lunan bay

The lovely Lunan Bay and Broughty Ferry.
I think i should go back when i'm less grumpy and it's less hot. Bloody scottish weather.
The people walking are my parents =] I'm not allowed to take up close photos so i get distant ones on the sly.

The cat would be my Misty.

fink - this is the thing

the beef

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Sports movies. I love 'em.

Tin Cup 

Bull Durham 

Friday Night Lights 

Remember The Titans 

Invincible 

We Are Marshall 

Varsity Blues 

Field of Dreams 

A League of Their Own 

The Cutting Edge (a real guilty pleasure) 

The Mighty Ducks 

Lords of Dogtown 

Blue Juice 

Wimbledon

I have a sports movie problem

I've almost been alive 21 years. I am refusing to age any further.
REFUSE!

Maybe the 21st year will be a charm.

A copy of Picasso's The Frugal Meal.

I enjoy copying things.

My old art teacher told me i'd make a mighty fine forger.
Shame it's illegal and all.

billy joel - vienna

henpecked

Mr Holland's Opus

I love love love love love this movie. Films and good music, i'm a sucker for them. Even the crappy ones. This is however not one of those.

I'm watching it just now and Beethoven is being discussed and i've always been completely dumfounded by him. There's being a genius and there's going beyond what's possible. He was 31 when his deafness occurred and from the little i've read, it obviously plagued him but never stopped him.

"How can I, a musician, say to people 'I am deaf!' I shall, if I can, defy this fate, even though there will be times when I shall be the unhappiest of God's creatures...I live only in music...'"

Amazing.

If only we all had even a shred of that grit and determination. It doesn't half make you feel ordinary. But ordinary isn't so bad.

Florentijn Hofman


ray charles - i've got a woman

one flew east, one flew west

"He don't look a bit scared. He keeps grinning at me. 

They put the graphite salve on his temples. 'What is it?' he says, 'Conductant,' the technician says. 'Anointest my head with conductant. Do I get a crown of thorns?' 

They smear it on. He's singing to them, makes their hands shake. 

'Get Wildroot Cream Oil, Cholly...' 

Put on those things like headphones, crown of silver thorns over the graphite at his temples. They try to hush his singing with a piece of rubber hose for him to bite on. 

'Mage with thoothing lan-o-lin.' 

Twist some dials, and the machine trembles, two robot arms pick up soldering irons and hunch down on him. He gives me the wink and speaks to me, muffled, tells me something, says something to me around that rubber hose just as those irons get close enough to the silver on his temples - light arcs across, stiffens him, bridges him up off that crimped black rubber hose a sound like hooeee! and he's frosted over completely with sparks. 

And out the window the sparrows drop smoking off the wire. 

They roll him out on a Gurney, still jerking, face frosted white. 

Corrosion. Battery acid. The technician turns to me. 

Watch that other moose. I know him. Hold him! 

It's not a will-power thing any more. 

Hold him! Damn. No more of these boys without Secondal. 

The clamps bite my wrists and ankles. 

The graphite salve has iron fillings in it, temples scratching. 

He said something when he winked. Told me something. 

Man bends over, brings two irons toward the ring on my head. 

The machine hunches on me. 

AIR RAID. 

Hit a lope, running already down the slope. Can't get back, can't go ahead, look down the barrel an' you dead dead dead."

- Ken Kesey

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

I really didn't think i would enjoy it and it took me until the last chapter to do so, but i'm pretty fond of this book and all it's characters. Who knows if i'll read it again, i don't feel any great urge to but i'm glad i did. Really glad.

I wish to see the movie now please.

Jack Nicholson seems like the perfect choice for McMurphy, even with the lack of red hair and being built like a brick shit house.

I said 'Shit brick house' a fews days ago. I'm a numpty.

It's great the things you remember when talking sillyness with a buddy. 

Anybody else have a WereBear? They were great. Anything you can turn inside out and make something new is great. 

Great great great =]

I was going to read Titus Groan next but i need something small after Ken Kesey; not an easy read! So now i'm thinking, A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. My sister says it's like an older Catcher In The Rye, which could be nice.

I really didn't want to like that book.

Oh well.

Just add me to the masses of adoring Salinger fans.

Darn.

A drawing i did to show the state between life and death. It's obvious but i still like it.

clown shoes

Songs of today:

Frida Found A Friend - Efterklang

Haust - Olafur Arnalds

Things Go Up - Seasick Steve

DEA - The American Dollar

Over All - Francois Breut

Fix Up, Look Sharp - Dizzee Rascal

Time Is The Enemy - Twin Atlantic

To The Well - W. A. Matthieu

Please Forgive Me - David Gray

Wait For Summertime - Yeasayer

Knocked Up - Kings of Leon

Slip Away - The Muckrakers

This photo makes me happy =]

Three more days and i'll be officially 21.

Crap.

I think i'm going to refuse.

3…

Finally! Something of mine to upload! And it sucks. 

A part of my final piece of 2nd year...not a fully formed idea at all and i'm not happy with it but at times i find it sort of pretty.

Hmm.

I've been photographing other work and i should filter those through the days, see how long i can make them last. About two minutes. Why does my head have to be so full i can't draw anything?!

I'd like to be dumb, i really would.

I could draw pretty pictures and be perfectly content.

Guh.

I have been having ideas though, mostly about what i was talking about in a previous entry, old houses, history and the dead and such.

It does actually make sense but perhaps only in my head...and i like that.

Bedlam has also come back into play but i'm not sure, it's a whole different tangent to do with how the disturbed view death and i'm also looking into a child's outlook, due to my fairly childish attitude towards shuffling off this mortal coil. In essence, i don't see why i bloody well have to.

See. Cluttered brain.

Weetabix chocolate minis are my new favourite cereal. I feel sick though. Whole bowls are not doable!

A fun fact: The pathway beside my house is called Coffin Way. It's one of the routes people took to get to church. If a funeral was taking place, a procession would come through the path carrying the deceased. Morbid but fascinating. It's kind of amazing that beside my house is one of the last places someone would be taken through, it was part of tradition and i like tradition.

the blue nile - tinseltown in the rain

eleanor aloysius

farewell by ~LoadedGuns on deviantART 

my young bride by ~LoadedGuns on deviantART 

. z . by ~srtapolyester on deviantART

One of my very favourite things, is that when the Japanese for karaoke is translated into English, it becomes 'empty orchestra'. It is the name of my newly acquired Deviant Art gallery, so i now have two. T W O. I'm going to get confused, i just know it.

bruce hornsby - the way it is

phoebe

"About halfway to the bathroom, i sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts. Old Maurice had plugged me. Now I was on the way to the bathroom to get a good shot of bourbon or something to steady my nerves and help me really go into action. I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom, dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a little bit. Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I'd hold onto the banister and all, with this blood trickling out of the side of my mouth a little at a time. What I'd do, I'd walk down a few floors - holding onto my guts, blood leaking all over the place - and then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice, to leave him alone. But I'd plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft - after I'd wiped off all the finger prints and all. Then I'd crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. 

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding."

- J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

Another book done and dusted, i really liked it, i did. But i didn't love it and i have a love/hate relationship with the ending and Holden still pisses me off. But i'd rather a novel with characters to be affected by, than forgotten. I don't think i'll be forgetting little Phoebe anytime soon. She probably really would 'kill you'.

I would very much like Holden's red hunting hat. That would be pretty neat.

My next read is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'm hoping it has a more satisfying ending and at least i won't be spoiled by the film adaptation like i was for Perfume and Pride and Prejudice, that spoiled them a bit.

Today was a weird day, room tidying and throwing up isn't a very good mix. I really don't enjoy being infected and seeing as i haven't been out in public recently, i blame the carrier monkeys that unleash their germs on my parents in the Practice and scurry their way to my immune system.

Swines.

Anyway, if you want a good film to watch, buy/rent/download this:

Oh, and the illustration up there is by Charles Keeping, not me, because i suck too much to produce something as lovely as that =]

easy go

For your viewing pleasure:

(Watch out for 31 seconds in, it's my favourite part.)

I dare you not to fall in love with either.

I would like Erik Mongrain's fingers and Paul Buchanan's voice please.

I'm in the midst of reading J.D. Salinger's, 'The Catcher in the Rye'. 

I attempted to read it 2 years ago but after the first few pages i couldn't stand Holden Caulfield's narration. 

I am however on a mission to read all the novels you're supposed to read, purely because i like reading and i want to make my own mind up instead of enforced public opinion. 

For example, Chuck Palahniuk; he was a sore disappointment.

Plus, while i'm at uni i forget what novels are - i'm the worst multi-tasker in the world.

But yes, i'm giving Mister Caulfield another shot and he's actually not half bad, really self-indulgent writing but not half bad indeed.

claude - noir by *luve on deviantART

let the blind lead those who can see but cannot feel

Sleep Disturbance II by *gabesellers on deviantART

sleepwalking 6 by ~tombennett on deviantART

"I sing the body electric The armies of those I love engirth me, and i engirth them; And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul. Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves; And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? And if the body does not do much as the Soul? And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?"

- Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric

is there anybody out there?

My boy just died... II BW by ~borissov on deviantART 

 This photograph is proving problematic. I found it on Deviant Art and liked it instantly but then i read it was taken while the man was grieving for his son. Having been a mourner far too often of late, i don't know how i would feel having my photo taken during the experience. No, i do, it'd be shit and i wouldn't appreciate it but then a photo like this wouldn't exist and i don't like that one bit. Being an artist, i'm completely insistent of not denying any subject, no matter how painful/vile/disrespectful because then what would i have to study? Bunnies? I do like bunnies but then they're being slaughtered in Germany! Poor Thumpers. But, i guess it's easy to document when you're on the outside. My brain is conflicted, i do not like it. 

Something nicer!:

God by *Tenteri on deviantART I started drawing again today, nothing special so it may not be posted but i started! Forgot how much i love drawing people and their bones, much love for the ribcage.

twin atlantic - audience and audio

the company of wolves

"Little girls, this seems to say, never stop upon your way, never trust a stranger friends, no-one knows how it will end!
As you're pretty, so be wise!
Wolves may lurk in every guise!
Now, as then, it's simple truth, sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!"

I saw an advert for The Company of Wolves in Empire and it's one of the best reminders i've ever had of a film i'd long forgotten.
I remember watching this as a little'n, half stuck to the screen, half hiding under my duvet.
I've always been like that, but i'm not a fan of horror, more, fantastical creepiness.

I found that it's based on Angela Carter's book of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, which i have read half of!
Happy accidents.
I shall have to buy this little beauty.

the lazy eye

Not mine, unfortunately.

Found on The Lazy Eye

khonnor - cantelopps

ghost

"I have been known on occasion to howl at the moon."

- Crash Davis

Bull Durham

Finished up Dorian Gray and i have to say, i was pretty underwhelmed and i don't even know why! Maybe because it was a tough read, not to understand but the language was so dense and you couldn't miss a single word or you'd be wondering what the hell happened. I liked it though, with its insane theories and despicable characters. Youth is fleeting? Yes, well, i guess so.

I've been listening to Radical Face's podcast for the past few days and i can't actually stop listening. He talks about his album Ghost and how it's based on old houses and the stories they bear. The houses with floors that creak and walls that feel almost soft, as if it has seen a lot more than you have. He speaks of how whilst you live in a house it absorbs your story and how inevitably when you leave, you leave your ghosts behind to haunt whoever lives there after you. So the older the house, the more history you have to deal with.

I love that way of thinking, that a house could be alive and brimming over with stories to tell. I wonder what kind of stories my house would tell. It's got me thinking about my last project, about 'the moment of death' and this reminds of that...where exactly do you go after? Can you get stuck? If you are taken suddenly, do you get confused and cling onto the safest place you know? This got me thinking to the way we preserve the life of the deceased. I got an email from the uni about a magazine called Antennae which is involved with taxidermy, i find the whole process rather grotesque but i am interested in why we do it. Why we go to great lengths to preserve what's gone. There are longstanding traditions of memento mori and death masks, which seem to serve some purpose of remembrance.

I think i'm going a bit off track.

I'm just interested in the stories behind things, inanimate objects that seem to breathe and give comfort or even disturb, like the picture of Mr Gray.

Ucht, why can't i be interested in fluffy bunnies and rainbows like normal people?

I think i'd like to illustrate this song by Radical Face, he talks about it in his podcast:

"...the song 'Winter Is Coming' is the story of a man and his family. Uh, in the story the man discovers that the seasons are people, winter, spring, autumn and so on. Sensing a bad winter coming, which he and his family aren't prepared for he decides to kidnap summer and he chains him down in his basement. Uh, the song begins with the wife looking out the window and seeing winter, uh, marching up to the house and she's destroying everything in sight and the song follows them as they try to run, they try to get away."

I really want this album.

Enough rambling nonsense, i'm sleepy and i have more of Perfume to read!

Good day.

the ankle grabber

When i was little my Dad gave me a book called, The Ankle Grabber by Rose Impey. It is quite possibly the reason that at the impending age of 21, i am still incredibly aware of what may be lurking underneath my bed, readying itself to 'ankle grab' me' and gobble me up. ('gobble's such an appropriate word for referring to bed monsters).

The above photo is probably the best depiction of the absolute terror i have of what is below my mattress.

Perhaps it's a 'misunderstood' beastie, with big eyes, blunt claws and a gummy mouth?

I can but hope.

teacups

I like finding little things to adore and never tell anyone about =]

stefan noons - unlucky

happenstance

"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern."

- Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

It took me two days but i finally finished watching the epic Casshern. Think The Matrix being slapped in the face by a stupidly pretty Japanese man =]

You know when you hear a piece of music that just screams 'car chase' or 'fight scene', like Explosions In The Sky or Feeder's 'Shatter' and you instantly start to imagine these grandiose scenes of immense violence...well, you don't have to imagine at all with Casshern. There are actual jet-pack-hip-things. That makes it sound ridiculous but it's very much not. The story was a bit sketchy at points but i can forgive that because of the score and effects and the general mouth-gaping goodness. If the soundtrack wasn't 25 quid i'd by it right now!

Speaking of which, we got broadband finally and i got me an iTunes account. I'm going to be poor, oh so very poor...ucht.

[Hello to my mum, i promise not to forcefeed iTunes all my money even though i really really want to!]

I will post a new drawing at some point, i swear!

olafur arnalds - haust