Recently in Thoughts Category

A year ago today, I posted what was not technically but spiritually the first post of this blog's existence, in which I discussed the following resolutions:

Get out of London at least once a month. Check! Birmingham, Oslo, California, New Zealand, Amsterdam, Derby, Plymouth, Ashford, Croatia, Cromer, San Diego (again), France

Update this blog thing once a day. Check! Sort of. I generally updated, with very few exceptions, once every weekday.

Spend at least part of my summer in Croatia (this has been a resolution three years running, so it's about due) Check!

Go roller-blading in Barcelona. Fail! Didn't even go this year! Rrrr.

Go to the gym at least four times a week (blading counts as one). Fail!

Never, ever watch TV by myself. Fail!

Never, ever drink on school nights. Except maybe Thursdays. No, not even Thursdays. Oh, okay maybe sometimes on Thursdays. Fail! Sometimes absurdly failed.

Create a short film and submit it to the UpOverDownUnder film festival. Fail! However I'm slightly mollified by the fact that there WAS no UpOverDownUnder film festival this year. That's hardly an excuse.

Finish at least one chapter of The Trusted Professions every month. Check! Okay not technically once a month but I got it done, which was the point.

Play a live gig, with an audience. Check!

So that's 5/10. A pass. I set the bar high, and just managed to clear it. Given myself a little bit of extra credit for the destruct\hour.

So, a good year, really.

Hmm.

Did I mention I hate meta-blogging? That is, making a blog entry all about your own blog. I think I've done it maybe twice since starting, and even then only tangentially to some other topic. And now.

As mentioned I've been going through, as I'm sure we all do at fairly regular cycles, a bit of a blog malaise at the moment. Not really sure why I do it. It's interesting and somewhat gratifying to note that all of my successful resolutions were somehow captured or logged by this journal, which makes me want to continue. I also feel like a lot of my resolutions were a bit banal and unworthy compared to many of the things my fellow two-niners seem to be doing (buying houses and incorporating companies and such).

So it's not really a blog malaise at all. It's a life malaise that's more or less continuous but my awareness of it ebbs and flows based on how distracted I can make myself from it.

I like my job. It's not what I want to be doing and I don't know what is.
I love my friends. I'm desperately, sometimes horribly lonely.
I miss my family and want to go home but don't know what I'd be if I went there. I don't want to go home and I don't know why.
I'm happy. I feel like I haven't progressed in five years.

I just don't know.

So, blogwise, I'm changing the parameters a bit. I'm not posting every day just for the sake of doing so. I think it's a good habit and I don't think anyone should analyze too much the quality or worthiness of any one post (/novel/song/friendship/creative act), lest one analyze it right out of existence, but I would like each post to have substance. This may mean large hiatuses or it may not. I'd like to do a videoblog that's decent and substantive. I'd like to get The Trusted Professions published this month and get underway with the audio version fairly soon. I have a concept for the next novel which I will hopefully have fully refined before next November. I feel energized when I have creative projects and I want to keep as many on the go as possible.

Lifewise, I really should change the parameters a bit. I just don't know what to change them to.

Happy Birthday, blog.

Well, firstly, go and read this, because basically I want to steal this idea. No thoughts expressed in this post are original, yet they might lead to something that is.

The video iPod, and devices that emulate its function (including, in a large part, your computer) are going to change the way we consume video content, and it's going to rush the convergence of television and the internet even faster than it is already going. There's a wave building, and I want to be on it, rather than looking back on it in a few years saying: "Ooh I really should have caught that one." Because it really is going to explode, very soon.

Little TVs in your pocket you take them out and want to watch something. You don't want to watch a half-hour show because you're on the tube and you are constantly getting up to change trains or buses. You want something short, something consumable. Music videos automatically spring to mind, of course, as do a variety of short-form film sites (Channel101 and Strongbad being two of my favourites), but the rise and rise of bloggin obviously indicates a craving for fresh, regularly updated content that is germane to your location and your own personal interests.

A niche that needs filling. Obviously the 'establishment' (whatever you choose that to mean) has started grinding the wheels and will eventually start producing short-form content, but in the meantime the people on the ground, as always, have the potential to be one step ahead- to get into the niche before it gets filled with corporate crud. People on the ground...like you and me.

Here's my game plan: A 3-5 minute downloadable webcast, each episode focusing on a different thing. Made by us.

Plainly, most vLogs are generally useless and inane and hard to watch. Like most blogs, actually. I don't wanna go down that route. Whatever is done needs to be tight, it needs to be about something interesting and informative about that subject, and it needs to have at least a semblance of a professional look about it (but let's not go crazy).

It also needs to be regular. Right now I'm thinking once-a-week. Now, I probably could research, film and then edit a minishow once a week (I have NO idea how rocketboom does it once a day), but it would mean I'd have to pretty much dedicate all my free time to it, leaving no time for all my various other hobbies.

So what I'm thinking is this: Four teams, each one responsible for making one show every month. This takes the pressure off each individual team- not particularly hard to make a 3-5 minutes magazine piece in one month. I'll give you an opening title and bar graphic to maintain continuity between each of the four sources.

The show can be about whatever each team wants it to be about, but it does have be about something (as opposed to most vLogs which are just people blahing into a camera). You need ideas? I got ideas. Take a look at my blogroll. Everyone on it, each of you reading this, get excited by something. Pix is nutty about knitting and photography. Adrian will chew your ear off about string theory and design paths. Lori will show you that little corner of Manchester that only she knows about. There's a year's worth of interesting stories just there. Interview a band. Take us on holiday with you. Review a videogame. Take us rollerblading down the Thames path. Investigate the animosity between skiiers and snowboarders. Investigate the London porn industry. Talk to people. Take us dancing with you. Get mad about something. Get excited about something. Feel happy about something. Make it interesting. Show it to us. Join me.

One show a week. (Oh! We need a name. Think about that, too.) One show a week. You make one a month. I make one a month. I need three other like-minded people who each have access to a camera and some editing software. We band together. We get on the wave. You don't even have to live in London, this can be done from anywhere in the world. I'm excited about this. I'll sink my next paycheck into this.

Think about it. It could work I will be e-mailing you. I'll be e-mailing Londonist. I'll be e-mailing Pick Me Up.

In the meantime, I'm off to the sunny shores of San Diego. Have a Merry Christmas! I'll see you next year.

I've been having this recurring dream for the past three years or so. I've heard that, in broad strokes, it's not an entirely uncommon dream. While I haven't had this specific dream before, I've had dreams which are extremely similar.

Okay, so I dream that I'm living back in Hamilton, in the house I lived in as a teenager. Uhm, and, somehow it's transpired that I've decided to go back to University, to get some kind of Masters degree in something not particularly useful. But I've been sleeping for a long time, and I'm not really aware of what day it is. Anyway, I get up early, and I'm asking my mum if she knows where my class is, and my little sister says:

"You've missed three weeks of classes, you'll never catch up, there's almost no point in going."

And I just stand in the kitchen, kind of slumping, thinking: "Well, what do I do now?"

And then I woke up, all covered in sweat and shaky and frightened.

Yesterday me and some friends got together for our semi-irregular band rehearsal. Songs are made up on the spot and, while I'm not very good at it (I usually revert to either joking or screaming), I occasionally step up to the mic and sing some lyrics off the top of my head. One of the lines that came to me yesterday was:

I know I'm treading water
and I know I can't do that forever
but if there's nowhere to swim to
is there any point setting out to?

| had a dream when | was in norway. rob said it was interesting and that | should write it down. rob's often wrong on these things. blame him if you get bored

so, | dreamt that saddam hussein, the butcher of baghdad, had escaped from american-occupied-iraq and was hiding out in some country (norway, | guess) in which | was, also, in. and somehow (the dream didn't really make it clear how) saddam had taken some kind of shining to me and was always inviting me to his big house parties

my friends gave me a hard time for hanging out with a former tyrant. he butchered hundreds of people they said; don't hang out with him

| know | said, he's dag-nasty evil. but | like all the presents he gives me and his parties are cool and it's kind of neat hanging out with someone who is such a global celebrity, even if he is a tyrant

| said that if | could go into "cheat mode", | would gun down saddam and all of his friends (various international criminals, such as osama bin laden and saddam's two dead sons Uday and qusay, also attended these parties), but without cheat mode, there's a chance they'd fight back and kill me, and | didn't want to be dead. so | was sort of trapped going to these parties, as well

anyway, one time | was at this great party at saddam's and Uday started to hassle me. | was wearing a t-shirt of some tori-amos-esque singer-songwriter who had unthinkingly put an Arabic symbol she did not know the meaning of on her t-shirt, and Uday was very upset that | was wearing this symbol so brazenly on my chest. he started to shove me about, all the while yelling at me in a language | didn't understand (iraqi, would be my guess). | tried to placate him but he was extremely offended by this symbol on my t-shirt

there was a small boy perched on a sofa nearby

-| am from pakistan, he said, and | know what that symbol means-

what does it mean? | asked rather desperately

-that is the symbol for naan bread- he said

well why is he getting so offended by it, then?

-it would take too long to explain-

I can't wait until I have my back surgery, and then my tummy tuck. I'm not fat by any means, but after 10 years, time can take it's toll, ya know? The back surgery is necessary, and of course the tummy thing is purely cosmetic.

[backing slowly away from my computer]

Can this be? Can I really know someone who is actually considering really truly having a 'tummy tuck'? And, on top of that, admitting they are having a tummy tuck (as opposed to having one quietly and then saying you've been working out)? I don't even know what a tummy tuck is. Hang on....let me consult www.plasticsurgery.org (I have it in my bookmarks, of course)...

Abdominoplasty, known more commonly as a "tummy tuck," is a major surgical procedure to remove excess skin and fat from the middle and lower abdomen and to tighten the muscles of the abdominal wall. The procedure can dramatically reduce the appearance of a protruding abdomen. But bear in mind, it does produce a permanent scar, which, depending on the extent of the original problem and the surgery required to correct it, can extend from hip to hip.

Let me just read that again: IT DOES PRODUCE A PERMANENT FUCKING SCAR!!! Reading down through the description:

It may take you weeks or months to feel like your old self again [...] Exercise will help you heal better. Even people who have never exercised before should begin an exercise program to reduce swelling, lower the chance of blood clots [!], and tone muscles.

Yeees, exercise will help you heal better. OR, alternatively, exercise will reduce the need for a tummy tuck at all, surely? I don't know. Maybe I'm being harsh (am I being harsh?) Maybe there's some kinds of tummy fatness that exercise just can't help.

I just...people are free to do what they like with their bodies, y'know, go crazy, but I hate the idea that on the one side you've got an entire cos(mopolitan)-industry devoted to making people feel shitty about themselves, and on the other side you've got this cos(metic) surgery industry saying: "We can fix you! Just give us your money and we'll chop you up and if you avoid the blood clots you'll be left with a scar." Great, where do I sign up?

There's been a recent, or at least it seems quite recent to me, there's been a recent sort of acceptance, or popularization, of the idea of cosmetic surgery. When I was a kid it was like smoking is now- a few people did it, but pretty much everyone knew it was a bad idea, and not something you'd readily, or proudly, admit to. But now, you can't turn on your TV without seeing Xtreme Makeova, or Ten Years Younger, in which a poor bloke had his NOSE cut up to make him look ten years younger. Because your nose really shows the signs of aging. (note: he didn't look ten years younger at the end, because you can't really tell how old guys are, anyway)

Sigh. Maybe I'm being paranoid ("Paranoids are just people with all the facts.", as Spider Jerusalem noted), but I get the sneaky suspicion that the latter cos-industry said to the former: "Nobody likes us. They think cosmetic surgery is indicative of incredibly low self-esteem and no-one in their right mind should hate themselves so much as to go under the knife. Can you maybe, I don't know, run some articles and do some shows, showing how normal and cool cosmetic surgery is, so we can get some clients? Oh, and find better looking models so people feel even worse about themselves. Thanks!"

and now the beasts are feeding off each other.

Sigh, I need a drink. Have a good weekend, folks.

d

The world?s only British matador is, apparently, retiring. Asked why he was retiring, he responded:

?Well, in order to be a matador, you need 100% of your faculties...well...90% of your faculties.?

That made me giggle, for some reason.

I'm currently looking for somewhere to live, which means I spend the greater portion of my working day staring at the gumtree, looking for flats that fall into my very specific criteria: location, price, size, convenience, shower pressure, the usual.

However I'm finding that, while I'm reasonably flexible in all of these areas, I immediately discard any advert that contains the following heinous writing mistakes:

++ WRITING EVERYTHING IN CAPS!!! WITH LOADS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!! CAUSE FLATS ARE SO EXCITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
++ txt-msg spk whl typng. I can't even stand this in text messages, let alone on screen. Look, it's great that you've figured out that the letter 'c' sounds like the word 'see', likewise u = you. And I'm sure you're saving yourself some mighty precious seconds* by not having to type those two extra letters. But you also come across as a mouth-breathing moron.
++ and, well, and I apprciate i may be throwing black ketles here, but pretty much any knid of speling mistake. Except for 'thier'. Cause anyone could make that mistake, it's totally understandable. Hush.

I'm sure the people who write like this are great, friendly people, who are a lot of fun to live with. But if my first impression of you is: "Wow, this idiot can't even string a proper sentence together."; I don't have a lot of positivity about our future cohabitation prospects. Is that wrong?

d

While I constantly maintain a sort of low-level state of general health (blocked nose, brain fatigue, insomnia, lower back pain), it's actually pretty rare that I am stricken with an illness that is so severe that I can't make it into work. I mean, every time I wake up with symptoms that you might associate with severe flu/being dead, but I find if I just 'fight through them', they rapidly dissipate over the next hour. This is has been my general strategy (and, I believe, most medical professionals) towards most health problems: ignore it, and it'll go away. And this really has stood me in pretty good stead over the years (even my hernias self-repair).

The alternative strategy to this, and the one mothers generally recommend, is to stay in bed and drink lots of fluids. Since getting a job that pays me whether I'm actually present at work or not, staying in bed has suddenly increased dramatically in its appeal, and since I'm not at all myself in the morning, I often awake to find it's midday and someone sounding suspiciously like me has called in sick for me and turned off my alarm.

My advice to you today is: Whatever healing strategy you go for, don't mix and match. This is what I did last week, and my body's been whiplashing all over the place trying to figure out which way to go:

Wednesday: Woke up feeling awful. Decided to 'fight my way through it', and had a semi-miserable day at work.
Thursday: Gave up on fighting through it, spent all day in bed. Watched every episode of Spaced and loved it to death. So, pretty productive.
Friday: Realized staying in bed hadn't made me better, so went back to work and had a fully miserable day infecting my colleagues. Went to a birthday party with an open bar, tried to kill infection with alcohol (that's what cough syrup mostly is, you know) and cigarettes (cause....infections....need....oxygen?), passed out on friends floor after finishing drunken late-night 'Cranium' session.
Saturday: Realized the 'fight through it' thing wasn't working even more than staying in bed, so sat on the couch all day watching an OC marathon. Realized I hadn't been missing much since I gave up TV.
Sunday-Monday: Tried to switch back to 'fight through it' mode. Got dressed, went outside, had apocalyptic coughing fit, went back to bed, stayed there for two days solid.
Tuesday: Still don't feel great, but I'm back at work. I hope they noticed how much doesn't get done when I'm not here. Heh.

Like Charles says at the beginning of (or, rather, in the prologue to) Brideshead,

as I lay in that dark hour, I was aghast to realize that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died, and I felt as a husband might feel, who, in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew that he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife; no pleasure in her company, no wish to please, no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think; no hope of setting things right, no self-reproach for the disaster. I knew it all, the whole drab compass of marital disillusion; we had been through it together, [my job] and I, from the first importunate courtship until now, when nothing remained to us except the chill bonds of law and duty and custom. I had played every scene in the domestic tragedy, had found the early tiffs become more frequent, the tears less affecting, the reconciliations less sweet, till they engendered a mood of aloofness and cool criticism, and the growing conviction that it was not myself but the loved one who was at fault.

Just kidding, boss! Back to work.

So, I?m sitting at this gig the other day, and I?ve got a couple of thoughts chasing round in me old brick, two of which are of pertinence today:

The first was, well, before I started this here blog, I was already a pretty active member of the old blogging community, checking out all your sites and things, making comments, occasionally guest-hosting here and there. And something I?d often ask other bloggers is why do you blog? It really interested me and I never really understood it. No-one ever gave me a straight answer, either. Now that I?ve made one of these myself, a question I?ve been asked quite frequently over the last month is, well, why did you do that then? Seems like a lot of effort for not much reward. So I?d been giving that some thought recently.

Concurrently (along with a whole lot of other random thinks; new recipes for Spot?s nutritional supplement, etc), I was thinking about music. I?d seen five bands play in the last day, and I was trying to pin-point exactly what makes a band, well, any good. A lot of nights you can see a band that obviously has enthusiasm and technical talent, but you watch them up against another band with equal measures of both, yet one rocks and the other is quite bland, and often it?s quite hard to pin down why.

So these two thoughts kind of ran into each other and I thought, well, sometimes it?s kind of hard to tell why humans do a lot of things. Why were all these people coming together to form bands and make music, for example? (and, by corollary, why do people come and listen?) I know there?s ?the dream? that you might somehow make money out of it, but that?s obviously not the sole reason people do it, because bands are so notoriously poor. Ask a lot of musicians why they make music, they say that they do it because they need to do it.

And I guess it occurred to me that music, like blogging, (and like a good portion of human activity- certainly almost all creative endeavour) is a form of communication. Writing, sex, gestures, possessions, hell, even money can be, and often is, used to communicate something to others. It?s nice to listen. It?s nice to be heard.

A common poetic conceit is to think of human souls as little lights in the darkness, and I was quite pleased to imagine all of us as points of light, sending out tiny lines of communication to the other lights around us, in all the myriad ways we?ve learned to do so; music, and writing, and touch- reassuring each other that we?re not alone in the dark. (and I know it's not the whole picture, and that there are thousands of other complex human motivations driving all the strange things we do)

Some types of communication (like, say, the music of the White Stripes*) might reach millions of people, which is absolutely incredible. But any one of those people would probably trade that communication a thousand times over for the communication they share with their beloved; small gestures, moments, noises, looks, letters.

And I sat at this gig, envisioning an infinite number of communication sightlines, little spikes of light, beaming out between all of us wee stars, even into the future, and I smiled, and it all made sense, and I got the answer to my questions.

d