nixsight

1. Siou II, 2. .playing in the morning light., 3. The Key to Success!, 4. Official Awesomeness

I’m still in the process of working out what my Vox account is for, but I seem to have been keeping most of my fannish thoughts on tv and film over there for the last few days (as the audience there seems to be primarily American, and so does much of the tv we watch). For those of you who haven’t seen or read my Vox blog, it’s here:

http://nixsight.vox.com/

Vox is pretty, but I’ve yet to work out what else it is. I wonder if it isn’t a little quiet and nicely designed to ever be a successful social network, but it’s certainly prettier then MySpace.

Amy and I celebrated our 9 month anniversary yesterday. Because we are not totally gaytarded, we didn’t mark it with party-poppers or lavish meals with ballroom dancing after… But there was wine, and ice cream, and eighties musical watching (Fame, for those interested).

(I meant to post about this yesterday, by the way… that would have been a nice way to mark it properly, too. But I didn’t. Because I’m rubbish, that’s why.)

It struck both of us seperately that if we weren’t particularly smart or cautious, this week could feasibly have been marked by the birth of our first child. I won’t go into detail about how the timeline works out there… needless to say, we had a relatively long, cute and chaste preamble to courtship, and so shouldn’t be judged too harshly on what happened immediately after.

Last night we tried to work out what material 9 months might represent… If the nature of the items is qualitative, then it’s difficult to imagine anything less valuable in the general run of things then paper. (Although, of course, typing that now, I realise that there is so much to be said on what paper has done for the human experience…). But if we’re talking about an item that more relevantly fits the time period, maybe 9 months can only really represent one thing, and that’s “Happy Baby Anniversary”.

In the same way that the first week could traditionally be termed the “First Base Anniversary”, as that quite closely reflects what that period of time signifies. And depending on the cultural background, 6 months or 18 months could be the “Haven’t You Proposed Yet? Anniversary”.

I just hope that by the 15 year mark we aren’t, like so many other couples, morosely clinking champagne glasses over our “Staying Together To Put On A United Front Until The Kids Leave Home” day… Although I kinda doubt we will. We are too damn cool for that…

(And in case you didn’t guess, this is totally dedicated to my lovely Amy.)

1. looming-presence, 2. Sangre en el camino 2, 3. Katie re-edit, 4. energy of form

1. Hotel Sunway, Phnom Penh, 2. backstreet girl, 3. ode to nigel, 4. bared

(It is worth noting that some of the links in this post may not be safe for work) 

On a similar note to my last post about The Dears: Ever since first seeing their flickr photostream I don’t know when, I’ve had tetheredto, aka Rose & Olive in my contacts list, but I didn’t really work out why.
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The first time I heard a song by The Dears, it was accompanied by a charming, poignant, violent and cartoony video, and a tremendous amount of drama and authentic-feeling performance, which perfectly showcased the heartfelt vocal storytelling, and it pulled me into their perfect example of one of my favourite musical tropes – the dual-vocal male/female dialogue song, probably most famously represented by The Fairytale of New York, but with notable entries from Iggy Pop/Debbie Harry (I think), the girl from Lush and Jarvis Cocker, her out of Catatonia and the bloke from Space, PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke (or Nick Cave) and… well, there are loads. I already told you that I loved that sort of song…
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Image by Faerylepdoptera at flickr.

1. Untitled, 2. Brenna AERO-EKTAR, 3. Untitled, 4. Mr Eagle 1

When I started posting these mosaics under the “1,000 words” headings, my intention was to pick images from my contacts at Flickr that stirred something in me, and that best fit the old idea of a picture being worth a thousand words.

Chase Allgood’s photos are a perfect example of what I was after… every one of his images, most often portraits, evokes something deeper than it’s subject matter implies. He makes the broken down, sad or haggard somehow beautiful, and the beautiful full of a pregnant sadness.

More than that, though, even the more static of his images seems to be capturing a moment, a person on their way from somewhere or to somewhere, or contemplating either the path behind or the path ahead. There is a space in each photo ready to be filled by the viewer’s imagination, and in each of those spaces lie the stories…

Image by Kaotik Visions at flickr.