What colour is the future?

I just re-read the first post in this new blog of mine (which I seem terribe at maintaining), and smirked at the part where I expected everything to turn white and chrome overnight on New Year's Eve. I hate people who laugh at their own jokes, but I really did expect there to be a tangible change associated with that passing of time.

It's taken me three months to feel it, that's all.

I recently saw a documentary and a series of vlogs online that have inspired me to make changes in my life, I see it as a kind of personal future-proofing, but it isn't really.

The documentary is called 'No Impact Man' and I heartily encourage you to watch it. It's about Colin Beavan and his family, who embark on a year-long project to live in New York City with no net impact on the environment. To quantify it with a short list, this means:
- No buying of anything new
- Eating only locally grown and therefore seasonal foods
- No disposable anything (yes, that includes toilet paper)
- No consumption of electricity
- No non-sustainable travel (only walking and cycling allowed)
- No trash

Needless to say - they did it.

The ongoing No Impact Project is inspiring hundreds of people world-wide to try the experiment for just one week, and to see how that affects how the individual sees their environmental impact.

One week-long-no-impacter charted her progress with daily vlogs, which can be found on her facebook page. These videos, along with the documentary, inspired me to undertake my own project. This week I have made a commitment to live my life pretty much as I always have, but not to create any waste along the way. I'm blogging about it on my local newspaper's website, and on my twitter page so this blog might slow down for a while.

So. My concluding question is: Is the future green?

Techno Techno Techno Techno...

Okay so I thought it was about time I tackled the inevitable subject of new technology in this new decade of ours. It's not a subject I am particularly knowledgeable about, but I am an ardent consumer/inexperienced borderline technophobe so that's the angle I'm coming from (And if that appears to be a contradiction-in-terms well, that's because I am a contradiction-in-terms. Deal with it.)



So the world seems to be going 'ooooh' 'ahhhh' 'wooooo' over Apple's latest new release like kids at a fireworks display. Not to say that Apple products are superficially shiny and pretty with no substance to them at all...of course. Ahem. No, I believe I bridge the gap between the iLover and the iHater - iLove my iPod, but iHate (or at least i'Mnotconvinced about) the iPad.

I've watched Steve Jobs' keynotes lecture about this new toy, so I've at least tried to make an informed decision before disregarding this product out of hand.

The way iSee it (I could go on forever making silly iPuns, really), the iPad is the product of a smartphone (let's face it, the iPhone) and a laptop. Only it's bigger and better than the iPhone and smaller and not as good as a laptop. Really, my confusion with it is that I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. It's an internet browser, but my laptop does that surprisingly well. It's a music store, but my iPod AND my laptop cover that area of my life. It plays videos and games, but my laptop AND iPod do that. You can email from it, but my laptop AND Blackberry do that. Can you see where I'm going?

For me, the iPad is a pretty little gadget, but ultimately an unnecessary one. It doesn't do anything revolutionary that iNeed a gadget to do. Jobs keeps banging on about how great it is to 'have the internet in your hands' in his speech, but with the technology I already have I can hold the internet in my hands (or just the one hand in the case of my phone).

To sum up before iStart repeating my self and you get sick of all the iPuns, the iPad will be great, in 5-10 years when it can do everything a laptop can (like word processing), but at the moment iThink I'll just stick to what I know and spend my money on food, thanks.

And now for a TV show I DO love...

'Brothers & Sisters' is now in its 4th series, and I love it more and more as time goes on. I've recently given myself a massive financial headache by buying the first two series on DVD - and I don't even care (as I write this I'm watching series two on the other half of my computer screen).

It's a comedy-drama surrounding a family living in California, and it stars pretty much everyone, including; Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths, Rob Lowe and even Wales' own Matthew Rhys. It's hilarious, compelling and dramatic all in one breath. When talking about things like this show I generally surmise with the sentence: 'You'll laugh, you'll cry - it'll change your life'. In this case I stand by that statement completely.

The reason I love it goes beyond mere entertainment. 'Brothers & Sisters' is great because it fully and intelligently explores, in each episode, what it means to be part of a family in the 21st Century, all the complexities, the fights, the break-ups and the make-ups, the politics and the pain. Ah, I could talk about it forever. From Justin's drug problems to Kitty's politics, from Nora's discovery that her husband was having an affair for almost 20 years to the part said mistress comes to play in all of their lives after William's death (in episode one). It's all brilliant.

There's a scene in the episode I'm watching now that sums it all up for me really.

After discovering that Justin has resumed his recreational taking of pain medication (after coming back from Iraq wounded), the family rally around and hold a detox night-in for him. A few hours of sweating, shouting, shaking and locking the doors leave them all exhausted. In the early hours of the morning, the eldest two of the three boys are having a bit of a heart-to-heart over a cup of coffee, really they're just feeling sorry for themselves. In walks Nora (Sally Field), their mother, obviously sleep deprived, eyes half open and interrupting their conversation comes out with this gem:
"You're both wrong...get over it, you're both better men than your father. And you were as good a dad to Justin today than William Walker ever was. I have never in my life been so proud of you."
With that earth shattering piece of motherly love, she exits the room as if she had just been talking about the weather.

This is the magic of this show. The writing and the acting are exquisite.

Anyway, I could talk about this forever but the new series starts in less than an hour so I'd better be off. Real life stops for good TV.

Why I'm not Gleeful

Everyone in the Western World is raving about Glee, a new musical comedy television series from across the pond. Being a fan of trashy and brilliant US televisual exports, I tuned in for the first couple of episodes, needless to say I don't think I'll be watching again.

First, the singing is so badly dubbed they may as well be on the Top of The Pops stage circa. 1973. I know it's asking a little too much for actors to be singers as well, but if you're going to produce a musical - at least put a little effort into making it believable. I'm a picky customer when it comes to TV and film, so I have to admit that for this reason I took an instant disliking to Glee.

Petty complaints aside, it struck a discordant note with me in the wider sense. (This is the point at which, were I talking to you face-to-face, you would roll your eyes and tell me I'm reading into it too much.) In essence, this show is about a group of misfits with some degree of talent who, I assume, will eventually become wildly successful and popular, all the guys will get all the girls and everyone will skip off home into the sunset and all the bullies will be sad. So it looks like this show is great because it is subverting all the stereotypes in our culture (particularly American culture) which state that anyone who is different is at some kind of disadvantage, or to use teenage vernacular, if you are gay/disabled/fat etc. then you are by default a 'loser'. Yes?

No. I reject the notion that this is subverting any stereotypes because in setting up the pretense it is reinforcing the stereotypes in the first place, or worse (and I think this is more to the point with Glee) it is accepting those prejudices as the norm.

Let's take stock of the characters of the eponymous group for a moment. We have:
- a homosexual boy (haven't we seen this before - I'm thinking of legwarmers and dancing on cars by the way...)
- an asian girl
- a black girl
- a girl raised by gay fathers (the only hint of originality here - kudos to the writers for that at least, although she is the all-singing-all-dancing product of the stereotypical gay men)
- a paraplegic (yawn)

This is all so predictable I could spit. Then to top it all off we have a supporting cast of:

- an obsessive compulsive (yawn)
- a butch Sports coach who by her own admission "doesn't menstruate"
- and finally a whole bunch of white, middle class, bitchy cheerleaders (double yawn)

My point is, why should we have the stereotypes in order to break them down? For me it is accepting in order to reject. Why not reject in the first place? Why not have a bitchy but popular cheerleader raised by gay fathers, a feminine Sports teacher, an asian musical theatre teacher?

Would all these things not be just a hotbed of humour as the characters that the writers have chosen to show us (again and again and again)???

I'd like to think popular culture is (or should be) past this kind of thing. It's a new decade in a new century; post-feminist, post-apartheid, post-stonewall. These assumptions deserve no place in our consciousness any more, even if they are just there to be broken down.

Testing testing 123...present to future

Well I think I've set this up so I can write on-the-go, from my phone that is fancy enough that I don't even know how to use it.

What can I say? I'll probably never use it, but it seemed like the Twenty-First century thing to do.

(You have no idea how long it took me to type this...)
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Julia Nunes

Okay, so this is swiftly becoming a bit of a 'things I like' blog, which it wasn't supposed to be, but I'm gonna run with it.

Julia Nunes is a musician, American, talented, intelligent, beautiful, funny - basically one of those people you want to be great friends with but you secretly hate at the same time. I came across her YouTube channel (here) because a few months ago I started playing the ukulele and she is an incredible, INCREDIBLE, uker. To summarise: I LOVE HER.

Here is a link to one of my favourite videos from her channel (haven't worked out how to embed videos yet...). It's a ukulele cover of 'Flagpole Sitta' by Harvey Danger - the theme tune to Peep Show to you and me. It's awesome. Check it out.

She also writes her own stuff, which is pretty sweet too, like this one. Enjoy.

My Parents Were Awesome

This is Michael, submitted by Chris. ------------->

My Parents Were Awesome is one of those blogs you subscribe to that makes you check for updates on a daily basis.

What hooked me first is that it's just a collection of old family photos (which I have a bit of a thing for anyway, even what they're not my family photos). Then you see an image that perfectly explains the premise of the blog to you. It's about recognising the coolness of your parents. For those submitting images, they are showing the world how awesome their parents are (a very unique and genuine mark of respect, I think), and for those just looking at the collection, it sets you thinking about your own parents. For me, it wasn't long before I found a picture of my dad worthy of submission to the website. (Though I don't think he'd be too happy with me showing the world a photo of him in a 70s fashion disaster...)

So go and have a look, and recognise that your parents were awesome too. I can assure you, they were.