Yearly archives: 2007

A request from the Spinneyhead removals service

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Next time someone we know moves, can they make sure their new place is on the ground floor.

Hey rainmaker, come away from that man

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He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you
He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you
You’re twistin’ my melon man, you know you talk so hip man
You’re twistin’ my melon man

Hey rainmaker, come away from that man
You know he’s gonna take away your promised land
Hey good lady he just wants what you got you know
He’ll never stop until he’s taken the lot
(Hey Hey he hey hey)

Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re a man
Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re the man
You’re a man

You’re twistin’ my melon man, you speak so hip

Hey rainmaker he got golden plans I tell you
You’ll make a stranger in your own land
Hey good lady he’s got God on his side he got a double
Tongue you never think he would lie

(Oh he lied, oooh he’s twistin’ my melon man
(Oh he lied, oooh he’s twistin’ my melon man)

Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re a man
Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re the man
You’re the man

He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you
He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you

Hey rainmaker, come away from that man
You know he’s gonna take away your promised land
Hey good lady he’s got God on his side he got a double
Tongue you never think he would lie

Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re a man
Gonna stamp out your fire, he can change your desire
Don’t you know he can make you forget you’re the man
You’re the man

You’re twistin’ my melon man, you know you talk so hip man
You’re twistin’ my melon man
(Hey Hey he hey hey)

He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you again
He’s gonna step on you again, he’s gonna step on you again

Happy Mondays – Step On

The Twang

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The Twang, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

I’m still not 100% convinced by The Twang. They get it right more often than I want to punch the singer.

Stop the buses

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Stop the buses, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

Piccadilly bus station, and the shops beside it, has been cordoned off. The nearest vehicle in this picture said Collision Reconstruction Unit on the side, so I’m guessing a bus crash.

Update An elderly woman was hit and killed by a 142 Magic Bus.

How to draw boobs

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Pinup artist Max Riffner on how to do justice to natual breasts.

I say these things because in order to draw them and make them look nice, you need to understand what they are. Drawing them in some objectified manner is really unacceptable. It will make your drawing end up looking foolish and trite, not to mention making you look like a thirteen year old who has never even touched a breast in their life. In fact that brings up a good point: go touch some breasts.

Ladies?

via Fleshbot

Wacom Cintiq 12WX Interactive Pen Display

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I love my little graphics tablet, which makes drawing on screen so much easier than using a mouse. But it’s still not a perfect replacement for the experience of dragging a line across paper, or- in my current comics project- tracing paper. Which is where the Wacom Cintiq comes in, if you’re rich enough. Full size Cintiqs go for over £2,000. You’d have to be a mad keen amateur or a professional to splash out on one of those. So, to get (slightly) poorer people hooked, Wacom have introduced the Cintiq 12WX Interactive Pen Display. Amazon has them fot £839. Needless to say, I’m adding one to my wish list.

An Embuggerance

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An open letter from Terry Pratchett to all his fans-

Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I
expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o)

Terry Pratchett

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell.
I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

Terry Pratchett strikes me as the sort of person who’ll find creative ways to fight Alzheimers. I’m optimistic that we’ll see a few more books from him yet.

Evolution's revolution

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Human evolution is happening at a greatly increased rate. Far from stopping evolving now that so many diseases have been conquered and we’re living longer the new conditions we’re creating are accelerating changes.

I’m reading Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution, a book that puts forward this very argument with sections on the development of defences against malaria and how even mundane things such as job satisfaction can affect reproductive effectiveness. Fascinating stuff.

Pretending to play

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Pretending to play, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

Annamarie and Nathan practicing their pretend racing game skills prior to filming. I’ll post a report from the set later. For now I have to clear stuff off my hard drive so I can transfer all the footage.

They say you can never go home

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I’ve got a load of emails archived from when I was working at The Gas (it’s possible I’m not supposed to). I just went and dug out one I remembered writing. It’s dated 11/07/2001-

I went back to my birthplace last night. It was a simple enough journey made epic by having to escape from Cardiff’s one way system.

As an example of just how messed up the one way system is-

I’ve been staying in the Ibis. To get to the Ibis from the office, you turn right, walk a hundred yards, cross the road and then walk another hundred yards and there you are. To get to the Ibis by car from the carpark next to the office required two full circuits of the one way system, at least two miles of travelling. (Okay, the second circuit was my own fault, but only because it seemed logical to follow the Car Park sign which lead me not to a space but right round the back of the hotel and back onto the one way!)

I got lucky and only made one and a half circuits of the system before finding a road which promised to take me to the M4. The road, however, took me through what could politely be described as the backside of Cardiff. Industrial and Post Industrial wasteland as far as the eye cared to see.

When I got onto the M4 it was matter of only twenty minutes driving until I reached Bridgend, which was dead.

It’s one of those horrendous small towns which sprang up to house the workers of some heavy industry and is now on the decline, serving only as a commuter town. There was more acreage dedicated to the roundabouts which got you out of town than to shopping space in the centre. I found a hospital, but the name (Princess of Wales) suggested that it wasn’t the one where I was born. It’s probably been knocked down, so one day some unfortunate family is going to have a blue plaque (“Famous [insert criminal activity or worrying habit here] Ian Pattinson was born here on…..”) attached to the side of their lego brick housing development home.

They say you can never go home. In the case of Bridgend, that’s a good thing.