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Creativity

Success is…?

I think I consider myself an unsuccessful person in most respects. I’m always wary of buying into someone else’s subjective value system; our government would, no doubt, love to ram their values down all our throats forcibly if that were possible. I’m trying to define success on a personal level that means something to me.

Trouble is, even on my own terms, I can’t find much from my current or past life that would qualify as successful (or even especially rewarding, which is probably the best kind of success of all). I’ve wasted half my life treading water. I think my recent birthday still troubles me on that level.

I don’t think I relate to other people very well. Most people are very facile at pretending they’re okay (most of the time), really well adjusted and comfortable, etc. I’m not sure it’s possible for any of us to be genuinely comfortable in this intense, madhouse environment we’re living in. We’ve abandoned almost everything that constituted our default existence, and such profound artificiality can’t possibly hold together coherently. Well, I mean, it doesn’t! I think society is more culturally divided than it ever was, even though more people are straining to pretend otherwise. (Usually, alas, to flatter their own egos rather than to seek genuine change.)
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Too Much Analysis

I’ve been thinking about human interaction a bit. Bad idea. Thinking usually ends up troubling me.

Sometimes, it seems to me that a lot of human interaction is bullshit. You pretend to feel better than you really do whenever possible, pretend to be more interesting than you think you really are, and generally ‘sell’ yourself. I’m absolutely useless at doing this. You’d think, understanding the theory, I might not be quite so pathetic at it—then again, part of the problem is understanding it, because then you start to question its futility or dishonesty and open another massive can of worms. Oboy. Too much time on my hands = too much analysis.

Work situation… a brief rant…
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Another Year Ends

This entry will smack of tokenism, as it’ll likely be the last one of this year. Best wishes for the new one to those who care.

Since this has become more a book/film comment sort of blog lately (accident not design), I’ll mention a couple of purchases. I took advantage of WHSmith’s sale, picking up the videos of Jeepers Creepers and A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) for £4.49 each. A good deal for a couple of pretty successful 2001 films.
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Computer Fakery

Since I was droning about Harry Potter earlier… today (er, yesterday), I read the appalling story/rumour that they might use cast-off footage of Richard Harris from the first two movies, combined with his stand-in and computer trickery, to generate an artificial ‘performance’ for the third movie!

I really, really hope this is only a rumour…
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Retail Therapy

Today, being out shopping (for food, not pleasure, alas), I passed a book store and I of course succumbed. Some people buy shoes; some people can’t pass a novelty shop without buying some little cuddly toy; but me, I guess it’s books. It used to be comics more than books, but books are better value for money these days, and comics don’t have many Jack Kirbys out there anymore. (*sigh* I might get nostalgic.)

It was a close one. This store had several copies of Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, with wonderful illustrations by Bernie Wrightson. I wanted this so much when I heard about it maybe 17 years ago, but amazingly, I have never seen it for sale anywhere. I didn’t even know it was still in print. Anyway, that’s earmarked for purchase v.v. soon. I passed it today.
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HTML

Hm. Someone recently suggested Web design as a possible career for me. I’m not really convinced. I mess about with Web design occasionally out of boredom as much as anything else. I’m not sure I enjoy it much, and the results are usually disappointing, because my design skills are never really up to realising what’s in my head.
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