The Ultimate Secret Bunker

I suppose most of us must give at least a passing thought, at some time or another, to what we might do and where we might go in the event of some horrendous world catastrophe - nuclear war, bird flu, the rapid onset of the next ice age, perhaps, or a giant, out of control rabid, toxic Celine Dion rampaging across the globe.

World leaders have certainly given it some thought at various points in recent history, building vast underground bunkers and complex communications infrastructure to ensure that they (and maybe a select few of us) survive. Most recently we had the opening of the Global Seed Vault built under a Norwegian mountain to store all known types of crop, in case some future disaster puts at risk our capacity to produce Corn Flakes and Hovis.

But now I know exactly where I'll be heading should the prophets of doom start their oratory in earnest:

http://gizmodo.com/5018990/lego-secret-vault-contains-all-sets-in-history

Yes, it's the secret Lego vaults, where the crazy Danish plastic brick makers have stashed away one complete set of every Lego product ever made. Really. Every one.

Can you imagine a more fulfilling way to live out your last few days on Earth, as the meagre food and oxygen supplies dwindle and the hope of salvation recedes? Something better than having access to all those Lego Space and Pirates sets that were just that little bit too expensive for your Dad to buy you, even at Christmases or significant birthdays? Come on!!??!

Sorry guys, you can all go off and live in a bunker full of seeds and grain (grain?! Puh-lease - even the most fertile of imaginations would have difficulty making any fun out of a few big piles of plant germplasm) I'll die happy pretending to be a wee square yellow spaceman with limited capacity for limb movements and a head that has a tendency to fall off at the most inopportune moments.

If the rescue parties ever arrived with news of mankind's miracle survival and the great hope for the rebirth of the human race, they would find me, like a crazy, child-like Colonel Kurtz muttering to myself about the scarcity of roof pieces and my grand plan to build a replica Berlin Wall out of thousands of 2x6 multi-coloured studded bricks.

Woolly

Ah, now... in MY day... [author strokes greying beard, sobbing gently before falling asleep against zimmer frame]

http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2008/05/thats-wonder-of-woolworths.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_7421000/7421035.stm

Control

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Cult

Anton Corbijn's biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis has been lauded in many circles, including picking up prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Corbijn has an outstanding pedigree, having worked with the band during their short lifespan, and with input from Curtis' widow Deborah, and the now-departed Tony Wilson, 'Control' should have all the ingredients required to be a top-notch piece of cinema. That it fails is perhaps the greatest cinematic tragedy of the year.

Firstly I should say that the photography is simply sumptuous, as one would expect. The cast is solid (am I the only Samantha Morton fan out there?), and there are some excellent musical performances too. Thankfully there is no attempt to out-do Steve Coogan's near-perfect Tony Wilson from 24 Hour Party People - here the Factory boss is played pretty straightly by Craig Parkinson, leaving the comic relief to be provided by Joy Division, and later New Order manager Rob Gretton, played by Toby Kebbell.

A film about a man who commits suicide must have its light moments, yet there can be no discussion of mental illness, the pressures of success and fame, and suicide with out some exploration of the internal torments which go alongside. Frustratingly, it feels like Corbijn is merely touching from a distance here (to quote the title of Deborah Curtis' book, on which the film is based). His direction is prosaic and remote, rather than conceptual and intimate; we as an audience never really get an insight into the workings of this troubled mind. There is no real exploration of a troubled childhood or of the exploration of drugs (prescribed and un-prescribed) or the fascination with altering perceptions and experience. Similarly there is little or no insight into the genius of the lyricist and performer, or how he was driven and inspired (save for one cursory nod to some early Wordsworth reading and Bowie listening)

Sam Riley's Curtis comes across as almost too perfect to be truly convincing as a tortured soul. Curtis was a deeply awkward character - an anti-pinup, if you will - but Riley comes across as somewhat cherubic.The lack of emotional insight and character development means that the audience finds it hard to relate to the the spasmodic on-stage performances (there was laughter at the screening I was at). Corbijn fails to make the psychological link between the singer's state of mind and the expression of it through performance, and eventually his downward spiral into depression.

Similarly, we find it hard to truly understand the reasons behind the ultimate, final act. Suicide, and the reasons behind it, must surely be one of the most difficult things to portray through any medium, but Corbijn's withdrawn viewpoint gives us little insight. Instead of a picture of a man torn apart by mental instability, drugs, his own fame, genius, the women he loved and his inability to deal with these issues, we are left with a somewhat puzzling portrait of a slightly-strange-and-troubled-but-nice kid who had it all and threw it away.

I'd highly recommend Deborah Curtis' book, "Touching From A Distance", to get a far more rounded view of one of music's most interesting characters.

Cylindrical

It's amazing to think that sound has been around for over 100 years. We now take for granted every-day noises like birds coughing, cars squeaking and Terence Trent D'Arby...

Some of the earliest sound recordings were made using Edison's mechanical cylinder phonograph. Now, thanks to the magic of the Interweb, the University of California, Santa Barbara is making available it's huge archives of early sound recordings.

Spanning the period from the late nineteenth century to the late 1920s (when gramophone records finally killed off the cylinder) the archive contains thousands of recordings, available in streaming format or to download. If you don't know where to start you can also listen to a hand-picked selection via the streamed 'radio' channel.

Personally, I think that this is the sort of thing that the internet was invented for - making available on-demand small yet fascinating pieces of history. Surely it'll only be a matter of time before broadcasters such as the BBC follow suit and make their archives available in this way...?


http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

It Never Happens To Me...

"Love's just a door that's locked and there's no key"




The Assembly