Clean on Green
There has been a bit of a political tinge to some of my past posts and doubtless this will continue in the future.
So I’d better come clean.
Like many of my generation I have not been very politically active beyond the personal/individual level. I have come, belatedly, to the realisation that that is not enough.
For a long time now the policy landscape of the major parties has been little more than a battle for the mediocrity of the middle ground and a ‘just don’t fuck anything up’ mentailty.
So I have joined the Greens.
Here is a list of the Greens’ policies. See what you think. I find it refreshing and inspiring to see a real vision and one where sustainability and social justice are cornerstones of a guiding philosophy not just window dressing.
Orange
Our warm up exercise for the secondary colours is this.
Place a sheet of the colour (say orange) in the middle of a larger piece of white paper. Stare at it for about 30 seconds without focusing directly on it. Try and stare through/past it like looking at one of those 3d illusions. After a while the complementary colour starts to appear like a halo. When the orange sheet is taken away a luminous blue rectangle hangs like a mirage on the white board. It is quite magical.
Recycling at school
I haven’t blogged about it this year, but I am back at TAFE studying textiles.
I am doing a weaving subject and recently put out a call for old bicycle inner tubes to use in my final project (thanks Ben for the nice Continentals that added some yellow writing to the mix - see below).
I have been getting really interested in textiles and a subversive move to ‘refashion’ instead of obediently buying what fashion dictates, so decided to try to reuse/recycle/renew some textiles in my weaving project.
I decided to use leather thong (not recycled) as my warp (the long threads that run along the fabric parallel with the selvedge or edge) and recycled inner tubes and stockings as well as rag for my weft (the threads that run from selvedge to selvedge). Anyway, I took some shots today of the work on the loom so you can see what I am doing.
Stay tuned for the finished products - I am planning to make wristbands, bags and accessories from this lot!
Bank-rolling a brand
What an interesting industry branding has become. I am not talking about labelling your cow so that if it strays next door you can tell it from those in the the neighbour’s herd. I am talking about the ‘identities’ that companies are using to represent or describe what they have to offer consumers.
Take the 2012 London Olympic Games’ brand as a case in point. What does it say to the average Mohammed (recently reported as the most common boys name in the UK)? A friend has suggested that it harks back to those baggie trousers worn by MC Hammer. It certainly screams bad eighties fashion statements with its hot pink faux lightening bolts - the sort of thing your mother said looked “jazzy” as you went off to the school social.
It is always important to work out how your brand will perform in the many diverse mediums that are used to reach a global audience. Unfortunately London 2012 has reportedly caused epileptics fits in those unfortunate enough to sit through the motivational television ad screening in Britain.
The best thing about the London 2012 brand is the eighties price that was paid for this piece of design excellence. In the era of bigger is better, $900,000 would have been considered a bargain. In 2012 it would pay for offsetting a lot of carbon emissions.
Perhaps the organisers are seeing the error of their ways but have run out of money and hope someone will give them a new freebie via the invitation to Create your own design on the official site.
Armed for sound
Melbourne performance artist Stelarc has pulled off an unusual ‘installation’ with the insertion of a prosthetic ear into his left forearm. In a continuation of his unusual and sometimes unsettling body of work (sorry about all the puns) that explores the human body, he convinced a team of surgeons to implant the ear-like structure, which was grown in out of stuff called Medpore.
Stelarc is known for a series of performances in the seventies and eighties that involved him being suspended above the ground using hooks pushed through his flesh. As an arts student I remember being fascinated and repulsed at his original, memorable and bloody work.
He now plans to wire himself for sound - adding a microphone to the limb, which will be connected to a bluetooth transmitter so that you can listen to what the ear is hearing on the artist’s website.
Paris grows up
I generally don’t like to add to the hysterical publicity machine that surrounds Miss Princess Hilton, but feel compelled to share her latest wisdom with you.
You are no doubt aware that Miss Piggy recently suffered a memory lapse two or three times when forgot she wasn’t meant to drink and drive. And then that she wasn’t meant to drive without a licence. And then that she’d been warned once already about driving without a licence, like.
This week she stepped out of the limelight and off the red carpet to do her time in detention for her bad memory and left us with proof of her maturation:
“In the future, I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make.”
An inspiring new role model is born.
If Jesus was more assertive
Please please me
Singing in the shower this morning I found myself wondering if there’s an (oral) sexual subtext to the Beatles song ‘Please please me’. What do you think?
Last night I said these words to my girl,
I know you never even try, girl,
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.
You don’t need me to show the way, love.
Why do I always have to say love,
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.
I don’t wanna sound complainin’,
But you know there’s always rain in my heart (in my heart).
I do all the pleasin’ with you, it’s so hard to reason
With you, whoah yeah, why do you make me blue.
Last night I said these words to my girl,
I know you never even try, girl,
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.
An open letter to Monsieur Frau
Monsieur Frau,
You don’t know me and I know you only by the noises you make as you sleep, but I think of you often. For five days we shared a room, ate, slept and bathed together. Language a secondary obstruction to us communicating. Your distant gaze and wailing cries in the night tell me that the fog of years had descended on you.
I sometimes ponder the irony. The vomit wiped from your chest by someone young enough to be your daughter as I wait for the elderly matron to remove my bedpan, clean me and replace my sanitary cloth. Dignity is a burden sometimes.
I wish I had known you, Monsieur Frau, when you wore a striped suit to work and drank coffee in pavement cafés. I wish I had seen you picking up your young children having fallen in the snow.
I hope you are sitting quietly in the shadow of the majestic peaks, your hair well groomed, your coloured shirt clean and crisp, and hands gently folded in your lap. I hope the sky is clear for you today Monsieur Frau.
Monsieur Frau, I hope you are well
Richard
Our uncivilised nation
It seems that the threat to Australia security is so great that we have decided to wage war on children. Our parliament recently approved the purchase of cluster bombs for use by our armed forces “in combat against enemy armoured vehicles”.
Do they forget (do they know) that cluster bombs that don’t detonate on impact sit around until some unsuspecting child is attracted to their bright colours, mistaking them for toys and losing a foot or a limb or worse whilst investigating? Have they heard that the UN’s outgoing Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs has described them as “medieval weapons for the uncivilised”?
But don’t worry, we are only going to use the safe ones - the ones that ’self-neutralise’ when dropped if they do not hit a target - that are designed to “minimise the potential impact on civilian populations.”
It is not an original idea, but one I can’t resist suggesting. Why don’t we remove that threat to civilians by no longer waging war on anyone?