Avatar Mosaic: Four Word Reviews

Kev and Sarah’s considered and insightful reviews of the Papples’ latest album has inspired me to do something similar with one of the presents Ian gave me for Christmas – that being the 1986 album “Mosaic” by Wang Chung.

I was particularly excited when I opened the cellophane to discover that this seems to be an original pressing which has been waiting patiently in its box since 1986, and the booklet inside is starting to show its 30 years a bit. The music inside is as fresh as ever, though. The title comes, of course, from the lyrics of the final track, in which Wang Chung tell us that the world is a mosaic upon a golden floor.

Wang Chung Mosaic

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Avatar Progress report

Mr. Chang, the shady Chinese businessman financing Pouring Beans Productions’ new documentary film, has now seen a rough edit of “Railways with Smidge Manly” and discussed with me some changes that are still necessary.

Clearly the public are clamouring for the release of this important film, and any delay is going to be met with considerable impatience, so to help tide us over until it’s ready to go, here is a look inside the editing process. This is, in its entirety, the list of changes that I made, explaining Mr Chang’s instructions in full.

  • Wobbly –> red train pat etc. Vertically. + coming out of station at CP
  • –> –> –>
  • Platform-train tighter or clip inb. ? straight to speech on 2nd shot
  • Barry rustling – filter out?
  • Timetables – wind noise – change for station
  • Voiceover still not good (headphones)
  • Longer gap or music between good email and people we met.

I hope this sheds some light on the philosophical and ethical issues with which we are wrestling in trying to perfect our artistic vision.

Avatar Crab in control

We all knew that design genius Kevindo Menendez was destined for great things long before his stylish designs graced the catwalks of Micklefield Fashion Week.

But surely it’s a true sign that his thrusting work has achieved worldwide penetration that one of his classics, the “Crab” mug, has been spotted in the Master Control Room of a major broadcaster.

Crab in Control Room

It’s one thing to have your “Penguin” t-shirt worn by Naomi Campbell but it’s days like this that must matter the most to a leading designer like him.

Avatar Wiping away history

Today I did a kind of cleaning I’ve never done before: I cleaned the keys of my computer keyboard. Not where crumbs have landed in between them – the keys themselves. Some of them were dirty, you see, with a sort of browny-grey film on them. The keys I use all the time were white, the ones I use occasionally had a white middle and dirty edges, and the ones I never use were just dirty all over.

It’s annoyed me for a while but today I hit on the solution. I took a rubber to the keyboard and rubbed out all the dirt. Now it’s sparkling clean and all the keys are white. But while I was erasing the filth, it occurred to me that in its dirty state I effectively had a keyboard-sized infographic showing which keys I use and which I don’t. For some reason, the square brackets were completely filthy, even though I’m sure I use them sometimes, while the weird § key had a clean spot, even though I can’t remember ever having used it before typing this sentence. Comma was dirtier than full stop. Q was cleaner than Z.

Even weirder, the numbers got gradually dirtier from left to right, so 1 was clean while 9 was pretty mucky.

It’s nice to have a clean keyboard again but I feel like I’ve lost a historical record of the letters I type and the keys I don’t need. A little bit of history wiped away.

Avatar Broken Cake

Today I arrived at work and found this on my desk waiting for me.

Faulty cake

I am confused by this. Red fault tags are supposed to be used to label technical equipment that has been broken and logged with the appropriate department. I have not been trained in the correct protocol to use when cake has been labelled in this way.

Anyway, long story short, I ate the cake. It was nice. It didn’t taste particularly broken.

Is anyone here a doctor? If so, can you tell me if I am in any danger? Thanks.

Avatar Things on my Desk: Unloved Sauces

Today I looked round my desk and was faced with a sight that is all too common in modern Britain.

The grim truth is that we all take too many sachets of sauce from the cafe or canteen, we just do. Whether its some sort of instinctive nesting impulse or just the fact that we can get something for free so we do. The untold story though is what happens to all of these unwanted sauces once they are taken from the  relative comfort of the canteen stainless steel container. Do they ever make their way home? No, for once they have been removed they somehow become dirty. Nobody has opened them, nobody has licked them, but they can never go back, they are alone. Destined to see out their expiry dates in the back of an office drawer, or become a ticking time bomb in the pocket of someone who never checks their pockets before doing the washing.

Spare a thought for the unloved sauces.

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