russelldavies’ Neighborhood

[overhead shot of a table in an expensive modern-european restaurant. It's not a capital, but it's one of those cities  on the thinktank/summit-circuit that treaties get named after. Two people are talking. A man in his fifties and a woman in her mid thirties. Both are understated in appearance, but obviously expensively dressed. Both of their smartphones are turned screen-down on the table. It's unclear to us who is the most important. And it's unclear which one is saying the following]

Governments and corporates know me as 'Switchboard', which is how I like to keep it.

I have an aptitude.

Well, a few aptitudes.

But, mainly - I'm very good at people.

Especially those who can't really be described as people anymore. I know what they're good for, what they want and - how to get hold of them.

I've never saved the world, but I've probably had lunch with someone who has.

I'm who you call if you have, y'know -  a *really* big problem.

[ringtone]

Hi,
Now you can visit my new blog  at Finlaychristie.typepad.com

While not having read that much Iain M. Banks, I find myself thinking in Culture Ship names an awful lot. Blip.fm seems to encourage it. I try and think up a culture ship name that sums up the song I'm going to blip. No idea why. I enjoy it greatly however.

The tragedy of the commons is a myth.

There is a vast conspiracy enacted by those who would steal the common off the goose.

A giant distributed clan of supervillainy: the free-riders.

They are sent across the globe and beyond - into our fictions and our factions to ensure that the tragedy plays out as prophesised.

They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be bought (as they are freeriders) - the only way they can be stopped is by applying a sharp pinch to their left elbow and when they turn around on their hard heels, giving them an extremely disapproving, disappointed look.

Start now.

 

 

Last night's dream was a strange one. My wife and I entered a Gothic chamber, something out of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. We were going to see a live audioanimatronic performance of a magician, flourishing cards and bursting out of the wall. Then it came.

Breaking through a large window, the spider attacked with an unstoppable force. My wife screamed, I jumped on its back and began my brutal task. Punching into its hard carapace, I burst it as though it was made of plastic. I ripped off its antenna, its jaws. I was victorious.

I got tagged by Saffer, who I kind of regard as my commanding officer, so here goes.

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:

• 1987-1990: Working after school and weekend in Harris Printers, Porthcawl. I nagged the guy who ran it for a job and got one - folding stuff, stapling, sweeping up at the end of the day. It progressed through learning to set type and help run the letterpress, help make plates and run a litho through to installing and running their first Mac set-up. An SE30 with an A3 black-and-white radius screen and a LaserWriter+ that cost a small fortune.
• 1992-93: Gregg's the Bakers, Cardiff. While in college - I had a job that involved sweeping and mopping the floor of the bakery shop and serving customers. You got to take home quiches and sausage rolls, so I thought it was a pretty sweet deal.
• 1993-94: Architectural Assistant, Welsh Health Common Services Authority, NHS Wales For my year out working I stayed in Cardiff and had a hell of a year working in the NHS, drawing ceiling and landscaping details by-and-large but towards the end of my tenure there I got to do the early concepts for a few schemes such as a respite ward for cancer patients which had some interesting passive-solar features, and a medium-secure unit for violent mental patients, which probably wouldn't pass the Sarah Connor test, but did have nice 45 degree corners in corridors so patients could give staff nasty surprises. I also developed a nice moonlighting role getting paid cash-in-hand to do concept sketch work for one of the qualified architects over the weekend, which he would then pass off as his... This also sticks in my mind as being the one place I have worked where myself and three colleagues successfully managed to speak only using song titles for an entire day.
• 1995: Assistant Producer, Camden Lock / Delphi: My first job out of architecture school, and into the WWW, courtesy of Mr. Phil Barrett. In a Camden basement where I met Stef, Yoz, Mick, Pouneh, Obi, Emyr, Alex, Pete, Graham, Stuart and others, mucked around with Emacs and Video Cameras; and fully fell in love with the Web.
  

Four TV Shows I DVR (I don't have a DVR, but let's say... time-shifted time-based media originally produced for television... ahem):

• The Wire: I've just finished Season 2, so no spoilers. Also this is something I watch on planes, trains, buses - anywhere I'm on my own. Foe is not so into it to say the least. I, however, am totally hooked.
  
• Lost: Season 4 and it is back on, as far as I'm concerned. Like the Alias Rambaldi Arc, I like my J.J.A stories weird and byzantine. The more DHARMA the better.
  
• Sarah Connor Chronicles: It gets a bit emo now and again, but Cromatie is awesome. Also, I guess it's a sign of age that I fancy Lena Heady way more than Summer Glau.
  
• Primeval: This is UK-pulp family scifi served straight-up and dumb, without any of the shameless Whedonising of RTD's Doctor. I love it.
  

Four places I've been:

• Adelaide: Beautiful, and the central market is not to be missed - especially the lamingtons...
  
• Shanghai: crazy corpuscular, muscular hypercapitalism. maximum city, reached by maglev. Maglev!
  
• Aberdeen: grey stone in sunshine. A majestic market town and a little bit post-peak oil.
  
• Sienna: The archetypal Italian hill town, and a wonderful place to passeggiata through the contrada...
  

Four music artists I'm listening to right now:

• Saffer beat me to British Sea Power," Do You Like Rock Music?", but 'Atom' is magnificent.

• School of Language "Sea from shore": very Jim O'Rourke, but this is not a bad thing.
  
• Nick Cave and Warren Ellis "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" OST
  
• Deerhoof "The Perfect Me": which seems to sum up a lot of the other, odd things I'm listening to - poppy math rock with wierd vocals seems to do it for me right now.

PAGE ONE:

[scene] A kitchen, close-up on a clock on the wall. it's about twenty to eight in the morning. "Black Mirror" by Arcade Fire is playing.

PIC1: dolly back from clock to slightly wider shot of a room - a kitchen that's been turned into a mess of notes, lines drawn in string, marker pen on old 70s wallpaper, a Human League poster, equations, question marks, memorabilia from the 50s, a poster for international geophysical year.

DD: TODAY I CHANGE MY NAME

PIC2: dolly back further to see a kitchen table with someone - a slight man with unkempt dark hair slumped forward on it - seemingly asleep.

DD: ME - AND A THOUSAND AND TWENTY-THREE OTHERS, STOP BEING WHO WE WERE, AND BECOME WHO WE'RE GOING TO BE.

PIC3: dolly back further through the kitchen window to a typical suburban street.

DD: DURRAN.

PIC 4: dolly-back and raise camera to a wide shot of a surburban estate on the edge of a large, dense, dark, decadent and decaying city

DD: TODAY I CHANGE MY NAME, AND WE START TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

Testing the fancy s60 app