Canopy

Too much rain isn't good for anyone

Utopia1

Reciprocal consumption

 We avoid the quiet of our own minds, perhaps for fear of what we might hear. We live in the noise of music, videos and podcasts.

The media we consume are meant as distractions, as entertainment to stop us from listening to or being left alone to hear what we're thinking. It's close to impossible to be present, to mindful in the presence of these things, which is why we love them. They block out the real world and lose us in a fiction or a mediatised simulation. They are an addiction as much as alcohol or any other drug. More prevalent, stranger, more manipulated and manipulating.

As what we consume has become digital it also now has analytics built into its consumption. What we listen to listens to us, what we watch watches us.

Local psychogeograpic node

Psychogeograpic node. 

Type: tragic spontaneous

Duration: semi-permanent human lifetime

Leylines

Spraypainted lines on the footpath and the road act as urban leylines. They point the way to water, energy, concealed gas or effluent; to danger and utility.

To the uninitiated they draw out an unfamiliar language on the everyday that only indicates that the path on which you walk is about be dug up and you will have to cross the road or walk over a garish obstacle masquerading as a  footbridge, navigating patronising marshalling equipment as you go.

To those that know the city's vital systems are mapped out as veins and arteries, viscera and vessels carrying lymph, bile, vital essences, and transmitting messages from neurone to neurone; an anatomical map painted on the skin of the town.

Language

Language becomes the programming mechanism for reality; vocalise it - it can be so.

The software paradigm infects the idea of real, interfering what measurably exists - some kind of epistemological crisis invoked by describing what is not. Calling forth ideas into form; a new magic.  The more an idea is heard the more it is believed, the truer it becomes the more likely it seems to be (real).

Begins the manipulation. Options are; become conditioned to act as if an idea is true and give it greater weight, look stupid or confrontational for challenging the spoonfed truism. It becomes truth. Programmed.

The descent

Perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the moment I realised my descent into suburbia was total came at a casual game of tennis, but it did. It sat there in front of me like the proverbial dead cat. One moment I was wondering whether my hangover was actually mild enough for me to be engaging in physical activity and the next, there it was; I had had a conversation about decking treatments.

"What's that on your face mate? You alright?"
"Yes, I'm fine it's probably just the decking oil..."
"Ultradeck? Good stuff that. I used it at our place, keep it up to date and it'll see you right. Every six months I do ours."
"Ultradeck? You don't need to do that every six months unless its in the sun."
"Well, some of it..."
"Yeah, do those bits more often then or it'll crack"

...And so on it went. I withheld the fact that I had also mown the lawn for fear of a protracted comparison of two and four stroke lawnmower models.

At that moment I think I realised that for the sake of my own sanity I was going to at least pretend that I was some sort of sleeper agent whose purpose it was to point out the raw strangeness of suburban comfort.

Surprise! 1

Starting as a peculiar sort of unease it came, a strange suspicion of being followed from a distance, a persistent presence that could be felt round corners, dogging carefully quietened footsteps. I made it to the gym without seeing anyone or anything behind me but feeling very slightly anxious. Whatever it was didn't follow me inside. I checked through the glass doors.

Heading outside after a swim and a shower I put on my headphones to drown out the traffic with music. I was thinking through the day ahead until the same dogged presence was on me again. Removing one earbud I looked back behind me and saw nothing. Perhaps a hint of colour, one of the gym-bunnies in their fluorescent lycra heading inside for a spin class. Nonetheless the sensation continued. Having got into the habit of missing breakfast maybe the source of the problem was missing calories and caffeine.

After a pit stop at a cafe my nerves were more settled. I dismissed the thought almost entirely. I am simply not interesting enough to be followed. There was a long straight stretch of pavement with nice clear lines of sight, completely empty in both directions and I set off calmly, this new thought in my head. Once again, more slowly this time the feeling crept in; I was being followed by something. I picked up the pace looking in front and then spinning sharply round to see only an empty pavement behind. As I turned back there was a blur of motion and TOOOOOT!!!!  A clown had jumped out and blown a child's party tooter in my face. One of the ones with a paper and wire extension that rolls out like a tongue in a cartoon.

Before I could open my eyes from the surprise both clown and tooter were gone again. I couldn't have imagined it! I saw it right in front of me, felt the displacement of the air as the clown leant forward, the sharp tug and slight pop as the earbuds were pulled from my ears by their cord. I had heard the rustle of baggy trousers, the rasp of the reed in the tooter but there was no one in front of me and nothing behind. Rattled, my heart thumping in my chest, I fair ran to work, feeling much safer behind a card-entry door.

How to explain my alarm? "You look like you've seen a ghost" No, actually it was a clown. A disappearing clown with a party tooter who stalked me for over an hour just to make me jump. I must have sat silently staring at a blank screen for 10 minutes before the air conditioning chilled the sweat on my back enough to bring me to my senses. I don't think I really recovered from the shock of the morning, though I dismissed it quickly enough as a rather odd prank. I had a restless awkward day through which I crept, going outside only unwillingly, constantly on alert for the sight of brightly coloured clothing in my peripheral vision or the distant sound of a size 30 footfall.

Hustle

Hey, you. Yeah, you.

Wanna buy some writing? Wanna buy some thinking?

No? You'll regret it later when you've got nothing to do and you end up numb in front of the TV again.

Go on, just a lightweight concept or two.

No, really?! Well, fuck you then! I hope you suddenly come to in the middle of your reality TV program, see how little reality it contains and your brain dribbles out of your nose because of your ludicrous ineptitude with abstraction.

Up yours man! On your way.

This morning

Headphones & Sunglasses

Prototype

This is the prototype of an improvised conceptual device.

I am testing out ideas for a new occasional series.

Heavy Plant

Walk past a "Heavy Plant" warning and wonder vaguely if the trees thought it was for them; if whoever put it up had enough imagination to wish they were putting it on a tree or enough insight to see the irony that heavy plant machinery is commonly used in the removal of heavy plants.

Put yourself in the position of the trees, try to think like they might. The sign seems to suggest far more questions than it answers:

• How heavy would a plant have to be to warrant its own sign?
• Where on the transition from sapling to full tree might that point be?
• Is a single tree enough for a sign or should a tree in search of a sign join a copse to up their chances?

Just Write!

Got lazy and disinterested. Took a year off. Missed it. Had something to say about that. This says it better.

This week's links

If you aren't creeped out by elective plastic surgery the next 2 stories should fix that

Valeria Lukyanova, the Human Barbie Doll

http://www.gq.com/women/photos/201404/valeria-lukyanova-human-barbie-doll

"This Is Not a Barbie Doll. This Is an Actual Human Being." Not so long ago, images of a young girl washed over the Internet. She was impossibly blonde and impossibly shaped, and surely it was all a masterly work of Photoshop. Right? Michael Idov travels to meet with Eastern Bloc Barbie herself and discovers that her world is far more bizarre and twisted than anything in the photos By Michael Idov April 2014 More: When Human Ken Met Human Barbie Even More: Is Human Barb...

The GQ+A: Human Ken Doll Justin Jedlica on Meeting Human Barbie: The Q: GQ

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2014/04/human-ken-doll-justin-jedlica-interview.html

E When Human Ken, an American whose real name is Justin Jedlica, met Human Barbie , it didn't go exactly as planned. There was no ride in a Beach Cruiser™. No steamy night in the dollhouse. Instead, Justin, 33, a self-described "housewife" who attained his look through 140 procedures, compared Valeria to a "drag queen." · · · So how do you and Valeria know each other? We met at a photo s...

Stem cells even more amazing than previously thought!

BBC News - Doctors implant lab-grown vagina

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26885335#TWEET1097810

Scans of the pelvic region were used to design a tube like 3D-scaffold for each patient Continue reading the main story Related Stories Will we ever grow replacement hands? Stem-cell livers grown in laboratory Scientists make 'lab-grown' kidney Four women have had new vaginas grown in the laboratory and i...

Look at the size of that needle! Not for me thanks. Anything that looks like that and comes with a "pain management kit" should be avoided.

Crowdfunded xNT Biohacking Implant Ships This Month | Digital Trends

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/soon-well-cyborgs-crowdfunded-xnt-biohacking-implant-ships-month/?tru=DyUN3#ixzz2yXsnwaH2

After mounting a successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo toward the end of last year, Dangerous Things is now ready to ship its xNT implant to consumers later this month. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, the xNT is an ISO/IEC 14443-A and fully NFC Type 2 compliant NTAG216 RFID chipset encased in a 2×12 mm cylindrical USP grade lead-free Schott 8625 biocompatible glass casing. In plain English, that basically means it's a tiny capsule designed to be inserted into your body (usually ...

Lazy post

Ooh look, a lazy blog post. How special.

Just some things I came across that I noticed.


Visual effects just keep getting better. However it seems we are now so consumed by consumerism that we're constrained to showcasing creativity as commercials (not that I'd have done anything different).

Science validates my coffee and beer heavy diet

Caffeine + alcohol keeps your chromosomes just rightSome telomeres are too long, and some are too short. Perhaps striking the right balance of caffeine and alcohol is the key to keeping them just right—as if you needed an excuse to have another hot toddy.

Cicadas attempt to deafen Sydney. This is the loudest year since I've been here without any question

Cicadas having a blast this year
Experts say the class of 2013 is already larger and louder than anything NSW has seen or heard for at least 10 years.

Theme party

Australia appears to love theme parties. I have been to more themed parties here than I would have thought reasonable. One was even themed 'the letter W'. I wore a puzzled expression all night and kept asking people, "What? No, really. What?!". I know how to party I do.

I loathe theme parties. They have the painful combination of over-enthusiasm, limited ability and enforced fun also common to amateur dramatics and office sports teams.

Theme parties are okay if you're a student in your first year of university and genuinely need a theme to help break the ice, even then they can be treated with a degree of suspicion. I found a wary participation and a willingness to make fun of yourself good idea at that point in life (any point in life come to think of it).

I can't remember whether it was my university or a friends where I went to a "traffic light party"; if you are attached and not interested in intimate company you wear a red badge or piece of clothing, if open to offers but not actively looking you wear a yellow one, and if you're up for anything you wear green. Inevitably by the end of the night those wearing yellow had drifted off to another party, the greens clung hopefully on, imagining that their shy glances and self-conscious conversational openings would be rewarded by finding someone as awkward as themselves, and all those wearing red had copped off with each other.

A similar degradation of behaviour is one thing I fear when attending any themed party. That one minute you'll be thinking how fun it will be to wear a big fake moustache and the next you'll find yourself sat next to a bubbling fondue set picking car keys out of a bowl.

The other major fear is the party-goer who has taken it all a bit too seriously. There is a certain type of person to whom themed parties present an opportunity to show off that they simply cannot resist, and in any case can barely suppress in everyday life. You know the person I mean. The one who can source a pantomime horse costume at twenty minutes notice and, given a little extra time, will also supply a willing volunteer to be the rear-end of same. Not only do these people show all the rest of us up by putting in far too much effort, they somehow do it absolutely stone cold sober and are quite often disgusted by my lack of effort and/or unwillingness to 'get into the spirit of it' until at least mildly inebriated. For some unknown reason these people seem intent on having the most talked about costume - regarding this as some form of moral victory - and so they patrol the room bugging anyone and everyone until they collect even the faintest of compliments. Quite often they will stay sober the entire time. Bastards!

Tonight, in case you haven't guessed, I have my office Christmas party. It has a Wild West theme (yes indeed, how very festive). I was cajoled into going by a co-worker. It's at a local RSL club a short distance from work. I work in local government. BAH, HUMBUG!!

Doodling is bad for your productivity

I appear to have had my notes interrupted by an inconvenient in-text dragon's nose. I hate it when that happens.

The trouble with tablets...

Kirk dealing with tablets Tribbles

[disclaimer - I wrote this a year ago but it still seems valid]

...is that once you've got one you need want a few of them. I really like the 7 inch tablet for casual browsing and it's exactly the right size for carrying around, but you can't make phone calls on it. If you want to do work then the 10 inch version is great for a portable device, but bloody hell it's heavy, and bulky.

Once you can also write on a tablet - the windows 8 tablet that I've been used has really good handwriting recognition - you also realise that the potential for this to be a go-to bit of kit in place of a notepad is enormous. However there is no way on earth I am going to start lugging around a lump like a 10 inch tablet that weighs the best part of a kilo to meetings out of the office.

Kitsch

I have always loved the mail order catalogues that come through the door for their unwavering devotion and enthusiastic marketing of tat.

Just occasionally one surpasses itself; the pictures that follow are all from just one catalogue.

Pity the poor fool who had to write the copy for these.