Saturday 6 March 2010

Street drum - London version



there is an awesome video of this, but apparently Apple is a dick and requires me to buy (for £20!) Quicktime 'Pro', because apparently, my 'intermediate' Quicktime 7 isn't quite ready for the big leagues of uploading and editing. Sometimes Apple, you reeeeally test me. Thin ice.

Sure, chain a pram to a bus stop. That makes sense.




this is weird. The bottom one was from tuesday night on my way to Madame Jojo's for a 21st, the top one was on my way back from my adventure to Alice in Wonderland last night. Apparently, the baby is fine without his/her mode of transport. Who does this? Where was the logic? For some reason, leaving a pink pram chained to a bus stop rail feels like some form of very passive and sideways abuse in my head. It's very sad. The only nice thing about this is that despite it sitting on Tottenham court road for 4 days (at least), not once person has vandalized or attempted to defile it in any way. It's just chilling there. i like this.

Thursday 18 February 2010

Hanuman reincarnated - the guy with the 13in tail


If you do not have a proof of our evolutionary past, here comes this tea estate Indian worker: Chandre Oram, from Alipurduar of Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal has a 13 inch (32.5 cm) long and one inch (2.5 cm) thick tail. Far from being frightening, this tail attracts thousands of poor people worshiping him as a human incarnation of Hindu monkey god Hanuman. The 5.6 ft (1.68 m) man enjoys climbing trees and eating bananas for breakfast. The Hindu epic Ramayana says that Hanuman was a devout of god incarnation Rama and helped him rescue his fiance captured by an evil king.

"I was born on 'Ram Navami' (birthday of Lord Ram, of whom Hanuman was a devotee). People have a lot of faith in me. They are cured of severe ailments when they touch my tail. I believe I can do a lot of good to those who come to me with devotion," Oram told the Press Trust of India.

Oram has set up a small Hanuman shrine in his courtyard, receiving offerings on Ram Navami which he offers to the deity. But if worshipers are convinced by Oram's tail, women are not.

"Almost 20 women have turned down marriage proposals. They see me and agree, but as soon as I turn around, they see my tail and leave. I have decided to marry the woman who accepts me and my tail. Or else, I'll remain a bachelor like Hanuman."

Still, doctors say there is nothing holly in that tail, but a developmental birth defect called spina bifida, and they have offered to eliminate the tail via surgery, but Oram rejected their offer.

"He will not survive without his tail. It has become part of his being, his existence," said Oram's sister Rekha.

True tails (which would represent atavisms) are extremely rare. They are made by coccygeal vertebrae, while in Oram's case, the tail shoots out from the loin (lumbar) region, a clear mark of spina bifida.

"The coccyx is a vestige in humans and we stopped growing tails from that region a long time ago when we evolved from monkeys. Oram's case seems an aberration, an offshoot of a congenital defect," said eminent surgeon Dr B Ramana.

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Vegan bus



this is a vegan cafe on Brewer Street, Soho. Excellent food, "dude" service.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Thursday 11 February 2010

Our future

I was having this conversation with one of my closest friends a few weeks back, and we were to trying to come to terms with the pressures and anxieties of our lives. We're both in 2nd year of uni and struggling to keep the show on the road, with both life, love, family and work. Where is the moment for fun in this?

This week i had 2 deadlines, one i handed in yesterday and the other for tomorrow - as yet unfinished. My boyfriend broke up with me 2 weeks ago because he's got commitment issues - among others - and the balance of my life was screwed. I know that in a way it was positive for it to end, because there is no way i could have done this work if i felt the pressure to have him over, to spend time with him after class and go for lunch. Now i'm using all my spare time to go to the library and conquer the work load until the early hours of the morning. How is it that my life is so full that i haven't got time for my friends, or a boyfriend? It's pretty sad, and i'm far from being the only one. Was it always like this for young people our age? To not have time for what my degree tells me is the most important thing - finding a mate.

The problem stems from the pressure we all feel not to fail. In Norway and Sweden, children don't go to school until the age of around 6 or 7, while here i in the UK we started around the age of 4 or 5. From that early moment in our lives, we are voluntarily placed in the cattle corral that will be our lives for the next 2 decades of our lives. 2 decades! Our most formative years are about passing tests to prove our worth to the system, our later years are about life-altering exams that will dictate our futures. Fuck up aged 16 and the world almost ends! Universities will pick an A* GCSE student over a set of As and Bs any day, and yet we're barely at the age to figure out what the point of the whole thing is for. A levels are the gateway to your future potential, and without good grades your university placement opportunities are pretty poor. Then you get to university. i'm surrounded by kids my age who are questioning what the hell they're doing here, why on earth they chose that degree, what's it all about? Age 17-18, you are made to chose the direction of your life.

Some adults tell you that it doesn't really matter, that you should try different things. I met this business executive at one of my mums corporate cocktail parties who told me to stop being so afraid of failing. That it's ok if it doesn't work. I told him that i didn't believe this to be so, that my life was actually a roulette of hit and miss, and dropping the ball was tantamount to a disaster! Our generation is so well educated at this point, more so than any before, that we are fighting for our very lives to stay and, basically, be OK. Not even to be incredible, just OK. Existing. If i apply for an internship, i know that there are probably about 100 others exactly like me trying to snag that placement. If i apply for a job, there are people with 2 degrees compared to my 1 that are competing with me. Our parents have figured out the system, and the system is one of little bits of paper that say "i'm worth it. i passed the test". But what does that really mean? Do those chemical engineers whose whole lives it is to study and have no social life really enjoy what they are doing? Do they even care? Their parents are concerned with one thing: will my investment in this child be worth it?

Well, will it? What is the point? Our future is already mapped out for us, despite the superficial exterior of presenting so much freedom of choice. Really, life is about ticking boxes, getting the grades, looking good on paper. In all of this, where is personal development? Worth derived from the heart, friendships, love, social contribution? Value of knowledge, intelligence, learning - and not the ability to regurgitate what we've been told we should know. There is a stark difference between people who know how to pass exams, and people who actually care about what they are learning. Its not a dichotomy of good and bad, its just the choices that have been made for them. Are you good at maths? Take economics. Be an investment banker. Make loads of money. You like reading and art? Do it in your spare time.

It's the sickness of our generation, and future generations to come. Why are we so depressed as a nation? Because we are constantly made to feel as though our worlds are going to crash if we don't pass that next exam, or see a gleaming red A at the top of our essays. What kind of life is this?

And why are adults so shocked that our generation is so bored and unenthusiastic about engaging with the world? We're exhausted!! We're so done with thinking at the end of the day, after so many years of hard slog, that all we really want to do is watch a movie and switch off. Entertainment is designed for those who don't want to think or pick up a book and imagine. Everyday i read thousands of words by academics, and write a few hundred of my own. I don't want, nor even have the time really, to pick up a book when i know i should be working. I'd much rather sit and watch Ugly Betty or House and have my mood lifted than feel the anxiety i always feel.

I was speaking to that same friend about this, and she said she had noticed that we are becoming the people think we should become, because of social/family pressure, and how that's different to what we should actually do.

It's odd that popular culture tells us that we can be whoever we want to be, in movies, achieving your dreams, but when it comes down to it we mostly settle for we know we can actually get without truly striving for it. It's the pressure of our generation that we have more opportunities than any previous generations, and yet we're so exhausted by the pressure of exams and the fear of failing that we just...can't quite get there.

The world is an uncertain place, and we're terrified that at any point we'll let everyone down and be humiliated broken people who will never get anywhere simply because we made one mistake.

And i don't think we're wrong to be afraid. There is so much competition between bright people in the world for the few good jobs that if we wait too long or miss a step, or get 69% instead of 70% and miss out on a 1st at uni, our lives are ruined. The lfiepath we were suposed to have disappears in a puff of smoke.

We've been driven by our parents since childhood that we have to have a plan, plan, plan! But in the end, did their lives go according to their parents plans? to their own? i dont think so.

When i went to that cocktail party, the man told me i had to stop being afraid of doing it wrong, so what if i do? then that business isn't for me. People make mistakes all the time, it doesn't stop us from getting right back up and trying something different.

Monday 1 February 2010

Pink's awesome Cirque du Soleil act



Ok, happily skip to 2:08 mins in and get through the walking about thing. then you see her actually perform some amazing acts in the air - minus harnesses. i mean, i feel like it could have been a good idea to have a mic on her face not her hand, but there we go.

one problem is that one minute she's dry and twirling about, the next shes wet and twirling about and you're like "hey, i'd like to see what just happened mr cameraman". eh, oh well. enjoy!

Saturday 30 January 2010

A little highland love










Fairies, Dust and Water










EDITORIAL: Sogno D'Inverno
MAGAZINE: Grazia Italy
PHOTOGRAPHER: Signe Vilstrup
MODELS: Quinn Cooper & Masha Novoselova



I had a dream about this years ago, a woman with a dress made of the sea - except in my dream it was made of felt, sik, wire, beads, sequins, water, seaweed, netting and salt. it was amazing, i still remember it.

Mist and Owls


Heather Marks - Javier Vallhonrat






swirly green




http://www.leiweb.it/moda/immagini-di-moda/10_g_moda-abbigliamento-inverno_7.shtml

the trippy and the awesome








alter-ego


http://www.leiweb.it/moda/immagini-di-moda/10_g_sexy-biker.shtml?boxGallery2

future of the anti-fakeworld movement - begins with cute room design



both www.marieclairemaison.com


http://www.frenchbedroomcompany.co.uk/

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Street drum

Here is some awesomeness from the streets of NYC.

Song of the Sea

Here's a cute bit of animation i discovered on another blog http://pandaleina.blogspot.com/?expref=next-blog



When i saw this i immediately thought of Scottish and Icelandic mythology, which tells of a mystical creature known as a Selkie (scots for seal) that sheds its skin from seal to become human, and can return to the sea by putting their skins back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. If a man steals a female selkie's skin, she is in his power, to an extent, and she is forced to become his wife. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. They are not able to make contact with that human again for seven years, unless the human is to steal their selkie's skin and hide it or burn it.

Monday 18 January 2010

Vampire skull!


March 10, 2009—Among the many medieval plague victims recently unearthed near Venice, Italy, one reportedly had never-before-seen evidence of an unusual affliction: being "undead."

The partial body and skull of the woman showed her jaw forced open by a brick (above)—an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires.

It's the first time that archaeological remains have been interpreted as belonging to a suspected vampire, team leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence, told National Geographic News.

Borrini has been digging up mass graves on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, where the "vampire" was found, since 2006.

(See mass grave pictures of plague victims on another island near Venice.)

"I was lucky. I [didn't] expect to find a vampire during my excavations," he said.

Belief in vampires was rampant in the Middle Ages, mostly because the process of decomposition was not well understood.

For instance, as the human stomach decays, it releases a dark "purge fluid." This bloodlike liquid can flow freely from a corpse's nose and mouth, so it was apparently sometimes confused with traces of vampire victims' blood.

The fluid sometimes moistened the burial shroud near the corpse's mouth enough that it sagged into the jaw, creating tears in the cloth.

Since tombs were often reopened during plagues so other victims could be added, Italian gravediggers saw these decomposing bodies with partially "eaten" shrouds, Borrini said.

Vampires were thought by some to be causes of plagues, so the superstition took root that shroud-chewing was the "magical way" that vampires spread pestilence, he said. Inserting objects—such as bricks and stones—into the mouths of alleged vampires was thought to halt the disease.

—Christine Dell'Amore

And in a fun turn of events, the production team working on 'Being Human' used this bit of superstition and archaeology in a historical flashback in Episode 3 from Series 2. I like this a lot, though i'm not sure why. A nice knowledge circle in my head i guess.