Rofl
Hey All,
I didn't actually wind up getting any food yesterday.
What I did was take the train to Tottenham Court Road to buy Invisible Kingdom from a small comic shop on Charing Cross Road.
Two interesting things while I was there: there was a Japanese/British family there (Mother, Father, Small boy), with the Mother and Father sitting on the couch. At some point the Mother asks the kid: 'Do you want to go to Borders?', to which the excitedly exclaims his assent.
Which made me smile. Even if they are just going to raid the considerable Anime Shelf they have at Borders, it is still good to hear a kid excited to go to a bookshop.
Other interesting thing: some kind of bluesy, swampy music was playing on the stereo, which turned out to be... Early Fleetwood Mac. Evidently pre-stadium filling coke-roadie straw-blowing Fleetwood Mac.
Bizarre. I knew that Mick Fleetwood had form on the early UK Blues scene, but this had me blindsided. More investigation may be necessary. Of course, if I start to turn into too much of a hippy, I authorize Elea to travel to the UK and shoot me in the head.
Speaking of my Sisters, my mother told me that my other sister K has started doing Akido with my mother. If she stick with it, that means she might wind up with Two Black Belts (the first being in Tae Kwon Do). Kirsteen Logan, five foot two of martial arts fury.
I've commented before how whenever there is women's kickboxing on the TV, there always seems to be a trailer-trash looking freckled redhead. A curious pattern. Like how in every notable french movie there always seems to be Jean Hughes Anglade. I just checked on IMDB and it turns out he did a cameo in Leon (ie the movie that inspired The Professional).
Speaking of buying food at Tesco (which I wasn't but let's pretend I was), today I received my quarterly envelope from Tesco regarding my loyalty card, which now has 450 points on it.
A couple of weeks ago I read something that Warren Ellis had written along the lines that Loyalty cards are actually data collection systems to better allow the big corporations to narrowly tailor their marketing to targeted individuals. And I don't doubt it.
This was interestingly illustrated today by the inclusion a couple of vouchers for double points etc on soap, yogurt, chicken, bread and paper kitchen towels ALL OF WHICH I BUY ON A REGULAR BASIS!
1984 is upon us, Brothers and Sisters, we're all zeros and ones, numbers being crunched in the machines.
I did mention that I bought the final Trade Paperback volume of The Invisibles yesterday? Some of you might be aware that Grant Morrison (writer of The Invisibles) actually sued the Wachowski Brothers for lifting ideas, concepts and bits'n'pieces from The Invisibles (the settled out of court). I tend to credit reading stuff like The Invisibles with triggering my occaisional bursts of Meta-physical thinking, deconstruction of the social and corporate apparati around me, inquisitive paranoia about the media, etc.
Fresh narratives lead my internal explorer through doorways in my mind that previously I hadn't thought to open and inspect.
Either that or its some kind of mild manic episode.
Does any else feel the irony that Postmodern language theory (including post-structuralism etc), which in part deals with the problem that the way that Language necessitates the encoding and decoding of information frequently creates barriers to communication and understanding, is so often written about in such a way that is almost incomprehensible due to the language used?
Ie the language of these ideas about decoding ideas can only be decoded by someone who knows how to decode the language used to encode these ideas.
Some things are so hard to put in a paragraph.
What I'm trying to do is work out why I learnt more about post-modern cultural theory from reading a comic than I did at the University of Queensland.
High culture and low culture collide in such bizarre ways. Shostakovich (the Russian Soviet Era Composer, sometimes sampled by Hip-hop DJs) was getting a hell of a lot of press recently, because it was some milestone to do with his life or something. [checks wikipedia entry on Shostakovich] Okay it was the 100th anniversary of his birth.
But here's the thing: I found a book about Shostakovich at the Stratford Library recently, and in the Blurb it mentioned that he would encode anti-soviet messages into his music.
Fuck me. I've heard a bit of Shostakovich, and at no point do I recall saying: 'That discordant horn stab, there: That's all about the Boshevik repression of Kropotkin and his fellow Anarchists, and there! That cymbal crash says to me that the Red Army marching on May Day clearly shows that the Soviet State is really no different to the militaristic fascists they oppose. It's all so clear!'
Of course, I'm not an expert in listening to classical music and reading the images and events behind it, not having a huge background in opera or symphonic composition or the like.
But having said that, as a politically aware Black Metal fan, I know exactly what it means when I read that such and such's new CD is infused with huge, nationalist overtones.
Of course, that often means that the band in question has been cribbing musical notes from Wagner, which can be heard even by pretentious hacks like me.
And how do we know that Wagnerian musical memes indicate right-wing idealogy? Because we know that Wagner's musical, political and personal ideology was right wing.
Fair play, it is easy enough to listen to Wagner and Wagner influenced music and hear grandiousity, insistent forward pulses and all the other things that volkisch fascists, past and present.
On a side note, did you know that the Nazis hated Jazz? Apparently, apart from being made by Black People and Jews, they were also offended by the chaotic, syncopated rhythms and the alien sounds of the extended harmonies used.
Tell me if I've mentioned it before in this blog. I suspect that I have.
Enough of that. Maybe K is right: I should make a rants page.
Back to our regularly scheduled programme: After buying the Invisibles Trade last night, just for fun I went to Leicester Square, whereupon somebody passed my a flyer for some comedy upstairs at a club called Oxygen. I suspected that the quality might be questionnable, but it would only be £2.50 to get in, so I figured I'd go along anyway.
As it was, most of the three of the six comedians were pretty ordinary. But two really stood out. Aaron Barschak and a bloke who I think was called Paul Brennan. What I gleaned from watching them? Standup comedy is all about the Rhythm and the Energy. Without that an act is almost certainly doomed to failure.
The notable exception being Steven Wright, but of course, that man's material is so ridiculously surreal it exists outside the usual rules.
Completely by chance I was sitting with two Jewish Melbourne boys who had just spent the southern summer studying international law at the University of Jerusalem. One of them had a yamulke clipped to his tightly curled hair, both had blue eyes.
There is a stereotypical comment about Australians in there somewhere, but I think I'll let it sit.
When I got back to Leytonstone it was raining, so I figured that rather than do my food shopping and risk worsening my cold in the freezing wet, I'd go home and go to bed. Which I did.
And so ended the latest of the many Valentine's Days I've spent single.
Now I'm going to tweak my CV to play up my computer skills so that I can hand it into a Net Cafe on Charing Cross road that is looking for staff.
Over and out.
J
I didn't actually wind up getting any food yesterday.
What I did was take the train to Tottenham Court Road to buy Invisible Kingdom from a small comic shop on Charing Cross Road.
Two interesting things while I was there: there was a Japanese/British family there (Mother, Father, Small boy), with the Mother and Father sitting on the couch. At some point the Mother asks the kid: 'Do you want to go to Borders?', to which the excitedly exclaims his assent.
Which made me smile. Even if they are just going to raid the considerable Anime Shelf they have at Borders, it is still good to hear a kid excited to go to a bookshop.
Other interesting thing: some kind of bluesy, swampy music was playing on the stereo, which turned out to be... Early Fleetwood Mac. Evidently pre-stadium filling coke-roadie straw-blowing Fleetwood Mac.
Bizarre. I knew that Mick Fleetwood had form on the early UK Blues scene, but this had me blindsided. More investigation may be necessary. Of course, if I start to turn into too much of a hippy, I authorize Elea to travel to the UK and shoot me in the head.
Speaking of my Sisters, my mother told me that my other sister K has started doing Akido with my mother. If she stick with it, that means she might wind up with Two Black Belts (the first being in Tae Kwon Do). Kirsteen Logan, five foot two of martial arts fury.
I've commented before how whenever there is women's kickboxing on the TV, there always seems to be a trailer-trash looking freckled redhead. A curious pattern. Like how in every notable french movie there always seems to be Jean Hughes Anglade. I just checked on IMDB and it turns out he did a cameo in Leon (ie the movie that inspired The Professional).
Speaking of buying food at Tesco (which I wasn't but let's pretend I was), today I received my quarterly envelope from Tesco regarding my loyalty card, which now has 450 points on it.
A couple of weeks ago I read something that Warren Ellis had written along the lines that Loyalty cards are actually data collection systems to better allow the big corporations to narrowly tailor their marketing to targeted individuals. And I don't doubt it.
This was interestingly illustrated today by the inclusion a couple of vouchers for double points etc on soap, yogurt, chicken, bread and paper kitchen towels ALL OF WHICH I BUY ON A REGULAR BASIS!
1984 is upon us, Brothers and Sisters, we're all zeros and ones, numbers being crunched in the machines.
I did mention that I bought the final Trade Paperback volume of The Invisibles yesterday? Some of you might be aware that Grant Morrison (writer of The Invisibles) actually sued the Wachowski Brothers for lifting ideas, concepts and bits'n'pieces from The Invisibles (the settled out of court). I tend to credit reading stuff like The Invisibles with triggering my occaisional bursts of Meta-physical thinking, deconstruction of the social and corporate apparati around me, inquisitive paranoia about the media, etc.
Fresh narratives lead my internal explorer through doorways in my mind that previously I hadn't thought to open and inspect.
Either that or its some kind of mild manic episode.
Does any else feel the irony that Postmodern language theory (including post-structuralism etc), which in part deals with the problem that the way that Language necessitates the encoding and decoding of information frequently creates barriers to communication and understanding, is so often written about in such a way that is almost incomprehensible due to the language used?
Ie the language of these ideas about decoding ideas can only be decoded by someone who knows how to decode the language used to encode these ideas.
Some things are so hard to put in a paragraph.
What I'm trying to do is work out why I learnt more about post-modern cultural theory from reading a comic than I did at the University of Queensland.
High culture and low culture collide in such bizarre ways. Shostakovich (the Russian Soviet Era Composer, sometimes sampled by Hip-hop DJs) was getting a hell of a lot of press recently, because it was some milestone to do with his life or something. [checks wikipedia entry on Shostakovich] Okay it was the 100th anniversary of his birth.
But here's the thing: I found a book about Shostakovich at the Stratford Library recently, and in the Blurb it mentioned that he would encode anti-soviet messages into his music.
Fuck me. I've heard a bit of Shostakovich, and at no point do I recall saying: 'That discordant horn stab, there: That's all about the Boshevik repression of Kropotkin and his fellow Anarchists, and there! That cymbal crash says to me that the Red Army marching on May Day clearly shows that the Soviet State is really no different to the militaristic fascists they oppose. It's all so clear!'
Of course, I'm not an expert in listening to classical music and reading the images and events behind it, not having a huge background in opera or symphonic composition or the like.
But having said that, as a politically aware Black Metal fan, I know exactly what it means when I read that such and such's new CD is infused with huge, nationalist overtones.
Of course, that often means that the band in question has been cribbing musical notes from Wagner, which can be heard even by pretentious hacks like me.
And how do we know that Wagnerian musical memes indicate right-wing idealogy? Because we know that Wagner's musical, political and personal ideology was right wing.
Fair play, it is easy enough to listen to Wagner and Wagner influenced music and hear grandiousity, insistent forward pulses and all the other things that volkisch fascists, past and present.
On a side note, did you know that the Nazis hated Jazz? Apparently, apart from being made by Black People and Jews, they were also offended by the chaotic, syncopated rhythms and the alien sounds of the extended harmonies used.
Tell me if I've mentioned it before in this blog. I suspect that I have.
Enough of that. Maybe K is right: I should make a rants page.
Back to our regularly scheduled programme: After buying the Invisibles Trade last night, just for fun I went to Leicester Square, whereupon somebody passed my a flyer for some comedy upstairs at a club called Oxygen. I suspected that the quality might be questionnable, but it would only be £2.50 to get in, so I figured I'd go along anyway.
As it was, most of the three of the six comedians were pretty ordinary. But two really stood out. Aaron Barschak and a bloke who I think was called Paul Brennan. What I gleaned from watching them? Standup comedy is all about the Rhythm and the Energy. Without that an act is almost certainly doomed to failure.
The notable exception being Steven Wright, but of course, that man's material is so ridiculously surreal it exists outside the usual rules.
Completely by chance I was sitting with two Jewish Melbourne boys who had just spent the southern summer studying international law at the University of Jerusalem. One of them had a yamulke clipped to his tightly curled hair, both had blue eyes.
There is a stereotypical comment about Australians in there somewhere, but I think I'll let it sit.
When I got back to Leytonstone it was raining, so I figured that rather than do my food shopping and risk worsening my cold in the freezing wet, I'd go home and go to bed. Which I did.
And so ended the latest of the many Valentine's Days I've spent single.
Now I'm going to tweak my CV to play up my computer skills so that I can hand it into a Net Cafe on Charing Cross road that is looking for staff.
Over and out.
J
posted by the.exile at 4:24 pm
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