The appeal of Twishite

I’m just going to come out and say it: I think I like the Twilight movie series.

I’ll just let that one sink in for a few seconds, before I embark on a long list of qualifications that I hope are going to make that statement even remotely acceptable. Feeling OK? Not planning to start leafing through the phone books of every region in the UK, desperately searching through the thousands of people with my surname so you can just come and slit my wretched throat? … good. Reasons to stave off lighting those torches below the cut.

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aerogare asked: If you'd have a director make a film about your life, which one would you pick?

Duncan Jones, director of last year’s sleeper hit Moon. This might not sound like an obvious choice - sure, the film was awesome (and by fucking hell it was awesome) but how can I take sci-fi stylings and apply them to a film about my life?

Put simply, when I watched Moon I felt as if the walls of the cinema were just barriers to the world of the film - instead of there being the noisy environment of a multiplex out there, instead there was the Sarang moon base, and beyond that the moon itself. The fact that I instantly felt that immersed and involved, even with the stylised way in which the film was made, is a massive achievement, and that’s why it feels appropriate - if I can feel immersed in his directing style, then there’s obviously some sort of correlation.

If you’re interested to find out what he’s doing next, it’s a film called Source Code, and it sounds like Groundhog Day on steroids - Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soldier in a governmental program that forces him to experience the same train bombing over and over again, in the hope that he’ll uncover who did it and what they’re planning next. Batshit? Course it is.

Studying studies

If you’ve ever been at a university with even a degree of flexibility, you’ll probably have reached a point where you’ve got to choose from a list of modules. It might happen in your second or third year, even occasionally the first. And it’s exciting, to a point - all those possibilities, laid out in front of you. It’s also a pain in the bum.

You may or may not know that I’m studying English and Philosophy. It’s a course that’s equally split, but not equally organised, and because of that it’s hopelessly complex at this point. English modules are forty credits, meaning that their study requires an entire dedicated term. Philosophy modules are twenty credits, but because you have to have forty credits per term you end up studying two in tandem. This is all well and good, so far.

The other slightly bizarre setup of the English/Philosophy course is that the tripartite structure - Terms 1-2, then Terms 3-5, then 6-8 are how it’s split in terms of levels - is completely different to any other course that York teaches. Well, almost any course. Again, this is all fine, until you get a breakdown of communication between departments. Term 6 (so that’s Summer next year) is technically part of Level Three, so the English department haven’t yet started throwing module choices at us for it. But the Philosophy department, usually operating in a completely different manner, has.

This, of course, makes things plain painful. I’m thrown into a dilemma. What if I choose a Philosophy module now, only to find that it ruins my chances of getting onto my favourite English module later on? Alternatively, I could just leave it, and end up being left with something shit, like the Life and Times of Mary Shelley (most hated author; not a real course).

That said, there’s some stuff I’m definitely committing to. In keeping with my aim to stay as modern as possible (I get bored of historical literature, because I get bored of history), I’m going to move on to British and Irish Literature, 1910 to the Present in Autumn, and then in the spring of 2011 I’m going to be studying Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, a book all about consciousness and how perception links into the body (or something like that) and a module called Free Will and Moral Responsibility, about… um, free will and moral responsibility. That bit’s fairly straightforward, and it looks interesting and engaging enough to tide me over.

I just wish that the departments in what’s supposedly the ninth best university in the country would actually talk to each other occasionally.

(I’m aware this is a bit of a rant - I’m suffering serious creative drought here.)

Finally, shorter page URLs. Now all we need to do is solve world hunger, and we’re done.

Yes, of course it’s nerdy. It’s also more intuitive: the three main pages of this site now have easy-to-remember addresses.

Try these out for size:

Writing: http://chrisjfraser.com/writing

Contact: http://chrisjfraser.com/contact

My book: http://chrisjfraser.com/book

Neat, huh?

Son of Dave is live online tonight

Like music? Like harmonicas? Beatboxing? Strange men in hats? Blues crooning that feels so out of place it ends up feeling right? Then you’ll love this.

21st century bluesman Son of Dave is doing a live gig tonight, and the wonderful people over at the Camden Roundhouse (no, they’re not paying me to say that, more’s the pity) are streaming the gig live. Shortly afterwards, there’ll be an edited highlights version of the gig up online, and I’ll repost that when I get round to it.

Here’s the link to the stream. It’ll update at 9pm GMT (4pm Eastern/3pm Central), and kick off then. Look forward to it - it’s gonna be great.

thisgrimfandango asked: If you have a lot of spare time, you should totally make me a Grim Fandango-themed layout for my tumblr. :D

Can’t promise a full theme, but I could probably mess around with a few mods… I’ll get back to you :D