First Lines

here is an excellent first line of an excellent book.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

''You never hear about a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident, and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that we are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue.''

and I can't resist a bit more

''Most of my life I never worked out whether to pity, ignore, adore, judge or murder my father. His mystifying behaviour left me wavering right up until the end. He had conflicting ideas about anything and everything, especially my schooling: eight months into kindergarten he decided he didn't want me there any more because the education system was 'stultifying, soul-destroying, archaic and mundane'. I don't know how anyone could call finger painting archaic and mundane. Messy, yes. Soul-destroying, no. He took me out of school with the intention of educating me himself, and instead of letting me fingerpaint he read me the letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo right before he cut off his ear, and also passages from the book Human, All Too Human so that together we could 'rescue Nietzsche from the Nazis'. Then dad got distracted with the time-chewing business of staring into space, and I sat around the house twiddling my thumbs, wishing there was paint on them. ''

really brilliant, I've just bought it for my friend Kate for her birthday so I slightly revisited it on the bus.

Pause

Earlier this term we did a project called 'to be continued', spending two weeks in print, two in photography, and two in the studio.

These photographs are my final outcome. I hired a film camera and searched London for moments of pause. Moments in which the pause is not artificially created by the camera but is visible in real life. They will be continued but as you see them they are utterly frozen.

The first picture was taken in the financial district. The man left the building and walked to that spot. He stood stock still, staring into the building works for several seconds. I took some time to take the shot as it was in bright sunlight, but he did not see me even though i was only a couple of meters away, pointing a camera directly at him. What has he done?

The second was taken outside the Gherkin. By utter serendipity, I wandered past looking for moments of pause and came across a big crowd. It so happened that the Queen was visiting the Gherkin, and was inside that very moment. I positioned myself near the entrance then looked back at everyone else staring without seeing. It was a gift, because every person there had a camera of some sort out - there was nothing noticable about me pointing one around. Eventually Queenie came out - there was a bizarre moment as hundreds of pictures were taken over and over again, phones infront of eyes, and nobody had their hands free, so nobody could clap. The Queen walked silently through and got into her Bentley, which had silently broken down. Out she got, into the people carrier behind, as one of the watchers said 'oh poor cow'.

Untangle: the final shortshort

Phoebe and I's final short short, which will be an advert for a website we're setting up. We're making an online, independent kind of directory, of climate change activism. Aimed at people who, like us, do the basics, but don't know where to go from there. We are told over and over to 'do something', 'take action'. But we still found ourselves confused about exactly what to do. The directory will be regularly updated with reports on different subjects: emissions, for example. And our content will come from the work of all major charities, local community activism, and government initiatives, giving people an overview of what possible actions they can do on the subject. We are not experts. But we are trying to make sense of what's going on, for ourselves and others.

If anyone has any experience making websites or advice, we would be eternally grateful. Otherwise we'll just muddle through.

cat

untangle me please

http://www.lifeacademy.uk.com/entries/view/030c7db5d2bb4ee98a4e3e380eb239d6

Phoebe and I's completed animation and pitch for a competition of new ways to use the internet - we launch into the wide world our plan for a Climate Change Action Directory. We'll never win, we're up against people building schools in Kenya, but it seemed a good way to put it out there.

From an animation point of view it is a low quality and in 4:3 out of necessity to fit the format of the video pitch. It looks better in big and 16:9.

Follow the link to watch our animation followed by a delightfully stuttering pitch to Microsoft, and give us a thumbs up if you agree.

Scrabble

'She flew' I claim as I sift through the tip. A puny mew pines 'yin!' from the nub of a mauve jug, perched on a sheer face of muck. I say that hokey pokey witch put paid to our town. Her voice that charmed lava from sand on Oslo beach. If my Nordic bones sing true - and they do - that hitter of poison won't live to complete her sixer of evil. Nay, I'll quell my rage, an' go. Butter won't melt in my gab. Cover the zit in gauze and brush off the ants, I'm leaving to put a dent in a demon. Near her door there's a doo of peace, but my id says no: the time of deliverance is nigh.


This is what happens if you play a game of scrabble, write down all the words played in order, then make a story out of them. You have to use them in the order played, and you can use little connectives aswell. It's funny how connections appear. This is a game from last summer between me, my grandma and my mum. I rediscovered the story today.

Sauron's eye

Phoebe working on Sauron's Eye, the lightbox we built this weekend. Well, not really built. it's a wine box from Majestic with a striplight in and an underbed storage box lid balanced on top. Total cost 7.99. We have been working on Sauron's Eye for ten hours today, we have done four seconds worth of drawings. It has been fun acting out the parts. I had a leaping owl and Phoebe had a struggling rabbit.