Biting off more than I can.....

After a long time thinking about it, I eventually decided to get my own website - in my own REAL name so I'm now off making that, at my lesiure (-:


Hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew.

Alan's Questions

“Deep Philosophical Questions” is the latest work by Mr Alan Bigelow.



Alan provides many of his digital stories at webyarns.com and they offer his specific perspective on various aspects of digital story making....

Alan, a generous, talented and kind man, combines Comic strips and philosophy in this particular story to answer six important questions that have eluded some of the more widely known philosophers.

enjoy, I did.

A head in the game

I needed a laugh recently, for reasons I'm not going to detail right now, suffice to say I really needed cheering up. I also had a stinker of a flu so was behind in doing email, etc, etc & my usual surfing rounds, visiting those sites and communities of which I have been a long time member, I happened upon a bit of ole banter from three even older friends of mine. Namely Mal, Chris & Steve, chinwaging like a crowd of old codgers over at gamedevelopers.ie , they were kindly & light heartedly discussing one of my past creations the 'guy' above:

Danger Magee: Irish Eco-Warrior Goose.

Now When I say that Danger was 'my' creation, it actually took an on-site team of ten people to get us to the point of capturing that 'in-game' shot above in one of the prototype levels, our team of ten were further enabled by off-site teams in both NDL and Havok and elsewhere. It was a 'Goose' but everyone kept forgetting that and for some reason kept calling Danger a duck ! When everyone knew all too well that ducks don't wear bullet belts or confederate caps, I mean, come on guys....

While I did come up with the idea of Danger the goose, in that I wrote the game and level bibles and all that creative type jazz, Kev and PC and Mark all helped to get him, proportioned, low poly modeled, rigged, cycles going, and eventually into our Beta PS2 Engine. It was a genuine collaborative effort, with Nick and Paul as driving forces behind making it happen. Joe, Tony and John were doing additional bits and pieces.

That was almost ten years ago, and despite a couple of significant publisher offers; when we brought the working prototype demo to VC's for matching finiance they just couldn't understand the appeal of a funny smashing stuff up 'game' ? Let alone why anyone would want a game to be physics driven, explosion laden, for a new console yet to launch, and all that wrapped up in a comic environmentally subversive message to boot ? or to quote one bright moneyed spark:

"I mean this is 1999, who's interested in the the global environment or computer console games for that matter ?"

Of course not long after that, Abe hit big as we ran into the dot com bubble and cash flow challenges. The VC's decided to support an array of insightful technologist's with the .com suffix and life with a little less Danger went on for us. Our Goose was cooked before he ever got outta the egg.

Two Twitter Thoughts - Higher & Lower

Woodpecker like, two thoughts hit me in quick succession as I noticed my twitter following has now risen to over 500 in three days.

That Lilly Tomlin joke: “When I was young I always wanted to be somebody.
Now I wish I had been more specific.”

And immediately following ;-) the potentially apocryphal: “The key to being good in the room is….. Keeping your mouth shut !”

Being somebody more specific ?

Isn’t that a sorta Carl Rodgers question ? therapists' talk, potential plus attached psychosomatic metric, or an SEO term type metamanagement tag, some kinda keyword prison, any specific me forces me over a blogging barrel to become a conceptual contractual muscle under the long tail. No one wants to be whatever that is, right ?

I am what I am and it’s taken me over forty years to accept my mental and emotional warts, my creative deficiencies, inherent character flaws and my obscure sense of self or should that be sense of obscure self ? Anyway should or can any one of us change, conform and maybe limit our opinions in order to become more popular ? Well as Obama said and proved, ‘yes we can’ but then who would 'I' become if I became that higher being ?

“Somebody specific” I hear my own internal cynic retort while pulling on my comfort(able) blanket of obscurity.

Surely we must all strive towards being a specific somebody that can easily fit into mental models and ‘democraphic’ understanding, compelled to content ourselves as commercial cerebral commodities that the successful probloggers tell each individual one of us we need to be, seen, heard and read to be, in order to ensure appeal to those individual strands within the individual tribes within collective customer clusters among the masses of mystery potential that might share who we are, if we only knew that specifically !

I resigned myself to never being ‘popular with the masses’ because not only do I not want to follow the top ten tips for getting terrific traffic or obliterating my obscurity but also Like all other creative people I know I’m a very successful… procrastinator, I don’t actually want to be a business with customers, I don’t want clients, I don’t really want to be compelled to sell anybody anything, I just want to learn from and enjoy the digital conversations emerging from twitter, the simple truth is I don’t want anything specific so, therefore how can I even think about offering something specific in return ?

Room to be more .... ?

In 2004 I had to somehow categorize myself here on Blogger, I’ve been a writer for over twenty years but sporadically earned my day to day living working in various areas of the technology, entertainment, education and indeed entertainment technology sectors. While interested in many many subjects and areas, my first love is and always was comedy and comedy writing. Ah yes I love to laugh... and then figure out why I'm laughing.... Aren't writers supposed to grow out of that 'its all about me' stage ?

As a well paid professional manager, director, creative, screenwriter and playwright I was also interested in team dynamics and collaborative work/writing, how technology could enable or hinder that process of understanding ? As a game developer and entrepreneur dealing with coders, artists, investors, banks and corporations you get into examining processes and needing to understand, theories, psychology, best practice, you need to understand people, you need to understand ‘how to behave’ with people. I learned to behave and I learned to understand - but nothing specific.

So the story goes, a British writer/journalist confesses that in the two years he’s spent as a member of an American scriptwriting team, he hasn’t actually contributed anything. That's nada, nothing, zero zilch, a conscious decision he made when given the following aforementioned advice by a veteran of that writing room: “The key to be being good in the room is….. Keeping your mouth shut.”

The yarn continues.... the British writer never offers an original thought nor an inflammatory remark during his two year stay, he basically keeps his mouth shut and as a consequence when his contract ends he's offered another as he hasn’t made any enemies, and he hasn’t actually contributed ! yet incredulously more importantly neither has he alienated anyone. Thus in that passive processes he collected a nice salary, a reputable scriptwriting credit and further opportunity.

Now whether you believe that story to be true or otherwise, it’s underlying didactic is being ignored on Twitter as the din of lots of people doling out advice on building a followers base, executing a PR/marketing idea or a 'how to' on developing personal twitter management strategies, becomes more and more prominent, most advocating that you become H.I.R.E. - Helpful, Informative, Responsive and 'an' Earthling. Offer that something more specific, don't 'keep your mouth shut' appears to be the kernel of the advice.

A choice between H.I.R.E or L.O.W.E.R. (Let Out Whatever Emerges Regularly)

The second means you use twitter as an electronic extension of your frontal cortex and just whack every unfiltered thought immediately onto screen and out into the twittersphere, by sheer volume of tweets you may eventually become ‘popular’ or at least followed by some of the more impulsive twitters on the main timeline. Or you can decide to use a strategy or alternative strategy or an alternative to the alternative strategy. Chris Brogan offers what's fairly sound advice (the real stuff I've parodied above in H.I.R.E.) if you are genuinely interested in strategy.

Strategy is for bored rooms and the military, I personally decided nothing in advance, being from Ireland, I first connected with several Irish People by following them, I soon encountered the volume twitters who became insufferable bores, when they pushed genuinely interesting thoughts and links off my screen at pace, I quickly dumped the regularly offending – a bit like kicking them out of that room for shouting, which is of itself quite odd, you see for most writers 'I' is usually the center of the room and our inherent rebelliousness tends to mean we are always 'decenters' irrespective of our location.

NANOWRIMO
But the last few days I've been trying to catch up on my novel word count and have conciously not been very active in the twitter stream - I didn't want to start a conversation and then run away in the middle of it, so I literally 'shut up' on twitter.in the last couple of days. I have followed other people and they have kindly reciprocated but have also been very quite, maybe I should stay that way....

any quick thoughts ?

About Me ++ About You : my 300++ connected Twitter followers

A pause in my daily writing & paddling of the twitter stream allows just a little time…to offer my response of sorts to previous posts, but specifically to thank Zoey Jordan , your good self and those other 300 individuals who incredulously have decided to follow me on Twitter since I joined about four weeks ago in early October.

Up until the age of 40 I was confused as to who I actually was, now… I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not looking to get into clever word games or a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs style psychology discussion or prompting any kind of tie-in Taoist reference about acceptance or self. I just want to observe that at a time in my life when I’m more comfortable ‘about me’ I find that my use of the internet continually changes my own perception ‘about me’ and that’s maybe more ‘about you’.

I remember a television advert, (back when people watched television and other’s bowled together) where a lady in a white coat stood mid shot and declared: “I’m not a dentist…but….I recommend” and thereafter waxed lyrical about the merits of a specific toothpaste.

That advert annoyed, almost infuriated me, her superficial attractiveness and friendliness were negated by the audacity of an actress (& her copyrighters) to offer expert orthodontist advice while not actually being expert (i.e. at least not in dentistry) but also in some weird counter advertising connection style – objectionable = memorable ? She acknowledged it before hand, I simply didn’t like that but still remembered it these many years later as that patronizing toothpaste ad. (note the absence of brand memory)

A genuine expert, whom I respect recently twittered about Martin Lindstrom’s dismissal of product placement, (She has protected updates). Martin’s marketing philosophy was outlined in last Sunday’s UK times as a sort of cognolinguist creativity craftily constructing memes targeted at specific clumps of individual dendrites within the individual brain. – Way beyond the life of Brian’s ‘we’re all individuals’ sort of idea, but with added technology, promise and mystery: all stuff that IMHO powers part of the intellectual aspects of this internet thing. By Martin’s standard’s a wafflely, all over the shop, humble and hastily constructed ‘thank you precious 300th followers, post like this will do little to ‘promote or advertise’ any brand that might be clevercelt.

But as you know all too well I’m not a brand and although connected and highly valued by me, you are not my customer nor consumer, as I have nothing to sell and no desire right now to manufacture anything to flog to you, I’m not an opinioneer or whatever someone with 300+ followers might somehow think they are entitled to call themselves, I’m simply a father, husband and writer first and foremost. And in that order, before I can be anything else connected with either others or technology, which means, like you, I must first inhabit my head wherever my Cartesian mind-body or the internet takes me.

Unlike Lonelygirl15, I’m not pre-scripted but I am primarily a writer and as with most of those writers I admire: I am concerned with ideas AND readership - while there is a point or rationale, perhaps even a catharsis, to writing for pleasure or self development, mastery of this craft does not happen today in isolation, as a writer I need an audience and on twitter - I've already got 300 people plus willing to listen to the occasional 140 characters form me. For that I am genuinely grateful. So thanks once again.

in response

I'm multi tasking today, in both real & virtual worlds. I wanted to share this video and then ask anyone who views it to go to You tube and check out the current 33 responses, which reinforces my understanding of active criticism.

Send me a link for a wake ?

On twitter @ 1.45pm (GMT) today, received an interesting tweet in my stream from one of the apparent stars of the Irish Blogosphere. Whether 'in jest' or in partial seriousness; he mentioned that he'd be offering the following advice to some multimedia students on Monday next:

" My message: TV is dead, newspapers are dead, quit your course."

Now perhaps not what you'd expect to hear if you were one of the aforementioned multimedia students, after all (at least when I lectured to multimedia students approx 10 years ago) the 'discipline' isn't specifically focused on either TV or Journalism, but that's exactly the thing about today's asynchronous web communication technologies - by design, they demand immediate responses, not disciplined, mediative, considered or meticulously planned replies, rebuttals or slow... grinding.. to... a..... halt, next day, ponderous yabber yabber, two weeks to script, six weeks to schedule - trying to catch up on what's already gone - old slow as a one legged donkey media - so whether joking or serious, in my view, in terms of his spontaneous twitter advice to students, the blogger could be correct.

However for me it becomes a little bit wider, College educations were once upon a time about, creating critical thinkers, producing independently minded individuals, equipped with specific life skills and knowledge (back in the days when the book was the only accepted repository of knowledge). However now it's all about bits and bytes and bits of stamped paper or specific skillset fits - ironic that the area of criticism flourishes on-line yet withers in the classroom. Just check out any of the active criticism in the guise of video responses/replies/comments available everywhere on the web, personally I don't think it is any longer acceptable to just say: (as it did several times yesterday in the ticket film reviews) "It might be worth crossing the road to see this film."

I mean ok, we may come to respect the 'informed' opinion's of individual critics but such a 'critical appraisal' of a film is just god damn lazy at least and space filling at best. I remember reading Anthony De Mello's awakening several years ago, and it's central tenant was very simple: Wake up, to what's actually around you. - I think web apps like twitter encourage that, encourage those of us connected by the web, to wake up and stay awake.

It also encourages each of us to, do a TED and 'spread ideas worth spreading,' the trouble for the blogger and I is, when it comes to twitter, we're preaching to the converted, the vast majority of those in the stream already recognize the stuff I'm waffling on about, but it's genuinely empowering - to someone like me, who grew with the evolving, 'electronic business equipment revolution' to see Bill gates 'A PC on every desk 'become 'A PC desk in every home' but by far the most exciting and independently liberating aspect of today's web culture is the potential and probability for 'active criticism' i.e. forget the crossing the road or passive opinion, the ability to make things, to build things, to 'create' in response to the work, and opinions, of others..... and all within a couple of hours.

my image above based on FUNERAL © Higyou | Dreamstime.com

non runner today

heres why

Getting write away for the day - with the wonderful Carysfort press & IWC

I'm spending my occasional day away from my PCs tomorrow, off meeting some people in the flesh in Dublin. I'll be attending another of the excellent 'OUT TO LUNCH' series of readings in the Irish Writers Centre. John F Deane. poet, novelist, founder of poetry Ireland, general all round good guy and solid source of inspiration to many Irish Writers for a number of years, will be reading his latest work. John's site simply doesn't do justice to his vibrantly textured talent, he is a uniquely gifted wordsmith not a webmaster. Increasingly today IMHO writers should consider embracing the web, new media and all the new media tools available if they are to reach the widest audience possible. John's IWC event is open to the public but if you are around town and thinking of heading to Parnell street, then best call Ian first to ensure you can grab a seat.

Later in the evening I'll be in The AbbeyTheatre with my very good Friend Lillian Chambers and her colleagues from Carysfort press. The Carysfort Press will be launching some of their latest titles but will also be celebrating ten years of really terrific and unique support for Irish Theatre Writing - Dan Farrelly and Lillian are really to be commended on their wonderful contribution to Irish Cultural Life. Their collective foresight, generosity and commitment to Irish Theatrical heritage should be applauded and more appreciated - The event is 'invite only' and I'll update this blog with any developments etc over the weekend.

It's the moleskin and ink for days like this - I refuse to bring my laptop (having hauled it half way round the world altready) also I have just set up twitter txt with my phone so if any of the great and good of the Irish theaterazzi or media offer me a descent quote, I'll stick it on twitter straight away (-: or record it for later podcasting.

Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden Debate

I watched the Full Vice Presidential Debate with Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden on Youtube, all 92.5 torturous minutes of it, even though I’m not American and can’t influence anything got to do with the election. It's just that 'car crash watcher' mentality in me, fighting to get out.

I wonder what 'Matt' thinks now ? Probably - 'Hey she didn't even mention the dinosaurs."

I am compelled to share the planet with Americans. The vast majority of Americans I have personally met here and on both coasts of the USA are the salt of the earth, great people, superb professionals, intelligent individuals, good guys and gurls with their heart in the right place, filled with the ethos of the American dream, which they have successfully exported across the globe.

However ‘Reaganomics’, competitive greed, government ineptitude, a totally self interested, insular attitude, with only condescendingly occasional glances outside to see what can be grabbed, have soured that American dream and turned it into a Global nightmare, and now these two political puppets strive to be ‘as straight up as they can’ on TV & the web.

It was like watching a couple of middle class kids, argue in the schoolyard while trying to behave in front of parents.

A couple of things:

Drilling for oil in the ocean is not an option – when Americans pollute the ground, I’m forced to live with that, it’s their ground and they have to live with it, when they pollute the air, the Atlantic ocean actually goes someway towards absorbing that pollution and Sarah Palin wants to start messing about taking chances, drilling underwater, drilling for profits and more greed.

Her Ha ha, a team of mavericks and clean green natural gas !! was almost as funny as his grasp of ‘boz knee acks’. She is so artificially sweet n slick she’s transparently duplicitous, he’s so generous and steady and such a professional, making sure he adheres to best NPL practices, making sure that repetition, and focus and his best presentation techniques….. even though nobody apparently got his joke about never being the VP.

Tough to watch the warbling, difficult to digest the duplicity, hard to endure the sheer egotistical ignorance. It was actually dispiriting to watch of two professionally polished politician, dummy dueling, ultimately prompting nothing in this viewer only despair right now.

Pratronise the paddy's like this for the Lisbon rerun ?

Our most famous, internationally famous advocate 'Bono' tells us, that in these times of credit crunchiness, we should all ensure that our Irish government adheres to it's development Aid pledges, we should make sure that a very tiny portion of our national tax is given to international worthy causes that, without doubt, deserve support. I will give outside that mechanism anyway - and still what Bono says appears to make sense. I will also gently recommend to friends that they do it also. The whole five friends idea in the above video is great isn't it.

That touch at the End with Mr. Dustin Hoffman (respect) seemingly ad libbing is very effective. In a subtle way it enforces the idea of "do as I do not as I say", which is kind of where the whole Bono ranting begins to fall down, I mean Bono tells everyone what everyone else should be doing, while also transferring the commercial operations and profit machine of his band U2 to the Netherlands- merely a very effective tax efficiency measure. Ensuring his company doesn't pay tax on profits here - but remember - make sure the government gives a portion of your tax to development aid as promised - hmmm quite disappointing and duplicitous there Bonio.

I kinda remember Bono, back in the eighties on the Late Late show that far off time when people under 55 used to watch RTE TV, telling Gaybo the difference between success in Ireland and success in America. The jist was something like this:

In America a walking man, looks and sees a mansion of a house on the top of a hill, complete with cars, designs, pool and the trappings of wealth, He says "Look at all that wealth and how successful that man has become, some day, if I work hard, pursue my dream, dedicate myself, I may make enough to have what that man has."

An Irish man passes in similar circumstances in Ireland and says "how did that gobshite manage to get all that, what stroke did he pull ?"

An illustration of 'classic Irish begrudery' or 'in-built cynicism from 800 years of oppression by forces of occupation' - or just Bono playing to the crowd, whatever about it, the story retold is now more like, look at that man preaching form afar, does he really, truly believe he has a higher spiritual understanding than those of us, happy with obscurity, modest incomes and quite conscience?

A couple of posts down this blog, I have a clip of Jim Corr, ranting on about international conspiracy theories and the need to vote no to the Lisbon referendum, despite, rather than because of, it most Irish people voted NO. Could a video campaign with well known Irish celebrities, advocating a yes vote, have worked ? Emm, I don't think so, it's a trust issue, we Irish just don't trust anyone who chooses to live on a hill, either metaphorically, physically or otherwise, we don't like condescensions of any type, after our failed love affair with the church, when someone does start preaching he just strikes us as a prat - and all he's doing is simply trying to Pratronise us.

A blank check (sic) for Irish Banks: Questions.

The good ole Irish taxpayer, in the form of our wise and creative government, decided we will be collectively going guarantor for six Irish Banks, something worth four hundred Billion euro.

Is that 400,000,000,000,000 Euro ?

Which would be approx 565, 627, 000,000,000 Dollars then.

Ahh ok …. Go ahead.

Hold on, wait, erm that’s way more than half what the USA package is, isn’t it ? Seems a tad disproportionate in terms of, what we’ve been assured is a ‘fundamentally sound system’ in a tiny country. ‘The banks’ assets outweigh their debts’ assures Irish Mary, based on what valuation ? their own 100% mortgage repayment percentiles ?

Yes Irish Mary from the international hub of high finance that is count-y Donegal, our beloved minister for enterprise, will be bringing her considerable intellectual weight to the debate, or to paraphrase her morning appearance at Leaders’ questions: ‘ I dunno, Lenihan is the money man, he’ll have plenty of excuses dreamt up by this afternoon to pawn you off’

So we're sort of ‘waiting for Gobshite’, on the main stage, which might mean seeing sideline senators in the Seanad again getting up, repeating media analyst’s comments and passing them off as original representative comments yet again today ? my own ‘borrowed’ favorite being; ‘privatization of profits and nationalization of debt – with sufficient outrage as to make it seem original, what a performance Ivana, how much are you paid to recycle again?

I need someone to explain to me why we are protecting and preserving what appears to me like a flawed greed system, why are we guaranteeing the debts as well as the deposits of banks that dug their own position ? Do they really expect the Irish public to take all this seriously, it might help the banks, its doing nothing for politics or politicians.

Is ‘in labour Eammo’, finally getting a context for his pained oratory delivery, “ I want to know if the foreigners here are now putting their money in our six banks ? Am I guaranteeing them too Mary ? – erm… Brian the brain will be along shortly Mr labour, he’ll answer that question too, did you know his Dad was a great Irish Politician, who CharlieH tried to financially de-liver ? BTW, thanks for alerting them udders on national TV.

“Can I be part of a committee to oversee the blankness of the cheque ?” asked Enda the road of 'Fine slight breeze', “ Ahh go on will ya, do you not know I was nearly tee-shuck one time ?, I could’ve been just as irresponsible as the rest of you, but I have charisma and it’s not a two litre Toyota, guffaw guffaw, mammy, where's mammy ?”

So who will oversee this rushed, panicked, pieced together, slapped up, get our mates outta trouble bit of bed feathering legislation, what’s the exact parameters, can we really do what we want with a gazillion guarantee ? I mean budgets are designed to be over spent aren’t they, surely this is the same thing, a gazillion, a squillion, a half a trillion, 400 billion, what diffierence do the numbers make to ordinary people on under 30k a year ? Let's get this through -- and quick !!

" Hoi’ liddle Irish Paddypeople, don’t forgets, even though you don’t like the lisbonians, you sthill in Europe, talking to da commishon is what you will be doing, don’t be sinking you can do your own dance at our EU funding party liddle paddypeople, you gotta talk to us too you know" – so sayeth EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, whom I'm sure will need to consult with our very own EU Charlie on big matters.

So maybe the EU will police this whole thing, I certainly hope so, despite their own internal questions about checks and balances and wider trust issues, I think the old better the devil you know attitude is as redundant as the idea that politicians always put 'the peoples' interest first.

Barring Disaster, Will I get to the turd end of the credit crunch ?

Well of course its not, there will be lots more pain for most even remotely connected with any part of the finance industry. But it also seems to me there will be even more to come for others with no ties whatsoever to any part of the finance industry. Why ? Well I mentioned an unbelievable statistic back in 2005, in an article for gamedevelopers.ie : the stat: "two thirds of financial markets are made up of speculation - only one third is actual trade." It was glossed over at the time really, but in that context, i.e. prior to the sub-prime collapse and recent era of energy inflation, it was still a shocking aspect to learn concerning the nature of 'the system'.

Does the fed and the US treasury secretary today really believe that pumping lots of borrowed cash into such a fundamentally flawed system will, while suspending only selective forms of speculation (short selling), positively contribute to solving matters, restoring confidence, reducing fear, fix things, prevent further failure. - make it all go way ?

I'm simply not an expert on global finance by any stretch of anyone's imagination, although I might just be financially simple ! but a very clever and intelligent friend of mine Jo, who worked at the FT for a while, introduced me to that staggering statistic over dinner one evening in Leicester.

Jo went off home to London, I to Ireland and back into the middle of the housing and greed boom. Having a chat with a couple of biz accountant / auditor / investment / wealth management gents later that same week, my newly learned statistic was laughed away as I discovered CFDs (Contracts For Difference) and other speculative financial instruments available to someone like me, an average Joe type. Not only were Wall street traders and finance professionals adding fuel to the speculation fire, gobshites on modest incomes like mine could join the party for as little as 10K (the average monthly rise in home values we were being told by auctioneers and our own little band of greed merchants back home in the green sod)

I concede I have no respect for money, it is merely a tool like any other tool, if your over-worked and flat out friend finally opens their garage door to reveal to you one million hammers and screwdrivers of various sizes and shapes, would you begin to fear for their sanity? if the tool was cash, would concern get replaced by respect for their dedication, industry, invention with awe and admiration. Illustrative of the complexity of individual perceptions of money, if only in terms of our current materially orientated, money obsessed society. The vast majority on less than a dollar a day have only a multimillionaire spokesman paddy rock star as their voice - lyrical perhaps but admittedly very very odd indeed. Yet as an almost last in the team schoolyard pick, it's accepted, we'll have the guy who sound's like a dog biscuit.

So we've had a couple of false endings to the credit crunch, two I count so far, now we're at the third / turd - that particular end of the stick that the average, working, non finance professional person will without any doubt end up holding. (As usual)

In their wisdom, a rescue package will mean unprecedented generational debt for America - forget Hitler, bin laden, world wars, hurricane's, the finance system that is another good ole boy network and it's greed has surpassed all previous moral low points and now the trillions worth of debt will be given to every American's future child. It's not really perplexing at all as to why there is a major rush to get the whole thing through congress.

ten for that ? you must be mad ! Palin.

Sometimes famous actors slide from big to small screens and turn human, resulting in words, images, their real persona and their various professional images colliding, When Michael Palin found himself in the vicinity of any object for sale in any one of his excellent travel documentary series, (too many of which I watched I could mention just see his wikipedia entry) his immortal post haggling Monty python line above, would shot across my dendrites and cause an internal titter.

Similarly I often found it difficult to suspend my disbelief in relation to the character of Jason Bourne, hard to take him 100% seriously, not because of a poor performance or sub standard production, on the contrary I generally enjoyed the series, it was just that somewhere in my subconscious a Philip Pullman novel kept my imagination wondering about the lineage of the main actor, a potential for his shadow to be another shadow but today Matt turned very real and he shoots from the hip about another Palin:

We don't want to live in lisbonia -

merci mais non merci,
Dank aber kein Dank,
tak men nej tak,
grazie, ma no grazie,
dankzij maar niet dankzij,


Dzięki ale nie dzięki ! agradecimento mas não agradece ! gracias pero no gracias ! tack men nej tack.

Which is what Ireland said to it’s European neighbors today in relation to the Lisbon treaty, basically ‘thanks but no thanks ’.

Maybe not in so many words and not in so many languages but the Irish people most certainly did say "NO".

We’ve already heard Dermot Ahern Minister for Justice on the telly saying there were 'myriad' reasons for this. Some annoyed European Official (unofficially) sourly blamed the Irish media's focus on internal national issues like Bertie Ahearn's cash case, resignation and the consequent election of a new leader. I mean the cheek of us Irish to actually be concerned about our own welfare when there was a much bigger European picture to consider. I wonder what others thought were Dermot's myrid reasons, I have a few conjectures.

As any ad man will tell you, unless you are selling to rocket scientists, you must keep your message short and crisp, easy to understand and above all clear. When someone like Charlie McCreevy a Brussels based veteran politician who earns his not inconsiderable living from European affairs tells us that he hasn't read the treaty but puts the the thing smack into the center of public consciousness - things ceased being simple. When he then said he doubted if anyone else has been able to wade through it and understand any, let alone all, of it, when he's conceded that there's a whole lota complexity there beyond him, a big raft of technicality that's just too dense, then how in all conscience can he expect lay people like us to understand any of this stuff. But don't worry about that.. just vote yes.

We had all three major parties supporting this referendum. We had each of them instructing their supporters to actively support a yes vote. We had all the people who are normally interested in and involved with politics now playing politics with the rest of us. The people very unsubtley telling us exactly what it was we should be doing i.e. voting YES. They were even trying to score points from each other at the beginning, claiming the other side(s) (i.e. everyone except them) weren't doing enough to promote Lisbon. And 'make no mistake' we were told, Lisbon needed to be promoted because 'Europe was relying on us' - so while we had a choice, we really didn't have a choice at all, we simply had to vote yes, according to the majority of the Irish political system.

That was only the initial main problem, people like me who basically believe in the ideals of democracy, freedom, liberty, respect for your fellow human being, the right to rights. Your average Joe Soap basically, who loves and embraces almost all of those sorts of ideas that offer the opportunity of a collective warm and fuzzy feeling, the assumption of collective progress through trust, a real Tim Buton and Jack Nicholson's Mars Attacks style "Why can't we all just get along" sentiment. We love the idea of Lisbon. We have just had enough of politics - if it wasn't the general election, it was then Bertie, it was then a leadership issue, a cabinet selection issue, a watch out Brian Cowen, look what's happening to Gorden Brown issue, a Lisbon treaty clash of egos, you had people like BIFFO and Enda Kanty elbowing for photo ops, run the country ? I wouldn't let either of them run..... down the shop for milk.

I used to believe that anyone who wanted to be a politician, deserved to be, basically if they were attracted to the duplicity, the intermittent spotlight, the disingenuous and fickle nature of political appeasement, lobbying, courting - fascinated by prospects of suffering ridicule or being derided by sections of society to only then become of all things - a public servant - then fair play to them, off you go, stand around shoutin' each other down and out maneuvering each other to your hearts content, but do try and do a decent job of keeping the place tickin' over while you're at it.

Of course we had a big Celtic tiger wave of affluence in which the poor got poorer, the health service imploded, living standards inflated rather than rose, the education system threaded water, the country flooded with economic migrants and the the top tiers of our society snuggled up with the politicians to form a political and financial hegemonic strata that directed operations below and around about the time it all started turning sour - they decide to ask the voting population to endorse this complex idea in a secret ballot - did they really believe that people would vote yes. I don't think they did, so in a last gasp of reverse psychology:




Somebody in their wisdom decided to let Jim Corr, well known cultural philosopher, globally renowned political intellectual, to air his own views, just to prove that anyone who was considering voting 'No' would be regarded with the same respect as Jim.

Even that didn't work.

search for the creative self

Chance, temporal lobe density, childhood trauma, genetic predisposition, embracing failure, ambiguity, water logic, domain acceptance, serendipity; enablers, assistants, generators of creativity, sources of originality, ignition of imagination or simply bald ox beyond the interest or understanding of mainstream society ?

Maybe mystery is more important than knowledge, perhaps that irrepressible need to understand supersedes intuitive attraction towards fantastical imagination, could it be, that experience of being actually exceeds endeavour ? We should somehow become oblivious, ignoring ‘just do it’ embracing ‘understand it’ incorporating ‘believe it’ morphing into ‘live and create freely’.

Our industrial society is less than 300 years old. Today’s education system was designed to service that industrial society and perpetuate the educational system that feeds it. An educational system that is to creativity what agent orange was to international diplomacy.

Mathematical and mental thumbscrews wring the last drops of independent thought out of potential educational cannibals – points rise, reputations increase, buildings are erected, imagination evaporates in a cloud of more knowing, a fog of academic achievement blurs progress on a path that actually leads back to past bald ox. I’ve heard the herd before and I didn’t like what they had to say then either.

Creativity is a very precious concept, inferring as it does originality, wisdom, value, promise and much much more. Integral to creativities gestation is independence, necessary to it’s prosperity is acceptance. Such opposing notions fuel my search.

ebooks - the ‘ashtray on a motorbike’ phenomena a market might want

Can you spot the ebook above?

Without descending into a diatribe about McLuhan and co, I believe ebooks as a format and indeed art form are currently utterly immature. Fundamentally this is because the majority of those currently connected with their potential production cannot envisage/understand any viable business models for mass consumption more complicated than a ‘print book to electronic screen’.

Each of these non innovators sit waiting on the other to light the market up and speculate on innovation – the only dull spark to date being kindle. So in a similar context to what happen to TV innovation for fifty years, i.e. we simply got ‘stage’ on screen, ebooks currently lack their own dynamic properties. Apart from mobility, not needing to purchase an additional nightlight and incorporated navigation aids, ebooks in their current form are merely electronic versions of static print. The hardware standards agreement of late 2007 just ring fenced the current hardware players in an industry that doesn’t as yet know what it produces.

So apart form the low cost distributive ease of the ebook, there is little reason to believe that readers or consumers or anyone else for that matter, will actually want something even the potential seller doesn’t understand.

Back in the Black

I was going to create another blog for a specific series of writing projects I'm currently undertaking but I suddenly felt nostalgic for one of the first blogs I ever created - i.e. this one (back in early 2004) Thus I'm coming back to basics, with renewed vigor to play around with information and blogging about some of the digital media materials on my private site clevercelt while also using this blog to describe the creative processes etc that's involved with making those. The other thing of course is anything that appears here must be either public domain, creative commons or indeed my own personal copyright - no stuff belonging to anyone else (without express permission etc).

The photo above is of my son Conor's dog buddy posing for him. Buddy is the Irish Ronaldo of Jack Russels, His specialty is the four footed lunge. What with Euro2008 and all that on TV at the moment, soccer is saturating the airwaves and it's such big business it really is hard to enjoy it without getting a little cynical about the whole thing.