THECUBE is where I went today. Thecube. The Cube London. I am now back home. My feet reek.
Where is THECUBE? It is near Liverpool St. Station. Whereabouts? Near Spitalfields market. On Commercial Street if you want to be specific. What is it? It is essentially office space for creatives and business indivuals or companies. But it is a whole lot more than just office space, temporary accommadation, a limbo. It isn't even that. It is a place to network, to find contacts in whatever field you happen to be 'in'. If, for an example, you are an aspiring photographer, and you join to become a member, not only can you come in to use the working environment, but you can also take advantage of the fact that other people in the industry will be in easy reach of contact.
Think of it as a professional, innovative Facebook for real life. Less gimmicky and never freezes. It is a perfect oppurtunity to get yourself known.
The Look
This is a big part of THECUBE. It prides itself on sleek wood and glass panels, glossy surfaces against original brickwork, surgically-clean tiled floors. However, it is not so much the materials that have been used in the creation of the space, than the space itself. It is open plan, which promotes talk; private cubicles to work in are not THECUBE's style - if that's what you want, go to a library, or sit and work in your bathroom. Or in your cupboard. Or in bed. It is about connections here, not introspective doodling.
Needless to say, it is a very cool, modern building, both its interior and exterior leaking potential creativity. To be unable to work here, or to have trouble somehow, or above all, to feel on your own, is criminal. The sense of community that its creators are trying to express in every aspect of THECUBE is commendably evident.
Members Only
But it isn't a completely exclusive club; non-members can 'rent' space as they please, but it is more expensive that way. And to add to that, the benefits of connecting with other members are lost. Its success will rely on its members. Another comparison: Twitter would be inconsequentially tiresome if there were only a few members. Or, to say it another way, by all means, you can join Twitter, but then after a while, if you don't follow people, you won't get people following you - you won't make connections.
This is how THECUBE also works. If you aren't a member, you can't reap the rewards. In fact, its lowest level of membership (£5/month) is called In The Loop Membership. thefreedictionary.com defines "in the loop" as part of a group that is kept up-to-date with information about something. Exactly. And who wouldn't want to be in the loop? Especially in such a cloistered sector of society as 'creatives' and 'innovatives'. It is hard enough to find a door to knock on, let alone get your foot in it. It is the ideal place to launch yourself into whatever industry you fancy, as long as you are specific about what it is you want to crack on with.
Me? What am I doing?
I went in for a meeting today. I contacted THECUBE via Twitter to ask if they needed any writing done (free of charge of course - they are a fledgling company, 7 weeks old), because I am in dire need of experience. And here I am. With my foot in the door. In fact, the door was opened for me because I couldn't work out how to get in the building. This is a case study, as you see that by acquring various contacts on Twitter I could then make a connection with a relevant contact, and before I knew it I was nervous on the tube to Liverpool Street. With any luck the contacts will come in deluges now. It most definitely is 'who you know'.
What I'll be doing for THECUBE is writing. Writing a newsletter, helping to write a book for their first year. Like a baby book, full of first steps and pretty vomit. It will be based on cubes, the number 6, and staccato. I suggested that, as it is the first year, and because it is cube-related, the pages should be thick like a picture book so that - when finished - the book will actually look like a cube. We'll see.
& now what? Well. I'm going in next Wednesday. Every Wednesday maybe. I need to brainstorm and think about haikus. Double haikus. 6 lines, you see?
www.thecubelondon.com
That is the website.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Sunday, 4 October 2009
the mountain fable
It is Sunday. I have just seen a very small trailer for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Mount Parnassus is in Greece. Mount Parnassus in turn is named after the son of the nymph Kleodora, who is called Parnassos. There was a city of which Parnassos was the leader, and that city was flooded by torrential rain; the citizens ran up the nearby mountain slopes to safety. Whether this is where the mountain got its name from is beyond me. Etymogically speaking, 'Parna' comes from the same root word for 'house' in the Luwian language, which is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of Indo-European, and it is closely related to Hittite. You find out about that yourselves. The '-ssos' is a placename suffix, like Knossos. God knows what that means. 'Place'? Homeplace. Fair enough. May well mean 'is ruined'. From the mountain they looked down at the city crying and basically not loving it. Why is Parnassos called Parnassos then? Don't know. Apparently, his mother, the nymph, was one of those (yeah - 'one of those') prophetic nymphs who divined by throwing stones or pebbles. Very accurate. When the citizens ran up the mountain they followed (yes, followed) the sound of howling wolves; why on earth you would follow the sound of howling wolves I have no idea, perhaps they were suicidal. Anyway, they built another city up there called Lycoreia, 'the howling of the wolves' - naturally. Orpheus, the motherfucker, lived here with his mum and beautiful aunts. Did he fuck them too?
Why did you read that? What did I write it for? Any purpose, any purple. When I was younger I remember the exact moment that I learned what "on purpose" meant. I think I had to sit on the naughty step at my childminder's house because I did something "on purpose" - but I couldn't fathom it. It sounded too much like "purple" to make any sense. Another time at my childminder's house I first heard the word "violent", which, you guessed it, I thought was "violet" - again this was explained to me. I also learned the meaning of "including", and I remember that we were watching an advert for an upcoming season of Rugrats, which mentioned that all the gang would be there or whatever "including Angelica!" (what an ironic name, looking back: she wasn't an angelic at all). It means "everyone, plus Angelica". I remember that it took a while to explain. I need to know what words mean. Words and words. Well the above history/myth lesson didn't have any purple, really, so don't get violet about it now. Or I'll get violet. Serial. "WTF IZZ SERIALZZ???" Watch the Manbearpig episode of Southpark to find out why 'serial', and not 'serious'.
It is Sunday. Sunday in a student house is basically like any other day, but definitely a little bit slower, because no one is at lectures. Sometimes people go to lectures. So after we ordered tickets for Glastonbury this morning, we lazed around for a while. It is perfectly acceptable. Yes, I can hear you squaking, "Glastonbury tickets?!" Yes yes yes, Glastonbury tickets. Yes. SI AMIGOS Y AMIGOS. I've never been before, and Glastonbury 2010 is very special because it is the 40th anniversary. I don't think it is as special as 50, because that is half a century. 40 is just four tenths of a century, which is horribly anticlimactic and blandly unspecial. Still: it is a multiple of ten, and that's worth it. Because it wouldn't be going on next year if it wasn't for that magic 40, so I suppose it's good. It's good, yeah. I want to roam amongst the hippies. Me and Becky guessed that around 50,000 people probably attended on average. But we were very incorrect. The actual number is about 175,000. Brilliant. I just want to be lost, muddy and musical, Glastonburyised. Maybe it won't be like that. I suppose I will have to wait. In the videogame, No More Heroes, 'Glastonbury' is part of a fictional manga within the fictional story of the game's storyline - he is a giant robot which some girls ride around in smashing stuff up, I presume. It is a giant robot, though. The correct term is mecha, I guess, but then again, I'm not a prick so I'll say robot. The song "PURE-WHITE GIANT TINY GLASTONBURY" is a song on the soundtrack for the game. I'd rather be a Giant Tiny than a Tiny Giant. Would you? Why not debate it among friends? Bzzzzzz. That's the sound of sarcasm. I prefer the spelling 'Glastenbury', which is a town in Vermont (USA). Glastenbury Mountain is named after the town. According to legend, the town was flooded by torrential rain and they ran up the side of the mountain to safety, following the sound of howling wolves all the way up. BZZZZ. Shut up.
Why does The Politics Show exist? It is horrid. What even is politics in the UK? It is all ratification and referendum, voting and lords and commons and stupid paper signing and reading. Lots of wobbly jowled gentlemen, some unfortunate other individuals - men and women - with no charisma, except that of a wooden, melancholic, SAD affected talking, jiggling head, or on the other hand, with all the fight and inconsequence of a stupid yappy little dog, who can be kicked easily away with something like this blog post. They have no efficacy whatsoever. No anything, no nothing. Benchers and backbenchers, benching and wrenching each other's teeth out, all the tension of a fight that just can't be cared about. Hot air, so much of it, so much that they are stifling and sweating in their stiff suits, drenching their shirts and blouses on the benches, mopping their pulsating brows, feeling the droplets coggled in their untamed eyebrows, badly done makeup running, arses burning on the bench. With all the hot air, I expect they would undress, and from that explode into orgy at any moment. They should. But they don't. Why don't they? That'd be much more exciting. But of course, bureaucracy is bureaucrazy. Everyone knows this, but everyone carries on, not caring about the mountains of forms they have to fill in for the tiniest of things, your everything on record, your children made of paper and tickboxes with signature hair and crosses for eyes, scribble of a mouth saying "mother, father, stop your form-filling-in!" and then the inevitable answer, the blank-page stare, the ballpoint pursed lips, the numbers in their eyes, this says it all: "quieten down, child, and watch this, your paper inheritence, your filing cabinet future, now, erm, tick here to agree that I haven't abused you by telling you to quieten down... then sign here - no, there, and here - again? yes, again you silly boy/girl - ah! it's another form for insulting, hang on, it's here somewhere - wait - WAIT! where are you going? you need to fill in this before you leave! answer me? - you're going to make me forge it? - what?! you don't care? you have to - you don't? what?! you'll have to sign here for that, to prove you're culpable for what you say, and that it's not my fault - PLEASE! otherwise I'll have to fill in the one that means I become your mouthpiece and gumshield, brace and retainer! - what? don't slam the door, I'll get a noise complaint form from next door? they're good at forms, please d-- NO! NO THE DOOR! SHIT! More paper for the pile ......."
And so it went that this paper pile grew to over 300 metres above sea level. The town suffered under a sudden bout of torrential rain, and it began to flood, so they did the logical thing and ran to the mountain, and up its papercut slopes, following the sound of honking members of parliament. Later they founded a town on the mountain called Empeaton, and it was a shithole, and... bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Fuck off fox hunting as well, leave the law alone. Clearly no one wants it repealed. Puck you.
Why did you read that? What did I write it for? Any purpose, any purple. When I was younger I remember the exact moment that I learned what "on purpose" meant. I think I had to sit on the naughty step at my childminder's house because I did something "on purpose" - but I couldn't fathom it. It sounded too much like "purple" to make any sense. Another time at my childminder's house I first heard the word "violent", which, you guessed it, I thought was "violet" - again this was explained to me. I also learned the meaning of "including", and I remember that we were watching an advert for an upcoming season of Rugrats, which mentioned that all the gang would be there or whatever "including Angelica!" (what an ironic name, looking back: she wasn't an angelic at all). It means "everyone, plus Angelica". I remember that it took a while to explain. I need to know what words mean. Words and words. Well the above history/myth lesson didn't have any purple, really, so don't get violet about it now. Or I'll get violet. Serial. "WTF IZZ SERIALZZ???" Watch the Manbearpig episode of Southpark to find out why 'serial', and not 'serious'.
It is Sunday. Sunday in a student house is basically like any other day, but definitely a little bit slower, because no one is at lectures. Sometimes people go to lectures. So after we ordered tickets for Glastonbury this morning, we lazed around for a while. It is perfectly acceptable. Yes, I can hear you squaking, "Glastonbury tickets?!" Yes yes yes, Glastonbury tickets. Yes. SI AMIGOS Y AMIGOS. I've never been before, and Glastonbury 2010 is very special because it is the 40th anniversary. I don't think it is as special as 50, because that is half a century. 40 is just four tenths of a century, which is horribly anticlimactic and blandly unspecial. Still: it is a multiple of ten, and that's worth it. Because it wouldn't be going on next year if it wasn't for that magic 40, so I suppose it's good. It's good, yeah. I want to roam amongst the hippies. Me and Becky guessed that around 50,000 people probably attended on average. But we were very incorrect. The actual number is about 175,000. Brilliant. I just want to be lost, muddy and musical, Glastonburyised. Maybe it won't be like that. I suppose I will have to wait. In the videogame, No More Heroes, 'Glastonbury' is part of a fictional manga within the fictional story of the game's storyline - he is a giant robot which some girls ride around in smashing stuff up, I presume. It is a giant robot, though. The correct term is mecha, I guess, but then again, I'm not a prick so I'll say robot. The song "PURE-WHITE GIANT TINY GLASTONBURY" is a song on the soundtrack for the game. I'd rather be a Giant Tiny than a Tiny Giant. Would you? Why not debate it among friends? Bzzzzzz. That's the sound of sarcasm. I prefer the spelling 'Glastenbury', which is a town in Vermont (USA). Glastenbury Mountain is named after the town. According to legend, the town was flooded by torrential rain and they ran up the side of the mountain to safety, following the sound of howling wolves all the way up. BZZZZ. Shut up.
Why does The Politics Show exist? It is horrid. What even is politics in the UK? It is all ratification and referendum, voting and lords and commons and stupid paper signing and reading. Lots of wobbly jowled gentlemen, some unfortunate other individuals - men and women - with no charisma, except that of a wooden, melancholic, SAD affected talking, jiggling head, or on the other hand, with all the fight and inconsequence of a stupid yappy little dog, who can be kicked easily away with something like this blog post. They have no efficacy whatsoever. No anything, no nothing. Benchers and backbenchers, benching and wrenching each other's teeth out, all the tension of a fight that just can't be cared about. Hot air, so much of it, so much that they are stifling and sweating in their stiff suits, drenching their shirts and blouses on the benches, mopping their pulsating brows, feeling the droplets coggled in their untamed eyebrows, badly done makeup running, arses burning on the bench. With all the hot air, I expect they would undress, and from that explode into orgy at any moment. They should. But they don't. Why don't they? That'd be much more exciting. But of course, bureaucracy is bureaucrazy. Everyone knows this, but everyone carries on, not caring about the mountains of forms they have to fill in for the tiniest of things, your everything on record, your children made of paper and tickboxes with signature hair and crosses for eyes, scribble of a mouth saying "mother, father, stop your form-filling-in!" and then the inevitable answer, the blank-page stare, the ballpoint pursed lips, the numbers in their eyes, this says it all: "quieten down, child, and watch this, your paper inheritence, your filing cabinet future, now, erm, tick here to agree that I haven't abused you by telling you to quieten down... then sign here - no, there, and here - again? yes, again you silly boy/girl - ah! it's another form for insulting, hang on, it's here somewhere - wait - WAIT! where are you going? you need to fill in this before you leave! answer me? - you're going to make me forge it? - what?! you don't care? you have to - you don't? what?! you'll have to sign here for that, to prove you're culpable for what you say, and that it's not my fault - PLEASE! otherwise I'll have to fill in the one that means I become your mouthpiece and gumshield, brace and retainer! - what? don't slam the door, I'll get a noise complaint form from next door? they're good at forms, please d-- NO! NO THE DOOR! SHIT! More paper for the pile ......."
And so it went that this paper pile grew to over 300 metres above sea level. The town suffered under a sudden bout of torrential rain, and it began to flood, so they did the logical thing and ran to the mountain, and up its papercut slopes, following the sound of honking members of parliament. Later they founded a town on the mountain called Empeaton, and it was a shithole, and... bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Fuck off fox hunting as well, leave the law alone. Clearly no one wants it repealed. Puck you.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
The word is 'PROLEPSIS'
I'm in Southampton at Becky's house. It's very weird. I would like to be a student. I, Student. It's a shame that I'm not. I'm looking for jobs. It would be lovely if I could look for jobs now and not have a job at the same time to have to keep me going. A temporary job is distracting. You know what I mean. Time-consuming, as well. What I mean to say is I want a career. I don't want a job. What are you here for? Careering, probably straight into a job, straight into a wall, the kind of wall that careers straight back into you. Students don't have walls. Doors and windows, but no walls. Who needs all this philosophising anyway? Whatever and whatever else.
Now a flashback. Two nights ago I watched the first episode of Flashforward.
I was slightly apprehensive. I had watched the trailer, it didn't impress me really. However, I decided to give the first episode a go. What ensued was half-good. I was expecting melodrama, and what it was, well it was melodramatic. There's nothing wrong with that, though. So we career onwards into the program itself. It begins by establishing all of the characters, lovely lovely, so that we care about all of them. I don't care about most of them because they all interact with each other as if they're in group therapy. We get to see the status quo, the nice little lives, the houses, and for one character the prelude to a possible suicide. This makes it more fun when the 2 minutes 17 seconds long black out happens. Everyone in the world blacks out. Everyone sees something in their 'blackout' which is more like a vision than a dream - but then with some super sleuthing it is decided that the visions are actually memories of events which haven't yet occurred.
Ah-ha. Now we are getting somewhere. People who haven't had these memories of events which haven't yet occurred are going to die; that's pretty logical: if you see nothing, there's nothing of you existing in the future (which is April 29th, 2010). The media picks up on it, and you see some nice footage of some people on the news talking about these memories of events which haven't yet occurred. Is that getting annoying yet? I'm getting a memory of an event which hasn't yet occurred: I am watching a program about memories which haven't yet occured and I am using the laptop as a battering ram to my head. But that event hasn't yet occurred. For some reason all characters avoid saying "flashforward" like the plague, as if the word doesn't exist in this alternate reality, until Shakespeare in Love says it while being emotional in bed. If the program was called 'Memories of Events Which Haven't Yet Occurred', all the characters would be saying 'flashforward' - do you see what I mean? Shut up Shakespeare!
Am I being unfair? Maybe. I may be being biased, but I did research Flashforward, and did not realise that it was based on a novel of the same name. If Wikipedia counts as research, then yes it was research. The novel sounds pretty interesting, more science fiction than something that is happening 'now', and the blackout for 2 minutes and 17 seconds actually has a cause, shall I say it? It's caused by the Large Hadron Collider. I'll say that much. Perhaps I'm more of a book person. Perhaps I'm a purist. Perhaps perhaps. But let's carry on, shall we?
Despite hiccoughs here and there, for example, Abrams ripping off the pilot of Lost, with the carnage of the plane crash paralleled with the carnage that happens after the blackout on the motorway on the freeway when Shakespeare wakes up; the abuse of situational music every time something vaguely emotional or chilling happens - it makes me not want to listen to what's going on, and rightly so, some of the emotional stuff is ridiculously overdramatic and I wouldn't listen anyway, actually it makes me laugh, so it's a little bit of entertainment over the top of what stupid, teary-eyed waffling they are doing; the fact that this program is also basically just an urban Lost - strangers thrown together because of some fateful event, this time less plausible in its premises (a plane crash versus everyone in the world blacking out for the same time? Over in the first round); of course, also the memories of events which haven't yet occurred thing; despite all this, it has some good points.
The dialogue is believable and enjoyable, and in its very nature it has to be melodramatic at times - if we as an audience are going to believe that everybody blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and experienced a memory of an event of which hasn't yet occurred yet, then we can believe that these people also actually speak like they do. The characters themselves are bit funny, but on the whole, I'm not irritated by watching them, let's put it at that. Even though there is a little voice in my head, bleating and bleating about how silly the program is, I am addicted to the story, and this is only the first episode. I desperately want Shakespeare and his sidekick to find out what is behind all of the mysteries - I searched for the second episode online as soon as I finished watching the first one. I didn't find it. And I felt like a junkie, I need my next Flashforward fix, I'm a gibbering idiot, I'm hungry for a plate of intrigue. It's something that really needs investigating, and I can't wait until it is fully investigated. Every episode is like a slice of cheescake, but after every bite of the slice I have to eat a peppercorn; lovely, but with a miniscule sphere of shit every so often.
On the train down to Southampton me and Alex watched the second episode. Thirty-five minutes of it. I felt very unfulfilled. Have to wait for tomorrow. Have to wait for tomorrow. Then episode three... what will I do? I'm rocking back and forth in a corner. Help me.
Now a flashback. Two nights ago I watched the first episode of Flashforward.
I was slightly apprehensive. I had watched the trailer, it didn't impress me really. However, I decided to give the first episode a go. What ensued was half-good. I was expecting melodrama, and what it was, well it was melodramatic. There's nothing wrong with that, though. So we career onwards into the program itself. It begins by establishing all of the characters, lovely lovely, so that we care about all of them. I don't care about most of them because they all interact with each other as if they're in group therapy. We get to see the status quo, the nice little lives, the houses, and for one character the prelude to a possible suicide. This makes it more fun when the 2 minutes 17 seconds long black out happens. Everyone in the world blacks out. Everyone sees something in their 'blackout' which is more like a vision than a dream - but then with some super sleuthing it is decided that the visions are actually memories of events which haven't yet occurred.
Ah-ha. Now we are getting somewhere. People who haven't had these memories of events which haven't yet occurred are going to die; that's pretty logical: if you see nothing, there's nothing of you existing in the future (which is April 29th, 2010). The media picks up on it, and you see some nice footage of some people on the news talking about these memories of events which haven't yet occurred. Is that getting annoying yet? I'm getting a memory of an event which hasn't yet occurred: I am watching a program about memories which haven't yet occured and I am using the laptop as a battering ram to my head. But that event hasn't yet occurred. For some reason all characters avoid saying "flashforward" like the plague, as if the word doesn't exist in this alternate reality, until Shakespeare in Love says it while being emotional in bed. If the program was called 'Memories of Events Which Haven't Yet Occurred', all the characters would be saying 'flashforward' - do you see what I mean? Shut up Shakespeare!
Am I being unfair? Maybe. I may be being biased, but I did research Flashforward, and did not realise that it was based on a novel of the same name. If Wikipedia counts as research, then yes it was research. The novel sounds pretty interesting, more science fiction than something that is happening 'now', and the blackout for 2 minutes and 17 seconds actually has a cause, shall I say it? It's caused by the Large Hadron Collider. I'll say that much. Perhaps I'm more of a book person. Perhaps I'm a purist. Perhaps perhaps. But let's carry on, shall we?
Despite hiccoughs here and there, for example, Abrams ripping off the pilot of Lost, with the carnage of the plane crash paralleled with the carnage that happens after the blackout on the motorway on the freeway when Shakespeare wakes up; the abuse of situational music every time something vaguely emotional or chilling happens - it makes me not want to listen to what's going on, and rightly so, some of the emotional stuff is ridiculously overdramatic and I wouldn't listen anyway, actually it makes me laugh, so it's a little bit of entertainment over the top of what stupid, teary-eyed waffling they are doing; the fact that this program is also basically just an urban Lost - strangers thrown together because of some fateful event, this time less plausible in its premises (a plane crash versus everyone in the world blacking out for the same time? Over in the first round); of course, also the memories of events which haven't yet occurred thing; despite all this, it has some good points.
The dialogue is believable and enjoyable, and in its very nature it has to be melodramatic at times - if we as an audience are going to believe that everybody blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and experienced a memory of an event of which hasn't yet occurred yet, then we can believe that these people also actually speak like they do. The characters themselves are bit funny, but on the whole, I'm not irritated by watching them, let's put it at that. Even though there is a little voice in my head, bleating and bleating about how silly the program is, I am addicted to the story, and this is only the first episode. I desperately want Shakespeare and his sidekick to find out what is behind all of the mysteries - I searched for the second episode online as soon as I finished watching the first one. I didn't find it. And I felt like a junkie, I need my next Flashforward fix, I'm a gibbering idiot, I'm hungry for a plate of intrigue. It's something that really needs investigating, and I can't wait until it is fully investigated. Every episode is like a slice of cheescake, but after every bite of the slice I have to eat a peppercorn; lovely, but with a miniscule sphere of shit every so often.
On the train down to Southampton me and Alex watched the second episode. Thirty-five minutes of it. I felt very unfulfilled. Have to wait for tomorrow. Have to wait for tomorrow. Then episode three... what will I do? I'm rocking back and forth in a corner. Help me.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
what's so funny?
Last night I watched Charlie Brooker's newest in the '-wipe' series, Gameswipe. Even though touted as a one off, I don't think it should be. The program was a compressed encyclopedic look at games, with a touch of critique - as always - thrown in here and there. I enjoyed it. I laughed. This is probably because I am a great fan of games, and, unfortunately, fall prey to the in-jokes that you aren't socially allowed to understand. I won't go into the grisly details. But with ownership of consoles increasing, especially the Wii, notoriously family orientated and with just that touch of easy-listening quality, should information about videogames - and all that is involved with them - be more accessible, more mainstream? Around a quarter of all UK households own a console of some sort - and this is the key word, I think: HOUSEHOLDS. Not a quarter of all geeks, a quarter of all single men, a quarter of all odd-bods, but a quarter of households. This means real people. Videogames have a terrible picture painted of them, and as Brooker mentioned, it is more often than not because of violence and swearing and all sorts. I'm quite sure cinema probably had the same reaction when it was in its early stages (as videogames are; realistically, their history only spans 25-ish years), and photography as well, and probably, although I'm not presenting it as fact, the written word was demonised thousands of years ago. Marks that mean words! Cameras taking souls! Films being entertaining and realistic! Videogames providing escapist fun! Make it stop!
But the worst thing, or the thing that is a shame, is that videogames are not allowed the same graces that film and television get, meaning, they are forgotten about, and this one quarter of households have to really search to find any decent information about what good games to buy. Gamesmaster looks dated now, but it had the right idea. As Jonathan Ross is allowed Film Two-Thousand and Whatever, because it is socially acceptable to watch films of course, why is it strange and unbelievable that a counterpart may be allowed to exist? A sort of Game Two-Thousand and Whatever. I'm sure you have probably all noticed that there are adverts on television for videogames - they are slowly becoming mainstream, and will only continue to do so; there are only more people being born into a world where consoles already exist, rather than videogames being 'invented' within living memory, so it makes for a more accepting generation. I think this was illustrated quite well on Gameswipe, maybe not intentionally, when Mark Kermode (probably on the One Show) said something like "I've never played a videogame and I hope I never will again". This is an example of someone who was not born 'into' the videogame era, and so probably will never 'get it'. It may not be true of everybody, however, because anomalies exist everywhere. Children growing up with a console in the home, much as children growing up with a PC or a television, will see it as part of their life. Material, violent, expensive, timewasting... but then again, nothing has ever been material, or violent, or expensive, or timewasting, has it? It is just a matter of time until videogames are 'normal'.
Games are hardly discussed outside circles of friends and internet forums, in spite of their actual popularity. This is why Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe was not only a surprise, but a little knock-knocking on the door of sense and normality. With gaming now pretty much established as something that is here to stay, I don't see why there can't be a regular platform for reviews and discussion which can cater for its only-growing audiences. It is just as valid a medium as film or literature, by which we can be just as validly entertained, but in which we can become more involved, because there is that added factor that we are playing the game, not just watching it or reading it.
But the worst thing, or the thing that is a shame, is that videogames are not allowed the same graces that film and television get, meaning, they are forgotten about, and this one quarter of households have to really search to find any decent information about what good games to buy. Gamesmaster looks dated now, but it had the right idea. As Jonathan Ross is allowed Film Two-Thousand and Whatever, because it is socially acceptable to watch films of course, why is it strange and unbelievable that a counterpart may be allowed to exist? A sort of Game Two-Thousand and Whatever. I'm sure you have probably all noticed that there are adverts on television for videogames - they are slowly becoming mainstream, and will only continue to do so; there are only more people being born into a world where consoles already exist, rather than videogames being 'invented' within living memory, so it makes for a more accepting generation. I think this was illustrated quite well on Gameswipe, maybe not intentionally, when Mark Kermode (probably on the One Show) said something like "I've never played a videogame and I hope I never will again". This is an example of someone who was not born 'into' the videogame era, and so probably will never 'get it'. It may not be true of everybody, however, because anomalies exist everywhere. Children growing up with a console in the home, much as children growing up with a PC or a television, will see it as part of their life. Material, violent, expensive, timewasting... but then again, nothing has ever been material, or violent, or expensive, or timewasting, has it? It is just a matter of time until videogames are 'normal'.
Games are hardly discussed outside circles of friends and internet forums, in spite of their actual popularity. This is why Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe was not only a surprise, but a little knock-knocking on the door of sense and normality. With gaming now pretty much established as something that is here to stay, I don't see why there can't be a regular platform for reviews and discussion which can cater for its only-growing audiences. It is just as valid a medium as film or literature, by which we can be just as validly entertained, but in which we can become more involved, because there is that added factor that we are playing the game, not just watching it or reading it.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
omnibus/hidden tracks: 1) Dream of Boxes, 2) Five Leg Blues)
So I haven't been writing. So what? So and so.
Here we are, now in September. Summer is over. I mustn't say this in front of Becky, however; she maintains that summer ends when the clocks do their thing, forwards I should expect. What have I spent so long doing? What have I been talking about before the disappearance of any real sense of update. What indeed. What and what. So and what. So, this and that, what what? What-what? Yuk, I'm boring myself. I've been doing a few things. Here are some that I can remember.
I went camping to the Isle of Wight. This was with my mum &dad&brothers, and Becky was also invited. She was invited, and came along, too, so everything worked out. We stayed... near Bembridge. But nearer a little village called St. Helens - or Stelens (stell-ens). The sea was cold, but so it goes that every English beach must be properly utilised by any beachgoer. So it is. I swam and things. One other point of interest was Appuldurcombe. Go here. We were taken of a tour of the house by an eccentric old man (Norman, 87) and his dog (Benjy, 14). The dog did most of the talking. He seemed to know an awful lot about the history of the place, plus other periphery knowledge that he woofed to us. Norman barked and sniffed trees, so was his nature.
I have been helping my dad work. I have been working with my dad. My dad has been giving me charity work when I'm quite sure he would have been able to undertake without me. He is not an undertaker. He is a tiler. These are my grassroots. I've got a bit of money from this.
I have been attending many barbecues. Apparently the word 'barbecue' comes from a word in language the Timucua people of Florida and the Taíno of the Caribbean, which is barbacoa - meaning 'sacred fire pit'. This was a form of cooking a lot of meat (often a whole animal) in a pit. The barbecues I have been attending are for main part quite vegetarian affairs. I am squeamish with meat. I will eat a burger, a sausage, and a kebab - perhaps multiples of these things - but offer me a chicken wing, and I will politely try to eat it, before realising that it is completely disgusting. Perhaps I am less squeamish than I am lazy. I am lazy and squeamish. Take it off the bone and mince it up, put lots of spices in to take away the taste of the meat, grill it to a second death, stick it in a bun with bare BBQ sauce or ketchup (whichever is at hand), and a cheese slice, and it hardly tastes of meat at all. Anyway, these were the Barbecues of the Summer of 2009, and they will live in our collective memory. I'm sure we could probably manage more barbecues another year. So many more that we get bored of them.
A few weeks ago, a month or more now, I did some more physical labour. I am becoming the salt of the earth. I sanded down a very la.... You really want me to list the procedures involved with sanding down and re-staining a load of decking? No. So I won't. I did enjoy doing it though. Seeing the finished product was quite satisfying. The coffees I got from my commissioners kept me going.
Becky has gone to university, also. This is fine, because now I can spend weekends there pretending that I am also a student. Yessss.
And now here we are in autumn. Pronounced in a different, but also perfectly valid way, it would be 'ow-toom'. Sounds like 'our tomb'. I am aching a lot today - my shoulder and arm areas are particularly in pain. Owtoom indeed. I worked eleven and a half hours yesterday, from 8:30am in a warehouse all through the duration of a lovely day until 7:00pm. Doing what? So you want me to tell you? Well, I'll tell you THAT. Lifting boxes, carrying boxes, arranging boxes. For some variation, later on in the day I was left on my own in the silently echoing warehouse climbing ladders and removing boxes from the shelves (they were full of invoices, mainly), then climbing down the ladder, carrying, arranging --- and so on, and ever. It did feel like a very long day. That is probably because it was a very long day. God did I deserve a bath when I had walked back home. Did I ever. The boxes on the shelves were very heavy. I had premonitions of me falling off the ladder, back into the shelf behind, and knocking a box of invoices off, and then dominoes of tumbling financial boxes, bungling bureaucracy, unsteady and tedious and completely stifling, finally getting the better of me. Bureaucrazy. It didn't happen - I emerged unscathed, save for a scratch on my shin for when I walked too close to something scratch-inducing: the sharp edge of a box, I should expect. Boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. My Slovakian work-mate for the day said that I would dream of boxes. He was wrong; I would be immersed in a nightmare of boxes. We were both wrong. Instead I dreamt of something odd that I can't recall. Dreamt is pronounced drem' (as in, with a glottal stop, when you don't pronounce the 't') or drempt - it is hard to say without making that popping P sound. Do you p what I meanp? I am p for my constant p of how to p this and how to p p. How p of me. P you think? P's carry on, p, I'll carry p. P? P go.
Later that evening, all horror in me arose and curdled in a silent recognition. There was a daddy long legs in my room. There are worse things that could be in my room, but for me this is pretty bad. A daddy long legs, let me reiterate, a daddy long legs. By this, I mean a cranefly. I hate them. They are pointless. They are stupid, and they can hardly fly. They bobble along, bouncing, their long, thin legs having a fit in the air around them, which is probably why they can't fly. Their bodies look like worms or grubs. Dee-scuz-ting. It could not muster further than 30 centimetres off the ground. So I hit it with a magazine, and it disappeared. Never to be seen again. I stood there for a good few minutes before I ventured near; I lifted up the cushions, which had provided the anvil to my hammer in the smashing process, and found nothing. As in any good action/adventure game, the enemy disappeared. No poof of smoke, or sound-of-defeat. Visuals are rated 4/10: Interesting enemy design - why can't they fly properly? Are they supposed to be drunk? I found this to be poor. God what am I saying. This was scary, but I found popping down to the toilet to be a more frightening experience. I took the folded magazine (The Times, Style magazine) with me, now my trusty sidearm, my stake, my garlic, my Excalibur. No that is rubbish. It was more like a flimsy shield. Imagine the toilet in the unfrequented garage extension... storage area, washing pool & drum-kit room... and spiders galore, I should expect. Not a great prospect, because I have to sleep there (above it) tonight, and I'm scaring myself. "JUST GET TO THE POINT!" I can hear you shouting. But you shouldn't shout, it's rude.
Anyway, downstairs I opened the bathroom door, magazine poised in hand, ready to tackle a beast of a spider. There was a beast of a spider, on the floor, which darted as soon as a door-just-been-opened-sized area of light spilt into the bathroom. It was now in the shadow just under the toilet. I swear it had only 5 legs, but it was still fast. I was going to hit it, but that would've meant mess, and secondly, I would've felt a little bad. But then I remembered, spiders and daddy long legs are supposed to be in high supply indoors this early owtoom, because it is warm and wet. But I thought they only came inside when it was colder, as well. I suppose it has got a little bit cold. It is a house spider, or giant house spider; Tegenaria duellica. Apparently the males leave their webs late Owgoost, early September, and run around looking for a mate. No way was I gonna poo in there with that freak legging it around - they used to be the world's fastest spider (Guiness Book of Records, 1987), with speeds of half a metre per second. Usually in my bathroom there are those little floaty spiders, which I found out are also called daddy long legs. The other things which are called daddy long legs are Harvestmen (these are sort of spiders, with one body fused together rather than in seperate segments like spiders - and have very long legs in comparison to their bodies). I used to think that these arachnids are the same as those spiders which hang around in my bathroom downstairs. They are 'floaty spiders', in my world (named by Saunders, R. A., 2008). However, I have found out that these are Pholcus phalangioides. Besides daddy long legs, they are called cellar spiders and skull spiders, because apparently the bottom part (the cephalothorax) looks like a human skull. I have never thought about this before. I will endeavour to call them floaty spiders. Anyway, after gauging the situation, I hastened for a poo in the main house.
Around the world, the cranefly has silly names; "gollywhopper" has to be the weirdest one. I have learnt that it has evolved - like most 'modern' flies - little stubs under its wings called halteres. They are supposed to maintain stability, allow for fast aerobatics, and help stabilise the head during flight. Why don't these help daddy long legs actually fly? Because daddy long legs are p, absolutely p.
Here we are, now in September. Summer is over. I mustn't say this in front of Becky, however; she maintains that summer ends when the clocks do their thing, forwards I should expect. What have I spent so long doing? What have I been talking about before the disappearance of any real sense of update. What indeed. What and what. So and what. So, this and that, what what? What-what? Yuk, I'm boring myself. I've been doing a few things. Here are some that I can remember.
I went camping to the Isle of Wight. This was with my mum &dad&brothers, and Becky was also invited. She was invited, and came along, too, so everything worked out. We stayed... near Bembridge. But nearer a little village called St. Helens - or Stelens (stell-ens). The sea was cold, but so it goes that every English beach must be properly utilised by any beachgoer. So it is. I swam and things. One other point of interest was Appuldurcombe. Go here. We were taken of a tour of the house by an eccentric old man (Norman, 87) and his dog (Benjy, 14). The dog did most of the talking. He seemed to know an awful lot about the history of the place, plus other periphery knowledge that he woofed to us. Norman barked and sniffed trees, so was his nature.
I have been helping my dad work. I have been working with my dad. My dad has been giving me charity work when I'm quite sure he would have been able to undertake without me. He is not an undertaker. He is a tiler. These are my grassroots. I've got a bit of money from this.
I have been attending many barbecues. Apparently the word 'barbecue' comes from a word in language the Timucua people of Florida and the Taíno of the Caribbean, which is barbacoa - meaning 'sacred fire pit'. This was a form of cooking a lot of meat (often a whole animal) in a pit. The barbecues I have been attending are for main part quite vegetarian affairs. I am squeamish with meat. I will eat a burger, a sausage, and a kebab - perhaps multiples of these things - but offer me a chicken wing, and I will politely try to eat it, before realising that it is completely disgusting. Perhaps I am less squeamish than I am lazy. I am lazy and squeamish. Take it off the bone and mince it up, put lots of spices in to take away the taste of the meat, grill it to a second death, stick it in a bun with bare BBQ sauce or ketchup (whichever is at hand), and a cheese slice, and it hardly tastes of meat at all. Anyway, these were the Barbecues of the Summer of 2009, and they will live in our collective memory. I'm sure we could probably manage more barbecues another year. So many more that we get bored of them.
A few weeks ago, a month or more now, I did some more physical labour. I am becoming the salt of the earth. I sanded down a very la.... You really want me to list the procedures involved with sanding down and re-staining a load of decking? No. So I won't. I did enjoy doing it though. Seeing the finished product was quite satisfying. The coffees I got from my commissioners kept me going.
Becky has gone to university, also. This is fine, because now I can spend weekends there pretending that I am also a student. Yessss.
And now here we are in autumn. Pronounced in a different, but also perfectly valid way, it would be 'ow-toom'. Sounds like 'our tomb'. I am aching a lot today - my shoulder and arm areas are particularly in pain. Owtoom indeed. I worked eleven and a half hours yesterday, from 8:30am in a warehouse all through the duration of a lovely day until 7:00pm. Doing what? So you want me to tell you? Well, I'll tell you THAT. Lifting boxes, carrying boxes, arranging boxes. For some variation, later on in the day I was left on my own in the silently echoing warehouse climbing ladders and removing boxes from the shelves (they were full of invoices, mainly), then climbing down the ladder, carrying, arranging --- and so on, and ever. It did feel like a very long day. That is probably because it was a very long day. God did I deserve a bath when I had walked back home. Did I ever. The boxes on the shelves were very heavy. I had premonitions of me falling off the ladder, back into the shelf behind, and knocking a box of invoices off, and then dominoes of tumbling financial boxes, bungling bureaucracy, unsteady and tedious and completely stifling, finally getting the better of me. Bureaucrazy. It didn't happen - I emerged unscathed, save for a scratch on my shin for when I walked too close to something scratch-inducing: the sharp edge of a box, I should expect. Boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. My Slovakian work-mate for the day said that I would dream of boxes. He was wrong; I would be immersed in a nightmare of boxes. We were both wrong. Instead I dreamt of something odd that I can't recall. Dreamt is pronounced drem' (as in, with a glottal stop, when you don't pronounce the 't') or drempt - it is hard to say without making that popping P sound. Do you p what I meanp? I am p for my constant p of how to p this and how to p p. How p of me. P you think? P's carry on, p, I'll carry p. P? P go.
Later that evening, all horror in me arose and curdled in a silent recognition. There was a daddy long legs in my room. There are worse things that could be in my room, but for me this is pretty bad. A daddy long legs, let me reiterate, a daddy long legs. By this, I mean a cranefly. I hate them. They are pointless. They are stupid, and they can hardly fly. They bobble along, bouncing, their long, thin legs having a fit in the air around them, which is probably why they can't fly. Their bodies look like worms or grubs. Dee-scuz-ting. It could not muster further than 30 centimetres off the ground. So I hit it with a magazine, and it disappeared. Never to be seen again. I stood there for a good few minutes before I ventured near; I lifted up the cushions, which had provided the anvil to my hammer in the smashing process, and found nothing. As in any good action/adventure game, the enemy disappeared. No poof of smoke, or sound-of-defeat. Visuals are rated 4/10: Interesting enemy design - why can't they fly properly? Are they supposed to be drunk? I found this to be poor. God what am I saying. This was scary, but I found popping down to the toilet to be a more frightening experience. I took the folded magazine (The Times, Style magazine) with me, now my trusty sidearm, my stake, my garlic, my Excalibur. No that is rubbish. It was more like a flimsy shield. Imagine the toilet in the unfrequented garage extension... storage area, washing pool & drum-kit room... and spiders galore, I should expect. Not a great prospect, because I have to sleep there (above it) tonight, and I'm scaring myself. "JUST GET TO THE POINT!" I can hear you shouting. But you shouldn't shout, it's rude.
Anyway, downstairs I opened the bathroom door, magazine poised in hand, ready to tackle a beast of a spider. There was a beast of a spider, on the floor, which darted as soon as a door-just-been-opened-sized area of light spilt into the bathroom. It was now in the shadow just under the toilet. I swear it had only 5 legs, but it was still fast. I was going to hit it, but that would've meant mess, and secondly, I would've felt a little bad. But then I remembered, spiders and daddy long legs are supposed to be in high supply indoors this early owtoom, because it is warm and wet. But I thought they only came inside when it was colder, as well. I suppose it has got a little bit cold. It is a house spider, or giant house spider; Tegenaria duellica. Apparently the males leave their webs late Owgoost, early September, and run around looking for a mate. No way was I gonna poo in there with that freak legging it around - they used to be the world's fastest spider (Guiness Book of Records, 1987), with speeds of half a metre per second. Usually in my bathroom there are those little floaty spiders, which I found out are also called daddy long legs. The other things which are called daddy long legs are Harvestmen (these are sort of spiders, with one body fused together rather than in seperate segments like spiders - and have very long legs in comparison to their bodies). I used to think that these arachnids are the same as those spiders which hang around in my bathroom downstairs. They are 'floaty spiders', in my world (named by Saunders, R. A., 2008). However, I have found out that these are Pholcus phalangioides. Besides daddy long legs, they are called cellar spiders and skull spiders, because apparently the bottom part (the cephalothorax) looks like a human skull. I have never thought about this before. I will endeavour to call them floaty spiders. Anyway, after gauging the situation, I hastened for a poo in the main house.
Around the world, the cranefly has silly names; "gollywhopper" has to be the weirdest one. I have learnt that it has evolved - like most 'modern' flies - little stubs under its wings called halteres. They are supposed to maintain stability, allow for fast aerobatics, and help stabilise the head during flight. Why don't these help daddy long legs actually fly? Because daddy long legs are p, absolutely p.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
floating weekend summary
I haven't really stayed in a flat before, except obviously on holiday and things like that, and I must say that the lack of stairs is an interesting and overall brilliant feature. Me and Bexxer were staying at my parents' flat down in Portsmouth all this weekend - I say "all this weekend" but what I mean when I say that is Saturday night, Sunday night, left on Monday. It very much has been a floating weekend, and I feel that Friday was absolutely ages ago, as if this weekend has been very much set apart from the rest of the summer so far. Why? I don't really know. I suppose it's the way time works. Watched Brasseye last night, the SCIENCE episode - "they managed to isolate and blow up a fortnight" - very funny. Maybe this weekend past has been elastically stretched by bad science and turned into wobbly matter, and I'm floating around passing heavy water. There's a little metal Buddha in front of me, sitting on my laptop. Much more relaxed than I ever have been. I have also recently, as in an hour ago or something, had lunch. Yes, lunch. I made it as well. Butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup. With onions in as well, some vegetable stock, and a lot of pepper. It was very tasty, at least I thought it was very tasty, and it is my mum's favourite soup (she told me to make it for her) and she said it had too much pepper in it, could feel it at the back of her throat a bit in fact. Well, maybe I just like spice too much.
But the weekend was an interesting thing. It was the GRADUATION BALL! £35 a ticket, so I, and all of us, were expecting something sick. Sickly good. Bek, me, James & Sophie stayed at the flat (which is my parents' flat they bought, but rent out to some students who are not saying in it for the summer, which is why we are allowed to go down there so much), and we all got ready and whatnot, and I must say I do not ever want to wear a tuxedo again - 'black-tie' my arse, too much cummerbund that doesn't even bloody stay up, baggy baggy trousers... the only decent thing I was wearing was the shoes, which were mine. Enough about suits, though; everyone there was wearing the suit and looked a vague concoction of stupid and smart: we were all in the same boat. The same, very, very surprised boat. Surprised, because the Union at Portsmouth did not look at all like the Union inside. Well, of course the rooms were the same shapes and everything, obviously I wasn't getting lost in a stupor of bad-tasting rosé champagne, tripping over 3' x 3' sparkly dice, set up around these rooms which I didn't know, slipping over the hearty vomit of whatever and so-what... No, nothing like this. I knew where I was. It was just that the red carpets and white 'curtains' put up round the walls, and the streamers and whatnot - this all made the place look very swanky. We therefore proceeded to swank it up. We were such swankers that night. Me and James ran into a group of swankers actually, who called us swankers, for dancing. Please. Just because they think they are too cool to skank it up to the Cream DJs upstairs, just because they are so woodenly terrible at dancing, just because they were not drunk enough, just because they were swankers themselves. Deary me.
But honestly: it was a brilliant night. Well done Portsmouth, I can almost forget the brain-baking incompetence of the graduation day itself. Oh well. I'm sure I will remember the better things; who wants to remember queueing? I will instead remember the Graduation Ball. There were a lot of things to do that night. There was a helter-skelter, prompting me to sing "helter-skelter! dananananana!" every time someone mentioned it. There was a food area, with a carvery, a BBQ, a noodle bar, a pizza counter? Yes, all of that. Plus the helter-skelter of course. There was a silent disco (which was so funny - I had never been to one before, and the madness of bopping around to Jay Z and then turning around to see people doing the macarena was too much for me, clearly). There were loads of different little bar areas. Each one of these areas had a theme, however: the overall theme for the whole thing was "Seven Deadly Sins". So, there was a bar where you could sit down and chill out, which in the daytime is usually a coffee place called Via Lattea (though still attached to the Union), and that one was Sloth. I suppose because people were sitting...? Gluttony was the food area. To be honest, I didn't pay enough attention to signs and things to work out which areas were denoted by the other five sins. Shame. Even the cocktails were themed for the night, "the proud student" for example, and other things similar like "the lusty banana", "the jealous foot" - I don't know, I'm making them up, but they ran along those same, rickety lines. Oh, have remembered two other places: Envy was the silent disco (I presume beause there were two channels on the wireless headphones, and you'd get 'envious' of other people listening to the other channel? A bit tenuous), and Pride was the place where you first walked in, filled with mirrors and gold. The other three I don't know, but I imagine Lust was a quiet area near the toilets or a secluded area outside, or behind the helter-skelter. Not that it would be the official area, however. Just a lusty place.
Oh, and we saw N-Dubz play. I would say it was shit and rubbish and that it pointless and I'd rather have seen so-and-so play. I mean, luckily I have been listening to Radio 1 recently and have had ear-worm of N-Dubz tunes for longer than I would have liked. But aside from all of that, it was pretty decent. They did win the MOBO award for Best UK Newcomer, so any haters can refer themselves to that. Definitely glad I saw them. What did bother me though was that Number 1 isn't even their song - it's Tinchy Stryder's, and I think Dappy just appeared on it. Who am I to know about pop politics, though? I'm not particularly a pop person so perhaps in mind of the peradventure propping up this current subject I shall pop off. The article covering them on Wikipedia is nice and comprehensive, however: N-Dubz!
Sunday was spent lazily (me and Bek didn't get up till 2), wandered into town, cherished the new Burger King in Portsmouth (one had been closed for more than a year, which saddened us all), and then wandered back and went to see James, Josh & Jack in the evening. I had a terrible pizza from Domino's Pizza (tandoori - never, ever get it, it will set your arse on fire the next day). Slept. Monday, wandered about, clutching my stomach as the tandoori worked its terrible business deep into my bowels. I was unhappy about this. And then we left. And now I am sitting here looking out into the drizzle, wondering whether it will ever be sunny again. Will it? August is supposed to be nice. The man who cut my hair the other week told me. I saw it on the front page of a paper at the weekend, backing up the local knowledge of the barber. Fantastic. Roll on August, then. Oh, and I have done nothing for my new project since I mentioned it last week. I even emailed the creator of CRIMSON ROOM, Toshimitsu Takagi, but as of yet I have had no reply. I've read two Sherlock Holmes stories as well, or have I told you that already? Anyway, if I have or not, whatever, I found them to be very underwhelming and overestimated. Perhaps there are better stories than the two I read. Perhaps this week, or in a second, I can do some more on it. I just want it to happen right now, but my horoscope said you do have to walk before you can run. You can't just start flying before you're even born. You can't be a tree before you've been a seed. You can't step in the same river twice. Don't do this while doing this unless you want a certain other thing to occur. You must close your eyes before you can open them. Leaves only fall down. Try but do not try too hard. Learning is a key to the door of understanding. Talk in riddles and you will be muddled. All of these kinds of things. I only trust clichés, so if you want to talk to me, speak to me in clichés.
But the weekend was an interesting thing. It was the GRADUATION BALL! £35 a ticket, so I, and all of us, were expecting something sick. Sickly good. Bek, me, James & Sophie stayed at the flat (which is my parents' flat they bought, but rent out to some students who are not saying in it for the summer, which is why we are allowed to go down there so much), and we all got ready and whatnot, and I must say I do not ever want to wear a tuxedo again - 'black-tie' my arse, too much cummerbund that doesn't even bloody stay up, baggy baggy trousers... the only decent thing I was wearing was the shoes, which were mine. Enough about suits, though; everyone there was wearing the suit and looked a vague concoction of stupid and smart: we were all in the same boat. The same, very, very surprised boat. Surprised, because the Union at Portsmouth did not look at all like the Union inside. Well, of course the rooms were the same shapes and everything, obviously I wasn't getting lost in a stupor of bad-tasting rosé champagne, tripping over 3' x 3' sparkly dice, set up around these rooms which I didn't know, slipping over the hearty vomit of whatever and so-what... No, nothing like this. I knew where I was. It was just that the red carpets and white 'curtains' put up round the walls, and the streamers and whatnot - this all made the place look very swanky. We therefore proceeded to swank it up. We were such swankers that night. Me and James ran into a group of swankers actually, who called us swankers, for dancing. Please. Just because they think they are too cool to skank it up to the Cream DJs upstairs, just because they are so woodenly terrible at dancing, just because they were not drunk enough, just because they were swankers themselves. Deary me.
But honestly: it was a brilliant night. Well done Portsmouth, I can almost forget the brain-baking incompetence of the graduation day itself. Oh well. I'm sure I will remember the better things; who wants to remember queueing? I will instead remember the Graduation Ball. There were a lot of things to do that night. There was a helter-skelter, prompting me to sing "helter-skelter! dananananana!" every time someone mentioned it. There was a food area, with a carvery, a BBQ, a noodle bar, a pizza counter? Yes, all of that. Plus the helter-skelter of course. There was a silent disco (which was so funny - I had never been to one before, and the madness of bopping around to Jay Z and then turning around to see people doing the macarena was too much for me, clearly). There were loads of different little bar areas. Each one of these areas had a theme, however: the overall theme for the whole thing was "Seven Deadly Sins". So, there was a bar where you could sit down and chill out, which in the daytime is usually a coffee place called Via Lattea (though still attached to the Union), and that one was Sloth. I suppose because people were sitting...? Gluttony was the food area. To be honest, I didn't pay enough attention to signs and things to work out which areas were denoted by the other five sins. Shame. Even the cocktails were themed for the night, "the proud student" for example, and other things similar like "the lusty banana", "the jealous foot" - I don't know, I'm making them up, but they ran along those same, rickety lines. Oh, have remembered two other places: Envy was the silent disco (I presume beause there were two channels on the wireless headphones, and you'd get 'envious' of other people listening to the other channel? A bit tenuous), and Pride was the place where you first walked in, filled with mirrors and gold. The other three I don't know, but I imagine Lust was a quiet area near the toilets or a secluded area outside, or behind the helter-skelter. Not that it would be the official area, however. Just a lusty place.
Oh, and we saw N-Dubz play. I would say it was shit and rubbish and that it pointless and I'd rather have seen so-and-so play. I mean, luckily I have been listening to Radio 1 recently and have had ear-worm of N-Dubz tunes for longer than I would have liked. But aside from all of that, it was pretty decent. They did win the MOBO award for Best UK Newcomer, so any haters can refer themselves to that. Definitely glad I saw them. What did bother me though was that Number 1 isn't even their song - it's Tinchy Stryder's, and I think Dappy just appeared on it. Who am I to know about pop politics, though? I'm not particularly a pop person so perhaps in mind of the peradventure propping up this current subject I shall pop off. The article covering them on Wikipedia is nice and comprehensive, however: N-Dubz!
Sunday was spent lazily (me and Bek didn't get up till 2), wandered into town, cherished the new Burger King in Portsmouth (one had been closed for more than a year, which saddened us all), and then wandered back and went to see James, Josh & Jack in the evening. I had a terrible pizza from Domino's Pizza (tandoori - never, ever get it, it will set your arse on fire the next day). Slept. Monday, wandered about, clutching my stomach as the tandoori worked its terrible business deep into my bowels. I was unhappy about this. And then we left. And now I am sitting here looking out into the drizzle, wondering whether it will ever be sunny again. Will it? August is supposed to be nice. The man who cut my hair the other week told me. I saw it on the front page of a paper at the weekend, backing up the local knowledge of the barber. Fantastic. Roll on August, then. Oh, and I have done nothing for my new project since I mentioned it last week. I even emailed the creator of CRIMSON ROOM, Toshimitsu Takagi, but as of yet I have had no reply. I've read two Sherlock Holmes stories as well, or have I told you that already? Anyway, if I have or not, whatever, I found them to be very underwhelming and overestimated. Perhaps there are better stories than the two I read. Perhaps this week, or in a second, I can do some more on it. I just want it to happen right now, but my horoscope said you do have to walk before you can run. You can't just start flying before you're even born. You can't be a tree before you've been a seed. You can't step in the same river twice. Don't do this while doing this unless you want a certain other thing to occur. You must close your eyes before you can open them. Leaves only fall down. Try but do not try too hard. Learning is a key to the door of understanding. Talk in riddles and you will be muddled. All of these kinds of things. I only trust clichés, so if you want to talk to me, speak to me in clichés.
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Did I hear the Gaudeamus?
I have graduated. I won't talk about Tuesday because Tuesday was a day of nothing-much and research that I will always come back to for a while, so it isn't important. Wednesday, yesterday, however, is another matter entirely.
I am not quite sure whether the day went well, or if it went badly. I am in two minds about the whole thing - negative and positive. I suppose there are essences of these two things in everything.
I think that the graduation, not just the ceremony itself, but the whole day, just highlighted the absolute disorganisation that haunts the very foundations of the University of Portsmouth, like the spirit of termite who forgets how much it eats and ruins the very fibre of what the University stands on; it is eaten from the inside by disarray and confusion. Firstly, we arrived at the Guildhall in Portsmouth and walked down to the Park Building, which is right behind it - here is where we picked up our gowns. To say this is understating the matter entirely; the wait was lengthy, weighty. But this wasn't my main gripe with it - I didn't expect to be able to get things yesterday without queueing. But then again, should we have to queue? Perhaps if the University had organised itself better, there should have been less standing in line (as is English thing to do - we queue patiently furious).
'Line' is not the right word. We arrive and there is no one at Park to direct us anywhere. There are two purple stands in amongst a bustling throng of people, on each it says Graduation Enquiries - these are people, I thought, who are just queueing up to ask questions. So instead I followed the sign saying "return gowns --->" on the Park Building. Obviously, it wasn't where you picked up the gowns, but they told me they are in a big room at the other end of the corridor. Anyway, it transpired that the Graduation Enquiries thing was actually the queue for gowns. Should it have not said "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE", or perhaps "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE" - but I think
PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE
would have worked much better. I cannot believe that University didn't have the ingenuity to specify where exactly we were supposed to pick up the gowns. Perhaps it was the final intellectual test, an initiation for the ceremony later; if you can't find the gown-place, you don't graduate. I imagine it was just stupidity on the University's part, though. I said that 'line' was not the right word, because the crowd that was moving as one thing with hundreds of shuffling feet near the "graduation enquiries" was a queue for gowns, but it didn't particularly look like a queue, or a line. It was the complete antithesis of a line: a mass, a blob, a quivering scab, which bottlenecked as we found out that it did turn into line when we had to be filtered down through a stairway into the belly of Park. Here the queue was a line. The effect, however, was one not dissimilar to trying to push a cube through a smaller, triangular hole. A bloody mess.
This was done, and we got our gowns in time. We were missing mortarboards. Another queue. Why did we bother wrapping tape measures round our heads? The mortarboard collection point was in a gazebo set up in a car park, with lots of cardboard boxes full of the stupid hats. Mine didn't fit. When I asked the girl helping me if she had a different size, she said 'yes, one'. One other size. So, like I asked previously, why put myself through another potentially complex-forming thing like head measuring? Now I think I've got a big head. 60cm circumference. Is that bad? Do I now need to look up 'average head measurements' on Google? Best not; people would think I was starting up some phrenologically-based eugenics scheme. Instead, I will just retain the image of my head as one which is big and misshapen. Asteroid head. I know it's not, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
The ceremony itself, in Guildhall, was possibly one of the most boring things I have sat through in all my life. It was absolutely interminable. It was also very hot and stuffy in that hall. And, though the names of graduands and diplomates were read out quickly, it seemed to be a rather prolonged experience, during which I suffered:
Bum-ache - a terrible aching in the buttocks resulting from sitting on cheap seats for too long; cannot be dispelled by 'shifting'
Paranoid mortarboard syndrome - in which the sufferer can do nothing but check the mortarboard they are wearing; one notable symptom is constant tassel arrangement (or CTA)
Actual catastrophic tinnitus - an ache in the ears, occurring when in close proximity with loud, often piercing noise; patients often report that girls sitting directly behind them 'wooping' and the onset of ACT occur at the same time
Yawning - a large intake of breath, indicative of apathy; thought to have a 'cooling' effect on the brain and body
Restive indecision in the lower limbs - in a resting state of mind, the constant moving of the legs into different positions; causes are unknown
I'm sure I suffered a number of other pieces of annoying behaviour while I was there, but they are so annoying that I can't remember them.
I must say, though, that it wasn't really that terrifying going up onstage to shake the vice-chancellor's hand. Sheila Hancock (she is the Chancellor the University, how brilliant) was out of action for hand-shaking because she had hurt the wrist of her right hand, or just the right hand itself. She also made a lovely speech afterwards, saying that us students - graduands I suppose - should be very proud of ourselves, because if we can do this horrible walk, up onto the stage, and then all around the hall for everybody to see, we can do anything. Well, if I wasn't that scared of it, does that mean I won't be able to do that much of anything? We'll see. She also said that we are the educated "elite" - that we have been to university, and therefore are 'worth' a whole lot more than the "vacuous celebrities" on the red carpet wearing "borrowed designer dresses"; she went on to say that us in Britain have an "obsession with the mediocre", or something like that. Her speech was very nice. I think I might order a DVD of the ceremony, not to watch me raise my eyebrows to the camera onstage (one of the more minute forms of horseplay on the stage - one person purposely tripped up the stairs onto the stage; though Sheila Hancock said she enjoyed the "pratfall", I just thought it was a prat falling over), but moreover to listen to that speech again. It was inspirational.
The evening was filled with curry (I had a madras), drinking (I stayed and went out with Alex and Mark), walking around (we met the most indecisive people from the Film Studies course), and a failed botch at visiting a strip club (£10 entry does not bode well for the price of drinks therein). We went to bed when it was light. So that was good. The day ended well, despite the fact that it did not particularly start as if it would be a barrel of laughs. And to think I was toying with the idea of not going to graduation at all! Yes it was awfully boring, loftily so, but no: it wasn't all that bad. All you need is a little tolerance to get you through the day.
And there was no group on the steps of Guildhall, throwing their mortarboards in the air, smiling, laughing, kissing each other, and breaking down into a postgraduate orgy that wouldn't dissolve for hours. That's illegal in Portsmouth.
I am not quite sure whether the day went well, or if it went badly. I am in two minds about the whole thing - negative and positive. I suppose there are essences of these two things in everything.
I think that the graduation, not just the ceremony itself, but the whole day, just highlighted the absolute disorganisation that haunts the very foundations of the University of Portsmouth, like the spirit of termite who forgets how much it eats and ruins the very fibre of what the University stands on; it is eaten from the inside by disarray and confusion. Firstly, we arrived at the Guildhall in Portsmouth and walked down to the Park Building, which is right behind it - here is where we picked up our gowns. To say this is understating the matter entirely; the wait was lengthy, weighty. But this wasn't my main gripe with it - I didn't expect to be able to get things yesterday without queueing. But then again, should we have to queue? Perhaps if the University had organised itself better, there should have been less standing in line (as is English thing to do - we queue patiently furious).
'Line' is not the right word. We arrive and there is no one at Park to direct us anywhere. There are two purple stands in amongst a bustling throng of people, on each it says Graduation Enquiries - these are people, I thought, who are just queueing up to ask questions. So instead I followed the sign saying "return gowns --->" on the Park Building. Obviously, it wasn't where you picked up the gowns, but they told me they are in a big room at the other end of the corridor. Anyway, it transpired that the Graduation Enquiries thing was actually the queue for gowns. Should it have not said "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE", or perhaps "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE" - but I think
PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE
would have worked much better. I cannot believe that University didn't have the ingenuity to specify where exactly we were supposed to pick up the gowns. Perhaps it was the final intellectual test, an initiation for the ceremony later; if you can't find the gown-place, you don't graduate. I imagine it was just stupidity on the University's part, though. I said that 'line' was not the right word, because the crowd that was moving as one thing with hundreds of shuffling feet near the "graduation enquiries" was a queue for gowns, but it didn't particularly look like a queue, or a line. It was the complete antithesis of a line: a mass, a blob, a quivering scab, which bottlenecked as we found out that it did turn into line when we had to be filtered down through a stairway into the belly of Park. Here the queue was a line. The effect, however, was one not dissimilar to trying to push a cube through a smaller, triangular hole. A bloody mess.
This was done, and we got our gowns in time. We were missing mortarboards. Another queue. Why did we bother wrapping tape measures round our heads? The mortarboard collection point was in a gazebo set up in a car park, with lots of cardboard boxes full of the stupid hats. Mine didn't fit. When I asked the girl helping me if she had a different size, she said 'yes, one'. One other size. So, like I asked previously, why put myself through another potentially complex-forming thing like head measuring? Now I think I've got a big head. 60cm circumference. Is that bad? Do I now need to look up 'average head measurements' on Google? Best not; people would think I was starting up some phrenologically-based eugenics scheme. Instead, I will just retain the image of my head as one which is big and misshapen. Asteroid head. I know it's not, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
The ceremony itself, in Guildhall, was possibly one of the most boring things I have sat through in all my life. It was absolutely interminable. It was also very hot and stuffy in that hall. And, though the names of graduands and diplomates were read out quickly, it seemed to be a rather prolonged experience, during which I suffered:
Bum-ache - a terrible aching in the buttocks resulting from sitting on cheap seats for too long; cannot be dispelled by 'shifting'
Paranoid mortarboard syndrome - in which the sufferer can do nothing but check the mortarboard they are wearing; one notable symptom is constant tassel arrangement (or CTA)
Actual catastrophic tinnitus - an ache in the ears, occurring when in close proximity with loud, often piercing noise; patients often report that girls sitting directly behind them 'wooping' and the onset of ACT occur at the same time
Yawning - a large intake of breath, indicative of apathy; thought to have a 'cooling' effect on the brain and body
Restive indecision in the lower limbs - in a resting state of mind, the constant moving of the legs into different positions; causes are unknown
I'm sure I suffered a number of other pieces of annoying behaviour while I was there, but they are so annoying that I can't remember them.
I must say, though, that it wasn't really that terrifying going up onstage to shake the vice-chancellor's hand. Sheila Hancock (she is the Chancellor the University, how brilliant) was out of action for hand-shaking because she had hurt the wrist of her right hand, or just the right hand itself. She also made a lovely speech afterwards, saying that us students - graduands I suppose - should be very proud of ourselves, because if we can do this horrible walk, up onto the stage, and then all around the hall for everybody to see, we can do anything. Well, if I wasn't that scared of it, does that mean I won't be able to do that much of anything? We'll see. She also said that we are the educated "elite" - that we have been to university, and therefore are 'worth' a whole lot more than the "vacuous celebrities" on the red carpet wearing "borrowed designer dresses"; she went on to say that us in Britain have an "obsession with the mediocre", or something like that. Her speech was very nice. I think I might order a DVD of the ceremony, not to watch me raise my eyebrows to the camera onstage (one of the more minute forms of horseplay on the stage - one person purposely tripped up the stairs onto the stage; though Sheila Hancock said she enjoyed the "pratfall", I just thought it was a prat falling over), but moreover to listen to that speech again. It was inspirational.
The evening was filled with curry (I had a madras), drinking (I stayed and went out with Alex and Mark), walking around (we met the most indecisive people from the Film Studies course), and a failed botch at visiting a strip club (£10 entry does not bode well for the price of drinks therein). We went to bed when it was light. So that was good. The day ended well, despite the fact that it did not particularly start as if it would be a barrel of laughs. And to think I was toying with the idea of not going to graduation at all! Yes it was awfully boring, loftily so, but no: it wasn't all that bad. All you need is a little tolerance to get you through the day.
And there was no group on the steps of Guildhall, throwing their mortarboards in the air, smiling, laughing, kissing each other, and breaking down into a postgraduate orgy that wouldn't dissolve for hours. That's illegal in Portsmouth.
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