I was thinking about the last Sunday before I go on my mission. I know how all this run-up-to-the-mission -thing works, so I know I'll have to give a talk in church on my last Sunday, and that I'll be asked to pick a hymn or I'll get to ask the choir sing for my farewell, etc... So I was thinking what would I pick. The very first one I ever thought I'd pick was 219 'Because I Have Been Given Much' - which is Marc's favourite hymn - but we sing it all the time, and Ray is pretty fed up with it. It does have a really appropriate sentiment "because I have given much I too must give" the sort of idea that you get blessings and you in turn bless others, which is what the mission is about. But because we do sing it all the time, it makes it lose meaning. So I've been thinking of alternatives.
                   
There's a bunch of really missionary-themed hymns, but I'm strangely averse to them - like "Called to Serve" is the missionary hymn. And I don't like it very much. There does seem to be a huge tendency to sing the bigger number hymns in the book more often, like around the 200s. I prefer the little numbers. So I was flicking through the hymnbook yesterday because I was bored, and a couple stood out to me as interesting: 8 "Awake and Arise", 9 "Come, Rejoice" and 28 "Saint, Behold How Great Jehovah". They're all restoration hymns rather than strictly speaking missionary/service ones. I haven't heard 8 or 28 before. The words to Awake and Arise are really nice though, and it's sung 'Brightly' and one of the scripture references is Doctrine and Covenants 133:7-10 which is win, not only because it's leet :P Come, Rejoice is a lovely, bright tune. We don't sing it very often, but when I was picking it out on the uke, I did recognise it. The last line of every verse has my favourite word 'hosanna' on it. :D Also it references Doctrine and Covenants 29:4 'Ye are chosen out of the world to declare my gospel with the sound of rejoicing, as with the voice of a trump' which is very missionary-appropriate. 28, 'Saints, Behold How Great Jehovah' I also haven't heard before, but as I played it on the uke it's really a lovely little tune, about restoration and gathering, which is what missionaries talk about. It too references D&C 133, verses 37-38. (I'm liking that chapter of D&C at the moment).

There's a whole bunch of other hymns that would be appropriate too, but I think I'm leaning towards 9 Come Rejoice. It's the hosannas that do it for me :) I might even call it my favourite hymn from now on.

Anyhoo, I was thinking of the other last Sunday stuff too. Like what I'd say in my talk... Mention having watched David and Chris, Claire, Pun, Guy, Joe, Alex etc... all go ahead to their missions and leaving me behind, striving to follow their example. How observing them has made me familiar with the leaving-side of the mission, what it's like to those who stay, what it's like on the build-up to the departure (the preparation, filling the papers, the farewell, the last Sunday, the setting apart, the begging for letters... :P) So I've been able to think of all that and plan all that (because I don't have family in the church who'd plan that for me, I have to take care of it myself). And all that has kept my mind busy enough to not start thinking about what's beyond what I've seen my friends do: the actual leaving, going away, not knowing where and with who, not seeing the people I love for a really long time... I'm a natural born worryer, and most things in life make me scared - even good things. So all this run up to the going on mission has let me not-focus on the scary bits, has let me look at the process step at a time: get the papers, get the medical sorted, get the interviews done, get the call, prepare to go, get my stuff sorted, get my family sorted etc... It's all to stop me from going "holy crap, this is scary and I don't want to do it" - because I do want to do it.

Of course I wouldn't say it like that, and the example of friends would be a very small part of the whole talk. But I'd like to mention it.

http://xkcd.com/576/

Why didn't I think of this? :D WIN!

http://michiedo.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-glad-im-boy-im-glad-im-girl.html
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6081/bart-hess-at-the-dutch-invertuals-exhibition.html

I wish I replied to blogs.

Well, in a desperate attempt to be more like the Gilmore Girls I bought some Pop-Tarts today. My intention is to have a Pop-Tart related accident (the intention was to have that accident at lunch time with lots of my colleagues witnessing it, but I ran out of time because technically my lunch hour started at 12 when I went to talk to my stake president {who conveniently enough works at the same office I do} to sort out the mission papers). So if you hear in the news something along the lines of "Pop-Tart stuck in Frenchman's eye socket - physicians bamboozled" (holy crud, I can't believe my spellchecker agrees with me that 'bamboozled' is a word! It thinks 'Gilmore' is not a word but 'bamboozled' is? Well that's left me positively bamboozled), then that's me causing grievous bodily harm to the people who live in my house. Maybe the unexpected blessing in such an event would be the French de-occupying my house. One can dream.

As mentioned in a bracket there, I sorted my mission papers today. I believe the phrase I am looking for is "and they're off!" So yes, after a wait of about 7 weeks (give or take a bit) I will hear back from God who will tell me that I am called to serve him, and he'll tell me where I'm assigned to. That'll be exciting, now won't it?

I wish I had some more news for you from my exciting jet-setting urbanite lifestyle. And I do. (Because let's face it, any news will beat "bought Pop-Tarts" and "am waiting for the next 7 weeks"). Let's see. ... Hmm... I'm sure there was something.

Well, while we wait for that to happen, let's have a look at this upcoming week in brief:
-Monday: make animation LED lightshow for George (but I'd much rather read though the junk-forum!)
-Tuesday: elder Ballard arrives in Coventry, choir sings, will have to go to ASDA to exchange bras.
-Wednesday: complicated plans involving changing the tyres on James' car, going home with him to eat and waste time, buying cinema tickets while he drives off to pick another girl up and then watching Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D. (I have never seen anything in 3D - I reckon I don't even operate 3D vision, I think I see in 2D)
-Thursday: Institute is back, so I'll spend my evening learning about religious things.
-Friday: I can't remember, maybe it's empty. That could be my internet night.
-Saturday: I need to find a place to play croquet in. A park-space. Also I need to buy a croquet set :S Proper ones are really expensive >.<
-Sunday: the day of rest, but I'm going with the missionaries to help them or something.

Amendment:
-Friday: Go round Silvie's
-Saturday: Be round Silvie's
-Sunday: Leave Silvie's and get back to Cov in time for a YSA Fireside.

I wonder if I would be allowed to skip this upcoming week, as I've already lived it out. Could spare me the time while still gaining the experiences... No?

Next time, more about Pop-Tarts.
(PS, does anybody know how long you are supposed to heat them in the toaster? All the package says is "use lowest heat setting")

The other day I swore to myself that I would never ever sing in choir again, especially not alto, that I'd quit as soon as the Easter concert was over. Well, it's over, it went really well (I botched up only once, when I started one of the hosannas too early, and the lesson learnt there is 'look at Ben, whatever you do, just friggin' look at Ben') and we'll be singing again (not the whole cantata, but the same hymns we did last night and the last number of the cantata If Ye Love Me, which is the second-best song of the whole thing, after Hosanna to the Son of David - btw, hosanna is now my favourite word :3) on the 21st when elder Ballard comes to Coventry to give a talk (wewt, I get to sit next to the apostle, though it's also slightly lame that I have to sit on the stand for choir, and then look at his back while he speaks :/) So yeah, I guess it's fair to say that I'm not quite given up on choral singing yet.

I'm also greatly enjoying reading Finnegan's Wake, as impossible as it is. It's not a novel, it's not even a story. It's not exactly a poem either, though it is poetry, I would say. It just tickles so incredibly much, it's doing to language what surrealists did to realism: twisting and changing it, making it funny, makign you see relations and correlations that you hadn't really seen before and that aren't really there either. :3 It's one of a kind, I don't know anything alike it. I don't recommend it to anybody (except maybe Linderel and Silvie, maybe), but I do encourage people to be aware of it, and maybe someday willing to take up the challenge with an open enough mind to say "I will not understand this when I read it - but I'll read it anyway. All the way through". No, I haven't got through it just yet.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland talking about Easter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFhS0dAduc

I love elder Holland, he has this really evocative, emotional, strong way with his words, it's marvellous (I recall a few months back him talking about Joseph Smith and the time he spent in Liberty Jail (gotta love the irony in that name) and it still is one of the best talks I've seen).


Today's dialogue of the day:
-Boy, do you have any pornography in your bag?
-No sir, we don't even own a pornograph.

Amg, where is Silvie? I need my Silvie. Silvie is in French? I mean, France? I need my Silvie ._.

So, with the lack of Silvie and a thing I need to say, I'll encumber you people with it:
Amg, what is going on? People are, like, social to me?! In real life! People talk to me on a bus stop! Some kid on the bus was all smiles and "how you doing" flirty, and and and... I said hi to a totla stranger on the street, thinking she was my housemate *spatzes* Also, the other day, I had Chinese take-out. By myself. I'm frightened by my urbanite habits.

I don't know if I should do updates... But I will: choir needs singing, church needs attending and God needs believing in, photos need editing, work needs... going to and coming back from and doing stuff at and being social with people I like, events need arranging, mission papers need sending, movies and arts need seeing in Birmingham, reviews of movies and events and arts and books attended seen and read in Birmingham and London need writing, art needs making, house probably needs cleaning but I'm not going to so no point in mentioning that...
Meh a lot.


*edit* Z0mg, you can strike the mission papers, they're finished! :D :D :D Just had the final bit (chest x-ray) info given me, and it's all doooooooone! :D Now I need to have an interview with the bihop and then the stake president, and then... they'll be off! :D Amg, it's unbelievable! My papers, let me show you tham! (I won't, but let me anyway!!)

...Yet another ET-crash wiped diarying. I really flipping hate that so incredibly much that I... don't know what to do. Maybe I'll just go away from ET and internet for 18 months and add ET-diary-crashes into my list of "things I won't have to worry about on my mission" -_- *is really friggin' unimpressed* You'd think I'd learn and make back-ups or some such of diary entries I want to keep. But I don't (learn, that is). Meh. I can't even remember what diary-entries I lost. The one with the circus review and other random bits, and an invitation for people to watch General Conference last weekend (which was pretty brilliant, by the way, I went to three of the four sessions and loved every minute of it, and I may or may not be linking you at some point to specific talks, if I can pick ones to share).

I'm sure I had something more interesting to share, but I can't remember what, I'm so annoyed now. *sighs and goes to do photo-editing*

This made me go "oh noo! XD
http://xkcd.com/557/

Also, I propose a new game based on http://xkcd.com/561/
What is the uncomfortable truth the well would tell you? (Feel free to take your time, I'll need to think of this for myself for a while).


Also, the recentest Order of the Stick (Varsuuvius' story line) made me cry ;_;

Waltz with Bashir review

After a recent link in [Viking]'s diary to a Jeffrey Tucker article about Intellectual Property in LewRockwell.com (I really need to learn to read that place), I got interested in this guy Tucker and started to look at his archive, and in this http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker135.html there is a great paragraph:

All market failure arguments have the appearance of plausibility about them. Let's say you have a poorly managed apartment unit with a porchlight that is out. Everyone would benefit from having the bulb changed. But if one person benefits, so does everyone. All dwellers enjoy the light and only one pays. That's not going to work, is it? No one would act. Except that at some point, someone comes along and befuddles the failure theorists by changing the lightbulb.


I just wanted to share that because it's been a while since I've been looking into IP-stuff, which is one of the rare things (alongside drivers that don't indicate when they turn) that drives me to an indignant rage and therefore would be something that I would be interested in being actively involved in professionally, in regards to policy-making and intellectual public debate (by this I mean that I would consider IP-stuff a career - though I'm not sure if I'd ever consider a non-indicating-drivers -related career, but I sure would bash their heads in if given the chance).



I have recently been more actively researching mormonism and art, and did indeed find huge amount of incredibly useful things that really help me understand how my newly-adopted religious background affects my work (because it has to have some effect and therefore I need to know what this effect is). I will share some of the results with you at some point, because not all of it is only applicable to me (some of it is, of course, because out of the people who see this text I think I'm the only one who is freaked out by the fact that one of the apostles said that if you don't use your artistic ability in a way that the Lord would have you use it, you might not have that ability in the Kingdom - this worries me, because an eternity without being arty? no thanks. But I doubt anyone else cares about that :P). But I've discovered some absolutely wonderful texts about photography, poetry, art as a tool for improving families and individuals, there's a lot of talk about beauty, and a lot of condemnation of this romantic artist-as-God/cult of fame notion that is around a lot - that last thing made me particularly joyful because I've been anti-that for a long time. But yes, that is to come in drips and drabs in the future.

I still also need to write some reviews about/from the Flatpack Festival. I've had this strange nagging idea, that if I attend or witness something temporal (an event), I should write and publish about it for the benefit of all those people who didn't have the same opportunity. It's like it's my duty to do that, so that things that are done but tied in time will not be forgotten. It also grieves me to think of all the marvelous things in the past that are tied in time and lost. I think this kind of ties to the IP thing, because copyright causes destruction of creations, when all they would need to continue living is a copy.

Amg amg amg so very full of WIN!

http://xkcd.com/556/

<3

Sorry for cross-posting Facebook-friends, but...
Why Do Mormons Build Temples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x_-TQivCx8

I'd just like people who know/like me to watch that because you'll get a small insight into what is important to me: the temple of the Lord. Also it helps to explain why I go "amgsquee!^_^!!" at times after having been to the temple (I'm going on Good Friday to do baptisms, and on 23 May hopefully to go properly <3)

*runs off to exiting art happenings* See you Monday or something :P

Well, Chelsea won Coventry lost, photo shoot went great, and I found out they make Earl Grey Rooibos tea <3

Tomorrow is the 7th of March, 2009. It is a Saturday. I plan to go round a friend's house to do someone I know a favour: a photoshoot for someone's daughter who turned legal this month. Her mom reckoned it'd be a pretty cool and special and different birthday present, something she'd remember and keep for a long time. And it helps that the girl is pretty too, and not camera-shy I hope.

Also tomorrow Coventry Sky Blues will play Chelsea in the Ricoh Arena in Coventry in the FA cup quarter finals. Which, for some reason (reason which I know but won't say here), I care about despite the fact that footie means very little to me. So hopefully I'll be able to catch at least a bit of that on the radio or TV or something (if I wasn't doing this photoshoot I'd go to a pub and watch the game).

Today I had a day off work 'cause I needed to get stuff done and run a lot of errands. It was a really gorgeous day today and hopefully tomorrow will be too.

Also tomorrow is exactly two years since I got baptised. Two years. How marvelous. Two years since I last drank coffee, tea or alcohol. Two years since I made a covenant with the Lord and took His name upon me, to remember Him and keep His commandments. Two years of having the companionship of the Holy Spirit. I look at how my life has changed in two years and I marvel at the miracle. (I can obviously see how it needs to change even more for the better, but it's all good so far.) I can honestly say that I am happy. Not just today or this week or something, but I am honestly happy with my life, even with the problems and difficulties that I have. It all makes me happy.

A proposal for a new reading practice: Extreme Reading.

I made a NotFunny wiki. You can look at it if you agree it's not funny.

In case you've missed it so far, Minesweeper is pretty cool for a contest, and people should enter. :3

The Urban Word of the Day:

February 20: double freeture

When you pay for one movie at the cinema but sneak into a second flick once the first one is done.

I went to see Hancock, but then it was over instead of leaving I decided to treat myself to a double freeture and snuck into watch Wall-E.

So, what do you call the feeling when you try to get a double freeture but are caught by the cinema staff when the movie is just about to start and have to leave all embarrassed and stuff and never set foot in the establishment, and start to go to a small independent cinema in the next town? >_>

The single most important thing about art is context.

Meaning, medium, message, skill, idea, beauty -- all of those are completely worthless without context. And that is the difference in 'modern art' (i.e. contemporary art) that makes people go "waah, so-and-so is paid ridiculous amounts of money to splatter paint on a canvas and I'm not appreciated for drawing photorealistic pictures of elves!" The paint-splatterer has context. Context is the difference between amateur and professional.

Now, I did just say that without context it's all worthless -- but at the same time I don't mean to say that anyone should stop doing whatever they are doing. For all means draw, people! It's great fun, you're doing yourselves nothing but favours in being creative in any way you like (keeping your mind active through creative processes will help you in the long run). I'm not saying there is no value whatsoever in having a creative hobby. It's just like the difference between having an interest in crime fiction and being a detective. I simply ask you to see this difference. Without context it is nowhere near being professional.

Now admittedly, I am only talking about what I know, which is fine (read: useless) art. I'm not talking about the useful arts of making pretty pictures for other purposes (illustration, decoration, design, advertising...) because those other purposes hold very little interest for me. So, again I'm not exactly saying that you can't be a professional creative without context (though I will be very very surprised if you are - I'm sure even designers are aware of their context).

Context is really difficult. It's knowing what's around, it's the other things that exist that influence meaning and effect. A crude example: if I were to make a piece of art where a dead diver was suspended in a humongous tank, knowing the context (=Damien Hirst's shark-in-a-huge-tank -thing) makes it what it is. Without the context it isn't what it is, and frankly, I don't know what it would be. Possibly nothing.

Obviously this is a huge simplification to illustrate a point. Context is far more than one piece of work by one artist, and it's not limited to art: context is the culture, the time we live in, the moods and tastes of the world, the things we feel and think about - everything. That's why it's important, because it's the only thing that ties art into everything else. Art is not a solitary practice. No man is an island and so forth.

I think the question that needs to be asked is the same important question that is presented to us in the end of that viral Muppet Show video Mana Mana: What is a Mana Mana? Err, no, sorry, that's not it, I meant the other question: who cares? So what? Context is about as important to artists as having webbed feet is to a duck: it doesn't affect very many people in the end, so if you are not a duck, I mean, an artist, why would you care? If I just have told you in no uncertain terms that you are not really an artist, why should you care about context? Well, because it makes what you do so much better. It actually helps. And the principle of context can be applied across the board, to all walks of life. So maybe I have something to say that might be useful to learn (I say maybe because I'm pretty much typing this off the top of my head and I have no idea where it's going anymore, so I might forget to say anything useful in the end).

So lets have another simplified example. If you were an ET artist, making the kind of art that populates ET, what would you do with the principle of context? First, you'd need to look around you. See what everybody else is doing. For the sake of the example we'll restrain it to ET (though in actuality you'd need to be looking at a lot of stuff. A lot). There are people here that are doing a Thing, their Thing, and that is the most interesting sort of work that can be done (anyone who isn't doing their own Thing is probably doing someone else's Things - which is fine, that's how a lot of people start, but that's not an interesting Thing to do so finding your own Thing is pretty important).
Second, because so many people are doing their Thing, there are a lot of Things, and some of them are more similar than others. So for the sake of context you'd need to be able to identify Things that other people do that are similar to what you do. Note, I didn't say "look similar to what you do". I don't meant that the work/pictures/medium is similar, but that the Thing is similar. You are allowed to be a solitary genius with a completely unique look and style - but your Thing will still have some similarities with other people's Things. The long and short of it really is the ability to see connections (which is also a mark of genius: a genius will be able to see connections and associations between things that others wouldn't see) between what you do and what other people do.

So once you've kind of made yourself aware of what is around you, you will pretty much be thinking about that stuff even without me telling you to do so. But that's what I'm going to do anyway: think about stuff! That's the third on the list: look at stuff that other people have made, think about it, let it have an effect on your thinking, and let that thinking have an effect on your doing. And in anticipation of the plagiarism-accusations and 'z0mg art thief' -cries: just no. That has no bearing to this matter whatsoever. Context pretty much cancels the whole idea of stolen ideas, because all ideas of the world are a recycling -- with emphasis on the cycle: what we do affects what has been done in the past just as much as what we see having been done in the past affects what we do. It is not a linear progression. I call it 'standing on the shoulders of giants' - but you need to be on friendly terms with the giant in order to stand on him, and that way you both will reach higher. This is the purpose of art/culture/philosophy/human activity.

This mutual influence back and forth in time is a great big heavy responsibility that art has to bear. You musn't do something that'll ruin the past to lots of other people. That's why the 'real art' is such a protected discipline, not just about anyone can do it. A non-real artist can't ruin the past for others, only a real artist can. Because if you 'do it rong', you will wreack havoc amongst everything that we hold dear. An example is Tracey Emin and her unmade bed. Before that there was a theme in photography, it was a kind of a ticklish theme, very interesting, felt almost naughty... theme of these art photos of unmade beds. These beds had an aura, a mystery, a story. They talked about taboos, about human existence... And when Emin showed everybody her bed, she broke that boundary (which is good, don't get me wrong, breaking boundaries is important!) and those bed-photos lost some of that appeal they had. It was like seeing that glamorous rock star you idolise throwing up his liquid dinner in the gutter: you are better off having seen what you saw (increased knowledge etc) but at the same time... you will never look at him or listen to his music in the same way. Now imagine that somebody else had caused that loss to you and to lots of other people. That would sting. But still I maintain that stinging isn't bad, ruin isn't bad - but you do have to be careful.

To bring all that back to our ET-example, without knowing context, you might ruin another ETer's work. (Here I trust my readers to be responsible artists and not take this as a hint to use context as a weapon in whatever little feuds you have in ET. Really, art should transcend all of that.) So be careful with it.

* * *

Here I ran out of steam. I have no idea what made me write all that, it just kind of spilled out of me incontrollably. I was intending to simply mention that context is the most important thing and then move on to tell you about Extreme Reading and my jumbled thought-process about my anti-conclusionism, but somehow there isn't really space for all of that right now, sorry. :S I'll do those next, but they'll probably be really long entries too, so I apologise in advance to the less patient ones of you :3

And as a reward to all of yous who read all the way to the end (or at least scrolled down), a link to a really cool interactive web-toy-thing. http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/ One of the coolest things I've seen in a long while, and a really cool example of the new Flash 3D stuff that is emerging.

Went to have another vaccine yesterday, and the vaccination schedule effectively prevent me from going on the mission any time before mid-July. *sighs* This thing is constantly being pushed back and back and back, it's vey frustrating. And I'll have to duck when I tell my bishop that it's pushed back yet another month >_>

I'm contemplating changing my ET-stylesheet from the green to be a bit more inconspicuous for work. Because let's face it, it's very green.


I have far more interesting things to think about. I don't know why I made you read those boring bits before giving you the following interesting bits.


I have come to the conclusion observed that my life revolves around fear and fascination (which is convenient because when I did Experimental Practice in university my teacher told me to explore something I have both a fear and fascination for (which is where my choice of words comes from) and I think I botched some of my Exp.Prac module by exploring things I only had a fear or fascination for, not both - though I pulled through in the end, and clearly learnt something from all of it so issallgood). Anyhoo, back to my observation. I claim that any emotion, experience, thought, etc etc that I have is something that I have either a fear or a fascination (or both) for. And that everything I can observe can be catalogged under one of those three categories. Of course it's not quite as simple and straightforward as that since there are different decrees of fear and fascination, some things swap sides depending on other factors etc... But still, it's very good to know.

Also I have a new project idea (I should consider finishing some of my previous ones... >_> That drawing of a typewriter with the text about Snowden dying in Catch-22 bleeding out of it needs to be shot... I know someone who might be of help but I'll need to investigate...) for photography-typewriter-mailart. If you would like to be a part of it, give me your mailing address at some point (I won't give out any details right now, I'll try something out first, so it's one of those trust thingies - sides the surprise would be totally spoiled if I told you what it was all like :3)