Hi,
This week I had a reminder of how small the internet has made the world. A long time ago, Jools and I used to live in East Brunswick in a shared house. One of the sharers was a Dane named Finn. Finn was a great house mate apart from his unfortunate party piece, he would stick a bottle of Schnapps in the freezer for a week and it didn’t freeze, this is where I learnt that physics does have a place in the wider world. Rule #67 if it’s been in the freezer for a week and didn’t freeze then you can bet you are going to have a deathwish hangover. they didn’t teach us that one in high school. But I digress. We lost touch with Finn and apart from wondering about him on those rare occasions I had a hangover, life moved on, about 25 years worth of on.
The other day there was an email in the duggup mail queue wondering if we were the old and missing friends. Well of course we were. Emails have flown backwards and forwards between Finn and Jools and the years are falling away. It turns out that Finn is a Runrig fan as well, somedays it is the simplest things that bring a smile.
So with an unrepentant soundtrack of ice clinking in a glass of single malt it’s time to “Allez Sillies”
We can all agree that art stimulates our senses, Hannes Broecker’s “Drink Away The Art” is a work to arouse our sense of taste (not to mention eliminating the need of elbowing our way to the bar). By hanging flat, glass containers with a variety of cocktails in the exhibition space viewers drank the art and as the night progressed, the levels of the drink containers diminished. By the end of the event, the art, itself, ran dry, and empty drinking glasses were returned to where they were originally placed.
http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/art/Hannes-Broecker—Drink-Away-The-Art/
Yes, I am rather taken with this piece of ephemeral art and yes make mine a double. with ice.
Continuing the ephemeral art theme. “Jim Denevan makes freehand drawings in sand. At low tide on wide beaches Jim searches the shore for a wave tossed stick. After finding a good stick and composing himself in the near and far environment Jim draws– labouring up to 7 hours and walking as many as 30 miles. The resulting sand drawing is made entirely freehand w/ no measuring aids whatsoever. From the ground, these drawn environments are experienced as places. Places to explore and be, and to see relation and distance. For a time these tangible specific places exist in the indeterminate environment of ocean shore. From high above the marks are seen as isolated phenomena, much like clouds, rivers or buildings. Soon after Jim’s motions and marks are completed water moves over and through, leaving nothing.”
http://www.jimdenevan.com/images.htm
This will hold me for a while, at least until the crop circles are back.
On the subject of crop circles, well peripherally at least. A British farmer is fighting to keep the powers that be from bulldozing his castle that he built by hiding it’s construction with hay bales. Officials were unaware of the elaborate castle because hundreds of bails of straw concealed it for four years, the UK Daily Telegraph reported. After he unveiled his home to neighbours in 2006 he was served a planning contravention notice which ordered demolition of the structure. What hope have the aliens got, with bureacracy like this, I ask you.
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272618494.shtml
I finished editing a few more tracks from Rob and Doreen’s party last week
As well as “Kilcunda Wind” there is also a live version of “Crashing Into Walls” and a few of the band’s tracks. Zoom H4 recorders are just so damn cool.
https://thatchspace.com/2008/02/17/my-friend-ian-a-party-and-a-zoom-h4/
Hands up everyone who has been watching “Who Do You Think You Are” on SBS. Bloody brilliant show, I’ll bet we all now want to create family trees right? But the show’s sponsor ancestry.com.au are shall we say, hmmm, a tad pricey. Well to help get your toe in the water, Kindo is a site that allows you to create your family tree online. Adding members is fairly simple, and you can invite the family to fill in people in your tree you might have missed/overlooked/never knew existed. You can create detailed profiles for members of your tree (throw in a piccy, email address, regular address, phone number, birthday, website, and you get the idea). Trees are only accessible to members of your family to view and have the potential to get quite large if everyone in your family participates. http://www.kindo.com/
Over at Harper Collins books they have released a free MP3 of Neil Gaiman reading “A Study in Emerald”. It’s basically a Sherlock Holmes / Cthulhu Mythos, mashup that Gaiman wrote. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft would almost certainly approve. It’s a really well done bit of work, and a great listen. Neil Gaiman tells a mean story. If I might point out, possibly not a good one to be listening to on tram going to work. your Monday may be impedimented long before you get there, as you blissfully sail past your stop and end up in Coburg.
http://tinyurl.com/3absfo or http://harpercoln.vo.llnwd.net/o16/StudyInEmerald_full.mp3
duggup’s change of home and new URL http://duggup.com.au appears to be successful (and surprisingly painless). So what’s there this week? We had the usual eclectic crop, Jools was taken with an Australian band called “Crayon Fields” and an Argentinean indie pop outfit called “P jaros de Plomo”. My favourite this week is “Vampire Weekend”, really really good. Stroll over and check them out.
Flash Game Time: Over at the BBC’s website, is a harmless (getting worried?) piece of “impedimentia” called Microlife. The short version is you play God, and control the lives of tiny microlife, these are single-cell organisms that move around slowly. You feed them, and can train them to become warriors to defend their nest, but you have to be careful to keep an eye on your funds. They get old and die and are subject to illnesses, so you have to keep them healthy (being God isn’t looking that crash hot now. Is it?). In the early levels there are no predators, so you can raise your microlife without having to worry about the evil Catchers, but later on these predators come looking for lunch, so you have to make sure to have Warriors trained up to fend them off. Microlife is addictive. You will kiss goodbye the morning before you know it (but that is our mission here and we take it seriously).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bluepeter/content/rich_media/microlife1_media.shtml
Needless to say we wont be discussing my performance on this one either.
Have a good one
thatch
{Currently listening to osh10 and Robin Trower}
{Currently reading: Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson}
{Quick Status Check: Hell, I’ve run out of Aberlour. bugger }
{Crop Circle Status: It’s not long to May now (about 72 sleeps) and the games will begin again. http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2007/2007.html }