"And then he said..."

This evening I sprayed off my patio. I can't even begin to describe how happy this made me.

When I was growing up, I always helped my mother plant the yearly flowers. I didn't exactly enjoy it. In fact, she usually had to threaten me with something awful to get me to do it. But the one part of it I loved was spraying off the sidewalks and patios when we were done to clean off the dirt and bits of flowers. I liked spraying them off after mowing too, to get rid of grass clippings. There's just something about it, making it all nice and clean and shiny with water.

I really wanted to spray off my patio, because a) it was dirty, b) sweeping just doesn't cut it and c) yay, spraying. One problem: no faucet outside. I knew that such a thing existed as an adapter to hook up a hose to one's kitchen faucet, and last night I found one and bought it, plus a hose and a small sprayer nozzle.

It got the job done, although the water pressure from a faucet isn't too thrilling, so it wasn't the high-powered jet of my youth. Got the patio clean, though, even if it took longer.

Geek stuff now.

No, I'm not going to see Dark Knight tonight. Yes, of course I want to see it. Yes, you're correct in recollecting that I have a super speshul attachment to Heath Ledger.

Maybe that's why I'm not all chompy. I can wait till next week. Or the next, even. I don't know. Normally I'd want to see a movie like this in a theater full of fans. This one? I don't know. I'm tempted to say that it's the Heath thing, that I'm loathe to see his final film and for there to be none more. I'm not sure that's it, though.

The Watchmen trailer was pretty damn righteous, though. I've read some of Watchmen. Not all. It's on the list.

Oh, and the next person to inform me that life as I know it will cease to exist and I will lose any and all pop-culture credibility I have if I don't watch Dr. Horrible like right the hell now gets a spork to the larynx. I'll get to it, all RIGHT?

Yay, I'm going to finish all my target documents for the week. Whew!

I'm reading a fascinating book right now. It's called Standing
Next to History by Joe Petro. Petro had a 23 year career in
the Secret Service during which he guarded Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald
Ford, Pope John Paul II, Dan Quayle and for four years, President
Reagan.

Petro is appealingly forthright, not holding back but exercising
discretion (he won't discuss what's inside the football, for example)
and relating interesting and often humorous stories about the people
he protected. He has a great deal of affection for both the Reagans,
who he describes as kind and generous, and none at all for Nixon, who
he said was an arrogant blowhard. Even so, he is diplomatic about
everyone.

The insight into the workings of the Service is fascinating, too,
although Petro is circumspect about certain details of their
procedures.

I was laughing out loud at one particular story. Before a
presidential visit to Moscow, he was on the far advance team, the
first of three that visits somewhere before the President does, and he
and the other people with him were staying in a Moscow hotel. One
night they decided to comb their rooms to find the listening devices
they knew the KGB had put there. they went over every inch and didn't
find anything, then one of them pulled up an area rug and found a
strange brass plate with a screw. A-ha! They unscrewed the
plate...at which point the chandelier in the room below crashed to the
floor.

Whoops.

The KGB bug thing isn't smoke, either. On a different visit when he
was protecting Nelson Rockefeller's wife, he checked into his room,
then left. When he returned, the phone was different...and there was
still plaster dust on the floor beneath the jack where they'd put the
bug in.

Anyway. It's interesting.

I feel like shitty death...

There was a chemical spill at work today in our boiler room... the vapours got into the air con system and were spreading round the building and we were sat going 'it stinks of acetone in here' for about an hour before the whole team started feeling dizzy and headachey. We all went outside for about half an hour and I started feeling worse... retching, uber dizzy and a killer headache. Asked to go home after that which was allowed but I've had to get my Mum to rescue my car from work because I was in not fit state to drive. Headache and dizziness have passed, but still feeling sick now :(

I'm really pissed of because I should be at Lynn and David's now helping them in the new flat and having nice food and nice booze. Instead I'm stuck at home feeling like donkey butt cheek. The universe seems intent on shitting on me from a great height at the moment because my plans for Sunday night have also been fucked over. Am hoping I'll feel better in the morning so I can still go to York for one night.

EDIT: OH apparently the spill was Graffeti cleaner and was 'a small spill' if it was that small the vapours shouldn't have made their way up a 15 Story tower block really *rolleyes*

Today I am wearing: a long scarlet linen skirt, a bright orange v-necked t-shirt, white fake Birkenstocks with orange flowers, fake ivory necklace and bangles, silver and garnet ring. My fingernails and toenails are painted bright orange.

How about you?

I remembered today something I failed to mention when talking about our visit to the Globe. Now pinko-wet-libertarian-lite that I might be, I can't help but have a liking for a firm and consistent application of rules. I don't know why; just something in my personality I guess. And it was down to this that there was another aspect of the Globe that tickled me in a "by God you've got to admire their consistency!" kind of way.

The standing area in front of the stage is called "the pit" and the audience members who stand there "groundlings". The rules are firm. No sitting is aloud. You must stand. We were watching - from a seating position in the upper tier - King Lear, and as anyone who's ever watched that play knows, it's a long play with a very long first act (about two hours). So we're watching away when, about an hour in, we notice a commotion in the crowd. We look further, and see that a man has collapsed and is lying, apparently unconscious, on the pit's concrete floor, surrounded by a cluster of people looking very awkward and embarrassed. (i.e. Very English).

A couple of the usher/attendants quickly walked over and spent a couple of minutes talking to him, presumably trying to establish to what extent he wasn't okay. (I'm guessing he was at least mostly conscious, because it wasn't as though they were calling for an ambulance, thumping his chest, or giving him a good slap). Meanwhile, in the grand tradition of both London theatre ("the show must go on") and London theatre goers (there's always one or two unconscious bodies to step over when you're on your way home after a night out) the play went on.

It didn't really spoil it in any way. To be honest, when you've got a two hour first act you need a little excitement like this to see you through to the interval. And after a couple of minutes, an attendant rolled a wheelchair up, they helped him into it, and then they wheeled him off.

Anecdote ended? Not quite.

Because about five minutes later I saw a rather elderly woman attendant make her way across to where a young girl was sitting down at the back of the pit leaning against the wooden backwall. "Ah I thought," as the older woman bent down to talk to the younger one. "After what's just happened to that bloke, she's wanting to check that this girl isn't feeling faint too."

The spoke for a few moments, and then the girl stood up, and the older woman walked back to her post. No. She was just telling the girl to stand up. It clearly takes more than wheeling a semi-conscious audience member out of the pit to make the Globe reverse their polices.

And you've got to respect that.

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/2008/07/18/peter-bradshaw-reviews-standard-operating-procedure/

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/?p=2742

[movies] Peter Bradshaw reviews Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure: ‘The Abu Ghraib scandal was a product of the digital age: ordinary roll-film cameras or Polaroids might have been too conspicuous, there would be no facilities for development, and any resulting prints might have been confiscated or lost. But digital images, immediately accessible and so easily transferable and reproducible, and with ineradicable date and time stamps, were the captors’ undoing. Watching this film is the grimmest experience imaginable…’

How do you lot feel about SHADOWRUN-inspired fiction? Is this the proper forum for that, or should one be created (if it hasn't been already)?

Best,

-M.

The English language might have over 600,000 words, but I still find meanings in life that fail to be covered by any one of those words. In particular, I've long felt that there needs to be a word to describe the momentary sense of confusion and dislocation caused when someone who you had simply assumed to be Polish reveals themselves to be British by the simple expedient of opening their mouth.

A classic example of this occurred to me this morning, while walking up the steps to the platform of my train station. Ahead of me were two blokes dressed in paint splattered overalls making their way slowly up the steps, and it wasn't so much that I assumed they were Polish as my subconsciously rambling and still half-asleep soul unconsiously categorised them so. Steps. People. Marble. Cigarette butt. Sky. Blue. Polish decorators. Weekday. Work. Bollocks.

Like you do. Anyway, I caught up with them, and heard the following, dislocating snippet of conversation.

First Bloke: [in a broad London accent] You're not into this "take two steps at a time" malarkey, then?

Second Bloke: [in a broad London accent] Fuuckkk thaat!

Of course, the clues were there all the time, weren't they? If they'd have been Polish, they would have been taking the stairs two steps at a time, wouldn't they?

But anyway, the word. Any ideas?

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080717.html

A careful look at the full field of view for

Tomorrow morning will be the last day of the conference.  It's been enjoyable, it really has.  We have come together as a group and had a lot of fun the last couple of days.  And slowly people have been REreading.  Maybe what I'm doing is rubbing off.  After our classes today, we were all sitting in the lounge reading our lines for tomorrow.  Well, I considered myself reading, everyone else said they were translating.  No matter.  I sat off from the group, reading along, often flowing ahead of them but then I would get bogged down a tiny bit and slow up or I'd be listening to them explaining and reexplaining the Latin to other members of the group and forget what I was doing.  

And I realized something....  years ago a friend, Donna Jacobson (sp?) and I were in college and in a Livy class together.  I knew I was in over my head, that I really hadn't had enough Latin--or rather, didn't know how to read prose.  I remember going to a review one night, I think upstairs at the student union (don't know why I remember that....), and Donna was more or less leading it.  I remember struggling with long sentences and clauses and whatnot, and it just seemed so easy to her.   I'm now where she was, and my companions here are where I was.  They are a bright group.  They know their grammar and whatnot.  But I *see* what the Latin is doing more easily.  I truly think a great measure of that is reading in word order and reading whole sections not just one line or two at a go.  I read far enough through to see who's doing what to whom, to see that I started a sentence with a nom pl and it ended with one too.  In fact, I feel so at home with what Latin is doing with word order for effect and suspense, I've gotten to the point that I really and truly do not want to translate it into English most of the time, because most of the time what's in the Latin is really and truly lost.

Last night we had our Roman meal which we cooked together and then ate with a fair amount of drinking going on during both.  I then taught Greek dancing, followed by just all sorts of dancing.  It was mainly just me and another woman, basically dancing to whatever was on and not caring that we were out there by ourselves.  A great time was had by all.

Tonight we went out for Italian and stuffed ourselves to the gills.  When we came back, we read Miles Gloriosus, which complements the Aeneid nicely because the soldier claims to be the grandson of Venus!  I had never read Miles and I ended up being given the lead slave role.  It's been a loooooooong time since I had a part in a play reading, probably since college.  It was a nice transportation back in time.

My card playing has been a big hit--and in fact, this was exactly what I've always wanted: to have a group of adults/teachers who had full command of Latin grammar and such who could take my basic card-playing script and adlib when comfortable.  We played the other night and we played again this afternoon when the network was down and couldn't do much in the computer lab.

I have the evaluation to fill out and I have a lot of thoughts that I would like to include.  Constructive things.  I might be listened to, who knows.  After all, we did read the passage as a whole before we started reading today and then read it again afterwards.  What it lacked was dramatic performance/emphasis.  I know I'm a bit egocentric about reading.  As a teacher, I want to read first because I want the students to know what it SHOULD sound like, with emphasis and drama, so to speak.  Then when we read together, I read WITH them and we ALL read.  And if it isn't dramatic enough, I make them read it again if we have time.  

While it is important to call on people individually, this also means others will be left out.  Choral reading, I think, is key to building a true comfort level in reading.  (I wonder if that's true....)  

But my point was, I think last night I actually had made these suggestions about reading before and after to one of the profs.  I had had a fair amount of wine by that point and had done a lot of Greek dancing, so my memory isn't the best.  If this suggestion was heard and tried, then I really should lay out a plan of action, some real suggestions that might make this a truly superior workshop.  It's already way up there because of the size (small) and personal attention.

Anyway.  Time to go to bed.  I'll have to work on the evaluation in the a.m.  And pack.  And everything else.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/public-service-announcements.html

Dave McKean, for too many years now a man without a website, wants me to tell you that things are finally stirring at the unusually-named http://davemckean.com/ (and that Allen Spiegel will be selling original art from The Graveyard Book at Comic-Con.)

Ah, the city with the most observant Jews (New York) gets you on Rosh Hashana. Alas.

Maybe next time. These events you just listed, including the Sep 30 event, aren't the official Graveyard Book Tour, right? Ordinarily I'd assume the Book Tour wouldn't be until the book has come out, but I know that this tour will be more of a reading/Q&A tour rather than a signing tour, and if it's not a signing, then the tour can start before the book is available.

It would be awesome if all publicity/scheduling people had a big calendar with every religion's holidays, along with demographic maps showing which places have a lot of which religion.

A few years ago Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket's ammanuensis) and I were grumbling together about the way that, probably thousands of years ago, it was decided that the Jewish High Holidays would fall in High Publishing Season, and how unfair this was to Jewish authors and their readers and, nu, what were you going to do about it?

To answer your question, No, the events I listed will be the US Graveyard Book Tour events. The US publication date is September the 30th. (The UK pub date is Hallowe'en, and I'll be signing and/or reading in Dublin and Scotland and elsewhere in the UK and London.)

But there is an event to make up for my being in New York on Rosh Hashana: On November the 9th, which is a Sunday, I'll be In Conversation With the amazing Chipp Kidd, at the 92nd St Y, talking about 20 years of Sandman. And I'll be signing stuff afterwards, if the last events I did at the Y are anything to go by.

...

I ran into this quote in the New Yorker, about reviewer Katherine White. The first paragraph is from the article, the second is a quote from White:



The full article -- the birth of Stuart Little compared and contrasted with the rise and fall of the first influential children's librarian -- is wonderful. It starts at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=1

I was interviewed in Locus this month (the one with Garth Nix on the cover), and tried to say something very much the same about Young Adult fiction: that young adults (and older kids) should be reading everything, relentlessly. They should be reading outside their comfort zones, because the training wheels have come off, and that's the only way they'll find out where their comfort zones are, reading everything.

(Also learned from that Locus that Michael De Larrabeiti was dead. I interviewed him once, as a journalist, and loved his three Borrible books -- they were (especially the first two) hugely influential on Neverwhere.)

...

There's an article about the revised and retooled theatre production of Mister Punch in LA today at http://www.latimes.com/theguide/performing-arts/la-gd-perf17-2008jul17,0,4577290.story -- with a marvellous photo, which looks strangely McKeanish (see below). It's an interview done with me last week when I'd just got back from Brazil and was slightly under the weather, but the reporter has made it sound like I was still making sense.




WHERE: Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fri., 4 and 8 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun.; ends Aug. 31. (no perf Aug 8-10).

PRICE: $25 ($50 opening night gala)

INFO: (800) 838-3006; www.rogueartists.org

...

And, because all questions posed on this blog are eventually answered:

ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha did a run of 50 black on black Disaster Area t-shirts in the late 1980s. There were also yellow on black and white on black versions but the last was sold around 2001, and they have not done a reprint since then.

Someone asked what sizes the various tee shirts are. They range from xxl down to the ones where I'm not sure how I used to get them on and am certain either the shirts have shrunk or I used to be a lot smaller. So from Too Huge For Me To Wear down to Really Bloody Small.

...

My friend Kelli Bickman has a mother named Connie. Last time I saw Connie she came over and gathered up all the accumulated bags I'd got from planes over the years, the ones with the mini toothbrush and the eye-shade in, that had built up into a small mound at the back of a cupboard, and she took them away to do something good and worthwhile with them for kids. Kelli wrote the other day to say,

My Mom is the volunteer creative director for Children's Culture Connection (CCC), a non-profit organization working with 12 international charities to help children in America, Haiti, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, India, Peru, Kenya, Nigeria, China, Bulgaria and Russia. CCC has raised thousands of dollars to help empower and connect the children of the world, built houses in Vietnam, installed water pipelines in Sri Lanka to bring clean water to orphanages, sent kids to school, helped with medical supplies in the Amazon jungles, organized art projects with children in seven countries. and more...it is really amazing.

Feeling very inspired by the lessons learned from my mother and her spirit of giving, I am working to help Children's Culture Connection raise awareness, as well as send art supplies to the children of the world. I've just re-developed my website (www.kellibickman.net) and will donate 20% of the sale of any works of art to buy art supplies for these children and help them to expand their imaginations and their world.

Can you put this link on your blog? It would be greatly appreciated...I am eager to spread the good news. Of course, if anyone is interested in getting involved or donating directly to the CCC, that is most welcome. www.childrenscultureconnection.org

...

And everything in this whole post pales into insignificance when placed beside...

Mr Toast as Sandman.

In case anyone's interested, here is the first preview I wrote for that Best Freelance Job Ever website.

Death Race

*sigh* Here I go, recreating the long, involved art-related post I wrote yesterday that got eaten.

My current spate of art-collecting was prompted by the bare-ass walls of my bedroom. That wasn't a surprise. What WAS a surprise to me was how strongly I'm suddenly gravitating towards folk art and primitives. I've been thinking about why that is. I've always liked the folk-art aesthetic but I've never really collected it before now. I suppose a big part of it is that it's readily and inexpensively available, and it enables me to have original, one-of-a-kind artwork on my walls without paying an arm and a leg for it.

I've got a bit of a collection going by an artist named Tamara Ryan. Here's one that I already have.



Her paintings run strongly on this theme. All of them feature trees in the foreground, with her stylized round leaves. Some are winter scenes, some aren't. Many of them have these cute owls in the trees. There was one that had sheep on a hillside that I really wanted but missed the end of the auction for. The paintings aren't large, and I think the most expensive one I bought was $20.

Now, when I first started looking at folk art paintings, I asked myself what's the difference between primitive art and just bad art. Well, I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that there's definitely a difference. I was in an antique/junk shop last week and I saw a ton of homemade, amateur art...all of it just bad. Not folk art. Not primitive. Just bad. Tamara's paintings aren't like that. They have a childlike quality, but they aren't childish. They have a style to them, an intent. Maybe that's the difference, I don't know. But I know that it's an immediately apparent difference when you look at the paintings whether they're primitive, or just bad.

It doesn't help that the terminology has gotten muddled. Historically, "folk art" was artistry in objects that weren't intended to be pieces of art, like handmade weathervanes or the carvings on a handmade door. That definition has expanded to include what used to just be called "primitive," in other words art by people without art training. Then there's "outsider art" which originally meant art done by people in insane asylums (no, really) and has kind of expanded into the folk art/primitives arena as well, although outsider art tends to be edgier and done by people really on the fringes, like homeless people.

Okay, so related topic.

Remember those tacky-awesome vintage needlepoints I got at the Sunbury Crafts & Antiques Fair? I find myself wanting to acquire MORE tacky needlepoint.

It's no secret that I enjoy things that have a certain kitsch factor. In my primary living spaces, like the living room, front hall, bedroom, etc, I like to display tasteful, attractive art. But I think it would be really super fun to have a large collection of kitschy vintage needlepoints hung salon-style in a secondary space, like a stairwell. I was surprised by how much I liked how the needlepoints looked up on the wall, especially when they were grouped. Grouping them kind of removes the implication that I think they're good. If I hung them alone, that'd put over the message that I'm being serious hanging this tacky fruit-basket needlepoint. But hanging them together makes it about the genre, not the individual pieces, and lets me hang them...ironically? Does that make sense?

Anyway. It's really easy to find these old needlepoints, but not quite as easy to find the RIGHT ones. IT's a delicate process. There's a balance to be struck with their taste level. See, they can't be too nice and tasteful, but neither can they be too hideous and awful. It's a narrow band of taste between legitimately nice and vomitous where you find the awesome-tacky-kitschy. I don't want any with people in them. No Precious Moments, please. Nothing country, no samplers or teddy bears. I'm finding myself mostly choosing landscapes, farm scenes, that kind of thing.

OF the ones I'm watching at the moment, I think this one's probably my favorite:



Mmmmmm, tacky. Wool embroidery. Want.

Y'all probably think I'm nuts. That's okay.

The art I've gotten for the bedroom is arriving now. Soon I'll be able to hang it. I've had some (I hope) great ideas for creative ways to hang and display that I will attempt to implement this weekend. Pics to come if they work out.

It's very hot and humid. No sunshine. My eyeshadow has melted from my eyelids in a non-pleasing fashion. Damn you, Juuuuuuuly!

( And then I inadvertently looked at a LoLcat while drinking tea. Alas, poor monitor )

The first thing any first-time visitor to London will notice is that while London might be an ancient city, its buildings, in the main, aren't. Granted, there's the Tower of London. But that's mostly it. Even Westminister Abbey was rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between the Great Fire of 1666 and the Luftwaffe of 1940, not much remains of medieval London save for its street pattern. (And of course, the average speed of its traffic, which is also remarkably medieval).

So if any roleplayers from the less ancient parts of the world (yes Americans, I'm looking at you here!) were to come to London seeking inspiration for the settings of their D&D games, they wouldn't find much to inspire them.

At least that's what I thought until yesterday, when my other half and I went to watch King Lear at Shakespear's Globe Theatre (official site).

You're find the Globe on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral. It isn't the real Globe of course; after being destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1613-14, it was finally shut down for good in 1642 during the English Civil War by a bunch of (literal, actual) puritans and demolished in 1644. (If anyone ever wonders why we don't go for republicanism, it might be that when we tried it, they did stuff like that).

This current incarnation of the Globe, which is built near the site of the original, was the result of more than 20 years of work by the American actor Sam Wanamaker. Sadly, he never got to see the building finished, but it's a worthy legacy to him - which my crappy camera-phone pictures do not in any way do justice.

Plans did not exist of the original Globe. All that the designers and architects had to go on were a few drawings, descriptions, and some archaeological evidence - plus discussions with actors and directors about how such a theatre would have to be constructed to work. So it can't said that the new Globe is an exact replica of the old.

But if you want to know what a medieval theatre would have looked like, and more importantly worked like, then I think it's pretty much spot on, from the rough lime and wood exterior and the thatched wood to the lack of glass in the windows. About the only obvious anachronisms - save for us, its twenty-first century audience - are the discrete electric lights.

There are things I see in life that make me want to write a D&D scenario and this was one of them. I'd strongly recommend a visit, either to take in a play (they do modern plays, as well as Shakespeare's Globe) or to go on a guided tour.

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/2008/07/17/the-10-mental-illnesses-batman-indisputably-has/

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/?p=2731

[comics] The 10 Mental Illnesses Batman Indisputably Has … #2 -Munchhausen-by-Proxy: ‘This disorder, which usually exhibits itself in terms of a parent causing the illness of a child in order to garner attention, sympathy, and means of support for themselves, is something close to what Batman does with his many “wards”. Namely, he puts them in constant danger so that, perhaps, he can save them as his parents failed to save him from the life he’s inherited. Also, so he can stand in front of a glass case displaying the Robin togs they died in, so he can feel bad about himself…’

http://www.astrofiammante.net/blog/why-playing-with-the-ocean-is-a-risky-game-post66/

Bournemouth has decided that it would like to be a surf resort, according to The Guardian, and to attract all those surfing tourists for who Cornwall is just too inconveniently western. What a distance to travel!

To that end the Dorset town is building an artificial reef out of specially-designed sandbags in Poole Bay in order to take the area’s natural swell and turn it into breaking waves. Here’s what the paper has to say about the scheme:

Artificial reef: Surfers wait to catch Dorset’s £3m wave

It would be pushing it to suggest that the atmosphere in the Dorset resort of Bournemouth was febrile but there was certainly some excitement yesterday as work on installing the reef began in earnest. In the coming months the reef, the size of a football pitch and made of dozens of huge specially-designed bags pumped full of sand, will take shape on the sandy seabed starting at 210 metres off the beach at Boscombe. Surfers are due to start catching the first artificially boosted waves by the end of October.

The reef, which is costing the best part of £3m, is the centrepiece of a regeneration project in Boscombe - compared with central Bournemouth a poorer, less glamorous part of Poole Bay. On the back of the development boutique hotels are being developed, restaurants opened and beachside flats built.

Boscombe is being marketed aggressively to the growing band of south-east surfers for whom day trips to traditional surfing hotspots in Devon and Cornwall are out of the question. Marine biologists are said to be keen, thinking the structure might provide a haven for fish and crustaceans.

Other resorts are looking on with interest. After Bournemouth the reef’s designer, the New Zealand company ASR, is moving on to Kovalam in southern India, and it has carried out a feasibility study for two reefs in Goa. If Boscombe is a success it expects other British seaside towns to be banging on its door. Read full story here…

Now this is a long way from being the first artificial reef project. In fact, there’s one just up the coast, made from a sunken Navy frigate and designed for divers. And, off the east coast of America, they use old New York subway cars.

And the Poole project, with its specially-designed sandbags, is obviously being carried out in a well-researched and scientifically controlled manner.

But also just up the coast from Bournemouth, close to Start Point, is the village of Hallsands - or, at least, what was the village of Hallsands until 1917.

Now it’s just a few broken houses clinging to the base of the cliff after the opposite process, dredging to remove material which was used to improve a harbour at Plymouth, undermined its beach and caused storms to destroy it.

This is not to imply that Poole is being unwise to build its reef. Presumably we now have a much clearer understanding of how ocean forces work and of their effects on coastlines.

But it does make a poignant contrast. And it also illustrates the perils of unintended consequences and of the hubris of thinking we can control what the ocean does.

This was my favourite line from the Guardian story: “The sea is a mysterious thing. We don’t know how it will affect the coast.” Jim Greene, a local surfer, said: “Surfing’s a lot about nature, responding to what is there naturally, so an artificial reef doesn’t appeal to everyone.”

This is probably very easy, but still, that should make us all feel big and clever...

I read an article today in Metro about a bloke who's marrying his daughter. You wouldn't think that marrying your daughter would be something you'd want made public, but they're both very happy to talk about it. Why?

( Answer... )

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/2008/07/17/the-letters-of-stanley-kubrick/

http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/?p=2719

[movies] The letters of Stanley Kubrick … Kubrick on Full Metal Jacket: ‘My intention was not to relish violence for its own sake but to emphasise the reality of both the training process undergone by the recruits and the war situation in which they found themselves. A crucial aspect of this process is the use of language to dehumanise the young men. This had to be presented in a totally truthful way otherwise I would have compromised the reality of the story. I make no apology for taking such an approach. Full Metal Jacket offers no easy moral or political answers. It is not intended to be either pro-war or anti-war. It is concerned with the way things are.’

I cannot get enough of this Rodrigo y Gabriela album. For those of you unfamiliar (as I was, I'd heard of them but had no idea what kind of music it was) it's this really intense, kick-ass Spanish guitar. Instrumental, but kind of hardcore. Awesome.

I also can't stop listening to the Adele album. I listened to "Best for Last" five times in a row today, then "Tired" five times in a row. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I also liked the OneRepublic album, but I thought I probably would, and Bitter:Sweet is awesome. I also really liked that Howl album.

On the downside, I didn't care for Sara Bareilles, Coheed & Cambria or Cold War Kids. My winnowing method is simple...I listen to an album in its intended order, and if by the fifth song none of them have made an impression, I'm done.

But I still greatly appreciate the recs from whoever suggested those albums. Exposure is a good thing!