[Slow Ben]

Morning Tricksters!

Not too bad a day for a monday.

Had a sausage biscuit to start of the day. So, so far, so good.

I did nothing this weekend but drink beer, watch football and play video games. It was awesome.

[Darkwatch]

I worked and now I'm working everyday this week, then running home on the weekend to come back on a late bus and start work again.
My week will be exciting.

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Slow Ben, on 15 November 2010 - 02:49 PM, said:

Had a sausage biscuit to start of the day.

Explain this contraption to me forthwith, yank. A biscuit of sausage? Verily, I do declare this to be most queer!

[Slow Ben]

Its just a sausage on a biscuit. But we call it a sausage biscuit.

I know I know. Bloody Americans...

[Thelomen Toblerone]

When you say biscuitm I presume you mean the american chewy biscuit and not a normal biscuit? Otherwise, a grim yet fascinating combination....

My manager's just got back from a business trip to the US, goes fairly regularly, and I recall him mentioning american biscuits, saying they were weird.

Wikipedia appears to indicate it is akin to a dry scone. I like scones. Thus I am intrigued.

I agreed to a "cultural come dine with me" thign at work today, where three of us take turns taking the other two to a cultural event which they enjoy and want to introduce the others to. Consequently, I will be attending a contemporary dance performance - front row - at Sadler's Well next summer (I know, talk about forward planning), where a Canadian dance troupe will be performing completely nude and I am assured we will be hugged by naked dancers of both sex.

It's ok though, I was assured that the most avant garde and cutting edge contemporary dance is currently in Quebec and Tel Aviv, so at least I#m in at the deep end and gettign the good stuff from the get go.

Sigh.

[Mentalist]

that's some serious advanced plannign, you've got going on there, Toby.

I had a fairly great day at work today. broke the first thousand in the total ampount i've raised on the job. it felt goooooood

[Darkwatch]

Thelomen Toblerone, on 15 November 2010 - 09:50 PM, said:

It's ok though, I was assured that the most avant garde and cutting edge contemporary dance is currently in Quebec and Tel Aviv, so at least I#m in at the deep end and gettign the good stuff from the get go.

Sigh.

Interpretive dance is a form of performance art.

I don't think you understand what you've agreed to. I'm not sure if you saw my rant on a performance art night I attended last week, but just in case here is the expanded version:

Quote

Only very rarely have I been so disgusted with humanity as I was tonight.
I saw the end of civilization tonight, and it was a bunch of pretentious art grads.
Seriously tonight I have seen:

-People holding eggs in one hand and a heavy object in the other while blindfolded while someone else put ice cubes in their shirts.

-A girl having thrown nuts and bolts on the ground, look pained, rearrange them. Apply lipstick, then floss her teeth, to pull out eggs from her pantyhose to break them on her face.

-Another girl who sat four people down. Took a plant with closed flowers that had hand lotion in them. Crush them, and smear them all over the faces of those she sat down.

-A video that was nothing but a random collection of scenes badly put together.

-A guy with a camera that made different screeching noises based on the colours it registered.

-A guy in a shower that got covered in water mixed with mustard and ketchup.

-A girl who made origami swans while putting pebbles into her mouth and then passing a thread through her hand and the swans to hang them from her flesh. Then spit out the pebbles.

I left after that.

I had enough. I was angry. I wanted everyone in that place to die. I wanted all to know what kind of disgust, hate, loathing, rage they had brought out of me.
I wanted them all to suffer.
To clarify the point.
What I saw was devoid of any communicable sense or meaning. It was nothing but a facade over pretension. Now I'm not saying that all things in life require a communicable meaning, or a goal. I know the universe is without meaning and it doesn't disgust me, in fact it inspires me.
The problem with performance art is that the person performing apparently has a point to make, or an idea to communicate. If so they suck. We spend years teaching people how to write and talk and then we teach them this kind of crap in higher institutions. Not that it matters much, they're burning their own money so it's their problem really on the financial side. Where it becomes a problem for me is that a good chunk of the population ascribe merit to these kinds of things. Or find it interesting, as one of them put it "Finding novel ways to express an idea." To bad expression has nothing to do with it. It's so vague and so open to interpretation that I cannot for the life of me understand why we even need performance people (I'm not going to call them artists). Because if it's all interpretation than give me a blank wall and I'll do fine with my own imagination.
Then there's the problem of implying that these people are expressing ideas and not mental diarrhea. An idea is usually a self contained and coherent construct. There was nothing coherent last night if not for the sheer stupidity of each performance. (A slight exception is made for screeching camera guy who had to program an app to make his thing work. Somewhere he actually deployed some effort unlike the others). I get that absurd and surrealism is important in art but really last night was neither, it was just idiotic.
At one point during the screeching camera performance, something deep inside me broke. My patience was gone and I was now convinced that these people and those around me were taking things seriously. The level of disgust brought me to an image of an infinite chasm, of all the nothingness that was being worshiped around me. From the core of my soul came a responding howl. Rage and hate, the slow terrible kind emerged. Nothing of interest, nothing of value was being done here. This was pointless not only in each individual performance but in general, this is the dead end of culture, hell the dead end of humanity.
I'm bloody serious. These people are performance grads. While being a historian has been deemed useless by some, I'm sure even they would agree that learning history requires a hell of a lot more work than to do what I saw tonight. I'm also sure that you do not need to go through 3 to 4 years of university and pay thousands of dollars to shove rocks in your mouth, which by the way we teach kids not to do when they're 2 years old.
That this is common place is bad enough, that they're pretentious enough to think what they did was artistic or worth any form of merit is beyond me. Specifically mustard ketchup shower guy and miss thread through hand with origami swans reminded me of Jackass. The difference is I don't hate Jackass (I don't much like it either). Why? Because they're not pretentious, they know, admit and revel in the fact that they are doing stupid things. They are not being serious. These people were, and they were being taken seriously which is in itself far more loathsome than the performances themselves.
Had I not left then and there I may very well have ended up ruining the evening (as mine is ruined) just to make a point, which is what was lacking in general all night.

Never again. I don't care if they promise me godhood I'm not sitting through that kind of crap again.

I might also point out that it was in Québec as well. There's your cutting edge.
Seriously, find something else to do to immerse yourself in our culture.
Attend Just for Laughs instead.

This post has been edited by Darkwatch: 16 November 2010 - 03:14 PM

[Slow Ben]

A sausage biscuit. Egg and cheese optional.

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[Obdigore]

Slow Ben, on 16 November 2010 - 05:49 PM, said:

A sausage biscuit. Egg and cheese optional.

Egg and Cheese are in no way optional on a Sausage Biscuit. They are required.

Add in a large Orange Juice and some sort of fried potato, and you have a breakfast that Europeans could only dream of!

[Thelomen Toblerone]

I think you'll find any dream we had would include bacon. HEATHEN

Also, some sort of blood or offal based treat would be included. My country invested the full english, we have attained breakfast perfection. Wlthough I will admit that the sausage biscuit thing with cheese and egg looks superb. This is why I can't move to the US, I would die within months of morbid obesity. I currently weigh 9 stone, that would double within a week I'm sure.

@ DW: Wow. I genuinely, genuinely don't know how to respond to that. Just, wow. I shall ensure I'm plastered, nay fear!


On another note, I'm really starting to get fucking sick of black tie dinners and evening receptions. They're AWFUL. Talking to business people about their tedious companies and discussing proposed european banking regulations, it makes me want to slit my wrists. Thankfully I didn't have to go to the white tie banquet on Monday, else I would've vomited. Tomorrow night I have the ultimate pain black tie one, then next week three solid days I'll be at a policing conference in Heathrow with another and a couple receptions, talking about the proposed reforms to police authorities. A day I can manage, an evening I can manage. But three?!?! Sigh.

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Darkwatch, on 16 November 2010 - 03:12 PM, said:

Thelomen Toblerone, on 15 November 2010 - 09:50 PM, said:

It's ok though, I was assured that the most avant garde and cutting edge contemporary dance is currently in Quebec and Tel Aviv, so at least I#m in at the deep end and gettign the good stuff from the get go.

Sigh.

Interpretive dance is a form of performance art.

I don't think you understand what you've agreed to. I'm not sure if you saw my rant on a performance art night I attended last week, but just in case here is the expanded version:

Quote

-A guy in a shower that got covered in water mixed with mustard and ketchup.

Brynjar?

[Mentalist]

ugh
why does my back hurt so much?

[Slow Ben]

Lift with your legs.

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Stop giving piggy backs to passing fat men.

Well, what a wonderful day this has been.

The dinner speeches went on for ages. Aaaages. Even the stirrup cup dragged. Never engage a treasury MP in dicussion on european baking regulations, I warn you now. I've also somehow ended up in a very awkward situation which will make next week a sheer fountain of pain, the details of which I shall save for the weekend when I've had more to drink (and by more I mean proper drink instead of port and champagne all night).

[Mentalist]

As long as a moderately attractive woman is involved, we'll forgive you, Toby.

also, @ SB: i'm at a loss what I could've been lifting. Maybe Im getting to that point in life where I actually need to stretch before physical activity.... sigh...

[Mentalist]

Evening all.

I'd just like to stop by and leave a drink for TB.

Winter officially started in Winnipeg, and I can only imagine what a hell it must have been for her to get to work today....

[Thelomen Toblerone]

£4.35 a pint. No wonder I'm freakishly unhungover.

[Slow Ben]

Is there anything better than working on a Saturday? Besides a swift kick to the nuts, I cant think of anything.

Only 7 more hours till drinkytime!

[Centzon Totochtin]

I'm going through my suitcase and haven't worked in 5 weeks... am I helping?

[Slow Ben]

Rouse my jealousy? Yes you are.



But at least one of us gets to live the dream. Hope your havin fun Centz!