Enjoying: arty stuff

Aaron pointed me towards this very cool, ultra stylised video that shows how much visual information (both in advertising and other signage) we are exposed to on a daily basis. He found it on an interesting blog about alternative advertising practices. (They got it from a New York artists collective site - theWooster Collective, which has a wealth of awesomeness on there.)

I really hope there's some kind of CC (Creative Commons) thing going on with it as I'd love to use it for something else (or at least work out how it's done - lots of frame by frame hard work at a guess). I have one problem with it though - there's a point at which the guy enters his PIN at an ATM and now I can't for the life of me remember what mine is. (Hoping that muscle memory comes to the rescue next time I need to take money out :)

LOLing: Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker is a fast-talking, acid witted observer of modern English pop culture, going right back to a hilarious serious of mock tv guide pages he published on a website called tvgohome.com around the turn of the century.

It's certainly crude but hilariously so and with a healthy dollop of insight as well.

You can check out the entire tvgohome archive (be prepared to wile away the odd hour or two there) here

This is just a sample (minus the world-class swearing common to many of them) from the site.



He's since moved on to do a fair bit of very funny and highly edgy work on TV - very little of which has made it here although you can find a fair slab online, including the notorious Brasseye episode about paedophiles called paedogeddon.

His latest effort is called Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe.

If you've ever made snide remarks about the tools appearing on tv - on ads in particular, you might be able to relate.



My choice gag from this was

Ad - Who says you can't lose weight and enjoy yourselves?
Charlie - Bobby Sands? (Bobby Sands was an I.R.A member who died on a famous hungerstrike in a British prison in the 80s)

Reading: JPod by Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland has been revered in parts of the MSM (mainstream media) as a chronicler of the zeitgeist for the last 10 or 15 years, starting back in 1991 with his novel Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture.

While I always had a certain curiosity about what the man had to say, there was something that slightly riled my born-and-bred Gen X 90s flannelette shirt wearing slacker sensibilities about having my culture dissected and demographised. So I left him and his subsequent works on the shelf.

I noticed his new book JPod the other day though and there was something about the backcover blurb that grabbed my attention - maybe because of my growing interest in game design or maybe I was just in the mood for a bit of zeitgeisty po-mo pop culture.

In brief, it's the story of a bunch of young folk working as game designers in Vancouver - all smart, oh so cool and all with far more interesting lives than you or I. One guy is trying to live the perfectly statistically normal life after growing up on a lesbian hippy commune, another's mum has a major hydroponic grow-op in the basement and on it goes.

Coupland cleverly mixes in some interesting text/graphical snapshots of modern life into the pages (e.g whole page text blocks of the ingredients in a pack of corn chips) as well as getting the characters to mix up the styles a little by having them write eBay postings of how they would sell themselves and saucy letters of seduction to Ronald McDonald.

He even brings himself into the story, which doesn't turn out as wanky as you'd think. It's an entertaining look at modern life that doesn't take itself too seriously and I think I may even go back and dip into the man's earlier works.

Here's an extract, taken from the rather funky book website at http://www.jpod.info/

(Evidently, this book is also in the process of being made into a tv series)

Never Mess with the Subway Diet

"Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel."

"That asshole."

"Who does he think he is?"

"Come on, guys, focus. We've got a major problem on our hands." The six of us were silent, but for our footsteps. The main corridor's muted plasma TVs blipped out the news and sports, while co-workers in long-sleeved blue and black T-shirts oompah-loompahed in and out of laminate-access doors, elevated walkways, staircases and elevators, their missions inscrutable and squirrelly. It was a rare sunny day. Freakishly articulated sunbeams highlighted specks of mica in the hallway's designer granite. They looked like randomized particle events.

Mark said, "I can't even think about what just happened in there."

John Doe said, "I'd like to do whatever it is people statistically do when confronted by a jolt of large and bad news."

I suggested he ingest five milligrams of Valium and three shots of hard liquor or four glasses of domestic wine.

"Really?"

"Don't ask me, John. Google it."

"And so I shall."

Cowboy had a Jones for cough syrup, while Bree fished through one of her many pink vinyl Japanese handbags for lip gloss—phase one of her well-established pattern of pursuing sexual conquest to silence her inner pain.

The only quiet member of our group of six was Kaitlin, new to our work area as of the day before. She was walking with us mostly because she didn't yet know how to get from the meeting room to our cubicles. We're not sure if Kaitlin is boring or if she's resistant to bonding, but then again none of us have really cranked up our charm.

We passed Warren from the motion capture studio. "Yo! jPodsters! A turtle! All right" He flashed a thumbs-up.

"Thank you, Warren. We can all feel the love in the room." Clearly, via the gift of text messaging, Warren and pretty much everyone in the company now knew of our plight, which is this: during today's marketing meeting we learned we now have to retroactively insert a charismatic cuddly turtle character into our skateboard game, which is already nearly one-third of the way through its production cycle. Yes, you read that correctly, a turtle character—in a skateboard game.

The three-hour meeting had taken place in a two-hundred-seat room nicknamed the air-conditioned rectum. I tried to make the event go faster by pretending to have superpower vision: I could see the carbon dioxide pumping in and out of everyone's nose and mouth—it was purple. It made me think of that urban legend about the chemical they put in swimming pools that reveals when somebody pees. Then I wondered if Leonardo da Vinci had ever inhaled any of the oxygen molecules I was breathing, or if he ever had to sit through a marketing meeting. What would that have been like? "Leo, thanks for your input, but our studies indicate that when they see Lisa smile, they want a sexy, flirty smile, not that grim little slit she has now. Also, I don't know what that closet case Michelangelo is thinking with that naked David guy, but Jesus, clamp a diaper onto him pronto. Next item on the agenda: Perspective—Passing Fad or Opportunity to Win? But first, Katie here is going to tell us about this Friday's Jeans Day, to be followed by a ten-minute muffin break."

But the word "turtle" pulled me out of my reverie, uttered by Fearless Leader—our new head of marketing, Steve. I put up my hand and quite reasonably asked, "Sorry, Steve, did you say a turtle?"

Christine, a senior development director, said, "No need to be sarcastic, Ethan. Steve here took Toblerone chocolate and turned it around inside of two years."

"No," Steve protested. "I appreciate an open dialogue. All I'm really saying is that, at home, my son, Carter, plays SimQuest4 and can't get enough of its turtle character, and if my Carter likes turtle characters, then a turtle character is a winner, and thus, this skateboard game needs a turtle."

John Doe BlackBerried me: I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS

And so the order was issued to make our new turtle character "accessible" and "fun" and the buzzword is so horrible I have to spell it out in ASCII: "{101, 100, 103, 121}"

Watching: Prometeus - the media revolution

This is an interesting video about the possible future of media and experience that I found on Jenny Weight from RMIT's blog. It looks at where communication has come from, where the Internet is taking it and then goes on to hypothesise about how virtual worlds might be able to represent more and more of reality and what this means for our understanding of it.



It also reminds me a little of this movie, though doesn't get quite so detailed in it's examination of the possible evolution of the media in general and how information and knowledge might be managed.

Causing: concern

Well I just learnt a lesson about not taking micro-naps at the radio station console - nothing bad happened but because there's a window that goes out to the hallway, a couple of passing people from the Men's group down the hall were concerned that I'd collapsed or something and quickly roused up the station manager to check on me.

Which is a bummer because it's rather warm and cozy in here and I could really just go for a nap about now. (Still, it's nice that people care about strangers)

Reading: Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most interesting writers around, cramming his books with all manner of ephemera and ideas, making subversive observations about society and weighing up the mainstream by focussing on subcultures. Best known for writing Fight Club, there's also a movie version of another of his novels, Choke, coming up at the Sundance Film Festival soon.

It's hard to tell too much of the story of Rant without giving the whole thing away but let's say that it's an oral history of a man who likes to be bitten by poisonous spiders and rabid animals, who sets up a tooth museum and who joins a bizarre team sport called party crashing which involves people decorating their cars and crashing into each other in night time traffic.

There's time travel, full sensory input media, a weird city system that revolves around a day/night curfew to ensure better use of public facilities (you're either a daytimer or a nighttimer)and Rant's girlfriend, a deformed hooker who clients pay not to have sex with.

It gets a little confusing at the end - I have to admit that as much as I love the man's work, he does seem to have a problem coming to satisfying conclusions. Perhaps this is how he likes it - why should everything be wrapped up with a tidy bow and explained and resolved? Still, when you've enjoyed the first 95% of the story, it sometimes feels a little rushed or something.

Anyways, this book is still well worth a look - I might even go back for another try to see if I can make more sense of the ending second time around. (Don't get me wrong, generally I got it but there's this whole layers on layers thing)