The Gap Between The Pauses

So here are some loosely assembled thoughts I have had and observations I made over this Yuletide season, my friends. I like Christmas. I’m an Atheist, but I still enjoy the celebration. (Stay your keyboards, all those who would explain that Christmas was originally a pagan festival that Christians appropriated. Fine. And while we’re at it, English was a very different language before the Norman Conquest. And Neanderthals were once more successful than Homo Sapiens. There’s even evidence to suggest they invented line dancing to while away the cold nights of the Ice Age.) On the evening before Christmas Eve, I went up to the very unbusy Garden City, Booragoon, to buy a few things. I ran into several people I knew through my last job. One was a friend who was employed by the City of Perth to be one of the Santa Clauses to ride The Santa Train. Whether you were on The Joondalup line, the Armadale line or out at Mandurah; if you were on the train in the fortnight before Christmas, yo...

I've been trying to create some of those things you see on Tumblr and elsewhere on the Web where someone has gets a photograph and puts some beautiful and moving text to the image and together they say a really powerful and moving thing, that will then go viral with 16 year old hipsters. But it's harder than it looks. Here are my first three attempts. And sadly they're not even close. PJK

I was reading a story about the making of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launch video (released in November 2011) last night and was struck by the article's gushing tone and high level of corporate BS. The story was in FAST COMPANY a trade site for advertising, so really, what did I expect? This was the set up: The launch campaign centers on a 90-second trailer based on the veteran/newbie premise, starring Sam Worthington and Jonah Hill and directed by Peter Berg. The film begins with Hill ( Get Him to The Greek, Superbad, Moneyball ) bumbling through a burned-out New York war zone, with Worthington ( Avatar, Clash of the Titans ) as the battle-hardened foil. Inoffensive enough, but I was particularly taken by these paragraphs: Berg, whose action credits include Hancock, The Kingdom, and the upcoming Battleship, was the immediate choice for director, and he joined the production before the actors came on board. “We selected him first and foremost for his wa...

Zeitgeisters, There's something like two week's of music on this computer. I can't do anything with such an absurd profusion of choices. Unlike most of you–who seem to be more than ready to exit this corporeal plane for some kind of Johnny Mnemonic or Tron existence where you are nowt but electrons dancing amongst the light particles–I come from the 1980s. I thought the audio cassette was the height of sound reproduction and convenience. An album was somewhere around 12 songs lasting about 40 minutes that one had to turn over after the end of side 1 in order to facilitate the listening of side 2 . Truth be told, I don't think I'm quite over the introduction of that seductive, mirrored coaster, the Compact Disc. But you're over it, aren't you, my friend? Even as we speak, you're downloading millions upon millions of MP3s a.k.a The Western World's Compleat Pop Music Back Catalogue (1900-2011) –minus Rod Stewart Destroys The Great American So...

Every now and then I like to Google Clip Art with various subject titles in mind. This evening I Googled the word "family" and found these two gems. Sure the Silhouette Family look a little retro. They're out for a stroll all holding hands–which people used to do before the progressives and the communists and Dr Benjamin Spock introduced doubt and perversion into the Western Mind. And don't get me started on Jung and/or Freud. So sure, some of you will see a group of peaceful folk, hands linked and you'll want to douse them with pepper spray a la Lietenant John Pike (Pepper Spray Cop), but you're just all riled up and twisted by crazy modern values. Or hopped up on goof balls. Whatevs. The Silhouettes are decent God-Fearing folk who are happy that their money is in a savings account with a 9 per cent interest rate. Yeah - THEY HAVE SAVINGS. Sure they're freaks. But perhaps not so much as these next folk. Meet the Traced-Overs. Flippin' 'eck....