A serious post.

So.  The obligatory review of 2008.  The highs, the lows, the good, the bad and the ugly.  The good has been rather good, I’ve done some wonderful diving (2 hours from a 12L tank, 35m dive, boo yah) and hung out in some great places; London, Istanbul, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Shuzhou, Cairo, Sharm el Sheikh, Dahab…  

Despite having a digital camera since 2005 and a DSLR since 2007 it was only this year that I’ve begun to take photography seriously.  So I might have taken nice shots in the past but this year I have attempted to do this not by a fluke but by conscious effort.  

Even though the diving has been good it has also been a year were I’ve been very very sick of all aspects of diving.  Really this set in late 2007 but it has definitely carried on all through this year with a pile of diving magazines gathering dust and a log book that hasn’t been updated in I don’t know how long.  It’s only very recently that my enthusiasm has actually returned.

So in a lot of ways it has been a good year but in others it hasn’t been the greatest year on record for me.  The death of a close relative, though not a shock, was in many ways the straw that broke the camels back for me and I needed to sort some things out.  What’s more another person extremely close to me was very seriously ill and specialists said that they might die.  Luckily they got better and hopefully should be ok for the foreseeable future other than having to live on medication.

Some people who I felt would be there at difficult times quite frankly weren’t.  I think the worst part of this was that I was there for them at various times and gave all the faux support I could muster and just really didn’t get it back what I needed a few fake words of support.  But that’s over with now and things have moved on.  I’m leaving the year with a group of friends that I know I can trust and rely upon.

2009.  Academically I have to make decisions with the future in mind be it applying to Oxford for a masters (maybe), or apply to the LCC for a course in photojournalism/documentary photography, or just randomly decide to leave the country and blow with the wind.

Travel.  I’m hoping to go to Jordan to dive Aqaba (the Cedar Pride) and visit Amman.  Also to visit Canada on the way to San Francisco in the summer.   Hoooooooooooooooooooopefully.  Diving.  Photography.  Mmmmm.

Photography.  Where will it lead.  Lo-fi.  Underwater.  SLR-Y. Ooooooooooooo who knows.

Well that’s the end of the sentimental end of the year post.

I promise it is the last semi-serious post that will appear here for a long while. 

Promise.

Although I guess a few resolutions may appear tomorrow, but I’m sure they’ll be a bit LOL.

Back in the 80s…

It was a wonder a dirty old man didn’t have his wicked ‘ol way with me back then because I was just so damn cute.

300

What Israel is doing in Gaza is utterly disgusting.  

“Oh but they’re shooting 300 rockets at us everyday and one person has died.”

Well then, 300 rockets is one rocket for every Palestinian Israel have killed in the last couple of days.

No one is innocent in all of this, I understand that.  

If it hadn’t been for the mandates.

If it hadn’t been for the British.

If it hadn’t bee for the French.

If it hadn’t been for Balfour.

If it hadn’t been for Sykes and Picot

If it hadn’t been for the holocaust.

If it hadn’t been for the Zionists.

If it hadn’t been for a few people trying their luck.

If it hadn’t been for the Palestinians being a bit stateless to begin with.

If it hadn’t been for the 1967 war.

If it hadn’t been for Nasser being led around by his ego.

If it hadn’t been for the Jordanians being shit at fighting.

If it hadn’t been for the Israeli crush a nut with a sledgehammer attitude.

If it hadn’t been for both sides ignorance of the other.

If it hadn’t been for ignorant politicians all round.

If it wasn’t for the constant support of the USA and alot of the West.

Then there would be a different story.  But this all happened and so we have this story.

I don’t often care about things but when Tzipi Livni (does she have a husband called Bungle?) comes on TV trying to justify these actions I actually find it disgusting.  The fact that this is occuring in a ‘window’ between presidents.  The fact that the world is letting this happen.  

It’s really fucking disgusting.

Desert Island Discs

6 x CDs

1 x Book

1 x Item  (with the fact you’re on a desert island in mind)

 

 

I’m sure the purists would argue the case for bleach or in Utero, maybe even Unplugged in New York, but sometimes commercial success comes because an album is just so bloody good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because back then I used to wait impatiently for NME to come out every week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best.  Album.  Ever.  See above for comment (same as Nevermind.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Redemption song.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because if I remember rightly, which I don’t always do, this was the first album I ever brought new with my own money.  The very very first was Bad by Michael Jackson in tape form from a xmas fayre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because there is nothing like listening to a fuzzy battered mix tape, clearly this was an improvement years later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hardest choice by far and this isn’t necessarily my favourite book but it’s one I really like that is thick (seeing as I’m marooned on an island.)  

At school the people who got the highest marks in English one year (I got the highest boo yah) were all asked to attend an invite only book group that met once a month.  It introduced me to some fantastic books that I might otherwise have taken years to discover.  This was one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m classing this as one item because it’s a set.  Practical and recreational for a desert island.

he who fucks nuns will later join the church

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.”

From this.

Well you know what fuck you, you stupid, ignorant fucking cun…

1.  Read this, it explains the savage and primitive origins or religion.

2.  Religion and the idea of one deity merely acted as a method of explaining things in a time when they otherwise couldn’t have been explained.

3.  Emperor Constantine randomly made up Catholicism one day.

4.  Gender roles don’t actually exist they are all forms of socialisation.

5.  The Ancient Greeks used to sleep with anything/one that had a pulse.

6.   Where abouts in gender roles does the kiddie fiddling enjoyed by a multitude of Catholic priests come in?

7.  ”Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

8.  All you have done is read and re-read a book of stories, in which case, why don’t we ask someone who has read all of the Harry Potter books a few times to advise us on abortion and the like.  A story is a story.  What would Professor Dumbledor say about same sex marriage?

9.  Pope Benedict, you need to get laid.

10.  Live and let live.

the future is unwritten

21.8.1952  -  22.12.2002

the all night, drug prowling wolf, who looks so sick in the sun…

I don’t know whether to screech in my loudest voice that I want one or denounce the whole insipid thing.  After staring at the picture for almost 5 minutes I think the latter.  It doesn’t even look like the original. 

Exhibit A…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit B…

“Treatment that emulates the worn-to-the-wood layers of gray auto primer and flat black spray paint that Strummer famously used.”  … like the kids that take sand paper to new skateboards and rub them against walls.  ’Nuff said.

I don’t see how a £600(ish) replica guitar, the owner of the original one being dead, can:

“Grow louder and shake up the establishment.”

Infact the more I compare them the more they don’t at all look alike.  What I wouldn’t give for the original though.

I finally had a clear-out of half decent photos laying around my room, so now I’m all out of back issues.  Thus I need to start taking new pictures and not just ones of semi pornographic gingerbread people…

Psycho killers…

AND stereotypical terrorists…

Well, Christmas has come early yet again.  I tidied my room (as in a hardcore sort out) and found the most amazing stuff.  My mp3 player from when I was 17 which contains so so many long deleted classics.  40 gigs worth.

This bootleg.

FCUK sunglasses from back when I thought spending £20 on a pair of sunglasses was hardcore….

A tape (!!!!!!) player.

A permanent marker that I used to love sniffing.  (From Egypt where there’s no restriction on harmful chemicals.)

(sniffing interlude)

(no, seriously.)

Also an old-ish sketchbook.  I think some things in it are alot older than others…

Yeah I don’t know what I was thinking either.

 

 

The last one annoys me.  The angles are quite poor compared with what I used to churn out in graphics with a drawing board and a few protractors.  Based on this it must have been drawn in the last couple of years I guess.

I’m itching for a new tattoo.  Oh no.

that’s what you get when you let your heart win

N.B. the X factor covers of Hallelujah were f.cking disgusting.  Ok they can sing but they CAN NOT SING THAT SONG.

Really what can I say, I’m easily a third of the way to becoming Jimi Hendrix or…  Eric Clapton.  No, I’m not living day to day as a man but have learned a massive two guitar chords.  Anyone that would like to hear my two chord symphony only has to ask and then I shall play for the magnificent song of space and outer galaxies.  Sometimes I just feel like I’m too modest.

Facebook thank you for this little gem…

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It’s not easy living the home life of warmth, abundant food resources, pay-per-view movies and very faaaaaaaaaaast internet.  Such a punishing existence.  I (we) got hissed at by a Canadian goose at our pond/lake this morning.  Risking life and limb.

I’m being further tortured on the issue of xbox 360.  I found one at my Dad’s.  Yes.  All boxed, brand new and with extra games and a controllers.  I’d like to think I’d ruined a Christmas surprise but I haven’t.  It’s not mine.  It belongs to my cousins, or it will once the 25th rolls around.  My Dad is merely storing it because they’ve probably torn the house apart looking for it.  There is also a 42 inch flat screen tv next to it for them.  Yes 42 inch.

I said this wasn’t fair.

To which I got the reply from someone… (not my Dad)

“Well, look at it this way, to them those kind of things are their entire lives (xbox/tv/psp etc.)  Compare the number of books we have to the number of books they have.”  (1500+ versus a very low number.)

To emphasize the point further….

Yes.  We do have a copy of Mein Kampf.  No I’m not a Nazi.  It was for an essay and was ultra cheap because it was flood damaged stock.  Ok.

I heard there was a secret chord

If I didn’t know any better then I would assume that in the Pearl Jam cover of Redemption song, they sing “free your self from anal slavery.’  Maybe they do.  I imagine that it’s something that one would want to be freed from.

I’ve had a very Indonesian week with watching Gamalan, listening to the talk from hell on whatever it was on and a movie.  I won’t lie, based on the quality of movies in the Middle East I expected it to be like pulling teeth but it was actually really good.  The cinematography was especially good, so was the story line other than the random blue giant orb.  I’m so going to do an Angelina Jolie and adopt a random asian kid, they’re just so cute.  At the end of the day it’s cuteness that matters when you’re showing off amongst the other parents at play group.  With any luck they’ll be a protege as well.

After the new hard drive in Mac just finding a whole CD of ultra CHAV dance music has been like Christmas come early.

I have to say how impressed I was with this music shop on Charing X road.  I was going to go and get a guitar Thursday because there was only four of the one I wanted left in stock but couldn’t physically carry it so I ordered it online at 11am that day and it arrived before  lunch the next day.  Very impressed with their service indeed.  The guitar is fantastic too.    Ok maybe I should re-phrase that, it will to some people sound like shit.  One because it is no way tuned and two because it’s only cheap to begin with, but it’s mine and that’s what matters.  I mean come on it looks shit hot and image is everything!  lulz.  That Alien guitar strap is so old, a hidden gem from the back of a wardrobe.  

At least it’s given me a few good photos.  I’ve been so out of love with photography lately and I have no idea why really.  I haven’t any desire or inspiration at all.  That said though the Nikon Expo was fun, free stuff is always fun!  So yeah, after going on for a month I finally updated flickr.  Go me.

I have a big massive rant about China and aid to Africa (one rant the two are actually linked) but I will save that for later.

hippies are bad mmmmmmkayyyyyyy

If hippy KOs me one more time with his chair I’m going to KO his hippy dope smoking ass into 2009.  He’s already thrown one spaz fit because someone pushed passed him so he sped his chair out of the way and back and then the b.stard thwacked me in the process.

Plus this entire room just reeks of dead rat/rodent.  Trust me, I’m speaking with authority on the subject.

Christmas holidays are within spitting distance…  Though I’ll miss friends it’s so nice to get out of the city for nearly a month and just well.. do not so much other than a little work that needs tget sorted.  Retardedly I have literally burnt myself out trying to get work that I should do over Christmas done before then.  I did so much reading/other work on Thursday/Friday/Saturday that I just laid in bed all of yesterday in a monged state.  I don’t know how some people go on like that for days and days, in a way I admire them I really do.

….Everyone is living in fear that the ticking hippy time bomb may explode at any moment….

Ok, he exploded again.

Now he’s talking to himself.

Anyway,

I’m aiming to get a two day Tuesday/Thurday timetable next year.  It’s perfectly doo-able.  Sweet.

And he exploded again….  I thought Hippies were supposed to be mellow?!

Being angry is bad mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmkay

LOL this is the best, and just had to happen in the U.S.of.A.

Love Clarkson

Want one.  Though I still don’t agree with Zoos.  But WANT ONE!!! mmmm cute.