More of my unremitting weirditude.
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One of hard rock and metal's best voices, I regret that I'll never be able to hear him perform live.
A few days ago I voted, walked down the road, and into a few conservatives who were going door-to-door. I walked past them and then turned around to go talk to them.
So I approached and said that I have concerns about global sustainability. That's a discussion for another time.
He said to me, "How are the [insert party other than ours here] going to help with that?"
I had to answer, of course, "I actually don't know."
He said, "I find that interesting," in a tone that let me know exactly how much contempt he had for me.
It's really easy for me to get washed away in waves of conservative hate when David Cameron's slimy, smarmy, often-airbrushed face is all over the place. I tend to forget that a political party is made up for more than just David Cameron clones. However, I think there are two issues here:
1) I should have been more diligent in researching the issues that are important to me.
2) Politics is an incredibly muddy area, full of people with their own agendas, and it's incredibly hard to see through it to find out exactly what you want to know.
Of course, I can go and talk to all of the party representatives out there that I want, but the fact is that they are going to be putting a spin on everything that they say, one way or the other. Even if they don't intend to. It's difficult to trust a representative of any party, even the one you voted for!
What I would like is an impartial source that would be an encyclopedia of each party's policies, right next to the existing policy that it is going to be changing. No rhetoric: bullet points, numbers, dates, specifics. If you go onto any of the parties' websites or manifestos, you tend to get broad generalizations and specifics.
If wishes were horses, however, I'd have enough power to run my apocalyptic doomsday device that's currently in low orbit.
In my defense, my vote wasn't just the result of me throwing a dart at the ballot sheet. It's built up of all the political information I, as an interested and intelligent dude, have absorbed over nearly three years in this country.
That isn't to be underestimated. However, I needed to be more scientific about it - I needed to have done my research and found out the specifics. When three conservative spokesmen are looking down their noses at you, it probably isn't a good idea to say, 'I had a gut feeling.'
So what am I trying to say in this rather unfocused post? First, we as voters need to be more diligent in finding out the details of the parties that are going to determine the future of this party. However, those parties need to take some responsibility for better informing their voters of just what it's going to mean if/when they get into power.
Also, I would like it if they got down off their damn high horses and started treating us less like potential votes and more like people.
I leave you with a link to David Cameron's interview with the brilliant Jeremy Paxman.
The final exhibition for this year is all up and running, and I gotta say, I'm not too sure about it.
First off, we allegedly have 90 students on this course, but I'm sure I've only seen about half that number over the last week or two, which is when we're all supposed to be clearing the studios out, putting work up and painting the floor.
Probably as a result, the studios don't look as good as they should. In fact, there's a whole section of floor that hasn't been painted, and it's right in front of the entrance, so people will see it as soon as they walk in. That's not a good first impression to present.
Jeff asked me to come look at something, and it was the schedule for clearing and painting the studios. I was a little put off, because my first thought was, "This should have been printed out, on Studyspace, and circulated by last week at the latest. People aren't even going to see this until tonight!"
Jeff is supposed to be in charge of the first year. Now, I don't want to be babysat, but is it too much to ask that they at least set a good example? If the head of the whole year is so off the ball that he only tells us the details of what we are supposed to do ON THE DAY THAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING IT, then why should we care at all? If I weren't already a responsible, conscientious adult I would just say, fuck it, you can work to MY timetable, boyeeee.
Now, I know the tutors have other stuff on their plates. They're practicing artists as well, and it's not them that has work in this exhibition, it's us. So why should they chip in? Well, the exhibition is a direct reflection on the university and on the success of the first year as a whole. It's going to make an impression on prospective students. It could turn a potential student into a lost student. Why wouldn't they exert greater control over the exhibition process?
The obvious answer to that is that this course gives you the freedom to do pretty much anything you want. That wouldn't work if they treated us like children and babysat us all along the way. However, the future of the fine art course as a whole depends to some extent on this exhibition. In other words, their jobs depend to some extent on this exhibition.
As I said, I don't want them to do it all for us. I would settle for them being a little more prepared and a little more on the ball.
A couple of weeks ago we went on a trip to Rome. We saw some museums, some statues, some fountains, and a whole lot of churches. Seriously, do you know how many churches there are in Rome?
A whole lot, that's how many.
So I thought I'd kick this off by posting some of the slightly more remarkable photos from that trip.
That is one peculiar sculpture. It almost looks like a female figure, and I found it outside a church that had been co-opted for a musical performance, so maybe it's related to the performing arts somehow.
I don't know what the hell this one is, but it's pretty freakin' awesome, so I like it. I don't know whether this is just my camera projecting colours that maybe aren't really there, but I love the interplay of the orange light, the cold blue shadows, and the warmth of the brick building face.
The Romans were innovative in their use of light - here's a big old skylight set into the top of a dome, giving this really nice, even lighting to everything in the room. It was amazing the lengths they would go to to get natural light into their buildings, whereas in my flat, the corridor has no windows in it, and the flats themselves only have small windows.
I just thought it was cool that a fully-clothed woman was being fawned over by scantily clad men in this statue, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of pretty much every similar image in pop culture.
And this pigeon has gotta be feeling like a total baller as he's just chilling out on the head of this statue. I mean, look at that guy. He is so proud of himself right now.
That's it for now. I'll put some of my own work up a little later on.
