Crouching Tiger Hidden Something Or Other

I met Ian last night. His blackberry was going off all evening with compliment emails for this shot he took for a client and which made it to the front page of Flickr.  He's usually running around Asia if you need a great photographer. More details here.

Miu Miu & Monarch Mind Control

 

The Monarch mind control program came straight out of the CIA's MKULTRA trauma-based mind-control program. They nicked it off the battalions of high ranking Nazis imported by the CIA after the second world war through Project Paperclip. The Nazis nicked it off the Vatican who kept records of  what their unspeakable torture techniques did to the minds of victims during the inquisition (priests are especially sadistic) and they in turn learned much from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The monarch butterfly taught geneticists from its migration that cross generational information can be carried over. So why waste a victim when you can sexually abuse and mind control the victims kids who are prepped and good to go from the start. That's why inter-generational child abuse is how the CIA took the game to the next level (and several more).

Through Vigilant Citizen I learned how the fashion, music and media business use the Monarch butterfly to declare in a public manner that the talent being used (if you can call GaGa, Britney et al talent) are micro controlled  and/or not of their own mind.

Why do they do that? 

Well that's kind of interesting. There's a sort of braggadocio by declaring who is in charge and also a karma-deal respected by occult elites at a 'universal law' level that if they (sort of) publicly declare what they are doing then they have a karmic 'get out jail free card' in much the same way that the NeoCons told us they were going to invade Iraq to protect freedoms before 911 in 1997, through their Project For A New American Century Website (PNAC).

Last night I was checking out Prada Brand - Miu Miu's latest collection. I wasn't that impressed with it, but I noticed the Monarch Wings above and thought I'd share it with you. As you'd expect from Miu Miu it's done very elegantly, but no amount of tasteful design should prevent you from knowing that the epigenetics of Monarch butterflies are about control and fucking with kids heads and bodies through trauma based mind control or at worst ritual satanic sex abuse. This post is dedicated to Vigilant Citizen, and Secret Arcana who do a sterling job of pointing out the concrete symbolism that is irrefutable in the entertainment and fashion industry.

1930's Colour Photography

I can never get enough of early colour photography and film. The last work to blow me away was the Russian triple monchrome colour filtered photography at the turn of the century stuff by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. I feel like a time traveller looking at this work. It's too complicated to explain (even to myself) quite why though it is partly related to the 'upgrading' experience from black and white to colour. I must think some more about that because there's a lot of neurological stuff going on.

I hope you take notice of the food content below and from the original link because this whole centralised, pre-packaged, distribution-intense, just-in-time, hyphenated-international-food-grid that we've become dependant on is going to change. This I'm certain of because it's so wasteful and unsustainable. It's delusional to think otherwise.

The photography is from the Daily Mail. Now it's not hard to figure out that I've serious issues with the Daily Mail's bait and hate game of fear marketing, but I will say that in the last couple of months it's the most informative (if you can sift the disinformation out like all newspapers have) and interesting paper on the planet. I only tell you that because they will break the big news coming soon in the next few months. That's their reward for keeping the establishment happy. I believe the internet traffic currently reflects this.

Ian Taylor

I first met Ian in Phnom Penh about 10 years ago when I was probably one of only two Western Planners in Thailand. He was just about to move to Bangkok to do the same job so we had something in common from the get go. Ian was quickly cynical about the advertising proposition process (long before it became fashionable to diss propositions) so he wrote a bit of code that produced an auto proposition  generator. I found it hilarious (and unnervingly accurate given the politics that goes into that process).

Since then we've both moved on from the high octane world of consumer materialism. Aside from being a truly gifted photographer, Ian is the single most interesting Asia adventurer and traveller I know. He just got back from a resumed Kayak trip down the coast of Burma and Thailand as the first attempt had to be cut off due to some exotic tropical illness he picked up. Probably from eating wild roots and strange sea marsupials or something.

Last time we hooked up for a chat Ian had me gagging at the bit to fly to Calcutta with tales of poets and Marxist philosophers trying to hold onto some sort of anti materialist ideology in the face of rampant consumerism and erm not much money. I'd fit in there wouldn't I?

Ian's now pinging between Hong Kong and Bangkok a bit more. All of his photography makes me envious but if there's one thing Ian nails better than anyone it's his kids shots. Go check his work out over here if you want a guy to squeeze a great photo out.

Cosplay Meditations

Did a bit of location scouting today and came across a Cosplay scene at the Sirikit Convention Centre who were there to raise money for charity to help the Japanese out after their recent earthquake. The gentleman above was dressed to kill so I taunted him with an invite to torture me and blow my brains out. He obliged my request though what is less obvious is how gay his voice was during this pose. A sort of campy faux moaning that his arm was aching keeping me pinned down.

Something I forgot about people who use cameras for a living is how long they take to set a shot up so I used the time to chill out and work on my breathing and meditation. Instead of being irritable while angles and setting were being worked on I found myself needing to be reminded that the next location had to be checked.

The Clockwork Orange T Shirt seems an incongruous addition to the setting but the colour orange tied in nicely with the Saffron material around the shrine and I am very interested in Kubrick's work at the moment as you may recall. I'm rarely this chilled but that's how  ten minutes of deep diving works out these days. I'm finding it all very interesting.

Then & Now

 

Love this temporal examination of photography. More over here.

Iconic

Dear Mr, Eisenstaedt:

Now that I'm 60 - it's fun to admit that I'm the nurse in your famous shot "of the amorous sailor celebrating V.E. Day by kissing a nurse on New York's Broadway." The article in the Los Angles Times, which described your talents, stimulated the recall of the scene on Broadway.

I had left Doctors' Hospital and wanted to be part of the celebration but the amorous sailor and a subsequent soldier motivated a retreat into the next opening of the subway. I wish I could have stored that jubilation and amour for use P.R.N.

​Mr Eisenstaedt, is it possible for me to obtain a print of that picture? I would be most appreciative.

I regret not having met you on your last trip to Beverly Hills.

Perhaps next time. If not - I'll understand because "it's not only hard to catch him - its hard to keep up with him."

Have fun.

Fondly

Edith Shain

Trainspotter

My favourite meal of the day is breakfast. I started taking the definitive cooked breakfast a bit more seriously when I lived in Camden from 97-99 (around the time I worked at HHCL).

My girlfriend and I, at the time would go exploring Greasy Spoons and try out Hi-So Fry Ups at swish hotels and bourgeoisie cafes. I can still remember the first time the mushrooms arrived in a full cream sauce and I realised that an upper crust cooked breakfast wasn't such a bad thing or indeed a class transgression worthy of pejoratively labelling an injustice.

Last year I lived in Hong Kong twice on the Island of Lamma which is a lovely island only a half hour ferry ride away from Central where kids and dogs intermingle freely at all hours like they did in the old days when the car was less dominant and main stream media scaremongering was restricted to those bad old communists. Now it's a never ending stream of paedophiles served up with Roe vs Wade (poltical in-joke for observers of right wing psychology). 

While living on Lamma I got into the habit of breakfast experimentation and discovered that straw mushrooms are an extraordinarily good replacement for meat in a cooked breakfast for both taste and texture dimensions, and so because it's been a couple of years now since I blogged my morning victuals, I thought I'd share some low res mobile snaps of my creations.

I love cooking (particularly for others) and for some reason or other I find breakfast a truly beautiful sight. It's a never ending quest nailing the perfect British Beauty though. If I'm lucky I'll be able to weave this post into another about cultural drift because I see what's happening here in Asia and it's very interesting some of the unifying aspects of global culture as good ideas catch on everywhere.

Christian Poveda

I'm a heavy consumer of podcasts and this radio obituary for the award winning photographer Christian Poveda is a definitive reason why BBC World Service is in a class of its own.

Asian Poses

I've had a terrific day today as I managed to crowbar myself off fantasy island where I'm staying and make it to Hong Kong central for a full-on slap-up English Breakfast 'power meeting' at the Flying Pan (I went for the 'Fly Up' with extra side of English sausage just creeping into the picture on the bottom right) We had a terrific time because I'm a breakfast connoisseur and when tanked up on English Breakfast tea can wax lyrical with Shakespearean soliquoys or even riff on with an Iambic Pentameter (when pushed )about stuff like plate sizes, Croydon fry ups, Kate Moss and hygiene (it's all true), Audrey in Croydon who keeps it real, her ex partner Rob who is a FASHION HO (but a bit of a genius with it) responsible for educating me both on my degree and more importantly on Vivienne Westwood and the punk ethic among many other things.

I even launched into my recently formed "Hierarchy of Nuts" speech because that's the stuff that fills my head at random points. Do you want to hear it?

No I didn't think so but tough luck, as I made sure that Sherri (who is doing something very interesting with a boutique agency network start-up and her interactive head honcho endured my ramblings) I think I should be sharing it with you too.

It goes like this top of the nut food-chain is the Macadamia and below that is the Brazil, Walnut, Almond or Pistachio (interchangeable) followed by Hazlenut, and then there's a whole sub hierarchy of peanuts starting of with dry roasted and shell steamed (Asia only) and ending up with ready salted and then those awful lighly salted partly husked (is that a word?) cheap peanuts that cheapskate bars serve thinking they're doing us a favour when in fact they only serve to remind one of the poverty of taste being endured but more importantly I felt compelled to share that the Macadamia is the fillet steak of the nut world -  juicy, meaty, tender, and I think we concluded that the likes of the almond are not fully represented if the whole cracking procedure (fiendishly difficult in the almond's case) is not brought into the hierarchy metric. Good point I thought when it first raised.

Anyway, it's important to have an opinion on things as a a planner and the nut allegory only serves to demonstrate that. My planning mentor was alway one for making a game out of these things and would endlessly press gang us with impromptu list-games about books, movies or whatever he deemed worthy of inspection. This was before the ubiquity of mobile phone internet of course but it's a loss we should be aware of.

Lastly, because it was such a grand fry up I insisted on a photo of the glorious spread. I thought briefly, and not for the first time that black pudding is in my case an unavoidable  addictive reason for not giving up meat products (along with bacon, but not sausages) because despite considerable moral and ecological arguments for giving up meat I don't think I can - which fills me with horror . I have the ability to break down and weep or write poetry about black pudding and also chuckle as I did today when Sherri asked what it was made from. Pigs blood innit.

Along the way, I shared the Asian Poses websites for the pic above, and so I opted for the cutting edge vogue, of the puffed cheeks looks coupled with the rapidly fading Churchill V sign. You should try this shit because Asians (particularly girls) are well ahead of the game when pulling camera poses and it can rescue a bad pic or easily replace that awkward scowl that is meant to convey modesty but looks like glumness in many a random occidental snap. Here's the web site again for the afficianado.

AWE5OME - Jing Kuek

Don't we all dear! By Jing Kuek via AWE5OME

Joy Island

I've just come across the astonishingly talented Chinese Photographer Joy Island. Not bad for someone who started taking photos in 2005 is she? With creativity like this it shouldn't be too hard to breath some life into brands that all too often are sclerotic and asphyxiated with a marketing bullshit that has crushed the life, tonality, voice and ability to inspire or provoke thought, through endless quantitative measurement of the difference between idea free and idea less.

Great brands are about ideas, not about doing everything possible to avoid an idea, and we need to let let talented local Chinese creative people and artists connect at this level. Creativity doesn't come from an Apple Mac it comes from people. The brand idea that sticks out often gets hammered in, here in Asia, but with photography like this I just know that China has a brilliant future as long as the creativity is protected.

China Central Television Building (CCTV)

I took a taxi ride out to the new CCTV building over the Christmas break. They have recently connected the two main pillars in a feat of engineering that can only be truly appreciated by standing under it, walking around it and hopefully the next time I go by sneaking into it.

Architecture for me is a love affair and I've been folllowing the Dutch mastermind for the CCTV building in Beijing for a while now. His name is Rem Koolhaas and this latest project is truly the only building since the the Guggenheim in Bilbao, which I've felt has challenged and then extended my appreciation and meaning of the building form. I was close to trembling while standing under that huge overhang - but maybe that was the hangover too. Its all steel and feels like a Airbus A340 is suspended over your head. Here are the pictures from my N95 mobile phone camera that really don't do it justice.

It appears to defy general gravitational and architectural balance guidelines. I'd really like to hear what Owen Hatherley of Nasty Brutalist and Short thinks of this design. I feel that this qualifies in some respects as as good example of brutalist with other design nods and dimensions that I'd love to hear Owen's erudite (and quality socialist I might add) views.

The shot below is really pushing the zoom feature on the N95 to the max. The slightest movement shows up on the final shot but I think it starts to give a feel for all the safety netting suspended underneath the overhang as it was conjoined recently.

I couldn't help but look at all the lovely media space waiting to be made beautiful. Or at least let Beijing use it as a graffiti space. Its huge and rusting at the moment.

It needs to be walked around to appreciate all its angles.


If you look really hard. You can see the construction workers walking on a little horizontal section at the point where the sky meets the upper part of the joining section. Or put another way the other side of where the sun's glare is.


Just seeing this building means I have no choice now but to buy a decent camera. Any suggestions very much welcome. You might be able to see what I'm trying to capture. Expect more Beijing architecture. There are some amazing pieces around the city for the Olympics.

Mobile Life

Losing mobile phones is something I do so well that without wanting to come across as achieving enlightenment on a detachment level I think I’m entitled to say that for some time now each phone loss now feels as disappointing as say having a pint swiped in the pub. It happens, at least 20 times or more now. Yes it’s annoying but there’s no point beating myself up. I’m a complete loser (or champion winner) at losing stuff, and mobiles top the list.

It does feel beyond absurd though when I’ve resorted to calling my number once I get home, on the off chance I can retrieve it by negotiating with cab drivers to bring them back for a price that suits us all. Often they just switch it off once I start calling. Its me thats in negative equity, not them.

Haggling for something that belongs to the owner anyway is something everyone should try at least once in their life for the humility it fosters.

Some time back I also lost my Sony T1 camera and predictably a while later my mobile phone too. Some time late last year after all this; an amazing local Thai brand called i-mobile brought out a 5 mega pixel camera phone pretty much before anyone else so I thought I’d go for it. I lost that too eventually but not before many enjoyable attempts at experimenting with it.

Anyway, just before a trip to the middle Kingdom last week that I couldn’t Blog about because China is a bit fussy over Blogs, I unexpectedly met a cashier acquaintance at the new Boss Bar in Phrathunam, who I’d inflicted with some amateur photojournalism using the i-mobile 902 late last year. I promised to post the pictures I’d taken so here they are plus a few others (thats the girl on reception crashed out in the wee hours above, plus erm my foot ) from a phone that despite some shortcomings and an all too brief relationship was a brilliant bit of kit that makes me yearn to get back into the kind of spontaneous photography that only a mobile phone camera delivers comfortably.

The i-mobile 902 phone also had an FM radio, voice recorder, and mp3 player with speaker, blue tooth and few other features that I’ve probably forgotten about.

www.bedsupperclub.com

OK, I know Rob hates Bed Supperclub but its a great design and some mates DJ there on a Monday, plus we laugh at all the Friday and Saturday night cattle class clubbers just as much as him and usually turn up for the last hour to watch the preening set get silly on too much alcohol and questionable happy hardcore bollocks.