy using. I never even bother looking at cheap woodwork tools. If they don’t work properly, I don’t have enough time, that I can waste it using stuff that I do not enjoy using. Get a decent computer you enjoy using. Why skimp on stuff that will just depress you.
It is perfectly legitimate to do something, simply because not having it done is depressing you. Do the stuff under your nose that depresses you most.
People are phenomenal about making decisions, they do it all the time, any explicit system is pretty feeble in comparison. Trust your own judgement more, it is far better than you give it credit for.
Finally, I am writing this in Market Felt format, which just feels wonderful for jotting down rough ideas. Change your font, change your outlook on what you are writing. However just ensure that you use one that kerns properly, so you are not driving yourself mad trying to figure out whether you put in one space, no space, or two spaces.
Ideas Machine - despite the best of intentions, I simply cannot keep up with all the various thoughts and ideas that I have, and struggle to jot down the roughest of notes for them all. Accordingly I am now accepting, that there is an element of natural selection, and the best of my ideas will fight their way onto paper, or blog, and the weaker will perish. Fortunately there does seem to be a near infinite supply of them., and the weakest are doubtless pretty feeble.
Anyway, in an attempt to simply record some of the, a rather random entry today, which will at least mop up some ideas.
Doors can be made of anything - you tend to simply buy a wooden door, but logically, as long as the material complies with certain physical characteristics, you could use virtually anything, what about bright plastic, doors with lights in them, rubber doors, metal doors, doors made out of clothes, doors made out of chicken wire stuffed with crushed aluminium cans, etc etc.
Wall ornament, attach a wire between two points on your wall, either a firm wire that you bend to shape, so that it catches interesting shadows, and projects them on the wall, particularly powerful when you have candle light, or a taut wire, with a little buggy device that moves alone it, the crawler device is battery powered and includes flashing lights, maybe not something for your house, but worth a shot for a nightclub or coffee bar.
Getting Things Done - book and stationery package, sell the book and supporting stationery, ie filing cabinet, and dymo tape labeller together, you certainly buy more stationery after you have read the book, so worthwhile for stationers to consider selling it, or booksellers selling some stationery to support it.
Washing machine tubs - these are made of stainless steel and can be obtained from scrap yards, ideal plant containers, I like the ideal of planting up fennel or florence fennel in them. Ditto dill.
Gabions - I am keen to put some gabions in my garden, basically wire structures filled with rubble, they would however probably be the mother of all slug traps!
Save documents - why do we have to consciously save, surely the reasoning for this goes back to the computing dark ages. A computer nowadays is perfectly capable of saving every key stroke as you make it. Simply amend the programmes to work that way. Whoever is the first to do it, never lose a document again, would be hugely popular. Bill, Steve, can you sort this out please.
Explicitly examine decision making - it is useful to consciously examine how you arrive at decisions. Look at pretty much every decision, why did I decide to do this now, why not that, why this way, why not do so and so too. It quickly becomes apparent that you are superb at juggling vast numbers of variables, incomplete information and uncertainty in a very intuitive way that you simply could not programme for. In real life you do not have perfect answers, simply good enough answers, and there is always an opportunity cost, if you do this, you are not doing that, if you phone your mum, you are not washing the dishes, if you walk the dog, you are not mowing the lawn.
Start from where you are - there is no point getting guilty about where you are starting from. You have done well to get here, simply figure out the most productive way forward. A better career would probably have meant a worse social life, so where you are now is probably the best place for you to be, focus on where you want to go, and how to get there.
I joined the Civil Service to indulge my love of stationery.
People say that share investment is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to buy
when to buy it
when to sell it
Think about those, and think of sensible reasons, and you should do okay.
People say that prioritisation is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to do
when to start
when to stop
the worrying and feeling guilty about what you are not doing won’t help.
Adopting a “Getting Things Done” methodology will not increase your productivity by more than a few percentage points, but it will reduce your worry and guilt levels hugely.
We really do not need extra ways of feeling guilty about what we are not doing.
Don’t waste your money on bad tools, scratchy annoying biro, just chuck it. Get a nice pen that you enjoy using. I never even bother looking at cheap woodwork tools. If they don’t work properly, I don’t have enough time, that I can waste it using stuff that I do not enjoy using. Get a decent computer you enjoy using. Why skimp on stuff that will just depress you.
It is perfectly legitimate to do something, simply because not having it done is depressing you. Do the stuff under your nose that depresses you most.
People are phenomenal about making decisions, they do it all the time, any explicit system is pretty feeble in comparison. Trust your own judgement more, it is far better than you give it credit for.
Finally, I am writing this in Market Felt format, which just feels wonderful for jotting down rough ideas. Change your font, change your outlook on what you are writing. However just ensure that you use one that kerns properly, so you are not driving yourself mad trying to figure out whether you put in one space, no space, or two spaces.
Amazon indulges
02/04/07 07:41
And so, ....
I have a week off.
I do a lot of train journeys, mainly the same route, so when I catch a different train it feels really different, even when it starts off along exactly the same line, at the same time, in the same clothes,
sitting on the train feels very different, because you know that it is going to end up somewhere different, so the expectation somehow changes your perception of the present.
Other wierdly different, when it is the same, experiences, going round somewhere when everyone is at work, or school, and you’re not, but should be, somewhere busy on a quiet Sunday morning, going to work wearing something different from usual.
It is now Monday morning, but knowing that I had a week off made the weekend seem completely different. Normally I would have stressed over fitting in everything that always needs done. But instead I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, and trying to organise the various stuff that I want to get done, or ought to get done. I’ve also been trying to declutter my life of all those half done tasks that just depress you every time you see them, but never seem urgent enough to actually get done.
{First stage of revision: Sorting out several months' worth of notes.
can't sleep paper stacks will eat me
from evilstorm - LiveJournal posting}
I am probably spending too much on iTunes, too much in the sense that I cannot afford much, rather than too much in the sense that I am actually spending like some crazy loon lottery winner with minutes left to live. Mighty fond of the Holly Gollightly album, You cannot buy a gun when you are crying. However iTunes like Amazon indulges your desire to browse, and make lists, and personalise. I knew someone from Taiwan who liked really top end HiFi and would listen to violin solos, not because he liked them, but because it was the most taxing music for the HiFi to play properly. I suppose you could play endlessly on iTunes without actually enjoying listening to music at all.
I would like to learn to tap dance, so that when I am queuing on the train platform, I could tap dance to amuse myself and others, or more likely amuse myself and annoy others. It would be just so surreal to have someone tap dancing for a minute on a train platform, then they stop and vanish into the crowd.
I would like to get dvd’s of the Wim Wender’s films that I enjoyed while at the University FilmSoc, Kings of the Road, and the State of Things, but they seem too obscure to have made it onto dvd, for shame, they are very beautiful and quite contemplative in their way.
The sun is slowly rising behind a misty day, skeleton trees against white blotting paper sky, my garden is starting to bud, barbie pink camelia by the steps, and a slightly washed out kerria against the sky blue trellis I made when we moved here, dog curled huffily on his sofa.
I suppose I should be more purposeful, but like someone on a different train, happy to release myself to the possibilities of the moment.
I have a week off.
I do a lot of train journeys, mainly the same route, so when I catch a different train it feels really different, even when it starts off along exactly the same line, at the same time, in the same clothes,
sitting on the train feels very different, because you know that it is going to end up somewhere different, so the expectation somehow changes your perception of the present.
Other wierdly different, when it is the same, experiences, going round somewhere when everyone is at work, or school, and you’re not, but should be, somewhere busy on a quiet Sunday morning, going to work wearing something different from usual.
It is now Monday morning, but knowing that I had a week off made the weekend seem completely different. Normally I would have stressed over fitting in everything that always needs done. But instead I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, and trying to organise the various stuff that I want to get done, or ought to get done. I’ve also been trying to declutter my life of all those half done tasks that just depress you every time you see them, but never seem urgent enough to actually get done.
{First stage of revision: Sorting out several months' worth of notes.
can't sleep paper stacks will eat me
from evilstorm - LiveJournal posting}
I am probably spending too much on iTunes, too much in the sense that I cannot afford much, rather than too much in the sense that I am actually spending like some crazy loon lottery winner with minutes left to live. Mighty fond of the Holly Gollightly album, You cannot buy a gun when you are crying. However iTunes like Amazon indulges your desire to browse, and make lists, and personalise. I knew someone from Taiwan who liked really top end HiFi and would listen to violin solos, not because he liked them, but because it was the most taxing music for the HiFi to play properly. I suppose you could play endlessly on iTunes without actually enjoying listening to music at all.
I would like to learn to tap dance, so that when I am queuing on the train platform, I could tap dance to amuse myself and others, or more likely amuse myself and annoy others. It would be just so surreal to have someone tap dancing for a minute on a train platform, then they stop and vanish into the crowd.
I would like to get dvd’s of the Wim Wender’s films that I enjoyed while at the University FilmSoc, Kings of the Road, and the State of Things, but they seem too obscure to have made it onto dvd, for shame, they are very beautiful and quite contemplative in their way.
The sun is slowly rising behind a misty day, skeleton trees against white blotting paper sky, my garden is starting to bud, barbie pink camelia by the steps, and a slightly washed out kerria against the sky blue trellis I made when we moved here, dog curled huffily on his sofa.
I suppose I should be more purposeful, but like someone on a different train, happy to release myself to the possibilities of the moment.
Cool stuff
10/02/07 08:07
Write about FourthBlog here.
Some more random jottings
* I shall love you until death makes strangers of us.
* The gravity engines - it is assumed that man will colonise planets with similar gravity. However if you can use gravity engines to convert gravity into energy, which seems conceptually possible, though physically improbable, then you could colonise planets with very high gravity, by living in discrete low gravity bubbles, surrounded by gravity engines.
* Hellish creatures - what if creatures evolved that used chemicals to phase in and out of our time stream, using time to rot away material that they could then consume in the future. What if such creatures left a backwash that could catch a man and pull him down through time. What if such travel was strictly one way. How much would you dare travel, down through time, till you ran out of futures?
Cool Stuff
To explain a little. I recently got a new iMac computer, and from there got Broadband, expensive but worth it. I dabbled with iTunes, but until a friend recommended podcasts for long commutes, I did not see much need for iTunes or an iPod. However I now have an iPod and listen to quite a lot of podcasts. I do commute a lot!
Much of what you see when computing is simply a metaphor. The desktop is a metaphor, the material is not there in any physical sense, it is just presented like that, to make your life easier, just as the files on a hard drive are not single neatly filed items.
The metaphors of computing and what they signify are starting to change quite a lot, it seems to me. It is difficult to understand what things actually do.
Clearly an iPod is not really a flash drive walkman, it is something cleverer than that. However google is simply a very high tech version of the old biblical concordances. It is interesting to try and step back and think about what we are really using, and what it really does. Or to just dive in and swim around in all these new possibilities that were inconceivable a short while ago.
The podcasts led to the Indiefeed Alternative/Rock feed, and that led to listening to the Thermals, which led to me researching them on google, and wikipedia, and listening to segments of their tracks from wherever, and my wife ordering a couple of CDs from Amazon. This is probably a tediously ordinary story, but inconceivable a few years ago. I remember reading about endless bands in the NME but you never knew what any of them sounded like. As Billy Joel sang, you can’t get the sound from a story in a magazine.
Alternatively listening to a podcast of a lecture by Professor Howard Frumkin on public health and town planning
http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/podcasts/
I could then check out his presentation as a pdf, (I have an iMac so not having it in powerpoint is a big deal to me), check out his books on Amazon, and add one to my Amazon wishlist, so that when my wife asks for ideas for Christmas presents, I can direct her to my Amazon wishlist.
Other cool stuff
http://yugop.com/ver4/index.asp?section=stuff&id=6
Though I have no idea what or why, but I do like creating grey waves.
I’ve already mentioned wikipedia, and I use this blog, so they are obviously both cool, as are operating systems that update on the fly through your broadband connection. One more site strikes me as particularly cool at the moment, and like the others, I drip drip drip heard about it through podcasts, until I eventually checked it out, having no idea what to expect.
Flickr - basically a fantastic shoe box of shared photos. I’ve not delved deep, but I do like the random interesting images. I do like the overall high quality of the photos that you initially come across. I do like the page of popular tags, with the different font sizes, presumably demonstrating their popularity. I do like the slideshow option for the tags. I do like the way you can wander through images as you interests take you.
A couple of thoughts occur.
Just as walking across my field last week, I knew that many feet make a path, and a path presumably leads somewhere, and my feet keep the path there. Where no feet walk there is no path. The internet now uses our feet to make paths, everywhere. People buying this book on Amazon also bought this, people downloading this podcast also downloaded that one, popular searches today are...
Even quietly wandering through the internet we are leaving a path, that is of value to others, although we might not know where we are going, we are leaving a path, because in aggregate all these paths do amount to something.
Having once wandered, it is impossibly difficult to retrace your steps, without the back or history on the browser, it would be like a Borgesian library, an image once glimpsed, but never to be seen again.
There was a wonderful image on Flickr of a stone like chain against an old barn wall. The textures were gorgeous. I clicked to see more images by the artist. Within a few minutes I has seen a few dozen images of her life. I had a rough idea what she looked like, where she lived, what car she drove, her pet dog. On the one hand I was growing to know and like her. On the other I have no connection with her, I will never know her name, or conceivably meet her. I felt uncomfortable. I felt that I was intruding too much. All this technology seems to offer intimacy, as people we offer intimacy quite casually. Here are the photos on my desk of what matters most to me, I leave my filofax lying about. But we want privacy. On the morning commute no one wants to speak. We are all tired, lost in our private worlds. Intimacy and privacy are oxymorons, but the internet seems to offer both, but offers neither. You think that you are an unseen observer, but you leave paths, and trails, you think you are an anonymous poster, but the astute observer can pick up clues, that lead back to you.
Maybe we need a new sense of etiquette to cope. In the early days of the internet you just did not post personal details, so the various texts you left across the internet would not identify you too easily. Now google can search the internet for a duplicated misspelling in an instant, you leave images and fragments of your life, you link to others you know, who might be less discrete than you. Common user names across different domains, lazily duplicated passwords, we are living our lives in a shop window of our own devising. Like the early evening commute when you see in peoples houses, before they think to pull the curtains. We are at once intimate, but private. Alone but potentially endlessly observed and studied.
When I was young cars were less usual, housewives were more common, it made for a safer environment for children to grow up in. Those days are gone, and I don’t suppose you would want them back. You have to accept responsibility for the downsides of the changes you experience. If we are to live in this virtual shopwindow, then we must accept its implications. Random people can contact us, and start conversations, we have to accept that people are who they say they are, they might be hyperintelligent canines, or bots in Turing test mode.
Why do I need a webpage?
I initially used bulletin boards, way back, before I could access the internet. Then set up my own webpage. I still have a webpage, but have not updated it in ages. However I could post all my jottings to this blog, and all my family photos to Flickr, why go to the trouble of a webpage. May webpages are simply created in the same way that these blog entries, are pasted together to make a page. No html required. Simply cut and paste into some software online that does the job for me. I suppose you need a website to display a portfolio of work of some description to market yourself in some way, but unless you have a high degree of need, then blogs and flickr seem so much easier.
Some more random jottings
* I shall love you until death makes strangers of us.
* The gravity engines - it is assumed that man will colonise planets with similar gravity. However if you can use gravity engines to convert gravity into energy, which seems conceptually possible, though physically improbable, then you could colonise planets with very high gravity, by living in discrete low gravity bubbles, surrounded by gravity engines.
* Hellish creatures - what if creatures evolved that used chemicals to phase in and out of our time stream, using time to rot away material that they could then consume in the future. What if such creatures left a backwash that could catch a man and pull him down through time. What if such travel was strictly one way. How much would you dare travel, down through time, till you ran out of futures?
Cool Stuff
To explain a little. I recently got a new iMac computer, and from there got Broadband, expensive but worth it. I dabbled with iTunes, but until a friend recommended podcasts for long commutes, I did not see much need for iTunes or an iPod. However I now have an iPod and listen to quite a lot of podcasts. I do commute a lot!
Much of what you see when computing is simply a metaphor. The desktop is a metaphor, the material is not there in any physical sense, it is just presented like that, to make your life easier, just as the files on a hard drive are not single neatly filed items.
The metaphors of computing and what they signify are starting to change quite a lot, it seems to me. It is difficult to understand what things actually do.
Clearly an iPod is not really a flash drive walkman, it is something cleverer than that. However google is simply a very high tech version of the old biblical concordances. It is interesting to try and step back and think about what we are really using, and what it really does. Or to just dive in and swim around in all these new possibilities that were inconceivable a short while ago.
The podcasts led to the Indiefeed Alternative/Rock feed, and that led to listening to the Thermals, which led to me researching them on google, and wikipedia, and listening to segments of their tracks from wherever, and my wife ordering a couple of CDs from Amazon. This is probably a tediously ordinary story, but inconceivable a few years ago. I remember reading about endless bands in the NME but you never knew what any of them sounded like. As Billy Joel sang, you can’t get the sound from a story in a magazine.
Alternatively listening to a podcast of a lecture by Professor Howard Frumkin on public health and town planning
http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/podcasts/
I could then check out his presentation as a pdf, (I have an iMac so not having it in powerpoint is a big deal to me), check out his books on Amazon, and add one to my Amazon wishlist, so that when my wife asks for ideas for Christmas presents, I can direct her to my Amazon wishlist.
Other cool stuff
http://yugop.com/ver4/index.asp?section=stuff&id=6
Though I have no idea what or why, but I do like creating grey waves.
I’ve already mentioned wikipedia, and I use this blog, so they are obviously both cool, as are operating systems that update on the fly through your broadband connection. One more site strikes me as particularly cool at the moment, and like the others, I drip drip drip heard about it through podcasts, until I eventually checked it out, having no idea what to expect.
Flickr - basically a fantastic shoe box of shared photos. I’ve not delved deep, but I do like the random interesting images. I do like the overall high quality of the photos that you initially come across. I do like the page of popular tags, with the different font sizes, presumably demonstrating their popularity. I do like the slideshow option for the tags. I do like the way you can wander through images as you interests take you.
A couple of thoughts occur.
Just as walking across my field last week, I knew that many feet make a path, and a path presumably leads somewhere, and my feet keep the path there. Where no feet walk there is no path. The internet now uses our feet to make paths, everywhere. People buying this book on Amazon also bought this, people downloading this podcast also downloaded that one, popular searches today are...
Even quietly wandering through the internet we are leaving a path, that is of value to others, although we might not know where we are going, we are leaving a path, because in aggregate all these paths do amount to something.
Having once wandered, it is impossibly difficult to retrace your steps, without the back or history on the browser, it would be like a Borgesian library, an image once glimpsed, but never to be seen again.
There was a wonderful image on Flickr of a stone like chain against an old barn wall. The textures were gorgeous. I clicked to see more images by the artist. Within a few minutes I has seen a few dozen images of her life. I had a rough idea what she looked like, where she lived, what car she drove, her pet dog. On the one hand I was growing to know and like her. On the other I have no connection with her, I will never know her name, or conceivably meet her. I felt uncomfortable. I felt that I was intruding too much. All this technology seems to offer intimacy, as people we offer intimacy quite casually. Here are the photos on my desk of what matters most to me, I leave my filofax lying about. But we want privacy. On the morning commute no one wants to speak. We are all tired, lost in our private worlds. Intimacy and privacy are oxymorons, but the internet seems to offer both, but offers neither. You think that you are an unseen observer, but you leave paths, and trails, you think you are an anonymous poster, but the astute observer can pick up clues, that lead back to you.
Maybe we need a new sense of etiquette to cope. In the early days of the internet you just did not post personal details, so the various texts you left across the internet would not identify you too easily. Now google can search the internet for a duplicated misspelling in an instant, you leave images and fragments of your life, you link to others you know, who might be less discrete than you. Common user names across different domains, lazily duplicated passwords, we are living our lives in a shop window of our own devising. Like the early evening commute when you see in peoples houses, before they think to pull the curtains. We are at once intimate, but private. Alone but potentially endlessly observed and studied.
When I was young cars were less usual, housewives were more common, it made for a safer environment for children to grow up in. Those days are gone, and I don’t suppose you would want them back. You have to accept responsibility for the downsides of the changes you experience. If we are to live in this virtual shopwindow, then we must accept its implications. Random people can contact us, and start conversations, we have to accept that people are who they say they are, they might be hyperintelligent canines, or bots in Turing test mode.
Why do I need a webpage?
I initially used bulletin boards, way back, before I could access the internet. Then set up my own webpage. I still have a webpage, but have not updated it in ages. However I could post all my jottings to this blog, and all my family photos to Flickr, why go to the trouble of a webpage. May webpages are simply created in the same way that these blog entries, are pasted together to make a page. No html required. Simply cut and paste into some software online that does the job for me. I suppose you need a website to display a portfolio of work of some description to market yourself in some way, but unless you have a high degree of need, then blogs and flickr seem so much easier.