My cheap photoframe plays a movie
Theresa and I went shopping at Big W down in the big W itself, Wonthaggi. I bought
- a cool jacket with lots of pockets, charcoal in colour, it makes me think of Kraftwerk for some reaon
- a new pillow
- this great little photo frame media player thingy. In the picture it is playing an AVI file of Jess Franco’s Count Dacula featuring amongst others the beautiful and doomed Soledad Miranda. (That’s not her – she’s a brunette, as you probably know or could at least guess)
The frame does have sound but it’s thin and weedy so I’ve plugged it into my cheap and cheerful iPod dock and speakers. The movie is on a USB stick that you can see sticking out of the side. The screen size is maybe 20 cm by 15cm.
… in my loungeroom at least.
I’ve been availing myself of certain internet technologies to catch up with some films by Jacques Rivette this week.
I saw Céline et Julie vont en bateau on SBS TV a couple of decades ago and it slowly blew my mind. I found a copy of it a few months ago and it’s well worth the four hours if you are planning a slow evening. Don’t let anybody watch it with you unless they promise to be silent.
This week I’ve been alone at home so I’ve watched Duelle and L’amour par terre. I’m currently obtaining a copy of La Belle Noiseuse which might be my reward tonight for finishing the FIT1002 Programming in Java unit test online today. I may also have a little glass of whiskey, which I find goes well with the graceful pacing and interesting logic of his films.
Funny day yesterday. I’ve been having a lot of back pain, especially at night. I was a bit gung ho with the tree lopping, maybe. Anyway, I hardly slept at all and got up about three to walk around Korumburra listening to the Velvet Underground. Did some study during the day then saw the GP for an extension to my sick leave. My principal has given me a letter saying that I can’t return to work until I convince a departmental doctor that I’m ok to work. Then Shane picked me up and we went to grungy old Festival Hall to see the Pixies on their Doolittle tour. Now I’m old enough to remember Doolittle but there weren’t many others there that could say that. Before and after we had a couple of drinks at a pub behind the hall. Got back about 2am I suppose, I was pretty out of it.
The band were great. The seats were so so – good view of the stage, but at a fair distance. The sound was loud and punchy but not 100% clear. Kim Deal was getting a great growl on a precision bass. Joey Santiago was very controlled, and accurate – oddly so, when the parts he writes are so dissonant – and David Lovering played (and sang) well although there were one or two little time hiccups. Black Francis sang beautifully and looked like a million dollars in an expansive suit.
A great night.
Setlist:
- Dancing The Manta Ray
- Weird At My School
- Bailey’s Walk
- Manta Ray
- Debaser
- Tame
- Wave of Mutilation
- I Bleed
- Here Comes Your Man
- Dead
- Monkey Gone To Heaven
- Mr. Grieves
- Crackity Jones
- La La Love You
- No. 13 Baby
- There Goes My Gun
- Hey
- Silver
- Gouge Away
Encores:
- Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
- Into The White
The corner of my room
Beside my bed
books
Know Thyself by Dr Craig Hassed
(self help book)
Running with scissors by Augusten Burroughs
“shocking” biography
The mind’s I (Fantasies and reflections on self and soul) by Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett
Philosophy of the mind
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Winner of the Man Booker Prize!
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip Dick
“Dick at his wildest and strangest … a mystifying but brilliant book”
A confederacy of dunces by Joseph Toole
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize!
MOJO December 2009
Forerunner by Andre Norton
Scifi paperback that I lifted from a rented holiday house in January
The lost life by Steven Carroll
A distant shore by Caryl Phillips
Reading lamp
Facewasher
Sailor’s cap
Keys to highschool
2 small socks and a girl’s hankie
Old wallet
Plastic bag with an old mobile phone in it
Watch – I don’t wear it anymore
Blue whiteboard marker
Hairclips
File tag saying “11 BIO Cells”
Empty waxsol packet
Small copper item
Guitar pick
Glass drink caddy
Yamaha flute in case
Matches
Aidan’s NAPLAN results
Hair tie.
Coming soon – what’s inside my bedside drawers.
Communion wafer
… are deliberately courting prosecution under new anti-blasphemy laws by publishing 25 irreligious quotations. Link here.
My favorite:
22. PZ Myers, on his desecration of a Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”
Celine and Julie discussing fate
Theresa and the kids have gone to Melbourne for the night, which leaves me alone.
I did a few things – mixed some tracks that I put an acoustic guitar on this morning, went on the treadmill – then I decided to watch a couple of my favorite movies that I’ve had kicking around but haven’t seen for a long time, and have a couple of drinks.
The Man Who Fell To Earth seemed appropriate – an alien misses his family, has big ambitions but falls to lethargy and drinking gallons of gin. Sad story but it has the ring of truth about it.
Celine and Julie Go Boating is probably my favorite movie ever. I want to be Julie, for sure. Even if it means being trapped in a time loop forever. You could do worse than being stuck in a time loop with Celine, after all.
