Oblique Strategy of the day and unrelated thoughts

"Do we need holes?"

Good question, Brian. Usually I can bend an Oblique Strategy to fit anything in life, much like the way people read horoscopes, but this one is causing me problems. Maybe it should be "wholes" . . .

I'm sucking on Strepsils in the hope that my voice will return in time for school. It disappeared after I went to see Rolo Tomassi at the Casbah on Wednesday. They were on good form, surreally fancy-dressed in a tiger suit, monk's robe, a small dress, etc. In addition to her leopard print skirt-suit, the singer was wearing a mask which Pat thought was meant to be Toby Anstis, but I wasn't sure. Anyway, trying to have a conversation over the support bands has left me sounding like I have a forty-a-day habit. Hilariously though, the kids at school have only one frame of reference, and I heard two of my Year 10 boys muttering that I must have been to a Sheffield United or Sheffield Wednesday game (which is odd in itself, because they already know which teams I give a remote crap about, and it's neither of those).

Up until the smoking ban, I'd always assumed my morning-after gravelly tones were due to inhaling everyone's "social" smoke. Now I've realised it's purely from shouting over background music that's invariably too loud (forgive me if I sound old, but we all know it's true), so ironically, the smokers who stand outside the whole evening are probably better-off throat-wise that anyone else.

So last night was Rough Disko's third birthday, which unfortunately clashed with a free Crystal Castles gig and wasn't as full as otherwise. Still, DOTS were excellent as usual, and seem to have easily enough really good material for their first album.

The other band were Camp Actor, whose performance I ruined for Ian because I thought the singer looked like The Sandman (amazing animation: watch it):



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjgHbRrnjhU

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Use filters."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Question the heroic approach."

Love Love Love This

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Breathe more deeply."

Catholic Guilt Guilt Guilt

I found my goldfish dead when I came home from school today. I'd had it for about three and a half years, and it's shubunkin friend committed suicide by leaping from the tank over a year ago.

I was a terrible owner. I didn't have a filter or anything, and I spent the last two years wishing the little buggers would just die because I was too lazy to clean them out as much as I should have.

Now, of course, after wishing it dead for so long, I feel profoundly guilty. (Perhaps not profoundly, actually.) It looked weird lying there on the newspaper after I fished it out with the net. I only knew it as a moving being beyond the prism of plastic and water.

RIP fish. I'm sad you're dead, but I'm not sad I don't have to look after you any more.

(The fish only had names as a pair, and I couldn't remember which was which when one died. They were called Fizz (or "Phys") and Imp, after Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Something Living (you know, the big shark). I was looking at them when I first got them, and was struck by how the fact of little perfect examples of life were much harder to comprehend than death. Take that, Hirst.)

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Don't stress on thing more than another."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Twist the spine."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Short circuit (example: a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)"

I have my doubts about this one, or perhaps it's just his example. Reminds me of toilet roll with Aloe Vera extract.

I love Fight Club. I wish I'd read the book before I saw the film though - the book read like the film, but I'm not sure if that's because Ed Norton's voice in the film is so powerful . . .

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Don't break the silence."

Re: oblique strategies

I've been getting these Oblique Strategies from http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html which has a random generator. There's 127 of them in total, and some of them are more oblique than others. Bizarrely though, they almost always seem to make pretty good sense to me or carry some greater than usual significance. I've been working on a screenplay, and "Just carry on" is definitely the best advice at the moment.

Apparently, Alfred Hitchcock said, "Once we have worked out the story in full, then we begin the screenplay," or words to that effect. It seems to me that different genres require different methods. TV and film are so unforgiving, over-structured and busy that I can imagine a series falling apart if you tried to just work through from start to finish. Stage plays and prose on the other hand, allow so much more freedom and creativity on the part of the writer, that I think the more you let your mind wander around the better (and then get to the editing afterwards). Much of the inspirational steps in art have come about due to mistakes or accidents, and yet the film/TV business seems to want to eradicate any originality.

I've been visiting a lot of writing blogs recently, and the diversity of opinion and technique differs wildly, from the institutionalised "you might think that sounds like selling out, but you DO want people to see your work, don't you?" approach, to the fresh and original voice of a talented playwright who isn't prepared to compromise his writing for commercial success. (And lots of opinions in between.)

Frankly, though, if I hear another word about "practical aesthetics" and "super objectives" I think I'll have an electronic paddy.

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Just carry on."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"You are an engineer."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Look at the order in which you do things."

Allotment

Picture post - attempts to capture the Autumn light

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Cut a vital connection."

Oblique Strategy of the day

"Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events."

How to spoil a nice cup of tea

The latest government suggestion on carbon-cutting is that we all drink UHT milk so that supermarkets won't have to refrigerate it, thus cutting down on energy. I kid you not.

There is not a right-minded person who would come up with this suggestion, and yet it's getting discussed! Have they ever had UHT milk on their cereal or in their tea? Would they make custard or cheese sauce with this disgusting fluid?

I can imagine life without my own private transport, or a life spent in the dimness of a energy-saving-lightbulbed world, or a life without exotic fruits (or unexotic fruit & veg) grown in South Africa and Kenya . . . but a life without fresh milk?

The tea council should put a price on the head of the dimwit who came up with this. It's oddly reminiscent of the Natwest adverts, with junior executives coming up with the most "out-of-the-box" ideas possible . . .

Read the text on the milk portions: "tastes like fresh milk", apparently.