How to make a million dollars by Thursday (Music.)

These are the best lyrics you could ever put in a song. You’ll be rich in no time.

Why did you have to make me cry?
You don’t have no alibi.
I don’t want no other guy.
Why’d you have to lie?

I snogged Mariah Carey
And the lead from Blondie
Despite being a lady
myself (Homo erottic.)
Now I’m naked, naked, naked
oh, I’ve dropped custard
I might hurt myself (It’s cool to be neurotic.)
My clothes all fell off

I know you’ve got no alibi
I know you’re going to lie, lie, lie
goodbye, goodbye
I’ll get naked with some other guy (Because I’m a slag.)

CTRL+P your way to chart success.

Reference Culture

I’ve created a term for my own use. Doesn’t that feed the ol’ ego?

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone, but we live in a vacuum of inspiration. I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic there – it’s just a simple observable fact, but the people I’ve expressed this to seem to disagree with me – pretty ademantly.

I’ll opine that culture is in a spiral, or rather loop, that makes snobs like me bitter, and deflated. They’ll counter that by saying that films and music are great these days.

Has there been a good film in the last five years? Hell, let’s say ten. Name them.

What about song? Television program?

Ok, there are examples, but my point is that there is not nearly enough. Entertainment is a global, multi-billion dollar industry. Why is so few good or even, watchable films made?

I realised a few years ago, namely the time that the first Franz Ferdinanz album came out, and Peter Jackson’s King Kong was in cinemas, that everything being produced nowadays is just an attempt at emulating something in the past, that will always remain better.

I used Franz Ferdihanz as an example, because at the time it clearly stood out as a rehash of the last ten years of English music – back to the days of bands like The Clash and The Smiths where accents ruled supreme, songs were quirky little things about real English life – which was great, those bands are classics and will evermore be remembered as such – but, the modern wave of emulation-bands soon became tiresome.

At first it was a welcome return. We were so glad to see a familiar face that we invited it to our homes, where it’s sat around like a sounding like a broken record – presumibly because broken records are a symbol of the classic past – and generally warped music into this weird thing where people just reference slang terms in London accents.

There’s no rebellion anymore! Why are people so proud to sing “I kissed a girl” it’s not like anybody cares. Nobody has a monocle left that you can bring them to drop carelessly. We’re in a free time, without conservative values, so all of this attempt at rebellion is just cheesy, unnessicary pop.

When the Smiths sang, it was new. They were singing because nobody sang like they wanted. These days people sing because they got a Smiths record a while back, and they found the tabs online. Easy enough.

“Let’s dance to Joy Division” by the Wombats. How much of a gimmick can you inject into a song? All these songs these days are just their own little hook. Not just that – but their success is riding of the fact that people are appreciate Joy Division once again – there was a boom of popularity – and now a song could cash in on it.

Incidently – dancing to Joy Division isn’t ironic.

I’m not even one of these anti-conformist sorts either. I’m just somebody that loves films and music, and that woke up one day to find out that no new music and new films would ever be made – because everyone is still trying to cash in on the past.

Reference Culture Part 2 – The references strike back. (Films.)

Onto films.

You know what’s great? New ideas. What ever happened to them? Is there somewhere where all the writors and filmmakers of the last generation are hiding, or being held? Or were they all sucked into The Big Rehash conspiracy of the late Nineties onwards?

Why are all movies these days updates of franchises? Not everything needs a film about it, but that seems to be how the media works now – they find a gap and fill it. Not even classics, not even the Dickens novels that you would expect people to pounce over – the franchises – the successes ten years ago that people felt didn’t have enough bad CGI (Don’t get me started.)

This could best be illustrated with the film of the Allan Moore comic The Watchmen. Or in fact any Allan Moore comic ruined by some marketting team that decided to make a film of his work.

In case people aren’t aware – The Watchmen is a comic, about being a comic. That might not make a huge amount of sense – but in the time of it’s creation in the Eighties, comic books were all the rage – but had gone too far. They had become silly. They needed a thorougg critique to mark their end – and that was The Watchmen – and Moore calls it “The gravestone of the comic book genre.”

So, the Watchmen was a comic about the comic genre – and as a result, was made in a way which utilised that structre to it’s fullest – and as such, it would never be possible to make it into a film.

Terry Gillingham was the first director to approach the challenge. Moore told him directly that it was completely unfilmable, and Gillingham accepted.

Darren Aronofsky was the next to be handed the concept – but later found it to be unworkable. Aronofsky is the director of Requiem For a Dream – and frankly, if he couldn’t work with it, then it’s impossible.

Example over. But the same thing has occured over the last ten years countless times! Sometimes successfully, as in Casino Royale, and sometimes unsuccessfully, as in the movie (Shudder) Hitman.

It’s as if films these days know that they can’t stand up to the classics anymore. There will be tongue-in-cheek references to old movies, because the innovation that they displayed stands out – although surely it is the job of any inspired director to create new images, that in stead of paying homage to the classics, actually bring out a new form of innovation.

The aim should never be to emulate. Emulation is limitation. The aim should be to create something entirely new, something that other losers can emulate in the future if they so feel like it.

“Wit”

Here’s a quick review of a movie I saw the other day. It’s called “Wit”, based on a pulitzer prize-winning play of the same name.

I was just going to write. “Huh-huh, they should have just called it “Shit.”, because being that blunt makes me giggle to myself.

Well anyway. It’s okay. I was hoping for something – based on the title – witty. But in all honesty I found it pretty poorly written. I found that most of the characters were these 2-D cartoon-like concepts, just running on screen to say some contrived thing, about being evil, or negligent. And that was them.

“She’s research dammit! I don’t care if she dies! I pissed on an orphanage on the way to work!”

etc etc

And it seems to me, if you want somebody to be considered witty (Which is what I assumed we were meant to make of the occasional retorts from the main character.), then surely you need some sort of competition – you know, a little bit of real-world, applicable wit is far better than delivering comebacks to soulless, inanimate, punch-bags of characters. The things they would say were so contrived, it was almost as if they a really tired fantasy that you have when you’re Fourteen – thinking “If only they said THIS, then I could have said THAT.”

Well, anyway – The main reason I say that, is because the Doctor characters were presented as PURELY EVIL. I just couldn’t understand the point. Yes, your research is important, I get that – I didn’t need to be reminded of it time and time again. “I don’t care if she dies, because I’m a device of the narrative – but I WILL shout about it.”

You know what I would have liked in the movie? Some Wit. I think that would have solved it completely. There are long words – but to think that long words amount to Wit, just isn’t the case.

And I know, I know. The point of the film isn’t about wit at all, it’s about how useless her wit was, how it couldn’t protect her, couldn’t comfort her, and if anything, she used as a divisive tool to isolate herself. But still – if it’s called “Wit”, please, for the love of god, put some wit in it. There were some bits in it where she would turn to the camera at the end of some grueling scene and round up with some one-liner, smugly, that was never witty.

I don’t MIND things being contrived – as long at it serves a purpose, makes things entertaining, worth watching.

But the emotional part of the film – and I do admit that it is a massively emotional film – Is very realistic. She dies of ovarian cancer despite her linguistic finesse. It’s painful, and upsetting to watch – and I did feel “Wow, what a great film!”

But then I thought – All the film has done is present cancer and death. OF COURSE it’s emotional.

My view on films is that they should be experiences that you can’t sum up in a few sentances. I think that you could convey the real emotions in “Wit” just by sitting down with someone and saying “You know, people really do die slow, boring deaths of painful diseases, despite efforts and pride placed in their various academic pursuits and/or leisurely activities.”

To which most people will reply “Stop being a gloomy cunt.”

But, my point is – There needs to be something in a film tha goes even a little bit beyond reality for it to have a lasting impact – being able to sum up it’s essence in a sentence, to me, makes the time needed to actually watch a full movie, a waste.

And this isn’t to say it’s a bad film. I wouldn’t ever have much to write about a bad film, other than it’s bad – Of couse, I would have a lot more to write about a film that I nearly thought was excellent – and that’s how I feel about “Wit.”, it was very close to being excellent – but not quite.

So, to try and sumarize – these are the few things that I disliked about it:

-2-dimensional supporting characters, whose job is to set up for a bad punchline to each scene, and act unhumanely evil and shoot about “research.”
-It’s just… not witty.
-There’s no real character in it – the acting is absolutely superb, and the ability to convey a very real sense of actual human suffering obviously takes a great deal of skill – but presenting reality in such a way strips the audience of an actual insentive to watch the film, as we already live in such a reality.

And, to end, I should also reiterate that Wit is one of the best films that I’ve seen in a good long while now. It is genuienly emotional, which is something rare in modern cinema – and I would recommend it to people who haven’t had the experience of losing somebody to cancer, purely because it’s an important part of reality that we should all be conscious of. That being said – if you have lost somebody to cancer, watching it may feel unnecessary, and bleak.

An Interview

http://nlp-experts.org/ martial-arts/ 87-liams-year-martial-arts-china.html

TEST

These are the sites that I work for:

www.takeawaylanguages.com

www.takeawaylanguages.cn

www.ppimk.com

http://nlp-experts.org

ETC ETC

Ed

Another Life….

Its funny.

I should be dead by now. I can see absolutey no reason why I am still here. I worked so very hard on the first film, sleeping an hour a night for over a month, eating a miniscule amount, and generally thinking too much. I was pretty certain it would kill me.

So moving on from the film was painful.  Suddenly my mind had no foundation any more, like the ground had disappeared from beneath me and I was floating aimlessly, unsure of what would happen to me – which is my reason for my current depression and the depression over the last two months.

But then suddenly an idea occured to me, or someone – We could use the film as a prototype for the next stage, and remake a new version, after getting investors together.

A new life….

This always happens with me. I feel a new low, a new emptiness, and then something happens to bring a spring to my step, and makes me pour my heart out into something new.

Dr Fullen revisited.

“To be honest, dude, I think you’re depressed. And I don’t mean “yeah, you’re just feeling a little down today”, but actually depressed. Then again, I’m not a professional psychologist, so I can’t really make that call. Given how you act and what you’ve been through, though, it would surprise me more if you weren’t. As for the trains thing – as I said before, I think it’s a symptom. It’s the whole ‘lack of control’ thing – you couldn’t control getting your injuries, you couldn’t control Darron’s illness, and it sounds like Rachel just pestered you for sex until you gave her it – ‘it’ also being ‘control’. So between those things, and a lot of other things, too, you’ll have associated giving control with ‘bad’, ‘unhappy’, and a whole mess of other negative feelings. Now you avoid it.”

Back as Liam.

I think I am depressed. I realised fully just before I set off to Hong Kong. It’s a scary prospect really, of course it is, it’s like being told ‘For you, there might well be no such thing as happiness.’

I don’t know what to do. Pills? Nah.

I want to deal with this. I don’t really believe that mental problems have a physical root, so I won’t think about fixing them in a somatic way, that wouldn’t help anything. One drug is the same as another drug in my mind, it would be like smoking weed of popping E’s – I’m not for that sort of thing.

For me, life is a puzzle, and I love puzzles. There’s no sense turning that situation around and whining about it – I’m living a dream, that demands much of me, but that I can rise above if I’m willing to put the effort into.

And being depressed has massive upsides. I have talents I wouldn’t even think of making for myself if I was born happy like some idiots are. Happiness is the end goal for me, where as for some people it just gets them on the way out of the womb and that’s that.

Depression makes effort. Happiness doesn’t. Happiness makes laziness.

Maybe my depression comes from how much I hate laziness. I have to be depressed in order to motivate myself.

Which came first the motivation or the depression?

No-one’s going to come for you sunshine, and no-one’s going to comfort you.

This post never happened. Too much.

norwegian wood

My life is wonderfully baffling, beautifully dark and completely abstract. I am at best, forgivable, and the attention of a girl who, is at worst, adorable. I’m pretty sure that I don’t deserve the chances that I get romanctically, I normally reject them outright at the first hurdle. My sensitivity makes me spiteful, efficiently removing threats, without any concern for their feelings. I’ve lost a sense that the people that I’m talking to are actually human - as most of my conversations with loved ones are over msn, where its conveniantly easy to forget that the boxes of words being sent in my direction has a soul attached to it after miles of wire and a pair of arms.

So bonus points go to whoever can find me in person I suppose. I can’t love people in concepts, through verablisations, through ideas. I just can’t. People fail me in those departments. People can, however, still impress me in the chemicals that flow between us, an animal magnitism. Maybe that’s wrong. It feels right.

I’m learning (As in, not learned.) that a relationship does not have to be permenant – in fact, it can’t be. All relationships are equally finite. There’s no alternative. So why do I put so much stress on them? I should be able to say ‘This will do for now, I’ll see what happens to it, but I can always explore other people if it doesn’t work.’

This is a step towards shallowness for me, I feel. I’ve often thought that I could only have one relationship with one girl in my entire life – and maybe that was possible when this journey first began - but not now. I’ve become something so different than I had intended. Pain paved the way for frantic experimentation in the name of solace. It found nothing. It found hollowness.

I’ve maintained my integrity throughout, in an odd way. In some sense I have no integrity in the sense that I have hurt people along my way to these conclusions, but in my actual actions I have not lost anything. I have not delved into the shallowness of drink, sex, drugs – I’ve dived into the ideas of actual meaning, filmmaking and moral standards throughout this all.

But now it’s time to let go. I see sense, and I see that I am not happy. I see that my life is wonderful, immense, and beautiful, but I myself am a tiny shell of an individual looking out into it through the narrowest of vision.

I talk of freedom to people. I have freedom in some respects, but am so painfully jealous of the freedoms that most people have. The freedoms that they have in relationship, to just be happy with someone, for something as simple as thinking that they’re good looking – or whatever – which I don’t know if I can ever do. I don’t think I can appreciate the small things like that at all.

What is a relationship? What do man and woman really mean to each other? For some people the answer is quite simple – and I find that I’m almost running away from the simple answer, that it scares me.

The answer is that we are not bound to each other. That we choose each other, taking into account their pasts and flaws. Your mother will have had sex with other men before your father. Your father would have had sex before your mother. People have sex with people that they don’t love all of the time. Love is as fragile as a summer snowflake. It can be gone before you even feel it. It doesn’t exist outside your mind at all.

Innocence doesn’t really exist. Innocence, is a decision that people make after they make mistakes, not before. People that don’t make mistake aren’t innocent, just fortunate. People that do make mistakes at least have the knowledge of how to not make the mistake again.

Relationship cant be permenant. Life isnt permenant. Relationships are a microcosm for life, and as so are just as limitted. They can’t be bigger than life itself, like I had hoped. They can’t span eternity and create some form of immortality.

They can however, be fun.

Fun? Is that it? Fun?

Yeah.

Not my favourite of concepts, but seeing as it’s all that’s left I think it’s worth holding onto.

So a relationship is not permanent. Now what do I do? Do I have several relationships? Do I just see what happens? What of integrity and chastity and all of those things?

Fuck em. That’s what. They’re made up.

It’s either that or I’ll be a monk. I don’t know. Whatever.