This was a bitch to upload, being almost a gb, it took five hours. Which I had to do twice! I stopped enjoying it a few days ago, but hopefully as my computer skills improve, I'll be able to get these videos out faster. Just waiting on a new tripod so I can resume filming. Enjoy
Monday 28 September 2009
Monday 21 September 2009
Vlog Launch
Hello friends, I have an announcement to make. You can now see me in animation. Wonder no longer about how handsome I really am, see for your self!
OK, so it's my first video, it's a little rough, a bit rambly, but I'm new to this. Even if my videos never quite break out of mediocre, there shall always be enjoyment in the title sequence, which would be nothing if it weren't for my exploited friends.
Irisz Heathershaw assisted me in creating the logo, and Stephen Barlow knocked together the jingle in under three hours when I arrived on his doorstep and demanded he help me. He would also like me to point out that I requested the solo guitar be amped up. It was just so camp I couldn't help myself.
I would like to sincerely apologise to them for making such impositions when they both so busy, and to express my deepest gratitude and awe for their work.
OK, so it's my first video, it's a little rough, a bit rambly, but I'm new to this. Even if my videos never quite break out of mediocre, there shall always be enjoyment in the title sequence, which would be nothing if it weren't for my exploited friends.
Irisz Heathershaw assisted me in creating the logo, and Stephen Barlow knocked together the jingle in under three hours when I arrived on his doorstep and demanded he help me. He would also like me to point out that I requested the solo guitar be amped up. It was just so camp I couldn't help myself.
I would like to sincerely apologise to them for making such impositions when they both so busy, and to express my deepest gratitude and awe for their work.
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Sorry for neglecting you
So I finally came back with another actual blog post, and not a cop-out excerpt. Allow me to apologise profusely to all ten people who actually follow this blog, really, you guys mean a lot to me. I was pretty dismayed to see that I only managed one post in August. That's pretty pathetic, especially compared to my fifteen in January.
For the time being, most of my creative juices are being expended on the novel, which is sometimes going well. Looks like it's gonna need another couple of months before I finish it, and that's before I even get down to editing the son of a bitch.
For those interested in any of my other creative exploits, I've ordered a lovely Creative Vado HD which I'll be using to start vlogging. Will this replace my blogs? Probably not. But I think the website that I'm setting up for my third year will. Stay tuned for more deets. Or follow me at my twitter.
For the time being, most of my creative juices are being expended on the novel, which is sometimes going well. Looks like it's gonna need another couple of months before I finish it, and that's before I even get down to editing the son of a bitch.
For those interested in any of my other creative exploits, I've ordered a lovely Creative Vado HD which I'll be using to start vlogging. Will this replace my blogs? Probably not. But I think the website that I'm setting up for my third year will. Stay tuned for more deets. Or follow me at my twitter.
Why smokers look so cool and how to stop them
There’s something about the act of smoking that speaks to me of moral corruption. Perhaps it’s because I have always wanted to, but never dared. The teachers from school and parents, the institutions of guardianship, instilling their values so thoroughly, their voices loud with an unquestionable truth. Smoking is bad.
Perhaps this is why smokers appear so dangerous to me. If they’re willing to do that to themselves, where do they draw the line for others? All I’m saying is that second hand smoke is just a taster of what they’re capable of. These people habitually carry around the tools to start fires.
For them, smoking is freeing. It’s a gateway into a life of anti-authority. They’re aware of the overwhelming evidence which condemns them to a shorter lifespan. They read the block capital portents of misery and infanticide on every packet, and ignore them, becoming stronger with each tiny act of rebellion.
In truth, I’m jealous; I’m weak enough to actually feel threatened by a slow and tar ridden death. But perhaps this is what appeals to them. They are controlling their own death, deciding their fate. Leaving the door unlocked for that assassin, so they can greet him in their armchair, and rasp their goodbye. People have been dying from cigarette related illnesses for years. There’s a certain comfort in that, in the predictability of the symptoms, which can be traced and measured, related anecdotally to other smokers, charted against each other, graphing their own timeline, whilst sharing a hacking and face-purpling laughter.
It would seem the government has mistaken humanity's health concerns. Smokers share cigarette packet labels, these banners of mortality with a private revelry, buying cigarettes not by brand, but instead by effect: “Can I get the ‘Causes harm to unborn babies,’ please?” If we can’t appeal to a smoker’s health, then perhaps we can appeal to their wallet, displaying instead the price in wide bold letters, £5.45, and what this equates to in their life, such as an hours’ wage, or a Coldplay album.
If we take this further, each packet would come with a calculator to determine what else they could have bought compared to what they spend in a year. The results wouldn’t show the meaningless numbers, but instead precious items in a glorious and high definition display. I’m not thinking so much rubies, but Xboxs, cashmere garments and conservatories. Or for developing countries, twenty camels.
From what I can understand though, the real reason many people start smoking is because it looks cool, and there’s very little evidence to undermine this claim, because it does. All musicians and actors smoke. Fact. Or at least the cool ones do. There’s something very mysterious about a figure with a cigarette. They’re introspective, probably because their hands are occupied, they have no choice but to confront their thoughts. When I think of smokers, I think of an unshaven man sipping whiskey at a bar, staring into the middle distance. Unapproachable, untouchable. Or a writer pouring over a manuscript, squinting through his haze of smoke. These are images cast from film, but the reality is much less cinematic. We have to be aware that cigarettes are like berets, people who own them tend to have smelly breath.
And wear stripy blue and white shirts. And speak French. What I’m saying is that there are side effects. But then again, we live in a world of skinny jeans and high-heeled shoes, piercings and tattoos. In youth we constantly sacrifice comfort for image, looking ahead only far enough to realise the immediate impact, and screaming to our future selves, “Fuck you future self!” And our future selves, who stopped caring about the way they look the day they wore slippers to Tesco, who feel only embarrassed by the Chinese character tats that were once emblazoned on a chest taut with muscle, but now sag unreadable, beneath three layers of wool. They think about their young unruly selves, how they were such a different person, only connected by memories, and they moan back to the past in phlegmy rattling breaths, “Damn you past self, damn you…”
Perhaps this is why smokers appear so dangerous to me. If they’re willing to do that to themselves, where do they draw the line for others? All I’m saying is that second hand smoke is just a taster of what they’re capable of. These people habitually carry around the tools to start fires.
For them, smoking is freeing. It’s a gateway into a life of anti-authority. They’re aware of the overwhelming evidence which condemns them to a shorter lifespan. They read the block capital portents of misery and infanticide on every packet, and ignore them, becoming stronger with each tiny act of rebellion.
In truth, I’m jealous; I’m weak enough to actually feel threatened by a slow and tar ridden death. But perhaps this is what appeals to them. They are controlling their own death, deciding their fate. Leaving the door unlocked for that assassin, so they can greet him in their armchair, and rasp their goodbye. People have been dying from cigarette related illnesses for years. There’s a certain comfort in that, in the predictability of the symptoms, which can be traced and measured, related anecdotally to other smokers, charted against each other, graphing their own timeline, whilst sharing a hacking and face-purpling laughter.
It would seem the government has mistaken humanity's health concerns. Smokers share cigarette packet labels, these banners of mortality with a private revelry, buying cigarettes not by brand, but instead by effect: “Can I get the ‘Causes harm to unborn babies,’ please?” If we can’t appeal to a smoker’s health, then perhaps we can appeal to their wallet, displaying instead the price in wide bold letters, £5.45, and what this equates to in their life, such as an hours’ wage, or a Coldplay album.
If we take this further, each packet would come with a calculator to determine what else they could have bought compared to what they spend in a year. The results wouldn’t show the meaningless numbers, but instead precious items in a glorious and high definition display. I’m not thinking so much rubies, but Xboxs, cashmere garments and conservatories. Or for developing countries, twenty camels.
From what I can understand though, the real reason many people start smoking is because it looks cool, and there’s very little evidence to undermine this claim, because it does. All musicians and actors smoke. Fact. Or at least the cool ones do. There’s something very mysterious about a figure with a cigarette. They’re introspective, probably because their hands are occupied, they have no choice but to confront their thoughts. When I think of smokers, I think of an unshaven man sipping whiskey at a bar, staring into the middle distance. Unapproachable, untouchable. Or a writer pouring over a manuscript, squinting through his haze of smoke. These are images cast from film, but the reality is much less cinematic. We have to be aware that cigarettes are like berets, people who own them tend to have smelly breath.
And wear stripy blue and white shirts. And speak French. What I’m saying is that there are side effects. But then again, we live in a world of skinny jeans and high-heeled shoes, piercings and tattoos. In youth we constantly sacrifice comfort for image, looking ahead only far enough to realise the immediate impact, and screaming to our future selves, “Fuck you future self!” And our future selves, who stopped caring about the way they look the day they wore slippers to Tesco, who feel only embarrassed by the Chinese character tats that were once emblazoned on a chest taut with muscle, but now sag unreadable, beneath three layers of wool. They think about their young unruly selves, how they were such a different person, only connected by memories, and they moan back to the past in phlegmy rattling breaths, “Damn you past self, damn you…”
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Excerpt 4 - David and the trophy cabinet
In the university main house, in the hallway that visitors and prospective students are most often ferried down is a long wall smothered in framed photographs. Photographs from fifty years ago to the near present, of high achievers, and graduates, receiving various awards, medals, trophies and oversized cheques. In the centre of this hallway is the glass cabinet housing these accolades of student achievement, these embodiments of graduate brilliance. Valueless metal cups are inscribed all the way round and down with names that have lost all meaning, of dubious characters whose deepest impressions were left on these glorified containers. What promise these names must have once held, but where are they now? What kind of stories unfolded after these displays of heroic sport and grand intelligence?
Would there be the usual tales of marriage, children and the eventual divorce? From rising to the giddy heights of regional manager of a prominent paper company, to the mid-life crisis, that led to cashing in that old life in search of something new, young and dangerous. Or did these individuals live blessed lives? Was this merely the beginning, the first realisations of the kind of potential that they would learn to harvest?
I read the names, instantly forgetting them, as if they were the ingredients to recipes made up in the kitchens of talentless, yet enthusiastic cooks. They feel familiar, the kind of names you read in a phonebook, lumped together with thousands of others, all written in the same small and neat font. Impossible to distinguish from one another, they seem doomed to averageness. These impressions left on these unremarkable awards are just a blip in lives that quickly resumed normal paths, unexplained anomalies, but proudly recounted to future partners and offspring.
There is one recurring name, one name which draws the eye again and again, as if it were etched more deeply, and more conspicuously onto the awards: David Misen. It is my brother’s face that I see again and again, shaking the hands of the university principal and the heads of staff from various denominations of sport, English and philosophy. Everyone smiles in these pictures. They smile so broadly, it would seem impossible to link these smiles with the death of the most promising student of the university’s history. Looking at these pictures, no one could see anything but brilliance in that smile. No one could say that suicide made sense.
“Must be weird, seeing your brother everywhere,” says Natalie. She has crept up on me; I have no idea how long she’s been standing there – how long she’s been watching me watch my brother. How long have I been standing here?
“I’m used to it. There were plenty more of these at home.” Almost every picture we have of David is professionally shot, whilst he shakes the hands of important men. Men David earned respect from, even from a young age. I can’t think of any pictures that contain us together above the age of six.
“And what about you, are there many pictures of you at home?”
“I don’t think there is enough room.”
She smiles sadly at me, expressing not only her sympathy towards me, but my right to her sympathy. Natalie has an air of understanding everything you say, as if she’s not just hearing the words, and not just seeing what you want her to see when you express yourself, but also what you wanted to say, but felt too embarrassed to share. Somehow Natalie knows all that I want to hide, and simultaneously assures me that it is okay.
I wonder how well she knew my brother, and what she understood about him. Perhaps she knows something I don’t. “I had no idea David had left such an impression here. Though it doesn’t surprise me, it’s just…he never said.”
“I don’t think David thought too much of all this,” she points to the cabinet of applause, as if she thinks as little of it as David did. How well did she know him? How well did she understand him?
“It just makes me realise that I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. Especially since he came here. We spoke occasionally online whilst he was away, but the last time I actually saw him, actually heard his voice was before he went away for his second year.”
“You only have to ask, David knew a lot of people, perhaps if you start asking, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
“What I’m looking for? I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Answers?”
Would there be the usual tales of marriage, children and the eventual divorce? From rising to the giddy heights of regional manager of a prominent paper company, to the mid-life crisis, that led to cashing in that old life in search of something new, young and dangerous. Or did these individuals live blessed lives? Was this merely the beginning, the first realisations of the kind of potential that they would learn to harvest?
I read the names, instantly forgetting them, as if they were the ingredients to recipes made up in the kitchens of talentless, yet enthusiastic cooks. They feel familiar, the kind of names you read in a phonebook, lumped together with thousands of others, all written in the same small and neat font. Impossible to distinguish from one another, they seem doomed to averageness. These impressions left on these unremarkable awards are just a blip in lives that quickly resumed normal paths, unexplained anomalies, but proudly recounted to future partners and offspring.
There is one recurring name, one name which draws the eye again and again, as if it were etched more deeply, and more conspicuously onto the awards: David Misen. It is my brother’s face that I see again and again, shaking the hands of the university principal and the heads of staff from various denominations of sport, English and philosophy. Everyone smiles in these pictures. They smile so broadly, it would seem impossible to link these smiles with the death of the most promising student of the university’s history. Looking at these pictures, no one could see anything but brilliance in that smile. No one could say that suicide made sense.
“Must be weird, seeing your brother everywhere,” says Natalie. She has crept up on me; I have no idea how long she’s been standing there – how long she’s been watching me watch my brother. How long have I been standing here?
“I’m used to it. There were plenty more of these at home.” Almost every picture we have of David is professionally shot, whilst he shakes the hands of important men. Men David earned respect from, even from a young age. I can’t think of any pictures that contain us together above the age of six.
“And what about you, are there many pictures of you at home?”
“I don’t think there is enough room.”
She smiles sadly at me, expressing not only her sympathy towards me, but my right to her sympathy. Natalie has an air of understanding everything you say, as if she’s not just hearing the words, and not just seeing what you want her to see when you express yourself, but also what you wanted to say, but felt too embarrassed to share. Somehow Natalie knows all that I want to hide, and simultaneously assures me that it is okay.
I wonder how well she knew my brother, and what she understood about him. Perhaps she knows something I don’t. “I had no idea David had left such an impression here. Though it doesn’t surprise me, it’s just…he never said.”
“I don’t think David thought too much of all this,” she points to the cabinet of applause, as if she thinks as little of it as David did. How well did she know him? How well did she understand him?
“It just makes me realise that I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. Especially since he came here. We spoke occasionally online whilst he was away, but the last time I actually saw him, actually heard his voice was before he went away for his second year.”
“You only have to ask, David knew a lot of people, perhaps if you start asking, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
“What I’m looking for? I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Answers?”
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