Screech
I’m no expert on bikes. The only thing I know about bikes is that once you’ve learned to ride one, you don’t need to bother anymore because it’s impossible to forget how. My pal Neil doesn’t agree. He really likes his cycling and is always zooming around on his bicycle. Recently during his zooming around he skidded and fell off and zoomed along on the side of his head instead.
By a crazy stroke of luck, a neurologist and a nurse were in one of the cars behind him and they stopped and tended to the dazed Neil who went to hospital and had his smashed head patched up. The only sign of permanent damage is that he still wants to zoom around on his bike. He’s got balls. And a scar.
Ouch!
Feb 2, 2006 at 14:13 Filed Under: Blog Comment
EyeAgainstEye
And so I have returned from the land of meat and beer. Good old Germany. I got there okay in the end (plane-plane-train-train-train) although if it wasn’t for a nice Germany lady who spoke English I might have ended up somewhere completely wrong. And then second I stepped off the train it started snowing and I had done my usual and assumed that anywhere outside of Scotland has better weather and not really prepared for it not being. But it wasn’t really that cold.
The space was really good- large and in a slight L-shape, with a couple of sliding walls. Felix, the gallery man was very nice and looked after me well. I took over two paintings, a hexagon construction, some drawings and a bag of materials.
I decided to do a wall drawing on one of the walls and it worked out really well because one of the sliding walls had a slight step in it where one part slid behind the other; and I decided that that was good place for it. And it was. Depending on what angle you were looking at the drawing from, it caused a sort of perspective error which is what I was after.
So yes, it was good. I also ate some of the best pretzels known to man.
I’ll add some photos and installation shots to the gallery when I get them sorted out but in the meantime, here are a few images. (It might take a minute for the page to load). You can also see some images at the Raum 45 site.
Feb 1, 2006 at 20:17 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Big Pump
I saw this in Aldi when I was in Germany. Who needs Red Bull when you can have a Big Pump?
Feb 1, 2006 at 14:06 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Grass Snake
One of the very few highlights of walking dogs is some of the things you find lying around. But then again, you would get that just from walking around on your own. (One thing you never find lying around is dead dogs).
Jan 27, 2006 at 0:22 Filed Under: Blog Comment
I Am A Spammer
I need to get up early tomorrow to go to Germany. I’m doing a show over there in a place near Stuttgart. It’s a solo show; it’s called EYEaginstEYE and I just tried to send the mailout to everyone. But alas, the server seems to be misconfigured and it just flooded my inbox with 154 Unroutable Mail messages. I just spammed myself. But there’s no time to fix it because I need to get to bed and get some sleep. On a more successful note, I noticed that the site just passed quarter of a million hits. That’s since August when I rebuild everything, so that’s quite good.
Jan 25, 2006 at 0:09 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Bin The Vegetables
Trish gets back tomorrow after a week of snowboarding somewhere in France. So I’ve got tomorrow morning to square everything up and make it look like I can look after myself. I mean I obviously can look after myself, just not always in the way that Trish expects I should. That girl has got high standards.
I’ve watered most of the plants, apart from the one I hate. I’ve washed some things- I can’t remember what but they’re clean. The vegetable man called at at a time that only someone who grows and sells vegetables for a living could consider reasonable. So I ignored that. I’ve smoked and drunk at a normal rate. The fish are swimming. And here I am half drunk writing on my website, checking all the spelling.
I’ve been watching slightly more TV than normal and simultaneously reading a really good essay about watching TV. Celebrity Big Brother is on telly at the moment which is the type of TV I hate the most but is also undeniably compulsive viewing. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a version of it in America, but I’m not very up on TV so I don’t know. But the premise is simple- you lock a bunch of desperate celebrities (I don’t know what that word means anymore (I don’t know if I ever did)) in a house together- you stress them out in various ways (they’re already stressed- they’re desperate)- hilarity ensues, or not as the case may be; in any case, something (badly) representing the gamut of human emotion ensues- it’s all televised – we, the public, get to vote for who stays in and who doesn’t- someone ‘wins’- everyone talks about it- and some people probably make a lot of money. That’s entertainment. Or at least, it’s a form of entertainment. Like snake charming, or badger baiting, or going out at the weekend and getting into a fight. And in some ways it operates in the same sort of way. It’s not the sort of thing that you would do… it’s actually a good example of exactly the type of thing you would go out of your way not to do. But if someone else is going to do it then you’re going to be the first to get a good ringside seat where you can watch the mayhem unfold. It’s on at the moment and I’m going to watch it even if nothing much is happening.
Jan 21, 2006 at 0:29 Filed Under: Blog Comment
The Eye Of The Duck
Happy 60th David Lynch!
Jan 20, 2006 at 14:16 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Errata
Well I should have seen it coming with that last post. I stepped out of my glass house for a moment to throw a few large boulders. An enthusiastic Corrector has already set about drawing attention to all of my own errors and my mum pointed out, as always, yet another rogue punctuation mark.
In my defence I should say that that last post was about three times longer, and therefore three times more boring, than it ended up. I banged on for ages about how I’m okay at spelling but guilty of typos blah blah etc. And I deleted all of that because, well, it was dull and just made me sound like a smartypants. So I posted it just at the point where I started going, Fucking hell, can’t anyone spell anymore? And that just made me look like a smartypants hypocrite.
Anyway, I refuse to apologise (who me?) but I should point out that, yes, I make a lot of typos. That’s because I write Burning Salad 1. quickly 2. in one take. And also 3. I don’t care if there’s the odd typo. It’s just words on a screen after all. And typos are exactly that- typographical errors. Hitting the wrong key, dribbling on the keyboard, have a minor fit, that sort of thing.
Like I said, I actually like Leet. (Just not for the same reason that all the lee7 K1DZ do.) And I am a big fan of teh. But anyway. The ire of the last post was directed at the people who are, well, just idiots really; I probably shouldn’t have focussed solely on their abstract mad spelling skillz.
I mean, I just Googled for my favourite word- ‘moot’. And I found an article titled, ‘Apple moots return to UK Mac show’. And it was an okay article. Not particularly interesting, not particularly dull. The word moot in the title. And this in the comments: MOOT wtf is a MOOT YOU HOMO talk english not your sutpiD ENGLISH [sic]. Which did actually make me laugh. But still.
It’s people like that who should feel the icy cold grip of CORRECTOR. It’s more about the sport than the semantics. And people like that don’t need much encouragement to take the bait. It’s like punching a wasps nest. Or shouting the word moot at a wasps nest, to be more accurate. Very angry wasps with an irrational hatred of the word moot.
Anyway, considering the fact that this whole post is itself, more or less, moot, I’m going to stop now.
Jan 18, 2006 at 22:36 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Speak And Spell
Fuck me, if I read another thing on the internet where someone is so bad at spelling that their putting the word they’re in the there sentence the wrong way three times in a row I’m going to cry and smash my computer.
I am so fed up of it it makes me want to explode. But everything has a context…
When I’m not reading Wikipedia (and occasionally laughing at it’s sometime questionable providence) or doing something else ‘worthwhile’ online, I’m surfing through, say, forums about videogames; something like that. Now I’m not going to make sweeping generalisations or jump to conclusions here- but you’ve got these kids who love to be all authoritative (and that’s fine if they have reason to be) but can barely string a sentence together. So you’re trying to talk about why Katamari Damacy is a genuine masterpiece and some grommet too young to know what a Commodore 64 is is either trying to prove that they know more than you (and proving that they don’t) or making a good job of saying not a single thing of any importance. And in both cases succeeding in using language like a chimp uses chop sticks to eat spaghetti.
Get a fucking dictionary you idiots! That’s right, you don’t read. Well book mark dictionary.com then. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
It’s not even like I don’t like Leet. I actually really like it and how it re-encodes language, but that’s a whole other story.
So I’ve invented a great new internet game. It’s really easy and you’ll like it if you’re like me and get really pissed off with bad use of language on the internet.
The game revolves around a few basic principles of internet forums:
1. Some members like to maintain an aloof persona.
2. Some members think they are really clever.
3. These people’s understanding of language is retarded. It really is. Retarded.
And the golden rule:
4. New forum members are not expected to rub anyone up the wrong way. In fact, if they do, all hell can break loose.
So, what I’m proposing is really just good old fashioned trolling. Here’s how to do it if you want to join in. And if you do, I salute you.
1. Find an internet forum frequented by smartypants.
2. Find a spelling mistake. It shouldn’t be hard.
3. Ensure that English is the mistaken’s first language. (This is important, it’s only fair. Obviously don’t ask them- check their profile or something.)
4. Sign up for the forum with the name CORRECTOR. (Depending on the atmosphere of the forum, you might opt for alternative spellings. KORRECKTOR, Correcteur etc.)
5. Draw attention to the spelling mistake in as few words as possible. This should be your first post. Subsequent post should only discuss language or correct mistakes. In both cases do so in as few words as possible, ignoring any hubbub the correction might have caused.
Okay, I’m going to go and do some corrections.