happy in my hoodie by *S-D-R on deviantART

Recently, I had a burst of artistic inspiration. This was a rare event for me – the last one was almost 3 years ago, but as with a majority of my artistic endeavours that didn’t amount to anything particularly worthwhile.  As many people in the past have found, sleep deprivation can offer significant motivational impulses towards artistic endeavours. A simple Google of the terms “sleep deprivation inspiration” will highlight some documented personal accounts of this phenomenon (if you’re after some further insight).

This particular case of personal ‘artsy’ began to emerge on the end of an all-weekend long study session into the mathematics and physics of mechanics. Nothing too complex for a maths whizz, but that is something I’m certainly not. Besides, the most complex maths that my brain process these days is along the lines of addition and subtraction of logarithmic values and even then rules of thumb dominate my methods (eg. 2 noise sources with power of equal magnitude simply give a rise of 3dB to the power of one of the sources by itself -> 90dB+90dB = 93dB!).

Wow.. that shit is hard huh… (sarcasmsarcasmsarcasm).   (For some reason people think highly of engineers? I feel those thoughts are often misplaced, although this doesnt account for the massive levels of stupidity of the general populace – as constantly documented in my fellow fingerpuppetmafian’s blogstreams. RE: The great internet censorship debacle)

Bending my mind around complex Laplace transforms, natural frequency modes, system stability and automatic control again after a 3 year hiatus gave it a severe shock. A sort of wake up call for those sleepy neurons to start firing vigorously in all directions. Now, couple this with high levels of coffee, guarana, lots of pacing back and forth, and patchy / minimal sleep – the interesting and unexpected result can possibly be described as a chaotic sense of clarity. My mushy brain was able to sort and select some of the best photographs of my vast (mostly terribly vacant of artistic merit) collection. The end result being a worthwhile gallery (to toot my own horn, Toot!) of photos that funnily enough were mostly taken when my levels of sleep were not particularly high.

The first set, which I’ll present in this first of hopefully many posts, is relatively narrow in its focus – A country road 2 hours drive from civilisation in one direction and 3 hours in another. (you can’t really call many places, even towns and cities in Australia civilisation, but for my purposes here I’ll use ‘somewhere that sells petrol’ as the defining factor). It doesn’t really matter where these shots are though, as the only context you need is ‘ remoteness ‘.

I’m not particularly sure who is going to actually read this drivel that I’m typing, but if you are, you can stop reading now and start looking.

Armidale-2 by *S-D-R on deviantART

Armidale-3 by *S-D-R on deviantART

Armidale-4 by *S-D-R on deviantART

Who are we, and how will we be remembered? Where are we headed? Is this now the digital age, or the information age? And is that an oxymoron given the medium? Have we converged on the time where information and the means by which we deliver it, define us?

Text, bulletin boards, chat messengers, social networking sites, email, SMS, pictures, digital video – you can hardly say we’re a universal society that’s recoiled from interaction with others. If anything, it assaults us at every turn. It’s inescapable.

Have we then, assumed the mantle of information couriers? And hidden beneath the writhing surface of those methods, have we unknowingly embraced a lock-step culture of enforcing that mantle on others?

And is the design of this mesh merely a vehicle to convalesce ideas? Or is it more? Is it our entertainment, our news and a part of our daily planning? Do we share that wealth of knowledge with others? Does the medium encourage us to do so knowingly and instinctively?

And yet, what is it?

It’s a system of signals and waves that delivers the thoughts and ideas of many; so that many might discuss matters in unison – breaching geographical restrictions.

Is that not a hive mind in its infancy? And at what point do you draw the distinction? Is this the cusp of technological revolution that we’d otherwise call fiction?

Discuss.

If there’s one thing that stands out as you “mature”, its the succession of days that it takes to recover from a big night out on the turps.  It’s only now, for example, on the dawn of the aftermath of a wedding reception on Saturday night, that the synapses have started firing on more than one cylinder.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”, so says Keats.  And while Keats is the man, clearly he hasn’t been to a Vietnamese wedding.

A Vietnamese wedding, let it be known, is a pretty surreal occasion to attend.  Especially when you don’t speak a lick of unAustralian.  And it’s not just that everyone else is four feet shorter than you, which makes you feel like you’re dining at the table alone, no.  And it’s not the bartering for your bride that sets it apart – No, I, too, think a basket of fruit seems a fair trade for a slice of the opposite sex.

No.  The real McCoy is that somewhere between that eighth beer and the tequila shots that began shortly after the little hand reached nine, you start to realise you can actually understand Vietnamese – and you’ve disseminated this from the broken pieces of pigeon-English that are tossed in as filler between real Vietnamese words.  And these scattered remnants of language form together in your mind to tell vast and bewildering tales of the events unfolding before you.

And somewhere in that tale, between the hordes of ninjas pillaging the village of scantily clad women; where rice wine seeped like golden honey from the comb-layered mountainside in thick streams; two people finally tied the knot.

The real kicker about a Vietnamese wedding however, is that the karaoke at the end of the night is in English. So it’s like the whole event was some foreign and elaborate masquerade. A marathon of a practical joke, which ends with the thumping punchline of: “My Sharona!”.

For anyone who’s familiar with Zatôichi – this was totally exactly like that.

I’m one of those people who has no affinity for balancing on bladed contraptions.

Give me both feet planted on one board and I’m perfectly at ease, but anything that requires both feet operating independently of one another in some kind of zen-like dance; and it’s a bit like I’m trying to rodeo on cement mixers. One foot talks to the other, there’s a brief pause while they chatter amongst themselves, followed by the inevitable raucous laughter as my arse takes the brunt of the joke.

Roller-blades, ice skates, ski’s; each is its own type of masochism.

The engineering of an ice rink, however, is a feat of marvel. Its round, has no real exits, and forces people to act like mice on a perpetual wheel. For anyone who’s been to a sushi-train, there are some similarities here that one might draw worthy of metaphor.

I’ve come to appreciate that trying to pick up at the rink is a bit like the “extreme sport” of how speed-dating must be.

Typically, you have three seconds to introduce yourself, state your intentions, ask for courting permission, and swap contact information. Unfair as that may sound, three seconds is all you get – because by the second pass on the rink they’re no longer skating on the outer edge and have decided you’re some kind of looney. To be fair, that’s probably true – so the real challenge, then, is in the delivery.

Try it out some time.

Games are temporarily out of the equation and as a consequence, I’ve run out of all the excuses that usually keep me from writing.  So, without more ado, commence ye glorious blabber:

A mate just got back from his three-month training stint in Malaysia with the Reserves.   And truth be told, the whole affair looked far more like a government-funded Cancun vacation than a term of national service.   After sitting through what could just have easily been a Balinese tourism brochure for an hour, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a holiday.  Bad.

Somewhere amid the reckless succession of picturesque glamor – each photo rife with its ancient temples, sandy white beaches, and oodles of unfamiliar flora and fauna – was a good time that I’d apparently missed out on.

Now, I’ll admit, I’ve never been to Malaysia, Singapore, Bali or Thailand. And even if every second of my mate’s photos were just hot pics embossed with a young lass, followed by the caption, “that chick has big cans”, I’m now tempted to visit them on aesthetics alone.  Bar New Zealand, and a short stint to Europe as a kid, I haven’t done a lot of travel abroad. I’ve never really felt the need to – there’s more beaches right here at home than I’ll ever have days off to visit.

So normally, a night of happy-snaps wouldn’t have phased me.

Normally, my idea of a top getaway is a good surf, hot chips on the beach, sand between my toes and a stormy front coming through.  Yep, that’s right.  A storm.

The kind of storm that sets your teeth on edge.  The one where looming clouds roll eerily on up from the south; where there’s a snap-change in the air and every fiber of your being crackles with anticipation; and the deep calm that settles before it hits.  The kind of calm that even birds daren’t disturb.  And later, the giant metronome that thunders against the rock shelf while lightning plays out across a black sky bay.  Good company and a few half-empty bottles of red.  The kind of bottles that you watch through the flicker of a log fire with a stupid grin on your face.  A warm bed.  Yep, I could set my life-beat by that shit.

So I put it to you, puppets: where, of your holiday picks would you go (or go again)?

Before I delve into the finer points of conspiracy theory, I’d first like to direct your attention to this fine article I came across at lunch today.

Now, I’m all about headlines (or, rather, reading between them), but this undeniable claim:

scatmars.jpg

highlights some of the wonders of investigative journalism in its prime. I’d also like to make special note of their image name – just, you know, in case the catch-phrase didn’t spell it out for you.

Now I assume everyone’s had a keen eye on the developments of the martian lander, and so you don’t need me to bust out my moves and tell you what it’s all about. Like about how it could take samples of things on the ground and investigate their composition in order to determine all softs of cool shit, as its scientifically known.

Initially they just wanted to find out if the red mass could sustain life, by locating ice samples and essentially boiling them in a miniature bucket-bong in order to provide a component-level breakdown of the soil. This so “they”, the scientists, could all sit around afterwards and scrutinise over the geology of the planet. Probably while listening to Bob Marley; and probably while muttering “huhuhuh” between mouthfuls of Cheezles.

However, after today’s announcement, rather than release their findings to the general scientific community, which one would expect from such an enterprise (and has been the case up until now) – they’ve opted play hidey-seeky with the White House. This inevitably leads to my first question:

Does the White House really have a bathroom where tourists take happysnaps of their favourite US pollies?

And secondly, what’s with all the hush-hush?

ARE THEY COMING TO GET US? ..

THEY’RE COMING TO GET US AREN’T THEY!

Condolences; chin up, thoughts are with you champ.

And the word of the day is: belligerence
Meaning: a warlike or aggressively hostile condition or attitude.
“It’s belligerence because I say it is, motherfucker.”

And the word of the day is: subterfuge
Meaning: an artifice or expedient used to evade a rule, escape a consequence, or hide the truth.
“The trojans fell before the subterfuge of greek reins.”

“Looking darkly upon Hector, swift footed Achilles answered:
I cannot forgive you. For as there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, there can be no love between you and me. One or the other must fall before then to glut with his blood; Aries, the god who fights under shield’s guard.

Remember every valour of yours. For now the need comes hardest upon you to be a spearman and a bold warrior. There shall be no escape for you. You will pay, in lump, for all those sorrows of my companions you’ve killed in your spear’s fury.” Homer, the Iliad.

And the word of the day is: incandescence
Meaning: the emission of visible light caused by combustion at high temperature.
“Today we learned that hooking a mini-vac up to a rack-mount UPS produces incandescence that can be seen from space. Go you huskies.”