Author: merocet

Mock Turners!

I’ve been short listed for the BBC’s annual Mock Turner arts prize! Really, I HAVE! Madness!

This is the picture that got me short listed…

And please, please, PLEASE click HERE to vote for me!

Thanks awfully!

How exciting??

The comments about my pic so far… He he!


Some much needed Monday lunchtime laughter. Cat on the Rails is a superb specimen of Photoshop wizardry. I would love to see this extended, not just as a one off. Leaping Bananas…Leaping Bananas…
Elli Robinson, Bonn, Germany

Cat on the Rails has a certain ‘knocked up in a lunch hour’ feel about it. Spontaneous and well composed though.
James Rawlings, Milton Keynes

How can Cat on the Rails be in this competition? It’s rubbish!
Mark, Chipping Sodbury, UK

Cat on the Rails has a haunting quality about it which is enhanced by the palette use and the composition of the cat taking centre stage. It is a piece of art which i would gladly buy.
Tessa Robinson, Guildford, Surrey

David Sillito is clearly extracting the michael. A badly photoshopped kitten? Bile-coloured “fish”? Mock the Turner Prize if you must – and this year it is disappointing – but don’t stoop to the level of comparing it to this rubbish.
James, London, UK

One lump or two?

Where? Wuh? What happened? W words huh? The relevant elephant one in this case being WORK. So 2 weeks turned into 3 and just cos I’m so good I even get a bonus day on Monday. All straight forward, all good, all nice people, and best of all, all temporary. What a civilised thing! Anyway the extra week means that I’ll have some money coming at the end of December as well as at the end of this month which means the pressures off a bit… And how good is working next door to the Tate Modern with a view of the river? Very good indeed!

Talking of pressure, reminds me of water pressure, and plumbing reminds me that my washing machine in my rented out house committed suicide this week which is another reason why it’s quite a good thing that I’m about to get paid…

For my next trick I’m going to be a gentleman labourer. Painting a house next week. Hope it’s the inside…

Snippets…

Exec 1 – “Are those wireless laptops or unwired laptops?”
Exec 2 – “What’s the difference?”
Exec 1 – “Unwired laptops aren’t wireless.”

Credibility is toast.

I came in at the back-end.

We want someone who can really build a relationship with Bruce and I don’t think he’s the man for that.

ABC…

“Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible… We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the UN’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, (we) could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

– George HW Bush – A World transformed (1998)

Work dammit

So Lara at Stopgap came through and off I go back into the world of Market research on a very temporary basis. 2 weeks of report writing beckons from Monday, marvelous. What is actually marvelous is that for the first time in a year and a half the amount of money in my bank account will go up rather than down. Just when I was getting used to that plummeting feeling…

Things you don’t see everyday…

1. A totem pole in South London

2. A zebra in Epping Forest

3. Echo and the Bunnymen in Shepherds Bush

Come on pumpkin, connect.

Someone sang that to me in a dream last night. And I woke up struggling for breath and had to write it down. Then I went back to sleep and woke up this morning to find that phrase written on the piece of paper in handwriting totally unlike mine. Not just sleepy-me handwriting, but someone else’s neat and well-formed letters instead of my normal scrawl (“I think he writes too fast so he can get all his ideas out” my teacher said when I was 7, and it stuck in my head, because she then went on to say that it was better to lose some of the ideas and write down only what you could write neatly, which I thought was most odd in a 7 year old way and seemed to quite defeat the object of being in a place that was supposed to make you cleverer).

Freaky, deaky banana-brain. Anyway, if you type 2 disparate words into Google Image search, you sometimes get a nice surprise.

And now I remember that school teacher confusing me I also remember that the self same teacher was in charge of who was going to “go up” each year. Going up was a strange construct in which the chosen two, one boy and one girl, from each school year would jump up into the class of the kids a year older than them for half of the school year. Me and Sarah Golding it was every f–king year. It was like punishment for being clever. Everyone of your own age decided that you thought you were better than them and everyone in the class you were joining thought you were a baby from the year below. Pure torture it was and me and little Sarah stuck together like glue. Oh, and to top it all, on the first day of the second time it happened I was introduced to my new scarily older classmates and then asked whether I would like to hold the class hamster? Well, yes I bloody did as I thought maybe that will make me one of the gang. It didn’t, as no sooner had I picked up the equally terrified rodent, than the little bugger went and snuffed it right there, right in my hands, right in front of my new class mates. My least favourite teacher then panicked and said it was probably because I was breathing on it. Fan-effing-tastic. She then decided that we had to go through a funeral for this doomed critter and that I should be the one to dig the hole and drop in the flaccid fluffy corpse and “say a few words”. This I miserably did while my new best mates mouthed “murderer” at me behind her back. You know those people who end up going on a shotgun rampage through small town shopping centres? It’s nothing short of miraculous that I didn’t end up doing that in later life.

Sorry about that. It all just came back to me and, well, this is stress relief for me as much as anything.

Anyway, deep breath. I Went and saw Lara Fisher-Jones at Stopgap just the other day to try to get some well paid, low responsibility temp work in Market Research so as to get a much needed pre-Christmas cash injection. She was very nice and the interview was straight forward in the way that only interviews for a job you can do, standing on your head, one arm tied behind your back, can be. She sounded very hopeful and was apologetic that the day rate was low in comparison to my previous salary. I had to point out that in comparison to my CURRENT salary, it was pretty good.

Oh yeah, and who was the lady in the picture in the last post? Corinne from Swing Out Sister, that’s who. Swing Out Sister not only still exist, but are also ace. You don’t believe me do you? I saw them on Friday night and grinned from ear to ear all the way through. Buy this if you want to make your ears very happy…