The Palm of the Left Hand

"A great portion of semen cometh from the brain". So wrote Ambrose Pare, De hominis generatione, 1573.

I have realised that last night's post was a pretty haphazard, slapdash affair and I should try and make amends. To that end I'm throwing up a post tonight, which will be equally slovenly and ill-considered in the hope that two wrongs can make a right.

First, a few new additions to the 2009 Word of the Year Lexicon.

Pixel Peeping - (verb) A tiresome habit amongst photographers who are poor at their chosen hobby of photography. They scrutinise every picture at extreme magnification, both their own work, and more importantly other photographers' work, for misbehaving pixels. Never mind the picture and it's composition, the subject, or the merit, because you can't see the whole at those magnifications, it's the pixels that count. Pixels that are part of noise, chroma, chromatic inaccuracy are all villians, and the taker of the picture is a bad photographer because the lens wasn't being used at f8.0, or whatever is the sharpest aperture. Or worse the camera is the wrong brand, the sensor isn't FF, APSC, Four Thirds, or whatever other strange idea enters the cranium of the pixel peeper. For these guys the best photos are technically perfect, but bland like junket.
A similar condition exists in audiophiles, where they care more about reproduction, staging and space than the performance. A little bit of "Let's listen to the definitive performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring tonal test disc!"
This also applies to cyclists, but lets not get me started. That would make your eyes roll up and glaze over. Just ride the right bike for you and enjoy it.

Sorry -(adjective) This has to be the most overused word of the year, and it still keeps coming. The list of those who've used it is staggering, and sometimes it's for some eye-watering conduct. It seems the nice thing is just say "Sorry" and all will be forgiven. It's a magic reputation restorer.

Splodge - (noun and verb) A great bit of onomatopoeia, superb for describing various accidents that can occur when you get older and parts of your body's sealing system start to fail.

And now a few other cover versions of songs that I should have had in the first list a week or so ago.

Nick Cave - Helpless Neil Young, as bleak and dark as he can be, never sounded so despairing

The Mars Volta - Candy and a currant bun A bit of a perverse take on the Pink Floyd classic

Bauhaus - Telegram Sam You know the one, a super sped up angry version of the glam rock trip out by T-Rex

Whiskeytown - A song for you Gram Parsons wrote some absolute rippers of plaintive remorse and this one of them

Linda Ronstandt - Tumbling Dice Why shouldn't I love this? A voice like honey, album cover work to make you think and a bit of teenage fantasy from me.


Lastly, start reading more, it's good for you.

Ebony and velvet

As part of my project to make lasting mark on humanity I have been brushing up on my literature again. Some of my knowledge and appreciation of English and American literature has grown quite rusty, and my memory of the great poets is a little more feeble than it has been in the past. To this end I have taken to reading poetry again, partly for the sheer pleasure of it, and partly because it's particularly irritating to others to recite at opportune moments.

This reciting at given moments, in some ways, it reminds me of listening to CTB singing, with gusto, and long before Walk the Line gave Johnny Cash popular, hip cred, Ring of Fire. The particular occasion was at the top of yet another lung-searing ascent of that painful bit of tarmac, Birdwood Road. I reached the top, as part of a ride with half a dozen others, bathed in sweat and gasping to hang on to the bunch. CTB, to then add salt to the lashing, launched into, in his fine baritone, Ring of Fire. Not just a few gasped lines from the chorus, no it was the whole damn thing. I, at that precise moment, hated him for it, just purely from sheer envy of the voice, the composure and the effortless nature, it was unalloyed magic.

With my renewed confidence in poety I have been attempting to instill/install a sense of literature and culture in my growing minion. He is now quite taken with a couple of Blake and Wordsworth poems, and has given over to reciting The Tyger on the walking bus and at school. It is a fine thing.

Well, here's a flashback for me. Somehow, when I was trawling Youtube for tasty clips on phoney health schemes, you know the sort, L. Ron Hubbard meets Brain Tamaki, I got distracted and the next thing I found this. The movie that this is the opening to, The Hunger, it made a deep, lasting impression on me, and this clip prompted a flurry of mental activity not seen in my cranium since the moment last year of the tanned girl on a vespa in a short skirt, the wind and the fortuitous glance.