Dangerous Practise

I'm in the library trying to print out some images, like last year. Very simply grabbing them from the internet and dropping them in Word. Enlarging them, then printing them off on A3.

In trying to print this image from Foundation



but it is too large a file for the printer to comprehend. That's weird.

R B Grange

Subject

Had an immensely productive day at college today featuring me doing all manner of stuff and actually caring about what I was doing. Gone are the days of me passing myself off as being too cool for school; I'm settling down to some real work. But I've a problem, a bugbear - which goes by the name of Subject Matter.

In making objects onto which things shall be placed I have, I think, brought the passive screen out of its slumber, and placed it away from the picture plain of the wall. But what I am to project? What is urgent? What needs to be said upon these pelvises?

My easy option is to say what I know; impart my wealth of knowledge and hope that that tells me something, or leads me somewhere. My interests are, I think, engaging and diverse enough to sustain peoples' interest. I'll spew. Everything I can think of I'll put onto these objects. All sound and fury, from a candle in a lantern; from a battery in a torch, burning alkaline splayed lasers across the image of an image of an fossil of a man.

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Skellingtons

I was just thinking as I walked up from Wood Green, that dinosaurs are like an unexpected present. Not they themselves, but their fossilised remains, are a gifted from nature without any intent.

Pure happenstance makes a fossil. The correct place where an animal died; usually a riverbank prone to rising water levels, where the carcass can be consumed by micro-organisms whilst the bones are covered by layers of silt. Then as the bones decay they are gradually replaced by sediment under pressure, to be locked away until some great convulsion of the earth, or maybe stumbled upon by some mammalian biped.

My work, now erring into these animals’ thighbones and pelvises, is starting to centre on an almost character-like creature of the Iguanodon. A beast surrounded, in its first rediscovery, by legend and revelation, it has now become one of many well known prehistoric animals.

Last weeks trip to the Natural History Museum provided me with several sketches of fossils, but there is something lacking in their exhibition. It seems to erroneously cater for children, but the exhibits are looking old and outdated, and the shop has no wooden skellingtons. Most ridiculous, or the thing that is ridiculous and its ridiculousness most interesting to me, is the Iguanodon posed comfortably on two legs; we now conclude it to have walked on all fours, but used its forearms for some manual work. I like this because of the original ideas of the body of this animal as shown in the sculptures at Crystal Palace (spit on the floor); which are just massive chunky iguanas, with thumbs on their noses.

Anyways, that’s me done.

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18 minute window

Right, this is getting stupid now. I've tried on three seperate occasions to up load a video to YouTube of me reviewing Dawn Gets Her Man, and failed everytime.

I'm able to posted things here because I can have another window open to check if the internet is working. But for YouTube there are no such fail safe points. The video could have seconds to go before completion and then cut out.

Pardon the strangely existential nature of this next sentiment, but the internet has stopped working since I started writing this post. And now it's back again.

(five minutes later)

I'm in the hall now in a blanket trying to post this.

R B Grange.

Do You Realize??

Walked in to Wood Green to have a talk with the fellow I met last week. His name was John, he was not the light. Instead of going straightaway to the Christian stand outside the library I went to HMV and purchased Full Metal Jacket and Gladiator. I then went on to W H Smiths and purchased a present for Becky, then to the Communist stand.

You'll be happy to hear, Chris, that one of the communists liked my wearing of the A badge and wondered where she could get one. I've been given quite a bit of literature on their cause and given them my e-mail address and recommended to the lady with whom I was speaking to read some Ayn Rand. She name a note of the name.

I then walked (always companied by Hayley) to Oxfam and Morrisons, then back to the Christian stall. I was told by some woman that John had to go to a meeting, so I asked her if she could tell him that I had been back. It turns out that he is a priest or pastor. Anyways, I took a copy of John's Gospel, (not this guy John, or John the Baptist) to make notes in. The communists gave me a paper about real stuff, wanted to discuss things and laughed and smiled.

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RBG 2.0, The RockStar Medical Student.

Just finished a sporadically busy six hour shift at the pub. It featured a vomiting dog, the rudest couple and a woman (who said she was a therapist, but I wonder...), who thought that I'd do well in whatever profession I chose. She started by saying I looked like I'd be a drummer in a band and what I was obviously very rock and roll. Yeah.

A similar misinterpretation of me happen at a birthday party I attended a few years back. Some woman told me and my brother that she was good at guessing what degrees people were doing. A bit of an arrogant statement, especially so, considering that she placed me on a medical degree and Michael studying physics.

"Social and Political Sciences" he said.
"Oh well, I got that it was a science." she said.
It's a humanity.

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Hat

I've got my ethical hat on today. Which isn't true, I wear all my hats at all times, some of my shoulder some on my sleave. The idea what sometimes you're on a scientific mood, or artistic temperament is bollocks to me. I am all things at all times, to all people, but it doesn't seem like the rest of everybody is.

I've been looking online for clothes which have little or no (if that's possible) impact on the amount of carbon being unlocked from the earth, and at the same time not using sweatshop labour. It's hard. American Apparel, one of my favourite shops, does well on this and I would recommend anyone to buy one of their t-shirts from the Sustainable range.



But most companies seem to think that people want to show off about their "green credentials". Having pictures of trees on their shirts and whatnot. This puts me in mind of the South Park episode Smug, where everyone gets hybrid cars and instead of smog being produced an atmosphere of smug chokes everyone.

I just want to live like I live without harming the environment, which is something I can easily do. Granted, it will mean changes in business, but I am a great believer in people doing the right thing and if you don't like the way things are done, you can shop elsewhere.

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ZOMBIE STRIPPERS

Internet is back at our house, so if anyone needs it come round. It hasn't been easy though and Becky needs to get a new piece of kit for her PC so the wireless works on it. But this situation couldn't have been avoided. The annoyance of having to send a week internetless and then three days with a nonworking connection, then an hour on the phone to India trying to explain that I have a Mac with Office on it (why I needed to do that I have no idea), then to have Becky shell out on hardware that she wouldn't need if we still had the old HomeHub (which by the by is housed in a draw if Charlie or somebody wants to use it in their work). That's my rant done, now on to the most productive week in ages.

I finished reading Flatland, read Ayn Rand's Anthem and have started reading a book some of you may have heard of called something like "The Origin of Species". This last book is amazing. I'm only two chapters in (after reading the introduction and preface, something I never usually do), but this is a brilliant book. This probably comes from how easy it is to read, Darwin's writing still is simple and expressive, placing, so far, ideas of domestic breeding in a language that even I can understand. Granted this book was publish for general realse and not as a paper, but this man is engaging it the full. I read some out to Becky in the studios and only lost the meaning of a sentence once.

I've also been reading John's gospel because a chap in Wood Green told me I should. Now I've read it before, but he told me I had to keep reading it. If you don't get the joke the first time it's hard for it to be funny ever again. I think this chap exprects me to have an epiphany whilst reading it, I don't know how. Then again this man isn't he best judge of things - He thought that there were no earthquakes before man committed a 'sin', that everything just (emphasis on the just) sprang out of nothing and that bees didn't used to sting people (I know they didn't, they used to be ant like things with a bite). I also had to explain what steam was to him, so I have little hope of him ever seeing past anthropomorphism.

I also watched "Zombie Strippers" at the Prince Charles Cinema. It was amazing.

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Wallpaper

Another day and I am without, so I'm in the pub. I'm starting to enjoy this way of life. Gold is quite an unreactive metal but it is it's rarity that gives it its true value.

As followers of my online activites will be aware, I have had a massive change in aesthetic of the late. This started with using a uniform grey within my work encompassing the YouTube channel and Blog space. I like mid-tone greys and think them far too underrated in visuals. Black is too much and swamps and dwarfs other colours. The same with white. But I have of late (but wherefore I know not) taken to placing more visuals around the place. Behind my heading here, and as a background on my channel. For the most part it's wallpaper, but that is your context. Wilde said something about Americans being violent because of their horrid wallpaper, and I now endeavor to make my internet home a nice one.

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What would Picard do?

I'm the pub, obviously. This being because of a lack of internet at our house. It should be up and running again in a week's time, an inconvenience that I could so very easily have done without. But begrudging situations will not change them, so I'm making the most of my worldly experience and come to the pub.

It is the hub of all of life, the Public House. Births, Marriages and Deaths. Sort of; people work to kill themselves there (but have a good time in the process), there are wedding receptions, (not in my pub, but in some larger ones) and Becky said that Andy found a possible dead fetus in the toilets once, but that might not be true.

I don't want you to think that I've come to the pub to use in the internet in order just ot tell you that I am doing it. This post is really to share part of the essay I am writing at the moment. Without Wireless yesterday morning I was able to write one-thousand words one Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek; The Next Generation (Gods save Ronald D. Moore). There's some of it, all spelling mistakes are to be corrected.

PRESENT
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica (BSG) can be seen as an alternative depiction of the present. Granted their techonology is more advanced in creating robots and faster-than-light travel, but the characters still react to situations as we would now, their zeitguiest is our spirit. To understand this better let us place it along side another of Ronald D. Moore reimagined series, Star Trek; The Next Generation. To a layman the two series may seem similar; “people in spaceships”, but this is far from the case, in BSG the remnants of the human race are forced to leave their colonies after a nuclear attack. Only fifty thousand people survive, the characters in the series are not part of humanity, they are humanity. The Next Generation has a much more pleasant back story. After making first contact with alien life hundreds of years before, the world is now a utopian society; no wars, no religion, no money, people “invest in themselves”. The people of Next Gen are not us, they have got past the hang-ups of our time and explore space with a moral high-ground. It is often mentioned to other races, like the Ferengi, that “we were once like you”, in there love of making a profit. In BSG there is money, the black market, a seemingly stringent class system stemming from place of birth, terrorism, insurgency, civil war, election rigging, “all the follies of human conceit” as Carl Sagan put it whilst describing the photograph taken my Voyager of Earth. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise is Neicheze Ubermansch, he makes a great hero, but his character is to be aspired for. Admiral William Adama of the Battlestar Galactica lies to his crew, plots to assassinate a superior officer (…), and yet he is more or less taken to be a good-guy.
By placing the human race outside of its usual context but keeping the ‘old ways’, as it were, Moore creates a platform for reassessing how we behave, what our drive is, and whether or not we are right to presume we are right. BSG does not come up with answers. You will not have learned a lesson by the end of an episode, but instead be left with choices and dissions that are otbe made. Many critics have said that BSG has been the only fiction yet produced that tackles the Iraq war in a mature and discursive way and I agree.

There's me in Berlin


R B Grange

Feets

Just calculated my Carbon Footprint at http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

It's a bit of a rubbish site; not at all 2.0. But it did give me an idea about how much nature I'm wasting.

2.499 tonnes. That's well below the national average of 9.8 tonnes and just over half of the global average of 4 tonnes. But it's still too much. I should really be getting it down to 2 tonnes at most. I've worked out that in purchasing a bike I can cut out my bus journeys and probably half my tube taking my print to 2.305 (approx). But if I down on restauranting and cinemaing I could get it down to 1.805.

Wish me luck.

R B Grange

Are these tonnes metric or imperial? Or is that a stupid question because of the spelling?

Sliver

I've been reading the novel Flatland by Edwin A Abbott for the past half an hour and I love it.

Those of you who know me will be aware of my complete lack of commitment when it comes to reading novels. After racking my brain a few days back I was able to remember the last fiction I had read, 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (obviously); a book I received for Christmas, I think, from Becky, and only wanted it read because I enjoy the film so much. My hesitation towards staring a new novel comes from the initial choice of which one to read. I don't want to waste my time with some pulp; although that is usually what I want from a film, the two media - although both time based - are used to vastly different ways. There is an allotted amount of time for the film, but not one for a book, the imperative must come from the reader and not the constant plod of the second-hand.

Flatland was a concept first told to Chris in explaining a topic I'll call "What we can know". I later found the brilliant Carl Sagan demonstrate Flatland on a YouTube clip of his documentary Cosmos. A world of two dimensions, or at least of two dimensional conscious beings, where one encounters a three dimensional being.

This is that:



The Tesseract is an object I've used in my work before, but in reading the opening few chapters of the novel my mind has turned to the idea of slivers. A slice which allows a glimpse. A depiction which is highly personal or highly useful for a certain circumstance, but one which does not embrace the whole idea. The Bias of Context. With this comes what Dawkins calls the Middle World in which we live. We see the parts of the light specturm that are useful to see, or hear the frequency of sounds that, yet gain, have a beneficial nature to us. But I want to see and hear the slices missing from plate of existence and for that I need Operationalist tools. Fun.

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RB Genome

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