Happy Saint Andrew's Day

Happy Saint Andrew's Day; time to do traditional Scottish things, so I'm eating a deep fried veggie haggis marinaded in half a bottle of single malt while wearing a kilt made of shortbread.

Brunel in pictures

Photojournalist David White set out to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Howlett. You may not recognise his name, but you will have seen at least one of his photographs, of the legendary engineer isambard Kingdom Bruenel, in dusty coat and top hat, cigar between his lips, posed in front of massive chains, ever inch the great Victorian pioneer and engineer.

Howlett was dead within a couple of years of taking that photograph at the age of only 27 (the toxic chemicals in the photography process most likely killed him), but he created one of the iconic images of the 19th century. All the more remarkable, as White points out, because photography, itself a 19th century creation of that great age of innovation and exploration, was barely twenty years old when he fashioned this image, not content to do a simple portrait but to frame, pose and light a scene which capture the essence of the man so well. White had a re-created camera similar to the one Howlett would have had in the 1850s and took it around Britain to photograph some of Brunel's surviving structures in as close a manner as would have been available to Howlett (although wisely he used non toxic chemicals); the BBC has an audio visual slideshow of the result which is both asethetically pleasing and historically fascinating, drawing on the early days of photography and that period when there seemed a great romance about the new world engineers and inventors were shaping in our little islands.

Christmas market vid

Christmas market vid
Originally uploaded by byronv2

A quick 360 view around the German Market, Christmas Fair and Winter Wonderland in and around Princes Street Gardens and the Galleries on the Mound which just opened in Edinburgh the other night.

Metamorphosis

One of my favourite pieces by Philip Glass, Metamorphosis One. I was listening to some of the music from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack and thinking the composer Bear McCleary was clearly influenced by Glass, then during a couple of episodes of the show they actually go and play this particular piece...

Current listening: Hollywood, Mon Amour

Currently listening to a very cool album, Hollywood Mon Amour (two or three film references in one, which appeals to a film fiend like me), although when I tell you it consists of songs from popular 80s movies you'll probably be thinking, hold on, Joe, how the hell can that be cool? Well, I admit it has more than a couple of tracks which I loathed in their original forms, like the theme song from Arthur ("When you get caught between the moon and New York City, I know its crazy, but its true..") or the bloody awful Eye of the Tiger from Rocky. But here I like them. Here they are very different. They have been reworked by Marc Collin, producer for the ultra cool Nouvelle Vague (another movie reference) using a number of artists and like the covers Nouvelle Vague perform they are very, very different from the originals, hip, and cool. Check the site out where you can hear some samples from the album.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

" What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. "

Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen

Probably the best known of the poets of the Great War, Owen was treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart, just a few moments from where I live in Edinburgh, where he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon (events fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration and the film adaptation of the book). Owen was killed on November 4th, 1918, just a week before the Armistice. He was 25 years old; much of his poetry was published posthumously.


(the eternal flame and the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc de Triomphe; the legend reads "ici repose un soldat Francais, mort pour la patrie, 1914-1918. It stands in stark contrast to the more bombastic militarism of the Arc de Triomphe above it and the triumphant, processional way of the Champs Elyssee in front of it; the larger version is on my Flickr)

Mark Millar talks Wanted

Over on the Forbidden Planet blog my colleague Mark poses some questions to another Mark, Mark Millar, Scottish comics superstar (Civil War, Ultimates) about his comics and the movie versions of Wanted and Kick Ass. On the blog there's a second, shorter video with an excerpt from the special effects creation extras on the Wanted DVD too.

Winning Vertigo

Over at work the nice people at Dorling Kindersley publishers have given us five copies of their new hardback Vertigo Encyclopedia, a lavishly illustrated a-z reference guide to DC Comics' groundbreaking mature readers imprint for comics and graphic novels. Its an imprint which has done a huge amount to make comics with mature themed and aimed at adults popular over the last decade and a bit, with series like Garth Ennis' Preacher (violence, drugs, sex, blasphemy, conspiracy and the ghost of John Wayne - brilliant stuff), Warren Ellis' fantastic Transmetropolitan and Neil Gaiman's Sandman among but a few.




Alex Irvine's guide gives a synopsis of the main story arcs, character biographies and important notes about the beginning and development of the stories, its a pretty essential reference work and also a pretty darn good potential Christmas present. The competition runs until the end of Sunday 16th of November - I've written a brief review of the book over on the FPI blog and from there you can also find links to enter the competition where you only need to answer a very simple question to be in with a chance to win one of the copies.

Censortwat

Itunes software screwed up recently - like many sites there is censoring software to 'protect us' and like many sites using this garbage it screws up regularly (so all sorts of harmless files or websites get censored or blocked). Danny Kaye's "I thought I saw a pussycat" had pussycat turned into p***ycat, while, even more ridiculously the 'Killer' part of Queen's Killer Queen was censored, so was Johnny Cash's Christian name and the word 'teen' in Smells Like Teen Spirit. As the BBC notes 'killer' was censored while 'murder' was allowed through by the software. Well f**k me, if that isn't the dumbest piece of s**t.

Oh dear what can the matter be? A man has been superglued to the lavatory...

The Beeb reports that an unfortunate man was literally stuck to the loo after making use of public facilities in the West Midlands because someone spread superglue over the toilet seat. Firefighters had to help the ambulance crew and the man was taken out of the public loo with the toilet seat still attached to his nether regions. Good lord, is nothing sacred anymore? I'm all for a good joke, but the time a man spend meditating with the Porcelain Buddha should be sacred!

Palin crank call

With only days to go Sarah 'pitbull with lipstick (very expensive lipstick) Palin has been fooled by Canadian comedian Marc Antoine Audette into thinking she was on a phone call with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, which went out on a Montreal radio station. The whole Palin thing - utter lack of a grasp of geopolitics, foreign relations, her dubious record (the library interference when she was a humble mayor, possible misuse of family connections in jobs, trying to avoid freedom of information requests on her work by using personal email accounts rather than official government ones), her hideously intolerant right wing stance, her love of shooting animals for leisure, the pretence at being an ordinary working mom while spending more on clothes and hairstyling than many families bring home in a year, her apparent lack of knowledge of what the duties of the VP actually are - would be funny, except even after all this there are still a lot of Americans who not only would vote for her, they are talking about how she should run for president in 4 or 8 years...

was declaring to the reporter he wouldn't vote for Obama not on political grounds but because 'he was a Muslim'.I can't help but wonder at the sheer stupidity of some people, but then again a lot of those numpties are the ones who voted for a retarded chimp to let in Dubyah (well, second time, first time his brother and dad's friends in the Supreme Court handed the election to him) and before that voted a dreadful B movie elderly actor who delighted on ratting out his fellows during the McCarthy era into the top job. Watching one news programme some ignorant redneck woman When the reporter pointed out he had been a regular church-goer for many years she said that didn't count. No, she wasn't a bigoted, racist cow at all... Although being someone who dislikes organised religions of all types I always find it quite disturbing how much relgion plays into American politics to begin with anyway, especially in a country which likes to boast how state and church are seperated by the Constitution.

Thankfully, despite idiots like Cardinal Winning constantly sticking his oar into Scottish politics (you have your own opinion, but stop trying to tell groups how they should be thinking and voting) its not the same here; in fact when Tony Blair started talking about his mate God we all got rather uncomfortable because its a private matter. And because we think a politician is meant to be answerable to the citizen, not some mythic deity.