Dear Australia,
RE: NUMBER OF OLYMPIC MEDALS WON
Now, you know that this blog is not one known for crowing, or exulting triumphantly over others. However,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHA
HA.
Thank you.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Doing the Time Warp...
Every year, round about Reading Festival time, a slender magazine plops through the letterbox. It is the Bangoriad, the yeary update for graduates from UCNW Bangor, or plain Bangor University as it now is. I flick through it, gaze across the bits in Welsh and see which words I can puzzle out (like most English students who go there, I (perhaps shamefully) never learnt more than a smattering of the language), read about a few new developments and new appointments, flick over the obituaries just in case someone I knew from then is mentioned, flick through only partially interested, and vagualy thinking of my time there, twenty years ago. This year, however, one thing caught my eye: mention of Y Seren, the student magazine, which has now put all the archive editions online. Going to the website, I spent a good hour looking through the editions between october 1986 and 1989, the time when I was involved in it as gigs and events photographer, occasional columnist, sometime scurrilous letter writer and one time spectacularly bad poetry contributor (however, the poem does have a message concealed, not very secretly, in it). I won't say 'the memories came flooding back': perhaps more accurate to say the memories lapped gently at the knee, and I thought with a wry smile of myself, loitering around the Students' Union building and avoiding lectures.
I got involved with Y Seren during Freshers' week, when I went up to the magazine stall and introduced myself as a photographer. There was one problem: I hadn't actually brought my camera kit ( a Pentax Spotmatic F plus various lenses) with me, and had to wait before my dad turned up a few weeks later before I could actually start shooting. Once I started, I realised I had hit upon almost the perfect way to get into events without paying. I could get into all the gigs free, then I would go backstage with the bands afterwards, do impromptu interviews, and drink their rider. However, this left those occasions where my services as a photographer were not required. In order to circumvent the paying for things problem, I became a member of Ents and RAG, and a member of Stage Crew. This meant I could either be sitting on the door stamping hands and taking money for an hour, then go into the event free (mostly the wednesday and friday discos), or I would help coordinate something and again free entry, or I would be the DJ. Failing that, I would be involved in setting up and taking down the stage equipment: This latter strategy meant that I could indulge in some late night drinking - this was well before 24-hour drinking was introduced, and indeed only just after North Wales allowed people to drink after the ungodly hour of 10.30. In fact, I did almost all of these tasks while enveloped in a warm boozy haze. This fogginess may be the reason why the memories do not exactly flood back.
And why my wry smile? Well, I can't help thinking now of what else I might have done had I not spent so much time living the student lifestyle, and if I had been more confident in my own abilities, especially when it came to going out into the big bad world. I ask myself: What if my 40-year-old self could go back in time and talk with my 20-year-old self? What would I say?
I think it would be something along the lines of this:
'First up, don't worry what other people think of you, ever. You can only be yourself, and this is your life, not anyone else's, and only you can live it. If you screw up, if you do something bad, then you are the one who will judge yourself most severely. Being cool isn't all it's cut out to be: A lot of the time, it's away of doing absolutely nothing, but with style. Just be easy on yourself. Next, don't bother with being shy, and stop hiding behind booze and fags. Express your ideas and opinions, even if others don't agree - remember what I said first? People will respect you the more for being honest in your ideas.
Third, do more study - you're just coasting at the moment, and yes, you're doing OK, but you can do so much, much more. If you don't, you'll spend years feeling frustrated at yourself and blaming yourself and the world around you for your own perceived failure. Remember, Carpe Diem!
Last for now - it's not a crime to enjoy life - live it, even when you don't have any money! Believe me, you won't be rich in the future either. Oh, and fame is a load of bollocks. Now, let's crack open the Merrydown and Red Stripe, put the needle to the record and do put away those fags...'
..and the image fades. And this leaves the question: What would my 60-year-old self say to me now? Since the key to the future always resides within the present, perhaps it's a matter of finding the balding, grey-haired bloke within. Just as long as he isn't wearing beige.
I got involved with Y Seren during Freshers' week, when I went up to the magazine stall and introduced myself as a photographer. There was one problem: I hadn't actually brought my camera kit ( a Pentax Spotmatic F plus various lenses) with me, and had to wait before my dad turned up a few weeks later before I could actually start shooting. Once I started, I realised I had hit upon almost the perfect way to get into events without paying. I could get into all the gigs free, then I would go backstage with the bands afterwards, do impromptu interviews, and drink their rider. However, this left those occasions where my services as a photographer were not required. In order to circumvent the paying for things problem, I became a member of Ents and RAG, and a member of Stage Crew. This meant I could either be sitting on the door stamping hands and taking money for an hour, then go into the event free (mostly the wednesday and friday discos), or I would help coordinate something and again free entry, or I would be the DJ. Failing that, I would be involved in setting up and taking down the stage equipment: This latter strategy meant that I could indulge in some late night drinking - this was well before 24-hour drinking was introduced, and indeed only just after North Wales allowed people to drink after the ungodly hour of 10.30. In fact, I did almost all of these tasks while enveloped in a warm boozy haze. This fogginess may be the reason why the memories do not exactly flood back.
And why my wry smile? Well, I can't help thinking now of what else I might have done had I not spent so much time living the student lifestyle, and if I had been more confident in my own abilities, especially when it came to going out into the big bad world. I ask myself: What if my 40-year-old self could go back in time and talk with my 20-year-old self? What would I say?
I think it would be something along the lines of this:
'First up, don't worry what other people think of you, ever. You can only be yourself, and this is your life, not anyone else's, and only you can live it. If you screw up, if you do something bad, then you are the one who will judge yourself most severely. Being cool isn't all it's cut out to be: A lot of the time, it's away of doing absolutely nothing, but with style. Just be easy on yourself. Next, don't bother with being shy, and stop hiding behind booze and fags. Express your ideas and opinions, even if others don't agree - remember what I said first? People will respect you the more for being honest in your ideas.
Third, do more study - you're just coasting at the moment, and yes, you're doing OK, but you can do so much, much more. If you don't, you'll spend years feeling frustrated at yourself and blaming yourself and the world around you for your own perceived failure. Remember, Carpe Diem!
Last for now - it's not a crime to enjoy life - live it, even when you don't have any money! Believe me, you won't be rich in the future either. Oh, and fame is a load of bollocks. Now, let's crack open the Merrydown and Red Stripe, put the needle to the record and do put away those fags...'
..and the image fades. And this leaves the question: What would my 60-year-old self say to me now? Since the key to the future always resides within the present, perhaps it's a matter of finding the balding, grey-haired bloke within. Just as long as he isn't wearing beige.
Monday, August 18, 2008
movies.
So, a rainy monday, and off to see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer with Angus. Oh dear. I think he enjoyed it, but with the exception of a few bits of things blowing up (admittedly, most of it), it was a fairly tedious affair, with a really tenuous storyline and characterisation that stretched reality so thinly it blew a hole straight through it and into the far side. Also, it had some really ropey CGI effects. Summed up, it would be something I'd fairly happily watch on DVD on a rainy sunday, but not otherwise. Then again, my cinema-going has been curtailed somewhat since having children - it now mostly involves stuff that is noisy and explosive. Actually, come to think of it, an awful lot of my cinema-going experiences pre-child were noisy and explosive.
And then I watched 'Braveheart' on TV a few days back. Now, this is a film to get the heart racing: an atavistic battle between freedom-loving tribesmen and evil overlords. I remember first seeing it in a plush cinema in Atakoy, Istanbul, back in '95, with my old chum Guy Elders, and being thrilled by it. It sang to the Scots part of my blood, and I cheered on Mel Gibson in the guise of William Wallace as he tore apart the flanks of the English. Watching it again, my response was anything but triumphal. The characters were ridiculously two-dimensional, the story flimsy and the historical intervention (read it - Edward II was born well after Wallace's death, for example) outrageous. Most of all, however, I felt sadness - sadness that Mel Gibson has such a blood-boltered, simplistic mind. Looking at his Ouevre subsequent to Braveheart, it is striking how much of it requires bloodshed, humiliation and pain on a grand scale, and requires the universe to work in simplistic Manichean ways. Gibson is always on the lookout for a Messianic figure, even if he plays it himself.
And then I watched 'Braveheart' on TV a few days back. Now, this is a film to get the heart racing: an atavistic battle between freedom-loving tribesmen and evil overlords. I remember first seeing it in a plush cinema in Atakoy, Istanbul, back in '95, with my old chum Guy Elders, and being thrilled by it. It sang to the Scots part of my blood, and I cheered on Mel Gibson in the guise of William Wallace as he tore apart the flanks of the English. Watching it again, my response was anything but triumphal. The characters were ridiculously two-dimensional, the story flimsy and the historical intervention (read it - Edward II was born well after Wallace's death, for example) outrageous. Most of all, however, I felt sadness - sadness that Mel Gibson has such a blood-boltered, simplistic mind. Looking at his Ouevre subsequent to Braveheart, it is striking how much of it requires bloodshed, humiliation and pain on a grand scale, and requires the universe to work in simplistic Manichean ways. Gibson is always on the lookout for a Messianic figure, even if he plays it himself.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Loose ends.
Well, a week into my summer holidays, and typically, I'm ill - some kind of ghastly sore throat - blocked nose- generally crappy feeling type of thing. Apart from painting a wall, sorting out my rampant tomato plants, one visit to the museums in Oxford and doing some pottering of the domestic variety, I've managed absolutely bugger all. And, to be perfectly honest, I'm totally hating it.
As I've grown older, I've realised that I only ever really enjoy myself when I'm busy doing something. I'm simply no good at loafing. Well, actually that's not true - I would be an Olympic champion at the art of avoiding doing stuff if a) loafing were to be recognised as an Olympic Sport and b) if I could be arsed to participate. Over the years, I have procrastinated, avoided, shirked, lurked, malingered, dithered, hithered and thithered, and all for no good reason, although I have been adept at thinking up ones to tell myself: that if I go down such-and-such a route, then I'll be cutting off a possible opportunity in another direction; that by focusing on one thing only, I'll be denying myself the ability to see the bigger picture; that THIS THING needs doing NOW, but this can wait for tomorrow; And so on, and so forth.
Of course, I'm hardly the first person to complain of this, nor will I be the last. The trouble I have is my immense capacity to be distracted. I could write myself out a to-do list each day, but that feels way too anally retentive and nerdy. I keep seeking ways to tie up the loose ends of my life, but of course they appear as quickly as they can be resolved. And while looking round for ways to resolve them, I waste more time, I dither more, and the looser the threads become.
As I've grown older, I've realised that I only ever really enjoy myself when I'm busy doing something. I'm simply no good at loafing. Well, actually that's not true - I would be an Olympic champion at the art of avoiding doing stuff if a) loafing were to be recognised as an Olympic Sport and b) if I could be arsed to participate. Over the years, I have procrastinated, avoided, shirked, lurked, malingered, dithered, hithered and thithered, and all for no good reason, although I have been adept at thinking up ones to tell myself: that if I go down such-and-such a route, then I'll be cutting off a possible opportunity in another direction; that by focusing on one thing only, I'll be denying myself the ability to see the bigger picture; that THIS THING needs doing NOW, but this can wait for tomorrow; And so on, and so forth.
Of course, I'm hardly the first person to complain of this, nor will I be the last. The trouble I have is my immense capacity to be distracted. I could write myself out a to-do list each day, but that feels way too anally retentive and nerdy. I keep seeking ways to tie up the loose ends of my life, but of course they appear as quickly as they can be resolved. And while looking round for ways to resolve them, I waste more time, I dither more, and the looser the threads become.
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