The Future That Was

There was a time when speculative fiction and art were utterly enjoyable and deep. I'm talking about glorious sci-fi visions of the future. Things were definitely positive back then. Tall spires piercing blue skies. Primitive shapes of crafts gliding lazily in the background. Machines that did your bidding without bothering you. Humans striking elegant poses as though they had achieved all they could and where about yawn (which would probably echo through their palatial quarters). These images just wanted one to transport oneself to that moment. There was something to look forward to. Probably the last example of this was the 'Go West' video by the Pet Shop Boys.

The state of such fiction is pretty dismal today. Distopic visions of war, oppression just gang rape anything positive. It is not as if there wasn't any turmoil in Paradise, back then. Imagine a book that just concentrated on the good futuristic life - it probably would be a boring piece of work and would read like a mag that features celebrity homes & gardens. Yawn.... For a story to progress (and sell) drama must exist. Back then, there was something grandly positive to contrast with negatives of future society. Todays fiction mostly starts of in a dismal world with no hope or scope for improvement. You are forced to connect with the protagonist in a crappy situation - who towards the end barely escapes with life and limb. In effect if it was a movie you'd be taken on a wild goose chase with a lot of (usually unnecessary) special effects and amplified sound effects. 'Probably' the coolest thing on screen would be when someone makes a grand entrance and mouths of a corny-as-the-character-can-get catch phrase. Sadly this is entertainment for us today.

Too get a clearer understanding of what the future was like, check these artists out
Syd Mead and a link to the trailer of a documentary on him.
Roger Dean the man behind most of YES album covers. Check out the Up Close and Architecture pages on this site.

To conclude here is a video of the song 'I'm with stupid' by the Pet Shop Boys. This is a spoof of another Pet Shop Boys video of the song 'Can You Forgive Her'. The two funny chaps are the guys behind Little Britain.

Bunnies Dance and Sing

Groove Armada - Get Down

Skittles Ad - Opera Bunny

Cyberpunk & Riddim

In September 2006, I managed to read William Gibson's Neuromancer (thanks to Mridul). A down right propah cyberpunk novel. I usually can't read cyberpunk novels because cutting through all the technobabble is tedious. Neuromancer is supposed to be the grand daddy of cyberpunk, written in 1984 and Its influence on movies, books, comics and video games cannot be overlooked today. The novel is about a bionic cracker who is on a contract to infiltrate some top security organization and in the process steal some important data. At least that is what the book was to me. The cracker has a super-sexy-martial-arts-expert for a bodyguard. In the end the nature of the object of their goal is something that came as a surprise to me. Read and experience it for yourself.

The density of technobabble was just right for me. Gibson does a commendable job of visualizing future technology. Something along the lines of Virtual reality meets Darwinia and the visualizer in your media player. -100 points if you are a fan of VRML. In the novel our cracker has to collaborate with a bunch of Rastafarians residing on a space station called Zion. This bit was the coolest thing to happen to sci-fi in years. Imagine a culture spaced out on marijuana living in space! As I read, I could imagine myself floating about this space station with blocked ears listening to dull throbbing of Dub music. Riddim fueled mellowness.

Which brings me to my most recent discovery, an album by Easy Star All-stars titled Dub Side of the Moon. I'm convinced that this album is nothing but a soundtrack to Neuromancer. This album is a dub version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon album. What-ifs like what if Pink Floyd was a roots reggae outfit get answered on this album. No shrieking in Patois like in todays dancehall numbers, just beautiful vocals in English (except for one track). The first track starts of with sounds of bubbling bongs, tchk sounds of a lighter and coughs. The ringing counter part on Pink Floyd's album starts with heart beats, ticking clocks and ringing cash registers. The reverb, echo and other feedback effects are not overdone. This dub album is not too abstract and sounds more like a reggae-fied cover of Pink Floyd than a pucca dub album.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I recently finished this wonderful book by Susanna Clarke. Its fiction and reads like an English classic. The story is set around the time of the Napoleonic Wars and its is about two English magicians who are trying to revive magic and its practice. There is a lot of politics and drama between (& surrounding) the two. The good book follows a slow pace. It doesn't drag and the authoress does a good job of keeping you interested with a variety of characters and their actions. The book has a very odd ending i.e., heads - it is a definite ending and tails - could there be more adventures? If its tails, I can't wait to read the next book. If you are into appendices and footnotes, then this book has quite a bit of footnotes referring to fictional books on subjects dealt within the actual story. The footnotes definitely add to 'this thing really happened' sense of the book. So if you are a gullible kid that is very sensitive to media and prone to gunning down mates in educational institutions across the US, I'd like to see you perform some magic. You can read excerpts from the book here.

I definitely suck at reviewing books and can't help the fanboyism from setting in. Probably its because I don't want to ruin your reading experience. This book gets a 5 on 5 from me. If you are illiterate and some one is reading this out to you, learn to read for the sake of this book!

Growing Up in the 80's (Part 1): SUPER TED!

In the 80's, I grew up watching cartoons & programs mostly produced in the UK. I've seen most of the stuff produced by Cosgrove Hall and then some. So in a series of posts I'll introduce you to some of the best stuff I have ever seen till date. Around that time a lot of anime-esque shows were gaining popularity and most kids my age preferred watching violent crap like G.I. Joe and mecha shite. I loved the non-violent stuff produced by Cosgrove Hall. I think this was because I started reading voraciously around the time and most of the cartoons were based on popular children's books. These cartoons were unlike the melodramatic soaps (read as pokemon & anime) of today. To start of the series we have Super Ted! He needs no introduction as the following clip says it all.



It still is one of the coolest intro for a cartoon in my book. Note the orchestral score in the background. One important thing about Super Ted is that he looks like an ordinary teddy bear. But at the first sign of trouble he says his magic word & unzips his ordinary guise and becomes SUPER TED! Incidentally, The magic word was given to him by Mother Nature. We never hear the magic word when Ted mumbles it. Ted tells us that it is so because its a secret. The wee bastard!

Ted lives with two friends on Planet Spot - Spotty Man (voiced by the 3rd Doctor Who -Jon Pertwee) and Blotch (a female version of Spotty Man). The Villain is Texas Pete and he is an American and definitely not nice . Pete has two cronies - a timid Skeleton who loves kittens and soft things; The other guy is a fat guy called Bulk (he is the duh-dumb type). The show was originally produced in Welsh and later dubbed into English.

For further entertaining stuff about SuperTed look here and here.

Look

Something for your optic nerves here.

The Elegant Solution

Mridul has alway claimed that I always blame things on pollution. I've never disputed this. Land, air and water, its all filthy. We're living like those fish in 'Finding Nemo'. Our fish bowl is dirty and we've no choice but to breathe, eat and drink it up. The world we live in is doomed. We can attribute this condition to various factors, mostly manmade. OR...

We can blame it on entropy and embrace apocalyptic visions of the Anti-Christ (Where the heck is he by the way?) and laugh like bastards. This doomed schtik has been going on for centuries. Its only us sentient monkeys making a fuss about it as a recent phenomenon. Why? simply because we can. If there existed another sentient species on the planet that we haven't wiped out yet; I'm sure the two would agree its doomed. We are alone & buzzing. History tells us that each civilization was looking for an Elegant Solution to end their problems. In todays terms the Elegant Solution is the Sci-Fi writers idea & the scientists wet dream. The media paints a picture of urgency, they show lab rats frantically experimenting on chimps & chimps experimenting on lab rats. they are all looking for a key. Key to the elegant solution.

Maybe we've to fight fire with fire. Maybe that might actually be the Elegant Solution. Its all futile. Buahahahha!
The Moral still is DON'T shit where you eat.

Precious Junk

I believe that we can all agree on the idea that we live in a materialistic world. I remember going once to my Mom's ancestral home in Pallakaad, Kerala. We had tea in this dining room which had a cupboard with neatly arranged, dusty and delicate china. A grand uncle of mine spent some time in the Far East & he had brought this and many other quality stuff. Quite a bit of his stuff were rumoured to be languishing in the attic of the house (or was it another house?). I'd never been to the attic as I was being constantly bombarded by questions like 'Do you remember me?' by various relatives. And when they got over the fact that the infant me was in-fact a gangly 13 year old, the next relative would pop in for the next iteration of questions. The stuff I saw in the cupboard will never be junk in my opinion for two reasons:

1. They don't make them like they used to. Those china cups were exquisite. The minimalist crock of today would just pale in comparison.
2. I like old stuff.

Confession: I am a pack rat. So what have I accumulated over the past few years? Whatever it is it will never have the charm of antique stuff. I tend to debate over purchases for so long that when I do buy the item, I no longer need it! Now this can be very irritating when you do stock taking of one's room like I am now. What a waste of money & space! One such object is my light box which has not been totally useless as I've made it to be.

The story of the light box- I found myself in a 2D animation course about four years ago. The need for a light box was unquestionable. Looked about town for one with a peg bar. No cigar. Ok I'll build one, drew up a design for the carpenter. He came in one morning, I explained the plan to him in grand detail. He knocked up one for me in two days. It looked like a deluxe rat trap! Problem being the angle at which the drawing surface inclined. It proved to be very uncomfortable when one slaved away for hours on it. The minor angle issue aside it was functional, portable and very spartan. I used it less often after I got it home. Consolation-wise I still use it nowadays for art and at night as reading light.

How much of the stuff we have accumulated are actually worth keeping? How much of it is going to last for the next five years? Who knows. Much of the bulk I own is media- books, tapes and CDs. The Choice is clear, either invest in miniature devices that become obsolete in about a years time or invest in something thats like a Soviet juggernaut i.e, hideous in execution but will last over half a life time as long as its not nuked twice to oblivion.

Dali in commercials

Found these ads starring the ever eccentric Salvador Dali.



The next ones' a gem!



Happy bubbles but devoted bubbles!

My Hands are Bloody

I have just killed a stale blog - The Hall of Beard. The blog was dedicated to famous bearded personalities and It featured two - Rabindranath Tagore & Gustav Klimt. Attempts to introduce readers (if any) to Arthur Brown (Musician), Alexey Pajitnov (Designer of the video-narcotic, Tetris) & Jeff Minter (Programmer of many obscure games & the not so obscure light synth) have repeatedly failed. The other motive behind the creation of the blog was to have a memetic affect on people's minds. One rarely sees full bearded men these days.
Rest assured I'm still growing one.