But luckily he has plenty of pictures left from last weekend.You know, it's hard to ever get too soft on the Royal Family what with their cradle-to-grave , unearned wealth and all...but maybe I get a little sympathetic to why a bit of the old class snobbery might take root when you look out the windows of your palace at the monument to the most highly regarded monarch in the nations history only to see ignorant bastards (both local and imported) crawling all over it like howler monkeys. I'm certainly not a royalist nor an anglophile, so I think it must be from a simple appreciation of fine craftsmanship and manners that I get so pissed off when I see shit like these kids fishing through the water for coins people have tossed in. Not pictured: Some Persian guy pretending to masturbate one of the statues and a Mancunian remarking on the great set of tits on another.A street artist I've seen several times outside of the......National Gallery. I had a quick peek in there, finally, but they are obviously not as cool with photographs as a museum and so there isn't really anything I can show. It's definitely worth another, longer visit sometime and when I do I'll see what I can gather to put up here.Ye oldeScientologists over on Tottenham Court road. Which reminds me, I know these guys take the prize by far, but has anyone ever really taken a close look at Mormons? I've been reading a lot of books from the Victorian era lately and The Church of Latter Day Saints has cropped up in several of them. It's interesting to see how they were viewed, reviled and laughed at in much the same way the Scientologists have been getting it in recent years. I suppose Mitt Romney has got me thinking about them again too.This is a portion of a monument along The Mall, opposite the ICA, which was made to honor British Artillerymen who lost their lives during a conflict in South Africa from around 1905 (sorry, it's been a week since I read the plaques or I'd be more specific). There are just so many beautiful monuments to the dead in this city......like this one, which is in the same general vicinity. Kind of a miniature Nelson's Column, this is dedicated to Frederick, Duke of York.The storyteller in me would like to think that his grave lay at the base, with this doorway leading in. But I don't think it is.
Addendum: THIS kind of worries me. It almost goes without saying that healthcare will factor into my deciding what country to be living in at the end of my two year look-see in the UK.
...is more than just a good song by Thom Yorke.I saw this fella in St. James Park last Saturday and luckily I had my camera with me. I've never seen one of these in my life and, frankly, wasn't entirely sure if they really existed as anything more than a song lyric.So yes, I grew up in the country but not a countryside with black swans. I have seen nature outside of a zoo, I assure you!
Shucks howdy but I just had a tease. An hour ago I got a call from someone working on a production that needed a script supervisor ASAP. That is to say, someone able to work mon-thurs this week for nothing but expenses. But I'd have to quit my publishing job cold turkey in order to do it. Between my parents and a good friend there was a lot of waffling over what to do, weighing financial stability against why I came to this country in the first place. But in the end I got some wise advice to find out more about the damn production before making my decision.
In my exuberance, this had never even occurred to me. Always consult others before making big decisions folks, if only to help cover your blind spots! After a bit more careful reading of the materials I was sent it turned out to be a student short. Well, bless them krazy kids but taking a big leap like I'd have to simply isn't worth it if I'm going to land in a small puddle (and break my legs, to complete the metaphor). I gave them by best wishes and turned them down. Still though, damn, maybe I should be giving unpaid work with actual production companies a more serious look again. I'd pretty much rubbed them out as a possibility, feeling I couldn't afford it. but given how quickly I've been able to find temp data entry work (and some of the pay figures I was being offered just before taking this publishing job in Hammersmith)...well, I think I'll be looking back at it again.
Komix Meanwhile, I've been looking over what I'm getting down for the comic and I like it but once again there shall be no update! This is because I'm fast realizing that I cannot escape the siren call of continuity and if I am to be having a story that develops then I need to maybe not just be making it up as I go along - as I've been doing thus far! Theoretically I could post the couple of comics I've got done and catch up today, but then it would only take one more violently loud house party or whatever to push me back into a cycle of catch-ups. I've found this painful enough to read, so I think I'm going to take advantage of the sunny side of not having a big audience and abide from updating though NOT working on the comic until I have a good buffer. Then I shall pseudo re-launch with gusto, a safety barrier and less pressure to crank it out which will - as my stupid habits seem to dictate - result in more being cranked out. That being said, I may have a fun drawing of yours truly up later today.
After the things I'm NOT doing, here is something I did/saw So yes, I went to the ICA and caught that Extreme Environmental Guerrillas exhibit. It was much more of a fanciful, artistic endeavor than a matter of hard science but that's okay!
That's okay.
It should come as little surprise to those who know me that in my more frustrated moments I've often wondered if the only way we're going to avoid the "turn it around in less than ten years or we literally become a dying planet" thing is for some kind of literal eco-fascist regime or regimes to spring up. The guerrillas exhibit contained elements of just that. Take a gander at the manifesto of this fictional group.Now it's important to remember that this is not a serious proposal but an art project by a very talented looking lady named MichikoNitta (whose nicely designed portfolio site can be seen here, with the Guerrillas project at the top of the right-hand side bar). Communication, food and death were the main subsections of the project/installation/what-have-you. Regardless of how plausible it is, I rather like the idea of hi-jacking the digital information tags to be found on thousands of animals around the world for a rudimentary communication relay network which would tie into the different species migratory patterns in an attempt to avoid the CO2 heavy traditional postal service (for letters, anyways) and the terrifying, ultra-disposable bullshit of mobile phones.
The art was also certainly ahead of the science when it came to the matter of food. The general idea being that we need to breed small, tasty animals which can be reared in our (in this case, the English) immediate neighborhood. This would not only get rid of the large carbon footprint of shipping in food from the countryside (and other countries) but would be using herds of animals which don't have as heavy an impact on their location as, say, cows. The pigeon/quail hybrid was a oddly amusing.And the inevitable rat hybrid (the Rattit - part rabbit).Now, as might be expected, the most extreme portion of the project comes under the final sub-section of death. I didn't get the best photo due to someone being in the way, but here is a shot of the Logan's Run style earring which is the centerpiece of the death section.In a nutshell, the proper EEG member would be fitted with one of these earrings at age twenty. Inside are a set of rings which prevent a needle containing one part muscle relaxant and one part lethal drug from injecting into the wearer. The inner ring rotates slowly and eventually, at age forty, the needle is allowed through to kill the wearer. Simply put, the less days we spend on this Earth, the less we consume of it. Remember, this is an art installation and not really a serious proposal. My first thought was of how the bloody things would probably go through some Beta problems and wind up offing a bunch of people in twenty minutes instead of twenty years. But it does set up the attention grabbing tagline "What would you do if you knew you only had forty years?".
After this there was a very enjoyable film titled "The Great Flood of London" (by Ellen Page) whose potential yo warn was somewhat undercut by the fanciful aesthetics (note the return of Zeppelins).
Another part of the installation, by a different person all together, featured a functional rainwater capacitor system made entirely from recycled water bottles. It's aimed at the suburban garden in an attempt to help make the currently unsustainable suburbs something we might be able to keep past the next fifty years without making terrible sacrifices. Sadly the designer, Elliot Frazer Payne, doesn't seem to have a website.Finally we come to something that I rather liked, a serious attempt at blending solar power and fashion. The website (and pdf) explains it much better than I can so I'll simply say that if I saw them for sale in a store, I would certainly pick some up (maybe holding out for a more masculine equivalent).
You know, it's hard to ever get too soft on the Royal Family what with their cradle-to-grave , unearned wealth and all...but maybe I get a little sympathetic to why a bit of the old class snobbery might take root when you look out the windows of your palace at the monument to the most highly regarded monarch in the nations history only to see ignorant bastards (both local and imported) crawling all over it like howler monkeys. I'm certainly not a royalist nor an anglophile, so I think it must be from a simple appreciation of fine craftsmanship and manners that I get so pissed off when I see shit like these kids fishing through the water for coins people have tossed in. Not pictured: Some Persian guy pretending to masturbate one of the statues and a Mancunian remarking on the great set of tits on another.
A street artist I've seen several times outside of the...
...National Gallery. I had a quick peek in there, finally, but they are obviously not as cool with photographs as a museum and so there isn't really anything I can show. It's definitely worth another, longer visit sometime and when I do I'll see what I can gather to put up here.
Ye olde Scientologists over on Tottenham Court road. Which reminds me, I know these guys take the prize by far, but has anyone ever really taken a close look at Mormons? I've been reading a lot of books from the Victorian era lately and The Church of Latter Day Saints has cropped up in several of them. It's interesting to see how they were viewed, reviled and laughed at in much the same way the Scientologists have been getting it in recent years. I suppose Mitt Romney has got me thinking about them again too.
This is a portion of a monument along The Mall, opposite the ICA, which was made to honor British Artillerymen who lost their lives during a conflict in South Africa from around 1905 (sorry, it's been a week since I read the plaques or I'd be more specific). There are just so many beautiful monuments to the dead in this city...
...like this one, which is in the same general vicinity. Kind of a miniature Nelson's Column, this is dedicated to Frederick, Duke of York.
The storyteller in me would like to think that his grave lay at the base, with this doorway leading in. But I don't think it is.
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