The Hum of Lost Time

Not sure what the title of this post means. But i thought it sounded good.

Let's retrofit the title with meaning. Let's try and get a little bit poetical on that phrase's arse (said as if Samuel L Jackson).

Actually no i will leave it there untouched pure as the moment i set it down.  I will leave it untethered and free to roam through the minds of its readers, free to create meaning  and nuance as it pleases to those whose minds turn to it.

In other matters. Why with free seats on the train does a foul smelling man, high  i think, decide to sit next to me? I despair (and quietly retch so as not to offend). The Hum of B.O.

The incredible rubber soak

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3624317/Drunks-amazing-tumble-on-CCTV-after-Savoy-awards-bash.html

Be amazed.

A Sense of Scale

Check out this site. Cool. Very Cool.

Pan Fried Sea Bass on a Braised Spinach, New Season Potato and Quantum Foam Bed....

http://htwins.net/scale/index.html

Train of Thought

I’m sorry i’ve got nothing.


I am sitting on my 6am train on my way to work. In the darkness beyond the carriage waves are crashing against the rugged Paekakareki shoreline, but they deliver no inspiration, no creative flotsam and jetsam for me to collect and fashion into some manner on this page. The last of the stars twinkling in the predawn sky offer me nothing. Not even the knowledge that many of those stars have long since perished, their light reaching me like an emergency flare light-years too late, stirs no emotion. Those familiar but unknown faces on my carriage lost in their papers, their laptops, their reverie or sleep are usually so generous with their mannerisms, habits, and otherness, but this morning they leave me empty.

....a song from my childhood... “rockin’ rollin’ ridin’ out across the bay / all bound for Morningtown many miles away” Anyone know the song?

It used to always give me a lump in my throat as a child. Such a lonely image the train steaming (in a child’s imagination are trains still run on steam? Surely yes) across a causeway bound for dawn. What made this song seem sad to me? Maybe there are some clues in the rest of the song’s lyrics which i are now lost to me. Maybe it’s the darkness, the way the train cuts through my 6 year old imagination’s bleak landscape – skimming but not a part of the landscape. Cutting through but not off the darkness.


Critically, i think it was because in my mind’s eye i was always alone on that train (the influence of that Farmbake Biscuits TV advertisement?.... Oh how i fantasised about getting that brown paper package wrapped in twine, the way the boy’s arm reached deep into the ripped paper and pulled out a biscuit was a kind of magic. Alone on that train, not knowing what awaited me in Morningtown, not knowing where my parents were.


Oh look at that, I’ve arrived in Wellington. Time to go to work. Sorry you’ll have to wait patiently on this platform for the Ben creative writing train to arrive. No telling when it’ll arrive.

Data is in the eye of the beholder

Some amazing data visualisation here:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

Some say, there is no such thing as a straight line in nature. Incredible that 'data' which has connotations of structure, geometry, binary, can be visualised so organically. I guess 'data' is a construct of an organic human mind, so it shouldn't suprise me that data can be presented so beautifully.

Three little girls from school are we

At the risk of attracting the wrong kind of element to this blog, I overheard a remarkable conversation on the train today.


I sat down in an empty train carriage today, empty but for three teenage school girls perhaps 15-16 years old.

Although they were sitting only 3 metres away and despite there being no significant noise to drown out their conversation they engaged in a conversation that made this father of three blush.

Apparently Girl 1 hadn’t gone all the way, hadn’t had sex, she had just done normal stuff. You know? Normal stuff…Kissing perhaps? a deep kiss? a clumsy and misdirected grope, you might think.

No, normal stuff like …

Girl 1: Well you know, it involved a 6 and a 9.

Girl 2: What?

Girl 3: ……“ you know she lies like that and he goes like this …get it? Like a number 69.

Girl 2: oh, right.

Girl 3: Have you ever tried A . N. A. L?

Girl 2 Isn’t it A. N.E.L?... No not yet, have you?

Girl 3: What hurts more do you suppose that or normal?”

Girl 1: Definitely that.

Girl 2 Oh definitely. Does it hurt the guy?

Girl 3: Don’t think so. It would be better if it was smaller I guess. What about rimming?

Girl 1: Oh rimming yeah that’s not even sex that’s just, that’s just disgusting...

Girl 1,2,3; Laughing

Girl 3: Can anyone hear us?,…can that guy?

Girl 3: Where did you do it? At home?

……

Girl 1: No I could never do it at home….on Eastborne Beach

Girl 3: On Eastbourne Beach?

Girl 1: Yeah further around where no one could see us.

Girl 2: Wouldn’t the sand get all inside your…?

Girl 1: No Eastborne Beach is stony.

Girl 3: You’d get stone...

Girl 2: No it was okay, really.

Girl 2: How tall is he?

A further commuter joins us.

Girl 3: If he is taller it would probably help because, you know he would be like this and you would be like that...

Girl 2: like what?

Girl 3 Like this

Enough people had got on the train at this point that their conversation moved to safer topics.

Quite a conversation from a group of girls from a respectable single sex college in Wellington.

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions from this conversation.

My takeout is that sex education has never been more critical, and I will take it wherever it is being made available.

Won't someone please think of the children?

MasterChef's backer drops support for school breakfasts


The above link takes you to an article about Countown discontinuing a sponsorship of a food programme for low decile schools and the inference is that they are spending the money instead on the MasterChef reality tv programme. The further inference (the reason it's news) is because they are turning their backs on the poor, not just the poor but poor children.

This news piece just struck me as wrong.

Countdown is a business. It makes decisions based on what will best make money for the business. Okay coporate social responsibility is now almost indivisble from business best practice...but if Countdown wants to pull out of a food programme for the poor, so be it. Countdown is not a government agency, it is a business.

Whether this is a good look or not is not my point. Whether they should be dragged through the press about this decision is my point,..(however weakly put)