27 Nov 2009

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.



The coldest morning of the month so far, was balanced out nicely by these Californian summer sounds playing in my ears: Some people say this album is better than Pet Sounds. I concur.

25 Nov 2009

Ol’ glitter fingers.

It was 8.50 a.m and everyone was being extra nice.
It was one of those wards in hospital where they probably had to have
‘Extra nice’ training due to the types that came through there.
Even in those surroundings – and that early in the morning
They all managed to keep the grins at max.

I liked it.
It made a pleasant change,
Especially for that place.
The amount of time I had spent in that hospital with
Frowning and depressed morons was incalculable.
I was called over to the desk and the lady started on the usual
Name / age / DOB etc,
I’m pretty sure I got most of them right.

She had on a great deal of makeup,
Her white-blonde hair was both coloured and styled,
I’d say 2 cans of hairspray had met their death that morning.
And her hands were adorned - yellow gold and some zircon rings.
Maybe diamonds, but then again how much could she be on?
More than me still didn’t necessarily mean enough for the real thing.
Her fingernails were French polished, and the tips a metallic silver
With a glitter paint effect.

I looked at her,
I looked around the room,
Down the hall,
At the colour coded walls and doors,
The plants that may have been real or plastic -
You couldn’t tell.
And she didn’t fit in at all.
I watched her while she typed and thought
Does she know she sticks out around here?
All the other nurses and desk staff were well-presented, sure
But dressed down.
In tune with the walls and doors.

Her expression seemed to suggest she was more than happy
With her outfit/hair/fingernail ensemble.
Part of me was so curious to see what shoes she had on
I almost leant forward to peek under the desk...
Just then she finished her questions and her typing,
The clickety-click of those falsies came to a halt.
There was silence again.
‘Ok, you can go back and wait over there now thank you.’
I thanked her too,

She was more than just getting by in amongst all that mediocrity -
She had one day long ago decided on a big rebel yell.
Decided to separate herself from her environment so she could
Manage to get through having to be there day in, day out.

In my head, I quietly applauded her.
Then I sat back down and waited, with a small grin that wasn’t there
Before.

23 Nov 2009

The people walk with such an indifference

'The people walk with such an indifference I begin to hate them, but then again I've never really been fond of anything.'

Why if you're travelling the entire length of a train journey - and they notice, doesn't anyone bother to tell you that your backpack is open? I came all the way into work in the rain, with my wallet exposed today. What's wrong with people? The 'English' weather over the last couple of days has pretty much worn down my already smooth face into an even gentler frown. I have - inbetween jumping over (as opposed to in) puddles, and cleaning bird crap off the car, been re-re-reading this:


Gets you through, Really does.

20 Nov 2009

No one likes going to the office everyday

but imagine going into the office every morning and sitting at this bad boy:


 
This made it straight into my 'Top 5 best things I've ever seen that are absolutely pointless' list.


16 Nov 2009

John Rae



Watched a doc. on the story of Dr John Rae, and more specifically the Franklin Expedition, which is as huge a fallacy as you could possibly imagine. Wiki has some info but nothing like Ray's story and background on John Rae. Amazing stuff.

my wife sent me this


The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.  Nietzsche

13 Nov 2009

Felt 3

Yeah, posting YouTube clips – l a z y. Keep watching for some desktop skate action at the end.



6 Nov 2009

Photo of the week



"The picture was taken in the Altai territory of Russia, right in the border regions of Kazakhstan. It shows the second stage of a Soyuz rocket in the crash zone where they come down to earth. You can see them fall during the day, and usually hear the big bang as they hit the ground. These things are made out of pretty good metal too, so a lot of the locals make a living chasing rocket parts, before selling them as scrap. If you look very carefully, you can see that the white things all around them are butterflies or moths." Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian photographer based in New York.


5 Nov 2009

Because why not...

Never a bad time for a bit o' RAW. So here you go - for no other reason than it's Thursday. For some of us anyway.

The genius of an artist, Aristotle says, lies in his texne, the root from which we get our word "technology"; but texne basically means skill or craft, or the ability to make things that never existed before. Negative entropy, i.e., information . . .
The musician and the architect, the poet and the physicist -- all inventors of new realities -- all such Creators may be best considered late evolutionary developments of the type that first appears as the shaman. Please remember that shamans in most cultures are known as "they who walk in the sky," just like our current shaman-hero, Luke Skywalker . . .

2 Nov 2009

Let's just try that again...

Around Christmas time, this bad boy is going to be fired up for the 2nd time:


Previously on The Wire – I mean, the LHC...

...Discoveries would include the God Particle, a tiny entity also called the Higgs Boson, which is believed to give objects – including people – their mass.

Buuuuuuuuuut -

A hole was punched in the protective pipe that surrounds the cable and released helium, cooled to minus 271C, into a section of the collider tunnel. Pressure valves failed to vent the gas and a shock wave ran through the tunnel. A 400-metre chunk of the £2.5bn device had been wrecked, it was discovered.

To reiterate the point of all this -

The LHC will accelerate bunches of protons, kept in two beams, each less than a hair's breadth in diameter, at speeds close to the speed of light.

One beam will circulate clockwise, the other anti-clockwise. Then, at four points along the collider's tunnel, the beams will cross.

These explosive interactions will form the operation and will generate new types of particle, including the Higgs, that will pop fleetingly into existence before disintegrating into a trail of other sub-atomic entities.

Sceptics argue that miniature black holes will be created and one of these could eventually grow to swallow up the Earth. This fear has led protesters to make legal attempts to close down the LHC, one even making it to the European Court of Human Rights.

Even stranger is the claim by another group of physicists who say the production of Higgs bosons may be so abhorrent to nature that their creation would ripple backwards through time to stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveller trying to halt his own birth.

So, with my scientific knowledge and calculations, I predict that around 11.59pm on Dec 24th 2009, this dude -
will come flying out in this -

...nothing's impossible, only improbable.