.: nine :....The empire strikes banksy


Just found this in todays Sydney Morning Herald.... excellent stuff

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'Museum fails to smell a rat
By Vikram Dodd in London
April 10, 2004


Doubtless it is a publicity stunt, but is it also art?

A graffiti artist called Banksy smuggled his latest work, a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, into the Natural History Museum in London, where it was exhibited on a wall for several hours.

Staff did not notice that the rat was out of place amid the museum's usual fare of dinosaur bones and artefacts from the animal kingdom.

The rat was stuffed and clad in scaled-down wraparound sunglasses, and had a rucksack on its back and a microphone in one paw. A miniature spraycan sat at its feet, while above it was sprayed in graffiti-style lettering "our time will come".

The piece, called Banksus Militus Ratus, was displayed with a text that said the common sewer rat had some remarkable new characteristics.

"Attributed to an increase in junk food waste, ambient radiation and hardcore urban rap music these creatures have evolved at an unprecedented rate." It quotes a bogus university professor as saying: "You can laugh now . . . but one day they may be in charge."

Banksy is believed to have disguised himself as a museum worker to glue the case to a wall.

Banksy is known for his graffiti art around London, and some of his works sell for thousands of pounds.

His manager, Steve Lazarides, said museum visitors liked the rat exhibit and one staff member had thought it was genuine.

Last year Banksy, real name Robert Banks, said not getting caught was part of the buzz.

"The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in the Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on Rollerblades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting."

The Guardian'

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...more after dinner [chicken fettucini]

.: eight :....one Easter, hold the frenzy please


hello. It's Easter Friday and I've nudged my way into working again, which is cool as I had things to do in here and I knew full well that there would be very few call (there have been none and I have 20mins to go).


"Easter is named after the pagan goddess Eostre (Latin: Oestre), an Anglo-Saxon maiden-goddess of fertility. The "Oestre" name in Latin apparently derives from the Greek, and has it's roots in a word that means "frenzy." We see this word again in English in "estrus," meaning a female mammal 'in heat' and able to conceive, and there we see the meaning behind the "frenzy" definition."

Today is day 4 with no nicotine. I feel good, I feel like I'm on the way up. Day two I spend feeling pretty depressed about nothing in particular (I found this also happened on day two of the last time I gave up smoking, about 18months ago), and as I mentioned previously, I have been dreaming vividly. Last night I dreamt that one of my friends had died on an ice-skating rink of some sort of heart defect. My dreams are not so much the actual events, but the repercussions, the conversations, having to tell people that he had died.

Where does this stuff come from, and more importantly, can it be sent back. As much as a dream like that can really ruin the next day, I'm really glad to be dreaming.


.... a couple of new blogs today that I'd like to share with you :

• die puny humans


• Geisha asobi blog


• the null device

enjoy.... see you soonly.

I'm going home to write some strange music.

au reviour!

.: seven :....oh gods be spanked, I'm becoming addicted to not smoking !@%&*

today is my rostered day off. I worked Sunday you see, which isn't as bad as it may sound... I had only 3 calls, one of them from a manager asking if there had been any calls for his particular client and another two simple ones from a lady in New Zealand. See... easy. I did some work for this frontline management course I have undertaken through work. It's ok too, there's a lot of psychology in management I find.


The day before (often known as Saturday) I went to the Macquarie centre and bought a nice new fish tank for work (this one is large and plastic, I can't vouch for the durability of the 'old' one [don't want to come in and have to clean up 40L of dirty fish water AND explain to my manager how I'm going to replace a few thousand dollars worth of computer equipment])... it's a bit larger than I thought it was, but i think that's better than being too small. I ducked into work quickly after buying it (work is just down the road from the shopping centre) and quickly set it up, then went into the city for an afternoon of beer, pool and eating steak with my friend Link. I smoked a few cigarettes too, although as I'm writing this I have had no nicotine whatsoever for about 36hrs (that includes nicobate gum), so that's good.

I actually surprised how much I wanted a cigarette on Sunday morning... damn those things are stupidly addictive. The novelty is over, time for them to go. As I've been saying to people : cigarettes just aren't making me seem as cool as I thought they would.


Oh yeh, I lost my debit card Saturday too, so i'm running on empty for (according to the bank guy who I spoke to to order a new card) at the latest the 19th. That's 12 days. Of course, technically I can get money... I'm not going to starve to death, but it's an interesting experiment to play with yourself.

This is linked I guess to my previous post (all those months ago), I have this preoccupation with life needing to feel real. I'm not sure if I can explain that more clearly : I'll try....

When I lived in Wagga, things just seemed more vibrant, time passed more slowly, my senses seemed more alive (well, most of the time). I was earning less money, had no car, but life was good. Now it seems to meld from typical day to typical day... and like some of my other friends, I spend the weekend trying to recover from the week. To quote Office Space : "we're not meant to live our lives this way!".


I've just come back from a nice walk along some bush trails in my area and found myself analysing how and when I use different senses while at work:

• sight : limited focus length (at a computer screen) ~ part of the job
  
• hearing : listening to customers and managers and colleagues ~ part of the job
  
• touch : inanimate objects (kbd, mouse), occasionally someone with come up and play with my hair.
  
• taste : when I have lunch, or a cup of tea, coffe or a snack during a break.
  
• smell : when I have lunch, or a cup of tea, coffe or a snack or a walk outside or in the atrium during a break.
  

...Both smell and taste are never used in the course of my work, and touch is usually only of inanimate objects. Even if we give touch the benefit of the doubt, I'm only using half of my senses during my working day. It doesn't sound so strange that I've started growing flowers at home, having remedial massage and enjoying cooking. I'm being starved of sensory input.


I had a second massage on Wednesday evening. I can still feel the difference a week later. Magic. I plan to go again in two or three weeks.


I had a dream last night that my gf of a couple of years ago, JM and I were having coffee and cake and talking of getting back together. It felt sweet, uplifting. But I woke up, and she wasn't here. I still miss her quirky insights.
I'm the only one of the three of us living in this house who is single. It's lonely for sure... but there's always a flip side... (no matter how horribly practical it is), I'm spending more time on my art and music, and I'm crawling ever closer to being debt free, it may still take 18 months or so, but things will be amazing when that time comes. I'm going to reward myself with a holiday I think. The grand plan after that would at this stage probably be looking towards a deposit for a house, although I'm keeping my eyes on the news re: interest rates and the housing situation in Sydney, by that stage it may be time for a move elsewhere, although I like that there is always something happening in Sydney, although do I like WHAT is happening?.
I guess seeing myself make statements like that only reaffirms that I possible don't yet have a well-formed overview of Sydney yet. I've been here for what? 5 years now? I've lost count.

plug. plug. I stumbled across the blog of dazelie...and I think you should read it.

...That's about enough of my ranting at the moment. I hope this finds you well.


...more soon.

.: six :. the other white meat


...You might be relieved to read that I am a bit surprised myself to find that the motivating factor in adding this entry was a line from 'pinky and the brain', the topic being the importance of recreation by, of course, brain.

"recreate.... you must recreate yourself by persuing diversions apart from your quotidian responsibilities."

...now dictionary.com lists recreation as being :

"\Rec"re*a"tion\ (-?"sh?n), n. [F. r['e]cr['e]ation, L. recreatio.] The act of recreating, or the state of being recreated; refreshment of the strength and spirits after toil; amusement; diversion; sport; pastime."

and quotidian...

quo·tid·i·an (kw-td-n)
adj. Everyday; commonplace: “There's nothing quite like a real... train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute”


...and for some reason that phrase just clicked with me... I've been working on so much for so long now (being a logging system for kids holiday activities for a council down in melbourne) that suddenly to have it finished-and-delivered-and-working to the customer has left a gap in my headspace that i'm now searching now to fill.


I have plenty of things to do: music, art, website stuff, graphic design, I could even include in this list things that i would put on my 'to do' list like learning to cook something new, learn another language, ...yet i procrastinate.


...and i was wondering why. And it's not just me, I have several good friends which i have talked to about this, and they feel similarly.


...The above 'pinky and the brain' quote, while i won't go overboard and say caused an epiphany, made me realise at least one reason why this might be. Everything i do has a goal, be it in itself or part of a bigger picture. I don't really do anything 'just for', for the fun of itself (ok, perhaps bar a few drinks with friends on the weekend). I have always wanted to put together a comic strip, not become a side-character in one.


So I am going to get out there and experiment with this...


I remember saying not so long ago how much more ready for work i would feel on monday morning if i had got out on the weekend and just 'done something' (typically walking around the city, going to the markets, perhaps the beach, shopping, dinner somewhere..) and i previously offered some reasons why that might be:

• exposure to sun after a week in the office gives me a vitamin d boost [known to decrease depression],


• physical exercise releasing endorphins,


• buying new *stuff*, otherwise known as 'retail therapy'


• perhaps just simply: doing something different,

....and i think i can add my new reasoning to this.

...In other news, last Friday night was our work xmas party, complete with elvis impersonator. It was held at 'le montage' restaurant.
... I cooked prawn curry for dinner. It was good.

....later.

:: five :protective shells :: I have nothing to say to you people...

Good news everyone!
...and good news that I'd almost (ok, i had) forgotten to add here.
The first ever Klang* has finally come full circle.... thats right... Mick tried tofu...and i actually think he liked it.
Again, a laksa was involved but it must be about 4 years since... well... read on....

...to steal from the junglehouse messageboard (but thats ok, coz i wrote this bit there too) :

"Eggs dont have a protective shell" ~ mick.

"We were all out at noodle king in lane cove eating laksa or similar, when mick, our culinary indiana jones, basically refused to try tofu. We tried to convince him from all different angles...the "try something new, variety is the spice of life" angle, the "it doesn't really have a taste of it's own" angle... somebody said something along the lines of "it's kinda like a cross between egg and bread"...to which mick replied "...but eggs don't have a protective shell".. i think more laksa was spat in outburst in that moment than had been eaten in the last ten minutes.. He tried to explain what he meant to say... which only resulted in his please being brushed aside and the phrase "what i meant to say was.." outlawed forever in Klang defence. The Klang was born... "

*Klang
The awarding of a "Klang" is an age old junglehouse ritual that involves the "Klangee" saying, or doing, something that causes those around them to react with wonder, laughter, surprise and/or ridicule, when what the Klangee "meant to say" or, do was entirely different.