Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Some times you're up

and sometimes you're down and sometimes when you're only half way up, you are neither up or down. Which begs the question where exactly are you? A little odd by way of introduction but I came across this quote yesterday and it made me think:

"We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience." - Larry Law

Do we find ourselves living more of our lives vicariously? We see pictures of popular places so regularly you could swear you've been there. There is enough 'life drama' on Oprah or Doctor Phil to last many people lifetimes, we get sucked into books, TV, films, comics and all kinds of media-driven non-lives. For some it's easy to distinguish between fantasy and reality, but for some there is an uneasy sense that the life they have isn't worth a lot - after all they can't fly, jump on a spaceship to another planet (although Branson may have that sorted soon :)) or fight off the Horde with a magic carrot. Have our recreation times become too driven by escapism or is the mundanity of life something to be escaped from?

Posted by Owen Jones 2007-02-13 11:47:35

Thursday, February 1, 2007
Sudoku

I've always had a decent head for mathematics and used to be very good at sums in my head when I was a kid (some of them are still lost in there somewhere I think) but when the initial craze surrounding sudoku began I wasn't interested. I don't mind the odd crossword or logic puzzle but for some reason the 9x9 grid of 3x3's didn't appeal to me. That is until the recent SKY TV Guide popped (or should that be pooped) through the letterbox - new series of 24, Bones and the Wire is always good news and at the back was a puzzles section. The crossword and word association sections were easy and that left only the sudoku. I decided to have a go. Once I grasped the poorly worded instructions, I know the idea is simple - but so am I sometimes, I was enthused. So far I've managed to do the puzzle in the paper each day aswell as some more difficult ones on the internet. What has surprised me though is how foggy the old grey matter is whilst doing them, I'm convinced I could have done them much quicker ten years ago as a school kid. Perhaps it's a sign that I'm not working the muscle enough :)

Favourite quote of the week:

I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson

Posted by Owen Jones 2007-02-01 12:03:40

Monday, January 29, 2007
Movement

I have a theory, it's probably been said a whole bunch of times but it seems to work for me, and that is the less you exercise the more lethargic you feel, the less well you focus/concentrate. Well duh! I know but in my case it seems to be taken that step further. After recent alcohol exuberances and any number of lazy excuses I found that, after consulting the training log I sporadically keep, I hadn't done anything physical beyond the norm in nine days. In those nine days despite ample opportunity I didn't manage to write a single word.

Checking the dates my writing was last updated with the training log brought up an eerie tale of the last six months, on three separate occasions I didn't train for at least a week and neither did I write much then either. I went running this morning - I wrote 762 words of my latest venture (sadly not chronologically) but pieces fell into place that just wouldn't fit before now. So I guess there is something to this exercise business and the million or so people before me to realise this are no doubt smugly nodding. Like any British rail service I get there eventually, the only question is did I get off at the right stop :)

As a taste of the madness infesting my brain I tried the snowflake method for the latest venture todayand came up with the following:

1.) One line description: God develops dissociative identity disorder that leads to the Apocalypse.

We'll be in all week :)

Posted by Owen Jones 2007-01-29 17:49:44

Sunday, January 7, 2007
Tough old bird

My Gran's best friend, Flossie,is 92 years of age. She lives alone and is more sprightly than most teenagers. Just before christmas she fell over in the house, tangling her leg in a chair. She took a nasty bump onher hip andcalled the doctor. Thedoctor arrived, not her normal one but a doctor nonetheless, and told Auntie Flossie she had hurt ligaments in her knee and that some rest would cure it along with some ant-inflammatory pills.

Two days of walking up and down the stairs to get to and from her bedroomlater she still wasn't feeling well, so she calledher doctor and explained the problem. He came out straight away and was more than a little mortified - she'd actually broken her hip in the fall and the other doctor hadn't picked it up. So for two days a 92-year old woman had been walking up and down stairswith a broken hip, the doctor and later the surgeon were amazed she hadn't complained about the pain more. Her reply "Well it did hurt but I didn't want to bother anyone about it, I felt silly for falling down in the first place."

Posted by Owen Jones 2007-01-07 09:52:58

Friday, January 5, 2007
Clever People

They fascinate me. I like ideas and reading/listening to people expound on subjects that either interest me or I'd like to be interested in, given the time. This fascination, in a backwards where-did-I-go sort of route, lead me to comics. When Ifind something new that I enjoy I try to do it all at once - there is a very old picture in a dusty family album of me trying to walk, watch the TV and eat an orange segment at the same time - if ever there was a summary of my life to date that picture is it. With comics I hunted down all the clever, fun, intelligent commentary I could find, from Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis to Grant Morrison and Brian Wood. The reasoning being, I would like to put the ideas I have into some form that will allow me to do them justice and in a format that will cope with my short attention span.

What I learned really surprised me. The planning, organisation and just sheer scope of imagination and vision that some of these people possess is fantastic (both senses). I read the first Transmetropolitan trade about six months ago and couldn't refrain from laughing out loud at the imagery (and if I'm honest the surface crudity) that Warren Ellis put into it. This was what I wanted comics to be and it was absolutely the type of story I wanted to tell. It also made me realise I didn't stand a chance - yet - of telling such a story because a lot of what makes anyone 'clever' is experience. Warren Ellis was a journalist for years, with some utterly wacky stories to go with the mundane, before he was able to condense and shape them into his work. You can't avoid your personal experiences creeping into that which you create and the wider your experiences the better you can explain through yourself. It is one lesson among many I'm holding to as a try to tell a good tale.

Posted by Owen Jones 2007-01-05 13:09:13