Many congratulations to Steve and Noirin on their marriage; may you both have years of happiness together.
Thanks to all who put up with me and put me up for the last few days, I really enjoyed being back over and having a break from the work I tend not to rant about half enough ;o) Hopefully there will be some form of new-yearage to continue the trend.
…the clocks went back an hour last night.
Slumber pulls as its inspiration the idea of the body monitoring itself, and considers the seesaw at the edge of sleep, where the mind tilts between conscious and unconscious states and plays perceptual games with itself. Slumber considers the often-self-defeating process of ‘trying’ to get to sleep, where the mind winds itself up over the fact that it is not, in fact, asleep.
Throughout the soundscape, differing elements come slowly to the surface and are subsumed by other sounds as the conscious focus of the piece shifts on to the next distraction…
Slumber has been accepted for inclusion in Up The Wall, a promenade event hosted by Chester Performs in November.
From the Guardian’s Ignopedia, a section at the end of a Charlie Brooker column…
“Scientology is a spoof religion followed by several high-profile Hollywood stars, every single one of whom is doing it for a bet just to see how long they can fool Tom Cruise.
Advanced followers of Scientology believe an alien ruler called Xenu brought his people to Earth 75m years ago, gathered them round a volcano and obliterated them with a series of nuclear blasts; their displaced souls are responsible for many of mankind’s ills.
This is hilariously implausible and richly deserving of open derision, unlike, say, the belief that a man who got nailed to a couple of planks more than 2,000 years ago is your best friend and saviour.
When not being laughed at, Scientology is viewed with suspicion; many members of the public consider it a sinister cult hell-bent on gathering as much money, power, and influence as possible, unlike all other religious movements, every single one of which deserves forelock-tugging respect and unquestioning indulgence of its every crackpot whim.”
Charlie Brooker, 2006
Since reading an article on the register some weeks ago, I’ve been becoming aware of just how much a subtly fallacy about the situation in the middle east/ Iraq is being perpetuated.
Al Qaeda is not behind all of the bombings apparently attributed to them in Iraq. They are being attributed to a group specifically called ‘Al Qaeda In Iraq’, who are quite probably a completely separate and unrelated entity to Al Qaeda (the Osama ones), simply using the name in the same way that market traders think up names similar to brand perfumes for their knock-off cheap ones (good metaphor, huh? ;o) )
Once you realise this, a TV report talking about ‘another bombing by Al Qaeda in Iraq’ has a subtly different implication to that which you may automatically assume, and as the other parts of the article discuss, interesting implications…
Postsecret have just posted their new cards for the week, along with a movie from Youtube. Have a look…
A recent find (I think, originally, via a Userfriendly link of the day) was that of Strandbeest. Strandbeest are large-scale machines constructed by a Dutch artist/ engineer called Theo Jansen. They use wind power to transport themselves across beaches and the like. There are some videos of them in action on the website, it’s well worth a look. I await the arrival of the DVD…
In a vaguely similar vein, the above reminded me of ‘The Way Things Go’, a chain-reaction film made quite some years ago. It’s fascinating to watch, you can see a clip on Youtube.
On a completely different topic, I’ve been considering a business name for my freelance work. My current favoured choice is ‘Nowt Design’ - any (sensible) observations, comments, alternate suggestions are welcome. Incidentally, ‘Nowt’ comes from a habit I adopted of naming things after words for ‘nothing’. ‘nowt’ is my laptop, ‘nada’ is my wireless network name, ‘zilch’ is my usb pen drive. So yeah, let me know whatcha think…
Two of the comics I check regularly have recently been resurrected with new posts;
both Choppingblock and No 4th Wall are both intermittently updating again. Woo! etc…
A friend pointed me towards a video of him playing guitar on the Morgan Custom website. You may find it of interest. I believe he has a certain amount of skill…
morgancustomguitars.com/nikharrison.mov
More info; myspace.com/nikharrisonmusic
Note. Yes, it’s a bit of a plug for a mate. But he is pretty good and i reckon folks might be interested. The movie isn’t directly linked from the Morgan site, so it hasn’t been seen much.