Despite my tirade against showers in specific and personal hygiene in general, I have to admit that a lot of incredibly wise and incendiary thoughts come to me in the bathroom. Those thoughts that strike you, out of the blue, and completely change the course of your day — or entire life, in the case of some famous Greek philosophers!

Once, for example, I was reaching down to soap that bit of my legs that I don’t see all that often (at a guess, it was my calf  — when you’re tall like me, there are outlying parts of your body that you might only see every other year), when inspiration hit, like a beam of holy light lancing down upon my up-turned visage: I should design a site that allows people to freely stream the contents of their computer screen! Sadly, I was beaten to that one by a week or two when UStream launched (and they do it really well!)

But the point I was trying to make is: some of our greatest inspirations come to us while we’re just sitting/standing/laying there and being.

And thus I found myself this evening,  standing up from my gleaming white throne and looking down at the silvery knobs that controlled the fate of my stodgy deposit. In that brief moment, looking from knobs to deposit, and deposit to knobs, I reflected on the sheer quantity of the food I ate earlier today.

Opting for the larger, more powerful flush, I stumbled back to the living room and collapsed flatulently on to the sofa.

I had intended to rant today about monotheistic religion and its poor suitability and applicability to modern civilisation, but I thought it could wait until tomorrow, after the food has settled and the massive amount of insulin has left my system before I try to write sensibly on such a sensitive topic.

So, saving the topic of religion for tomorrow, I’ll simply leave you with the list of food that I ate today, in audio format (so that you can hear the pain that I’m still suffering in my voice).

I suffered, so that ye can enjoy! Just like Jesus. Oops, it slipped in…

(If you can’t see the player, you’ll have to view it on my blog!)

Upon regaining consciousness, a few specific thoughts always rush hastily along my neurons and across synapses:

‘Did I forget to use protection?’

‘She told me she was on the pill!”

and old faithful: ‘The guide said two bricks was enough…’

… and then, with clarity returning, and the nagging feeling that I’m not, and never have been a father, I realise it’s just a Jelly Baby. It’s just a Jelly baby trying, in vain, to be heard as it leaves my stomach on its final journey towards the indeterminate fate of my small intestine.

Yesterday, after my Pink Jellybaby photo, I was inspired and encouraged by some wonderful artists on Etsy to do some more Jelly Baby photos — photos that might work on postcards, or greeting cards, or … I don’t know — perhaps there are Jelly Baby fetishists out there! Fetishists that, until now, haven’t been able to find a suitable ‘fix’. Don’t mock me, don’t hate me; I’m just filling a gaping chasm in the  Soft Candy Macro Photography market!!

Without further ado, a couple of romantic Jelly Baby photos!

And then, as a proof of concept, I tried adding a caption to the third image, just so you get the idea of the (possible) comic value:

I am interested in your opinions — do you like them? Are they obnoxious, cute, romantic? Would you buy one to give to a loved one, or as some kind of … humourous greeting card?

On the off-chance that you are suddenly struck with the urge to buy 1000 (or more) for distribution purposes, please contact me, and I’m sure we can come to an arrangement — an arrangement that’s good for me, you, and the Jelly Babies I am holding hostage downstairs, under a bright studio light, melting. Excruciatingly slowly, but surely, melting.

Think of the children. Buy in bulk today!

It’s been a while since I last wrote about music. Listening to music, like the appreciation of all art forms, is a very personal and subjective thing. You might like rock and I might like soul, but as long as we both get what we’re looking for, who cares? Well, I care! I listen to contemporary pop and sigh. It saddens me to think that, for some people, this is as good as it gets.

If we’re not careful the King of Pop will be nothing more than an honourific title thrown around by future generations in the playground: ‘Dad says the King of Pop died recently.’ ‘Yeah, sucks. Did you hear the latest Britney Spears song? It rocks!’ Unless someone — you or I — steps in and reminds children of what real music once sounded like and where their music originally came from, we can forget all hope of there ever being another King of Pop, Soul or Rock ‘n’ Roll.

* * *

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Not the Baron or Prince or Godfather — the King; the top dog upon which all comparisons are made and will be for years to come. I’m not going to talk about the last 20 years of his life but instead I will focus on the first 30, the three decades that revitalised a flagging music industry. In those thirty years, Michael Jackson became the greatest and most influential musician of our time. To those amongst us that appreciate music and its power; to those of us that are prone to bouts of aural sex: we have a lot to be grateful for! I just hope I can do Michael justice and nail the most important aspects of his influential and protean career.

While certainly successful, the first ten years of his life as the lead singer of The Jackson 5 were hardly monumental. The Jackson family were recognised as a musically-gifted family and Michael was nothing more than a charismatic and spectacular performer. But he could only grow so much, restricted by Motown’s draconian production rules and an oppressive father. The Jacksons were destined, unless something changed, to be a flash in the pan — certainly one of Motown’s biggest success stories (four successive number ones is nothing to be ashamed of!), but minuscule compared to what the Jackson family in general and Michael in particular were capable of. Perhaps the most important role of the Jacksons would be to become the first black teen idols. Breaking down barriers would be a recurring aspect of Michael Jackson’s life at the forefront of the music industry.

Stifled by Motown, The Jacksons jumped ship to CBS in 1975, a move that would finally grant the band the creative freedom it required. The Jacksons produced lots of albums in the following decade, but none of them approaching the success of their early Motown hits. But for Michael, it would be a different story indeed: in 1978 he met Quincy Jones on the set of The Wiz — “I hated doing The Wiz… I did not want to do it,” Quincy said later — they didn’t know it then but Quincy’s involvement with the film would soon change musical history and forge the greatest, most influential and successful collaboration in music history. Quincy Jones is a musician and conductor whose career and incredible influence spans five decades. With 27 Grammys and countless other awards, Quincy, like the Jacksons, broke down barriers that would allow future African-Americans to succeed in the culturally-biased media industry. The scope of Quincy Jones’ work is so varied and vast that it’s hard to comprehend: we’re talking about a legend that played alongisde Miles Davis during the creation of modern jazz and bebop, but then later produced the largest-selling album of all time (Thriller). He’s worked with Sinatra, Spielberg and even Bill Cosby. However, after Bad, his production and arrangement days were over — perhaps, after five decades of musicianship, the impresario had finally set down on paper the notes and themes that had run through his head for fifty years. Perhaps it was time to make way for future generations?

But I digress: it was on the set of The Wiz that this partnership of mentor and young prodigy begun. Off The Wall was born from the marriage of orchestral jazz, soul and 70s disco. Off The Wall fused sounds and melodies and dazzlingly energetic themes that had been building up for decades but never fully exemplified until this album was mastered and distributed. It’s worth noting, though their influences were not particularly significant, that both Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney wrote tracks for Off The Wall — perhaps this shows just how much confidence these musical geniuses had in Michael?

If Quincy and Jackson’s first collaboration hadn’t quite cemented things — Off The Wall only sold 20 million copies! — their next album would prove beyond doubt that they’d hit the spot. Thriller would be the first and only album to become something more than just a finely-crafted collection of songs. The astronomical number of sales — 109 million — would thrust Thriller into the category of ‘household staple’ rather than ‘commodity’ — families would go to the supermarket to buy bread, milk and a copy of Thriller. To this day, Thriller has more than doubled the next-largest album (45 million — Dark Side of the Moon) and its universally popular appeal will no doubt continue its reign of supremacy.

The bone of contention that one usually comes across when examining Jackson’s career is thus: how much of the success was actually due to him? Did Michael’s career begin as a vehicle for Motown’s music machine and end as nothing more than the pop industry’s poster child? Is it important? If we can learn one thing from history it’s one thing: for better or worse, the outcome is what counts, not the minutia, not those that fall by the wayside. If you discount his later work and simply focus on his early-adult albums — Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad and Dangerous – you have a body of work that was not only phenomenally successful but also more influential than the creations of any other artist in the last 40 years. It’s because of Jackson that we have hip-hop and rap music. Jackson revitalised a pop industry that was suffocating under the burgeoning force of uncreative, uninspired electronica. The phenomenon of Michael Jackson caused a rebirth of popular music that inspired and influenced almost every modern R&B, funk and pop musician.

I haven’t even begun to touch on the immortal influence that Michael Jackson had on both the youth and adults of the world with his music videos and live performances. Jackson created the music video that we know today; he single-handedly launched MTV to stardom with Thriller. Jackson, through sheer artistic brilliance, destroyed the last vestiges of African-American inequality in the media. Michael Jackson’s choreographic style — oh, that white trilby, those hip-thrusts and those gloves — had an effect more profound than anything since Fosse’s jazz or Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story.

I hope that the world, the media-consuming public, can in the next few years put aside any moral objections they have to the man himself and simply focus on what he created. It is irrelevant to wonder whether he is solely to thank for his wondrous advances in music or if he was merely the focus of myriad prodigious input from Quincy Jones. The matter of the fact is thus: Michael Jackson pioneered and sat atop the pinnacle of a musical, a rich cadence that had been bubbling and building up for decades. It finally exploded with Michael Jackson’s solo albums and the world is a richer place for it. From Miles Davis to Stevie Wonder and the entire R&B, jazz and soul libraries that flutter and reside in between, Michael Jackson created, embraced and become the very embodiment of modern pop music.

* * *

The two best albums you could buy a child or musical neophyte are Davis’ Kind Of Blue and Jackson’s Off The Wall. There is no better way to be quickly brought up to speed on the roots and direction of modern music. And if you haven’t heard either of them, you are doing yourself and rest of the world an injustice!

RIP, Michael Jackson. Surely one of your sons must be reaching the age where he might show an interest in singing or dancing…

Would you rather be an artist or engineer?

This is a question I often ask myself on trains and planes or as I lay in the still solitude of my bed. Do I want to create art so beautiful, so inspirational that people actually enjoy life a little bit more? Do I want to develop infrastructure and technology that provides clean drinking water for the billions without?

In this crafted and cultured world, this world without boundaries that we have persisted in creating and destroying over ten long, illustrious millennia, which is more important: art or engineering?

Which was more instrumental: myth and wisdom — or creating fire?

The Bible — or the Roman Empire?

Michaelangelo’s David – or Kodak’s film camera?

Band Aid’s Feed The World — or a network of satellites that enable global communication?

Lennon’s Imagine – or Apple’s iTunes?

Art or engineering?

Do I want to be the person that enables and improves the lives of millions through advancing technology? Should I be the one that converts magic, wished-for technologies into the accessibly mundane?

Or should I be the culmination, the end point, the person that uses contemporary technologies to create art? Art that resonates within and amplifies emotions; art that triggers further explosions of creativity until we have a more beautiful world.

I keep trying to be both an artist and an engineer but I fear that it’s time to choose just one.

Michelangelo or Edison.

Einstein or Plato.

I’ve never written poetry before. I just thought I ought to try. The photo underneath is unrelated, but I took it last night and thought it was pretty!

–

Evoke love and conjure desire, elicit tears and laughter inspire, craft dreams and banish doubt.
It is from within the desolate plains of mundane that the artist’s seed and culture sprout.

Bunsen and bellows both brazen and bold,
Latent and chemical and forms untold,
Exploited, excited,
Molded, contorted,
Bent to this engineer’s will.

Were it not for the artist,
Plain it would remain.
Were it not for the engineer,
What would we have,
Coal, ocher, fire, spear?

Forged through time, forever entwined,
Twins in kind, differing only in method,
Same in soul, a parity in purpose,
Art and engineering.

–

Apparently artists need to be challenged. They need muses, they need inspiration. Without pushing boundaries an artist tends to wilt and wallow, churning out much of the same, day after day, year after year until… well, they die. Scant few become very, very famous, and the rest are forgotten.

So to combat that particular murky mire of artistic dullness, to stir things up, Abi (a talented friend of mine that paints and makes pretty dresses) and Sebastian (photographer and part-time purveyor of baked goods) will be doing a grand project entitled ‘52 Weeks‘.

There are very few rules to 52 Weeks — in fact the only real rule is that we must post one photo each every week for a year. In our case it will be every Monday from August 31st 2009 until whenever 52 Mondays have passed! Is that August 30th 2010? Somewhere around there.

We have no set theme and no limits on what we can submit, as long as it’s one photo, every week, every Monday. Our photos will be placed next to each other, perhaps with a little bit about the photo or what’s going on with our lives. We’ve also never met and live on opposite sides of the country, but might plan for some kind of ‘momentous meet-up’ (or ‘hideous break-up’ as the case may be) during the project.

The photos will be posted both to Flickr and to another blog I’ve set up: 52 Weeks by Abi & Sebastian. It has its own RSS feed so you won’t see my (or her) photos pop up on this feed or this page. If you’d rather follow it on Flickr, you’re more than welcome to — it will all be cross-linked together anyway.

Expect to see some kind of introductory statements from the both of us to pop up over the weekend. Now I’m going to go and work on some cheesy picture of us both together to serve as our ‘title image’… and also have a think about what the hell I’m going to do for Monday. Stay tuned — this could either be very, very good, or diabolical. Either way, it’ll be interesting.

I can’t recall where I originally had this argument. It’s an interesting one with no real solution or conclusion, but it’s interesting. It’s the kind of thing that you can posit or postulate, but because it involves rewriting history, no one really knows what the ‘best’ answer is.

I am of course talking about socialism versus capitalism. I don’t describe myself as either a socialist or capitalist, or subscribe to one political party. My thoughts and beliefs tend to span the entire gamut — and if you read this blog regularly, you’ll probably know how I feel about most important issues.

I’m not going to tackle politics itself — I don’t think I’m educated enough to do so — but I want to cover one topic in particular. It’s an argument that’s cropped up a few times over the last few years, as technology has begun its (scarily) rapid consummation of the world and its day to day activities.

So, exposition first: I am capitalist/right-wing when it comes to matters of technology. The arguments I have are usually with socialist, left-wing types.

It goes something like this: ‘It’s sick that these large tech companies are so rich! And there are so many poor people in Africa without technology! Those CEOs on billion-dollar salaries make me SICK! …’ — you get the idea. Basically, spread the love. You see, technology is so damn all-encompassing. It affects healthcare, education, amenities, entertainment — the benefit of advanced technology is SO VAST that most of us can’t begin to imagine its impact on the world.

But would these socialists be quite so socialist if we weren’t living in some kind of utopian world? Are there socialists in sub-Saharan Africa? Do tribes share their deer with the clan next door? How about if they invent a new kind of spear — do you share that technology? Or do you look after your own first?

My argument goes something like this: capitalism drives invention. Capitalism is all about SELFISH NEED. But it is selfishness that inspires ingeniousness. If your kids are being bullied by some thugs with knives, do you report it to the State and trust it will get sorted out? Or do you make your kids body armour and teach them how to fight?

That’s perhaps a bad analogy, but you get the idea? Are you as likely to fight for someone on the other side of the world as you are for your friends and family?

How many inventions have been made with the Developing World in mind?

So the way this usually goes, in politics, is that a conservative party rules for a while, technology flourishes — and then ‘the people’ feel like change has to be made and a socialist government comes to power. I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing that there’s a change of power. God knows it’s good to shake things up occasionally, lest things become stagnant — and you never want a country to become stagnant. (The robot workers vs. labour unions is a good example?)

I just hope there are no iPhone or BlackBerry owners that are also socialists. It’s incredibly hypocritical.

The counter-argument is obviously this: why are we so inherently selfish? Can we change that, or do we have as much chance of that happening as the deconstruction of racism?

But the sad truth, whether we like it or not, is that we are selfish. We’re never going to push the development of technology solely for other people.

The Developing World should be grateful for our inventive endeavours. And we should be proud of them, not ashamed.