So, there I was, in my pyjamas (yes, I have pyjamas, why do you care? They happen to be very comfortable and stylish. But it's not like anyone is observing my dress sense when I'm asleep is it? Is it? Erm). Mhm, in my pyjamas. I slurred to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cornflakes - pretty standard for me. It's a bland choice, but I like to think cornflakes reflect my economical situation rather than my dismal, monochromal outlook on life (which, by the way, I don't have).
So, I shovel the first spoonful into my mouth, and they hit my tongue. And I can't taste anything except milk. I can feel them crunching and showly getting soggy. But I can't taste them. And I think, "This is weird, it must be some sort of physiological anomaly to do with getting up early. Maybe it's my taste buds, they're under-stimulated overnight or something. Maybe I should eat a smint before I go to sleep." and other distracted thoughts. Then it hit me.
Cheap food is abhorrently abysmal.
It wasn't my tongue that was the problem. It was the recycled, re-coloured, re-corned Chinese toilet roll that I was loading into my mouth. I wanted to spit them out. Then I realised that doing so would be a terrible financial decision for me, and chomped them down anyway. Mr and Mrs Tesco, if you are reading this, ask yourself, 'Would I want my children eating wood mulch for breakfast?'. No, no of course you wouldn't. Then stop making this garbage.
Of course, it's not that simple. The world, including me, needs garbage. We need these tasteless calories to stay alive. And at the end of the day, isn't any food with a nice taste just a bonus?
Food for thought. (heh)
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Dreamscape II
By the sad twisting strings of some glowing sky beams
a boy pilots his craft through a delta of streams.
He weaves a small rudder between select waves,
and sends handfuls of stones to their silvery graves.
Looking down to the bed, he glimpses sand sift,
a darting of shadows, a mellowy shift.
The green yellow waters make fine patterns of gold
and whatever moved hides behind boulders of bold.
His curious nature leans his head overboard
and fast playful crests lick their childish lord.
Small simple fingers dip down to the flow -
the waters push past them to where waters go -
his palms follow suit, and his elbows and arms,
and he strains half his body to the coral so calm.
He fishes around for an object to mold,
and his hands wrap around a peculiar hold.
It wriggles around, and it tries to escape
from the powerful claws that are wrenching its shape.
But its master has won and the surface awaits:
the boy's face is rippled by the waves it creates.
He brings the small monster right up to his eyes -
it twists to the babble to say its goodbyes -
but benevolent forces look down on the thing
and the boy hurls the creature back into the spring.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Go and see this movie because it is good
So, I'm a big fan of the Watchmen comic (I refuse to use the phrase 'graphic novel'. It's a comic. You guys with beards and figurines and Asian girlfriends, they're comics. Really, I mean, honestly. Get over it). If you're not familiar with the COMIC, it was written by Alan Moore (crazy wizard of a guy, whose other works include V for Vendetta, From Hell, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), and inked by Dave Gibbons. And it is great:
Watchmen is a highly critical and symbolic story that charts the decline of the 'masked heroes' of the 1950s, a fictional bunch of vigilantes with similar appearances and actions of the Batmen and Supermen we all know and love. After they started to get out of hand, what with taking the law into their owns hands and all, a law was passed banning all masked heroes from exacting their own criminal justice. So the practice died out.
We reach the 1980s, and the comic starts out with the murder of a certain famous man. The rest of the story is spent unravelling the situation and the huge plans behind his death. The latter involves some of the old masked heroes taking up their costumes again, for the supposed greater good.
As mentioned before, it's a highly symbolic work and touches on a lot of subjects including utilitarianism, criminal law, our place in the Universe, and man's imperfection.
The reason I'm bringing this comic up in my blog is because I watched its film adaptation last night. And it was really incredible. A definite 9/10 from me. I really reccommend reading the comic before you go see it - it will make the experience a lot more enjoyable. And it has a great soundtrack: the opening credits are particularly well done. The director, and everyone else involved, have done a great job keeping the film looking like a fantastic cross between reality and fiction, and the CGI character of Dr Manhattan (the blue guy above) has been integrated seamlessly amongst the real cast.
Go see it. You don't have to be a nerd to.
Watchmen is a highly critical and symbolic story that charts the decline of the 'masked heroes' of the 1950s, a fictional bunch of vigilantes with similar appearances and actions of the Batmen and Supermen we all know and love. After they started to get out of hand, what with taking the law into their owns hands and all, a law was passed banning all masked heroes from exacting their own criminal justice. So the practice died out.
We reach the 1980s, and the comic starts out with the murder of a certain famous man. The rest of the story is spent unravelling the situation and the huge plans behind his death. The latter involves some of the old masked heroes taking up their costumes again, for the supposed greater good.
As mentioned before, it's a highly symbolic work and touches on a lot of subjects including utilitarianism, criminal law, our place in the Universe, and man's imperfection.
The reason I'm bringing this comic up in my blog is because I watched its film adaptation last night. And it was really incredible. A definite 9/10 from me. I really reccommend reading the comic before you go see it - it will make the experience a lot more enjoyable. And it has a great soundtrack: the opening credits are particularly well done. The director, and everyone else involved, have done a great job keeping the film looking like a fantastic cross between reality and fiction, and the CGI character of Dr Manhattan (the blue guy above) has been integrated seamlessly amongst the real cast.
Go see it. You don't have to be a nerd to.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Fifth Floor Visions
Circling doves above the boughs.
I look again, a second glance.
The spinning wings belong to gulls.
Spiralling down to dying trees
on fading breaths of dwindling eddies.
They perch there on the twigs
and weigh them down and strip their leaves
to use them in their giant nests.
Three call to me in ancient tongues
and mock the rabbits in the brush.
They scare me,
make no sense at all.
I run to scatter
with my cries.
They fly to sea,
float on the waves,
and follow swell
like little buoys.
I look again, a second glance.
The spinning wings belong to gulls.
Spiralling down to dying trees
on fading breaths of dwindling eddies.
They perch there on the twigs
and weigh them down and strip their leaves
to use them in their giant nests.
Three call to me in ancient tongues
and mock the rabbits in the brush.
They scare me,
make no sense at all.
I run to scatter
with my cries.
They fly to sea,
float on the waves,
and follow swell
like little buoys.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A note about why you, the Twitter user, are ridiculous
Do you really have to describe your life in one sentence every hour? Do you really feel the need to plague the internet with more information than the annoyingly unstoppable amount it's already incapable of dealing with? Do you have so little imagination that 140 characters (or whatever) contains your heartfelt emotions; or the descriptive horror of your 956th Boots meal deal; or the 10 reasons you hate your life? Do you have such a low cerebral capacity that you can't look up from your iPhone/Blackberry for one minute to survey your beautiful analogue surroundings? Do you feel part of a growing internet community despite the fact that the more time you spend at your computer, the more socially inept you become? Do you bum cats?
Yes. Yes, apparently you do.
Yes. Yes, apparently you do.
"Faith is the defeat of probability by possibility"
I'd like to share with you a recent editorial by Jonathan Sacks in The Times (28/02/09), that I found very thought-provoking. I'm very interested in the religious state of the UK, and the supposed uprising of atheism on the Dawkins bandwagon. I'm sure I'll bang on about it in many blog posts to come. Here it is:
"We owe a debt to the British Humanist Association for its advert on buses: “There’s probably no God.” It is thought-provoking in a helpful way, because it invites us to reflect not only on God but also on probability.
One of the discoveries of modern science is the sheer improbability of the Universe. It is shaped by six fundamental forces which, had they varied by an infinitesimal amount, the Universe would have expanded or imploded in such a way as to preclude the formation of stars. Unless we assume the existence of a million or trillion other universes (itself a large leap of faith), the fact that there is a universe at all is massively improbable.
So is the existence of life. Among the hundred billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, only one planet known to us, Earth, seems finely tuned for the emergence of life. And by what intermediate stages did non-life become life?
It’s a puzzle so improbable that Francis Crick was forced to argue that life was born somewhere else, Mars perhaps, and came here via meteorite, so making the mystery yet more mysterious.
How did life become sentient? And how did sentience grow to become self-consciousness, that strange gift, known only to Homo sapiens. So many improbabilities, Stephen J. Gould concluded, that if the process of evolution were run again from the beginning it is doubtful whether Homo sapiens would ever have been born.
You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things. A few weeks ago James le Fanu published a book Why Us?. In it he argues that we are about to undergo a paradigm shift in scientific understanding. The complexities of the genome, the emergence of the first multicellular life forms, the origins of Homo sapiens and our prodigiously enlarged brain: all these and more are too subtle to be accounted for on reductive, materialist, Darwinian science.
A week later Michael Brooks brought out 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, the most important being human free will. The more science we learn, the more we understand how little we understand. The improbabilities keep multiplying, as does our cause for wonder.
And that’s just at the level of science. What about history? How probable is it that one man who performed no miracles and wielded no power, Abraham, would become the most influential figure who ever lived, with more than half of the six billion people alive today tracing their spiritual descent to him?
How probable is it that a tiny people, the children of Israel, known today as Jews, numbering less than a fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, would outlive every empire that sought its destruction? Or that a small, persecuted sect known as the Christians would one day become the largest movement of any kind in the world?
How probable is it that slavery would be abolished, that tyrannies would fall, that apartheid would end and that an African-American would be elected President of the US? Everything interesting in life, the Universe and the whole shebang is improbable, as Nicholas Taleb reminds us in The Black Swan, subtitled “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. The book’s title is drawn from the fact that people were convinced that, since no one had ever seen a black swan, they did not exist — until someone discovered Australia.
One interesting improbability is that the man who invented probability theory, a brilliant young mathematician called Blaise Pascal, decided at the age of 30 to give up mathematics and science and devote the rest of his life to the exploration of religious faith.
Faith is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. The prophets dreamt the improbable and by doing so helped to bring it about. All the great human achievements, in art and science as well as the life of the spirit, came through people who ignored the probable and had faith in the possible.
So the bus advertisement would be improved by a small amendment. Instead of saying “There’s probably no God”, it should read: “Improbably, there is a God”. "
"We owe a debt to the British Humanist Association for its advert on buses: “There’s probably no God.” It is thought-provoking in a helpful way, because it invites us to reflect not only on God but also on probability.
One of the discoveries of modern science is the sheer improbability of the Universe. It is shaped by six fundamental forces which, had they varied by an infinitesimal amount, the Universe would have expanded or imploded in such a way as to preclude the formation of stars. Unless we assume the existence of a million or trillion other universes (itself a large leap of faith), the fact that there is a universe at all is massively improbable.
So is the existence of life. Among the hundred billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, only one planet known to us, Earth, seems finely tuned for the emergence of life. And by what intermediate stages did non-life become life?
It’s a puzzle so improbable that Francis Crick was forced to argue that life was born somewhere else, Mars perhaps, and came here via meteorite, so making the mystery yet more mysterious.
How did life become sentient? And how did sentience grow to become self-consciousness, that strange gift, known only to Homo sapiens. So many improbabilities, Stephen J. Gould concluded, that if the process of evolution were run again from the beginning it is doubtful whether Homo sapiens would ever have been born.
You don’t have to be religious to have a sense of awe at the sheer improbability of things. A few weeks ago James le Fanu published a book Why Us?. In it he argues that we are about to undergo a paradigm shift in scientific understanding. The complexities of the genome, the emergence of the first multicellular life forms, the origins of Homo sapiens and our prodigiously enlarged brain: all these and more are too subtle to be accounted for on reductive, materialist, Darwinian science.
A week later Michael Brooks brought out 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, the most important being human free will. The more science we learn, the more we understand how little we understand. The improbabilities keep multiplying, as does our cause for wonder.
And that’s just at the level of science. What about history? How probable is it that one man who performed no miracles and wielded no power, Abraham, would become the most influential figure who ever lived, with more than half of the six billion people alive today tracing their spiritual descent to him?
How probable is it that a tiny people, the children of Israel, known today as Jews, numbering less than a fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, would outlive every empire that sought its destruction? Or that a small, persecuted sect known as the Christians would one day become the largest movement of any kind in the world?
How probable is it that slavery would be abolished, that tyrannies would fall, that apartheid would end and that an African-American would be elected President of the US? Everything interesting in life, the Universe and the whole shebang is improbable, as Nicholas Taleb reminds us in The Black Swan, subtitled “The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. The book’s title is drawn from the fact that people were convinced that, since no one had ever seen a black swan, they did not exist — until someone discovered Australia.
One interesting improbability is that the man who invented probability theory, a brilliant young mathematician called Blaise Pascal, decided at the age of 30 to give up mathematics and science and devote the rest of his life to the exploration of religious faith.
Faith is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. The prophets dreamt the improbable and by doing so helped to bring it about. All the great human achievements, in art and science as well as the life of the spirit, came through people who ignored the probable and had faith in the possible.
So the bus advertisement would be improved by a small amendment. Instead of saying “There’s probably no God”, it should read: “Improbably, there is a God”. "
Review: The World Is Not Flat - Self titled EP
Thanks to a few of my friends (who I love very much), I stumbled upon this incredible little English-American man-woman folk duo that recently recorded an EP with Oxford-based indie label Jam Jar records (http://jamjarrecords.co.uk/). I'm not a pretentious pitchfork media reviwer, so I'll try and keep this summary to an enjoyable minimum.
The record opens with 'Sixth Borough', a beautiful harmony-woven piece that conjures up the best of what you would imagine New York to be: leafy parks and rich tower buildings fixed into their aged grids, enlivened with the occasional peace that the city gets on one of its days off. Plinky acoustics lead us through the city and on to another famous city in 'Baker Street Station'.
The couple provide a small change in direction as they sing 'Earlgreylavender', a more intimate song, revealing relationships behind these enigmatic voices.
'Name' is probably the weakest on the 8-track EP, but it leads into 'The World is Not Flat', a sumptuous, if slightly cliched slice of Americana, that probably wouldn't feel out of place under SubPop.
Definitely the most moving, and most musically and lyrically inspired, song is 'Paradox', that gives us the wonderful
I've been saying that I love you for so long
and I'm wondering if it's dark that comes with the dawn.
This morning rooster keeps on crowing on and on and on
and I've been saying that I love you for so long.
We're then taken through the (unfortunately brief) 'Forest', to reach the swansong of the EP, 'Birdhouses', providing fruity, natural backing noise to complement another bout of haunting, airy female vocals.
A definite 4.5/5. I've not heard a better EP this year, but hey - nothing's perfect.
You can have a listen to some of it here: http://www.last.fm/music/The+World+Is+Not+Flat
love tom
The record opens with 'Sixth Borough', a beautiful harmony-woven piece that conjures up the best of what you would imagine New York to be: leafy parks and rich tower buildings fixed into their aged grids, enlivened with the occasional peace that the city gets on one of its days off. Plinky acoustics lead us through the city and on to another famous city in 'Baker Street Station'.
The couple provide a small change in direction as they sing 'Earlgreylavender', a more intimate song, revealing relationships behind these enigmatic voices.
'Name' is probably the weakest on the 8-track EP, but it leads into 'The World is Not Flat', a sumptuous, if slightly cliched slice of Americana, that probably wouldn't feel out of place under SubPop.
Definitely the most moving, and most musically and lyrically inspired, song is 'Paradox', that gives us the wonderful
I've been saying that I love you for so long
and I'm wondering if it's dark that comes with the dawn.
This morning rooster keeps on crowing on and on and on
and I've been saying that I love you for so long.
We're then taken through the (unfortunately brief) 'Forest', to reach the swansong of the EP, 'Birdhouses', providing fruity, natural backing noise to complement another bout of haunting, airy female vocals.
A definite 4.5/5. I've not heard a better EP this year, but hey - nothing's perfect.
You can have a listen to some of it here: http://www.last.fm/music/The+World+Is+Not+Flat
love tom
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