You're my guitar hero...

Nellie Bly


Annie Oakley


Ada Lovelace

///

I worry about the lack of contemporary female heroes in my life.

When I was in second grade, I did a presentation on Nellie Bly -- I even had this awesome hat that I thought was super historical, but was most likely just an absurd mess of netting and felt that my mom thought was funny.

Although the book my school gave me on Nellie Bly was, well, for second graders, her story has always stayed with me. I just thought she was, and is, so god damned awesome.

Her esposé of neglect and abuse at the Women's Lunatic Asylum in New York both fascinated and horrified me as a child; but it didn't surprise me, as far as I can remember. It seemed to make sense that authority, when unchecked and unobserved, would be cruel to those who they thought were weak and troublesome.

Hmm!

Annie Oakley and Ada Lovelace are to be spoken of another time...

//

PS: I finished my 2nd year of University with a 2:1 -- I think in American inequivalent, I'd be at 3.8 GPA? I'm not entirely sure; but I don't care, because whoo, 2:1! Fools!

Transatlantic Accent

Katharine Hepburn's speech 1947 against HUAC

Once Bitten

Every day I read Boing Boing comments, and every day I say to myself Oh God Why, don't read Boing Boing comments, they're horrible things! -- yet, every day, I read Boing Boing comments.

There's a dead newt on my desk,
and I can't read anything worth while.

Hear Hair

Boy, aged 3, banned from nursery school over haircut.

It looks sweet on him, even if it is kinda chavy.
Who cares about hair? Middle class England.

I was refused a job at Waitrose, here in my posh middle class new money commuter town. Straight up told I wouldn't be hired, because of my 'extreme haircut'. I don't think they liked the (small) gauges in my ears, either.



Aesthetic discrimination is rampant between the classes. It's amazing how we take things by face value. Style over substance. Who cares if they're a good worker, they don't fit with the cultural branding of the company.

I took photographs back in December, when I applied for the job.
Would you let me stock shelves and ring you up for luxury food products?



The fearful middle classes are stupid.

s&m + bible studies

Started/finished this wallet today - because I'm already a slave to the system; why not stuff all my bills into some gimp.

//
I was going to complain about art school, but why bother?

Different class of assholes.

All I really care about right now is:

The Wire
Being In Love
Fucked Up

//

I prefer Dresden

Self portrait as Tokyo & Dresden circa 1945.

//

Prince Harry killed thirty insurgents (human beings) directing air strikes.

They're putting Jack Ruby's pistol up for auction.

Manqueller man.

birds see ??? fps

30 seonds // Pigeon Sight

Editing experiment.

Edit: it is actually impossible to view Pigeon Sight on youtube, due to the compression. The piece was edited with what my chum Owen refers to as the knitting technique -- moving images are made through splicing together single frames of video sequences between one another, creating an optical illusion which melts two or more shots of video into one jittery image. I think youtube compresses my PAL 25 frames-per-second down into 15 or so FPS, thus, you see random broken up frames. In short, you're seeing about half the piece -- and the whole point of the editing experiment is erased. Amazing.

I must find a place to host .mov files.

//

I'm to present a pitch for a video project tomorrow morning. Of course I haven't written anything down or made any examples or even fully committed to an idea, but at the moment I reckon I'll be doing an adaptation of the Antigone/Ismene scene from Seven Against Thebes - using that as a pretext to explore motifs of meaning, repetition and determinism.

Ideally, I'd get access to the green screen studio, which would allow me to play Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles, Polynices, and the chorus of 12.

Only I am terribly apathetic at the moment, and don't feel like doing much of anything. My room is an absolute mess, I cannot get a hold of my student loans company, and I am generally sleepy and bleh. So I suppose the best route of action at the moment is to go have a coffee and hide in the back of the cafe reading 'Antigones' and listening to the Misfits.

In other news: I really would adore a Pixel Vision camera. It records to audio cassette, and the quality is amazingly wonder-horrible.

Example: