a foray into arts and crafts

i was asked to do something on a small canvas for a charity exhibition recently. as i don't make art, i wondered what to do, and in the end i deceided to get a "lenço do namorado" (lover's hankerchief) made. traditionally, illiterate fishermens' wives embroider love poems for their husbands in fishing villages here in northern portugal (specifically in viana de castelo). for non-portuguese speakers, the last line of the poem translates as "i like you". 

we're all going on a summer holiday

but where? where exactly?

let's show those africans how democracy can work. votes please (open to international observers' scrutiny, of course)

four things i like

ok, here are four things i like:

1. the rather nice website for miranda july (of me, you and everyone we know fame) 's book, no-one belongs here more than you. i wish i had had this idea. 

 

2. daniel eatock. just generally. he has some nice things on his lo-fi-in-a-good-way site. i bought a card he made once, where you could just tick boxes to indicate the recipient of the card, and it's purpose (in fact, to give you a better idea, here is a picture of a couple of said cards: 

i also really like this idea. 

3. taxidermy. not the horrible film. the stuffing of animals for decorative purposes. controversial i know, but i feel strangely attracted to it. my birthday is approaching, and for those of you with the inclination, nothing says "happy birthday you wonderful individual" like a small foxes head tastefully mounted on a wooden shield, thusly:

(it can be found here- for the amzing price of 85 pounds (WHAT a bargain) -courtesy of miss sarah chorley)

 

4. francesca beard. officially a "performance poet", ms beard is actually quite fun. veering between intelligent stand up comedy and credible performance poetry, she is both intelligent and humerous. i recommend listening to national accident helpline, the poem that was really a list, or everybody's angry. or just go to her site and browse a bit. 

so, do you like them too? there may be more things i like on here soon. if there's anything you like, let me know! it's all about the sharing.

is this the worst music video ever?

i don't really know where to start here. is it just that i'm wildly hungover (valuable lesson: you cannot drink enough to make some people interesting. but you can try), or is this really real?  observe. 

Faith

This could be a film by Harmony Korine

polls? bollocks.

definitive. 

however, there will be more polls, even if they are bollocks.

words words words words

another little gem. miss sarah chorley, recently of london town, was given the word yellow. here's what she sent us.....

I personally don’t like yellow. I find it conjures up unpleasant images of things I don’t really enjoy very much, like earwax and worrying if my teeth look like it. 

Of course, it does have its uses, without yellow there would be no orange or green. In light of this, and also thanks to the relentless insistence of someone who shall here remain nameless, I suppose I cannot dismiss yellow so readily, and so, I am now considering the contradiction that is yellow. 

In my admittedly bad habit of being a hasty judge, I forgot about some truly brilliant yellow things; of course egg yolk, especially of a 4 minute boiled egg; daffodils – I don’t know why I like daffodils so much, but I think it’s because a bunch only costs a pound and they are very simple, and the thought of spending more than that on something that will wither and die in 5-7 days makes me fell just awful on a number of levels; this chic wallpaper panel that I pasted in at the beginning; and ultimately, Spongebob Squarepants, who over the years and to my own endless amusement, I have become familiar with also as Bob L’Eponge, Bob Esponja and SpongeBob Schwammkopf, depending on my locale.

Not to get too distracted, horrible yellow things and their unpleasant associations are quite numerous, we can include yellow fever, smilies, ageing, rotting, decay, jaundice, cowardice, old toenails, flouro jackets. Yellow also renders other perfectly good colours unpalatable - to combine yellow and black makes danger, as in wasps and small poisonous frogs and police tape. With red, it is just disgusting, as in infected spots and scabs, a promise of much worse to come. And let’s not forget yellow cars or that stupid Coldplay song.

There is an awful lot of theory around colour and personal responses to it that I didn’t know about until I started to write this. Apparently every person responds differently to colours, and it has been proven to all be linked with individual personality. A colour I do like is red. I’m not sure what these things mean, perhaps because I am a philistine, or perhaps because sometimes you just like a thing and dislike another thing and don’t always have to psychoanalyse it.

So, in conclusion, I have found that it is true that yellow is more often than not ghastly, but in certain circumstances has been known to produce fabulous results. I still don’t like it though, and here’s a quote from Edgar Degas, who was a well-respected realist painter in the 1800’s, and so clearly knew a thing or two:

 ‘What a horrible thing yellow is.’

classic moments in lego

are polls bollocks?

according to a certain other blogger, polls are bollocks. 

but are they? are they bollocks or are they really an insightful way of judging the mood of the populace? without them, how could we make decisions based on our perception of the zeitgeist? if we here in the cabin do not take a representative splice of the population and ask them critical questions, how. will. we. know? 

so, wheeling out this poll into the virtual arena once more for your deliberation, i ask you to stare at it long enough to decide... are polls bollocks? or aren't they?

coming in april:

a poll about 

  

and we need examples, so please send in pictures/anecdotes about bad art.

enjoy voting!

food for thought

i got us a clock for the cabin. doesn't work mind. nice though isn't it?

I like adverts

This is some sort of reply to Adam's post about the Sky Movies advert and to the common pre-conceived idea of advertising as a negative issue. Still being mentally 17, I am predisposed to disagree and in this case I don't think S.Paulo's decision to ban billboard advertising is anything to praise.

I don't know the numbers but I would wonder where the city council is finding the money to replace the lost advertising revenue. Either schools, public transportation, etc are getting less money or taxes have to be raised. Interestingly the same argument applies to Sky Movies, I know very few people that have and watch Sky Movies, but most people I know watch FilmFour. The reason is simple, Sky Movies has no advertising and therefore you have pay, FilmFour has adverts and is free.

A lot of people voice their discontent with advertising but very few are actually willing to pay more for an ad free world. Similar to this is advertising in public transportation, and almost no one would be willing to pay 30p or so more to have adverts removed from the tube or bus.

In conclusion, compared to other sources of revenue, advertising seems to be a rather harmless one. Yeah, some people get brainwashed into buying crap, but the solution for that is having more informed consumers not necessarily ban advertising. By the way, this rant applies to consenting adults, Nike sponsored school gyms and Ronald McDonald are a different story and one that is wrong, as involves the pure and naive minds of our beloved children being preyed upon by evil corporations.

Finally, Wired's Chris Anderson has just written a book called Free and has a preview article which deals, among many things, with what I'm talking about in relation to advertising. He is also the author of The Long Tail about another very interesting idea.

Anyhow, I finish with an unrelated lovely new story by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential) which is now online at the New York Times website. Coincidentally, if this was a year or so ago, the story would be a premium service exclusive to paying customers. Through the wonders of advertising is now free.

Enjoy.

palestine/maps

remember when i was talking about that borders thing? well, there's a really good interactive map thing on the guardian site you can check out. it's very well done. also, there's a sort of "brief history" of the whole thing. it's basically the whole contents of the exhibition that we made, but on a computer and better and that. have a look.

words words words words

i just got the first text. it's from julie, my friend in marseille. her word was, of course, night.  if you like her phraseology, you should check out her blog, the kitchen, updated with belligerent regularity and encompassing the ins and outs of daily life in the mind of a creative unemployed type.

after taking delivery of her word, julie duly obliged us with this gem, accompanied with a dusky triptych of views from her  marseille appartement (that's french).

 

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Julie McCalden

Night

I used to think nothing worth happening happened till the sun went down. Now that I’m marginally less ignorant and my days are a bit more roast dinner than salad, that’s just embarrassing. 

Though clearly the night does bring with it many appealing contrasts to that of the day. 

It’s dark for a start. I love the dark. Daylight’s great as well, you’ve got to love daylight (except when you’re seeing it before you’ve been to bed and you can’t remember your name, or where you live. That’s not good.). But I love how the darkness and orange glow from the streetlights morph the familiar into the unrecognisable. Combined with our heightened senses, there is an eerie quality, peculiar to the night. Left to my own devices my imagination runs wild; the moving shadows, the footsteps in the distance, the amplified sounds, the feeling of being alone and the worry of not being as alone as I think I am. And this strangeness makes me feel more alive. If nothing else, the darkness provides an apt change of scenery for the other, less obvious contrasts to unfold. 

Apart from bank holidays, the night is the only time when the shops are closed. In the wee small hours when even the kebab places and burger vans are packed up and only the 24 hour supermarkets and petrol stations are open, we are as free as we will ever be from the relentless opportunity to shop. Of course, most of us are sleeping then, but we can sleep better knowing that free from commerce we remain. Unless of course you have the Internet, because that’s 24/7. But no one’s holding a gun to your head. You could just read the news or find out everything you ever wanted to know about feral children. Or shop, if you want, it’s up to you. It could save you a trip to the unforgiving and vastly more enticing, impulse-buy arena of the frenzied shopping centre, thus also happily reducing your carbon footprint as you would probably have taken your car, unless of course, your online purchase, which was made in china, is going to be delivered all the way from New Zealand.

Night is the time that we associate with pleasure. The day is reserved for work but come nightfall and the time belongs to us once more. You are free to do as you please. You can do something, or nothing, whatever takes your fancy. Your nothing might be somebody else’s something. It doesn’t really matter if it’s something or nothing that you’ll be doing, or if you’ll be doing it with someone else who thinks of it as nothing while you prefer to think of it as something or vice versa. Each to their own. Personally, I’d prefer to do be doing something, but if you want to think of it as nothing that’s your call, I’m not gonna get in your way.

I’m always ready for winter until the night starts casting its shadows at 4 IN THE AFTERNOON. That’s a real low point for me and I long for gin and tonics, the smells of cut grass and sun tan lotion, barbeques and that magnificent phenomenon that is the late summer evening. I couldn’t say the same the other way round. But we couldn’t have one without the other. Except if daylight savings was sorted out to be different. The point is, all said and done the night is tremendous. But it would be nothing without the day.

THE PAST: RUBBISH

     

a woman working in the rubbish past. note her unhappiness.

we are all completely correct and wise to be living purely for the moment. any kind of nostalgia is just silly nonsense, and should be quite literally stamped out (i am lacing up my big, stamping boots right now). 

in order to check whether the myth about things being (rather vaguely) "better in the old days" was true, i selflessly threw myself into a program of grueling research and analysis in an attempt to come up with some solid statistics from which we could all form an objective judgement vis-a-vis the past vs. the present.  

the question i posed was thus: 

"look at us! living in this mind-boggling day and age. no time to stop and enjoy the simple pleasures of life! i mean sure we have wireless internet, 24 hour entertainment, streaming video, laughably cheap international air travel, more ways to relax and entertain ourselves than we can shake a stick at (stick shaking being just one of them), but do we have real quality of life? remember when summer afternoons went on forever? when we had no worries, and spent all day lying on grass discussing what the clouds looked like? when we were grateful just to have a bowl of porridge and not the plague?    no, me neither. but i'm always hearing toothless old tea-bag faces droning on and on about it, as if the old days were the best thing since sliced bread (in fact, they see sliced bread as part of the downfall of the age of innocence, and regard this obvious leap in the unstoppable march of progress as a bad thing, in blatant contradiction of the old saying!)  well, let's settle it once and for all i say. which are better? things now? or things in the old days? your considered opinions if you will. "

...and after a representative sample of the global population cast their vote, the results can speak for themselves. observe!

      

so yeah. things in the past? rubbish. thing now? bloody brilliant thank you very much! i know it's not too much of a shocker, but still, there's nothing like having some definitive statistics to jam a wad of wet toilet roll into the flailing gobs of all those doubting thomas past-lovers is there? now we can all rest easy and know that the public has spoken, and that they prefer things now. 

keep checking here in the cabin as we continue with our ground-breaking research and we will endeavor to bring you more of these world wide exclusives. 

p.s. if you have a suggestion for future weekly polls, well suggest away. there's a chance you may be listened to.

p.p.s. thanks for voting! a poll is nothing without votes. and that's not a figure of speech. it's literally nothing.   

tidying the mental environment/a dilemma

i don't know what i think about this advert. basically, it seems that sky movies is being very clever and advertising the fact that they won't be showing adverts during their movies any more, and comparing this to the wonderful change in legislation regarding the total ban on outdoor advertising in são paulo last year. the ad, currently showing in cinemas (and below), is genuinely beautiful. atmospheric, inspiring, it really made me smile, until the end, when i realised it was... an advert! still, a good advert i think. premier league advertising. so, i guess, well done sky movies! for being so wily and appropriating an attempt to clean up our mental environment and slapping it right back in our faces.
if you don't want to watch the rather sumptuously produced video, you can simply check out some great pictures of the new, unbranded são paulo instead. let's hope more cities do the same soon.

borders

last saturday i was invited to speak at a sort of cultural event thing here in porto, as one of three projects loosely linked under the event title: borders (fronteiras). 

the first presentation was given by an architect named marta, from cirurgias urbanas, which is a portuguese architect collective who are working with architects without borders. their project involved organising a competition to ask people to propose projects to provide cheap, sustainable housing to develop areas of their city for habitation by primarily immigrants and asylum seekers, and to evolve the concept of a hosting centre (the places where immigrants are housed while waiting for deportation/citizenship) into a more open, constructive way of finding an active place in the host city for them. the project was called cidade de abrigo, or hosting city. 

                            

for me, this raised a lot of issues about immigration (not least the fear that this was all a bit lefty, with no practical dissection of the actual ethics of immigration, just a simple idealistic "we should let them all in and help them!" attitude, which i was able to discuss with marta in the debate afterwards and find was not really the case, although i think i was the only person there who doesn't think we should have boundless immigration and if i hadn't been presenting a project about israel/palestne i would have been branded a raging tory). 

i was next, talking about the process and purpose of an exhibition nuno coelho and i made a couple of years ago based on some experiences we had in palestine. technically it's an exhibition by nuno coelho (not one to share glory), but i was asked to talk about it as i was involved in some small way, and nuno was off holidaying in the açores. so, i gave a little presentation, explaining why the posters were made the way they were, and about the problems with widespread information about political situations like this and about the potential problems of education in conflict zones and unilateral borders and all that type of stuff. 

   

anyway, after me was this lovely group of austrians, who are part of a vary varied and multi-talented collective called goldextra. they were presenting a project they were working on, which was basically a computer game made in the half life 2 model (that's a reference for computer game types by the way) so multiple players in different locations can play at the same time. when playing the game, you can choose to be either a border guard or an illegal immigrant trying to cross the borders. you can follow one of two routes, one from western africa, and one from eastern europe, and get try and get into europe. it was actually really interesting. i'm not into computer games really (at all), but the process or research they went through and the reasons that they decided to make a computer game to illustrate a point were really fascinating for me (for each project the group do, they try to choose a different medium that they feel fits the purpose).

anyway, they were lovely, so go and have a look at their websites and that. we had a very pleasant conversation over delicious greek food too, which was courtesy of 555, so thank you to 555!

it's not like the old days is it? but is it better?

that is the question. let's find the answers by general consensus. votes please, over there -->

words words words words

i recently decided to try and give this blog some semblance of a purpose, and set about trying to think about something which would do the following things:

 - give me a reason to have it.

 - involve other people i like.

 - cause those people (and myself) to be a little bit creative, in a way they may not have reason to be in their day to day lives (although many of them are creative in their own right).

so, i sent out some e mails, asking each of them to write a text (between 200 and 1000 words), which can be accompanied by photos or videos or what have you. these texts were to be about whatever they liked, but had to take a certain word as their starting point. i chose all the words from a page of the book i was reading at the time. 

so far everyone has confirmed that they have at least started on the task (i know you're busy), and i for one am jumping up and down slapping myself around the chops and salivating with boundless anticipation. 

so, hopefully soon i'll have some creative gems for you. i'll be posting each one accompanied with a little bio of the writer, and whatever they choose to accompany it with. 

oh, and if anyone has a word they'd like to suggest for me then be my guest.

on an unrelated note, i would like to register here for posterity that i love finding things in the street. to illustrate this, here is a pencil i found in the street and brought home. it's the size of a child. i love it. i have included a shoe in the picture to give you some sense of the magnitude of the pencil. enjoy! 

oh, and p.s., as they say, do tell me what the most interesting thing you have ever found in the street was (witty vignettes and hilarious anecdotes may be published).

results are in

the polls have spoken. unfortunately (due to unforseen technical difficulties) we are currently unable to change the picture, but as soon as my computer comes back from the repair shop i'll do it i promise. go mountain vista!

well done for voting. 

Clever Americans

If analyzed through my first hand experience my knowledge of the McSweeney´s literary empire is limited. Yet, I´ve just added several works by Dave Egger´s protegés to my Amazon wish list so I think that gives me enough credibility to recommend them.

If you have no idea what I´m talking about, then read this.

In any case, if you like books and stuff you are probably going to like this brand of literary entreprises.
so.
there´s a journal. a blog. a dvd magazine. and quite few books. and another journal.

If this is all too much, then watch this unrelated gem of eastern european cultural assimilation.

POLLS!

look! over there! there is a poll for your interactive enjoyment! i want both of you to vote ok? this is a serious decision. antonio, put a picture (or pictures) of your choice up for our deliberation. me? i'm going with string, but democracy is the by word here, so think super wednesday and have your say!

 

welcome! antonio

i agree. about the individualist society and web 2.0. i think it ties into the celebrity culture business. i keep noticing how dumbed down things are in England (and probably here too, but in the absence of the red tops it's hard to get a good handle on the low end of society without actually getting your safari gear on and actually, like, going and living among them and that), and the way everyone says these throw away comments about people they don't really know ("amy winehouse is blonde now!") and it makes me think that (and i'm definitely a victim of this) people don't really think their lives are worthwhile unless someone is watching. hence new clothes thrills, facebook, the worship of the suddenly-famous prole. especially the worship of the suddenly-famous prole. because people think "ooh, they're just like me! no more talented, or attractive or interesting! but people take pictures of them shopping or wiping their arse or vomiting up their iceland king prawn roles, and thus they have achieved a higher status of being than us old fashioned left on the shelf proles." they may not phrase it exactly thusly, but something similar, punctuated with references to low culture and some belching and gasping (caused by the obesity).  

and no, we can't change the name. allow me to explain:

cabin fever is a condition which produces restlessness and irritability caused by being in a confined space, isolated and/or shut in for an extended period.  i believe in it. and it rhymes. the only other possibility would have been "break in case of anything", which is nice. we could potentially change it to "cabin fever believers" now there's two of us. and glad i am that there's two of us by the way. it's nice and cosy now. shall we invite someone else? if so, who?

oh, and by the way, welcome! antonio

hello, is it me you're looking for?

i think we should change the title of the blog.
i like "the official end of everything". don't like cabin fever believer. maybe because i don't get it.
can we change the title?
this post is becoming a bit like when people post messages on the wall in facebook instead of sending a private message so everyone can see that they are talking with that person about how amazing their new haircut is. i hate people that do that. which is more or less everyone. i'm sure i could analyze people like that and see a symbolism for the merge of our individualist capitalist society with web 2.0. but i won't.
anyway. this is quite cool. (if you have a mac that is, otherwise is quite boring, but then you are probably quite boring if you haven't got a mac so it suits you just fine)

antonio

a photo essay: how i felt for five days.

monday jan 28

tuesday jan 29

wednesday jan 30

thursday jan 31

friday feb, 1

a fawning parasite

and today's word of the day is: sycophant

a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.

sycophant.

a virtual raison d'etre

right, so blogging. here's what i think about this. today. i'm sort of weirdly drawn to blogging, although i can't help but have a sort of niggling reluctance. it's something i quite like the idea of, but at the same time, a healthy degree of realism about.

allow me to explain. i fully embrace the following facts:

i will probably get a bit upset that no-one will read my blog, apart from maybe my friend julie, who lives in france and, to be quite honest, probably has very little else/better to do (sorry julie).

i acknowledge that although i will get upset about this, i will also find it totally understandable, as i never go around reading blogs. and i probably won't really put up anything worth looking at anyway. or i'll put loads of things up, and then i'll forget about it for ages, and then come and check and be doubly disappointed.

i will almost certainly lose interest in blogging within a year (maybe less). this loss of interest may be fuelled by the following things:

lack of people making jaw droppingly hilarious responses to my witty, insightful comments on daily life/utterly brilliant pictures (they'll come sooner or later, be patient).

the realisation that making and maintaining this blog is yet another activity of a lengthy list of things i do to procrastinate, and not do things which are ultimately more important than giving myself a virtual raison d'etre (!) (hark at me), for example:

(things i do to procrastinate)
reading magazines/newspapers/books, making lists, smoking, watching films, having a job, putting them stickers on things and then peeling them off again and then sticking them on a bit straighter and then peeling them off again etc., staring out of windows, drawing pictures of space rockets (really), organising documents and bills in a hugely unrealistic way which i will immediately stop maintaining rendering the activity pointless, and/or worrying obsessively about my ultimate pointlessness and inferiority and inability to achieve anything.

(things i procrastinate against (against?))
having a job, talking to people in real life, achieving tangible goals which enrich me as a person, organising my finances/teeth.

however. despite knowing all this in advance, i've decided to throw caution to the wind and advance gung-ho into the world of blogging. watch out (world of blogging). here i come.

this post should end on that optimistic note, but in a punch to the face of emphatic final comments, i'll continue, and aim to end on a more even keel. sort of a warm down if you will.

i'm off now to stare out of a window for a bit. the chinese family opposite usually get home around this time.