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aymczard

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June 25th, 2006

Current Music:	Ghosts playlist
Subject:	Coventary Cathedral
Time:	01:59 pm
Current Mood:	Inspired

An object's use is determined by the use people put it to. I mean, you could design the perfect corkscrew, but if everyone uses it to wax their cars, then it's a car-waxer. In this vein, the use of blogs must be for people to impart vital information (normally about themselves) to the six billion other people in the world, who frankly don't care. It is, however, the act of imparting and the perception that people are listening which is important.

So, I'm going to use this blog the way it's meant to be used. Only I'm not going to talk about myself, I'm going to talk about Coventary Cathedral.

I'm not a religious man, by any degree. I'm more agnostic than anything else, following a complex philosphy that basically boils down to, 'I'll worry about all that stuff when I'm dead, I have far more important things to do right now'. But I do believe in people, and in the things that they can create. Things like Coventary Cathedral.

The original cathedral was built hundreds of years ago, around 1043. Feel free to read the history of the place in more detail on their own page. The point is that, by the beginning of the 20th century, it was one of the most beautiful gothic cathedrals in the British Isle. I mean, it had a lot of very stiff competition, but after a certain level of attainment, it all becomes subjective.

Now, a quick lesson on Gothic archiecture. Anyone who's looked at places like Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, or York Minster can not have failed to be impressed. Unless you're some kind of cultural retard. I mean, you've got to bear in mind that these places were built in the so-called 'Dark Ages'. They were built in a time before we had boats that were sterdy enough to sail the Atlantic, before we had gun powder, before we even had slide rules. They were built while we still laboured over the yoke of the absolute rule kings and when God's law suprassed any law made by man. Technologically, we had the bare basics. Socially, we were far more backwards than any of the places we look at today and decide we need to 'liberate' - image some kind of amalgamation of Iraq and Afganistan before the recent invasions, and you're pretty close. Yet still, we were able to create these master pieces of architecture. I mean, these things were built in a time when most buildings were still made of wood and no taller than two stories. These cathedrals would have totally dominated the landscape. You would've been able to see them for miles and miles, a huge momument to the glory of god . . . Like I say, I believe in people. Anyway, the real genius of these places was how they were built, the physics behind it all. You stand inside them and look up at the ceilings, and you've got to think about how many tonnes of stone is there, just hanging above your head. Tonnes of stone, just hanging in mid-air, dozens of feet above the ground. And in four, five hundred years, it hasn't shifted, hasn't slipped, hasn't fallen. For hundreds of years, it's just sat there, just as the architect intended it.

In all honesty, I'm not sure how it all works. It's all to do with arches and equal forces. It's all very complicated, and even with my A level in Physics, most of it escapes me. The Wikipedia article already linked gives you a good basic idea, and I'm sure Google knows the rest.

But on to my point: Coventary. During the Blitz, the cathedral was destoryed. All that was left was a few walls and a whole bunch of rubble. So, we us being British, the decision was made (the very next day) to rebuild it. By the early sixties, it was finished.

The final result is, without hyperboyle, breath taking. I mean, to look at, it's almost depressingly 1950's. You can almost imagine it as some sort of community project for people who'd lost their house in the Blitz. But, just as the original was very much a product of the tastes of the time, so is this one.

What I find so beautiful about it is that it's such an amazing statement about our age and what we can achieve. The spire was flown in by helicopter and fitted into place in eight minutes.

The truely amazing thing, though, is the roof. You need to take the virtual tour to see this, because I've not been able to find it any other place on line. Go to the cathedral's website, and take the virtual tour link and it'll bring up a new window, blah blah blah, start the tour. In the New Cathedral, click on the South Nave. Now, you see those six pillars? Zoom in on one of them, right at the bottom. You see that tiny strand of material under the pillar? Six of those hold up the entire roof. Six. The entire roof is held up by six tiny, tiny things.

Tell me that's not breath taking. Tell me that doesn't give you faith in the genius of the human race.

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June 24th, 2006

October 5th, 2004

Current Music:	Jimi Hendrix - Live at Woodstock
Subject:	A few things
Time:	12:57 pm
Current Mood:	pensive

I watched the special edition Star Wars DVD box set yesterday. I enjoyed it. A lot of people got upset when George Lucus started 'remastering' the originals to better suit his original vision now the technology was available. They complained that he was spoiling a masterpiece, overplaying it, using it as an excuse to cash in on the series. I must confess, a few of the same thoughts crossed my mind.

But I've been thinking about this, and long before 'director's cuts', 'remastered' and whatever edition DVD's started coming out, artists were 'remastering' their classic works the whole damn time. Take Pope, for instance. When 'The Rape of the Lock' was first published, it was about a third the size of the version we know today, and only two verses long. X-rays of famous paintings have shown 'key' elements to have been added later as fashions and styles changed or the artist's own style and tastes developed. Sometimes it wasn't even the artists. Look at Rembrandt's 'Night Watch'. But having a few inches lopped off to fit a frame a few hundred years ago, the whole picture has been changed. It wasn't even called 'Night Watch' when he painted it, that name was only given to it a few decades after he died.

So the point is that there's a precedent, like it or not. Whatever George Lucus' motivations, he 'enhanced' what has become an icon of the 20th century. Not changed, but added to.

And I'll be honest. I like the new special effects. For years I tried to deny it, but I do enjoy a bit of the old eye-candy. The x-wings and light-sabres never looked better. I don't mind new AT-AT's and whatever in the background, because I can see how it fits in with George's 'original vision'.

But the very ending of 'The Return of the Jedi' struck me dumb for a good five minutes. You'll remember that I'm fairly open-minded and easy-going about this whole remastering business. I don't regard it as some sort of sacred text, more an attempt to externalise a vision that George Lucus had in his mind, and being an artist I can understand how one has to compromise when bringing one's vision into the material world, how frustrating it is and how unsatisfactory it can be to look at something you've created and see it not quite fit what you wanted it to be. The closer George can bring the trilogy to his original vision, in theory, the better. It's interesting to see the creative development, if nothing else.

What struck me dumb is that, at the very end, when the Jedi 'ghosts' appear to Luke (Yoda, Obe-Wan and Anakin), they had replaced Anakin. The old ghost from all the other versions up until now (whom I'd always assumed to be David Prowse, the man in the Darth Vader suit) has been replaced with the ghost of the guy playing Anakin in the new movies. Surely this is an entirely sensible, logical, kinda cool thing to do? Well, yes it is, but in 'remastering' there's always a step too far. A point where 'remastering' becomes 'revising'. Replacing the old ghost smacks of Big Brother-esque revisions of history. The old ghost doesn't exist any more. He's been wiped from history. He as good as never existed. This isn't bulking out the Imperial troops, this is altering the old films to fit better with the new ones. Something deep inside me objects to that sort of revisionism on a primal level. What's next? Replacing Alec Guiness with Ewen McGregor? Reshooting all of Darth Vader's shots with the new guy in the suit? Redoing Vader's V.O.? Altering the sets is one thing, altering the characters is another. Like I say, I can't really explain it fully, but something deep inside squirms at this.

In other, almost related news, I finally began to understand something yesterday. We learn about and hear about dictorships and totalitarian regimes in school and on the news, and hear phrases like 'living in constant fear', but we don't really understand or appreciate them. We live in what is, in reality, a fairly safe world. We have a reasonably fair and safe justice system, and system of government. It's not transparent, it's not perfect, but it's fairly reasonable and reliable. Don't get me wrong, we're not 'lucky'. Thousands, tens of thousands, fought hard and died for us to enjoy this luxury. British Parliamentary Democracy has been around since the 1600's, but it wasn't until the 1950's that everyone over the age of 18 was granted a vote. That's 350 years. That's a long time to wait, and a long time to fight. Fuck George Bush with his 'we're lucky to live in a country where we are free to express our views'. Anyway, back to my point. There was an AA van parked outside our house for around half an hour last night, and it had a flashing yellow light. Like a police light, but yellow. Now, I owe people in power (i.e. the banks) a lot of money that I haven't been paying recently, due to the fact that I can't. I fear the post in the morning in case it brings another bill. I fear a knock at the door in case it's the bailiffs.

When I saw this light outside, and I didn't know what it was, my only thought was, 'my God, please don't let them be here for me'. For those few minutes, I was terrified.

Eventually, I went to check, saw it was an AA van, and went back to watching 'Return of the Jedi'. But it got me thinking. What if you felt like that every time you heard a car drive past? And every time you heard footsteps, or saw a shadow pass outside the window? And you knew there was nothing you could do about it. What if every time you heard the phone ring, you were scared to answer it, but too scared not too? What if when you rang your friends, or your parents, you were scared because they may not answer, or someone else might answer? What if you dreaded the post every morning, not because of bills, but because it might contain something which would mean your life would - effectively - be over. What if every morning you went to work in the system that did this to you. That every day, you went to work, and in doing so tightened the throttle-hold the state has over you and everyone else, but you went in and did it anyway because otherwise you'd have no money, and then they would be coming for you. So, you went in everyday and did everything you could not to think about it. What if the only way to ensure that it wasn't you they were coming for was to know who it was they were coming for, and the only way to do that was to turn them in. And what if you lived under the constant threat of someone else turning you in, so there was absolutely no time you could let your guard down?

I thought about how I felt for those few minutes, and then I thought about all of that, and I began to understand what people mean when they say, 'living in constant fear'. I began to understand why it's important we appreciate the freedom we have, and I began to wish that I could explain this to everybody. All these neo-fascist twerps and everyone else, including David Blunkett. He's a twat. And George Bush. I began to wish that I could sit these people down and make them understand. But I realised I would never get the chance, and they probably never would understand. And I realised that the majority of people are like that. The majority of people stumble through life, fighting for whatever, because they don't understand so many things. I want to understand and appreciate our society, our history and our politics. It's important to me that I do, because those are the things that make us as people, and as a people. These are the things that determine how we interact with other human beings, how we treat them, how we affect their lives. These are the things that will determine what we leave behind when we die. These are, essentially, the framework that defines us as individuals, in every sense of the phrase. But most people just wander through life, not understanding and not caring, drifting aimlessly where ever the winds blow them with the illusion of making their own choices. Most people don't chose who they vote for in elections, they get told. They just don't realise that.

I've still been thinking about death a lot. Perhaps it's because I've been reading 'Wraith' books for the past week. But it's a good thing for me. I think it's a path I need to walk, one that I've been needing to walk for a long time, but not known about. The more I begin to understand, the more comfortable I become. Death is the ultimate goal in life, whether you want to see it like that or not. It's were we're all going to. Everything stops, decays and dies. That's the nature of the universe. So we can either accept and try to understand that, or we can ignore it. As I'm sure you realise by now, I like to try and understand these things.

What I've realised is that any conclusions about the afterlife need to be based on assumptions. There's no other way to do it, because we have not truth about these things.

Here's what I'm assuming at the moment:

There is nothing new in the universe
As I said before, things change form, but are never 'created' or 'destroyed' on a quintessential level. This applies to everything from stars to atoms to thoughts.

There are a finite number of things in the universe
When I say 'things', I suppose I really mean 'building blocks' of any sort. Just like there are only eight musical notes, there are only so many atoms, so many narrative structures, so many social structures etc etc. But, just like musical notes, there are billions of different ways all these elements can fit together.
I mean, consider the difference between Beethoven and the Sex Pistols. Think about the values of a hippie commune powered by the machinery of a totalitarian state.

Things work in cycles
I don't mean this in a strictly literal sense of the words. Consider stars, for instance. I talked before about how stars form. Slowly, they burn themselves out, and die. In dying, they fling out vast quantities of matter that, eventually, trigger another nascent star somewhere else to start forming, and the whole process starts again. The new star won't be the same as the old one, and the solar system the new star creates will be entirely unique in thousands of ways.

The universe works on universal, consistent laws
These aren't necessarily the laws set down by science, or really any laws. What I mean by it is that what applies on a fundamental system on one level can be applied to a different system on a fundamental level. Stars are born, affect the universe, and in dying bring in new life. Animals are born, affect their environment, and in dying bring in new life. Societies are born, affect their history, and in dying bring in new life (social structures and ideas).

People, no matter who they are and where they are, will always be people
Just like there are only so many musical notes, there are only so many different personality factions. But, just like the musical notes, there are hundreds of different ways that they can fit together. And the fundamentals of human motivation never change. If you look throughout history, you can see different people doing the same things, again and again and again. People thousands of years apart, thousands of miles apart, who have never heard of each other, doing the same things and reacting in the same way, striving for the same things. Societies, essentially, are governed by the same laws, no matter how they are structured.

They are some fairly bold assumptions, but I don't think any of them are unreasonable. Each one is drawn from observation, and though I'm only a small thing who can only see small things, I'm doing as best I can.

Assuming that there is an afterlife, these assumptions lead to some conclusions:

Any society of the dead will mirror the societies of the living
People will always be people. They will always strive for the same things, hope for the same things, do the same things to get there, whether they are dead or alive.

The elements of the afterlife are drawn from the universe around us
Star dust, by degrees, becomes people. Our physical bodies, when they die, become plants and rocks. Anything external to the universe we already know must be drawn, at least in part, from the universe that we already know. What happens to our thoughts when we stop thinking them? What happens to our memories when we forget them?

Transferring to the afterlife is a process
Nothing in this universe simply ceases to be one thing and then becomes something else. Things change shape, form and substance via a process. Water doesn't just become steam, it needs sufficient input of energy to break apart the bonding, the bonds break down and the smaller molecules rise, as they are now lighter than air. A lot of religious thinkers describe this idea as a 'journey' that the soul makes. Tunnels of light, ferrymen on a river etc etc.

Those are all the conclusions that I've come to so far. I'm sure the more I think about it, the more I'll come up with.

But I'm not just an analytical thinker. Sometimes things just 'feel right' for me. Sometimes something slots into place so perfectly, I can't ignore it and I don't have a clue where it comes from. On the subject of death, I have two of these so far:

i) the 'process' needs faciliting in some way. Just like water doesn't spontaneously become steam, we don't just become spirits. There's a price we have to pay.
ii) Jade and gold are very important. I don't know how or why, but they are.

A lot of religions have the idea of 'paying' for your crossing into the afterlife. Either paying the ferrymen with two pennies, answering riddles or questions etc etc. A lot of religions have the idea of certain material or objects having a spiritual importance to the dead. But there's lots of other things lots of religions say that I haven't included, because these are the only two that seem to slot in.

I think what I'm trying to do is work out the 'truth' about death, and in doing so work out the 'truth' about life. I know it's all a fiction, but we all have to find our own path in life, no matter how we go about doing that or in what terms we decide to construct and explore it. Some people pick up a book and find it there, waiting for them. Some people have it just smack them in the face one day. Some people never know. But, like all things in my life, I think I have to work and keep on working and keep moving tiny pieces of the jigsaw around until they begin to fit. I'm a talented writer and always have been, but it's taken years and years of hard work to began to tap into that. I am a talented artist (as in drawing), but I've struggled my whole life, and struggled hard, and been absolutely crap for the most part of it. I've worked hard, really really hard, and I'm only just beginning to scratch the surface. I have so much more to go before I'm anywhere even within sight of being close. But the potential is in me and always has been, I just have to work like a miner to find it, and work like a smithy to realise it. And those two jobs are two of the hardest there are.

Anyway, I think I've taken up enough of your time, so I'll leave you in peace for now and go and unpack the shopping my parents sent me. I'm surprised there's anything left in Tescos!!

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September 27th, 2004

Current Music:	Jimi Hendrix - First Rays of a New Rising Sun
Subject:	Life and Death
Time:	03:07 pm
Current Mood:	thoughtful

I've been thinking about death a lot recently. Not on purpose. Not in a morbid way. It's just been on my mind.

See, I like to think that outside this world, there are many, many dreamworlds. The same way that random particles collide and stick together, and because they're bigger they attract more particles and eventually you have a sun and a solar system, people's thoughts float around is this space and drift into each other and stick, and they get bigger so they attract more random thoughts to them and then you have a dreamworld, built up on the substance of all these people's thoughts that have come together. It may seem a little ridicules at first, but think that the whole planet earth, with all it's complexity, was supposed to have been formed in the same way. So, all around us, in this either, we have these bubbles which, within them, have their own internal logic and are, essentially, their own little universe.

It'd be nice to think that, when we die, we simply go to another dreamworld. We go somewhere else, with different laws and everything. But death is such a huge thing, that doesn't seem believable to me. There seems to be a distinct and finite divide between our world, and everything else. And it's like the old saying, 'as above, see below'. Any world we 'transcend' to after death is simply going to be a hideous parody of this one. People, trapped, not knowing what do do or where to go, everything within this world turn out to the nth degree. In this world, we have this increasing web of globalization wrapping around us all and squeezing everything that's good and right out of us, and in the next one there will be factories stretching out for miles and miles, thousands upon thousands of souls packed inside, making one small part of some horrendous machine that they simply can not hold within their minds, everyone tolling for an end that no one can see or understand. This crushing conformity biting into their skin. Because, at the end of the day, that seems to be the ultimate end of humanity, the ultimate goal.

The more I read about other societies religious beliefs, the more they seem to touch that quiet, quiet part inside me. I suspect that it's simply because they offer an alternative, something away from what I see around me every day and hate so much.

Something I think about a lot is where we've come from and where we're going to. Humanity, we are reliably informed, started in Africa all those years ago. What the native African's believe about life and death seems very backward to us these days. Have we moved beyond such beliefs, evolved as a species past them, or have we simply forgotten and disregarded them? Have we lost touch with those essential beliefs, or have we come to realise that they are simply another step on the path and walked past them? The natural progression of human religious thinking seems to move from tangible polytheism - where the gods are just over that hill - to intangible polytheism, to monotheism, to atheism. Are we breaking down barriers, or creating more?

What I'd like to think is that when we die, our soul passes into one of these dreamworlds. Our soul is, essentially, the same as they are - a construct of our own imaginations. And so it is an intangible thing, undefined until we look at it. So our souls pass into a dreamworld, and then they come back here. But not every soul is human. Animals, machines sometimes, have souls. Constructed of this same thought-matter. And when they die, they all pass into one of these dreamworlds. And sometimes they come back. Sometimes they come back wrong. A soul that feels happiest human comes back in a machine, a soul that feels happiest as an animal comes back human, a soul that feels happiest female comes back male, whatever. Mistakes happen, because no system is perfect. No system in life is, so why should that be any different in death? Some souls in the dreamworld pine for the material world, and some in the material world pine for the dreamworld. Some just have a 'home', just as some have a gender, or a species.

It seems like I'm getting very metaphysical, but it just seems to me that there are somethings that can only be thought of metaphysically, because they are so big. Take imagination, for example. You don't realise how big it is until you begin to think about it. It's a strange, strange ability for a mind to be able to construct something utterly alien to the stimulants around it. Analysised, it really is only memory manipulation. Lets take an example:
I'm hot at the moment, but I could describe to you a scene in which I'm stranded in an Arctic waste. Everything external to me is telling me it's hot, but I could convince you, and myself, that I am on the point of freezing to death. So, I try to picture this Arctic waste. I think about all those nature documentaries that I have seen on T.V. A blue sky, white landscape, drifts of snow piled hundreds of metres high. And I think back to times when I have felt as if I will die of cold. When I can't move for being so cold, like back in my third year at university. I think of how it felt, how it felt as if my skin was a stone covering, because it had no feeling in it. How I didn't have the physical power to move my fingers. How it seems my limbs moved of their own violation, because I couldn't feel them. And I remember that sharp taste the air has when it's snowing or when ice is forming.
But, even through all that, the description is still lacking. It needs two more things: exaggeration, and metaphor. It was cold back in my third year, but in an Arctic waste it would be even colder. So my skin isn't just numb, it feels like it isn't there. My limbs aren't just senseless, but that feeling is in my chest and my lungs and my mind, too. And the only way I can explain this to you is by drawing on your own experiences. Hence the metaphor. But here's the strange thing. Here's the 'x', if you like. Neither you nor me has any idea what it would feel like if we had no skin. If our skin was so senseless, it might as well not be there. But I say that, and we can both imagine it. We both get roughly the same feelings.
And this is why imagination is such a big thing. It's memory manipulation, and one step more. And 'one step more' is exactly what metaphysics is all about.

I like to think that there is something beyond the visible world about our imagination. And when you think about your own head, all those thoughts and feelings and all that imagination bouncing around, and you multiply that by six billion, it becomes so huge and so heavy that you can't keep it in your head.

It's like our head is this Tardis space. I mean, it's what? A couple of litres of physical space up there? And most of that is taken up with the physical running of our bodies. Making sure our heart beats, regulating hormones, making arms and fingers move etc etc. If you've never tried to programme a computer to reach out it's robot hand and pick up an apple, you have no idea how complicated it is. And I'm reading this computer screen, my fingers are hitting the keys on the keyboard, my leg is moving, I'm listening to music . . . and that's just what I'm aware of. I'm sure my body is doing a bizillion things I never even know about. So where in this two and a half litres or however much are all my thoughts, even the simple ones like, 'I'll cook spag-bog tonight', and, 'what's the time, I've got to pick Gemma up at five'. Where's the poem I've been thinking about for the past day or so? The body is the physical space for all those thoughts about moving your fingers to be worked out, so where is the physical space for me to work through, understand and adapt abstract concepts, like the meaning of life or what the film I saw the other day was trying to tell me?
And, where do thoughts go when they die? Physical laws state that nothing can be created or destroyed, just changed in form. I mean, think about a glass of Sprite. There's these strings of bubbles, that start at the bottom, that bump into each other and become bigger bubbles, and that eventually come to the surface and pop. The bubble is gone, but what made the bubble isn't. The carbon-dioxide is realised back into the atmosphere.
So, with my thoughts and my imagination, when I stop thinking them, either they disappear completely - which contradicts physical law - or they turn into / go somewhere else. Either way, there is no answer outside faith.

At the end of the day, none of this helps me pay the rent. And, in truth, no one else cares. But it's important to me that I know. It's important to me that I try and understand. I'm going to die one day. I need to understand that. Just like I need to understand society before I can become a useful part of it. Yet, strangely, I don't need to understand computers or cars before I use them. Maybe that says everything you need to know about me.

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September 24th, 2004

Subject:	My Dream
Time:	12:52 pm

I have just had the coolest dream that I can remember for a long time.

I had a freezer, but it was kept at the company's shop. I had been there a few times before, but this time I got lost and couldn't find my freezer with all my food in it. I wandered around for ages, not being able to find it and getting increasingly upset. Eventually I noticed a sign saying 'customer appliances' over a door, and realised that I had somehow wandered into the showroom. So, I went back through the door, and started looking, a little happier to know that I was now in the right place.

As I was looking, I saw someone else. They had this large (about the size of a German Shepard) dog with long white and grey fur, and it ran up and attacked me. It bit me in the groin. But the guy called it off and, although it attacked me a couple more times, the guy was nice enough.

But then there was this family. There was a mother, a young son (about eight), a young daughter (maybe nine or ten) and another daughter (possibly around 11). Now they owned the dog, and it attacked me again. The mother pulled it off and started shouting at it. I was in tears again, and started shouting at her because you should never, ever shout at a dog. The two youngest kids were running around, causing hell. They were breaking stuff, and there was a lot of blood. Some of it was mine. Eventually, I managed to pin them all down, mother included, while I phoned the police. I found a guy repairing a set of metal workmans draws that one of the kids had destroyed, and he turned out to be their father.

As I was dragging this people down the stairs, the woman started shouting at me. She was saying that she was a powerful magician, that she could do all these things, and I snarled and she mentioned the year 1488. Yes, I said, I remember you, I remember what happened. Because I did. In a previous incarnation, I was there, and I could remember. And I was a mage, but one with the sense and self-respect not to go throwing it around like she was. I kept my head down and didn't go vuglar in public, worked quietly to make sure the universe kept on ticking. Her husband, the father, knew, and had been dragged along unwillingly. He was a good man. I was covered in my own blood.

We took them outside, and knew what had to be done. But as we were going, I realised the oldest daughter could be saved and was worth saving, but none of the others. The next thing that I remember is that I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and everything was dark. I lept off, and hung in the air. The five people were now five apples, and, suspended, I threw them. The mother and the two youngest children fell as gravity dictates, but the father and the eldest daughter flew, as if I'd thrown them and there wasn't any gravity. I watched them all go until I couldn't see them any more.

But then it was like we were filming an episode of a T.V. show, and I was hanging over this huge, dark space by a wire around my ankles. I hate looking down from somewhere where I don't feel safe, down this huge distance, because I'm always scared someone's going to put their hand on my back and push me, so I asked if they could pull me back in.

So then it was time to leave the set. The father was free to live his life as he wanted to, and he looked years younger. The daughter wanted to go to Weighbridge, and dance. I can't remember where the fahter was going, but I agreed to give him a lift. I found that I had left my wallet on the set and wanted to go back and get it, but the father said that I could pick it up on Monday, and insisted on giving me £10 for petrol, so I agreed. On our way out, I saw the daughter (now older, black, with curly hair and a lime green top) holding out a hitch-hiking board, but we weren't going anywhere near where she wanted to go, so we just smiled and waved and drove on. It was one of those moments where the great pressure seems to have been lifted, and everyone's breathing free and easy for the first time in years.

The place we had been filming at was some sort of quarry (but the building where the freezer had been was there and looked as it should) and they were blasting. They had set thin lines of explosive into the rock, to make a sort of net, and they were denoting them one at a time. We were driving bast one of the hillocks they were working one when one of the charges went off, and my right arm was pelted with chips of stone. It hurt. When I looked at it, it looked like someone had dug their nails into my flesh dozens of times, but none of them had broken the skin. The father really didn't seem worried about it.

It was then that the phone rang and woke me up.

I just went to lie down feeling really shitty and hopeless, and I had this dream, and it kinda inspired me. Washed away all those feelings of hopelessness. I woke up feeling that I was a damn fine writer, and a pretty good artist. That I had something to get up for, something to share with people that they would want, something that made me special. I don't feel like that often, I really don't.

That's why it was an amazingly cool dream.

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September 18th, 2004

September 10th, 2004

Subject:	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Time:	06:40 pm

As previously said, I didn't particularly like this book.

It's narrated first person by an autistic 15 year-old boy. He finds the neighbour's dog dead, killed with a fork, 7 minutes after midnight. He decides to write a murder mystery about it, as he is a fan of the Sherlock Holmes books. He likes Sherlock Holmes because he is cold and methodical, and follows logic where ever it leads. And he has this ability to, 'detatch his mind, almost at will', an ability our young narrator feels he possess.

So, he starts to gather clues, make lists, draw conclusions and elimate suspects, but his Dad reacts very violently when he finds out what he's up to.

Anyway, the reason I thought I'd like this book is because I thought it would give an interesting look into an entirely alien mind-set. And it does:

"Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you have a map in your head to tell you where you have lfet it, but even if you don't have a map, it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or biscuit agian. And a timetable is a mpa of time, except that if you don't have a timetable tiem is not there like the landing and the graden and the route to school. Because time is only the relationship between the way things change, like the earth going round the sun and atoms vibrating and clocking ticking
...
And this is why I like timetables because they make sure you don't get lost in time."

To name but one. It even has a diagram explaining how nothing is real because of the fact that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Which is real horrowshow. It's the reason I picked the book up in the first place.
So it took me a long time to work out why I didn't like the book.
It's what I said in my previous post, after I'd just seen it. Everybody else in the book is incredibly ordinary, and the story itself is very ordinary.
< SPOILER ALERT! >
See, the dog was killed by his father.
I'll start from the beginning:
The narrator's mother couldn't handle living with him, so hocked up with the guy from across the street, Mr. Shears, and moved to London. Mrs. Shears started coming around the house a lot, looking after his father, doing lots of cooking etc. The narrator's father asked her to move in, she refused, and in a fit of rage he killed the dog.
Meanwhile, after his mother left him, his father told the narrator that she had died.
The narrator, Christopher, finds all this out. I won't go into how. He decides that because his father has told such a big lie, he can't live with him any more, he can't trust him, and he has to go to London to live with his mother. Which is fine, but he's never been outside the street by himself before.
Eventually, his father works hard, buys him a dog, and slowly regains his trust. Touching. Or it should be.
See, it's not the lack of magical spells or sci-fi gagetery that puts me off.
I honestly think it's the lack of emotional engagement that I don't like. I mean, Christopher is told that he can't do his maths A level, something that he's wanted to do for a long time, something that he's proud of because no one at his school has ever done an A level before:

"Then she asked if I wanted to watch one of my Blue Planet videos, about life under the Arctic ice or the migration of humpback whales, but I didn't say anything because I knew I wasn't going to be able to do my Maths A level and it was like pressing your thumbnail against a radiator when it's really hot adn the pain starts and it makes you want to cry and the pain keeps hurting even when you take your thumb away from the radiator."

See, because he's describing it in such an analytical way, it's really, really hard to engage and empathise with him. But at the end of the day, that's okay, because that's part of who he is as a person and, more importantly, character.
It's kind of like 'Forest Gump'. Just because the film is named after him, and he's the main character, doesn't mean the film is about him. The film is about all the other people in his life. And that's what this book should have been about. His estrangment from his father should have moved me to tears (especially as that sort of thing usually gets me), but it didn't. All the other people in the book are two-dimensional ghosts.
Take this bit after he's finished the last paper of his exam:

"And then Father nodded adn he didn't say anything for a short while. Then he said, 'Thank you.'
And I said, 'What for?'
And he said, 'Just . . . thank you.' Then he said, 'I'm very proud of you, Christopher. Very proud. I'm sure you did really well.'"

It's all there, but it's just a shadow. You can't feel it. I think it's for two reasons:
1) The narrator can't feel it, so a huge thing that should be backing it up in the narration is missing;
2) It was written for teenagers.
The other thing that bugs me is that there's no character devolpment. Not in the narrator at least. His mother does seem to get her act together and mature, but he is static. As he says,

"And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington [the dog]? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything."

But you don't get any sense of him actually devolping at all. He doesn't learn anything. He doesn't learn that the outside world doesn't have to be such a scary place, he doesn't learn that people don't have to be emenies, or anything. His affection for his rat is passed on to his new dog, but he still seems not to change his feelings for his parents or understand feelings any better.
It would make a far, far better film. Like Forest Gump, or Pi. That would remove the narrative distance, and allow us to engage with the other characters more, while still being inside the narrator's head.
So, any film devolpers looking for their next project, try this one. I'll watch it. Hell, I'll even do the screenplay for you. Drop me a line.

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Subject:	A Clockwork Orange
Time:	02:30 pm

The main argument of the book seems to be that if you remove an individual's freewill then their actions, whether good or bad, are invalid as they do not represent a moral choice, just a mechanical toy going through the motions, someone operating by clockwork. A watch doesn't chose to tell the time, it has no choice. And whether is is accurate or not is down the to the guy that sets it. In the case of the individual, it's the government that sets the time, that decides what is good and what is not, what is morally acceptable behavior and what is not. Obviously, for the individuals being set by the government, the removal of freewill is a horrendous thing:

"But, oh my brothers, as my rooker reached for my britva inside my carman I got this like picture in my mind's glazzy of this of this insulting chelloveck howling for mercy with the red red krovvy all streaming out of his rot, and hot after this picture the sickness and dryness and pains were rushing to overtake, and I viddied that I'd have to change the way I felt about this rotten veck very very skorry indeed, so I felt inside my carmans for a cigarette or pretty polly and, oh my brothers, there was neither of these veshches. I said, like all howly and blubbery;
'I'd like to give you a cigarette, brother, but I don't seem to have any.'
.....
'Please, I must do something. Shall I clean your boots? Look, I'll get down and lick them.' And, believe it or kiss my sharries, I got down on my knees and pushed my red yahzick out a mile and a half to lick his grahzny vonny boots. But all this veck did was kick me not too hard on the rot."

But for the law abiding, surely it's better?
Well, as said, the government decides who's law-abiding and who isn't. You disagree with them, and into the chair. See, as the method is slowly brought into acceptance by being used on career criminals, the government can then slowly expand it into use on dissidents. Soon, everyone is the government's little clockwork toy, either through re-programming, or through fear. And we cease to have a society of individuals, just a society of clockwork toys, all going through the motions. And if we're confronted by such feelings as our little droog Alex every time we try and do something that the government doesn't want us to do - like question them - then all we can do is agree and cry for more of the same from them.
Course, then there's the question of moral choice. The treatment doesn't remove the desire to commit unwanted acts, just changes how the subject feels about them. It treats the symptom, not the cause. So, by wanting to indulge in the old ultra-violence but being forced to give the man a cigarette - or indeed lick his boots clean - Alex isn't being a moral person, he's an a-moral person being forced to act in an (almost sarcastically) moral fashion. It's like the prison chaplain says:

"He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to the grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen."

I think the whole moral question of goodness being a choice is summed up nicely by the chaplain, actually:

"Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man can not chose, he ceases to be a man."

So, that's the message that most people come away from this book with. And certainly the film. That's the greatness of, 'A Clockwork Orange'. Which, as I said previously, is all very horrorshow.
And then, of course, there's the idea that it leaves an individual defenceless. Unable to fight back, no matter what the circumstances. It leaves them open to exploitation, a pawn of whomever gets hold of them. By being forced to be good, you lose the option to say, 'no'. F. Alexander illustrates this nicely for us. He hates the government, hates what they are doing to society, how they're making everything increasingly more oppressive, and see's Alex as a perfect example of this and a perfect weapon.

"'Public meetings, mainly. To exhibit you at public meetings will be tremendous help. And, of course, the newspaper article is all tied up. A ruined life is the approach. We must inflame all hearts.'"
....
"'Ah, no. We have you ,friend, and we keep you. You come with us. Everything will be all right, you'll see.' And then he came up to me like to grab hold of my rooker again. Then, brothers, I thought to fight, but thinking of fight made me want to collapse and sick, so I just stood."

Not quotes from F. Alexander himself, but from his circle of friends, but the point is illustrated.
Anyway, that's all well and good too. The power of the media and suchlike. Small people being used as pawns in big games with no respect for the fact that they're an individual with feelings and a life to live.
So, all good stuff then, eh?
All very 1984 with extra added cool. Super.
Well worth the read.
But then, oh my brothers, we have the ending. Anthony Burgess - I can see the picture now - has this great stack of papers before him, this wonderfully pieced together treatise of language and freewill, and he thinks to himself, 'now, what to do now? how do I end it?' So, he gets up and makes himself another cup of coffee, and thinks. He thinks for days, standing on his porch, staring up at the moon, coffee-mug in hand, the steam whisping away into the night, the pensive look on his face of genius. And suddenly, my friends, his eyes light up as inspiration strikes, and he has it. He goes back into his study, smiles at this stack of paper covered in type-writer ink, pulls down his pants, squats over it and takes a shit, using the title page to whip his arse. 'Ah,' he smiles, perfect!'.
See, here's the problem. F. Alexander and his droogs get Alex to jump out the window, which beats him up pretty bad but doesn't kill him. And he's lying there in hospital, bandaged up to the eyeballs, and the Minister of the Interior - the one who brought the treatment in in the first place - comes in and says:

"'Well,' said the Int Inf Min, sitting down by my bed. 'I and the Government of which I am a member want you to regard us as friends. Yes, friends. We have put you right, yes? You are getting the best of treatment. We never wished you harm, but there are some that did and do. And I think you know who those are.'
....
'He [F. Alexander] was a menace. We put him away for his own protection.'"

So they undo the treatment, give him back his freewill, and lock away the dissidents, Alex again being used as this tool in a greater game. Oppotunism all round. It's not that bit I have the problem with. It's this bit:

"Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only in a way being like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal, so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in streets, like chellovecks made of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and when you wind it up grrr grrr grrr off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang bang and it can not help what it is doing. Being young is like being one of these malenky machines.
"My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, and I would not really be able to stop him. And he would not be able to stop his own son, brothers. And it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic chelloveck, like old Bog himself (by courtesy of the Korova Milk Bar) turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers."

So that's it? We go through all the above mentioned, and we end up with, 'boys will be boys'? We hit eighteen and suddenly we all want to settle down and have a family? The book ends with Alex going off to find a wife to be the mother of his baby that he realizes he wants so much. He just grows out of the old ultra-violence, like the way most people do cartoons. It's not even that everything that has happened to him forces him to become more responsible, and shows him the virtue of acting in a moral fashion, because after he's cured and put right again, he meets Pete, one of his old gang, in a cafe, dinning with his wife before going round to Greg's for fine wine and word games, wage-slaving away as a monkey in an insurance company. I mean, it's true enough. Every kid goes through a stage of setting crap on fire and nicking car stereos. And then they get jobs and watch Eastenders instead. But I didn't come all this way for that. What about freewill? The corruption of the Government? The media? All that cal? Never mind, eh, boys will be boys. Yarbles to that. I'll have to have a think about how it should have been ended.
1984 ended weakly, too. Not so much so, but it still did. Winston goes through room 101, and he ends up loving Big Brother. Weak, but acceptable.
Animal Farm and Caleb Williams are the only social critique books I've read that end well. Still, it's put me on my guard for when I write mine.

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September 9th, 2004

Current Music:	Byrds - Turn, Turn, Turn
Subject:	Russia and Oil
Time:	01:46 pm
Current Mood:	uncomfortable

It's about this video of the school siege. It's one of those things that doesn't quite slot in the way it should do.

I mean, for everything to have happened the way that they said it did, the following would have had to happen:

1) The hostage-takers would have had to made the video in the first place. Not too inconceivable, as they might want to show how serious they are, what lengths they're being forced to go to, etc.

2) (and here's the one that really sticks with me) This video would have to have made it's way from the school, and into the hands of the media.
Lets take scenario one: the tape was secreted out during the siege. Point one, how? Point two, why hold on to it until after the thing is over? Point three, who had it? If it was the media, why hold onto a scoop like that? If it was the government, why not use the intelligence in the video to plan an effective counter?
Scenario two: the tape came out of the building either during or after it all kicked off. Point one, how? It was carried out by the terrorists? Why? They're fighting for their lives and, more importantly, their cause, and one of them stops and shouts, 'hold up lads, wait a sec, got to go back for the tape!' And he is one of those few guys who is captured. And the other possibility is that, while sorting through the rubble, someone finds it and, despite the destruction everywhere around, this one piece of electromagnetic tape has survived in-tact and perfectly preserved, probably even with it's label saying, 'evil tape of evil men being evil to small children for no good reason'.

3) The tape made it's way into the hands of the media, apparently by-passing the Kremlin.
Again, two scenarios.
First, it did just that, straight from terrorist to media, with no government intervention. In which case, how? Three terrorists were captured by government troops, all the others were killed. Some, apparently, escaped. I heard that one the first day, but not after that. The only sensible explanation is that one of the ones who escaped gave it to the media, so why? He's prepared to die, and worse, for his cause, so why sell it out like that?
Second, the media (sorry, but I forget their name) have an insider in the government somewhere who sold the video to them. Someone who cares more about money then they do about national pride or security? Not too inconceivable in Mother Russia. Or anywhere else for that matter.

It's just one of those things that makes you step back and think. One of those things that reminds you not to take everything at face value, that reminds you to leave little holes in your perception instead of filling them in and glancing over them. I mean, there's nothing we can really do about it, but if you believe in that sort of thing, you can leave the holes for all those people that died, give their souls some comfort by leaving the question of the truth open in your mind. Some people think those sort of things are important.

The other thing that's bugging me about this whole story is no one is telling me why. All I hear is 'evil, evil terrorists', but no one is telling me what would drive a human being to do something like that. Something they know is going to fill the whole world with disgust. What makes a person think that doing something like that is their only option?

The other thing that's been bugging me recently is oil.
We've only got 40 years worth left, and that's a best-case estimate.
And it scares me, because that's well within my life-time, and no one's done anything about it yet.
I mean, theres cars and electricity. Slurping up oil like there's no tomorrow. But there's also plastic. I mean, go through your shopping, and put to one side everything that has no plastic attached to it. You'll have a stack of tins, although I'm sure they use plastic in the printing process for the labels or glue or some such. And then go through your house, and put a red mark on every piece of plastic. Your house will be covered in red. Plug sockets, window sills, paint, chairs, TV's, computers, cat's toys . . . It's everywhere. And no one has suggested an alternative. Plastic is everywhere. It's scarry when you think about it. Even your recycling box is made of plastic.

See, now this is when capitalism should come into it's own. See, the companies making their money from oil are going to have all their money dry up pretty damn sharpish when the pumps stop working. So, they've got to find some way of providing the same goods, or comparable goods, without using the dreaded black stuff. And, to minimize their loss, they'll have to use as much of their existing infrastructure as possible.
So what we should end up with is a material doing the same job as, say, plastic, but without using oil as it's base, and using all the same people, machines and outlets as before, thus minimizing job losses and the environmental destruction brought about by building new pipelines, plants etc. I guess we'll see how the whole system copes when it's oxygen is cut off. It's Saudi Arabia that worries me most, though. Their whole economy is built on exporting oil to the West. What's going to happen to them when it all dries up? What are they going to do to us?

I just hope all these big companies like Shell and Ford have their boffins working on whatever is going to replace oil when it runs out. It would be suicide of them not to. But it does worry me.

And I haven't had any coffee since last week.
And I haven't had a cigarette since Tuesday.

Gods, I want some coffee.

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September 7th, 2004

Current Music:	Byrds - Turn, Turn, Turn
Time:	02:30 pm

You ever have one of those days when you're inspired, but not enough to actually do anything? Like there's this latent pool of inspiration, but it's a few millimeters below the level where you can dip into in to draw anything out of it? Well, that's me at the moment. I keep running through all the trillion things I could be doing, but none of them grab me. I just want to lie on the bed and stare up at the ceiling for a bit. And maybe I should. Anyway, that's why I'm writing this.

I lost my job. 'Nuff said.

I just want to do something where there's no one else around. Or rather nothing else.

I've just finished reading 'the Mysterious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'. It didn't inspire me. It won an award, and I usually avoid books that win awards, because they're not normally about the sort of things that I find interesting. They're normally about ordinary people doing ordinary things. Stuff that normal people can relate to and draw something from. But I've never liked books like that. I've always liked books about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I don't want to read about somebody comes to terms with the fact that their mother has died, unless their mother was killed by an avenging angel and there's this really poignant scene where they're holding a gun to the angel, crying and not understanding. I guess that says a lot about me. I guess it says I like metaphor more than real life. But I'm living in life, so I don't want to have to read about it. If I want to see more of it, I can just turn on the TV. I can watch Newsnight, or something like that. Or even Eastenders, if I'm really that desperate. Drongo TV. I don't want to read about ordinary people leading ordinary lives and doing ordinary things. I want someone to take me away from all of that. I want to be held and made to believe the cling-film doesn't exist. And now I'm sad and I don't know why.

But literature is important. It gives us a context to understand the world. It gives us words to fit around what we're feeling. People don't seem to understand that. But in life, everything is left unsaid. In books, it isn't. You can trace through people's thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions, and think about it all, and see why they're doing what they're doing, or why they're feeling what they're feeling. And then, when you see someone in real life, and you don't understand why they're doing something or saying something, you can think about them, and you can think, 'well, it's kinda like when .... ' and because you understand what the character was feeling, you can understand what the person is feeling, and you can do the best to help them. If you want to. Or you can help them. And it's something that most people do subconsciously. I mean, you can even do it from Eastenders, but the sort of people who watch Eastenders aren't the sort of people to do that sort of thing. Same with movies. People just don't understand how things are put together, so they can't take them apart and re-arrange them. And that's what I like to do. I like understanding things. Well, some things. I hate understanding magic tricks. Because I know it's a trick, and I like being tricked like that. I know how it's going to end, but I still like the journey.

I think poetry is different, though. Poetry gives you a far more fractured picture of things. It's like throwing a brick through a mirror, and looking at yourself in it, and thinking, 'I never knew I looked like that'. I suppose there's always cross-over, but I think that's a good rule of thumb. I think poetry is the art of what's not said. They way you can draw a bunch of lines on a piece of paper, and suddenly it's a fox. And you didn't draw a fox, you just drew a bunch of lines. But there's a fox staring up at you from the page. You see, a story is different, because everything is there and you just need to take a photo of it. So you take a photo of a street, and there's all these people walking up and down it. You don't tell anyone where they're going or why they're going there, or who they are, but it's still a street full of people. But in a poem you just do a sketch of figures moving and shops in the background. And it could be a street of people, or a street of ghosts, or somewhere underwater, or something else you hadn't thought of yet.

One of these days, someone is going to pull all this crap I write and put it in a book, because I'm going to be famous and people are going to be interested in what I thought and how I thought the world worked, and all that stuff. But just at the moment, it's only you and me, and I'm the one I'm writing it for. I don't know why. I just wanted to write something and this is what happened. And I can write what I want, because it doesn't matter. None of it matters, really. Nothing. Not when you think about it. But until it all ends, we all keep playing the same game. And the people who don't want to play, or who tell it's all a game, or who play a different game, we put on pills or we lock up so we don't have to hear them anymore. No one likes a spoil-sport. Because there's no absolute value of anything. I mean, we let people into the Olympics only if they meet certain standards in how they do things, like Human Rights and things. And, brought up in the Western World, we think that these are absolute values, but they're not. They're just the ones the guys in charge think are right, and unless you play their game, you can't play with them. The idea that every human being has certain rights simply by being born human is a big idea that most people don't understand. They just accept it. But it's going to take me a lot of thinking about. I can't say I agree or disagree with it until I understand it. I mean, do I have the same rights as the oil barons or those people in Dwyfor? You should judge a people by how they treat their criminals, and that sounds good, but only because that's what I've been brought up to believe. I mean . . . I don't know. I don't think criminals should be killed. I don't really think the majority of them know something we don't. I'm just not sure that I have the same rights as everyone else on this planet, and I have these rights simply by being born. It just all sounds a bit . . . static to me. All very, 'we're all part of one big brotherhood', and I'm not sure I believe that. I think we're a whole bunch of different families, and our relatives are scattered all over the world. Sometimes I just want to give up, but there's no where else to go. Everything's too static. The whole world is calcifying, and there's no where else to go. It's not like a few hundred years ago, when you could just go to China, and it'd be a whole other world. A world with different people and a different culture and different values and a different society. Even a different sunset. Now, we're all under the same sun, and Coco-Cola is everywhere. I suspect it'll be worse in a few hundred years time, and worse again, and keep getting worse until we're all the same person. I wrote a story like that once.

Anyway, the album's finished now, so I'm going to clock off. I've burbled enough crap for one day.

LF

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September 3rd, 2004

August 24th, 2004

August 20th, 2004

Current Music:	The Beatles - Let it Be . .. Naked
Time:	11:44 pm
Current Mood:	grumpy

When I accepted this journal, there was a list of things I promised that I wouldn't talk about, because they are so incessantly boring and cring-makingly self indulgent, and because it's what journals all over the Internet are used for.

The gist of it was:
1) my problems;
2) my job;
3) anything 'crazy';
4) my life in general;
5) roleplay stories.

It didn't leave me much, but I was sure that I could find something.
I'm now, though, going to break most of them. I'm not even going to give you an excuse.

See, the Boss decided today that he would let me 'reduce my hours', from the 37 1/2 I currently work, to around 20. So, I decided to reduce them further, to 0. I'm going to get another job. One where the boss isn't an arshole who has decided to blame me for every single thing that goes wrong with the company. One who doesn't expect his ?5 an hour admin assistant to run the company cash-flow, manage the accounts, manage the payroll, track all the work, ensure all the invoices are typed, type all the invoices, send the invoices, design and build the company web site . . . and then get pissy with him when he makes a mistake. Not that I'm bitter at all.

However, I've found myself to be a 'the grass is always greener' type of person, so in the spirit of trying to change that, I'm going to compose a short list of things that I will miss from my current employment.

1) the people. Apart from Rob, the boss, I quite like them all.
2) the coffee.
3) the relaxed approach to working hours. If I need to leave a couple of hours early, or come in a couple of hours late, it's not a problem.
4) the uniform. As far as uniforms go, it's not too bad. Smart trousers, company t-shirt and fleece (in the cold), and crappy black plastic molded shoes. The sort of clothes that aren't meant to be washed more than once a week, and would scream if they ever saw an iron.
5) the free internet access. I can't really use it to do more than check e-mails and forums, but it's still good. I wrote in the big book of company instructions how to reboot the server, and included the line 'plug the monitor into the server', and Rob harangued me for not saying how. The server is basically a normal computer case, with all the normal connections. The man couldn't find his e-mail with both his hands.
6) the feeling of actually making a difference. I've had so many jobs where I'm just another faceless face, it's kinda nice to be able see what you're doing every day.

I think that's it. Not much, I know, but those are the things I'm going to miss. I'm sure I won't miss them too much, and certainly not enough to fuck the whole thing up as much as I can before I leave, but I'm sure I'll find myself missing them. See, I only have to give one week's notice, and that's not enough time for them to find a replacement and me to train them. If I'm so frikking useless, lets see how they do without me. Mind you, I've set everything up nicely for someone else to slip in. Damn my efficiency. Ah, well, I'm sure I'll find some way around it.

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August 19th, 2004

Current Music:	the rain outside my window
Subject:	Disney made me a furry
Time:	07:09 pm
Current Mood:	okay

It's weird the way people seem to insist on doing that. I mean, talking animals is a very old idea (I think Mickey Mouse first came around in 1929, or something), but sexualised animals are a weird thing, really. I mean, look at Minnie Mouse, or even Betty Boop. They had breasts and a swagger in their hips before Technicolor. Now it's just sort of the accepted thing. I sometimes wonder what the innocent side to that is. I mean, why create a sexually devolped character if you have no intention of them being considered as a sexual object? I think in the end the best answer is Death's: "If I didn't have breasts, my dress wouldn't hang right!"

Well actually, if we're being honest, it was Warner Bros. and Jim Henson's Creature Workshop, but that's another story entirely. You ever notice how Babs Bunny suddenly developed cleavage?

Anyway, what's brought all this to mind is that I've recently got hold of a copy of 'The Lion King' on the Megadrive. I'd almost forgotten how cute Simba was. But the animation is amazing, beautiful. Another teenage dream fulfilled by e-Bay. Though I must confess I've been playing Sonic 2 more. I won't comment about Tails :)

So, yeah, that's all I wanted to say. I'm a furry and it's not my fault. And 'The Lion King' has beautiful animation (the game). And no, I'm not going to watch 'The Lion King 3'. One and two were good, but 2 was pushing it.

Hmmm . . . famous 3's . . .

The Return of the Jedi - great, one of the best of them
Nightmare on Elmstreet 3 - crap, crap, crap and more crap.
Friday the 13th Part 3 - crap, crap and crap.
Hellraiser 3 - crap, crap, crap, crap.
The Godfather Part 3 - never seen it. Probably crap.
Star Wars: The One Where Anakin is Seduced By The Darkside - if the other 2 are anything to go by, crap. George Lucus is a nonce. The first three films ran on from one another, telling the same story, and that's what made them so great, so why go and piss around with that?
Halloween 3 - never seen it, but it was still John Carptener, so it might be good. The second one was. Better than the first, even.
Superman 3 - great. Again, one of the best.
Batman 3 - *chokes on his coffee* only eclipsed by the next one. Batman and Robin? *shudders*
Spiderman 3 - should be good. That's the time it should peak.
Matrix 3 - haven't seen it, but heard about it. The second one kinda sucked, and people who liked it say the last installment really sucks, so hopes aren't high. They should have let me write them. They could've been so cool . . .

See, 3's a tricky time for a franchise. It's either the peak or the trough. You've got your characters and your setting set, and you can really let lose with them because you don't have to carry the audience any more. So, that either leads one way or the other. It's the same with albums. Number three is your chance to really make it, or break it. Books is a bit different, though. But, having said that, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' is still the best, but then, 'Mort' is does the job the 'Equal Rites' should have done. Go figure.

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August 14th, 2004

aymczard

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