Burnt Leather.

I got my  website partially up and running.

  Please leave me feedback, I certainly need it.     Dreamweaver is a bitch but its the easiest one out there.


http://www.helper3000.net/phil/


  Ill change the name and the broken links shortly.

Does anybody know of any software in existence which is a guide to artist anatomy? I don't mean an online book thing,    Im thinking of a manaquin you can digitally position and view in different angles?   If there isnt any, then someone should invent it.

T o all art people...

 Do you find when you do art stalls on art markets people just gawp like cows chewing the cud and move on.  I didnt sell NOTHING again. and the stalls either side of me sold nothing nor did they guy opposite!  infact MOST people sold NOTHING, despite a range of fashion, photography , prints and originals on sale.   You know what I think it is?   people are happy to buy mass produced items, but ask them to buy something unique and handmade?  no they  feel uneasy.   They are being asked to think for themselves and define their own tastes. be an individual.
   the guy selling hand turned wooden vases joked he should put a Marks and Spencers logo on his pots and people would buy them then.
   In the good words of George Carlin

  "The Public sucks!"

So you want to know how the camping trip went?

  Toni went home early where I found myself alone in the woods and was visited at 3.30 am by a drunk schizophrenic with a billhook and ideas in his head.

 I told the mob of men and later the next night some pirates and a viking chased him off with a real sword.

  Im going to type that out full length because its a great story. I dont care if none of you bother with my long posts.

My Dad won £14,000 on the Irish lottery today!!!
  Infact he won it last week, he just hadn't bothered checking his numbers.

  He is going to give me a thousand to help with my university fees.  woo!  Life is good sometimes.  With the money Ive saved up it means I need not worry about my first year.   I was so worried you see, having just put a deposit down on a new flat with Phil, and knowing I would have less spare hours to work once I began college. The money I was trying to save was woefully slipping away into bills and fees.

 We got a house in the country. Away from the city with a view of cows in fields and a forest (the front view is unfortunately of a supermarket!!)

And Phil has his new job as a qualified RLD Nurse.

   Maybe I should tell the fucker to marry me now.

My mum got a Wii.    Its sitting in this room as I speak.

It's still in its box, and has been for two days.

Why haven't we set it up and started indulging in all of that Nintendo goodness?

Because we bought it on dads money.

And we are wondering how to explain where we got the money for such an expensive piece of hardware.

He may be dumb but I don't think `It was only 50 quid off Ebay` is going to wash with him.

It might have the first time, but I think after the playstation 2, X box and chesterfield leather suit all turning up for `only 50 quid or thereabouts`  he has probably become very suspicious. :-/

I got accepted onto an Art Therapy Masters Degree.  Woo!

   Thats me made up now. Now all I have to do is find the money....

I had the honor and the fortune to attend a lecture by Prof Richard Dawkins tonight.   I will be bragging about to my grandchildren so don't expect me to hold back here.     The Ticket was free. A public lecture.  We should see more of these. All science lectures should be public and free.
     Anyway, the Liverpool Philharmonic was packed to the rafters, which I think is a good sign.     His lecture was one Ive seen before on tv, and was largely based around The God Delusion, outlining the different types of gods and calling into question why religion should get special treatment and be untouched by criticism when they request public funding, their own schools, their own swimming sessions in our public pools, their own laws ans tax exemption.  He also asked why we call children `a catholic child, a muslim child` ect when we wouldn't dream of calling them `a socialist child, a conservative child` and so fourth. He stressed he was focusing on Abrahamic religions and set ideas of god,and rules and holy books, not pantheism or deism or any kind of poetic idea of a god of consciousness.

   Then came the good bit.  Question Time With the People Of Liverpool.  I feel for the man I really do.
  
  "Hi Mr Dawkins"

"good evening"

" Ok, do you believe that man evolved from chimps?"

"No I believe chimpanzees and mankind had a common ancestor"

"Oh well ok, well if we and chimps evolved from something else and chimps are more primitive then why are chimps still alive?"

"Oh you can not be SERIOUS! surely that isn't your question!"

  And then followed a lengthy explanation by Dawkins which there is no need for me to go into here.

"Ok then" says the man,"But how can chimps still be alive when they practice infanticide"

*stunned silence*   "I'm sorry....I don' follow, I cant answer that question it doesn't make sense"

"well I have another question"

"go..on...."

"You said religion is a disease that children catch from their parents"

"I did"

"well china has the fasted growing rate of catholicism in the world so how do you explain that?"

"well your parents aren't the only ones you can catch this virus off, missionaries are a great source of infection"
*audience applauds*

"yes but you also said most people stick to their parents religions but the Chinese aren't so how do you explain it?"

" well I cant really, I don't know much about it"

"And you didn't know anything about the chimps either did you" says the man smugly
   A small group clap, probably from the catholic cathedral next door.

 Then another woman stood up and said in the loudest most (ironically) arrogant voice  "don't you think YOU ARE ARROGANT to write books on the none existence of God when you cant prove it and you don;t know the answer."  She ranted for about 5 minutes repeating the word arrogant five or six times.
   "maybe its arrogant for me to assume the celestial teapot doesn't exist, I guess it is by your definition"
          You know, I welcome theists challenging atheism, but there are ways to ask good questions in a proper tone of voice, but this woman was attempting to sound like a headmistress telling off a naughty school boy. you could hear the indignation in her voice, she must have sat through the entire lecture seething and feeling threatened.  She wouldn't give the sodding microphone back.
    There followed several good questions, some theistic and some atheistic, but those two ejjits were the highlight of question time.  I bet theyll think twice before giving scousers a microphone and a soapbox again.
  
At the end of the evening, Dawkins was in the foyer signing books.   Well it just so happened I brought my God delusion along.  He had said in the lecture he didn't have time for personal dedications, he was just going to sign the books.
    He seemed less friendly and shyer than Ray Mears when I went to a lecture and book sign by him last year, but as I got up close to Dawkins I saw he was pale, sweating and more tired and old than he appears on any of his pictures.

Perhaps he doesn't talk to people much at the signing because sooner or later he will have someone trying to debate him.To be honest, I'm not surprised he looked so guarded and sweaty, I was there with my sisters boyfriend and he said "You know someone could attack or assassinate him right now"    I bet at the very least he gets verbal abuse from people at book signings.  He must never know if the next person is going to thank him or spit in his face.

    I saw several people had left letters on his table.   I gave him my book and he gave a very tired smile and signed it in tiny writing.     Id like to have said something but I couldn't think of anything. I just made faltering eye contact and smiled back.



 

Yeah and I forgot to mention, I forgot to bring a stall table. well...I dont own one anyway. I had to steal a table from the park.

Can any of my learned friends tell me...

Is it worth buying a nintendo wii?

On my way to grandmas house, my what big teeth she has nowadays...


They wont let you stroke them.Ive tried.


The kind of alley where you might find a wizard selling dragon eggs. Or a rapist.

I escaped the Dentist - for now. He decided Id have to have the tooth removed at hospital in a few weeks. I dont trust him anyway. Ive had the guy as a dentist all my life and in that time he has removed 6 of my teeth, healthy teeth I might add, to fit a brace. when I went to see him on monday, he suddenly looked real old, he must be retiring soon.
"gosh you dont have many teeth..what happened to them all?" he said puzzled, not remembering that it wasnt actually a mystery.
"You pulled them all out and give my skull a hairline fracture" I would have said, if he hadnt had his impliments of torture in my mouth at the time.

In other good news , Emma is doing a little better in hospital and hopefully I can go see her next week.

I had the EEG scan. It was interesting...but not exciting unfortunatly. I was imagining that I could see the results, that maybe they would be giving me electric shocks or making me look at series of puzzles, and having people sneak up behind me and go "BOO!" but nah. she stuck all these little sensors to my head and the top of my ears. I dont know what brainwaves are in the top of the ears but what do I know about neuroscience I suppose.

Then I had to sit there, for about an hour, doing absolutely nothing. Towards the end she made me do 3 minutes of deep breathing relaxation. Apparently they get better results if you are doing this - and I can only see it as meditating. She said the more active the brain is, the more obscured any underlying abnormalities are. There must be a marked differences between the relaxed, non-thinking mind and the active one. So much so, she said the results cannot be interpreted until it has been filtered through a computer to edit out all the crap.
Its going to them an awfully long time to edit it, there is alot of things they will have to get rid of from them brainwaves - worries of if I had busfare home, what would I have for my tea,what can I buy my family for christmas, whats on tv tonight, can I fart in here and get away with it? wouldnt it be nice to shag various celebrities,maybe mr mears could tie me to a tree and molester me or something and-- oh my gosh, can that thing pick up sexual arousal? I hope not. infact, I cant see what the hell they are looking at, is it possible the screen is showing actual pictures of my thoughts. Id better just stare at the carpet...`
"oh heck" she says "whats going on here?"
Then she looks over to me "Oh wait a sec, one of the sensors fell off."
At the end of the test, a torture device appeared from nowhere and was put infront of my eyes. I was asked to stay relaxed with my eyes closed, as the thing flashed bright intense light through my eyelids, first slowly and then faster and faster until I couldnt percieve the pulses. I must say that made me feel very strange, I dont know if thats normal or not, but I felt light I was going lightheaded like I was floating away and being hypnotised. meditation and drugs are not needed, just that bright flashy thing is enough to bring on altered states of consciousness.
So I have to wait for my fantasy sex life and other worries to be removed before they can see if anything is wrong. It was worth having it done though, even for peace of mind. It can pick up migraine symptoms, epilepsy and alike and see the difference of that between early onset MS, which is something that scared me. I very much doubt I have anything like that, but it seems to be so common nowadays these worries begin to permiate the mind. It seems possible the jerking and twitching I occasionally get may be mild common epilepsy because I get it usually when on a computer, when Im tired or had a drink, which are give aways. Either that or Im just twitchy...

Wish me luck these coming few days.
Tommorrow I go to the dentist with my dreaded wisdom tooth issue and on wednesday (if Im up to it) Ill be having an EEG scan for the reoccurring headaches,neck pain and twitches Ive been having for years. The EEG sounds exciting. The Dentist does not.

I went to a chinese all you can eat yesterday. I happen to be partial to chinese food and eating all I can eat. They had a novel feature Ive not seen before in this one - a chocolate fountain surrounded by strawberries and marshmallows.
I stared at this fountain and licked my lips, getting ready to eat all I could eat of strawberries dipped into chocolate. or maybe I might just go over and begin trowling the chocolate in with my barehands like the fat kid in willy wonkas chocolate factory.
Only something very terrible happened when I set eyes on this fountain...

My wisdom tooth suddenly cracked in half and peices of it fell out. It appears ive been eating all I can eat of the good stuff too much, and now the very sight of chocolate has my teeth cracking.

This is going to require something awful involving drills or plyers because the nerve is exposed and I wont be eating anything at all until its fixed, nevermind ALL I can eat.

And no , I didnt get to eat one single strawberry.

Toni, Amber Thomas and Elaine are all (I hope) In Florida now. the charity ChildFlight has paid for the entire family to go on holiday for free. they paid for the flight, the disneyword hotel, the daytickets, seaword , even clothes, sunglasses, water bottles, and bags. It is their gift to Amber for surviving cancer, and she is there with among 250 other families from the UK. Whats more, SeaWord is even putting on a birthday party for Amber, though I dont know when this is. Its Wonderful that such a charity exists. We forget that after surviving ordeals, children need to still be given opportunities in life to have fun, even its not imediately a concern. if anybody goes to Disney World in the next couple of weeks, the Families are all wearing yellow "ChildFlight" T shirts. Look out and give them a wave, god knows how them kids needa holiday after the time they have been having.

I have mentioned before, I have always been a fan of Ray Mears. I am a fan of wildlife,ecological, and cultural documentaries in general. They are close to my heart, and I am a fan of Ray Mears because he champions these bushcraft - the art of living off the land.
Last night I went to see a three hour lecture by this man on his travels over the last ten years, what he learned and photographed and what he predicts and plans for the future.
I bought tickets for both myself and Phil, and at the risk of looking like a couch potato fan, I bought his latest book `Wild Foods` before I hopped on the train to Derby.
I neednt have worried about looking daft with a new book in a bag as when I got there half the people had the exact same Waterstones bag with the same book in it.
The lecture was excellent. I was sat near the front. Ray proceeded to show slides of his photographs of indigenous peoples he had met around the world, from Indians deep in the Rainforests ,Hadza bushmen of africa, innuits of the north and australian aborigines.
I have always been deeply interested in native cultures. So much of it has died out, and as Ray showed, most of it is in the process of dying out completely. He predicted within the lifetimes of children around to day, the hunter gatherer lifestyle that has existed for the hundreds of thousands of years will be gone completely from the planet.
Oral History is something we see little of today. We sleepily accept children are `taught` in schools. A state education. And that all learning can be taught from books. But how can Hunter-Gatherer learning continue without oral history? How can you write about the sound a root full of water makes when an Aboriginese grandmother hits the ground to find it with her digging stick? You can write how to make a spear but not how to throw it and where , when nobody has taken you to the place and shown it you, and you have tried it yourself through trial and error. The information these people hold about their landscapes is so precise that a relocation program for Innuits to another part of the Artic resulted in the whole community starving to death.
I am glad to say in my family, some oral tradition has survived. I hadnt realised what a powerful instrument this first-hand information is, until I realised that other families did not have it. Being close knit, I learned as a child, about the birds, the trees, the mushrooms, how to plant and grow, the opinions of the past, how my parents, grandparents and great grandparents lived, what they ate, what they wore, how they cooked, how they kept warm in winter, and perhaps most importanbtly, their songs and stories. They might only be trivial things to other people, but the trouble with oral history, is that once a link in the chain is broken, all of it is lost forever and so even seemingly insignificant information needs to be kept alive through communicating these stories to children if they are to have a direct link to the past. Oral information is living information, it is alive in the heads of those who have learned it and it dies with their memory when they do. whatever you do not pass on to your children dies with you. And that is what Ray Mears has encountered over the years. Whislt in artic circle, he spoke to and filmed the oldest grandfathers and asked them to show him some of their skills. They showed him igloo building, how to light a seal fat fire and how to stitch the right kinds of boots for the different kinds of weather. The Young men asked their grandfathers why they had never taken the time to teach them the skills they knew, and the older generations reply was that they had never asked. The same was found in a rainforest, where people had once lived in a communal hut, hunted in the forest and cooked the meat over traditional fires, Ray returned eight years later only to find that the communal hut had been turned into a disco, the people lived in seperate houses and nobody now remembered how to light a fire.
We might call this progress but it is not. The people who used to light fires with bow drills now rely on matches, and the journey to the shop to get matches took TWO WEEKS by canoe. Two whole weeks! But without the former knowledge of fire, these people became, like the rest of us, dependant on consumerism. Many never returned from shopping trips to buy matches, they simply got lost on the outskirts of the vast cities in South America. Ray retaught them to make fires using this tribes traditional methods and then he showed a photo to us at the lecture of one of the men he taught now teaching his two year old nephew. Im sure you can see now why I admire this man.
Ive no great love of Western society, most people know that. Im not going to say its bad or evil. It isnt, and I enjoy many of my comforts like everybody else. What I dislike about mass consumer driven society is that gives us the illusion of freedom when it has actually hamstrung us. We are so disconnected from nature we are like nothing more than babies. We know little of how to look after ourselves. Im not trying to romantise other ways of life, Im no hippy, life as a hunter gatherer is hard work and frequently harsh, but I do thouroughly believe it is our lack of independence and disconnection from small community, oral tradition lifestyle and nature itself that causes so much of our depression and stress. It does in me at the very least.
After the lecture Ray did a questions and answers session. I had a good question to ask, but I was too shy to ask it. I wanted to ask whether he felt ecotourism was generally a good thing for these peoples or a bad thing. I have had both good and bad experiences with tour companies and having seen excellent respect to nature to downright money grabbing tourist traps,so Im genuinely not sure of the answer.
I was dissapointed most of the questions seemed to be boring and pointless for me. Id have relished the opportunity to pick his brains but the questions were largely along the lines of "whats the worst food youve had?" "wheres your favourite place in the world?" I did like one question which unfortunatley Ray avoided answering. A man asked how visiting all these different countries and peoples had affected his spiritual beliefs. He basically said he felt nobody had the right to impose belief on their fellow men and for that reason he would keep his own private. A good answer but as an ever inquiring agnostic, Id have been interested in hearing his philosophy, as I doubt I'll be meeting advocates for some of the many different beliefs in the world in person myself, though he made it clear throughout the lecture that he had the deepest respect for many of these traditional beliefs systems, many of which are thousands of years old and still exist because it teaches their people to live in harmony with nature. For instance, he was telling us how an Australian boy in one of his photographs was "lizard dreaming" and that meant the boy was spiritually connected to the monitor lizard in Dreamtime. This was an important role, it meant in their law that he was responsible for their welfare and regulation in the wild. Each member was an advocate for a different animal for which they were spiritually connected to in the Dreamtime. This meant that a community kept in balance with the environement by each taking care of a spefic part of it. The Dreamtime basically is a belief in two parallel realities - modern time and dreamtime. The dreamtime is the creationtime, the time outside of time which exists now and can be accessed now. Or at least that is how I got the gyst of it. It doesnt matter to me if aboriginese dreamtime exists or not,though the concept is barely translatable to english and I dont pretend I understand it or that I have even articulated it correctly. What matters is that it keeps not just a sustainable way of life, but a way of life with gratitude and understanding of what it is that keeps people alive.

At the end of the Questions session, Ray was going to do a book signing. I was lucky enough to have gotten in the queue early as when I looked behind me the queue that was forming snaked thickly around the building and it was already ten thirty. I suddenly found myself next in line. I handed Phil my camera and asked if he could take a shot, and then I placed my book on the table and smiled shyly.
"Hi there, who do you want it dedicated to?"
"Lindsey"
" L-I-N-D-S-- is it A?"
"no its `E`. S-E-Y"
"Are you Lindsey?"
"uh huh!"
Phil suddenly shoved my camera in my hand and mumbled he couldnt take a shot because I hadnt shown him how to use the damn thing.
"Oh for godsake Phil. Like this!" *click*



Im sorry to say I hadnt actually asked to take the picture, I was in a floaty kind of mood, because Ive never met any of my heroes before, and the queue behind me was vast. No wonder he looks half bemused. Sorry.
He shook my hand and thanked me for coming.
I shook his hand. Im pleased about that.
Of course, I will not be remembered, I was another face in a vast crowd of people , of whom I hope had been as eager to meet him as I have been for the same reasons and not because it's a celebrity thing. I am glad to see Ray Mears is as famous as he aught to be, it gives me hope that so many people take an interest int he world and that good tv that is educational is still so widely loved and respected. Thank you Mr Mears for your work over the years. You are a credit to the force of oral education , keeping knowledge alive through face to face teaching.
I was phoned this morning and asked by a company if I would spare time to volunteer as an art teacher for them, for the learning disabled. I am glad to be able to call myself a teacher, even if I am not paid to teach, I am proud that my name has reached charities and I am phoned by strangers who ask if I will teach them, face to face, and pass on an area of knowledge that I have garnered myself to enhance the quality of life for others.

Incase people dont know what my avatar is....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gAxbxxmYZ8


  It is Superb :)