Monday 30 November 2009

Question:

After you get your hair coloured is it normal for every subsequent bath/shower you take to be bright orange?

Sunday 29 November 2009

Here's Looking At You, Kid!





I don’t know why I was getting stared at so much in the street today… Was it the fact my flies were undone all afternoon? Or that I was talking to myself whilst simultaneously burping/heaving (because I attempted to drink a bottle of Dr. Pepper in motion)?

Ah, in the past, towards rare individuals
I have felt the pull of desire:
Oh come, come nearer, come into touch!
Come physically nearer, be flesh to my flesh -

But say little, oh say little,
and afterwards, leave me alone.
Keep your aloneness , leave my aloneness. -
I used to say this in the past - but now no more.
It has always been a failure.
They have always insisted on love
and on talking about it
and on the me-and-thee and what we meant to each other.

So now I have no desire any more
Except to be left, in the last resort, alone, quite alone.

- Desire, D.H. Lawrence.

Saturday 28 November 2009

The Human Zoo

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

George Orwell, 1984.

CCTV produces a whole field of the visual that isn't "made". The framework is wholly empty, noone is filming, anyone or noone might be watching, it just happens, reel after reel, as easy as breathing in an out, and you are caught.

Photo still of the surveillance camera players

Could CCTV just be a modern interpretation of the god-like presence? Western civilisation has largely all but dismantled every pure ideal of religion so is this new omnipresence the replacement? The all knowing, all seeing eye of the camera lens?

"Big Brother" as a T.V. show domesticates the idea of privacy invasion thus making the whole idea a cosy piece of popular entertainment that has been inbuilt in us to feel comfortable with.

If we as a society are not comfortable with our role the watching/watched are we paranoid? Is that idea more unacceptable? Are we then deemed as people with something to hide? But then what could be more paranoid than having cameras everywhere in the first place?

We are caught on a surveillance camera approximately 300 times per day.

In chaos there will always be an opportunity to enforce control but since when did feeling protected come from a world that is always exposed?

Friday 27 November 2009

I waft of coconut... Must have been to the hairdressers...

Is it just me or is getting your hair conditioned at the salon a gigantic turn on?

Anyway... one 40 minute drive, a 10 minute wait, a 30 minute slap of cold orange gunk on my head, a wait under a newfangled space-like head heater, a shampoo, a condition, some form of toner, 2 more shampoos, 2 more conditions, a boner, a hot wet towel, a warm dry towel, a cut, a blow dry, a shave and a cup of tea later and I look like my main man Peter Pan.

The Inspiration:

The Big Unveil:

Sunday 22 November 2009

Fuck.

I’m unequivocally and irrevocably happy.

Monday 16 November 2009

Communication Breakdown

I returned home from London with 427 unread emails, 207 unread facebook messages and a dead phone with 12 texts (not including missed calls) I can only read by pressing a button I can no longer click on.

I don’t think I could feel more technophobic/out of touch.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing though, at least I can avoid the texts I have saved that I care no longer to read and the ones that I still get that I don’t desire to pay attention to. At least now I have the chance to really think about what I want to say before I am able to get hold of someone.

It’s crazy how much emphasis is on one piece of equipment for any communication with the outside world. You would be surprised how strange it is to go meet for coffee without the option of being able to check up on the other person.

The modern world has become too impatient and too thoughtless. Our lives are constantly a toss up over whether we have too much time or not enough, too much contact or not enough contact. I think with social networking and mobile phones we are collectively treading the borders of whether we can suffice without checking up on everyone else’s plans… at what point do we make decisions of our own? It’s nice to be able to breathe without feeling obligated to reply back or get in touch… even if I could be missing out on something.

I wonder what Jane Austen did with herself in the 17th century when it was all letters and wax stamps?

Saturday 14 November 2009

Monday 9 November 2009

Provocation vs. Pornography

Photograph by Christian Simbaldi for 'The Guardian'.

Just dropping by to say that if you are planning on visiting the 'Pop Life' exhibition at the TATE modern you might not want to take your mother with you... at least not in Jeff Koon's porn room. Let's just say this HUGE sculpture was not so easy on the eyes/safe for work at any other angle. Neither was the silkscreen measuring 2.5 by 1.5 meters of his ex wife Ilona Staller's asshole... as for the rest they were pretty much billboard sized cumshots...

It was no more uncomfortable as when I took her to see Marina Abramovic's 'Balkan Erotic Epic' at Compton Verney where we watched women running around baring their vagina's in the rain for the sake of agriculture. But at least there was a valid message there beyond "hey look at me I married an Italian pornstar", which only fed my opinion of Koon as an hubristic megalomanic. Nevertheless maybe my judgement would be less harsh if I wasn't under parental supervision? Either way I could have done without the asshole. Cheers Jeff!

Me stiff backed, my mother giggling and red faced, I wasn't sure if we were viewers or voyeurs, experiencing that room as a family affair made viewing Damien Hirst's dead calf in the next section feel like a breezy walk through the park.

Mummy must be having a serious wander about where my artistic interests lie... Maybe next time I should take her to see the impressionists?

Friday 6 November 2009

I had a dream

That I was naked and I kept pulling my loose teeth out. Not only that but my parents were also running around naked and I was completely disgusted despite being nude with a mouth full of blood myself. Not quite as inspirational as Martin Luther king had it…

So before I concerned myself that I might be subconsciously a part of a masochistic, circus freak, incestuous, nudist colony, I perused an online dream dictionary or two.

Apparently:

  • Dreaming of being naked yourself means the person is worried about feeling vunerable/exposed to others or that they dream of freedom and nothing else.
  • Dreaming of seeing someone else naked and being repulsed means that the dreamer is concerned about discovering the reality of some person or situation.
  • Dreaming about losing teeth suggests that the person feels powerless or out of control in a real-life situation. If the teeth are loose it is a warning of untrustworthy friends and if the dreamer pulls them out it suggests they have lost, or are anxious about losing someone who has been important to them.
  • Dreaming of blood loss denotes a feeling of powerlessness. The dreamer may be exhausted or feeling emotionally drained.

All in all I think I prefer the nudist colony idea…

Thursday 5 November 2009

Smurf James, Watercolor.

Today I learnt that painting a picture of someone with flaky smurf-blue face paint on is near enough impossible… So I just doodled this and gave up.

Today I learnt that painting a picture of someone with flaky smurf-blue face paint on is near enough impossible… So I just doodled this and gave up.

Would You Like Milk With That?

Is it wrong that 2 supposed adults in their twenties can spend 4 hours drinking 2 cups of tea whilst primarily only being focused on small cups of milk rather than the beverage to hand?

Maybe not... but when that fascination becomes the second stolen article in this weeks crime spree (the first being a miraculous pair of scissors finding their way into my handbag), now that is wrong. We haven't felt this risky since I stole a pack of chewing gum from the co-op (at the age of 13) because I was 21p short of the sum of my desired sweets and when Laura swiped fake/play money at primary school failing at her role of responsible shopkeeper.

2 pints of fizzy pop + 4 cups of tea + 2 stolen milk pots. This is called living life on the wild side folks.

I can only hope the higher beings at wetherspoons aren't too put out.

Stolen Article:

Perpetrators:

Note to self: I really need to earn some money.

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Monday 2 November 2009

25 Things From a 21 Year Old:

The whole "25 things" schtick was a massive hit on facebook and I fought the urge to be dragged into what i felt was an ego trip of pointless dribble that would only interest the person writing it... Until now.

I could sit here and reel off useless facts like whenever I walk over a bridge I have an urge to spit off it, that I don't remember falling asleep in the last 3 months even though I know it's impossible to have not, that i fantasize writing "EXIT" on every door I pass through incase I can't find a way out or that I once had such an all consuming hatred for my nan's pet budgee that I contemplated pouring a hot cup of coffee on it... but that's almost all I would be able to come up with.

So alternatively I'm going to write something more substantial and list 25 things I am in a position to be grateful/appreciative of in my current state of mind:

  1. That no matter how unlucky I feel I am in any of my small undertakings, my life is always full of opportunity.
  2. That you can get 4 cartons of juice for £3 in TESCO and 2 sticks of lipsalve in Boots for £1.70!
  3. Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar"
  4. That there are songs that remind me of every relationship in my life no matter how fleeting.
  5. The fact Lily Allen came back this year with a nice haircut and a newfound hatred of shirts.
    Case in Point:
  6. The fact that I heard a 40 year old man nickname his friend 'beardmobile' on the street.
  7. Yoko Ono:
    "In a day, sometimes I feel so much love for the world, I think
    my heart is bursting. Sometimes, I feel so scared, I want to
    shrink myself even further. I think that’s what happened to us gods
    and goddesses. Like the dinosaurs, we realized that it’s too dangerous
    to be so large. So we kept shrinking ourselves to what we are now."
  8. That I will always think I need to avoid getting close to people but I know I'll never really be alone/lonely.
  9. The "Genius" option on itunes.
  10. The realization that only I have the power to determine if I am happy or unhappy, and for how long for.
  11. That I can put my head next to any window, listen to music and imagine I'm floating above and outside my body for hours.
  12. The people I've met and the books I've read. Even the bad ones.
  13. The way my housemate can avoid drama at all costs, and even though he has alot he could complain about, he won't.
  14. Appreciating this but also wishing I came up with the idea first: http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~andrew/infostudio_2006/works/SOO_2.pdf
  15. The fact that twitter makes me feel like I'm intimate friends with the stars.
  16. That I met a person who ate only jam sandwiches for a year, and now I know I might have to say goodbye to that person. But that possible eventuality seems OK knowing that I will remember facts like that instead of the ones that could distort them if I stay.
  17. True Romance - "I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and things seemed to be getting so shitty. And he'd say, "that's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too." That's the way romance is... Usually, that's the way it goes, but every once in awhile, it goes the other way too."
  18. The sky is blue.
  19. Relating to Paul Rudd's awkward social skills in "I Love You, Man".
  20. This Photograph:

  21. That everything changes tomorrow. That I'll always have tomorrow.
  22. When everything else seems unwearable/unwashed I can always rely on the fact that there will be clean socks in a box on top of my wardrobe.
  23. That the real beauty in life is that we are all collectively wandering where we like, and when we want. For no reason at all, I love that.
  24. Someone once told me that if you can count on 5 fingers or more the people you could go to in a crisis and that would help you without expectation then you can count yourself lucky. I count myself lucky.
  25. I secretly know as neurotic as I can trick myself into being, there is nothing I don't love about my life.