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Tag: podfume, rocketboom, vlog, ipod, fireant, indie

Watching The Detectives

Someone's on to me. They're trying to shake me down. They're running a make on me. Next it will be a photofit.

But I can live in the margins, Debra.

On the edge.


Nice girls not one with a defect,
cellophane shrink-wrapped, so correct.
Red dogs under illegal legs.
She looks so good that he gets down and begs.
She is watching the detectives.
"ooh, he's so cute!"
She is watching the detectives
when they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
but he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.

Long shot of that jumping sign,
Visible shivers running down my spine.
Cut to the babe taking off her clothes.
Close-up of the sign that says,"We never close"
You snatch a tune, you a match a cigarette,
She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet.
I don't know how much more of this I can take.
She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake.

You think you're alone until you realize you're in it.
Now fear is here to stay. Love is here for a visit.
They call it instant justice when it's past the legal limit.
Someone's scratching at the window. I wonder who is it?
The detectives come to check if you belong to the parents
who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter's disappearance.
Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay,
it only took my little fingers to blow you away.

Just like watching the detectives.
Don't get cute!"
It's just like watching the detectives.
I get so angry when the teardrops start,
but he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.
Watching the detectives.
It's just like watching the detectives.

Thursday Thirteen V20

1. I admit I cheated this week and posted this on Friday. But instead of calling it Friday Firteen, I'll just call it Thirteen, this week.
2. I was out until after midnight on Thursday and therefore didn't have time to post anything.
3. I was with Liz and Victor at a riverside venue until around 23:30.
4. Earlier in the evening, Victor and I had visited another location but had arrived around 45 minutes late. Thats because we'd left the previous place 45 minutes late. Oh dear.
5. I was also out until after midnight on Wednesday. We were in Bloomsbury and ate Thai food.
6. I had my first meeting on Thursday at 07:00, so didn't get so much sleep.
7. My Friday also starts with an Italian meeting at 07:00.
8. I have mastered running 4 way video conferences using fancy equipment, and did so with UK, Frankfurt, Paris and Copenhagen on Wednesday morning. Only problem was, that I thought Copenhagen was Stockholm. No wonder they ignored everything.
9. I had another Video conference with Munich, but the Munich room was in use. I called Claudia, and could see her visit the room full of people, because the VC was switched on but no-one had realised. Spooky.
10. I tried to attract their attention by moving the distant camera, but no-one noticed. Spooooky.
12. I can understand why people have little covers on their video cameras after that.
13. My iMac has a camera built in, with no cover. A little green light shines whe it is use. I hope it always shines when it is in use.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
Leanne, Chickadee, Judy, Raehan, Janne, Andrea, cq, amanda, venus, elle, mar, tnchick, kimmy
(leave a comment, I'll add you here!)

Get Thursday Thirteen code here!
Leave your Thursday Thirteen link as a comment and I will link to you!



Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

OTA: Wordless Wednesday

shafted or just lost?

I watched the end of the first series of Lost, where they opened the hatch and stared down the shaft.

Then, tonight, they've finally descended into the shaft, which took a whole episode. It seems to lead to the living quarters of an old science project improbably supported by an old apple 2 computer.

Whatever technology was there has obviously gone wrong and now looks as if the system needs to be reset every 108 minutes, as part of an emergency protocol.

I know part of the idea is to make this series entertaining and complex, but when we take 2-3 episode to descend into the shaft, I wonder if the pacing is correct.

you call that a telescope?

Dr Who's recent episode (the one about Victoria and the telescope) was set in Torchwood House, which has its own website. Theres a special area where you can get access to the telescope's controls, but to do this you have to type in a password. (Its "Victoria").

The point is, this website describes a fictional location in Scotland in a fairly plausible way, and has been dropped into the internet by the makers of Dr Who. Take a look - and I believe there's a few other sites sprinkled around, linked to other episodes. Clever, or what?

tea and reflection

I just had a play at the blog olympics, being hosted by craziequeen at the palace.

I realised whilst I was doing this that I've now been running this blog for a year and a day (rashbre1 was my first test blog a few days earlier-its still there and I do still use it for occasional experiments).

The first post on rashbre central was 'Hello world' on 30 April 2005, and I now use that archive date as an "alumni zone" for various clocks, weather wizards and internet pets that seemed cool when I first used them but have now been moved to this special and rather untidy parking lot.

Some of you may recognise these and, admit it, some of you still use them too.

Well a year on and I've moved from knowing nothing about blogging to the point where I can dash off an entry in about ten minutes, usually with a picture as well. I've gone through a start up phase with no comments or readers, to a moderate little buzz now, which encourages me to continue.

Its also been interesting as I've done a few other things along the way - picking up a guitar - sharing pictures, thoughts, music, humour - the nanowrimo novel - yes I'm still determined to get it published! and most recently branching into video. And all of that interacting with a diverse and similarly entertaining network of bloggerati.

And now, time for a cup of tea.

rashbre.tv - fischerspooner emerge

This short video showcases Fischerspooner during a studio performance of 'Emerge'. It's a techno dance piece and uses interplay between the movie making and the performance. Some intense moments.

rashbre.tv: HD London

This is a very short video about London, but its been filmed in High Definition, so it takes a lot of bandwidth. 20Mb for 30 seconds of video. Dont try this unless you have broadband!

taking comfort obsessively

A recent study discussed on Radio Four said that peak 'book reading time' for many people occurs in their teenage years. Something to do with set texts at school, I suppose. Later, I guess people divide into those who read books and those who don't with special categories for non-fiction, historical, autobiography and sports.

I'm one of the people who does read and usually have one of those untidy piles of partly finished books. Two recent ones to be added are both blog influenced - Improbable by Adam Fawer (recommended by utenzi's blog) and Taking Comfort by Roger Morris (who writes a blog and has some amusing reflections on getting the book published).

I decided to read the Roger Morris book as soon as it arrived from Amazon and here's a few comments:

The story starts when our main character, Rob, sees a Japanese student with a 'Hello Kitty' binder throw herself in front of a tube train. Rob retrieves the folder and hides it in his briefcase, on the way to his new marketing job. At this point I was expecting a conventional mystery, but we see instead a nascent compulsive behaviour progressing in Rob and the way he views those around him.

Rob lands in a fairly typically described London City office, with the trappings of expensive desk furniture and a role which is not entirely obvious to the reader, or to Rob, it would seem. But that is incidental to the main emergence of his compulsive behaviour, which centres around collecting artifacts from misfortune. The Japanese folder is the first of a series of items he acquires in increasingly bizarre ways.

Interspersed with this are product analyses of everyday (and not so everyday) items, which are examined in minute detail, usually from a marketing perspective, sometimes by specification, and sometimes by benefit or functionality. This has a link to Rob's professional world, but the same analysis transfers to other actions and situations in the story. This varies from making a cup of tea (an almost Haruki Murukami level of description here) to feature-listing velcro adjustable concealable police body armour.

So this becomes a story about human edginess and obsession as much as about a series of events. There's a deadening of perspective (like in a madness) between the view of a fountain pen, a hand-gun and a claw hammer - all of which have important places in the plotline.

The situations accelerate in the last section of the book. Some unfinished business creates a situation where Rob's obsessions become exposed. I won't say more, in the interests of plot integrity, but there are some neat links to earlier parts of the book.

The author, Roger Morris, uses a style for the book which appears deliberately experimental and somewhat stylised. For example, there's no speech marks in the text and this adds a sense of transference to the interpretations of character motive. Is the character really thinking the way described, or is it the perception of this state from inside of Rob's head? I found myself thinking of Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman in places, where the sliding perspective appears rational when considered from within the head of the person describing it.

And in places there are references to idiom (how an American can 'verbify' most nouns) and a few other linguistic tricks to create a smile.

I found this an intense book to read. I found myself inside Rob's head and the compulsive obsessive behaviour and a lowered sense of reality are distrubing traits, more so when they are blended with much other reality descriptions.

This is an interesting example of New Writing, I hope Roger does well from this experience and additionally continues his entertaining blog about the experience of writing.

And I feel I should also comment on the experience of the book itself. A hardback, 215 pages, weight, 0.315kg, Macmillan New Writing imprint, Heronwood Press Typesetting and Printed in China. You'll know why I'm saying this if you read the book.

rashbre.tv - venice grand canal

This is really still an experiment in packaging video for the internet. A trip along the grand canal in venice accompanied by one of the recent Christina Nott tracks. Enjoy the sights!

And by tomorrow, I'll start to post about some other things again!

rocketboom

Amanda's rocketboom flies high in the vlogosphere - so here is an episode - they are three minutes per day and well worth a visit.

I'm really practicing ways to package my own content at the moment and thinking about a graphic (like the TV set) as a way to highlight any vlog type entries. Oh yes, I started with a square blue television and then gradually photoshop took over.