IkoStar

This is the third one of these I’ve had:

If you click on it you’ll see a version (in a seperate window) the size of the universe.

The first one was given to me by a girl from California called Anne-Marie Murietta, who I’ve lost touch with now… which is a shame because she saved my arse on at least 3 occasions. If at some point she (or someone else she knows) googles her, they’ll find this and can get in touch. I managed to hold onto the ring for a good 10 years or so… then made a flamboyant gesture in this bar and it went flying off onto a crowded dance floor never to be seen again. Not dissimilar to Anne-Marie herself in some ways - only she went flying off in a plane, and wound up in Los Angeles rather than a dance floor.

The second one came from Susan… I saw one in a shop in Brighton and I forced her to buy it for me. She’s nice like that etc… and it weren’t cheap neither. That one met a similar fate to the previous one, only I don’t remember the actual incident.

The third I had made for me at even huger expense than the others… so it’s more or less identical to the previous ones, and it’s the one I have now. I feel completely lost with out it… and it kindof connects me to two people, even though technically I gave this one to myself, myself.

There was this one time in the 90s when I was seeing this hypnotist in Harley Street in London, attempting to deal with cocaine addiction or whatever… we talked about what was involved, the situation… the procedure etc, then we began the first session and he started to talk me down etc. Just like they do with the cartoon mice on TV.

Being an inveterate fiddler however, I managed to lose control of it (again) and it went rolling under this big mahogany desk in the corner so we spent the rest of the session on our hands and knees trying to retrieve it. So that was the end of that.

I’m not sure that the hypnotism worked entirely. I kept sitting there thinking “am I? am I?, I don’t think I am? How do you tell?” and not really paying attention to what he was saying. I did stop taking drugs though… but via some weird, wild coincidence that I can’t quite explain either - and that was decades ago… and anyway, what do you expect. Someone once said about Tony Blair “He played in a band. How can you trust anyone who’s played in a band but never smoked a joint?”. Yes. Well, you can trust me.

Anyway - back to hypnotism… unconvinced etc, but it was hugely preferable to the acupuncture sessions I had to try and get rid of RSI - NOBODY TOLD ME THEY WERE GOING TO STICK PINS IN ME !!! - unbelievable. The bloke who did it seemed fairly knowledgeable - I probably would’ve gone back and just kindof treated it as a therapy session… but having pins stuck in you forces you to focus your mind.

Still. Whatever:

There’s this thing over there —-> about these eco-planes, which look pretty cool etc. Apparently they’re solar powered, and the cockpit bit is filled up with a mixture of helium and nitrous oxide, which is doubly environmentally friendly because you just sit on the runway pissing yourself with laughter in squeaky cartoon-mouse voices… and never manage to take off.

Genius.

ps: Just because this is the third or possibly fourth time that I’ve mentioned cartoon mice on drugs, does NOT mean that I’m obsessed with cartoon mice on drugs. Quite the opposite in fact.

Ok, it’s probably time I wrote more stuff on this - I’ve been a bit distracted of late on account of living in Estonia now, but more on that later etc.

First, something fairly important to get out of the way:

A street scene in Copenhagen etc :

Nothing unusual in that, I here you crie, looks completely normal to me? WTF?

But look a little closer…

Yes, the restaurant with the abandoned pram outside it has a clock… which says a qtr to nine… AND THAT WAS ACTUALLY WHAT THE TIME WAS!!!

Incredible. If you come from England you will never have seen that before. No public clock ever knows the time… but I started noticing them here, and they’re everywhere. Amazing. The Danish have somehow managed to synchronise every clock in the country. It must have taken years.

The only clock in the whole of England that tells the correct time is Big Ben - and as The English have forgotten how to read the time on clocks with hands (apart from lawyers and things), the point is largely moot (which is a legal term) (and anyway, time itself was invented by a Scotsman (the same one that invented roads, and golf) so maybe that’s why), it’s mainly there for the tourists, but in Denmark they all seem to know what the time is. Here’s another one

And another.

I expect that these people are probably thinking OMG, is that the time?, we’ve missed the news. LOL.

Except in Danish… assuming these people are Danish. They seem Danish.

That first restaurant is called Le Pettit Tortus, which is Danish for The Little Tortoise. I was sitting opposite in a place called Huks Fluks. Fuck knows what that means.

It’s probably not even spelt properly, but it’s not always easy to tell with foreign words. Good food though. Norwegian King Crabs from Norway.

This is a rare shot of Susan not complaining about anything - although from this angle it’s difficult to gauge what sort of mood she’s in. It could go either way. Best just keep quiet at the moment eh.

(oh, that’s Norway in the background btw)

Ok, so we went to that Reboot 10 the other day, which is a kind of intelligent-conversation-a-thon etc, where people stand about drinking coffee out of tiny little plastic cups, talking about interesting stuff and generally planning the future… so I thought, yes, that sounds like my sort of thing etc, so I got on a plane and 30 hours later I was in Copenhagen eating these fish things.

Apparently they’ve had these things for years etc,

But this is the first one I’ve been to so the whole thing was probably better than it’s ever been before.

Met lots of interesting people etc
and went out and got slightly pissed a couple of times which was excellent as well even though I was far too jetlagged to deal with that sort of thing etc, and a special thanks goes out to Natbats etc who is ever so nice, and without who’s asprins I would surely have died. I wore a purple paisley shirt on the first day and a green stripey one on the second. Right now I’m wearing a red t-shirt with the letters SALE on it, which is just like the ones they have during sales in which everything in the shop is for sale except the only thing you want, which is the shirt with SALE on it. The Danish word for sale is UDSLAG (almost) which I quite like as well.

I can’t actually speak Danish, but the whole reboot thing was in English but with lots of different accents etc. Being monolingual in such circs makes me feel like a crappy old plastic bit of hardware from the 90s (like one of those zip-drives with the big plastic cassette things) that the new hardware has special adaptors for so we can still understand what’s going on etc. They’re quite clever these people.

Anyway, the Clearleft lot were there in force etc, and had at least 4 presentations between them that were absolutely packed etc. This is the one that Andy Budd did…

Which was about applying user experience graphs to absolutely everything including family and friends, hotels, evenings down the pub afterwards etc. It also reminded me of those socks you used to be able to get in the 70s where you could buy 7 pairs in a rainbow pattern etc - but you still only wear one lot at a time so what’s the point of that. To be fair, I was extremely distracted by the girl sitting behind the guy in the aeronautics shirt who looked like she might be gorgeous etc. Hard to tell from that angle, etc… and maybe it’s best to leave it that way. Who knows.

Anyway, I like Andy - he’s a collosus among men etc, and can talk for hours on any subject. Here’s another one where he’s explaining string-theory etc to some Danish people in a bar-type thing later that night.

I’m outside scrounging fags off the locals and generally waving my arms about and singing etc.

I like these conferancy things. I feel as neurotic as fuck to start with and generally hide under the table behind the boxes that the little plastic cups come in… but after a while I kindof get into the groove and start chattering etc. They make all sorts of mad little thoughts bubble into your head for ages afterwards… like :

- IP is memetic eugenics
- It would be quite cool to have a “goodie bag” which had a god-kit - ie: a massive false beard, a voice synthesiser thing with loads of distortion and echo and a massive plastic inflateable bible for smiting unbelievers and small children etc. That would rock it would give you authority and gravitas etc.
- The new rock and roll isn’t as rock and roll as the old rock and roll.
- I might move to Sweden actually.

and so on. If I go to the next one I think I might to a micro-presentation about… I don’ t know… everything I learned the year before I guess. I probably ought to have written it down.

See?

There’s a photie in The Guardian

If that’s what vegetarianism does for you then I think I’ll stick to kebab-burgers or whatever. I used to be a vegatarian once. Ate chips.

Before you do anything, go down a bit and stop that meaning of life one from going off again. Autoplay. Annoying.

And then come back, and check this out :

You kindof forget what it’s like sometimes. That’s probably what I would’ve been like if I stayed in Scotland.

But I didn’t. I wound up in England etc.

One line leads to another, as they say…

It’s all fucking culture. Fucking all of of. Innit. We don’t fuck about. Kick it.

It’s a zen thing.

Anyway I was going to put that one about dust in the wind next, but those mindless fuckspuds have blocked embedding (why? Do they think I’m going to go out and buy a record in frustration? mmm? Is that what you’re thinking? is it? Because I’m fucking not) so obviously the next thing was ELO, but the first one I tried was a bit annoying and that bloke’s hair is absolutely massive and it’s weighing him down and he looks old and tired so instead here’s another one:

AND IT’S MUCH LOUDER THAN THE ONE BEFORE

Which is slightly better and it reminds me of being in Dover in 79 when I was living in a van again and it was really hot and every thing smelled of petrol but which makes me feel all nostalgic now. The smell of petrol I mean. Petrol and Chips. That’s Dover.

Here’s another song about Dover.

Which is one of the greatest songs ever, so someone’s made it into a sort of home-movie… and I’m not sure if anything happens because I’ve never seen it all the way to the end because I have the attention span of some sort of tiny rodent, out of its mind on whizz like a proper cartoon one.

Anyway I have to play this song with headphones because it fucks up the cat.

If you click on it, you can see how big he’d look if you were like… well, a mouse. No worries though. He gets fucked up by mice as well, which is another thing that Jimmy Cliff and mice have in common.

And that, my friends, is the real meaning of life.

I wonder where Thompson is. She should have been here by now.

You see the sort of thing I have to put up with?

(in more detail) (and tinted blue, for no particular reason)

How do they do that? WHY do they do that? Unbefuckinglievable - you put them in your bag for a bit and 1/2 an hour later there’s been some sort of wire-fight and the mutinous little shits have got all intertwined.

It’s little things like this that push you over the edge.

This one’s excellent, I don’t care what they say.

see?

It’s at the far end of Charles’ Bridge in Prague - the whole Bridge have loads of statues of saints and whatnot,

although they look like mad nightmare chess-pieces to me - in that one where you’re the only prawn and you’re being surrounded by massive rooks and bishops and queens and so on.

Brrr…

Anyway, my one isn’t on the main bridge, it’s off to the side and down a bit. I go see it every time I’m in Prague, which is quite a lot because I like it etc.

Prague’s got that whole Eastern-European wild-west vibe going on, and it has the most beautiful women on the planet, especially that one that worked down the caf in Brighton with long blonde curly hair etc. I asked her who this statue was, but she didn’t know - or pretended not to… but why would she do that? I don’t understand it. I wasn’t being a pest or anything, I’d just sit there coworking on my own etc - much as I’m doing now in fact. That’s the trouble with women. They’re never straight-forward. There’s always some sort of subterfuge going on.

Whatever. There’s no point asking anyone round here because this is NZ and I might as well ask the cat, and besides, they’re all fat birds constantly eating cake etc. Cake cake cake, that’s all they think about from the moment they get up in the morning to the time when they eventually pass out in front of the infommercials, covered in cake crumbs etc. What an existence. What an existence.

So yea - I’m down the caf and obesity epidemic is particularly severe today… That’s another thing they failed to predict in Star Trek. I’m beginning to have my doubts about Star Trek actually. I lie awake at night racking my brains… but still can’t seem to think of one single solitary thing that they predicted correctly. What’s the point of them?

–

There’s only one more of these art things left. I probably ought to find some more. Not today though. Busy. There’s a massive black monolyth thing in Te Papa in Wellington which is pretty good. I don’t go back to it constantly though.