Saturday, September 29, 2007
The unfairground
I have been listening a lot to the latest
Kevin Ayers CD called "the unfairground".
Kevin Ayers has an interesting career history,
he was in the same scene as Syd Barret. He had
not made an album for over ten years. The new CD is
so catch and fresh. I can still feel the songs when I walk
into work.
Labels:
music
Scott Walker 30 century man
I watched the DVD "Scott Walker 30 century man".
This is a documentary about the singer/artist Scott Walker.
He started out in a boy band, but ended up as an experimental
artist. I love Scott's rich voice and the way he always
used to wear sun glasses.
Julian Cope released a compilation record of his work
during the 80s. So he invited on the film, but Julian
doesn't appear in font of the camera, so they showed
his email instead. Julian is always so cool.
Perhaps I will check out some of Walker's later experimental
work.
Friday, September 28, 2007
not a review of death proof
I have been feeling realy burnt out recently. One of the
ways I like to relax is to go and watch some a film.
There is a new Tarantino film out called Death proof.
This is a film about a stunt man who kills women, and then
maybe gets killed by women in some way.
I am not a high brow kind of person. Trash is my middle name. I felt
better after watching "shoot em up" last week, but I really couldn't
face going to see this film. Somehow I get annoyed that a big
hollywood company would make an exploitation film.
Instead I went home and watched a DVD called "Blade house of Chthon".
This was a straight to DVD film about the blade vampire killer. It was
actually better than blade III. THis looked like a TV series film,
because it ended in a strange way. Thanks to google I found
it was a pilot for a TV show that got cancelled.
Never let it be said that I am not a man of principle.
Labels:
DVD
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
airport security
I thought I was being so cool when I used a
picture of William Burroughs sitting on a
porch holding a rifle as the desktop
background on my linux machine. I don't use
linux for presentations, so I thought I would be safe.
However, it didn't seem such a good idea when I was
going through security at an airport and security
asked me to turn the laptop on. As I watched the screen come
up at the airport, I suddenly thought this could all
end in tears (or me missing the flight). Anyway the security
guard was not watching the screen.
I have a picture of a bluegene computer on the windows partition.
Labels:
stuff
Advice to new bloggers.
I have been keeping this BLOG for over 3 years now,
so I am entitled to give some advice for new bloggers.
One thing that is very IMPORTANT is that you don't
write anything that might stop you getting a job. The
human resources departments usually have nothing
better to do than than surf the web and send people
word documents. So I humbly suggest that blogging
that smoking a garden of blow is your main hobby
is probably not a good idea, if your goal in life
is to be corporate. (This shouldn't be a problem
if you want to sell fast food and stay up late watching
DVDs).
Also I would stay clear of talking about controversial subjects. For
example I would never consider writing a blog post about
necrophilia. This is not really a problem because I don't really know
anything about necrophilia. Of course there was that Soutpark program
about the kids stealing the corpse of somebody's grandmother for some
zany reason. When the police are telling the family about the lost of
the corpse, the police make some very tasteless remarks about
necrophilia. In the UK, this had people ringing in to complain.
This must be one of the reasons that we can't see southpark
on terrestrial.
I did watch the DVD "visitor Q", directed by Takashi Miike,
that had a long segment about necrophilia in a green house.
Given the type of films that Miike directs, this was pretty
tame, by his standards.
I could of course research necrophilia by reading
a wikepedia article, but you can't believe everything
you read on the Internet. Some things need to be experienced.
I did have a dream about having sex with someone who was
tied up. I was pretty shocked by this and woke up immediately.
The only part of my action film script has two hit men
killing a woman. So this is part of the script (I own the copyright)
Bang, bang the woman dies,
Hitman 1, says "she's dead."
Hitman 2, says "oh well waste not, want not", and starts
to pull down his trousers.
Hitman 1, says "what are doing man."
Hitman 2, says "but she is still warm. I don't like it
whan I have to talk about Eastenders, and they wriggle around
when we are doing it".
Hitman 1, says "put your trousers back on or I will kill you".
Hitman 2, says "ok, ok, man your so weird".
The two hit men exist stage left.
I am a bit stuck on the next 87 minutes of the film,
but there is clearly enough to hook Tarantino
in to direct it.
Anyway if you follow my advice you will be able
to keep bloggng and hold a job.
Labels:
stuff
blog in search of a theme
I was staring at the vortex of the toilet, trying to
get my head in the mood for another day. I am so stressed
that I have been unable to think of anything to blog about.
The toilet bowl mouthed back "you have got Bloggers block",
but your pooh is still runny, frequent and smelly.
Ten minutes later I had an idea for a posting. I can still
do this, I thought. I am not just a broken shell with all
the creative juices lost in a pub toilet somewhere.
Then I went to work. I got back home an hour ago.
I looked at the keyboard, and I had this vague feeling
that I had something to type.
I remember reading about some young genius, who wrote
poetry, but he didn't have enough life experience
to write about the world, so was reduced to writing poems
called "poem in search of a theme".
Anyway I have remembered what I was going to talk about.
In the online guardian there was an article about
broadband from the grave. Essentially you get a web site
when you are dead, so you can record content and email, and send
it tour family and friends when you are dead.
It reminded me about a conversation I had with someone over
10 years ago. We were asking what happens to a persons
web site when they are dead? There should be a graveyard
of web sites. Effectively this already happens with myspace,
because many of the people on my friends list are actually
dead. They still manage to post video and pictures, and that
makes me very proud.
Labels:
stuff
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Venray
I started this post sitting in a hotel room in a town called Venray
in the Netherlands. Why was I there you may ask? Good question.
I took a plane to Dusseldorf airport to go to a conference.
I used ryanair, and the Dusseldorf/Weeze airport turns out
to be 70 km from Dusseldorf. I stayed in Venray because it
was closer to the airport.
When I got off the plane last Sunday I noticed that there
were many people actually sleeping in the airport.
Venray is a nice town. I arrived there in the afternoon
and went for a walk in the city center. There were lots
of nice cafes with seats outside. Cafe culture, so
sweet.
Later in the evening I went for a walk. Many of the street
cafes were closed, so I walked into the outer edges of the
town's centre. There I found a kebab shop where I feasted
on another Donner kebab. Although I like to think of
myself as an outlaw, I am not so wild. At the edge of the town
there were some cafes where you smoke dope. I just stared in
at the window and watched the cool young things
get mellow. I did go to a bar. No one there spoke English,
but I did hear a conversation, that involved the words Stella and
Heineken. Yes, isn't it wonderfull how travelling broadens the mind.
There was some kind of rave/dance party at the edge of
the town center.
The drive to the airport was mostly through the country.
Even the countryside seems ordered and designed in the Netherlands.
The forests in Germany always strike me as very ancient
and full of wild fury. The German forests have not been
designed, but seem to have been there since the birth of mankind.
Of course in the Netherlands, everytime I passed a big
greenhouse. I winked to myself and wondered what they
could be growing.
Labels:
travel
shoot em up
I went out to see the film "Shoot em up" on Friday
night. I felt a bit guilty, because Mark
Kermode gave it a bad review. The film is just
a lot of mindless violence, however it was
done with style and was actually quite funny.
Anyway I felt better for watching it, though
it was not the kind of film I would take my mum too.
Somehow I feel a lot better after a bit of a laugh.
I just watched a south park episode that
involved Cartman taking off all his clothes to do
a Ninja invisibility trick. He did this in front
of an audience. I have to admit I laughed so
hard, I thought I was going to die.
Labels:
film
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
the historian
I have finished reading "the historian" by Elizabeth
Kostova. I am not sure that reading a book about
Dracula at a nuclear physics conference is a good
idea. It was a very clever book, involving scholarship,
and some good forward-backwards narrative.
I am ashamed to say that it was on Richard and Judy's
summer read.
Labels:
books
slaves of sleep
I have just got back from a conference in Germany.
While I was there I read "slaves of sleep" by L. Ron
Hubbard. This was a kind of cheesy fantasy novel, with
a nerd living a different life when he slept. It was
a fun read, but not very deep.
I have read some great science fiction books that are
based on some philosophical idea.
The strange thing is that Hubbard was the writer who
founded Scientology. He just writes a standard by the numbers
fantasy book.
Labels:
books
online viewing
When Apple announced that you could buy TV shows from ITunes, obviously
my first thought was to try to get a science documentary. Somehow
I ended up downloading a Southpark episode. I like to think of my
self as unique in some kind of pompous way. However, I noted that
the top download of TV shows from Itunes was Southpark. People
in the UK clearly miss Southpark since it was pulled from terrestrial
TV.
I watched the episode "make love not warcraft". I used my old laptop.
Trouble is the scenes slowed down and sometimes stopped. The
animation on Southpark can be pretty weak, but it doesn't usually stop
for 2 minutes.
I was more successful watching "brother" downloaded from Channel4
on demand service. I originally wanted to watch a film, but couldn't
be bothered to walk to Blockbusters. Unfortunately it took
2 hours to download, so I ended watched it a week later.
Of course the software from Channel4 interfered with the BBC
iplayer software.
Of course if I was really cool I would download free stuff from peer
to peer sites. I just get nervous having to deal with viruses
and things.
Anyway Blockbusters on Byers Rd have now got a much bigger collection
of box sets. So I rented "family guy volume 3". Who needs the internet?
One of my friends asked "what are you reading", I replied "that
I was much too busy and stressed to do any reading". Umm.
Labels:
film
Bourne Ultimatum
I am behind on this blogging thing. I went to see
the Bourne Ultimatum maybe two weeks ago. I was really
excited to see it. I am not really sure I enjoyed
it so much. Part of the reason was that half way through
the film, I really needed to go to the toilet. OK. perhaps
if I hadn't drunk the traditional pre-film beer, I would have been
OK. I bet Jonathan Ross doesn't have this type of problem. Somehow
the film was too much of a mismatch of the earler films.
The film made me want to really go to Tangiers. Jason Bourne and the
Nicky went over to Tangiers via a ferry from Spain. That is the best
way to go, after going to Spain via some cheap airline route.
Tangiers looks so sunny and beautiful.
Labels:
film
Sunday, September 02, 2007
The new old thing
I have just finished reading a book called "The old
new thing" by Raymond Chen. Chen was on the development team that
wrote Windows 95/98/XP. It is interesting to hear his side
of the story in the be nasty to Microsoft debate. His view
was backwards compatibility at all costs. The programming
examples were very ugly though.
Labels:
books
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