The Darling Times

Thanks to Laurence Wilson, Mountain Range's gloriously happy, beautifully ambient, Sigor Ros-inspired sounds came to my attention this afternoon.

With electronic, nature-infected notes, It's Lonely Around People, Too at points feels so much like an underwater wilderness I can almost picture fish swimming around my desk.  At any rate, I'm transported away from the monotony of revision and leaves me in a slightly more blissful place than where I started.

Lucy Rose: Bikes

Art.sy:  an online art collection site that, ingeniously, uses algorithms to understand your preferred works of art (or those in your own collection) and suggests new matches for you.  You can even follow a certain 'gene' or type of art, such as 1960's Art, or Black & White Photography.  And once you've followed an artist or gene, you'll get an email notification about new artworks, sales and upcoming shows.  Utterly brilliant.  Have an explore, its been in private testing for a while now, but opened to the public yesterday.

Earthlings

Watched this for the first time last night, after it was recommended to me by a friend, Turin Bridge.

Although I’d much rather have not seen it (we humans would much rather deny the existence of this cruelty) but now I knew about the film, I had to challenge myself and make myself watch it: to do otherwise would be ignorant.

And I’m glad I did.  Its hard hitting and awful to watch at times, but it gets the message across to us - many animals kept and killed for our pleasure live their whole lives in pain and are not even respected in death.

It has certainly made me question humanity - how can someone within the same species as myself treat life in this way?  Whether we blame Speciesism or just the psychology of a coping mechanism, it doesn’t make it any better, or right.

But how do we address this and make amend for what we have done and are still doing?  Joachin Phoenix, narrator, doesn’t give us the answers - just allows us to ponder what has been laid out as fact.

Is becoming vegetarian/vegan enough?  Perhaps we should instead take a more active role and fight for more humane methods? 

Delightfully funny short story by Neil Edwards. 

Shinies: Ennui

"Ennui" = boredom?  Or a strange lacking of enthusiasm for what currently surrounds us?  I see this Fabio Younnis-directed video it as a cold representation that as young people move to a time of heightened responsibility they/we have to suppress, or burn, childhood memories.  Apparently, nostalgia now doesn't have a place in our society and we can't run life and memories alongside each other.

But perhaps this bleakness is a product of our conditioning and the way we're been conditioned? 

FREE EVENT: Part of the Our Changing World lecture series - 6.30pm on 2 Oct 2012

@thedarlingtimes will be there & tweeting updates! 

Time-lapse video from the awesome people at MOO.com. 

With a bouncy castle, lifesize Connect-4 and Jenga as well as a colourful umbrella canopy, the stage/yard at 32-38 Scrutton Street last night was set for a young start-up birthday party.  And with the drinks flowing and hot dogs a-sizzling, the chatter started and we strapped ourselves in for a great evening hosted by the super lovely people at MOO.com. 

Happy Birthday was even sung and I came home with an amazingly cheerful bright yellow umbrella. 

Thank you MOO!