Friday, October 31, 2003

Lard!

Now they've got Lard there.

It's a ploy to make me take out a full sub, isn't it?

Gooooooooooky

Mildly Diverting's choice of Googleage gets stranger.

It's now pack shots, McSweeneys, and SAUSAGES.

Now, partial as I am to a nice quality link (except for the lovage and apricot ones from Waitrose, which frankly taste like they've been stuffed with marshmallows and sick) - that's just a wee bit scary. I wonder if they're reading a cookie of related searches I've done? Or using the google toolbar to follow my movements?

Now I'm sounding like a cookie consipiracy theorist.

But I want to know, because it's getting spooky. Next thing there'll be a link to 'how to hide your cat from your landlord'.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Haptics and Biological Interfaces

Scotsman.com News - Scotland - Man who lost bionic arm waits to be rebuilt: "Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, said this month that brain implants that could allow severely disabled people to control prosthetic limbs with their minds could be ready for use within two years. "

It's a shame the man who 'test piloted' nerve controlled arms has had it taken away.

But i guess that he's better prepared than most to deal with the psychological effects.

And...

What's more, they're suggesting that Frankie Goes to Hollywood is a related search.

Now they're just scaring me.

Anoraks

Google adwordsare calling up a site called kagoul.com on this blog. Its a community site for UK gay men.

Weird. As if any Gay man would go somewhere associated with the least fashionable item of clothing since the terry-towel housecoat.

And... why me?

Monday, October 27, 2003

German Museum of Packaging

PRIL: "One morning in 1951 German housewives were roused by a commercial transmitted over the ether by radio: loud duck quacking sounded from the loudspeakers, followed by a soft female voice which sang, 'Pril softens water, Pril makes water wetter, Pril, Pril, Pril?' "

A German detergent. tested on Ducks.

Yes, having a slow day

Ian Atkins is excersising - a good thing, as his diet (yes, the atkins diet) is the kind of thing you assume those americans that have to be cut out of their own homes must eat to attain that level of terrifying obesity. Really, as someone who can happily stick away a litre of icecream and three portions of chinese at one sitting, it is humbling.

He's complaining that there are no fat women in the gym. Well... he thinks he has it bad as a boy. If you're a fat girl you have the disdain of the blokes, the faintly-tinged-with-pity disdain of the girls with the norwegian smiles, AND the problem of trying to use a running machine without your tits boucing so much you get motion sick.

That's why.

News: Vision of Frankie comforted kidnap victim

"Weeks later Franlie Howerd died.

Great reporting from the lovely Steve.

God, hippies annoy me. Almost as much as estate agents.

Making your readers happy

A link for Lee - they know zbornak, too.

By the way
1. My mum now referrs to you as 'that nice chap with the little beard'.
2. I've got purple alcohol so we can recreate that cocktail.
3. Come for tea on sunday

Yes, this is official recognition of the fact my blog has a readership of one.

Friday, October 24, 2003

Write your own religion

I rather like the World of Wonder Manifesto. They make good telly, and it comes out of their belief in trash. I particularly like the fact they believe that the avant garde and the underground aren't the obvious, but the crap.

I like that thought.

I should write my own manifesto.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Deep ASCII

This'll frighten the horses. (NSFW)

It's Deep Throat, rendered in ASCII.

It's like the matrix's wank fantasy.

Monday, October 20, 2003

You are [INSERT NUMBER] in a queue...

Callcentres are developing some kind of malign, emergent intelligence. They decide on the kind of service you get according to where you're ringing from.

Maybe that's why everything has been noticeably smoother since I moved to putney...

Halo, Dolly...


Video kills the radio star.


The world's first videogame sitcom.

Friday, October 17, 2003

Neo Darwinism and Science.

Humour is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm having irony problems again.

Technorati

A quick discussion in the office about Friendster and the general smallness of the world.

All of these cool new media creatives up here in town... Its a tiny little world - you're never more than a person or so away from a shared acquaintance.

And, it seems, the game du jour should be six degrees of Dave Green.

I think I may find this depressing. Because it means it's a clique. Which means little originality and a lot of self aggrandising bollocks. Oh, and because I'm fucking propagating it.

I can remember the feeling of desperately wanting to be part of a movement, at the centre of something fresh and radical, in the underground, a trendsetter, when I was churning out 'art'. Now I look with extreme suspicion on these little coalescences of talent - I think they're cloistered and exclusive. It's not to say they haven't got talent - they have it in spades. It's more that the talent gets... herded. There aren't any outsiders, people cutting against the prevailing wind. It's like some weird cultural flashmobbing.

New Favourite Thing.

I'm beginning to think I should revisit all that stuff about 'there is no avant garde' again. The turnaround pace is so fast these days, that new 'yoof' movements are actually being picked up by the media before they have a chance to do anything of any interest. Nag Nag Nag is just New York Club Brats all over again. I don't like this. Flash Mobs - so last wednesday. Friendster - over before anyone found it. I wonder if anyone has registered mayfly.com ?

It's a similar feeling of ennui to the one I had clubbing last weekend - lots of people blindly having fun, most of them ten years younger than me, and me in the corner thinking 'don't you see that it's ALWAYS been like this? That you're no different?'. Maybe it was reinforced by all the 19 year old boys who found me surprisingly good fun to talk to, and were a bit shocked to find out I like Autechre and Aphex twin.

Perhaps I just think in the long now. I've got an image in my head of fashions changing superfast in a shop window, the sun not so much rising and setting as flickering...

Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I'm just too cynical.

Perhaps my old idea of the only valid form of resistance being apparent total conformity is the way. But then you end up like the Chap crew, making tits of yourself on the Today programme becasue your ability to articulate your posturing is... poor.

Maybe it's because the technorati is mainly youngish blokes, too.

I really should learn to piss standing up.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Popjustice!

Popjustice.com v4.0 is my new favourite thing.

Not least for this astoundingly fantastic accordion version of Spitinme Ear's Hit Me Baby yadda yadda yadda.

I miss creativity

This is a lovely idea - attending a lecture full of new media types, and documenting it by drawing peoples hairlines. It's like trendy media glasses crossed with Matt Groenings' theory of recognisability in cartoon characters.

It's a great response to a gathering too - whilst giving your full attention to the speaker, you're occupying the bit of your brain htat gets distracted and starts thinking about, say, garden peas. I know that in my notebooks, I often 'place' information from talks by the doodles surrounding them - years later I can flick through a book going 'it was on the right hand side, and there's a piss poor drawing of the lecturer in the top right corner....' Having said that, that relies on me finding the time to flick through the books say, once every six months to refresh my memory.



It's becoming a theme with me - I miss always carrying a sketchbook. I miss drawing. I miss creating. But I don't have the space in my life to keep it up. You can only create when you have the emotional resources to do it, and mine are stretched thin just coping with my life.

When am I going to get to the place where I feel competent and in control?

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Fuck a Duck...

A dead, gay duck.

And what's more

Two of the boys in question have just crowed 'Who have you been giving head to?' in strident, carrying voices across my sodding open plan sodding office.

Thanks, boys.

A Small but Vocal Public

Lists are a wonderfully lazy form of thinking. Their very nature means you can think of a very loose theme, jot down the first n things that come in to your head, and release a perfectly formed bulleted gagpile ino the world.

Which is read by a small, but dedicated, following of three boys.

Now, boys are lovely. I get on better with boys than I do with ladies. Ladies, lets face it, are unpredictable, overemotional, and understand makeup - three accusations that are rarely levelled at me. I enjoy their company, we make the same kind of jokes, we have the same oddly categorised way of thinking (see earlier posts for details of my freakish boy brain.).

But - and here's the rub (as it were) - I don't, as a general rule, have sex with boys. At least, not in any meaningful, let's get brunch, maybe a movie kind of way. It's not that I dislike having sex with boys. It can be quite fun, provided they're presentable, and don't
1. have the annoying habit of pushing on the top of your head rather than asking nicely
or
2. reek like the bottom of an ocelots' sockdrawer.

I just choose not to, because I don't really fancy them, so it's ultimately a hollow, unrewarding, and mostly unenjoyable experience. (And often chafes.)

So... and the point is coming (as it were) - there's an interesting double bind between liking and hanging out with boys, and not wanting to get anywhere near their sexual doings on any terms other than your own.

Because, correct me if I'm wrong, most boys seem to think about fucking you at some point.

(Lee, pass go, collect £200.)

Where am I going with this? Well, I don't think I've ever sufficiently explained to anyone other than another straight-acting lesbian the weird discomfort that happens when you get the first tiniest inkling that a boy might have been thinking about you... like that. Because it just doesn't occur to you that given random boy z might ever think about you as desirable, any vague intimation that a boy might be vicariously latching on to your sexual antics is like being hit in the face with a kipper.

You instantly smell something fishy.

I'm sorry I posted a throwaway comment about blow jobs in an endearlingly lazy list. It was done for comic effect, m'lud. I know I overshare all kinds of details about my sexual life with all of you, and that I'm singlehandedly destroying the mystique of the construct that is woman, etc...

But really, it was just a blowjob. In a dark nightclub. At 4am. With a complete stranger. And my lady wife. For a giggle. I was egged on.

So how come all of my dear readers emailed me almost instantly demanding more details? Hmm?

There was a point here. Oh yes. Lists - they get you in trouble. Actually, filing anything into neat little categories is gonna get you in trouble, lets face it.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Mildly Diverted

Yes, yes, yes, I know, I haven't posted in an age, and I feel guilty.

I have moved house. It has taken all of my energy.

Here are some random thoughts about it.

I miss my houseboys much more than I thought I would.
I think about my houseboys every day on the bus.
I miss my cats.
I didn't think I'd get so upset when I saw one of my cats drive off into the sunset.
I am strangely unaffected by having an unpleasant 'break up' with my best friend.
I am so in love it is terrible.
I really don't like giving boys head.
Morning cuddles are worth an extra 200 pounds a month.
Packed Lunches rock.
Untraceable Smells can ruin your life.
Cocktails are good, but stop you doing anything constructive.
Dogpoo is often concealed by fallen leaves.
Lesbians make really good removal (wy) men.