Music: Response

Some favourites, me on flickr

It's been a bit of a paradox that I'm most productive on this blog when I'm not having the best time at work. 2008 and 2009 were the lowest points in my time blogging when I was close to ditching it even though I had so much spare time from finishing work early from the latter half of 08. I got moved in 2010 to a much more physically challenging duty and yet turned the blog right around with a prolonged burst of activity. Now I'm back to being shafted and yet I've let the blog slide for the past month. Truth is, I've been busy in another medium. I usually think of writing as my hobby, and the various other interests I have more as on-off projects which wax and wane in my focus. I'm sure they're all tied together as creative outlets, probably all stemming from my love of building with Lego many many years ago. I mean, it's easy to use a hammer to wreck things, but wasn't there underlying symbolism in Jesus being a carpenter? Amongst the projects on the go are occasional dips into programming (or scripting, strictly); and, of course, my long-running conlang efforts which comes and goes depending on how much I've exhausted myself in completing some aspect. So as I mentioned in my end of year post, I've dipped into making music in the past two months.

The Further Away

IMG_4808, Sarah Zucca, 2013

Back in 2007 I wrote that Christmas had lost the meaning it once had. Given our earliest Christmases are as children, the meaning it has is invariably material. A decade ago as I was approaching the end of school, receiving lots of presents or even money in lieu was very little to get excited about. Where once there was unwrapping at 5am, I now struggle to get out of bed at 1pm. By the time I got a job and started generating income I could buy all the CDs and DVDs I wanted any time of the year. Asking for them, because you've been asked what you want, reveals a massive void at the core of the materially-orientated 25th. Currency is just being cycled and because requesting an object requires no consideration on the part of the purchaser, the present isn't really personal so much as a financial obligation to avoid being the one taking more than giving. So come the material crisis in my later teenage years, I began to realise the spirit of Christmas was seeing relatives.

Unfortunately, when I wrote up that realisation it was actually the last time my relatives came over from the US in December. For the past two years they've come over in late October for a pre-emptive combination of three birthdays in November, two in December, and Christmas rolled into one. Still, that leaves Christmas itself rather sparse with only my uncle joining us from down South. This compounds the sense of meaninglessness since the 25th is pretty much like any other day except very few people are working. Since I'm working right up to the 24th and back to the coalface three days later for the stint before the New Year holiday, it feels little different from an extra long-weekend. A far cry from the build-up in primary school when in the final few days before finishing up we'd bring in board games and videos to watch. My traditional viewing of the Muppet Christmas Carol is down to that. In fact, that too reveals a change in perspective.

Activation Theme / Windowlicker

Windows 3.1, Microsoft Corp. 1992

Tomorrow it's two entire decades since Windows 3.11 was released. The anniversary of a service pack for Windows 3.1 is a poor excuse to launch into this post, I know. You'll have to forgive the nostalgia - my first computer was an IBM PS/2 running 3.1. A technician had to be called out several times at expense to reinstall Windows as a result of my exploring the system. That computer is long gone after being replaced with a new Aptiva in 1998 - itself twice succeeded. Something about the old system still lingers fondly in my memory. I recall the last times I used that old operating system.

We're Here Tonight, And That's Enough

The Danbo, Greenplasticamy, 2011

Christmas seems like a thousand days ago. Maybe upward of four thousand. That's the last time I thought Christmas was for me - that is; the last time I felt I was in the targeted demographic, to use the marketing phraseology.

Long gone are the days when I was out of bed at 5am. As are the days I was out of bed at 9am. My noon awakenings hold up the unwrapping each year. It seems so far flung from the golden age I remember, but that might explain the emergence of traditions.

Where Does Time Go?

Part Two of Two.

A Wistful Look, James Carroll Beckwith

He's supposed to be old, like 26.
-The Brain, Brick (2005)

Yes, I did wait a year to use that quote. The previous post tangentially touched on my own pessimistic suspicion that I have missed the metaphorical bus. Like the time I decided to take a real bus home from work four years ago on a torrential day before Christmas - I waited in the rain for twenty minutes (not that it mattered since I had already been in it for four hours at this point) and not a single bus appeared. I was therefore prepared for two to appear at once. It turned out they were cancelled due to the flooding. At other times I instead feel there's enough time to just catch the last one. And yet whenever I take a few moments to just lie in bed and think I glance at the clock to find time is flying and I have somewhere to be - it hardly ever seems to do that illusion where it holds onto a second, but then is there really anything meaningful you could do in a second that would wipe out any death-bed regrets you might have?

From The East / From The South

Chevrolet Camaro Z28 1969

In the fourteen years I've played the various instalments of Gran Turismo I've never really taken a shine to American cars. The first game was heavily skewed towards Japanese makes and even skewed toward particular models - just how many Skylines is enough? GT is often cited as a cause for increased grey imports at the turn of the millennium and back then it was all about Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Imprezas, and Nissan R34 Skylines. My dream car at the time was an Impreza 22B. Being twelve years old at the time, the closest I could get to that dream was a treasured copy of Car magazine with the 22B as its cover story ("Catch 22-B"). The Japanese four doors that were dominating rallying at the time were seen as powerful and nimble yet practical family cars. In comparison, the American manufacturers (the Big Three: GM, Ford, Chrysler) had split personalities across the domestic and international markets. General Motors and Ford had their autonomous European operations, and whilst some of their modern models were present in GT2 (Astra Touring Car, Ford RS2000), domestic US models were largely absent and thought of as gas-guzzling lumps of metal that could just about turn left if given enough space (ie, NASCAR). There were really only two US performance vehicles that could rival the Japanese domination - the Chevrolet Corvette C4 and the Chrysler/Dodge Viper GTS, which was really only one until the C5: the Viper.

It's in the Trees, It's Coming!

missingno, bencanfield, 2010

Back in the summer I was engaged for several weeks with a role playing game. Though you don't play as any defined character, Gran Turismo has many of the elements of an RPG - just look at the grinding I had to do to afford an Audi R8. This month, however, I've got back into a proper RPG, one of the most popular of all time - Pokémon. Fittingly, I fell ill by the due date for this post as the last time I played Red/Blue was on a sick day which I spent bringing my Pikachu up to Level 100 in Cerulean Cave, which must have been at least twelve years ago. So aside from illness, why have I spent thirteen hours playing a child's old Gameboy adventure this month while on the cusp of turning twenty-five? And why am I also watching the anime?

Lose Control

Star Wars Collection, Brian Hathcock, 2007

When I was a child in the early 90s, Star Wars seemed to have faded from view. It was actually Muppet Babies that introduced me to it, though I had no idea at the time what it was they were parodying. It wasn't until one of my uncles who grew up with Star Wars got hold of a widescreen VHS of A New Hope that my brother and I were properly presented with the phenomenon. A year or two later the Special Editions were in cinemas and I recall a children's programme looking at the digital insertion of Jabba the Hutt into Episode IV. At the time I thought this was a good thing, bringing it closer to what was intended but couldn't be technologically achieved in 1976. If what we got was a compromised realisation of Lucas' vision then how could we not welcome improvement? But the changes kept coming, and not just the little visual and audio retouches that go unnoticed. Fans of a certain calibre are acutely aware of all the alterations that Lucas has made over the years, and they will certainly be aware of the incongruous modification to Return of the Jedi that will be imposed with the forthcoming Blu-Ray® release.

Everything Must Go

Testing my CLK-GTR around La Sarthe, Gran Turismo 4

One of the less realistic elements of racing games, particularly ones that brand themselves as simulators, is the short length of races. Two or three laps are common, whilst five or more is a rarity - imagine how long it would take to complete a real F1 season and how quickly the publisher would get sued after someone sits in front of a screen for hours until they have a seizure. These things are necessary limitations, balancing realism, accessible difficulty, and convenience. It's why you can set the length of play in Football games and the reason few racers feature a clutch.

My Favourite Game

My Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR 98, Gran Turismo 4

What's that old Douglas Adams quote?

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

At least Adams' were set by his publisher - mine are all my own making and I was much better at meeting them last year. I was hoping to complete a lot of draft posts this month but I dropped everything to play Gran Turismo 4 for three weeks. I know I'm an instalment behind, but it got neglected in favour of Metal Gear Solid 3 at the time.

Hexadecimal Genome

Eye-Bee-M, Paul Rand, 1981

I mentioned in October that my first computer was an IBM PS/1. In fact, I also had a used Commodore 64 for a few years, though I can't remember which came first; plus, I never really thought of the C64 as a computer. Like a console it plugged into the tv and it had a tape deck which to my young mind was equivalent to a game cartridge but with excruciatingly long loading times.

The interface of the 64 made it difficult for me to accidentally break it - the command for loading a game was written down on a piece of paper, and that was as much as I knew. By comparison, a technician had to be called out at least three times to reinstall Windows 3.1 on the PC. This was the same OS that came with a tutorial for using a mouse, so it was simply a case of double clicking the wrong thing. I used to explore the System and Windows folders looking for interesting hidden stuff (ooh, regedit.exe), but I only remember one particular time now in which I went into the Control Panel and decided to change the theme settings to something more Christmas-y. Unfortunately when it was next booted, Windows failed to load because my Christmas theme exceeded the video card's colour limit. You live, you learn.

The Reverse Will

Skrik, Edvard Munch, 1893

About twelve years ago my brother and I got pet goldfish. They died a number of times, probably due to our negligence; but we were unaware as our parents had replaced them, overestimating our attachment to the point of driving up the motorway to the pet shop in Renfrew one morning. To say that we were upset about this would be an outright lie, truth be told I pretty much forgot we had them - the cat was the centre of attention. Pet fish are really an entry level pet, the sort that a child can make a fatal error without having any serious mental scars. Ashes to ashes, flush to flush. Later on my cat disappeared. He was older than me by a few years so it was all but confirmed he went to find a place to die. Still, the ambiguity makes denial easier, and I wasn't as upset as I would in a more clear cut situation - as when my second cat was run over. That was much different because I had her from kittenhood. Animals do have personalities. Despite not witnessing it, her death is quite clear in my mind. That led to an excruciating post in 2005 that I'm not going to link back to.

(Dream A Dream A Trance As You Dream) In Trance As Mission

The Listening Room, René Magritte, 1952

More than a decade ago in a hot and stifling home economics class each pixel in my eye went out one by one until my vision faded, my inner ear lost track of balance, and the last thing I could feel was my head painlessly colliding with the floor tiles. I woke up in bed, got up for breakfast and went about the morning routine for school. Then I woke up again in the recovery position on the classroom floor. As I woke I said to the teacher 'I was dreaming' - What I meant was, I thought collapsing was the dream, and the dream was reality. She figured I had dreamt Scotland won the World Cup. I always found dreams interesting like my own personal bizarre little narrative-defying films, which is why I used to keep a dream journal off and on between 2004 and 2008. A few years ago I read about lucid dreaming but largely forgot about it until seeing Inception. Since the start of this month I've been trying, though to no avail as of writing.

Saturday's Kids

Preparing the Night Mail, scardy, 2002

I always wonder who's up at 6am watching cartoons and then I remember I used to get up every Saturday morning in the mid 90s to watch Live & Kicking. L&K was on from 9am to noon but I was always afraid I'd sleep in and miss it - the tagline being "Miss it, miss out".

I'd wake up in the dark and drag my duvet into the living room. I was often up far too early, sometimes BBC1 would still be off-air and there'd be static. At some point the test card would kick in with a piercing tone before transiting to Pages From Ceefax. The music played over PFC is often described as terrible, but I love it. As a preteen exposed to manufactured pop, this poor man's jazz/funk/easy-listening was amazing. PFC was probably also my exposure to the wider world: I remember reading about an IRA bomb one morning as the news pages scrolled.

Ectal 3: Once When I Was Six

I've always been fond of dismantling things to find out how they work. Reassembly didn't always succeed, though construction wasn't a problem (which is a post yet-to-come). Because of my hand at electronics, the Padre let me retune the VCR for Channel 5's launch. Behind the TV, Completely unsupervised. Emboldened by this, I later decided to dismantle an old plug. As a ten year old I was curious as to why there were three pins. Without realising the dangerous path I was on, I inserted the top pin into the socket: Nothing. I then moved onto the two lower pins. One in each hand, oblivious, I inserted the pins into the socket.

I thought the Padre had grabbed me away from what I was doing, but he had left for his night shift. After a minute sitting startled on the floor with my heart racing, aware that no-one else was in the room, I realised the thump on my shoulders was a result of hooking myself into the mains system. I couldn't understand how I hadn't stopped myself from doing something so obviously dangerous - something you think would instantly stand out as a bad idea. Whether my electrocution has anything to do with my off-the-scale skin-conductivity (as confirmed in 3rd year physics) remains a mystery.

[226]

Ectal 2: Clarissa Explains It All

Being the eldest to my 4 years younger brother, I've always wondered what a big sister would be like - mostly because fictional televisual families have at least a sister if not an elder one.

From the forgotten realms of my memory I remembered a girl 4 or 5 years older than me when I was halfway through primary school. She must have been a monitor (that is, a final year pupil who watches over a class during an indoor break because it's raining). For a year or s0 she looked after me until she moved to secondary school. I only saw her twice afterwards.

Early on in her first year she visited the playground during lunch. A seeming tradition since both schools are only a few minutes walk from each other, and I as well as others have done the same. The final time I saw her I was making my way back at the end of lunch, she said hi but I didn't recognise her. What really irritates me is that I can't remember her name, though I'm sure it started with L. Thank you L.

[192]

We Love The Winter, It Brings Us Closer Together

The Hearth, Aaron Gustafson, 2006

Between 1986 and 1990, there was me, my cousin, and my brother. For the best part of the decade it was just us three. The Padre's brothers hadn't had any kids yet.

Around 1992 my cousin moved to Florida via Big Blue and later settled in North Carolina. Roughly every second year my aunt, uncle and cousin would come over for Christmas - and occasionally Easter. When we were still kids, it was easy to maintain a relationship, but by the start of this decade it just became too awkward. One year we could all be on a train to Glasgow having a laugh, and the next time it would all be undone. Ironic considering the ways to stay in touch are much better than 15 years ago.

The 'best' Christmases are still the ones when they come over, though. Christmas doesn't feel like an event unless they're over. Isn't it all about seeing people again in the deep of winter? Something has disappeared from the experience. Perhaps it is the excitement that comes with being a kid receiving all the toys you want. In its place the simple joy of being in a family.

[199]

When You Think Your Toys Have Gone Berserk

When I was a toddler, one of my uncles bought me a particular stuffed toy as a birthday or Christmas present. This toy was the eponymous character of a mid-late 80s tv show. I was very fond of this toy and the show.

Statues

I don't usually read the Sunday Herald so close to its date of publication (traditionally read on a Wednesday at 0Dark Hundred). I only got round to reading last week's on Thursday night; having only just finished today's, my feeling that the days are running together is reinforced. I especially hate it when I read the pre-big-event coverage after having watched said event - in this case, the World Cup final.