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The BBC Film Network features a great little organic animation set to the music of Sound Mirrors by Coldcut
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D: I'm very pleased with my drains today...
S: Your drains?
D: Yes. They were all gunged and slimy so I went and bought some super anti-slime spray, and now my drains are clean and slime free.
S: That's great...does this anti-slime spray get rid of slimes other than drain slime?
D: Oh yes, it says it'll clear all forms of slime known to man.
S: Well in that case it'll work a treat in my garden. My begonias are frequently ravaged by slugs and if I could anti-slime their slime they wouldn't slide all over my succulents.
D: Isn't that a bit cruel? To deny slugs their owns means of movement...
S: Well up till now I've been putting out pints of beer to lure and drown them. Simply cutting off their ability to excrete slimy substances seems a far more humane way to stop them.
D: Humane? I don't know...slugs enjoy a quick one down the Pelargonium & Plant Pot just as much as humans. If I were a slug I think I'd prefer to drown soaking in a bath of alcohol than be stuck on the same leaf for the rest of my living, slimeless days.
S: Mm...you have a point there...
D: And what's worse is, if you deslime a slug you'll be destroying any hopes or dreams it has of meeting with such a merry end.
S: I'm starting to pity the poor souls. Yes, my begonias are of less importance to me than your drains are to you.
D: Now that I think about it, what if there was a slug down there making a bid for freedom!
S: I know...you might have ended its aspirations of reaching happy valhalla. It will no longer be able to glug gleefully with the gods.
D: Oh God! What a terrible thought! From now on I'll only pour the finest nectar down there.
S: Good idea. I think your conscience will rest easier if you do that.
D: Definitely. I'll be able to sleep well in the knowledge that my drain are clean and the slugs are getting hammered...
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I was on a random journey through the online world of artists this evening when I stumbled - if you can do such a physical thing electronically - across the site of Turkish painter, Esref Armagan. At first glance his work contains themes one might expect from that part of the world - bold, bright landscapes, the pleasure of food, music and striking creatures. In short, colourful. Then, when I read his biography the context of the painting changed entirely. Esref is blind.
All these vivid, exciting colours, views and objects - everything others see and take for granted - this guy has had no experience of. And yet, incredibly he can still reproduce them and their sensations just as well as an artist with the gift of sight. It turns out that his hands are his eyes and are very perceptive. He's learnt to touch, feel and caress objects and translate the sensations into clear visual pictures in his mind. Then they're sent back to his hands which draw out their shape on the canvas. But what about colour? How does he know what shades he's using, or what colour objects really are? It seems he's learnt simply by memorising what people tell him about the world, like how shadows differ in colour from light. Even perspective he's taught himself just by the experience of touch.
"When we see a cup," he says, "we're also feeling with our mind's hand. Seeing is as much touching as it is seeing."
~ article from New Scientist
It raises a lot of intriguing questions, like...how clearly can a person who has witnessed very little or no colour with their eyes, visualise colours in their mind's eye? Sighted people are able to imagine, say, the green of grass when they shut their eyes, but is this solely down to the experience of grass, or is some perception of colours inherent in everyone's brain?
The curiosity of imagining what a blind can 'see' reminds me of a work by Sophie Calle where she investigated what unsighted people found beautiful...
" For Les Aveugles (The Blind), Calle asked people who had never been able to see to define what beauty meant to them. The answers make one wonder why no artist had bothered to ask before:
'Fish fascinate me. I can't say why. They don't make any noise, that's nothing, that doesn't interest me. It's their evolution in water that I like, the idea that they are not attached to anything. Sometimes I can stand in front of an aquarium for minutes. Standing there like an idiot. Because it's beautiful, that's all.'
Next to each answer is hung a framed photograph of the blind person, and below it, on a small white shelf, rests a photograph - or two or three - that illustrates the definition. Again, these photographs are neutrally descriptive; but the ocean has never looked so calm, nor grass so lush. The definitions re-vivify the jaded vision of those that can see. They also allow us to enter a previously unknown imaginative realm. It is Calle's most successful expedition into other people's lives.
'Sixty kilometres from Cardiff, on the cliff is a desert-like hill. Terrible weather, steep terrain, thin grass - the flowers worry me, I'm scared to tread on them. I was struck by the beauty of this desolate landscape. I took a photograph of it. You won't feel the wind from the photo, but it will perhaps give the impression of vastness.'" Which all goes to show that the mind's eye, or hand, is a very powerful tool, and that visual sense, though overwhelming is only one way of seeing the world. Beauty is in the mind's eye of the beholder.
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"One must have chaos in one's soul to give birth to a dancing star"
~Friedrich Nietzsche
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~"Always look forward but never look back." "Nothing is out of the question for me. I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light...then I'm grateful." ~ Miles Davis~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~ JW v. Goethe~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart." ~ Marcus Aurelius~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~"The greatest risk in life is not seizing your opportunity for living it." ~ Adrian Nicholas, skydiver
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I'm sure I'm not the only one who, on waking up to find cold, wet and overcast weather, can often be found to mutter "dark, dull, dreary, damp, dour, dank, dross, drown, dregs, dirty, drab...". Poets are always using 'd' words to describe feelings of negativity, I guess because a lot of expression can be put into pronouncing the words. The face sort of ruffles up, like when we meet with other things of disapproval, like a bad smell or a rather obnoxious personality. Dead, debt, dumb, daft, dross, drown, dregs, drab, drop, dirty, ditchwater, down, drain. All create a rather depressing image of the letter 'd'. It's not all bad though...looking from the opposite angle the letter can redress the balance itself:
daylight, dawn, dusk, daffodil, dally, dewdrop, desire, delicate, delicious, delight, dream...
So, on a dreary day what better to do than dream....
....of delicious chocolate:
 
 
 
These are some of the very alluring wallpapers I stumbled upon (click them to go to the download page) at the equally tasty Chocolate & Zucchini food blog. I'm very tempted to lick my screen but I fear statically charged dust wouldn't taste quite the same.
Of course you can do some remarkable design with chocolate too - Ronaldinho for example:
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| 2005-01-04 21:31 |
| A is for... |
| Public |
| relaxed |
| Django Reinhardt - You're Driving Me Crazy |
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During a random blog jog I came across this little meme on the journal of an English writer, Chocolate and Vodka. It just caught my eye as something slightly different to the norm. You have to type each letter of the alphabet into the address bar of your browser and see what it suggests. So without further ado...
a is for A75 Viaduc - the story of constructing France's Millau bridge
b is for Babelfish
c is for The Capsule - a music and arts venue on my visiting list for this year
d is for Dabs.com
e is for my music hard drive
f is for my Flickr photo album
g is for the 2004 Global Challenge
h is for the drive on my computer storing digital camera photos
i is for a page on Edvard Munch
j is for Anders Jacobsen's blog, a Norwegian writer
k is for a schedule page for France 2 television
l is for Lesley Whelan, a Brit who produces beautiful contemporary artwork on nature, I'm glad this came up because I'd forgotten to bookmark it
m is for Mailfriends.com
n is for the National Exhibition Centre
o is for a Tsunami blog
p is for blog of Paul Kingsnorth, environmental campaigner and journalist
q is for Quank.net
r is for some random MSN advert
s is for my account page on TheCounter.com
t is for a random French blog
u is for a site entitled Goethe's Faust and the Germans
v is for Le Viaduc de Millau, the 'official' site
w is for a What's On When Guide
x is for Xfm
y is for English-Old Norse dictionary
z is for a page on freeflying
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It's at moments like this that my desire for a better camera reaches fever-pitch. Wrapped up against the bitter chill wind, to the extent that I resembled a black abominable snowman, I went on my regular aimless cycle around the lanes of the countryside outside Malvern. The sky was clear with the odd wisp of candy floss cloud and the sun hung low, so that as it passed the hills it could almost have been a beacon lit on top of them, but its light was diffused as if behind frosted glass. The conditions couldn't have been more ideal for a spectacular sunset and I spent a good half hour taking pictures of the sight as it metamorphosed through the various shades of orange, pink, red, purple, using a field gate as a support, until my fingers were too frozen to operate the buttons. As I was homeward bound a plane crossed the sky and pierced the glow, leaving a trail like a needle arrowing through red vapour. I hurriedly got my camera out and snapped a couple of shots before the moment lapsed.
It came as no surprised to me that, when I got home and looked through the photos the majority have got nowhere near capturing the striking brilliance of the sunset and there's only so much Photoshop can do to make them better. That final moment was what I really wanted and fortunately the camera picked it up quite well, although I still had to tinker a bit with the pics. It's the sharpness and flexibility of superior cameras I miss, but I'm trying to hang on until January's paycheque before investing in one. I think the Fuji Finepix S7000 is still my target, it seems to stand up pretty well against similar cameras, though it has been out for quite a while so I'm not sure whether there's a new one on the horizon.
Anyway, back to Shakespeare. It's just cruel of the OU to assign an essay due in on the 23rd...mind you at least I'm not the one who has to mark it next week. "Though this be madness, yet there be method in it".
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| 2004-12-14 20:39 |
| Grab a Book |
| Public |
| Hanne Hukkelberg live at London Jazz Festival |
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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
Well now, the book in my hand happens to be a Norsk-Engelsk dictionary so...
"torch n fakkel c; lommelykt c"
Wonder if they got 'lommelykt' from limelight?
...
Perhaps not, since 'lomme' (pronounced lomm-er) means pocket, and 'lykt' (pronounced lewkt) means - guess what? - lantern.
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6:00am Rose early to get brain stimulated, ran through potential answers in my head
8:55am Following much cursing at traffic, reached Worcester Record Office with 5 minutes to spare. Phew!
9:00am Quick tour of office, then 'practical test' asessing computer and digital camera competence. "You'd be surprised how many people get stuck even doing that" the tour guide commented as I was instructed to insert a CD-ROM and open a photo in Photoshop. Blimey.
9:45am Heartrate gathered pace as interview time arrived. Entered a small closet-like room almost completely filled by an old wooden desk, on either side of which sat two panellists with the ominous paper and pens (cue notion of people in white lab coats peering over their spectacles..."Ve haf a few qvestions to ask of you and ve vill be taking notes"). Fears abated though as all went very smoothly and quickly...naturally only one of the questions I'd prepared for cropped up, but it's amazing what adrenaline does for you when you have to think on your feet.
10:15am All over, bar the waiting
2:30pm Phone rings, job offered. Yeeehaaa! Job accepted v.v. gratefully.
2:30pm+ Generous amounts of alcoholic beverages consumed
Midnight Off to bed, exhausted but well and truly satisfied with my rather excellent early Christmas present (although it does start after Christmas)
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Just feel like spewing out a few random, vaguely interesting links I've encountered of late...
Where Ikea gets the names
- it transpires I sleep in a Norwegian placename, store my books and DVDs on Swedish placenames, have artwork framed in a colloquial expression and sit on a man's name.
Get your talking Spice Mice here!
- ever imagined Bush and Kerry in mouse form? Neither had I..though maybe as other creatures. But there's something rather appealing about their murine shreaking of phrases like "If you like cheese vote for me. If you like cats vote for that donkey", or "Where are the weapons of mouse destruction?"...or maybe the appeal lies more in the potential to throw the creatures at the nearest wall (or TV) to vent frustration.
Animal adjectives
- bovine, equine, ovine I'm fine with. But I drew a blank on the adjective for 'mousey' for that last comment. So my hunt brought me to this, animal adjective heaven. Must say I'm quite eager to find an excuse to decribe something as bombycine (silk-worm). Or phalacrocoracine (cormorant).
Bucketloads of free music from Tokyo Dawn Records and Enough Records
- tons of free mp3s to download from their artists, either through their sites or straight FTP downloading (Host: ftp.scene.org User: anonymous Pass: any e-mail address). It seems the FTP route accesses material from dozens of labels so there's literally a whole world of music to be tapped into. A huge, varied archive and I've hardly scratched the surface, but there's some interesting stuff in there (Saine par exemple).
Away from links, I've found this whole David Blunkett affair quite comical. When it was announced that he was to launch an inquiry into himself it conjured images of him playing judge and defendant in a courtroom, first donning a wig and black gown - "So, Mr Blunkett, is it true you usurped the immigration system for your own benefit?" - then throwing them aside and getting into the dock - "Certainly not, Justice Blunkett." Reminds me of the Blackadder 4 sketch where he's interrogating possible spies in the hospital and says "believe me, I'm going to be asking myself some pretty searching questions later on".
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| 2004-11-24 22:36 |
| Yessss!! |
| Public |
| cheerful |
| Gotan Project - Triptico |
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*cue annoying high-pitched mobile ring tone*
HELLO!
I've just discovered that Dom Joly has a new TV series lined up for January. It'll be on BBC 1, so they must have greater faith in its success than his chat show which got shunted into the shadows of Beeb3. The title has more punch - World Shut Your Mouth - and the premise sounds like the classic Joly of old:
"It's kind of moving on from Trigger Happy but it's in the same vein. If you loved Trigger Happy, you'll love this one.
The premise of it is that I've gone all around the world doing stuff. We've done stuff on the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon - obviously I've been having quite a nice year travelling around but we did go to some very grim places as well like Newfoundland where it was -30.
I'm really pleased with it and I think it's going to be good."
So do I, can't wait! :D
Turns out he's written a book too, an autobiography called Look At Me, Look At Me! But of course he couldn't just write a proper, sensible autobiography. Oh no, this one's made up of 50% truth and 50% lies, but the reader has to fathom out which is which.
Here's the complete and utter story, including a brush with a nun and a can of baked beans...
CIAO!
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The snow: Today brings the first snow sighting of the winter...and it isn't even winter. Next thing you know we'll be having a heat wave in April. Wait, I think we did this year didn't we?
One of the job applications I put in last week, for a digitisation assistant at the county record office, has yielded an interview in a couple of weeks time. I say interview, but it's actually interview and practical test. I have no idea what that will entail, probably some as ridiculously simple as seeing if I can take a digital photo and transfer it to computer. I'd rather have to do that as well as orate my way to the job though, as it's a chance to show what I can do, instead of the old grovelling "trust me, I can do this, this, and this, if you'll only let me show you". Would be a very welcome Christmas present if all goes well :)
Think I might risk freezing my noddle off and go and splash some cash...
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My sodden shoe stepped on a long awaited package which was lying on the doormat when I walked in this evening. Fresh from some long-winded French placename it contained a couple of little known CDs by lesser known French artists I stumbled across and impulsively ordered. One was Nouvelle Vague by themselves. Their music consists of taking early 80s New Wave songs (in the loose sense of the term) and dressing them in an acoustic bossa nova costume, with some gorgeous vocals by female soloists. Only when I discovered them did it click that Nouvelle Vague (French) = Bossa Nova (Portuguese) = New Wave (English). Though in my mind the words 'bossa nova' and 'The Clash' didn't exactly make much connection.
The other CD, A Monkey In A Yellow Hat from 9th Cloud. Loosely speaking it's trip-hop much in the ilk of Ninja Tune artists like The Herbaliser. Like a shiny new pair of French shoes to the ears.
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This inspired design for a bridge by Thomas Heatherwick has caught my eye...
Although it's only a small pedestrian bridge he decided to concentrate on the method of raising it, as well as looks. He didn't like the way bridges can look 'broken' when they're raised, and devised something resembling a crocodile tail in the way it bends up. Its segments coil up into an attractive ring on the pathway in a rather graceful and sensual way. It reminds me of, say, Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical devices - his turtle-like tank or the bird-like flying wings - and how his inspiration came from features and movements in the animal world. I don't know whether the same goes for Heatherwick but perhaps he was indirectly inspired in this way. What he does say is he believes that ''it's not enough to make a nice shape - it has to challenge in some way.''
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The official campaign site of Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. has been made virtually unreachable by anyone outside the US. On hearing this I tested the claim (here), and lo and behold got a 'Forbidden' error message. What's going on here? Do the Republicans have something to hide on their site? Are they trying to stop the world's critical masses from seeing the more suspect or downright transparent discrepancies in his policies and rhetoric?
On deeper investigation I discovered it is actually possible to sneak into the site this way. Unsurprisngly their rhetoric is as transparent as water, as well as showing that bending effect you get when you immerse something in it. Tricks of the mind, cunning with language...but then all politicians are masters of it. But few people attempting to get to the site will realise it is possible to enter its mind-bending (or mind-repelling) realm. All those US citizens voting from abroad who haven't made their mind up yet and looking to the site for information won't find anything official on the Republicans. Meanwhile John Kerry's site is openly accessible. Now it looks like this election will again hinge on a small minority of voters...those overseas maybe? Would the Republicans really want to bar a potentially crucial section of voters from accessing their site? Perhaps they're putting all their effort into brainwashing capturing domestic votes.
It would appear they have this domestic strategy all planned out, if this US socialist claim is credible. Professional thugs to hang out at remote polling stations intimidating voters to abstain? In Zimbabwe it happens, but in a highly developed Western 'democracy'? Hmm...
As for the blocked website, it seems the explanation is actually down to poor use of technology:
Bush Campaign Web Site Rejects Non-US Visitors
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"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life." - W. Somerset Maugham
Rules:
~ bold those you've read
~ italicise those you've started but never finished
~ underscore those on your to-read list
~ add three of your own
~ post to your LiveJournal
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Gross-mith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
261. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Black Bird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Jester
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bone Setter's Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookman's Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Rememberance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago)
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (or William Goldman)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O'Neill
351. Othello, by William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
340. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for Bed by David Baddiel
351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg by Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
361. The Bible
362. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
363. The Dumas Club-Arturo P?rez Reverte
364. Neither Here Nor There-Bill Bryson
365. Around the World In Eighty Day-Jules Verne
366. Asterix, Goscinny and Uderzo
367. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
368. A Streetcar Named Desire, Tenneessee Williams
369. The Iliad, Homer
370. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
371. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
372. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
373. A Fare Well to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
374. Tithe, Holly Black
375. Insomnia, Stephen King
376. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
377. Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman
378. Tiger Eyes, Judy Blume
379. The Thief of Always, Clive Barker
380. The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
381. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
382. The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander
383. You Don't Know Me, David Klass
384. Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
385. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire
386. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
387. Tommorow When the War Began - John Marsden
389. Four Past Midnight - Stephen King
390. Night in the Lonesome October - Richard Laymon
391. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
392. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
393. Cujo, Stephen King
394. Green Rider, Kristen Britain
395. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, JK Rowling
396. Kiss Chase, Fiona Walker
397. I Lucifer, Glen Duncan
398. Jack Faust, Michael Swanwick
399. The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie
400. Assassination! July 14, Ben Abro
401. Germinal, Emile Zola
402. The Saga of Eric the Viking, Terry Jones
It's not like I need any more books on my burgeoning 'to read' list but this list's just added to it anyway! Part of the problem is when you spend a lot of time on trains, and you see the books other people are reading and think "that sounds worth a look at!", or you get into conversation with someone and they'll recommend the book they're reading, or you see an attractive advert for a book at a railway station which entices you to want to read it...
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I think the high from Thursday night's gig is starting to wear away...I've moved down from walking the soft white cloud to trudging the hard earth once more. Can't stop the tunes running through my head like a scratched record though. There are absolutely no words which can describe the gig. It was an occasion to wallow in a wall of sound and a sea of soundscapes - to drown, to fly, to see the moon and the heart of the Earth, to be fired from a gun and be shot with a hundred bullets, to be inside the womb, to walk through a dark, shadowy forest, to see the sunrise from the top of a mountain, to travel the world and discover the jigsaw its parts make up, to witness a child being born, being held in its mother's arms, then dying needlessly at the hands of a 'friend', to watch a lava flow wend its way relentlessly to the sea, burning hot and merciless, to float on a calm ocean and see nothing but sea, sky and sun.
Those opening bars of Future Proof repeating for several minutes to an almost darkened stage before it turned blue and through the smoke emerged the band. Straight into Angel with Horace Andy's extraordinary vocals and the super-deep bass shuddering around the hall like a powerful tidal wave. Then Risingson, enter 3-D, and into rehash of Black Milk with Dot Allison on guitar and vocals. Then the first stunner, an unknown song, heavy bassline and drums which grew and grew into a cacophonous swell of blissful noises for several sublime minutes. Then into Spying Glass with its Jamaican tinge, first appearance of Sharra with Horace, followed by Big Wheel accompanied by less moody rainbow lighting - cue Horace bopping along in fine and rather cool fettle dressed in his rasta hat.
Teardrop was superb, very classy, though seemed to lack some of the broodiness of the album version. Dot was certainly enjoying it though. Safe from Harm was dedicated by 3-D to the unseen children killed in the Iraq war, some of their name were shown on the LED screen during the first half of the song, then it reflected the starkness and brutality of war by building into a lengthy crescendo of drums, bass and electric guitar accompanied by images of soldiers, tanks, planes, guns, explosions. Antistar was a song to die in - to sit in it and be taken somewhere you couldn't escape but didn't want to. Began with green lighting, when the strings first kicked in it felt like drowning, that sensation and sound you get as water fills your ears...then suddenly bright lights and a brighter sound like reaching the bottom of the sea and finding a brilliantly lit cavern. Then everything erupted, the strings grew with their haunting, Eastern trance, the stage became a sea of green and red...shut my eyes, unable to think of anything except the music which seemed to be flowing into me like some intravenous hallucinogen or thread of silk.
Then Mezzanine which carried a heartbeat on the LED, strong bass led into very powerful climax with bright white lights, the heartbeat turned from yellow to red to white before exploding. Inertia Creeps carried cynical slogans of the cult of celebrity (eg. 'Britney and Madonna plan second lesbian kiss'). Unfinished Sympathy saw most of the crowd on their feet dancing and clapping along, the balcony bouncing under the harmony of everybody's feet. The night turned full circle with Future Proof ending things. A green laser light spread into a loop, like a lasso around 3-D and the effect of smoke passing through it gave an incredible illusion of clouds passing through the sky, like you might see if you looked at a reflection on a pane of glass - beautiful, went perfectly with the start of the song. Again it grew and grew into a sublime cacophony of electric noise, beats and bass which rendered you open-mouthed, chilled and thoroughly immersed - the perfect blend of warm sunshine and chill wind.
All in all a very unique experience.
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I feel strangely magpie-esque but anyway...
1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to last sentence on page one hundred and fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.
Yes, Socrates; of course everyone with the least sense always calls on god at the beginning of any undertaking, small or great. A dog well-trained, obedient and active, is something even wise men find attractive. Sometimes an indictment of the Welsh, Scots or Irish as barbarians was combined with censure of their specific failings as Christians. Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption. My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it.
Taken from 1) "History of Science in Europe, Primary Sources"; 2) Goethe's "Faust"; 3) "England under the Norman and Angevin Kings"; 4) "Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Man"; 5) "Anna Karenina".
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Because it's not one of those boring million question surveys, and because I won't be able to give the same answers in a few weeks...
1. What is the name of your town?
Birmingham
2. How long have you lived there?
Pretty much 23 of my 24 years (except for a few months in Coventry)
3. Is it a town, city or village?
City
4. How big is it?
Big. Very big. I don't know exact dimensions but it's at least 20 miles North to South and probably the same East to West. Apart from the cramped centre it's very spread out and still growing rapidly, eating up more countryside...at the rate it's going Coventry and Wolverhampton will be suburbs in 20 years.
5. Do you know the population size?
The last I heard it's about 1.1 million.
6. Where is it situated (e.g. on the coast, in a desert...)?
As far from the coast as you can get in England.
7. Is it mostly hilly, mostly flat, or a mixture?
There's a range of hills about 2 miles from where I live, from the top of which you get a superb view across much of the city and get an idea of how it sprawls across hills and plains. It's a well known fact around here that when leaving and entering the city you have to either go uphill or downhill. None of the hills are very high though.
8. Are there any big lakes or rivers?
In Birmingham our lakes are mainly reservoirs, and our rivers are canals (more than Venice). I think it must be one of the only cities in the country not to have a river running through the middle of it, which makes for a very dry atmosphere in summer.
9. Do you know how your town got its name?
Birm = probably a Saxon ruler called Beornmund
Inga = the followers of Beornmund
Ham = hamlet
Therefore it's 'the hamlet of Beornmund's people'.
10. Does it attract many tourists?
Yes and no. Quite a lot of Japanese come here, a few Europeans and Americans but most of the foreign contingent are students at the 3 universities here.
11. What are the best things about your town?
It's supposedly the greenest city in England and it shows. Many of the streets are lined with trees and there are dozens of parks. It's refreshing to have all that green around when there's so much concrete in amongst it. Travel links are excellent thanks to its position, there are plenty of museums, tourist attractions, and music and arts venues here, and parts of the centre have been redeveloped and have a great atmosphere at night. Where I live is only 10 minutes from the nearest countryside, though obviously some parts are far further away. One of the best things about living here is there's never a day the same, there's always something different, unusual or unexpected going on. It would be quite nice to have some sea nearby though, and there seems to be an increasing obsession with shops in the city centre...
12. What are the worst things about it?
Oops, I've already started answering this. Other things? It gets very stuffy in summer. It's almost hopeless to try stargazing. There's a very haphazard approach to architecture in the city...the council wants to create a modern European city but seems to think putting the odd stylish ultramodern building, and masses of boring shopping centres in the midst of tons of concrete will achieve this aim. Oh, and property prices are absurdly high.
13. Quote some graffiti from around your town.
The most recent one I spotted was "Smack my arse Kelly" at the train station yesterday. Intellectual graffiti is a bit lacking here.
14. Have you lived in any other towns? Were they similar or very different?
Coventry for a short time, incredibly more saturated with concrete than Birmingham. If I'm honest Coventry is somewhere to survive, whereas Birmingham is somewhere to live.
15. Does anyone famous live in your town? If so, have you seen them?
Yes to the first, no to the second. I can't think of anyone more famous than the likes of Jasper Carrott and UB40 at present though, sadly.
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