fake snow

Is amazing. I went to a party a couple of nights ago with fake snow and it definitely improved it ten fold, apart from maybe the way it went all grey and sticky at the end from all the dancing. But then again that's a sign of a good party isn't it.
As is playing this:

drizzle can be good

I know I'm not saying anything new, but the dismal conditions of living up North has obviously resulted in some brilliant artistic creations. Maybe I will come back after three long years imbued with the urge to create something out of the grey around me. London is so different, it is somehow always colourful. I never understood why foreigners complain so much about English weather, it's the best.

D.I.Y.

Hand drawn tattoos are underrated.(says Kate)

christmas newsletters

Are the best worst thing ever. You know the letters you get sent by families that moved away, usually to Hampshire, years ago that you no longer speak to? Actually, they're almost better when you do still see them so you know the girlfriend of spotty teenage Tom/Gordon/Alex has been an ex for six months and that the photo of the mother and author is 5 years older than all the others. I don't think I've even met this family and am pretty dubious whether any of my family have either:
11 year old son: "Shooting regularly with School."
Mother: "Proud owner of a 12 bore shotgun." Fucking hell.

still life

This is really bad. But its basically the best bits the end part of Manchester. Flowers and Jerry.

Crazy

Patsy Cline - so good for Christmas listening for some reason. Not even Christmas songs, but there is something about this time of year which is so old fashioned. Mulled wine, mince pies. My favourite wrapping paper is often brown paper and string. Shit paper hats in crackers that always split cos my head is so big.
'Crazy' Patsy Cline. Youtube it. If I was a dick, I'd say it blatantly sounds its best on record.
Hometime soon. Can't bloody wait.

the pogues

Are number 21. What what what is going to be number 1? Ridiculous Noddy Holder.

proper crimbo

Noddy Holder's Official Top 40 Christmas Hits. wow. Actually really enjoying the Nicole Kidman/Robbie Williams cover of Sinatra's Somethin Stupid. what happened? (my permanent refrain) I think the novelty of having a tv in the holidays is just all too much. Cliff Richard is also pretty amazing he's calling Christmas "Saviour's day", what a joker.

good photography

seems very difficult to come by


Recently I've seen so many kebab shops in east london, girls wearing american apparel flashing their baps and fuzzy Holga shots that I'd pretty much given up on photography until this.
www.tpopesco.com

P.S. You are a Lion

I think it was a Lion. Because of your hair. It's like a curtain by the way.

meaty art

pretty much euphoric

It's the end of term because I have less energy than this guy

ear ear alphonse

Bertillon's measurements in practice.

Along the same vein of the human desire to classify and regulate - in itself a fascinating topic - is the work of Alphonse Bertillon, father of "anthropometry". The Frenchman was essentially a policeman with a geeky desire to develop a method of identifying criminals more thorough and reliable than that of eyewitness accounts.
Anthropometry identifies a person on the basis of several bodily measurements that allegedly remain constant, a technique that was commonplace until the introduction of fingerprinting.
Fascinating though that is I have yet to discuss my favourite of Bertillon's projects, his 1983 book "Identification anthropomorphique", in which he attempts to prove the atavistic regression in "degenerates"(criminals and prostitutes) literally by ear. Essentially Bertillon is trying to see if you can determine criminal tendencies from the size and shape of peoples ears. His conclusion after several years was, unsurprisingly that no, you can't. What a joker.

That was probably an anticlimax wasn't it, I apologise. (I'm not sure what animal I was, I like to think it was a polar bear though potentially I was a lion, or something crap like a hamster.)

Animalistic

Giovanni Battista della Porta was an Italian polymath, working away during the Renaissance. We briefly looked at Battista this week in one of my lectures. It interrupted slides on Renaissance portraits and was such a welcome break in the well versed "ideals" of the artistic period.
Battista was concerned with classifying living persons and things. In these sketches he aims to prove that human characteristics derive from or are at least aligned with that of animals.
I love these sketches. It reminds me of sitting in a double bed in Shepherds Bush, drinking tea and smoking, and running through every person that we could possibly think of and asigning them an animal that they resembled. Good times. I by the way, am a rodent or some sort. Maybe a beaver.

glumday

Some people love sundays. Not such a fan really.
They remind me of enforced family times, being extremely hungover and eastenders despite not watching it for the past four years. I bet this tastes much better then sundays. This is a much better idea.

Francesco Sforza

I love this boy's expression. Casually squeezing the life from a protesting goldfinch while gazing serenely into the distance, probably thinking about more ribbons for his sleeves or rings for his chubby digits.

Sweet Jesus

Maybe I'm having a sense of humour failure, but why why why would you think scarring yourself permanently with a terrible pun was a good idea?

Amores Perros

Few films pass the two hour mark and still retain my concentration. Though perhaps it could have been a bit shorter I really enjoyed Amores Perros(2000), a Mexican film charting the lives of three couples whose lives eventually collide in a car crash. What interested me most about the film was it's exploration of betrayal through two sets of brothers; documenting how their greed renders them amoral. Gael Garcia Bernal's character Octavio's unscrupulous desire for his brother's wife and Gustavo's shameless monetary gluttony provide a stark contrast to the unquestionably loyal dogs whose gruesome fights punctuate the film. It's worth watching even for the insight into dogfighting alone, highly recommended.

Sartre

I wish I understood philosophers.

Jean Paul Sartre's essay, 'Existentialism is a Humanism' is one of the more interesting and likeable philosophers my german professor has thrown at us. (We did Kant, last week. Try saying it in a german accent)
I like Sartre, he seems pretty unpompous for a philosopher mainly because he remained as a secondary school teacher throughout his working life despite being a prolific writer. I like the idea that a genius can work under the guise of apparently being fairly ordinary. The gist of the essay is that the essence of a man is self created, life is not determined at birth or by society. Endless possibility. Existensialism "puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders".
An intimidating thought, but it makes a lot of sense.
If you wanted to tackle it: www.marxist.org

R.I.P. Walthamstow and the best bookshop Ever.

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half in love with elizabeth

It happened.
Too long in the west country and you start liking electro remixes of perfectly good songs, I won't make a habit of it.

Even admist fierce flame, the golden lotus can be planted.

ra ra Rasputin

Apparently Rasputin means "dissolute". It upsets me that the most villainous haemophilia-curing nun-raping cyanide-immune Siberian is so badly underplayed in his disney incarnation. In "Anastasia" he's essentially a Russian Jafar.
If you're interested there's a really good book about him by Edvard Radzinsky with an amazing section about the "Khlysty", potentially the best religious cult ever. They believed that only after a man had sinned greatly could he be truly repentant and pleasing to God. That basically means nihilism in the name of God, fun times.