The Silver Cat

This was a request from my sister. It's from when I was watching a cat out of the window of my student house in Maidstone.

A cat sits on a breeze-block,
On a wet patch of grass,
Lapping milk from a saucer
Like wine from a glass.

Will My Eyes be Closed or Open or Freaky?

I was looking for LFO - Freak to cheer me up. Came across Bjork mashing things up big time stylee. Freak starts to come in around 1.10. 

PIRATES!!!

On another note, I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4 today. I loved it. LOTS of Pirates and no confusing story line. A simple story and LOTS of Pirates. Brilliant. Please go! Plus, if you wear heavy boots, then when you come out of the cinema you can feel as if you're walking like a pirate, which is great! That's what I did.

Langwij

Here's an interesting thought from Stephen Fry. I'm not jumping on the Fry-bandwagon, but I think it brings up a few good points about language today. When I'm teaching students, I do sometimes complain about American spellings but it's usually just because I've got an American dictionary and it means I have to look the word up twice. I sometimes tease Americans about words like 'travelling' (which they spell with one 'l'), but I'm realising that it doesn't matter.  


One thing that has started to annoy me though, is how things like 'couldn't have' and 'wouldn't have' can't be written couldn't've and wouldn't've when that's how they're often pronounced. I know it looks stupid but it's much more natural to me (and many others) and the conversation teacher in me wants to teach it to students. Also the likes of 'I'd have' contracted to I'd've (eg. I'd've been better staying at home last night) or 'there are' to there're (eg. There're five dogs on the roof!). 


Wouldn't've was actually used in a third year junior high school text book here in Japan and I complained at the time (since it does look odd and could get students in trouble in tests etc.) but it's started to annoy me, now, that we shouldn't write it like that. Russell Brand is the only person I've seen having used that type of contraction in print and I don't really see why he shouldn't've.


Anyway, the video's a bit different to that topic, but still in the same ball park. 

Arthur Smith

I'd like to recommend, to the non-existent readership of this blog, Arthur Smith's Balham Bash. I've not listened to this one yet and I'm not sure why it's only in 4 parts. But, I love the comedian Imran Yusuf, who's doing his stand-up in this show and obviously Arthur Smith and Kevin Eldon, who's got the funniest face of any man alive. That doesn't help him much on the radio though. I've only seen a little of Yusuf, but he seems cool and intelligent and funny. I like it when comedians can be fun but also clever in what they talk about and I think he's really good. Although I've not heard this one yet, so I hope he doesn't let me down!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rykzq

A Poem What I thought Of!

A chance perspective,
In perpetuality.
Neither the laws of art nor physics
Freed her arms from me;
And for that
I can think
To thank only the heavens
In spirituality. 

The Bees for Free

They're not really free, but here's a free listen to one of their new songs. I wasn't a big fan of their last album, 'Octopus', so I'm really happy that the few songs I've heard off their new album (Every Step's a Yes') are more to my taste. Here's 'Winter Rose' with a beautifully animated video. I love the Bees! I'd love to see them in concert again. 

Waiting For a Train

Here's a poem I wrote a few months ago. I'm going to have to try harder to write poems or I'm going to run out! This was just some drunk guy that was standing and swaying, looking at the ground, on a train station platform. It's not menat to be a comment about Japan. It could be anywhere. I keep changing the title, but right now it's called Waiting for a Train -

Staring at a spot he is,

As if he's gotten lost in it,

As if a mystery to him,

As if there's something

in there for him.

As if a picture of his love,

Lost then, as if he'd lost a limb.

His eyes well-weathered,

As the coast.

His lips are crumbling and thin.

His words are ghosts

And they're gone,

Up towards the mountains 

And the woods.

They're not for us;

No longer his.

And now he's swaying

on a platform,

Staring at a spot he is.

丸 (Circles)

Mum and sister are going to read this, so I thought I'd try and write something intelligent. The above is the Japanese character (Kanji) for circle. I don't know why. 円 « This is also a kanji for circle and is also the kanji for en (or yen), the Japanese currency. I don't know why that is either. But at least it shows that kanji are interesting. 


Anyway, the point I was thinking about was about circles. I did a project for university on circles and while I don't remember too much of it, I do remember that it's an important symbol in the human brain. I'll try to remember more another time, but Freud (or maybe Jung) studied circles and got people to do the painting equivalent of automatic writing, which was to ask someone to paint and draw until they weren't really thinking about it and subconscious thoughts came out. The symbol of the circle was quite prominent from what I remember and, also, the brain likes to work on repetition (I think, in terms of both making us feel comfortable and also making us feel eerie), in line with the symbol of the circle. 

So, I found it interesting that when I was trying to teach students (I'm an English teacher to adults) pronunciation, the letter 'o' seemed to be really strong in Japanese peoples' heads. Japanese language has a few less sounds than English and Japanese is pronounce words phonetically (exactly how they're written). So, in words like 'cussion' and 'lemon', it's difficult to get some students to say 'lemern' rather than 'le/mon' or 'cushern' rather than 'cu/shon'. There's a lot of other examples of sounds that are difficult (f and h, s and sh, s and th, u and a etc) but I found that the hardest for a lot of students to shake out of their head (as oppose to just wrapping their tongue, or ears, around the sound) was 'o'. It even produced fits of laughter for a couple of students. We broke the words down and they could say the sounds separately, but when a word was put together again they couldn't stop themselves saying the letter o. One student in particular found it very funny. It wasn't every student (some found it easy) but it was quite a few and I might be talking rubbish but it was interesting to me that 'o' seemed to be really heavily fixed in their brains. That is all. Now I'm going to bed.

Merlin

Tonight I have been mostly watching Merlin and eating a cheese sandwich.

http://www.alluc.org/tv-shows/watch-merlin-online/165372.html

The Unwretched Handclap Band and a Poem for Steph.

Firstly (and less importantly) my last, Stranglers, post was actually going to be a different video that I favourited on youtube a while ago. It was going to be The Phenomenal Handclap Band and by coincidence I found out, this afternoon, that Quinn Luke was in the Phenomenal Handclap Band. Quinn Luke being the guy behind Bing Ji Ling, which was my first video post. I had no idea. Still reading? See video above. 


Secondly (and more importantly) my sister is not doing so well health-wise right now, so here's a short poem I wrote for her ages ago. It was just called For Steph, but titles aren't my strong point!

Today I felt wretched,
But today is old and tarnished
And tomorrow brings forth many new days.
Maybe I'll shine tomorrow!


Hope you like it Steph! Hope you're on the up!!

The Stranglers and Dionne Warwick - Walk On By

I was going to try to post a video for a newish band and look all cool and groovy but I've been listening to The Stranglers best of collection (although admittedly mostly the famous and funky songs), so I thought I'd post these. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and first recorded by Dionne Warwick in 1964 and The Stranglers version is from 1978. The mix is the sNEaKY XFI 6% left x 50% track mix and the video is a mix of live footage and the original video (mixed by someone called sneaky!).

Enjoy!

A Couple of Paintings

I thought I'd just add that the poem 'Wishbone' was written for my girlfriend (The Chi), who's pretty great! Here's a couple of paintings. The first was painted as a practice for another (much delayed) picture, so I could get used to using oil paints. I drew round a banana, so actual picture is banana sized. The second was done as a comparison of home (the UK) and Japan (where I am at the mo) for an exhibition, but I didn't use it in the end. The second's a daikon (Japanese radish) and the real one is daikon sized. Any innuendo is purely in your head and was genuinely unintentional and you should maybe consider being ashamed.

Bing Ji Ling - Move On (Tummy Touch Records)

I heard this on Lauren Laverne's show on BBC radio 6 a while ago. The artist's real name is Quinn Luke, but he goes under the moniker of Bing Ji Ling (which is Mandarin for Ice Cream) and his album, 'Shadow to Shine', is out now. Here's the website for Tummy Touch - http://www.tummytouch.com/

The First Post on the Triangle

I'm not sure where the title sprang from. Hmmm what's going to be my first blog post. How about a poem. Hope you like it, it's called 'Wishbone' -



The wishbone the chicken is missing,
The scales on the butterfly's wings,
The elephant's tusks an'
the songs of the busker,
You complete me,
Like all of these things.

A poem that's wordless
is worthless,
A silence
inside of a book.
A book which is spineless
is pageless (and hopeless),
A hoover that's hoseless
just sucks.

The cowboy who's horseless
has a long way to walk for
his moment,
Before the sunset is lost.

A horizonless sun
has nowhere to go,
No daybreak to show him
how bright he can glow.
And it's a sad little splinter
that's brushed from the tree,
But like all of this stuff,

Without you,
I'm just me.