View Whore

I joined a Flickr group a while back purely because I like their concept. Each day they pick a random group to "invade". They all join it for a day, bomb it with photos relating to that group, and then fuck off again. It's random, it's creative, it's inspiring, it's completely juvenile and it's totally me.

Yesterday's group was an easy one. My Photo Is Crap But I'm A View Whore. It's a great little dig aimed at those people who submit photos to heaps of groups because they get off on the number of times people have viewed their photos.

So I did a shot taking the piss out of these people. In particular one woman out of the local group of photographers who I think is a self-centred egotistical twit. She's the butt of many household jokes about photographic technique and talent or lack thereof. She's also the reason I don't go out to local photography group meetings. I can't stand her in virtual reality so I think I'll be tempted to punch her in real life.

The list I created was with her in mind, and the shot based around those trying to be her, but not quite making it.



Yet... I am a view whore too.

This is my single most viewed photo to date. It pisses all over everything else I've uploaded for the amount of times people have clicked on it. And I'm addicted. I keep checking back to see how many more people have looked at this picture. Even by posting it here I am tricking myself into thinking it's more popular.

Go ahead... Click on it... You know you want to...

Project: Pair

I challenged my sister Kat to yet another photo project. She's doing a bucketload better than I am this time - the project was to use pair as an inspiration. On the whole I'm stuck in a rut. Mentally, photographically, physically.

I've taken a few shots, but the concept in my head for those shots has not translated into the physical. They lack interest, definition, focus. Kind of like my thoughts at the moment! Never the less, I'll slog on and see if something comes out of brutal bullheadedness today. So far this is one success that I've had:

Whinge, Whine, Fricken Whinge.

It's a cloudy, windy day. Bugger.

This kind of day just seems to take the life out of me. I can't go to the beach, because it will be cold and the sand will be blowing around enough to remove a few layers from any exposed skin areas. Exfoliation, yes. Painful and annoying, more so. If I ditch the plans of spending the weekend exploring outdoors and instead attend to the indoor challenge of conquering Mount Washing, I will end up being bashed about the head by sheets and towels as I hang them on a wildly swing Hills Hoist clothesline. Since I have a tenuous relationship with the clothesline at the best of times, it's better to avoid that idea too.

It seems that sunshine and fresh air are a requirement for my happiness. I like my job because a large portion of it is outside work, and in a very changing environment. In my current state of mind [ie. muddled, medicated, working on getting better] I couldn't imagine being inside in a little box all day, the same little box all day, to earn a living. Honestly I would not cope.

I'll add to that - sunshine, fresh air, new experiences. I feel happy when my eyes are opened to new things. Often on days like this I will spend a fair amount of time on the internet. At the end of the day it might look like I've accomplished nothing, but I will have been on a linkfest that takes me through hundreds of different perspectives, reading about whatever may fleetingly take my interest. I will have given myself brain fodder at least.

Speaking of brain fodder I need a new challenge. Kat and I have kind of run out of steam on the stripes photography challenge, so I have thrown the ball to her for the next choice. Who knows what it will be!

Even the doga are going nuts in this weather. They're whinging, all of them. Joey the turdlet will not stop barking until he is let inside. The other two join in just because they hear him barking and whining, and they're probably sick of it too. I have no idea how to shut them up and it's frustrating to say the least. Thank god I don't have children - it would be worse.

Anyway, I'm off to find something somewhat positive to spend my day on.

This has been a public service does of whinge.
Tell me to shut up and get over it anytime.

In search of The One

I am on a quest. It is very important, and potentially very fulfilling on a daily, personal level. The quest will be frustrating as I requires me to obtain perfection in a tactile form, however I do not yet specifically know what form perfection will take. Many times I will see something that is close, but will need to be left by the wayside because it is flawed in some way. I will reject many in search of the one. Yes, there can only be one.

I will have to beat my way through jungles of children in discount shops. I will have to use my senses, staying alert for the stench of Dencorub that warns the presence of nursing home escapees who find refugee in these places alongside the children. I will need to be agile, even a contortionist, to squeeze past the fat bastards looking at the cheap, shitty chocolate. I will steel myself against the inevitable intolerant anger at the bunch of asians arguing noisily in their own language over the last two dollar frying pan. I will remain focused on my goal.

My quest may take from the dangerous slums of the discount shop aisles to more delicate but equally dangerous surrounds - the boutique kitchen shop. Cat-footed, I will make my way through the too-close shelves lined with expensive bakeware. I will laugh at the frustration of the saleswoman behind the counter - she will be wanting to keep her eyes on me, but will keep losing me behind the shelves that are higher than my head. My horror at the fifty-two dollar price tag on the toothpick holder will be contained to an inner snigger. I will easily dismiss the Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay signature designs. I may be briefly distracted by the now discounted Nigella Lawson signature lines, but I will find strength and dismiss the pastel faffery in favour of my higher goal, my object of perfection.

No more being "Ms. Bitch" for me. I will no longer be "Quietly Plotting My Revenge". My object of perfection will be the one I wake up to every morning, warming me, snuggling into my hands, giving me strength for the day.

My quest... to find the ultimate coffee mug.

This old chart...

I’ve been going through my folders of charts. For me a chart for a bass or guitar playing gig in a band is a single sheet of paper, with the chords and general structure jotted out on it. All the rest – riffs, tempo, general style – it’s all from memory. Or made up as we go along.

Mostly they end up memorised and put aside. I’ve got an archive of charts that have been learned and knocked off the song list, or that have been learnt for a special occasion never to be played again. I’ve got a heap of duplicates in there also, where I’ve trusted myself to know the chart before a gig and left it behind – only to have a last minute Crap… How does it go? moment and a hastily copied chart from someone else. I got out of that habit in the last band, too. The guitarist and I worked well enough together for him to just turn and show me where he was going if I was lost.

But back to organising the charts. The only projects on the go at the moment are acoustic duos, which demand mostly a different repertoire to the disco/funk/blues cover bands I’ve been in recently. So I decided to consolidate all the charts I’m not using into one folder, obsessively arranged into alphabetical order. The only ones I’m keeping out are the ones currently in use.

In going through these handwritten pieces of paper I’ve come across so many memories, so many laughs and moments to treasure.

One example is Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love. Learnt one-off for a bridal waltz. Nothing special, but the wedding itself was of two cousins. The entire do was packed out with family and they all looked the same. Lovely people, but it was all a little creepy.

Another one I came across was Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor. This actually has a bassline that I really enjoy playing and there’s not too much wrong with the song. But the chart itself – it was written out at a time where I had to copy a whole heap of charts from the guitarist before a rehearsal. He already had them, so all I had to do was write my own copies, instead of work out my own at home. Since there was a heap, the singer decided to help me. Here’s where it truly is a funny chart to see. Take someone who has no idea of the meaning of all these symbols and get them to produce a copy of them. See, to a guitarist a letter, followed by a hash symbol, followed by a triangle and a number in superscript means one thing as a whole. A group of four notes with a specific meaning. To a singer, well… That’s four separate things to be made pretty. It’s a really cute chart, but not the most coherent you’ll see.

There’s a few charts for a fun cheesy covers band from years ago. It raised it’s head once for a muso’s club showcase and then disappeared entirely. Hell it was fun. We had acoustic bass, twelve string guitar, two singers, a squeezebox and a guy playing the spoons. And we played AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long, with the guitar solo on the accordion. It was tongue in cheek at it’s best, and we called ourselves Slippery Kitty. It was fine until it became apparent that the muso’s club publicity guy had misheard our name. We were advertised as Slippery Titties.

Then we have some charts that I have memorised to the point that I know them so instintively I could fall asleep playing them. In fact I have, at one horror gig where I'd worked long hours all week and then knocked into a few beers. I sat on a speaker and kept on waking up midway through the songs.

Another autopilot chart is Dancing in the Street. The entire verse can be played without using the left hand, so I go nuts. It's my muck about song. I can skull a beer during the first verse while I'm using my right hand to keep playing. Then I can light a cigarette in the next verse...

There's always going to be pieces of paper holding these memories for me. I write new ones all the time. Some you just laugh at, some make you smile. Some make you think - hell, that's right. What a crap gig! - but they all hold something.

Sometimes it's the little stuff you hold on to.

Getting the Groover back

It is time to find the Groover that has gone AWOL. That in control, happy, outgoing self that I allowed to get buried under some crap and bad health. So my mission for the next however long it takes is to do at least one thing that is different, special for me and/or bettering myself every day.

Today it is to bring out the drumsticks for some rudiments. When I first started playing I did daily rudiments exercises. I would sit at the coffee table of a morning with a steaming mug of coffee, a metronome, a pair of sticks and a practice pad. But that was at a time where I lived alone, didn't have to be at work at 6am and had no phone or internet connection. In short, life hadn't got in the way.

A little education for those who don't know what I'm on about:

Rudiments: A set of technical exercises covering the basic patterns and sticking techniques for drumming, especially snare drumming.

Practice pad: A rubber pad that imitates the natural rebound of a stick from a drum head.

Metronome: A device to set a constant unwavering tempo, which you can adjust higher or lower. I am a bizarre type who actually loves working with one of these. I love setting it higher and higher, seeing how far I can push myself.

Anyway, I got hold of a bunch of new sticks lately. Normally I use 7A sticks - they're lightweight, thin and easy to control, which is good because I've fallen out of the habit of practising. They're easy to fake with, basically. I saw these sticks on the cheap and had to have them - compared to my normal faking choice these sticks are like tree trunks.

What the hell does all that mean? Is this renewed practice bug because I've got prettier sticks and I want to use them? No. Well... I did buy them because I thought they were amazing, and now I have them I feel I should justify their purchase... But pulling them out for the first time highligted how badly I've let my technique slip into the realm of faking it. The tree trunks are way heavier, putting a lot more strain on my wrists. They highlight problems in my grip because the buggers bounce all over the place, not just straight up and down. Not only do I not have control over bounce direction but I don't have multiple bounce control - they're harder to lift and stop from hitting the pad more than once.

So today holds a big session of Vic, the practice pad, the metronome and the tree trunks. It will be rewarding.

Monday Melee: Say it with lyrics! day

Here is the deal. Monday August 6th, 2007 is the day to take the Monday Melee, dreamed up by fracas, one step further.

The rules:
No posting an entire song.
Explanations of chosen lyrics should not be necessary, the lyric should speak your answer for you.
Name the song, artist and the album for the benefit of anyone who can't pick it, or wants to hear more.

Feel free to pinch the logo and put it in your sidebar or at the top of your Melee post on August 6th. Make sure you link to fracas Monday Melee page, and this post. Here's the code:

<a href="http://fracas.wordpress.com/read/the-monday-melee/">fracas Monday Melee</a>

<a href="http://musodyke.blogspot.com/">Monday Melee:<i>Say it with lyrics</i></a>

If you've never done a Melee before, why the hell not?

These are the questions, every Monday. Visit the Monday Melee page to sign up with fracas.
1. The Misanthtropic: Name something (about humanity) you absolutely hate.
2. The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent or bogus.
3. The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
4. The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
5. The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
6. The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.