Saturday, February 17, 2007
We need more...
...movie posters like this one. Man but this has class and a combination of expressions which really draws you in. Certainly, it's what led to my renting it.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Maybe I'd still like the space station
Oh me
Oh my
Oh wonder
Meanwhile, I'm defintely getting more jaded. When I read this my first thought was "I saw this episode when it was about Nike". I'm thinking that there is a downside to having been exposed to countless pleas for help by the third world for as long as I can remember.
In the interest of this not turning into a mere warehouse of links and embedded video, I thought I might babble on a bit about some stuff.
Can you dig it?
I have decided that I am going to do my best to take a stand against the killing of time.
Since about 18 months ago I've noticed that my perception of the passage of time has ratcheted up a rather noticable notch. It's not the first time, certainly, and I look back with increasing fondness on a memory of me at a single digit age being told by my mum that the Carp Fair wouldn't be on for a month. What awe I felt at that stretch of time.
But now I find that a month is comperable to how I used to see a week, a week is more akin to a day and a day is more akin to three hours or so.
Like a lot of things, it's alarming but what can one do against time? Nothing much, but what can you do about your perception of its passing? Bore yourself to tears and it will slow. Snort cocaine off of Scarlett Johannson's left buttock while listening to a duet between Thom York, Bjork and a panda being played live in the auditorium of your personal space station and it will most likely speed up a bit.
Most likely.
But nobody wants to live a stretched out bit of boredom and I think it would be just an exercise in meaningless distraction to fill my time with as much entertainment as possible so as to send myself (perceptually) hurtling towards my emerald studded space coffin (complete with space servants to join me in the afterlife). Okay, fair enough, this leads to a more rewarding and tantalizing path then picking a spot on the spectrum of hedonism. Being productive in a personally rewarding fashion. Writing always "steadies time" for me and this is certainly one of the reasons I love it. But until I'm self supporting, I need to work a day job.
Now we're really heading into first world problem territory. Brace yourselves.
I...I want my day job to be something I want to do and which contributes more to my life than a paycheque. I want to stop pressing the mental fast forward button on stretches of time in my day which do not include physical pain or recovery from illness. I want to stop feeling like I'm mortgaging about 2/3 of my waking life to sustain myself and be able to enjoy the other 1/3. Essentially, I want to lose the prefix.
Just typing that last bit sent a deluge of imagery roaring through my head. Oh but Mr. Brackenbury, there are so many people so much worse off than you. There are those starving people, those diseased people, those abused working people, those people on the wrong end of a state sponsored genocide, those people who are forced at gunpoint to commit incest, those people who come to a website they regularly frequent for something interesting or pleasant and find neither and who could forget those tired, swollen bellied children with the flies crawling all over their eyeballs like octegenarian golfers parading around the 9th green to figure out the angle of their putt - those kids which were just segwayed to by TV's own Dr. Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammar, while you're just trying to be one of those children who gets to eat cereal and watch cartoons before going to school.
I think this is how generally well meaning people end up hating the poor just as they can wind up resenting a television show or a band - overplay. Is...is this an awful portent of my eventual transformation into a sharp fanged, utterly merciless bastard with no concern for anybody but himself? I certainly hope it's just a phase I'll outgrow by the next clothing or musical style I find myself enjoying.
Right then, to sum up, three new goals to achieve by years end (and preferably before).
(This rambling essay/manifesto was brought to you by the increasingly mind-gumming illness which I am losing the war to).
*This is, of course, worded just a little tongue-in-cheek.
Oh my
Oh wonder
Meanwhile, I'm defintely getting more jaded. When I read this my first thought was "I saw this episode when it was about Nike". I'm thinking that there is a downside to having been exposed to countless pleas for help by the third world for as long as I can remember.
In the interest of this not turning into a mere warehouse of links and embedded video, I thought I might babble on a bit about some stuff.
Can you dig it?
I have decided that I am going to do my best to take a stand against the killing of time.
Since about 18 months ago I've noticed that my perception of the passage of time has ratcheted up a rather noticable notch. It's not the first time, certainly, and I look back with increasing fondness on a memory of me at a single digit age being told by my mum that the Carp Fair wouldn't be on for a month. What awe I felt at that stretch of time.
But now I find that a month is comperable to how I used to see a week, a week is more akin to a day and a day is more akin to three hours or so.
Like a lot of things, it's alarming but what can one do against time? Nothing much, but what can you do about your perception of its passing? Bore yourself to tears and it will slow. Snort cocaine off of Scarlett Johannson's left buttock while listening to a duet between Thom York, Bjork and a panda being played live in the auditorium of your personal space station and it will most likely speed up a bit.
Most likely.
But nobody wants to live a stretched out bit of boredom and I think it would be just an exercise in meaningless distraction to fill my time with as much entertainment as possible so as to send myself (perceptually) hurtling towards my emerald studded space coffin (complete with space servants to join me in the afterlife). Okay, fair enough, this leads to a more rewarding and tantalizing path then picking a spot on the spectrum of hedonism. Being productive in a personally rewarding fashion. Writing always "steadies time" for me and this is certainly one of the reasons I love it. But until I'm self supporting, I need to work a day job.
Now we're really heading into first world problem territory. Brace yourselves.
I...I want my day job to be something I want to do and which contributes more to my life than a paycheque. I want to stop pressing the mental fast forward button on stretches of time in my day which do not include physical pain or recovery from illness. I want to stop feeling like I'm mortgaging about 2/3 of my waking life to sustain myself and be able to enjoy the other 1/3. Essentially, I want to lose the prefix.
Just typing that last bit sent a deluge of imagery roaring through my head. Oh but Mr. Brackenbury, there are so many people so much worse off than you. There are those starving people, those diseased people, those abused working people, those people on the wrong end of a state sponsored genocide, those people who are forced at gunpoint to commit incest, those people who come to a website they regularly frequent for something interesting or pleasant and find neither and who could forget those tired, swollen bellied children with the flies crawling all over their eyeballs like octegenarian golfers parading around the 9th green to figure out the angle of their putt - those kids which were just segwayed to by TV's own Dr. Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammar, while you're just trying to be one of those children who gets to eat cereal and watch cartoons before going to school.
I think this is how generally well meaning people end up hating the poor just as they can wind up resenting a television show or a band - overplay. Is...is this an awful portent of my eventual transformation into a sharp fanged, utterly merciless bastard with no concern for anybody but himself? I certainly hope it's just a phase I'll outgrow by the next clothing or musical style I find myself enjoying.
Right then, to sum up, three new goals to achieve by years end (and preferably before).
- Support myself with a job I enjoy and that is directly related to film.
- Forgive those less fortunate for being so*.
- Find and maintain a satisfactory perception of the passage of time.
(This rambling essay/manifesto was brought to you by the increasingly mind-gumming illness which I am losing the war to).
*This is, of course, worded just a little tongue-in-cheek.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Okay I'm having a bit of a Top Gear wank...
...but it's fun having them take the piss out of Hummers (sorta!).
You haff to verk for money
Phew! So I’m a little worn out, despite getting home at an oddly reasonable hour last night. I think some sort of virus is having a 12 round bout with my immune system which has yet to see a victory either way. It might just be a virulent meme, since I can’t for the life of me get the base line for “Billie Jean” out of my head.Nonetheless, I headed down to Brick Street (via Liverpool station) last night, clad in notebooks and armed with no less than two pens and a mechanical pencil to defend myself from getting mugged by the awkwardness one can feel when heading to a “hip bohemian venue” on their own. I did, however, get taken aback momentarily when I spotted Arabic (and only Arabic) street signs on some of the side roads I navigated. This was rendered stranger still as I heard more Polish than anything else (non-English) while walking around.
With a few lines of advice from good old Roberto in the back of my mind, I set to a winning start by sitting with my notebook and pint in the wrong half of the bar! It was a very enjoyable part with plush leather couches and all the rest, which I think I shall definitely return to, but not the right one! 93 Feet East (the venue, not an address) strikes me as a pretty successful place if only by merit of its size. It has a very large courtyard with a dozen picnic tables and a BBQ vendor who, if you ask nicely, will allow you to pay just a bit too much for sausages, chicken breasts and the like. Then there is the area where I first sat, with those couches I mentioned set about low wooden tables with a fine black finish, tall windows that look out on the courtyard and an affordably priced bar with nice staff. On that particular evening the DJ (who was, to my amusement, crammed in the upper right corner of the ceiling like a stuffed toy in some girls room) laid down some really relaxing, technically interested sounds.
Now these two parts could fool most people into thinking they’d seen the whole place, I’d like to think, but after 40 minutes of sipping Strongbow and writing letters I asked the bar staff if the event was still on and discovered that yes it was, but in the area next door. So I hurried round to a third area, basically a tall roofed rectangle with a stage on one end (with a drop down screen for the viewing) and a larger DJ/Technical booth jammed up against the ceiling in the back. Lucky for me there had been problems with the AV setup which delayed the beginning until about 30 seconds after I found a seat. I then saw 13 London shorts and a handful of bands, I'd expand upon that but then I shall be doing so in my article for CapitalMag. I'll link to that when it's up, should they find my 350-500 words pristine enough to "print".But for one exception....amongst the short stories, music videos and dubious "concept" videos there was a bit of outright propaganda for one of the looniest organizations I've seen in a while. I mean, O.I.L. are not as bad as some folk but I question this misapplication of fervor when there are so many more tangible and pressing issues to wrestle with than some nauseatingly vague mission to "reclaim love". Then again, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh due to how frighteningly unnerving the facial ticks of their leader were to me. I couldn't find any picutres of her, but imagine if you took a woman with a ratty brown ponytail and performed an operation on her brain so that in one small corner of her mind she would always think that a tiger is leaping down on her from a high cliff...you'd have an idea.
The Shortwave-sponsored event is happening again on the 8th of April and I have to say that I do feel inclined to give it another go, particularly a go in which I won't have to frantically try to write down names of people and production companies in a room darkened for viewing. Not to say that I didn't enjoy playing reporter, I'll definitely do it again some time but I do hope that I can busy myself with enough film work (of a more hands on nature) so that I can't.
Enjoy the pictures, I'm off to collapse after shambling through a day at work...
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