Category: Uncategorized

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Boo! Hiss

I don’t get Hallowe’en.

I try, I promise, but I’ve never really been into it; I’ve never been the one who gets excited about dressing in outrageous costumes or drawing attention to myself and how I look, and I’ve never really enjoyed Trick’r’Treating, either (When I was a kid, lo those many years ago, it was still called “galoshing” in Scotland. Although, looking at that word there, I wonder how badly I’ve misspelled it. “Galoshin’,” maybe? “Galloshing”?), so the whole holiday feels like a strange waste of energy and attention to me. I feel like the Grinch saying that, especially now that I live in America, a country that seems to consider Hallowe’en a national holiday on par with Christmas and Thanksgiving, but it’s true; when people talk about going to parties or getting dressed up, I find myself shying away mentally and thinking “Eh, you’re all crazy.”

I’d call it a sign of getting old, but I was always like this.

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No Sleep ‘Til

Ah, insomnia.

As I type this, it’s 6:30am, and I’ve been awake since 4. I didn’t wake up of my own accord; Ernie is sick and requires eye drops every 4 hours, so at 4am, it was time… but then I couldn’t get back to sleep. You know that feeling, when you’re lying in bed and your brain just tells you that you’re definitely awake no matter how tired you feel? That was me. When I was younger, falling asleep was no problem; I could be up until 4am at a club or working on something or in some deep, awkward romantic tryst and as soon as I’d get to bed, I’d be asleep. Now, though, I lie there all too often, all too awake.

I remember, when I was a kid, the tricks I’d try to play on myself to induce sleep. I’d try to remember the opening scroll from Star Wars – I used to be able to do that in its entirety, worryingly – or count from 100 backwards, imagining each number was a lower rung on a ladder towards sleeping. Neither work anymore, sadly; the noise in my brain overpowers it all. And so, I lie here hours before the sunrise, cuddling a sick dog and reading Marvel Comics: The Untold Story on my Kindle, wishing that I could close my eyes and open them hours later.

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“I Didn’t Destroy The Picture”

“I believe that if someone restores the [Rothko] piece and removes my signature the value of the piece would be lower but after a few years the value will go higher because of what I did,” he said, comparing himself to Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who shocked the art establishment when he signed a urinal and put it on display in 1917.

“I was expecting that the security at Tate Modern would take me straight away, because I was there and I signed the picture in front of a lot of people. There is video and cameras and everything, so I was shocked.”

“I didn’t destroy the picture. I did not steal anything. There was a lot of stuff like this before. Marcel Duchamp signed things that were not made by him, or even Damien Hirst.”

He said that he admired Rothko, describing him as one of the great figures in art of the last century, but added: “I don’t believe that what I have done is criminal. If the police are going to arrest me, then they are going to arrest me. I am OK with that.”

From here, and apparently a quote from the man who signed a Mark Rothko paining in the middle of the Tate Modern. As much as I love Rothko – and I genuinely love Rothko – I have to admit, I kind of love this.

Related: This Is Yellowism.

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“Who Wins? Who Loses? You Decide!”

Another toy that drove the nine/ten-year-old me insane with excitement, the 1984 Super Powers line. Only the first “wave” of releases came out in the UK – the twelve figures above – but they were more than enough to please me. Even at that age, there was something iconic about the big-name DC Comics characters, and I remember being ecstatic when I found Super Powers characters in a toy store in nearby Gourock. I still remember that the first ones I owned were the Flash and Green Lantern, but I remember that I also ended up with an Aquaman, Lex Luthor and Superman, too.

In America, there were a further twenty-one figures released, with lots of characters that I hadn’t even heard of at the time. I wish that I’d seen them, though; the idea of these toys being an early introduction to the likes of characters to whom I’d later become massive fans of – Jack Kirby’s Darkseid and Mister Miracle, or the stoic Martian Manhunter – appeals to me, even if I’m not sure what I would have made of such characters back then.

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366 Songs 284: Richard III

1997 was, in many ways, the hangover of Britpop; the bloom was off the rose, as they say, and the more interesting bands were looking elsewhere for inspiration already. Blur, of course, had “Beetlebum” and “Song 2” coming out, and Supergrass had “Richard III.” Like “Song 2” – the singles were contemporaneous – this is a song that throws away the cheeky-chappy persona for something heavier and purposefully less melodic, but what it lacks in tune it makes up for in force: This is a claustrophobic song that deserves to be played loud, so that the whole “I know you want to try to get away” overwhelms you the way it should, and you find yourself able to pick out the bouncy, McCartney-esque bassline, organ stabs and theramin amongst the aural soup. This is a song to get lost in, and find yourself exhausted by, by the time the fade-out finally arrives…

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“All Memory Lies”

All memory lies. It paints nice colors over the ugly or disturbing things. Or it cleverly distorts them; bends and twists them, so that they fit better into the convenient history we’re all continuously writing and amending of our lives. No matter who you are, your memory is always and for everything an unreliable witness. Never trust it to tell the truth about who you are or how you got here.

From here; it’s from Jonathan Carroll’s new book, apparently.

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Testing, Testing

Hello, technology. Assuming this works, I am writing this on a Kindle; it was a birthday present and an attempt for me to get off the laptop as I know it but still be able to check the Internet, email and whatever in evenings and weekends. I made myself a promise, awhile back, to GET OFF THE COMPUTER when I wasn’t working, if only because I spend so much time working and need to change my environment some time without going crazy. It’s been good for me, but having this Kindle has been really nice to just do fun things online without feeling like I should work. Plus, it’s gotten me obsessed with the format of Kindle Singles and other cheap, short digital books. More on that later, I suspect.

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This Is What 38 Feels Like

My birthday gifts to myself: Catching up on deadlines (I think? This is where I discover there’s something that’s slipped through the cracks) and stopping for the weekend. Seriously; I have been working on weekends for the last few weeks, and that’s just meant that I’ve been working seven days a week for varying amounts of time. That is, as the kids say, bananas and I’m taking happy advantage of the chance to, you know, relax over the next couple of days.

We’ll see how long it is until I get bored.

Oh, and I’m also going to shave finally, and maybe buy myself a book to read on my Kindle or something, too. That’s not too ridiculous, right…?

(To everyone who sent me birthday wishes on Facebook or Twitter: Thank you very, very much. I’m genuinely kind of humbled by them all.)