On Surfaces Pt.I: Putting My Preface on

I have a ticket to see Jose Gonzales tonight. It's going to be an interesting night. Many of you might know his work on the Bravia ads (left). Veneer is a pretty album. I'm just glad to see the guy from the new Zero 7 album.

I've come to terms with the selfishness of people. The fact that any person I meet will let me down can be pretty infuriating. The best thing for me to do now is not to expect anything and treat it as "one night to speed up truth".

None Like it Hot

Tuesday nights are once again movie nights. Until Nu Metro begin an initiative similar to Cinema Nouveau (Prive shows the same fils in larger seats), it seems like this will be an almost regular thing. I was running late and had to postpone seeing Little Miss Sunshine until next week. Instead, we saw An Inconvenient Truth.

I've seen quite a lot about the film, being that we carry the book at our store, that I saw Al Gore on Conan O'Brien, and that there have been a few things on T.V. about it. About ten minutes into the film I was surprised to see an excerpt from Futurama featured. Since I regard Futurama as the single greatest animated show in existence, it's needless to say that I enjoyed the reference. I re-watched the episode that it was taken from and I saw that featured "the inventor of the environment and first Emperor of the Moon" Al Gore's head.

He isn't the only celebrity to have guest starred as their disembodied-selves in the series either. My favourites are Stephen Hawking, The Beastie Boys, Lucy Liu, Beck and Conan O'Brien. "Good news everyone", gotfuturama.com reported that there are new episodes in the works. If this turns out to be rumours then at least I'll get a fix from the four planned DVD movies being produced.

Upon further reading, I found that Matt Groening et al. had produced a trailer for An Inconvenient Truth. As the person that initiated all of the recycling that we do in my home, I have a few conflicted feelings. I feel that Groening's treatment of the subject is a little too dismissive. It's perfectly fine when it's part of an episode because that is meant to be entertainment. I may be experiencing the whole thing in reverse though because I also see the need to raise awareness about the cause of global warming. If the trailer sells a few more tickets to the film then I'm at least happy about that. The film was shocking, I have to admit. I fear that the None Like it Hot excerpt may be more telling than it seems on first viewing. Will there be a "last minute fix" of half-measures to alleviate the problem? Still, I marvel at how different it could have been had Gore been inaugurated instead of Bush.


Go see An Inconvenient Truth.

On Last Minute Catastrophe, Scotland and a Local Girl.

My life functions in polar opposites. There is never anything happening until everything happens at once - like a cloud burst. "Gradually and then sunddenly".

We have an ADSL line at home. This is very helpful for downloading mindless amounts of data but since we have DSTV aswell, we were invited to try out the not-yet-released-to-market Multichoice and Telkom service of "Video-on-demand". Basically we stream videos across our ADSL line onto TV via a set-top-box. They contacted us months ago. Today they are installing the system and today I leave for Cape Town for a month.

My trip to Cape Town has been planned for at least a month and a half in advance - free accommodation, the only serious expenses being food and alcohol. Yesterday I am notified that Frank - who has been down for a week already - has been kicked out of the apartment. I am now homeless too. I make a few phonecalls and - one to an old girlfriend - and I managed to organise accommodation with hi-friends. Y'know, those acquaintances that you are friendly with but never seem to say much more than "hi" to each other.

One of my closest friends is leaving for Scotland today aswell. He and his girlfriend are working for Gas Electric and Telecommunication in Glasgow - for a year! His flight is two hours before mine and if I were to see him off from the airport I would either need to make a double trip or I would have to wait at the airport for four hours until my plane departs.

My season of dry-spells and flings seems to be ending now, but it's not all that simple either. The Scotland bound friend's girlfriend has a friend that I really get along with and that I'm attracted to. I'm told that she likes me alot but she is staying in Pretoria and I won't see her until I get back. It doesn't help that there is history there too. History between me and another friend of hers but it could get in the way nonetheless.

I wouldn't be going to Cape Town for so long had it not been for my Scotland bound friend. He and his girlfriend were set to come down with us. I was meant to drive down with them and they were going to leave before Christmas. I didn't want to be in Pretoria for New Years and so I opted to stay on with Frank until January 10. Two weeks before we're set to drive down, my friend is recruited to go overseas. By this time, I have already swapped out my shifts at Exclusive Books with some difficulty and I don't really want to cause any more trouble.

I'll be okay. I travelled Europe on my own, I think I'll do fine in the Western Cape.

...You Faded Jewel, You Diamond In The Rough...

I never could understand what Snow was saying as he sang Informer. I arrived home, flipped onto MTV and So 90's was just winding up. So for all of Snow's Jamaican lyrics there are "translated" English lyrics scrolling across the screen. And at one point he says "where they whip down me pants and look up me bottom". I packed up laughing...

I change to cartoon network where Sheep in the Big City is midway through the token time-machine episode when General Specific and Private Public arrive at the moment when a Cristopher Columbus-alike lands on the shores of the "New World". The guy's supposed to be Spanish but he talks with this terrible Italian accent. O.K. GET IT RIGHT: just because the "romantic languages" - French, Italian, Spanish and Portugese - all evolved from Latin doesn't make all of the people who speak said languages Latin. The phrase Latino annoys me to no end.

At which point I decide to fall asleep to a mind-nubming movie after posting this ramble.

Interval II: I like Pie

Just watched The Harvard Man. That was quite an experience. Apart from freaking me out about LSD and regardless of the poor technical aspects of the film, I was really intrigued by all the philosophy they went into. From time to time, I watch a film and it really strikes a chord of sorts with me. The sad thing is - like the Romantics found out - no amount of revisiting it can induce the same feeling of the sublime as the original experience did.

I get that with music that I love, films that I see and things I do. In simple terms, nothing is ever as good as the first time you try it. This might add some insight into addictive behaviour beyond the physical dependency - come to think of it, this may be the reason excitement over porn fades so quickly. It seems a lot like a yearning that tends towards a spiritual dependency. A need to feel that same feeling no matter how you find it. I'm not at all agreeing with the addict's use of this philosophy but I can understand the point of view.

I'm sorry if this is rambling. It's moments like this that inspired me to start Divination - although at the rate I'm going, Procrastination is a more fitting title.

Allegorical-like

Current Soundtrack: Such Great Heights by Iron and Wine.

How do you know which words in a title are written with a capital letter?