darklooks.com

Right. Jolly good. I’ve had the most marvellously busy couple of months, which has kept me out of trouble and off the interwebs, probably to everyone’s benefit.

I’ve had three conversations with three separate people* lately which brushed gently across the same territory. The topic is, as you have probably guessed by now, my artistic input. Since you’re reading this, you fairly certainly know or are aware of me to some extent. You know that I lead a telly-free life here in the civilised London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, spending my evenings running loads through the washing machine on inappropriate programmes for thrills, and occasionally dipping into the print media to keep the old thinker ticking over. [Read more →]

… and I’m not going to tell you, yet, until references and everything of that ilk is complete. But watch this space.

(”Mystifying” by the way used as an adjective.)

1. To pack, simply sort through your belongings and throw 50% of them out, until you have twice what you started with
2. Whilst packing, you will suddenly remember your favourite shirt/blouse/t-shirt and, despite not having thrown a single piece of clothing out for the last 20 years, will be utterly unable to find it
3. You will make a careful and concise list of what goes into each box, and will label each box clearly with its own unique code. Even as you are doing this, you know with a chilling insight that your list will be wrong and the boxes will somehow arrive unlabelled.

[Read more →]

Since I am now doing absolutely everything at once, and with rather more success than in earlier, more laid-back, times… anyone know how this works? I know that tasks expand to fill the available time, that’s fine: what I’m interested is the corollary, in which efficiency seems to increase exponentially to a (linear) increase in task count… undoubtedly there’s some terribly subtle stuff going on here. Hmm.

Right then. Since I have the run of the world (at least those bits of it which can get me moderately swiftly to LHR) in choosing my new “gaff”, as I believe it’s called, where should I head? My thoughts so far include TW1, TW11, and TW9 if it pops in under budget. Anyone?

It was put to me this week that I should, as it were, expose myself publicly as part of a strategy to generate wealth through humour. Whilst I accept I do, from time to time, prompt fits of incontinent laughter on the part of those around me, I couldn’t help but compare it to the other part of my wealth-generation strategy: working.

There has been an opportunity in my workplace of late to apply for a change in role: the sort of change which, yes, does have a pound symbol attached, but a modest one, the point of the exercise having as much to do with getting to face the kind of challenges you really fancy waking up at 3am worrying about, rather than ones you would hate to wake up at 3am worrying about, but wake up at 3am worrying about anyway. (With sentence construction skills like these, no one need fear my application progressing too far.)

It’s been interesting to observe the various approaches of those colleagues who have applied, and, out of deference to their privacy, I shall say nothing about any of them, save that the person who thinks they’re most cynical and defeatist about it is in fact hopelessly outclassed in negativity by another applicant. I… looked at the forms, shall we say, and thought about how I would fill in a couple of the blank boxes presented.

Two hours and six words later, I had failed to find in myself a single redeeming quality. Even my old PE teacher did better than this, and I was a real challenge (he wrote: “Mike is hopeless at this subject and knows it, but I enjoy his dry sense of humour”). Had I spent any longer on the matter, it’s safe to say I would have had to resign immediately, on grounds of sheer honesty.

So if, in a totally ahumorous, ruthlessly fact-based sort of a way, I cannot think of one good thing to say about myself, what hope could there possibly be for me as a humorist, when invention, wit, agility of imagination and mastery of the over-extended nonsense metaphor are all marvellous but essentially adjuncts to sound underlying structure of the prosaic old ahumorous sort? Wilde, of course, maintained that he reserved his true genius for his conversation, which has ever since provided hope to generations of bad writers who, when drunk, think they’re funny (self, of course, excluded: when drunk I am hysterical).

So which will garner more pounds sterling: funny “ha ha” or funny “I take my job extremely seriously, and regard it as my life’s work to improve human lives through intelligent application of technology, right up until the Singularity, for which I will be right at the front of the upload queue”? And is that even a particularly important question to ask (if you work for a mortgage broker, please note that the sentence in which this parenthesis is embedded is humorous and should not be understood as implying financial irresponsibility on the part of its author, who would like to borrow six times his salary to live in a Zone 6 shoebox, pretty please with icing on) in these days of personal fulfilment plans and tailored dieting?

Well, who knows, who can say, and I expect as with so many things in life we’ll find out sooner than we could have worked it out. Good night and good luck.

Seen on a giant ad hoarding on my way home today: “Imagine… expressing your emotions with optical zoom”

I can’t even begin to understand how I have successfully expressed my emotions all these years without an optical zoom (save the built in one, where you move the lens assembly and imaging surfaces closer to the object being imaged, often by leaning forward). This said, I am English and am therefore incapable of expressing any emotions in the first place.

In case you were wondering, yes, the same phone is also described as “Completely Camera-esque”, which for my money is right up there with Leicester police declaring that circumstances surrounding the man’s death “might have been suspicious”.

These obviously aren’t mistakes: I think “expressing your emotions” is meant somehow to be understood as a noun, a warmingly human synonym for “Samsung G800″. And it’s certainly the G800 which has the optical zoom, not my emotions, nor even the expression of them. Likewise “Completely Camera-esque” is not simply verbal terrorism, trying to inject into our ailing minds some subtle new partial quality of camera-esqueness (might such things be camera-esque-esque?), but rather has some memorable sounds in and is just compellingly awkward enough to stick in the mind. Perhaps. Now I see why I didn’t go into branding.

The link speaks for itself

“The UN Panel says every country will be affected by global warming”

Reaches for atlas. Unable to locate any countries not on the globe.

Reaches for dictionary. Unable to find relevant alternative definitions of global.

Concludes either:
a) “Global warming” now a set phrase and as such UK anglophones (at least) no longer required to consider what either of its constituent words might actually mean
b) the BBC science unit really is as clueless as everyone says.

Result:
Suspects a bit of both, disappointed in Beeb. As general loather of advertisements, and distributor of scorn upon other news networks, sad to pour scorn upon Auntie. Confused, but aware of Beeb’s ability to turn genuine science into truthy balls, and vv.

Actually I’m not quite sure I need to put a post beneath that title. You’re all probably too busy to read it as well.

And in all honesty I must confess the money went to Ikea for stuff I probably didn’t really need as much as I thought I did.