IMG: Chocolate Tinted Glasses
Posted on | December 24, 2011 | Comments Off
Quality Street Milk Choc Block wrapper as filter. Then a little Lomo.
Posted remotely by electronic trickery and magick, possibly involving cats’ souls.
IMG: Testing
Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 2 Comments
Testing WordPress from iPhone. Fully expect this to go awfully, horribly wrong.
IMG: Dune
Posted on | December 19, 2011 | Comments Off
Posted remotely by electronic trickery and magick, possibly involving cats’ souls.
Christopher Hitchens
Posted on | December 18, 2011 | Comments Off
Hearing of the death of someone you don’t personally know, yet whom you admire, is always a little odd. You can feel that your distanced sense of loss is a little disingenuous; that it hasn’t been earned. When the deceased is well-known and likely to be the subject of much tribute, there’s also the natural disinclination to get swept up in some mawkish wave of Diana-like sentimentality. Surely any normal person would just have a quiet pint in salute to the deceased rather than blather on about them.
I will do that.
And I’ll blather on just a little.
I remember the first time I heard (and heard of) Christopher Hitchens. It was about ten years ago and he was on a drive-time, talk-radio show discussing some of the less-savoury deeds attributed to Henry Kissinger. Hitchens was hugely impressive. So much so, I ordered his book, The Trial Of Henry Kissinger as soon as my commute was done.
Hitchens journalistic skill—not to mention his brilliance as a writer—is certainly in no doubt. I’ve read a number of his books since then and dipped into the regular stack of columns and essays Hitchens tirelessly turned out. Even during those times when I found myself disagreeing with his opinions, I was at least certain that Hitchens had considered his views in more depth than most others, myself included.
After his ‘anti-theist’ treatise, God Is Not Great, it became very easy to find audio and video of Hitchens engaging in debate with believers of various faiths. If you haven’t seen him speak and argue, it’s worth your while having a dig around YouTube for some examples. It’s certainly schadenfreude to take pleasure at seeing so many trampled by Hitchens’ reason, rhetoric and encyclopaedic knowledge but I challenge you to feel differently.
Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday, aged 62.
I publish this post, slightly self-consciously. What right do I have to join the mass of tributes? Unearned—and, if I’m honest, somewhat selfish—though my own feelings may be, however, I’m saddened by Hitchens’ death. That the world spins on is irrefutable. That it is diminished in some way seems, to me a least, equally certain.
Tags: Christopher Hitchens > God Is Not Great > Henry Kissinger > The Trials of Henry Kissinger
Hellraisers
Posted on | December 16, 2011 | 4 Comments
From time to time I venture a toe into the waters of comics. I’m not really a super-hero type of guy and have neither the interest or energy to try to figure out what’s happening in whichever universe is currently en vogue, so much of the genre—certainly from the Big Two—is pretty much lost on me. Luckily though, my brother is well-versed in most things ‘comic’ and I’m able to get occasional recommendations, or even sneakily borrowed books, from him.
Even more occasionally, he’ll go and do something incredibly generous that makes me temporarily forget his awful, terrible, black-sheep status. Like this:
At a recent comic-con (I believe that’s what they’re called in the geek vernacular) he got me a copy of Hellraisers by Robert Sellers and Jake. Hellraisers is a sort of graphic biography of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole. Since these four are among the most splendid of bastards to ever have graced this foetid planet, this gift was enough to fill me with unbridled less-grumpiness.
However, the icing on the cake was that he’d got the thing signed by the writer (Robert Sellers) and had the artist (Jake) do a little doodle of Peter O’Toole for me (O’Toole is the most splendid of those most splendid bastards, in my opinion).
There it is… Look.
Click to embiggen the wonderful sketch of O’Toole smoking jauntily.
All those times I’ve collected the brother from police stations and dubious, back-street bars with naked poultry beckoning at passers-by from the windows have been worth it.
Tags: comics > Hellraisers > Jake > Oliver Reed > Peter O'Toole > Richard Burton > Richard Harris > Robert Sellers
IMG: Almost Not There
Posted on | December 1, 2011 | Comments Off
Posted via Gerry Hayes on Posterous as I’m off my arse and away from a computer.
Kindle Swindle
Posted on | November 9, 2011 | 2 Comments
I’ve been in ‘streamlining’ mode of late, getting rid of a lot of old books and whatnot. It got me thinking about the benefits of a Kindle so I started researching.
While I was checking out Kindle hardware, Amazon kindly recommended a Kindle-format book that I’ve been planning to buy. It would cost me €7.71 to have the relevant zeroes and ones beamed to my Kindle (if I had one).
To compare, I popped to The Book Depository (where I buy a sizeable chunk of my books) to find I could get the actual, physical, hold-it-in-your-mitts, dead-tree version of the very same book shipped to my door for €6.37. And when I’m done with that, I can loan it to a friend or bring it to a second-hand book shop or use it to start fires in government buildings.
It seems unlikely I’ll be getting a Kindle this Christmas. I don’t feel I’m being unrealistic with this—I understand that there are people all along a book’s production chain that need to buy baked-beans and fingerless-gloves and stuff but it’s hard to shake the assumption that providing a virtual copy of a book should be, at least, a little cheaper than printing one and having a postman deliver it to another country. I tried pricing a few other books with very similar results.
“Pah!” I snort.
Get your head out of your arse, Amazon.
Or am I missing something?
UPDATE:
@timmaughan pointed out that I am missing something. Namely that it’s the publishers setting these costs and forcing them on Amazon. This seems quite believable but it seems odd that the largest vendor of both physical books and ebooks in the world (ok, I’ve just assumed that fact but I’d put some money on it being the case) can’t bring a bit more clout to negotiations. As we digest this new information, let me close the update with:
Get your heads out of your arses, Amazon and the publishing industry. I’m a freakin’ book-snob yet I’m thinking of buying a Kindle. I’d have scoffed, scoffingly, if you’d told me that a couple of years ago. There’s no way, however, that I’m putting my book-snootiness aside just to pay more money for something that has no physical presence outside of some transistor-states. Whoever is at fault for this stupidity doesn’t matter. The end result is the same to consumers like me—we’re not buying a Kindle.
See: 5:16
Posted on | November 8, 2011 | Comments Off
Posted via Gerry Hayes on Posterous as I’m off my arse and away from a computer.
Siri and I
Posted on | October 30, 2011 | 3 Comments
It’s possible Siri and I may not get along.
Our relationship just started today and we’ve already had an argument. This is how it ended.
I kind of admire its moxie, though.
Film: Tyrannosaur
Posted on | October 16, 2011 | 1 Comment
A year or two back, I saw Paddy Considine’s short film Dog Altogether and was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with Considine afterwards. He mentioned at the time that he hoped to expand the short into a feature-length film and that we was working towards that.
Well, Dog Altogether was a brilliant piece of work (the BAFTA people agreed with me) and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what Considine would do with a full-length film.
Tyrannosaur is what he’s come up with and, Christ, he hasn’t disappointed.
If you’ve heard anything about Tyrannosaur, you’ve probably heard about the violence. There is violence. It’s real and it’s unflinching and it’s harrowing. Tyrannosaur has a huge, savage, streak all through it and it can’t fail to affect you.
What I hope you’ve also heard, though, is that it’s a brilliantly beautiful film. Ugliness and grime has never looked so beautiful.
Peter Mullan plays Joseph, a man with serious anger-management issues. It would be incredibly easy for that the slip into one-dimensional raging but Mullan’s skill as an actor—as well as Considine’s writing and directing—never allows this to happen. That Joseph is capable of extremes of violence is clear from the beginning but his regret and his desire to change is beautifully and subtly drawn too. The simmering of Joseph’s rage—the hair-trigger that could release at any point—keeps you glued to him all through the film.
Olivia Colman too, is truly excellent. In common with many, I know her mostly from Peep Show and Mitchell and Webb sketches. Her performance here couldn’t be farther from that world. Hannah, Colman’s character, has her own problems with violence. A devout Christian in an abusive marriage, the humiliation and suffering she undergoes is almost beyond belief but it’s so real, so authentic, that we’ve no choice but to believe it.
It’s hard to watch Tyrannosaur. Very hard. But you can’t take your eyes off the screen. To do that would be to let down these characters.
Considine has created something amazing here. The last time I saw the bleakness and griminess of human-nature so beautifully captured on film was probably the Red Riding films based on David Peace’s books. Tyrannosaur doesn’t have the same nihilism and darkness as those, though, and despite its seriously disturbing subject matter, actually leaves you with a little hope at the end.
Astonishingly well-written, wonderfully filmed and acted. If you haven’t seen Tyrannosaur, remedy that. I want to see it again.
Tags: david peace > film > olivia colman > paddy considine > peter mullan > red riding > tyrannosaur
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and debase my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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