Orson Welles 'The Trial" (1962)

seen for the first time in 30 years. a staggering work of genius. of this, there can be no doubt. mouth falling open in amazement many times.

more (internal) losses.

today saw the extraction of the 3rd wisdom toom - intimations of age, fatality, and all sorts of other things you can get your teeth into.  geddit? terrible.

baited breath.

http://www.discogs.com/reviews/list?artist=Hafler+Trio%2C+The#c91091

yes, indeed, the reactive mind in action. suggest something that does not follow a previously established framework, and you get a) insulted, and b) dismissed.

Processing. But Processing what?

now three days spent installing “tools” (I think that word as applied to computer programmes is nonsensical and insulting, but I digress) in order to get a square on an orange background on an Android machine. Processing seems useful, but the draconian, idiotic and intrinsically non-helpful AppStore ‘safeguards’ prevent this from being used. One (or at least this one) wonders why Apps related to The Dalai Lama, Palestinian discussions, The Financial Times, Tawkon (the most interesting in various ways), and Phone Story, which makes me even ashamed to be even thinking about an app at all - but I will write more about this soon - are banned. but perhaps the answer is obvious.

the same is true in various ways about Supercollider, PD, (MaxMSP doesn’t count, and Jitter users are eternally dammed as far as I’m concerned), and lots of other applications. So, if I wish to use the years of developmental effort involved in any of these applications - and much of it can be embedded - in an iOS app, I can’t - because you have to write that functionality, developed for years and available in code libraries, again. And why Objective C? Jobs. Who owned NeXT. The man who said he “wanted to put a dent in the universe”. why is a man with such a colossal ego held up to be a hero just because he’s dead? Rather than the universe remembering me for inflicting a violent act on it, I’d rather it remembered me because I didn’t.

Java (at least on the Mac and Linux) still does not clean up after itself - the reason I abandoned it for anything serious many years ago. I am truly appalled that this situation has not improved at all. what can you say when you have to cold restart 27 times in one day?

last complaint, and then I will shut up - Apple does not ‘officially’ support NTFS. now, if I have to reboot, is quit everything, all daemons, everything, run DiskUtility, unmount the disks, then run ‘testdisk’ (I just tried to access the README file in the distribution, but it has taken 30 mins, and a 16k file doesn’t take that long to open), but this has to be done before the disks are unmounted. the remounting process that testdisk does takes about 3 or 4 minutes, and then the disks are read *and* writable. there is always still an unremoveable residue in the ‘trash’ folder, that can only be purged by reformatting. HOWEVER, grateful as I am to the author of testdisk (can’t open the README, so I don’t know who you are), if you quit terminal without FIRST quitting the script, you are left with a zombie that takes up 97% of CPU...sorry, but it does. obviously the QUIT message could be intercepted and a KILLALL sent or whatever, but I’m sure I will be told I could do this myself. trouble is, it took a month to discover this.

here we go again.

Seconds (1966)

saw this again for the first time in 30 years. looks even better than it did before, and its depth is more profound than I remembered. the attention to detail, the sheer beauty, the metaphors stacked on top of each other...and the chicken reference which Mr. Lynch obviously used later...and I finally understand what it all means, too. imagine Brian Wilson’s confusion at entering this film late, on acid, and with the onset of mental illness...or maybe don’t. if you have a chance, see this film and indeed, meditate upon its meaning.

Art.

The Rebel: Tony Hancock


never a critique of art as good as this. if I could put a gun to the head of every artist who uses that name to describe themselves, I would force them to view this neglected masterpiece.

consumption.

ON|OFF - a documentary about Mark Stewart.

oh dear. utter sadness. no explanations, expositions or truthfulness about the matters that concerned and inspired me most: I consider the first Pop Group LP (not the CD) to be one of the greatest modern records, and I saw them supporting Patti Smith (the poster for this gig actually appears in the documentary), and this was one of the revelatory, formative experiences of that period. Keith Levine looks ill and emaciated and frighteningly like Ben of Zoviet France, which might please him, as Keith was Ben's unmitigated idol. I was glad that this ended, and I learned that a man whose use of drugs led him to torture people on pub crawls with the admonition that helicopters were following him is not to be admired, as when the drugs became more plentiful, all we are left with is the anecdotes. and there aren't many in this film. what a wasted opportunity. so many sad points, and so much waste.

another test blah

indeed.

the ides of march are not what they used to be.

and who would argue with that?

blah.

blah.