Yesterday I took a trip out to Manchester to catch up with a friend. Initially I was going to take the train from Liverpool but as its January and money is tight,I decided it would be cheaper to drive and park up at a N.C.P in the middle of town.
To park in the N.C.P the maximum stay is four hours and the charge to do so was £6:90.
I was gone 4 hours and 9 mins.
Those 9 mins which I spent lost struggling to find my way round the unfamiliar streets of the city have cost me £25, because at 4 hours 6 mins a parking attendant issued the ticket in the photo...so nice of them!
The cost of parking for 4 hours 9 mins was £32 pounds... add to this the cost of the tram as I rushed back and it was an expensive visit!
What is annoying is the penalty would have been the same if I hadn't bought I ticket...therefore I would have received a discount of £7. I also wouldn't of had a deadline to work too, therfore I wouldn't have rushed and could have saved some money on the tram also. By trying to play by the rules I got stung almost on every level.
This got me thinking if you can only receive one parking ticket for an offence every 24 hours, the next time I get a ticket for being slightly late. The best thing to do is leave it there overnight to get maximum value for money. By my calculations I if I leave it there for 14 hours I would break even, after that the next 10 hours I'am actually getting for free!
I probably will never do this, however thinking about it and sharing it on here has definitely made me feel a whole lot better ;)
This video contains many of my favourite music tracks from the last 10-15 years and a few older but equally respected tracks. Its been mixed using state of the art consumer level technology. It exists because someone gave it a go, and in doing so created something of a celebration of tunes which I know to be cool.
The Internet has allowed this person to distribute this clip and because of this others can also experience what is good about everything contained here through the power of sharing. They may even be inspired to search for these tracks for them selves. This video is a nod to the past and also the future, however the old school don't get it!
The Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A) will stop this, and as a consequence the producer of this video will not be able to post content like this. Under this new act ,it will be the hosts of content like this who will be breaking the law as well as the publisher. You Tube, Facebook, Twitter any one who allows the sharing to take place.
The idea of the act is to stop online Piracy but the reality will be that it will crush the Internet as we know it.
The simple truth is Big companies like Sony, Universal etc have become lazy. They want our money but want the least barriers to getting it. The Internet has thrown down the gauntlet, it's made getting the message out there easy but at the same time also made the monitizeation of this message difficult. If the brands of yesterday want to compete with the new school they need to stop playing by the old rules and work out a way to deliver something better than the pirateable experience.
If you look at Artists like Plastikman or services like Spotify that's exactly what there doing and that's where the future lies. Rather than fighting the Internet the likes of Sony, Universal etc should be embracing the opportunities it presents and exploring how to take advantage of it rather than hold back progress just because it takes them out of their comfort zone.
In the words of the mash up... "Don't hold back ...Push it forward!"
This is a "remix" of the video i posted a few months back of the riots in Manchester. Using the song from the current Christmas John Lewis advert.
I was also reading a William Blake poem the other day and came across the following words which also reminded me of the bit of footage attached.
Taken from the Poem " The Mariage of Heaven and Hell". (Massively Abridged Version)
Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility ; And the just man rages in the wilds Where Uons roam. Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep... ...Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, rea- son and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason;
Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is heaven. Evil is hell. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body ; and that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul. That God will torment man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following contraries to these are true : — Man has no Body distinct from his Soul. For that called Body is a por- tion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. Energy is the only life , and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
Energy is Eternal Delight. Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling. And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire. And the original Archangel or pos-sessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death. For this history has been adopted by both parties. It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss.
To conclude I have included the above section of the poem because it really does seem to resonate with the goings on shown in the video. You wittness the bursting forward of energy, the expression of desire. That same desire described in the lyrics of the John Lewis advert which ironically has been used to promote consumerisim and further creating the desire to form "a heaven from" what is stolen from "the Abyss".
Last Thursday "I got a cap in my ass" whilst jogging home from a night out with work colegues. I now officially walk with a swagger and it hurts a bit when I sit down. If I was in the hood this may have been seen as some sort of badge of honour, but I dont live in the hood and there is no honor in having to wiping the seat to make sure you dont get an infection when you use a public loo due to your weeping wound.
It happened about 9:40 pm, I was minding my own buisness jogging along the road when I heard the sound of a car decelerating behind me. I then heard what sounded like a gas cannister being squashed, like a burst of air, I heard a slight whistling noise and then felt a kick in my backside followed by a pinch, like being bitten on my bumcheek. I then coiled backwards and grabbed my left buttock as I realised what had happened, my initial thought was that the car had run over a can of something and I had been hit by shrapnel...I looked to the road and the 4X4 was now accelerating away and I could not see any cannister in the road. I also could'nt find any shrapnel just a small metal pelet and then it dawned on me that some little sod had shot me with an air rifle. By this stage the 4X4 was quickly disapearing from sight and it was too dark to get the number plate.
Fortunately the ripstop fabric on my pants stopped the pellet but it still hit with sufficient force to beak the skin. I continued to walk home, a bit shook up so i tried to phone home to share my woes but got no answer. I got back to my Bed and Breakfast and told the owner what had happened before heading to bed.
In the morning I was woken by the landlord who handed me the phone and told me the police wanted me to come to the station to make a statement. I got there and the woman on the desk said she was expecting me as I was the guy who had been shot. It all seemed a bit sureal.
I was given a quick interview and then taken upstairs to a female "Scenes of Crime Photographer" who wanted to take a photo of my backside. I had a few reference photos taken and she asked me to remove my pants. I then had the indignity of being asked which spot was the pellet mark as i had several spots on my bum, was i sure it was an air rifle and not a shotgun. I then had to stand there and feel my bum untill I found the one that hurt, it was all a bit comical.
After the photos I then had to give my statement, which was quite cool especially as I could verify my movements with my Android phone which had even logged me stopping at the time of the shooting incident and recorded it all on an app called Eventflow, almost felt like the whole thing had been worth while because I had a chance to justify the expense of my HTC phone though the police officer didn't seem that impressed.I then left the station and sent a few joke tweets about the experience and went back to work.
As the day progressed word got round my work site about what had happened and more and more people made jokes with regards to the incident, they reffered to the Mean streets of Banbury and how I would now be taking up arms myself. It was all rather tounge and cheek stuff and became a little bit tidious though i did laught at some of the remarks.
I left work to drive back to Liverpool and as I drove home I got thinking about the situation and how it had come to be, who where the little bastards who shot me and why had they thought it was ok to do so. What fantasy where they living in and where had the ideas come from. I thought back to the riots of a few weeks back and wondered if these moments in time where connected through a social consiousness that somehow has become deriled from the reality of the normal people and now existed in one of playfull drive by shootings in your dads SUV and free stuff from JD Sports shops and Currys Digital.
I reflected on a story I had been told whilst in work of soething that had happened last weekend of how a dad was out riding his bike with his two sons. One of his sons fell off his bike a twisted his ankle, the dad got off his bike to attend to his son who was in agony and whilst he was trying to calm the boy down some little scum bag stole their bikes. If you check the papers its full of these storys, but what I find scary is its not just the papers now its people you know who are telling these tales.
So today I sat at home tried to make some sense of it by doing what I always do and going on You Tube. I typed in Drive By shootings just to see what was out there, I also typed in Scallies, Scumbags Hoodies and Scrotes just to see what else I could dig up. This video is a short montage of the clips I found, Ive also thrown in a clip of J-Roc from "Trailer Park Boys" (which is a satire but of a very real situation).
Ok so anyway I was just a victim of an airgun, some kids role play but its scary that this is a mindset, a reality / fantasy that people seem to want to create and be a part of... It seems this existance is steadily gaining more mass and starting to pull more people into into it like a social super nova and even if the idea of toy guns dosn't scare me... whats on the other side of the black hole certainly does and at this moment I dont see any way out.
Attached is a video I found on You Tube from the riots that took place in the UK last week. This clip was filmed in Manchester. I've stripped down the original soundtrack and replaced it with a track from a Plastikman album called 'Consumed' which I felt was quite fitting to the content. I ask that you watch it and then consider your own thoughts and feelings immediately after watching it. I would appreciate any comments you may have.
What follows are my feelings on this particular video and not on the riots in general which I think are too complicated to digest here in a single blog entry.
This clip of Manchester shows kids, youngsters, the type I see whenever I leave home, all getting in on the action... "gegging in" as we like to call it in certain parts of the North West of England. This particular clip, of all the clips I've seen from the riots,upset me. Not because it shows graphic violence or destruction but because it shows people like those I see on a daily basis behaving like animals, somehow infected, like something out of a horror movie. Having watched this clip I later found myself shopping in my local Tesco supermarket and it wasnt long untill I witnessed the usual cluster of young lads debating which drinks would get them most wasted for their money. However where as normally I may even be tempted to give them some advice, this time I found I couldn't even look them in the face. I felt that these somehow the guys in the You Tube clip and the guys in Tesco had become part of the same group, part of the same "Zombie Nation" that had ravaged our streets days earlier. In my mind all that separated them was their current proximity to the events because it seemed that somhow their mentality appeared no different from those capable of such things. To me they were guilty as where the majority of people I saw in and around town the following day regardless of if it was fact. It seemed everywhere I looked I suddenly saw potential rioters, much in the same way that when I was growing up I remember my Dad had always seen potential drug dealers and burglars on every street corner regardless of any basis to form such a conclusion.
I questioned why i felt this way and I concluded that it was because in my opinion these kids didnt stand a chance. Its a case that their mentality has been cultivated for them over the past decade within a society that has officially become both financially and morally bankrupt.It seems more and more Kids are bringing themselves up with no real role models to focus on just each other and fantasy realities that are being sold by those who see fit to exploit whatever misery they can uncover. These realities have been crafted by merchants of escape who seem to see society more like a farm yard in which they can harvest cash from and not a place that contains real actual people. The lies they pedal are pushed out through the media reiterating a mantra that tells these kids telling they can have it all.
"Whats that... you're not happy with your looks, have plastic surgery... what you have no money... here have a loan... it's like saving... but backwards"...."What your happy with your looks, how about a TV, an ipad, a flat, a car.. you can have just about anything you want, have it all... you deserve it...your special".
It's all wrong and I have been as much a victim as the next person. One things for sure I dont have any answers but I do feel that the problem was let out of Pandoras box a long time ago, and it gets worse with every next wave of individuals who reach an age of lost inocence. If we are to close the box (if thats possible) I think we all need to take responsibility for our own actions and work out how we can fix ourselves after years of being programmed by the great farmers in the sky.Fix the parents and the rolemodels and the icons each look up too and restablish the realities they subscribe too. I dont belive for one second we cant fix these kids or the system overnight but I do feel that one thing thats apparent is that these green fields of England have been abused for way too long; if what we saw last week tells us anything its that our society has toxins within it and that some of these people in our nation are obviously mutating. All the natural goodness has been withdrawn by big buisness and now as the crop stops growing people are freaking out. Like farming big buisness is looking else where and is currently in the process of rotated to pastures new. The next harvest is planned in places like China, India, Brazil, Russia.
One things is for sure, England needs to get back to its grass roots and replenish its soils with the goodness that was once there. If it doesnt it stands no chance of avoiding becoming part of the emerging moral wasteland that is the back end of a failed capatalist system.
Just been tidying up my desktop and opened a folder of Powerpoint presentations which Ive collected over the last year. My attention was drawn to this little slideshow produced by Simon Coggins. The pictures where taken whilst he was head of science for the British Antarctic Survey down on the Halley V site.
Some of the pictures are stunning and as I looked at them I wondered if Posterous would be able to handle a Powerpoint (PPT) file...I guess theres only one way to find out! (If this doesn't work please accept my apologies....but if it does I hope you like the pics :)
With one thing or another I haven't been able to catch up where I left off and have therefore fallen behind with posting to my Posterous blog....it's a long story and something which at the moment can wait.
Anyway where was I ...I was leaving LA!
&REWIND to March 29th 2011: In fact rewind further to when I was originally booking my trip home. I was originally going to fly straight from LA to NYC but then noticed the flight went via San Francisco. The first thing that struck me was how cheap the Virgin flight was from LA to NYC it was only $86. I then had a brain wave if I tweaked my flight to include a stop over ,it might not be that much more expensive, it turned out to be next to nothing... $40 for a day in SF. So I booked it and I was now leaving to head for my childhood Mecca.
San Francisco is a place I have always wanted to visit from way back when I was into skateboarding. When I was young it seemed to be the centre of the skateboarding world and since becoming an adult it has maintained my attention but now as the centre of the Technology world. I was therefore very excited to be finally visiting the place especially as it had always been too far from home to visit just out of curiosity.
My flight was with Virgin and it seemed to be very much what I would expect from a flight to San Francisco. The plane felt more like a bar with it's Chill Out music playing as you boarded and mood lighting adding to the effect. Once I sat down the Girl next to me showed me how to order drinks on the console and also pointed out that the plane had Wi-Fi something that impressed me much and made me wish I had charged my battery before leaving the hotel. The flight was only short but long enough to get a good deal of information from my co- passengers with regards to what I should do on my short visit. It was explained to me that my first Mission objective was to get the BART ( Bay Area Rapid Transit) from the Airport to my Hotel near Union Square then head out towards the mission district to an Irish Bar that I was promised would not disappoint.
The BART transfer took about 30mins and I departed the system in the centre of town. I was greeted by an array of Crazy people as I left the station, drummers , clowns , beggars and other buskers and so called entertainers. It was very surreal and took me a bit by surprise. I then had my first encounter with one of San Francisco's legendary Hills, after several months in Antarctic I found these to be quite a challenge especially trying to avoid just bursting into a pool of sweat. After about 10 mins of hiking I found my hotel a super boutique affair called the "Hotel des Arts" with rooms individually decorated by local artists, Ironicly my room was painted Blue and white and reminded me a lot of Antarctica in its design.
After having a quick wash I headed back out and onto the BART to the Mission district away from the main city. I'am so glad I heeded the advice because I had a brilliant night in the Bar and met some brilliant people. Two encounters in particular made the night a guy called Rush and a guy called Clint.
Rush was brilliant he came over and introduced himself to me as Rush he then kept on putting songs on the jukebox playing Air Guitar and asking me what I thought of Jane Addiction, Pink Floyd and so the night went on. He gave me the full run down on what I should plan to do the next day and even tried to make plans to meet me and take me for the best Clam Chowder in Town however unfortunately this didn't happen but I did manage to do all the things on Rushes Rush round SF which I will come to in a moment. Ok the other guy I met was called Clinton Golden who was in a band called "Carlton Melton". It turned out that this band was going on a European tour and would be playing in Liverpool in May...I have since seen them perform and had the chance to meet them on my home turf. They were brilliant..and at some pointbi will do a blog post just on them.
Anyway back to SF and I had a full day to kill. I took the advise of Rush and hired a Bike I then had the freedom of the coast. I head out from Pier 39 having indulged in some clam chowder and cycled the 8 miles to the Golden Gate bridge and up to Hoppers Hands. I then took in the view and made the journey over the bridge ready to get the ferry back to the pier. I loved every second of it and found myself very jealous of the Californians I saw running up and down the coast. I can't think of more sociable running experience and felt apart of it even though I was on a bike :-) It looked like great fun and something which one day I wish to participate in on foot.
My route back to the pier was on the ferry and then across the bay past Alcatraz. Which in itself was an fantastic to see, the place looked so haunting and I promised myself that if I ever got the chance to return to Sf then I would make a point of visiting the old prison.
Once off the ferry I hopped on to the tram to scoot back across to Union Square. stopped to watch the skateboarders and buy some cheap Holister clothing before grabbing my bags to head to the BART for a trip back to the Airport ready for the Redeye to NYC. oh what a day :-)
This post is out of context with my most recent, but its relevant with regards to the season thats just past at the Halley VI site.
Re-Wind back to Feb and in I am still in Antarctica, the guys at the Halley VI remote site are enjoying good food cooked by a great chef (Shaggy). In appreciation for his hard work we decided to make a film in his honour.... this video is the trailer for that movie...which I must add we abandoned after making only the trailer, for reasons that will become clear if you decide to watch the trailer.(By The way just for your information "Man Food" is the slang name for survival food in Antarctica).
Los Angeles has never been somewhere I would consider going too on Holiday. It's not even somewhere I would have considered going to for a quick visit. The stereotype of LA LA LAND with it's plastic surgery and it's cult of celebrity is actually so undesirable, as to actually be off putting. So when it was suggested to me to make the place the hub for my trip to the states, I wasn't too enthusiastic.
The truth is to get from Rio to America isn't that easy. To fly from Rio you are limited to very few options and it can be quite expensive,that's if your not on one of the main routes. I read that there are only six destination that you can fly direct to Rio and after that you have to make connections. To get to LA I had to make two connections one in Peru and one in El Salvador. Though this was a nuisance it did allow me to get out of South America for a very budget price and by flying to LA it was significantly cheaper to go there than fly to most of the other states I had considered. I had made it my priority to go to the Grand Canyon and California is well placed to do this so Los Angeles seemed like a good option. What I hadn't anticipated was to fall in love with the place..I really did.
A lot had to do with finding a brilliant hostel in the centre of Hollywood which had once been the home of Marilyn Monroe. It had lots of character and history that added another dimension to my stay. That said i found Hollywood on the whole to be brilliant. I had heard a lot of bad stuff about Hollywood , people had said it's a dump...it's not what you expect, and that's sort of true...but what is there is so cool that it doesn't matter. If like me you like the movies then the place seduces you almost as soon as you see the Hollywood sign. The walk of fame is strangely fun to walk down, the Chinese Treater has it's own gravity that draws you in. Rather than ramble on and on the following is a list of things which I loved about my stay. 1. Staying in a brilliant Hostel 2. Searching out a good place to get a photo of the Hollywood sign. 3. Saying Iam not bothered about the walk of fame then spending half a morning trying to find Marilyn Monroes star. 4. Stumbling upon Elizabeth Taylors Star and watching all the tributes mount up. 5.Seeing Penelope Cruzes star being made and missing her by two days! 6. Watching a slightly average movie called "Paul" in the Chinese Theater which I might add boasts a HD experience like no other and renders the movie even more average! 7. Seeing the Premier for Sucker Punch. 8. Walking past Hellen Miren doing her foot and handprints and not realising what was happening! 10. Getting lost in the Hollywood hills when trying to walk back from Universal City. 11.Watching live music at howl to the moon and really bad comedy at another bar in Universal City. 12. Gong to see Bill Maher for free. Check this site out for free tickets. 13. Union Station 14. Feeling safe on the tube. 15. Visiting Compton 16. Seeing Superheroes on the blvd. The list goes on and on... And considering I wasn't fussed about going there there was so much I didn't do, I didn't go on a tour of homes, never visited Bel Air or Beverly Hills, didn't go Santa Monica or any of the beaches, Disneyland or Universal Studios. The place is packed with things that seduce you and I was gutted to leave but that said the places I went to after LA I felt the same about both San Francisco and New York play the same trick on me of trying to me a resident!
My trip back from the Grand Canyon was eventful. The Amtrak train that was travelling from Chicago to LA broke down and had to be replaced midway with a makeshift freight train with a max speed of about 30 mph. As a result it was about 6hrs late when it picked us up from Williams and loosing time with every mile it travelled!
As a consequence I missed my connection to Las Vegas but I did manage to spend sometime in the company of a real life Crystal Meth addict which was quite enlightening and on a par with my expectations of Vegas.
When I did get back to LA I checked my tickets to San Francisco and discovered I had an extra day in LA, so I was able to jump on the Greyhound bus and still get to see Las Vegas.
When I first arrived, the first place I went to first was Circus-Circus and i was struck instantly by the noise! An endless evolving loop of bleeps (loving techno music I should have been in my element but the chaotic nature of this sound unnerved me- you should check my last post to hear what it was like).
The second thing that struck me was that's if your not in the game then your redundant and serve no purpose! I played my small bets and once I reached the point that I didn't want to go any further pulled myself away and became an observer. It was at this point I stopped enjoying my self, all I saw from this point forward was the faces of Greed, desperation, consumption , occasional fleeting happiness ....some jealousy and a lot of despair! It wasn't really my idea of a good time and I had this claustrophobic feeling the struck me moments after I stepped off the bus and just became stronger as the night went on.
Looking back I realised one thing in Vegas...Its not your bad dudes on the street..not the mafia or the so called underclass that scare me in society. With those people at least they may give you some sort of chance, some sort of fair odds! And if the worst comes to the worst you can always run. What scares me more is the faceless corporations that have lost sight of the people and just see us as a way to farm money. In Vegas its the likes MGM (who own everything) and in rest of society it's the big banks and corporations. These are the guys who scare me...faceless, inhuman and unstoppable, with a desire to own you and feed from you. When I think about it it's these guys who are at the root of so much modern day misery! This really hit home as I walked the Strip at 4:30am and has stayed with me ever since.
Anyway... sorry to go off on such a downer, it was'nt all doom and gloom, I did enjoy one thing about Vegas and that was the Beatles tie-in at the Mirage Hotel ...maybe one day Vegas will be more about Entertainment and less about trying to fleece you of all your money...maybe if they got the balance then I might consider going back, for now I think I will just be content knowing that there are other place that do cater for these things...like my home city of Liverpool!
As a final point, just an observation but Vegas was quick to pay homage to Liverpools history with a the Beatles show but doesn't pay the same respects to it's own history- all the old Elvis and Rat-Pack Vegas has been knocked down to make space for the super-casinos...why because it doesn't bring in the revenue! This actually shocked me more than some of the £2000 bets I saw placed...any way that's enough about Vegas, hope you like the photos!
