Last night I was discussing goth music with a mate and somehow the debate turned into my showing him around what goth music was in the first place. Blahblahblah.

This eventually led to my showing him Velvet Acid Christ, which I still don’t know whether they’re goth or industrial. And then I showed him a certain song. It triggered memories, many memories.

Particularly the whole story of how I discovered Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hunter Thompson in general – two of the biggest influences on my life and my art and pretty much everything I’ve ever done since reading the book, watching the movie and becoming a raging fan.

It all started out when I was a wee lad of 15-ish and listening to an internet radio – its name eludes my memory – that played a certain song a whole lot. It contained clips like Oh god, did you eat all this acid? That’s right, you see! and uhm … This is not a good town for psychadelic drugs, extremely menacing vibrations were all around us.

Back then I was quite a regular and chatted a lot with the DJ’s, yes it was a fucking awesome radio, and eventually this meant I asked what the song was and whether it was any particular mix they themselves created.

This is how I discovered Velvet Acid Christ.

So I listened to their music some more and god knows when, I finally decided to look up these sound clips and figure out where they were from.

This is how I discovered Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the movie.

Watching the movie had an instant effect of making a raging drug lover out of me. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to get my greedy little paws on most of the stuff I’ve wanted to try … have been hunting passively for acid for gawd knows how many years now … but I did try ether that I’ve made myself. The effects truly are just like the movie describes, it’s bloody fun too!

Anyhow, eventually I decided to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the book.

Fucking brilliant stuff! My writing style has never been the same again and it only cemented my dire desire to get into psychadelic drugs as soon as I possibly can … I still haven’t. For shame.

The fucking suck part of wanting to do psychadelic drugs is that we’re not in the 60’s anymore and everybody just wants to get stoned and drunk and dance for a little longer than usual. Bleh. I want to have fun! But this is really another story, which says more about my lack of connections to the drug world than anything else.

Tags: Arts, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, food for thought, Hunter Thompson, life

Webcomics have been an internet constant for a while now and while I’ve become a fan almost in their infancy back when Elftor and PA were king (I never read PA) … oh must’ve been something like *gulp* eight years ago … fuck I’m old.

Anyhow, my second big love was CAD, which I’ve been reading to this day. Sometime during the whole affair I was quite popular on their forum, then a certain revolt happened, which I magically survived and then I got banned a few months later … oh well. But I loved that forum, learned a lot about painting there.

It would seem that there are even more comics that I used to read, but don’t read anymore, than there are comics I do read. There are such marvels as Pewfell, the Dreamwalker Chronicles and Lackadaisy – in all the bookmarks folder for webcomics holds 58 different links. Out of those I only read twelve today, with a few new ones still in the buffer for me to go through the archives. So in no particular order:

Ctrl-Alt-Del

AppleGeeks

Bardsworth

Bunny

Commissioned

Girl Genius

Not Invented Here

PHD Comics

Sheldon Comic

Wulffmorgenthaler

Johnny Wander

Lackadaisy

Two honourable mentions also go to Copper, which should really start updating again, and Ugly Hill, which ended, but @paulsouthworth awesomely went on to do Not Invented Here.

Sadly, most of the comics I stopped reading lost my attention due to my simply forgetting to click the bookmark for a while. Henceforth this is remedied because I have resolved to continue reading only through RSS. Life is too hectic even if the only really proper way to enjoy a webcomic is by going to the home page.

PS: of course there is also XKCD, but I refuse to even bookmark that one. There’s a special charm in entering the URL by hand every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Tags: Arts, Comics, intrigues, life, RSS, Webcomic

They say the digital book revolution is upon us, that in a few more years everybody reading a dead-tree book will be silly, people with bookshelves fetishists and soon after that we’ll arrange witch hunts against anyone even thinking about killing a tree for t heir amusement.

They also say 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 is the year of the linux desktop.

They also say the internets will kill the music, movies, television, newspaper, book et al. industries … oh no wait that was the 1990’s.

They also say television will slaughter the radio … no wait, that was the 1960’s.

They also say movies will slaughter proper theatres … no wait, that was the 1930’s.

Excuse me while I let out a big hearty LOL in the corner.

Alright, enough making fun, let’s see some pros and cons about e-book readers because, honestly, there’s a lot of good about them, but nevertheless it’s going to take a while before I even consider buying one.

The biggest advantage of book readers is that they’re a compact form for storing texts, easily transportable and so on and so on. This is also their biggest weakness compared to books and the reason why they suck.

Compare reading a book to reading a sterile book reader will you. In a book your fingers interact with the text, the paper’s texture, thickness even the smell, they all tell you something about the book. You’re likely to disregard a cheaply printed book as stupid and a quality book you’ll instantly have more respect for. In a book reader they’re all the same, one can be The Great Gatsby or Nineteen-eighty-four and the other some sort of Da Vinci Code but they will all look equally stupid. Granted, paperbacks suffer a bit from the same problem.

And not to mention, instead of flipping pages in a book reader you press buttons, at best perform gestures with fingers. This will never change because that would defeat the whole purpose of having a reader.

Which brings us to the next point – book thickness. In a reader all books live in the two dimensional world, but real books are three dimensional. Now I don’t know about you, but personally I find it very important to judge when I will attempt reading a book by how thick/big it is. You won’t tackle a Ulysses during the toughest of exam seasons, but something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is just perfect.

Not to even mention the benefits of time estimates when you’re studying and don’t have to do mental juggling to notice you should start reading this or that textbook very early and which can wait a bit.

Oh and there’s just something instantly gratifying about seeing how much you’ve read, the number 100 in the bottom-left corner is just stupid data, but feeling with your hands that you’re half-way through. Now that’s quality information.

The name of the game is tactile feedback!

But not all is lost for e-readers as there is a certain application I would use them for – storyless books.

Let me explain, there are millions of books out there that don’t contain a story. Everything from ‘tips&tricks in javascript’ to ‘becoming a better person 101′. They are all somewhat useless to read cover-to-cover and often get looked at in random locations or when you’re searching for something specific.

This is where a digital book excels, you can search, you can very very quickly scan through pages and with moderner e-readers you will even be able to make annotations.

However, for real literature, please dear e-readers, stay the fuck away from me.

And this is all simply taking for granted that e-readers will ever be as robust as books are. How many electronics do you know where half the contents can be missing and the rest still works perfectly? Or electronics that are still in mint condition 300 years since being made?

Tags: Arts, E-book, food for thought, intrigues, life

Miss Boob, miss Boob
with your shape so plump
you excite and you annoy
little babies, dear,

are hungry so, and yet
you only let men play.
Like a peacock you display
your warm soft charms, dear,

are horrible nightmares
of girls well endowed
and women left behind
cherrish the attention, dear,

all I have for you is love,
in my heart I hold you dear.

This is a little ditty I slapped together after being challenged by one Ceridwen to find a way of joining together the topics of Shakespeare and my girlfriend.  Naturally I couldn’t pass up the challenge and since a dramaturgist I am not and there was once a time when I thought of myself as a bit of a poet the humble sonnet was an obvious choice.

However, the careful observer will note that the only semblance of a sonnet in this poem is the stanza structure, there is no rhyme to speak of – so not a sonnet, and the verse doesn’t follow a ten syllable lambic pentameter either … but hey, it was fun to write.

Just for the record, the whole intertwining of sentences and meaning between stanzas is just a little something I’ve lately picked up from Wilde’s Charmides and The Burden of Itys.

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Tags: Arts, Literature, Poetry, Sonnet