shifting spanner

I got one-upped in stupidity by the internet.

2013-05-31T16:05:00.002+10:00

In between working on serious cases, I sometimes google the stupid shit that pops into my head. To wit:

"I wonder if anyone has used deed poll to change their legal name to a dj name?"
<unsuccessful googling>
"or an mc name?"
<oh wow>

Amazing.

greatest hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

2012-06-19T14:02:00.001+10:00

A lot of people go through a time in their adolescence where they obsessively listen to music, and look to the lyrics for insight and instruction about - everything, I guess. That was certainly the case for me, but there were at least some things that I knew I hadn't lived long enough to properly understand. Songs I could be impressed by, but not relate to. So when a song you haven't listened to for more than a decade comes on, and you realise that not only has so much time passed, but you are up to your neck in that which was previously beyond your grasp, it can spin you out a bit.

For the record, that song is not Mmmbop.

A drought is not a season.

2012-06-14T14:00:00.000+10:00

Chris Bird, over at MightyGodKing, selected a panel from Transmetropolitan for closer attention some years ago. It was Ellis & Robertson's Spider Jerusalem, brandishing a snowball gun, declaring: "the future is inherently a good thing. And we get there one winter at a time." If you don't get the point he's making about the future, you may have instead chosen nostalgia, the belief that the past is (not was) an inherently good thing.

But that's not the most interesting facet for me. It's the winter bit that fascinates me. Being a white man raised in a country with a colonial history and a temperate climate, I have an understanding of winter. Not the same understanding I got while living in Canada, but Australia does have winters. The obvious replacement for winter in Australia's national consciousness is drought. But winter and drought are very different adversaries. And for drought to haunt a country which has a population that clings to the coast, drought is very imposing indeed.

Winter faces the aspect of humans that is warm-blooded. That we stand in stark contrast to the coldness of the season. Drought is a different manifestation of the same principle: mostly-water humans assaulted by an arid land. But I consider a drought to be a much more imposing concept.

A drought can feel like nature's vendetta against the living. A drought is not a season. True, in the tropics you will have the wet season and the dry season, but I am speaking of the temperate latitudes. Droughts can come in winter or summer. It isn't that the leaves turn beautiful shades of red and gold - things just begin to die. The ground goes hard, the moisture leaves the air. And then there are the fires. When the only thing that can stop the fire is water that you don't have, you run. You get Roman and build aqueducts. You dig trenches. You don't prepare for a season - you prepare for a war. A drought is somewhat like a siege, and the clouds that pass by overhead each day are reinforcements on their way to those who are not in peril.

Yes, I think droughts are tougher than winters. A long winter is nothing compared to a long drought. A long winter is a handful of weeks longer than expected. A long drought can go for years.

Winter engenders periodic festivals. Lunar calendars and solstices can give the appropriate guides there. Those gods are pretty reliable; they could be characterised as contract-making. Drought cultures have to pray for rain. They stare at a scorching sun in a cloudless sky and they beg. Their only hope of salvation is with the unseen. Their gods are mercurial.

The difference in duration between winters and droughts is, I think, large enough to be qualitative. They are metaphors for different things.

@tintagliaicefyr & @timwhiddon, this is for you.

2012-05-18T16:55:00.000+10:00

A conversation

2012-05-09T08:40:00.000+10:00

"Maybe it would never have worked out. Maybe this is just the particular way it didn't work out."

"I don't understand what you're saying."

"Okay, it definitely would never have worked out."

I've never actually had that conversation, but there is a lawyerly phrase that, I think, covers it: 'a conversation in which words were said to the following effect'.

2012-04-22T09:11:00.001+10:00

The problem with having first listened to Robert Palmer at too young an age is that on some level, I still think "she's so fine, there's no telling where the money went" means the song is about a beautiful cat burglar, possibly even Catwoman.

Observations on the faked death of Sherlock Holmes

2012-03-24T23:55:00.001+11:00

It very much appears that Moriarty shot himself in the head.
Sherlock jumped off the roof of St. Bart's.
Either the editing or the perspective is a bit wonky for Sherlock's fall - it looks as though he covered the same ground twice.
Or there were two bodies.
We know that Sherlock told Moriarty to meet him on the roof.
We also know that Sherlock knew Moriarty wanted to destroy him piece by piece. He had to have known public suicide was the endgame.
There is a red lorry that is stationary when Sherlock(?) hits the ground.
The lorry drives off after people are running to Sherlock(?).
The lorry is suss. So suss.
In the overhead shot, Sherlock(?)'s body is essentially parallel to the side of St. Bart's, rather than being perpendicular (as it was when he leapt).
After we cut from the overhead to John, we get another angle on the overhead shot.
This is confusing editing.
But we know he's not dead.
I don't know how he did it, because I'm no Sherlock Holmes.

This might explain my recent tweets, but it won't necessarily make them funny.

2012-03-18T23:18:00.001+11:00

I have a highly suggestible brain. Phenomenally so. I've previously alluded to this in many posts. I do so even more often in conversation.

It's happened again this evening. I drank a mouthful of flat Coke Zero. For some reason, (probably an ad I saw while watching the footy) I thought of the iPhone, specifically Siri. I then immediately thought of the stupidest thing I could tell Siri to do with flat Coke Zero, because it's a seller's market for levity these days. Thus:

And once I'd suggested one stupid thing, I just kept going.

This is the point where I got really carried away and had to spend several minutes editing my epic voice-activated, world-saving fantasy back down to essential components of 140 characters or less. As it turns out, the essence of my dreams of Siri-enabled heroism is:

Admittedly, an iPhone is far more powerful than Jeff Goldblum's 1996 laptop, Area 51 or no. So I think this goes in the 'doable' pile.

But despite having saved the world (in my head), I didn't feel like I could speak to Siri with any level of familiarity. So I took the lawyer's approach to the problem:

Problem solved. Now I just need to buy an iPhone.

Spirit Guide

2012-03-14T13:55:00.000+11:00

I heard a metallic rustling from the tin foil in the bin underneath my desk. I thought it was just contents settling, but then I could see things moving in directions contrary to that theory. I kept listening, kept watching, and was honestly surprised at the reaction I had when I realised my spirit guide had returned.

By 'spirit guide', I mean the four-limbed, three-footed little skink who was spotted in the office on Monday and flippantly referred to as my spirit guide.

Time will tell if he can enter the Spirit Guide Hall of Fame, whose ranks include Space Coyote and Kermit the Frog.

I should probably give him a name. Skinky Friedman, I think.

(Please don't go trying to tell me that Kermit the Frog is not a spirit guide. He plainly is, and to contend otherwise is to publicly demonstrate an embarrassing lack of awareness about what is inherently good in this world.)

(Aside from being inherently good, Kermit the Frog is also a fundamentally decent frog.)

A little bit more on Kickstarter

2012-02-29T14:04:00.000+11:00

This will only get more important. Crowdfunding, especially along the Kickstarter model, is changing the future of good ideas.

[Kickstarter Google news search]

The Upside of Whitney Houston, Kevin Costner and 'too soon?'

2012-02-12T17:24:00.000+11:00

Whitney Houston died and, not unexpectedly, started trending on Twitter. Somewhat less expected was Kevin Costner also starting to trend on Twitter. There are various permutations of all the jokes that could have been and were made. Look them up if you like. Many people will think those jokes are too soon. Others (including me) are more intrigued by Houston's ability to survive as long as she did, and not really paying attention to the 'too soon?' issue. But to the extent that the 'too soon?' issue illustrates anything, it demonstrates that morbid humour is global, if not universal. It shows that thousands of people all over the world had their heads go to the same place when they heard the news. That is something of a truism in relation to an obvious joke, but more interesting for the fact it's black humour. 'Too soon?' aside, I think the moment when the punchline for an obvious joke is itself a worldwide trending topic is the moment we have to admit we're not that different from each other. And not as funny as we think.

On Kickstarter v0.1

2012-02-12T07:40:00.001+11:00

If you don't understand how Kickstarter is changing how markets work, ask me & I will talk very excitedly with my hands.
http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/24-hours

Thoughts on Beyonce and Jesus. No, seriously.

2012-02-04T10:34:00.001+11:00

I think the names of the two other dancers in the Single Ladies clip are conceptually equivalent to the names of the two thieves at the Crucifixion. Interestingly, no version of the New Testament records the names of the two thieves. Nor does IMDb record the names of the dancers.

Wikipedia has all four.

Crazy plans that just might work

2012-02-01T13:47:00.002+11:00

I realise that I've said some pretty crazy stuff over the years, and now I'm hoping that you remember some of it. For a variety of reasons, I don't always pay attention to what I say. And for all the obvious reasons, it isn't always worth remembering.

But I've been thinking that some of those crazy plans just might work. And I'm willing to try them - if only I can remember what they were. So your help would be greatly appreciated - and hopefully these will make for good stories someday.

Thus far, I have:

*record an a capella version of The Shin's 'Caring is Creepy' with basically unintelligible vocals (yet still as meaningful);

*buy a pizza and get the delivery guy to take me home (unfortunately, this has been turned into a beer ad - I can't remember which beer, because, y'know, that's what beer does);

*have a group of people dress in French revolutionary costume and stand at the front of a protest singing songs from Les Miserables (do you hear the people sing?);

*invent tabouli jaffles (I did this and it didn't turn out like I'd planned); and

*fill a swimming pool with Bose-Einstein condensate (in the name of science!).

Given that these don't really sound like the best I have to offer, any recollections you may have will make all the difference.

You can also tweet them to me @shiftingspanner. I have already prepared two form letters:

Dear , thank you for your response. I have considered your response in detail and have one further question: did I really say that?
Dear , thank you for your response. I have considered your response in detail and agree that that sounds like something I would have said.

I've not seen its equal.

2012-01-27T11:30:00.001+11:00

The most impressive pair-of-shoes-over-power-lines I've ever seen.

Anthony Albanese and The American President

2012-01-26T07:52:00.000+11:00

So Anthony Albanese lifted a soundbite from The American President at the National Press Club yesterday. That is something so unwise, so self-evidently impolitic, that it needs no commentary from me. Still, I think the assessment of Tony Abbott stands. Fear and blame is Abbott in a nutshell. Unfortunately, fear and blame is a kind of leadership (I realise I skirt perilously close to Godwin's law, here).
There is another quote (of course there's another quote - it's an Aaron Sorkin movie) from The American President which has stuck with me since the first time I watched it. It relates just as much to a nation's people as to its leaders, so it is somewhat appropriate to bring up on Australia Day, given the anaemic state of our political leadership:

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

It's Australia. We have a lot of sand.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing

2012-01-25T08:58:00.000+11:00

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that my to-do list item "see if i can undo cable ties while cuffed" is work-related?

I assure you that other items such as "interrobang wheel" and "Street-Fighting Jesus" have nothing to do with work.

Downsizing. Upscaling.

2012-01-19T07:37:00.001+11:00

There is something about moving all your possessions out of one apartment, and in to one room. I think it's made my personality high definition. Higher pixel count. Optical zoom. Looking back, I think having a whole place can generate a sort of entropy of personality. Corporeal reminders of aspects of self, but without the information density to remind you how the pieces fit together.

Because I'm not sure if this is actually witty.

2012-01-16T16:34:00.001+11:00

First they came for the communists, and I said nothing because I didn't think a bunch of Justin Beiber fans would get that carried away.

Unexplained Surveillance

2011-12-27T00:05:00.000+11:00

Why use one camera when three can do the job just as well?

I'm not a fan of surveillance at the best of times: if people where anywhere near as good at paying attention to what was happening as they think they are, card tricks wouldn't work. I tend to notice cameras, like the three in the photograph at left. I wonder why they are there; I wonder what they are looking at.
So I stopped walking home and took a few minutes to try and figure out what the cameras were looking at. As you can guess from the first photo, the three cameras are not trained on the same building that they have been placed on - instead, they look across the street. This means both buildings are owned by the same company (or government), or an arrangement has been reached between the two. I think the latter is unlikely.
I then placed myself in the line of sight of the cameras. Two of the three were pointed at ground level service/fire exits. It is not unusual to have cameras on all exits, just to be comprehensive. But the third camera, that was pointed at a window. Which was odd, but just because it is pointed at a window doesn't mean it is watching a window. Further, just because it's pointed at something doesn't mean it's on.

But there was one other door that could have had a camera on it, and didn't, and this is what struck me as passing strange: it was the one that I actually thought needed to be secure.

Once you put the sign on, it's perfectly secure.

My cooking show

2011-12-11T13:52:00.001+11:00

I just made a sandwich that, ordinarily, should not have been able to be made with the ingredients available in my home. This means my cooking show 'Adventures In "Has this gone off?"', has become the even more disturbing 'Adventures In "Why hasn't this gone off?"'.

Perusal: 6 minutes.

2011-12-01T16:59:00.001+11:00

Some legal letters just a fancy equivalent of: "I'm going to be swinging my arms like this, and if any part of you should happen to get in the way, that's YOUR problem!"

In which a poor turn of phrase starts a train of thought

2011-11-19T12:38:00.001+11:00

"surreally literal": I don't think the writer of the article understands the oddness of the phrase, but the more I think about it, the more it describes an interesting storytelling approach.

If I'm understanding correctly, 'surreally literal' refers to a straight portrayal of a story with a premise that would ordinarily demand suspension of disbelief, or be heard as a metaphor. The Tortoise and the Hare is probably a good example. The story anthropomorphises the animals, and the audience would probably do so even if the story didn't. Just think of how we relate to nature documentaries - or how we interpret animal behaviour.

So. Tortoise and the Hare. It would be a pretty different story if it was told straighter, wouldn't it? Indeed, the more literal it gets, the weirder it gets. Eight hours of my life taken up watching split screen handheld camera footage of a hare sleeping in a ditch and a tortoise walking slowly would be surreally literal. But it would get especially interesting once we started comparing the surreally literal version with the mainstream one.

Conventionally speaking, The Tortoise and the Hare boils down to 'slow and steady wins the race'. That's a perfectly acceptable interpretation, and paints the tortoise's qualities as admirable ones. But that's the moral when the story is told briefly, and in a way that needs no perseverance. Present audiences with the concept of spending eight hours watching animals so that they can learn a lesson about determination, and you'll get a reaction - a reaction that the audience will think is reasonable - that is the same as the Hare when he is challenged by the Tortoise:

'Fuck this shit - I've got nothing to prove to you.'

I think I'm a fan of this now.

Goethe, Mickey Mouse & OWS

2011-11-15T19:20:00.001+11:00

In particular, 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'. Yes, the one in Fantasia where Mickey brings the brooms to life. Just because it's in a cartoon doesn't mean it lost the point it made in 1797.

In any case, the key is this: "Die ich rief, die Geister / Werd ich nun nicht loss". The spirits that I called / Ignore my commands. It is worth thinking about corporations in that context. On a daily basis, we accept that we cannot do anything about the actions of corporations. We have forgotten that we created them. They're not born. They have no inherent characteristics. They, and we, have forgotten that they exist at our sufferance. Surely we can get them to do the mopping up.

Thoughts arising from Anselm Kiefer's Sternenfall

2011-10-15T17:05:00.001+11:00

(please keep in mind I've been in an art gallery all afternoon and this shit would not sound nearly so pretentious inside those walls)
Starlight is a picture of the past, a place out of reach, and out of touch, with our present reality. Sternenfall is a map of the heavens that says "maybe these places aren't there anymore. Not in any way we'd recognise and maybe not at all." so maybe heaven was a place, and it's gone now. I wager that's a more disturbing concept than it never having been.