2009, Week 14 & 15

I can't work out whether my posting has slowed down due to a) not doing anything interesting to write about or b) me being too lazy to be bothered. I think it's mostly laziness, which ironically is the reason for me not having anything interesting to write about. Not having anything interesting to write about has never stopped me before though I suppose?

Our house is pretty ugly, but I like to think its oddness is part of its charm. Who else can say they have a 2 x 3 meter room attached to their bedroom that is referred to as 'the void' on the blueprints? It's especially ugly from the front, an 80's affront to architectural beauty, with no redeeming features and an afterthought of an extension. It's our house though and I love it. I think I have a lot in common with it; born in 1982, aesthetically odd and probably vastly over valued.

There are two weeks of the year when the house does look marginally attractive, when the tree in our front garden blossoms. To counter that I have to spend two weeks driving around in a Skoda covered in girly pink petals.




This week I finished reading 'Book of the Dead', the complete history of zombie cinema. It's a book I've been wanting to buy for ages and was well worth the wait. For example, did you know there are zombie films named 'Urban Scumbags vs. Countryside Zombies' (German), 'Space Zombie Bingo' (Troma) and 'Nudist Colony of the Dead'. Ironically, the next book on my list to read is the 'Tibetan Book of Living and Dying'. Sounds similar, but it probably doesn't give any analysis on the implicit social commentary of 'Dawn of the Dead'.

I very rarely watch a film that affects me emotionally, and I watch alot of movies. The last film that caught me off guard was United 93. Before I'd watched the film I was very cynical of the whole idea, I couldn't believe that hollywood could tell the story in a tasteful and non-exploitative way. By the end of the film I was mentally and, to a degree, physically destroyed. I don't know why but I can feel when a film's got to me, normally about 10 minutes before the emotional crescendo that has been building through out the film peaks. When the film does reach it's inevitable climax it's like a punch to the stomach. And it makes me well up a bit.

Last week I watched 'Waltz with Bashir' and it completely bowled me over, much like United 93. It's amazing filmmaking and I think pretty groundbreaking for an animation (more so than any Pixar film of late). If you read this, please go watch Waltz with Bashir and United 93. If you're lucky there may be one copy amongst those 200 'Epic Movie' DVDs in your local blockbuster.

2009, Week 7

For a few hours this week, there was a big chance that I had been horribly killed. Well, at least from my from Mum's point of view, as there was a car accident in Loughborough and she happened to hear about it. I'm not complaining, it's nice to know that someone is thinking about you. I do feel sorry for my sister who lives in South London, she must get the 'just checking you're not dead' answering machine message twice a day.

Talking of the afterlife, it turns out that our potential wedding venue, Leicester's Guild Hall, is the most haunted building in Leicester. So haunted in fact that Yvette Fielding and a bunch of morons paranormal researchers have paid it a visit (you can watch the footage on youtube, although you really must have something, anything better to do, don't you?). There's also 'The Best Paranormal Evidence' which was shot at the Guild Hall, which is essentially sped up footage of sun light moving across a floor. These ghostbusters would shit themselves if they ever saw a disco ball in full swing. Oh, and if you really do buy into most haunted, you really have to read this expose of Derek Acorah, it's hilarious.

There's a weird looking monument that we drive past everytime we goto Loughborough, and I really wanted to go check it out this weekend. It's called the 'Temple of Venus' and sits solitary on a hill next to the A512 (picture here). I know it's on the Garendon Park estate which has partly public grounds, but there are no noticable footpaths near the monument. The only useful bit of information I could find was from the knowhere guide:

the venus temple, ... the farmer. whenever u try to cross his field to get to it, he fires his fucking gun! wanker.

Unsurprisingly, I rain-checked the idea and watched The Wire instead. Me being shot dead would only upset my mum and put a real downer on the weekend.

This weekend I really wanted to fix the floorboards in the bathroom. At the moment standing on them feels like being on a ship in stormy weather. It turns out this is because they're badly fitted and dangerously thin. Basically, until I fix them we need to introduce a weight limit on the bathroom. Until normal service resumes, fatties will be redirected to the shed with a bucket. As usual though, I procrastinated upon this all weekend and got absolutely nothing done.

My little sister was annoying me with compliments this week. She'd been listening to my 6th form band demo CD and asking why I don't record songs anymore. Buoyed by her encouragement I restrung my guitar (previous strings were 4 years old) and wrote a song about how I shouldn't write songs anymore. Unintentionally, It was actually a meta-song in that the song itself proved the point of the lyrics. Nevertheless, I ordered a shiny new 88 key 'stage piano' (i.e. keyboard) to try and start learning piano again, something which I started a year ago and quickly abandoned, blaming my previous keyboard and its sticky keys.

Plan next week? Putting some good time into procrastinating about floor boards and pro-actively planning my excuse for giving up on the piano again. After all, you've got to plan if you ever want to get anything done.

CNPS: 15 (stuck)

Bring on the wall!

Two years after moving in and we've still not finished work on the house. One part that's annoyed me for ages is the 3 x 6 metre stairs wall. It's a funny shaped wall and because of this trying to hang picture on it would just look a mess, like an Ikea monster had vomited chunks of contemporary art onto the wall.

A few months back I decided that we should have a single image on the wall that fits in with the odd shape. To keep things cheap this invariably meant we'd have to paint something on to it by hand.

I knew from the start that it would either look incredibly cool or like the work of a crayon weilding manboy. So, to reduce risk we took a methodogical approach that involved photoshop, a projector, a macbook, step ladder, wall paint from the shed, ikea pencils, a week of painting & a bit of guess work. The actual pattern is derived from a collection of Photoshop Brushes, available here. You can load these in GIMP using the instructions here. Here's a few pictures:


The scale plan we knocked up in Photoshop


Projecting the plan


This photo is only part of the image, it actually goes further down the stairs with some huge flowers.

My dad once painted an awesome Star Wars wall mural in mine and my brother's bedroom (I'll try and dig out some pictures). He did this all free hand in multicolour, with a little help from the 'how to draw Star Wars' book, which makes our monotone technologically assisted job seem a bit weak. If only there was a 'How to draw Evil Dead II' book. That would be awesome. We'd need a lot of red paint though.

[Updated post on 14/12/08 to point to the actual brushes file I used and explain how to open brush files in GIMP]