Watching the bonus interviews on my Mulholland Drive DVD, I suddenly realised what I believe to be an absolutely  fundamental truth:

David Lynch is Woody Allen's evil twin.

Several days late in realizing that Tony Wilson, legendary founder of Factory Records, passed away on August 10.

The BBC News website has a news story, an obituary and a nice piece on how Wilson changed the music industry.

Artist Nina Katchadourian creates cut-up ‘poems’ by reordering library books:

The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings.

There’s lots more fab stuff by Dan Witz to be found on his website.

(Discovered by way of the Wooster Collective street art blog.)

Sorry about not catching on to this immediately when it was all over the Internet (or parts thereof) about a week ago. Well, never mind.

If and when it goes into production, I definitely want to have an Alien Abduction Lamp on my desk.

With the cow, please.

“The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences.”    –  Chris Jordan

Jordan's latest series of extraordinary images is called Running the Numbers and can be viewed at his website.

Pulled at random from Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (my deck is the fifth edition, from 2001):

“You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.”

Ars Technica on the writer's role in video games:

“Writers need to get out more, need to read more than science fiction, and need to watch movies that don't involve guns.”

Why writing in games matters, Pt I: Advancing the art of storytelling

(Apparently.)

Anatomy of a Black Hole

So it goes.

There's a nice obituary in today's New York Times.

There was a short moment of unscheduled surrealism late yesterday evening, when my phlegmatic buddy suddenly lost his temper in the middle of a conversation, claiming that I had provoked him with my vicious attack upon his person. But in fact our topic was quite unrelated to his person, and to my mind there was no way that he could be offended by my musings on this subject. His reaction left me completely baffled. Had he been hearing a different conversation from the one we were having? Different words from the ones I thought I was uttering? Different meanings, conspiring against the both of us? I have absolutely no idea.

Just came home from watching Underworld: Evolution.

What is wrong with the world today? Graphic violence and gratuitous nudity used to be such fun.

Now it's just plain boring. Damn.

The 2006 International Procrastination Championships have been postponed indefinitely, as none of the contestants are ready at present.

Our candlelit midnight barbecue yesterday took a strange and sinister turn when one of the tea candles suddenly extinguished with a loud 'plop'. Upon inspection, we found a large, dark grey moth submerged in the molten candlewax. Moments later, two more dropped out of nowhere, each landing squarely in the wax of a tea candle. We were about to remove the grisly pieces of art when a fourth one dropped onto the table, missing its target. For a second or two, it crawled around on the table, seemingly in a daze. Then it set off at speed towards a taller candle, crawled up the side of it, turned around and - I swear - jumped into one of the remaining tea candles, singeing its wing and extinguishing the candle in the process.

We quickly extinguished the remaining candles and finished our meal in darkness and silence.

Here's one that would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't for the fact that all of my friends got identical scores. In fact, we were wondering if the whole thing might be rigged, so I went back and did the quiz again, lying on every single question – and lo and behold! I got Lord of the Rings. I suppose this makes me (cue ominous music) the Anti-Frodo.

I rather like that, actually.

Fight Club!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla

My life has been rated:
See what your rating is!
Created by bart666

Since I don't seem to to be able to write much these days (soul-searching is no match for making out with my GF, I'm afraid), here's another bunch of silly quiz results. I sometimes wonder what attracts me to this stuff – after all, I do have a reasonably accurate (albeit unforgiving) sense of self, so I don't really need questionnaires to tell me who I am or what I ought to be. On the other hand, I'm a sucker for affirmation, and I really cherish those small bits of recognition from friends or strangers that just say ‘I've seen you. You're OK.’ And every time I fill in one of those silly little quiz forms, I'm actually handing myself a little piece of affirmation by proxy: ‘Yes, exactly. That's me, right there.’

Ever so often, a quiz might even tell me something I wasn't quite aware of, or nudge my train of thought in a slightly different direction from where it was heading. There's quite a few clever quizmakers out there, with a good grasp of human archetypes, a strong sense of humour and the good sense to create something that is complex enough to take on a life of its own. The quizzes that really work (for me, at least) tend to be metaphorical (‘What song/book/movie/food/fictional person/political system/(whatever) are you?’), with a wide range of possible results that display consistency, attention to detail and probably rather more than superficial knowledge of Jung's concept of archetypes and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator on the part of the author.

On the other hand, quizzes that claim RL relevance (‘How attractive are you?’, ‘What's your social stature?’) really give me the creeps. This is about ranking, not insight, although I must say that group identity tests are good for a laugh, if nothing else (provided, of course, that you don't mind laughing at very young, undereducated and thoroughly clueless people displaying their prejudices in public). One would have thought that group- or subculture-related quizzes might occasionally provide sly, perhaps even slightly surprising insights into what subculture the quiz-taker ought to be a part of, but there's nothing of interest here, nothing new, nothing even remotely intelligent or funny, nothing that warrants spending even thirty seconds of your time, unless you really enjoy being told stuff you already know – with spelling errors. The worst I've come across so far provides a thoroughly silly concept (assuming that whoever takes the quiz has no idea of his/her own group identity), a set of embarassingly inane questions (‘Do You have Long Hair?’, ‘Do You wear Black And lots of makeup?’) and more spelling mistakes per square inch than I can remember seeing throughout several years of proofreading for a living (‘Do you have died hair?’ is probably my favourite). Even the author's username has a spelling error in it.

Anyway, this is probably my favourite quiz (and result) from the past week. More snatches of vanity and identity to follow shortly.

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. </td> Existentialist 81% Postmodernist 75% Materialist 75% Romanticist 50% Cultural Creative 50% Modernist 44% Idealist 31% Fundamentalist 19% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

... that's what I get for following my gothic sensibilities *sigh*

You scored as Anakin Skywalker. </td> Anakin Skywalker 83% C-3PO 53% Darth Vader 47% Padme Amidala 44% Mace Windu 42% Obi Wan Kenobi 39% General Grievous 33% R2-D2 31% Chewbacca 28% Yoda 25% Clone Trooper 17% Emperor Palpatine 17% Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

... something that begins with 'love at first sight'.

She came up to me one night I was DJ'ing and introduced herself, referring to a mutual friend. Barely five minutes into our conversation I knew that I wanted to get close to this graceful, intelligent young woman, and that I wanted to enter into a relationship with her.

So I did. And I'm having the time of my life.

But my ex is furious with me over this, claiming that a) there's no such thing as love at first sight, b) my commitment to my new GF must be based on false assumptions (with a strong subtext stating that this is libido, not love), and c) that the suddenness of the whole thing is somehow demeaning to my ex, reducing the significance of our now-defunct relationship. (I should point out that we split up some nine months ago, at her request, and that we had only recently found a comfortable way of relating to each other again when I met my current GF.) During one of her rants I did a really stupid thing: I pointed out that I had in fact responded in exactly the same way when I met her. This really freaked her out, because as it turns out, she had spent several weeks after we first met deliberating, trying to figure out what kind of relationship she wanted.

The more I think about this, and the more I feel obliged to somehow defend my actions, the harder it gets to put into words what actually happens in those short moments when I first meet someone I end up spending several years with. I spend quite a lot of time in clubs, dancing or DJ'ing, and I'll happily flirt with any woman who looks my way. But much as I love the attention, I'm quite aware of the superficial nature of the situation. It is merely pleasant background noise; I hardly ever reach out to someone the way I did this particular night.

Within those first few minutes I actually had a fair grasp of her personality. I knew that she was ambitious, strong-willed and independent, that she carried herself with effortless grace, that we shared a number of interests, that her sense of humour was different from my own yet compatible, that she probably had a dark side and that the fascination I felt was definitely mutual. In the couple of months that have passed since then she has revealed sides of herself that weren't readily apparent that night, but none of them seem out of character; I have never had to fundamentally change the way I think about her. Her dark side is a lot more similar to my own than I would have expected, and maintaining her drive costs her great effort. But I love her spirit, and her attitude to life, and her way with people, and how she can lift me up and make me happy without even trying, and how she responds to my touch like no other woman I have ever known.

Attraction is a strange thing, hard to describe or define. Was that really love, that night? What is love, anyway? We connected in some way that I perceived as 'deeper' than usual, and I could sense her response to me, could feel myself drawing her in even as I was being drawn to her. That mutual experience is the key, I think, at least it is for me. We have encounters with strangers all the time, in all kinds of situations, but unless the spark is there instantly, nothing (or very little) happens, and the spark is that sudden jolt, that look of recognition in the other person's eyes saying "Yes, I want it, I want this to happen, I want you."

So we took the big plunge. Will the story end with 'happily ever after'? I have no idea. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but if I'm ever going to find out, I'll just have to hang in there. I have no way of knowing how it will end, or whether it ever will end.

I rather like that. Not knowing is nice.

They always come in clusters, don't they? Three or four large, badly-dressed men who think it somehow unmanly to actually dance when they go to clubs. Instead, they stand huddled together, not next to the dance floor like other people, but right in the f*****g middle, taking up as much space as possible. They don't talk, don't even look at each other, they just stand, broad-legged, each with a fresh pint of beer in his hand like some token of ultimate maleness, leering at the women and glaring at other men to try and frighten them away.

How crude. How sad. How pathetic. How ridiculously "macho". How mind-numbingly pointless. How utterly, senselessly stupid. And how annoying to the rest of us who actually like to go out dancing.

On the other hand, I can't remember ever seeing one of those neanderthal creeps actually getting anything. Maybe there's some slight amount of justice in life, after all.

Hm. I think I can live with this ...

You scored as Rebel Rebel. Your Rebel Rebel. Written by David Bowie. Year 1974. </td> Rebel Rebel 80% Space Oddity 75% Changes 70% John, I'm only dancing 70% Jean Genie 60% China Girl 50% Young Americans 45% Fashion 35% Ziggy Stardust 25% Which David Bowie Song Are You created with QuizFarm.com