The guardian has a ‘words that should be banned’ column. My nomination is ‘Democracy’. We don’t have a democracy in this country. We elect our leaders in a process that is a hollow reflection of democracy, but once given the mandate, they are let loose on the population unchecked until next election. The state of America is even worse, with huge social brainwashing projects running through the 50s and early 60s. Psychoanalysis, as driven by Anna Freud, was the art of perverting the course of human emotions - originally fired by concern at the way ordinary, ‘rational’ citizens would run the death camps and be capable of all manner of atrocities in WWII, a project was born in which social conditioning was used to make the Ego strong so that it could quell the Id, and then citizens would be able to act in a ‘rational’ way, free from self-destructive urges. Anna Freud adopted a family of young human ‘guinea-pigs’ to bring up in the model way. Meanwhile, commerce and the government realised that the techniques of psychoanalysis had applications elsewhere, like selling more cake mix or soap, and getting popular support for destroying small island states and taking over their banana production. By the late 50s, early 60s, the CIA was funding a program where LSD and ECT were used to erase peoples personalities and replace them with ideal, conflict-free emotional frameworks. In the end, they produced a bunch of bewildered individuals with no recollection of their past and the ability to repeat the phrase ‘I am calm and at ease with myself’. As for Freuds kids, one died of alcoholism and another committed suicide in Freud’s own house…
The X files has nothing on reality. Except for space aliens…
I can’t remember who it was that recommended I should see the movie Pi, but it was on TV the other night and I thought it was fantastic! This is not necessarily a recommendation as it is not a particularly easy movie to watch, but it does an amazing job of making number theory sexy and really drew me in anyway. The whole thing is shot in black & white, with stylish use of overexposure and hectic camerawork. The soundtrack gives you the heebie jeebies as motifs rather than melodies are repeated. The hero’s friend and mentor is a loveable old mathematician who seemingly once ‘got burned’ while looking for patterns in the digits of Pi, but brought himself back from the brink. The hero, meantime, is working on patterns in the stock market and we see him drive himself to the brink of insanity while his mentor tries to talk him down. The woman next door extends a hand of friendship and normality by bringing round samosas or performing other acts of nurture, but the hero symbolically rejects her. There is much that is unexplained in the middle of the film, I have a feeling there is a good deal of symbolism that was lost on me, but it held its own on the surrealism alone. I can’t really talk about what I thought of the end without giving it away so I won’t.
Went to see Monkey at Chester’s Gateway theatre on Saturday. It was the matinee performance and was fairly heaving with kids. It was a fairly cheap looking production, having only one set and limited effects; but there were a few nice touches that made it worth the trip: Monkey spoke like in the TV series - though his lips unfortunately synced with the sound, he performed the entire role speaking as if he had been dubbed by a japanese voice actor. He almost pulled it off. There were plenty of fight scenes involving some real, if watered-down, kung fu and some quality acrobatics. The Jade Emperor of the Western Heaven was funny as was the old man, played by the same actor. Ethnologically a little confusing (well, the original was a japanese show about a chinese legend set in india) it had an African Buddha and the music freely mixed African, Western and Eastern influences. Highlights include the giggles of the kids as monkey vanquished a demon by farting at him, or rubbed his name out of the Book Of Death by wiping his arse on it. Also, Tripitaka (who was actually a girl, both the acress and the character in this production) failed to interrupt monkey in time and he actually managed to say ‘bollocks’ on stage in front of delighted 6 year olds and appalled parents. Second half a bit on the slow side (it conformed to the common - accidental - formula of first half action, second half plot) but on the whole an entertaining and delightful show.
Recorded my Dutch cassettes down to minidisc and have been putting in track marks between all the dialogs while walking to work. There was a lengthy monologue about the Dutch royal family and most of it sounded English! There are still lots of words I don’t know but I’m starting to get the gist of much of it. Useful words heard today: Darling, nonsense, mine, sorry, anything else? Wonder how far you’d get in Holland with just those words…
It’s now wednesday of the new job - it’s been brilliant so far, although I can feel my brain starting to turn to mush with all the extra thinking that I’m being required to do! My PIC project at home and this job are mutually beneficial so progress was good last night. I basically worked from midnight till 2 and built a circuit that you plug into the R/C receiver and it lights LEDs to say whether you are going forwards or backwards. It’s a bit buggy but it’s a short step to having brake/reverse lights. It’s a bit of a longer step to build launch control but hey ho.
Great feeling of success today: I put one of my tracks onto minidisc last night in a near-finished state, and today it sounds great! I go off in the middle somwhere. Trouble is I don’t know if that’s cos the music is hypnotic or because it fails to hold your attention. I have a feeling it’s the latter so I will play it to a few people this weekend and gauge the reactions. Reason and I are getting along pretty well now, I used a stereo phaser to draw the bass right out. The didj and thumb harp and drums are a little muddy but I think that will come with practise. I also had a melody line that I was trying to do without a keyboard, just the mouse. In the end I made four phrases on the matrix and just used the patch change to arrange the part. I decided it was too repetitive so I deleted the whole track and exported the song to .wav. When I came to check it out to minidisc I discovered I had left the matrix running, so I got the first phrase of the melody repeated over and over all the way through. It was getting late so to save getting involved in it any further I hit undo to restore the whole track and exported again. I’m glad I did that. The melody needs more bedding in but it adds quite an identity to the track. In this track I hear influences from glastonbury circa.94, ‘ambient dub volume II’, jah wobble/the orb, DOH i’ve just realised how close to towers of dub it is… something off the radio around early 2002 and goldfrapp. The overall effect, while not quite cutting edge, has integrity and a little innovation in there too… time will tell what others make of it… problem is it’s not much like much of my other stuff, maybe I’ll have to do a norman cook and have a bunch of identities depending on the style of the music I’m pushing at the time.
This blog thing, and indeed the whole ‘writing stuff down about yourself that the whole world may see’ thing is interesting because it makes you examine your own identity, or at the least try to fabricate one. I have the disadvantage that I was brought up by a buddhist, so have generally regarded a sense of your own identity as a distraction that should be discarded. Related characteristics are an ability to be very non-judgemental and an ability to regard almost anything as worthless and discard it. Over time this has led to some difficulties getting on in the real world: had I been more disposed to judge others I would never have bought the house in the bad area that led to depression, years of stress and a sale at 10K less than comparable places less than two miles away. Since then I have been experimenting with applied ‘judgementality’ and sometimes feel like I am an asshole as a result. But I have to remember that my friends are among the most chilled out and liberal people on the planet, so I can afford to be right-of-centre relatively speaking. Also since I have been applying these principles my finances have (possibly) stabilised, my job situation has improved tenfold, and I have a brand new ability to prioritise and postpone. These must all be good things.
Lost all enthusiasm for juggling last night, but not until I’d made some progress on 4-4-1so the night wasn’t a complete loss. Ever since I discovered how to focus (the trick with me is to keep reminding myself I’m only focusing for a short while and I can think about all that other stuff in a minute) my solo juggling has improved in leaps and bounds (relatively speaking). I still lack direction in juggling. The trouble is, I know I won’t work hard at anything until I’ve got something to work towards, like a part in a show, but by then of course it will be too late: you shouldn’t perform anything unless you can do the next two things in practice.
Had some success with my PIC last night. Last week I wrote a prog that copies Port B to Port A, so the PIC effectively simulated a .25microsecond digital delay :-) I got it working that night then the next evening it was no longer working. This was a real puzzler and over the last week or more I have tried all manner of clock circuits and even was going to buy an oscilloscope to figure it out - fortunately John T lent me his oscilloscope so I saved a few bob there :-) Last night I thought I’d give it an hour and see what I oculd do. I thought I’d see what other circuits were out there and what people had done. I stumbled upon a PDF handout from a university course on PICs and there was a simple circuit in there. I noticed a mysterious lack of a pullup on the output, and twigged what was going on: it is a frickin CMOS chip isn’t it, and my logic probe is set to TTL grr. By this time I had rigged it with a large, expensive clock chip because I had been thinking it was the clock circuit that was at fault, so I switched the probe to CMOS and found the outputs behaving just right. Whooho. Put the clock circuit back down to a little, cheap ceramic resonator and it’s all hunky dorey! Next stage: Get a line to interrupt on change?
Config changes made