Archive for Media & stuff
Safe, sane and consensual
Cos nothing completes a complicated working week like a spot of non-consensual sex.
36% of my waking life
New job… hum.
I wrote the post below last Thursday, and I’m now feeling way better about the situation. The simple act of putting my thoughts on paper helped me see things more calmly, as did talking it through with J.
He pointed out that this is the first time I’ve NOT gone into a company as the bright young thing, so proving myself is gonna feel harder but should be a good process to go through.
Plus, I finally have some work to do; not much and not very engaging, but it’s at least a chance to get to grips with standard operating procedures.
The main issues:
I’m bored!!! I’m frustrated!!!
Bored because there is very little work to do. Frustrated because when work comes in, it seems pretty unlikely that any of it will be creative. The way the company is structured, I’m not sure creative work would even come my way; I think it might be cross-charged to the guys downstairs.
I did a lot of promo work in my last job – sales aids, websites, conference stands – but that was the boring bit. The fun bit was working on new concepts, and I did a reasonable amount of that too. I never did any med ed (the really, really boring stuff where you write monographs and key opinion leader slides).
But I’m worried that here med ed is gonna be the bread and butter, and the promo work is gonna be *sigh* the fun bit.
I’m trying to be grown-up about this. I know that sulking because the job isn’t what I expected isn’t going to help me, and it certainly isn’t going to encourage anyone here to help me. Complaining about what I don’t have is the perfect way to miss what’s under my nose, and I think this job could offer some great experience, just nowt creative.
I need to be proactive and create a system I’m happy to work within, but I’m not very good at that. Plus the junior writer, who joined two months ago from uni, is awesome at everything. This is great for the company, and she’s a lovely person, but it’s making me feel threatened.
The fact that she is so young, already so good at her job, and so freakin’ smart makes me feel like a charlatan. Like maybe I’ve been lucky so far, but next to her it’ll be obvious that I’m not that great.
So, positive, sanity-affirming plan of action:
Stay open-minded
Throw myself into stuff
Be proactive
Be humble
Let people teach me
Look for/create projects that involve concept work
Reassess portfolio in six months’ time
If I haven’t done any work I’m proud of by then, or alternatively grown into a position where doing creative isn’t so important, it’ll be time to hit the classifieds
No on 8, too late?
Last year Californians voted in favour of changing their state constitution so that marriage is defined as a union between one man and one women.
It was previously defined as a union between two people, meaning the state recognised same-sex marriages. The amendment is called
Proposition 8.
Now the “Yes on 8″ guys have filed to forcibly divorce all same-sex couples married before the amendment was passed.
I am not American, and I don’t expect to ever marry a girl, but this shit should matter to all of us. The video below is beautiful and
heart-rending.
25 things
A Facebook meme. I think they are supposed to be random, surprising, amusing. Mine turned more exposé, hence it’s posted here, not on FB.
1. I am 28
2. I have suffered from two major depressive episodes, and a few minor ones. I accept that this might happen again so now instead of pushing back I look for ways to live round it.
3. I don’t mind the idea of not existing, but I am worried about death being painful.
4. When waiting for the tube, I am paranoid that someone is going to push me onto the tracks (see above).
5. I have two body piercings and a tattoo.
6. I lost my boy virginity at 14. It wasn’t a very good idea.
7. I lost my girl virginity at 18. It was an excellent idea.
8. I have lucid dreams, like the kid from Waking Life.
9. I am fascinated by psychedelics, but sometimes find them challenging. You have to be comfortable inside your own head. My mother thinks all drugs = escapism; she is wrong.
10. I never want to stop learning.
11. I want to have children, and already feel a sense of loss knowing that if I do a good job bringing them up, one day they will out-grow me.
12. I have started writing a graphic novel about fish, and a thesis about post-evolutionary psychology taboos. I wonder if they’ll ever get finished.
13. When I was 14 I told my chemistry teacher I would rather have a job I liked than good pay. Last time round I got both – now I am spoilt!
14. I am a control freak, and I am guarded with strangers (aloof). It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I realised these things.
15. I make a mean toad-in-the-hole.
16. I have been to high class orgies with wall-to-wall Champagne, cocaine and beautiful people, and only ever had an alright time.
17. I have fallen into bed with friends, pissed and giggly and wearing mismatched underwear, and always had an amazing time.
18. I once sustained concussion giving head in a bathroom in Bangkok (with a bellyful of whiskey and speed).
19. I don’t own any bathroom scales.
20. I read the Dao De Jing when I was 21, and was amazed that someone had verbalised what I felt about life.
21. My favourite novel is The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.
22. Martha Gellhorn is the famous figure I most admire, and probably the writer who has most inspired me.
23. I try to be honest with myself. This blog is a tool in that process.
24. I like who I am.
25. Life makes me smile.
Shanghaied to Singapore
The Boy and I didn’t really choose Singapore. It would be whimsical to suggest it chose us. I guess J’s company ended up choosing it for us.
We had our hearts set on China, but a job offer that had only half made it to the table was discretely withdrawn. We tried to get there by other means, but without being bilingual it’s quite a closed market.
Then S’pore came up, and after a bit of consultation we figured what the hell. It’ll get us out of the UK, there’s great diving, we have friends in the region and we can practice our Mandarin (and Singlish, lah).
But what of moving to a dictatorship?
The nation’s moral compass
Hat tip to Kate.
Thinking of a threesome? Then say 10 hail Mary’s, scrub yourself with a yard brush and put such thoughts out of your mind.
So says Dear Deidre, agony aunt for a newspaper that trades largely in tits and, er, stories about people having threesomes.
The most common situation I hear about from readers seems to be that it’s the man who first raises the idea of the couple taking another man or woman into their bed.
Remember girls, all sex is rape.
She may or may not agree to give it a try but if you are caught in this dilemma, whatever stage you have reached in this, let me suggest you stop right now.
Thank goodness Deidre cares enough to let me know what I can do in bed.
Grr and double grr.
Organ donation, a simple (final) solution
There’s been a lot of guff about organ donation in the news lately.
Opt in, opt out? Be more like Spain, or more like China? Pay donors or not?
I have a simple solution:
We already have a stratified system – people have either said ‘yes, I’d like to donate my organs after my death’, or they haven’t responded.
Those who are on the ‘yes, harvest me’ list should be eligible for transplants if they need them. Those who aren’t? No transplants for them.
Can’t say fairer than that.
Sunday afternoon in the pub
To roughly quote a friend, 300 certainly wasn’t genre-defining in terms of comic book movies, but its production processes were pretty pioneering (alliteration, the English disease).
The main thing this makes me think of is CGI porn. Just imagine what fantastic 300-esque stuff the porn industry could create if it were prepared to flash a bit of cash (and knew how to spend it, The Fashionistas is shot on 35mm with an expensive soundtrack and still manages to be the dullest fetish flick I’ve seen).
I’m already picturing fairies, dragons, space monsters, ooh, zero-gravity (and tentacles, natch), and that’s just for my debut movie. Plus there are endless possible settings and backdrdops, costumes and so on.
CGI also opens up the possibility of exploring realms that are illegal with real performers – bestiality, paedophilia, necrophilia – which raises a whole slew of interesting moral questions.
Would watching a digitally-rendered kid-flick make someone more likely to search out kids IRL, or fuel the production of real paedophilia movies? Although once CGI is noticeably faster and cheaper than live action the second part of the question would probably become academic, and I’m yet to meet anyone who plays GTA who’s killed a call girl.
Watchable CGI porn is clearly still a long way off though. A quick web search (I’m so gonna get sacked!) reveals that so far the genre has offered up terrible limb-flailing hentai (which takes the hand-drawn movies backwards if anything) and Priceless Films.
I think the guys at Priceless have the right idea, and their characters look good, but the animation is a long way from getting me (anyone?) hot.
Until the dawn of decent CGI porn, there is always Ice Age
Who watches the watchmen?
I really want to be excited by Watchmen but I don’t trust Snyder not to fuck it up.
