Self Portrait
I've signed up for this new-fangled Flickr thingy. $20-odd for unlimited Photo storage can't be bad. I've often argued that, in this increasingly digital world we inhabit, cheap, easy online storage was an absolute nailed on requirement. Flickr is a step in the right direction. Nice one as they say 'round these parts.
It's just a question now of uploading the zillions of snaps one feels absolutely necessary to take these days, simply because there are no longer processing costs to take into account. Eeeh, processing? D'yer remember the frisson of excited anticipation as you gazed upon your prints fresh from the Chemist? No Max Spielman, Photobox or owt like that back when photography was still incomprehensible to 9/10ths of the population. Developer, fixer, red lights; a monochrome world. Hours spent manipulating enlargers and paper and making sure the timings just right.....hours it took, hours.
These days you plug your camera into your PC and off you go. Within minutes your snap can be printed in glorious technicolour, posted to a website for the world to see or manipulated to such an extent that it is unrecognisable from the decisive moment when the shutter did its job.
It's a digital world.
Dearest and I hosted a Greek night chez nous on Saturday night. Six good friends drinking fine wines and eating what can only be described as a fabulous meal. We both did our bit, but the stifado I produced was spot on. The Greek salad was crisp and fresh and wonderful, the stuffed vine leaves were superb and the garlic and rosemary potatoes melted in the mouth. Magnifique!
The evening's music was provided by my laptop randomly extracting stuff from over 3500 tracks on my hard disk via iTunes. The visualisation option provided psychadelic swirling patterns, drenched in colour, to entertain the aging hippies amongst our happy band of brothers and sisters.
We did consider making it a proper Greek night by forbidding toilet paper from the toilet but I suddenly realised that it would be me acting the 'maid' and disposing of the soiled material the day after.
Hmmmm....as someone, somewhere once said: Fuck that.
Y'know, a couple of weeks ago I was waxing lyrical on how the inclusion of downloaded tracks could possibly change the nature of the charts as it would take into account the hitherto insignificant musical tastes of the computer literate. Well I was right. Unfortunately rather than grown up, literate rock though, we have a bloody ring tone. Am I dreaming? Am I dead? I may as well be because through all the shite I have lived through - from "Shaddap-a-ya-face" to "You Need Hands", I always believed that we were evolving into artistically aware consumers who could cut through the shit and home in on the sublime.
So much for my analysis.
A ring tone. A fuckin' ring tone.
*Stares into the middle distance, pulls on a can of Oranjeboom and quietly despairs*
2 comments:
Toss us a can of Orangeboom, I'll sit and despair with you. DEls son Mikey had a new mobile for his B'day. Crazy frog ring tone Aaaarrrgghh!
Blimey, d'you remember that awful advert for Oranjeboom sung to the tune of Van der Valk? Can't get it out of my bloody head now you've reminded me of it.
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