Album Cover - Lee Brasco “Drastic Measures”
28th April 2008 | 13:21
I’ve designed my first ever album cover for Lee Brasco’s excellent mixtape Drastic Measures. The album is a free download, the link to which you can find at its Grimepedia page. If you’re a fan of anything that involves heavy beats or sound flows I really recommend the download, especially On the Block (track 6). There’s also a really brave Sweet Dreams cover that works surprisingly well.
Winston and John the Savage Get Religous
17th April 2008 | 5:07
Winston and John the Savage were pseudonyms used in a series of features featuring myself (Winston, text bolded) and a friend (John) where we did things that could potentially get us in trouble if identified. Only two were written before I became Design Editor, though ideas for future installments included Get Homeless and Get Rich. In this, the second of our articles, we lived each day as a different religion for a week.
Beep. Beep. Beep. 7 o’clock and I definitely don’t want to wake from my ignorance. “Oh my god,” I think, for the last blasphemous time this week, “What is it with religion and dawn?” Stumbling out of bed to light the incense, I burn my hand and know that I truly am suffering. Lotus, unfeasibly adopted, I imagine myself atop a mountainous precipice, my inner Buddhist sat cross-legged and Zen, my external Self, the blizzard blowing all around. Combining the two sides of my personality is impossible; the gale won’t be contained. I txt Wnstn, ‘Noble Truth Lvl 3. My suffering has ceased.’ As I sit cross-legged, meditating with Winston at lunch, I contemplate that thinking about nothing requires a lot of concentration. I find sitting on the floor of the chaplain’s office to be surprisingly comfortable, Winston less so.
What a glorious day to wake as a Buddhist! Self-improvement no longer a distant concept, inner peace begins now! The last two years a chemical assault, and now sex is something you do with yourself. Vrrhhmm, 1 New Msg. ‘Fuck how did you get the EXP? I’m haemorrhaging lvls today, Buddha would not be proud,’ I reply, prompting a reminder about swearing. Lunch, a heavenly bacon and sausage baguette sits in front of me, uneaten. “No meat,” John says. I hand it to Fran, the vegetarian, and sip on my pint of lemonade, hardly the beer I was longing for. I’d have felt embarrassed with it and jealous without, but Buddhism didn’t subscribe to such petty emotions. Perhaps meditation was the answer? Awkwardly becoming a lotus, breathing in time, humming and chanting; “Why are we here and where are we going? Why are we here and where are we going?” Not getting anything, I turned to distract John off his mountain Zen. Too late. “I was praying for a fart,” he grins. Buddha would be proud.
Review: Apple Macbook 2.1GHz
16th April 2008 | 8:46
This review was written for a job application to Custom PC magazine.
Playing games on Apple’s newest Macbook is like taking a lap dance from the Queen. It’ll satisfy a curiosity but undoubtedly leave you emotionally desolate and financially drained. Apple has a biannual tradition of announcing they’re getting serious about gaming, usually involving the illustrious John Carmack as if his mere stage presence was proof enough that they were bringing it all home. True to form, Doom 3 was severely delayed for OS X and the Mac continued to suffer a dearth of variety.
Society’s Soulless
7th April 2008 | 6:08
Express yourself! Make a WeeMee, a Wii Mii, a Zwinky! Personalise your MySpace with trashy colour schemes and music that “defines” you. The more you put on, the sexier you are. Spray more, get more. What does your toilet say about you?
I’m sorry, but what the fuck is this? At what point in our sorry history did culture become something you bought rather than created? 1776? I’m sick of the society which defines self-expression as a combination of pre-sets and friendship as the acceptance of an e-invitation. It was as I walked home from Uni one day that it struck me; for all of society’s shallowness, the depth in which it wallows in its own vapidity is infinite. Words could never express just how vacuous and insignificant our lives have become. Worse, we try and fill our existential cavities with the stories of other, equally insignificant lives, as if the holes will overlap, magically producing meaning from shared worthlessness. Sitting outside WHSmiths eating my McSoulless, I suppress the urge to throw my burger at anyone leaving with a copy of Closer or Hello – though, if I succumbed, at least they’d have an actual problem of their own to worry and gossip about. Increasingly, via celebrity “culture” and 30-second ad slots, we’re fed our thoughts and wants; encouraged to express ourselves via mass-produced cartoon faces, ringtones, fragrances and clothes, when in reality we no longer have anything to express. You are what you eat, and we’re all regurgitating society’s capitalist faeces.
This bugs me because people aren’t genetically cultureless, yet there’s a clear divide between those who enjoy and create the Arts (rah rah) and those who read The Sun (tits hurrah). Something terrible happens in the economic trashcan that mutates innocent children into chavs and criminals, the result of familial breakdown, poor education and a Netto health that snowballs and manifests through generations. Children to whom “field trip” is a literal term, used to concrete football pitches. Disparity emerges between the faces and the faceless, until each becomes the drug for the other; mutually defining, overlapping holes. A smiling woman proudly stands next to the open boot of her car. Her family’s happy this Christmas because Asda gave her a 2 for 1 on crates of hard, legal drugs, enticing us to blow away our consciousness in a sad attempt at enjoying life in these dirty, overpopulated cities, tumours on the face of the world, interconnected via a latice of concrete veins that transport the cancerous cells, slowly killing the only mother we ever had. High streets and local radio stations; identikit logos for identikit counties. The same people in the same places, talking about the same sports in the same pubs, drinking the same beer to wash away the same lives. Talentless graffiti by pathetic punks yearning to make their mark on the world: “AJ”, “Max 06″, “Infinite”. Splintered pavement suffers the wrath of a suffocating Earth, splintered communities suffer the wrath of a suffocating populous, deprived of pride, culture and self-respect. Congratulations.
First published in the January 2007 edition of Impact
