All Mod Cons

All around us we have technology. It has always been so, since we first napped flints and sharpened sticks. Technology is nothing new. You would have to be a fool and a Communist to think otherwise: There was a day when a cutting edge was Cutting Edge.

 Technology is of it's time and your well being depends upon it whether it's pasteurisation or a dialasis machine. Some of us even have technology within us to prolong our lives so we can pay more tax, consume more stuff and last out just long enough before we are allocated a free motability scooter. Technology is expensive though and if you can't afford it, you are a 'has been' and a burden on Society. Ergo, less titanium hips are being implanted in the last few years. Why employ some expensive surgeons and theatre staff, plus ongoing aftercare when the NHS can give you a commode and show you how to shop online at Tesco? Old and new solutions. This negates any mobility issues the 'Patient' may have and saves the technology for an ill person with more spending power. This person is known as a 'Valuable Customer'. In Private Health circles - where you are guaranteed resuscitation - you are a 'Client'. Paying for technology up front has already elevated your status and human value in  the eyes of Society.

 



Computerisation and networking are 'embedded' in our lives. Everything we do is logged. Even what we buy, like, look at... where we are and who we talk to and when. Technology also tries to predict what we are thinking...Search Engines are particularly sharp at this... 'Did you mean, 'Bio Naturals?' Even Amazon and similar sites try it on... 'Hey Rob, customers who bought what you just bought also bought the complete box set of Gok Wan's, 'How To Look Good Naked.' What bullshit! Anyway, as soon as that fucking wok shows up it's going back.

'Bad Earth'. Acrylic on aluminium.

It would be a mistake to employ new technology for everything though. It has always puzzled me why toasters have an incrementally numbered knob. Toast is more of a visual thing. A colour incremented knob would be better so I always got dark brown - number 5. And why bother with numbers when only 4 and 5 work anyway? Anything below 4 is warm bread and anything over 5 is coal.

Largely though, we embrace technology and have come to rely on it as a diverse form of entertainment and it makes our lives easier. A great example is the Internet Refrigerator. I was looking at one recently. As well as ordering your food shopping online you can map the contents of your fridge on screen. The screen is on the fridge door. LG and other Internet Fridge manufacturers now have an application so you can see in your fridge without opening the door. My oven has the same functionality but with an older technology system...It's called Glass.  The sales spiel for the LG model also claims you can hold a video phone call from your fridge and it has a hard disk to download to. A phonecall on a fridge? A fridge full of pornographic videos? If you'd have told me that in the 70's I would have spat out my Space Dust. So, that's a fridge for entertainment. It has nothing designed into it to offer any refrigeration benefits over a regular fridge.

'Cataclysm'. Acrylic on aluminium.

Personally, I feel that an internet fridge is daft and superfluous. It just tells you a lot about the kind of person that owns it. That person will also passionately covet some cutting edge 70's technology... an old motorised peppermill, a corkscrew that looks like some gym equipment and most likely a lettuce centrifuge. A lettuce centrifuge is the dumbest fucking food tool ever... You burn off 30 calories, drying some lettuce that rewards you with 3 calories in return. If we prepared all food in that way we would be better off eating dandruff.

Another piece of technology that irks me is the Bluetooth Earpiece. OK...in the car, they have a function. But I don't see people using them in cars. I see them being worn in supermarkets. Why does everyone I see wearing one look over 60 with 8" of forehead and look like they evolved in the same gene pool as Jimmy Saville? They don't buy anything either because they shop online. They just go to lurk about letching... Maybe it's a secret sign senior citizens use to make it clear they are on the look out for some back door action or something. I don't know but it's just an observation I made. If you look closely, on further inspection, some of these earpieces are merely cigarette lighters superglued to the ear.

Jimmy Saville... Arsehole.

When I was a kid, all the boys read 2000AD. Well, all apart from the kid who turned up at A&E with some technology in him (motorised peppermill). He read Blue Jeans - 'Because the puzzles were better'. Anyway, 2000AD was (and still is) a visionary comic book fiction aimed at boys. The year 2000 was going to be THE year. 'Everything will have been invented by then!' It was the year it would all happen. As my mate said, 'We'll be 35, have video watches, jet packs and pubic hair.' He was more interested in the watch and the jet pack once I pointed out he was ginger but it was a vision well characterised on his part.



 As it turned out, fuck all happened of any great importance in 2000 and we had to reflect on what had been achieved in the days of 2000AD, the comic. What had been invented then, that was affordable, obtainable, ubiquitous and

enduring? St Ivel Five Pints and Odour Eaters. Well it was a start. The first trickling down of technology from the Space Age.

Sadly the jet pack never really caught on. It was never going to appeal as it randomly lauched you 60 metres in the air in two seconds with no control whatsoever, like an ejector seat without a seat or parachute. Then the fuel ran out. The most reliable way to ensure some degree of Health And Safety was to forget the air bit, lean forward 90 degrees and blast yourself through the side of a fucking ambulance.

Lastly, technology can be a dangerous thing as science isn't an exact science. A good case in point is the Large Hadron Collider...a 27 kilometre circumference particle collider at CERN in Switzerland. The particles were going to be in collision at an energy of 7 teraelectronvolts per particle (that's faster than split shit). I recall a BBC science editor interviewing the big Swiss cheese at CERN and he asked him what would happen when the collider was turned on.....

The guy replied, 'We don't know.'  Excellent. Let's not fucking turn it on then! Four years down the line the Swiss use it to make grilled cheese on toast - with the knob set to 4.75.

'Apocalypso'. Acrylic on canvas.

In the private collection of Helen and Keith Davison.

All painted images copyright Rob Kirbyson.

Semiotic Montage

All cartoons and paintings copyright Rob Kirbyson.

NOW WITH EXTRA FILLING

Elvis has just left the building... and here is your Brucie Bonus...



October 2008

If you are reading this, you are The Resistance.

This will be posted in the past on 14.10.2008.  I wasn't going to write this blog but circumstances almost demanded it. My strange story starts with a guy with a funny name with a daft idea...
This old guy called Gentill Abdulla mailed me (Google that). It was a mindfuck frankly. He had cracked Time Travel and had met me in 1986 after reading about me in 2066. He had met me in a pub in Southsea - Hampshire (The
Taswell Arms) and told me we would meet again in years to come... I had long dismissed the incident... until he contacted me. At first I was a little sceptical. I mused over his mail many times.

He knew a lot about me. He knew my Grandpa was a motorbike racing champion. He knew I had won a Kelloggs colouring competition in 1973 and that the prize was a huge pack of felt tipped pens. He knew stuff only Jonathan King would know...

Percy Kirbyson on an Indian Scout circa 1932.

Taken near Girsaeter, Hedmark Fylke, Norway.



My colouring entry. Tom and Jerry.

 

He also knew I'd been presented with a Blue Peter badge. Actually, the way I earned that badge is quite character forming. I had a huge adolescent sexual  crush on Blue Peter presenter Lesley Judd. Ironically I didn't win the badge for masturbation. No, I won it for collecting foil milk bottle tops. It was my carnal desire for Lesley that made me pursue this idle pursuit so vigourously (collecting the milk bottle tops, not the masturbation). I visualised strongly, winning a Blue Peter badge and conjoured up a Blue Skies scenario where I was laying naked next to Lesley, savouring a huge Martini Rosso and an apres shag Gitanes. I got the badge but my fantasy was not played out in real life. I was clearly not old enough for Lesley. I was gutted. It was at this point that I wished I could travel in time and return as a 16 year old... My interest in the possibilities of time travel had been ignited, albeit with the selfish goal of having a chance to have some kind of sexual congress with Lesley Judd. I attach a Polaroid taken by a stage assistant during filming. The heightened sexual tension is clearly visible between the two of us.

Nearly all the UK's kids collected foil tops for six months and sent them in to Blue Peter. They were eventually melted down into one aluminium ingot and weighed in. With the money raised, Blue Peter managed to buy a vacuum cleaner for a woman with no legs in Basingstoke. It was State - Of - The - Art and had a light in the front so you could vacuum in the dark. This filled me with a sense of redemption, following a past childhood faux pas wherein I burned an old woman's house down with a huge firework rocket I fired through her living room window. In my defence, I didn't think it would really hit her in the face from so far away. Anyway, Abdulla knew all this and more from my Biography and police records. As Abdulla says, 'Do the research.'

He maintained that some of the things  I will write in this blog are historical facts from the future that will have not happened yet. Like memories in reverse. Memories of things that happened in his past and my future. I was super curious. His words hung in my mind like a dream you can't shake since you were a kid... like the one with the mouse.

He knew I'd kept hitting on his website (it isn't built yet...it is built in 2009). It all gets confusing. He knew that I was interested in the idea of time travel and he knew that I'd written a bizarre film manuscript about it entitled 'Bean
Machine' back in 1997. I didn't realise it at the time but he knew this from reading this blog... the manuscript now exists only in my head. Paper copies and the original are long lost or died on a failed hard disk... Like I said it's either confusing or I'm just imagining it. After a few weeks.... (back soon)

I mailed him back. This in itself was problematic....he has a Starbucks email account. They take over Yahoo in 2018...  I expected nothing, Nada: Fuck all.....thinking my email would sit there for nine years... Reading this blog he picked it up within hours even though nobody had read it for seven years, it was still in Cyberspace like a piece of rusting junk on a Bulgarian server.  He said he would meet me in the Taswell Arms again at 3pm January the 7th 2012..... But he also gave me some 'evidence'...'facts'... For what it's worth, I'll divulge them here, as advised...

Norman Wisdom , Born  4.2.15 



Sadly, household names Norman Wisdom, Claire Rayner, Alexander McQueen and the great Dennis Hopper will die... Sad news if this unfolds to be true. On a more bizarre note Gentill tells me there will be a Lib Dem deputy Prime Minister in the UK, George Michael will be imprisoned and a new range of Halal Pot Noodle will substitute the existing 2008 range to boost the product after the politically inspired decision to withdraw the Seedy Sanchez and the Bombay Bad Boy. Heinz will also withdraw the Tom & Jerry pasta shapes.

In 2012, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe, Charles Manson and Jimmy Saville will die. Not all good news though... Fray Bentos go bust, White Lightning is dropped to 3% ABV, Showaddywaddy make their second studio album and  the Chinese start making pork pies. They even put pork in. Fuck's sake... The Findus French Bread Pizza is phased out in 2012 also, due to pressure from the Italians and French flexing their muscles through EU regulations. I may start investigating the food industry. It drives me to fucking distraction.



Die you bastard.


 

The future is uncertain beyond 2066.

I decided to meet Gentill Abdulla in Southsea again on Saturday as planned.... I'll keep you posted. I may be gone some time. RK

If I never return, let this site be my artistic epitaph:

www.acrylicsandoils.com

As we say in the heady world of Cryonics / Cryogenics: 'Stay frosty.'

Musos: Part One

Musicians (Musos) are a talented lot it has to be said. They are more talented than people who do not play an instrument. Or are they? Last time I caught a bit of the Royal Phil Harmornic, there were a few chancers in there doing next to fuck all. One guy just whacked some Cymbals together and they also had a Trombone section. 
Trombones...Get a grip. Anyone can play a Trombone. It ain't complicated. I bought the cat a Trombone and it sold it on Ebay to get an Oboe. More of a challenge apparently. There are no Trombone lessons. The methodology is there right in front of you. You slide the front bit in and out and the low notes are the furthest away. In fact a Trombone is basically a long Bugle with a moving bit. Skill wise, it's less taxing than smoking a frigging bong... you don't inhale, there's less hand / eye coordination and you don't need a lighter. If you would like a musical analogy, it requires only 2000 more brain cells than a Vuvuzela.

Maybe we can tell a lot about a Muso by their choice of instrument. What does a person go through before they wake up one morning and decide they will buy a Mandolin? Why a Mandolin as opposed to a more masculine, complicated, manageable instrument? Why play an instrument that is difficult to see? From fifty feet away a Mandolin player looks like they are loosening up a chicken for all the wrong reasons... Subconciously, why has that person opted for an instrument that looks and sounds feeble and irritating? Is it because they genuinely like the shitty high octave girly twanging noise, or is it because they saw Paul McCartney play one once? By way of advice, never play an instrument that cannot be readily used as a weapon to escape a venue where a riot  breaks out. Take it from me, in a mosh, a Mandolin is a One Shot device. After the first guy's face, a Mandolin becomes as effective as a stale baguette.

Obviously, Mandolin's grip my shit...I have a pathological hatred of them... This got me thinking...Everyone has a tolerance level for various musical instruments, so when averaged out there must be a top ten of irritating instruments. In the next posting I will publish an exhaustively researched top ten of hated instruments. Please feel free to Comment and flesh this out...What instruments do you hate?

 Some instruments are universally disliked. The Ukelele for instance. If George Formby walked on at Glastonbury, he would be bottled off. Sadly - a sign of our times -  some would probably contain piss. Unusually, most small instruments have this effect on people... To put it simply, small instruments are easier to play and make you look like you are fannying around. I mean look at the Bass Guitar...Cool.... yet it's as easy to play as a Mandolin - four strings. Size matters with instruments. It's about ability, credibility  and a subtext of sexual prowess. What does a Balalaika say about someone? It says, 'I have sex with fruit.' 

Some Balalaika action.



Some instruments are so irritating that they fuel aggression. If you ever attend a Folk Night in a pub where a Banjo player is present, you don't have to wait too long before you hear the sentence, 'He's going to get that round his fucking head in a minute...' You can't win with a Banjo. The better you play it, the more you are disliked. This is logical to a Muso... The better you are on a Banjo, the more of your life you have wasted. You have chosen the Banjo and dedicated your life to it when you could have chosen something else. Anything else except the Accordian, which is too French.  Even among musicians there is factionalism and prejudice. Any priest will tell you that a sentence he often hears at the end of someone's life is, 'Is that you Geoffrey?...I wish I'd played less Banjo, Father.'

James Hetfield - Metallica.



Whatever the instrument, all Musos go on about Tone and Sustain. They are the Holy Grail. It's the esoteric language that seperates Musos from non Musos. Especially Guitarists. No Musos are more anal and obsessive than

Guitarists... They can smell different woods... They know the best alloy for fretwire...They know the optimum depth for lacquer and the sonic trade off of neck joints... This is justified.  As we all readily accept, Guitars are the king of instruments. That's just a fact. The guitar is the only instrument you can play and have a pair of knickers land on your face. Guitar is the only instrument that has the word Hero after it. How many times have you seen a Cellist with a cigarette clenched between their teeth? Have you ever heard someone play a Violin lick? Is there a console game called Sitar Hero? You see my point... Guitars are the dog's bollocks.

Guitarists even die better than other Musos. How often do you see the headline: Flautist Chokes To Death On Vomit... Bassoon Hero Diced In Powerboat Horror..... Tuba Player Asphyxiated In Motel Wanking Gaff ... Cornet Legend Loses Head In Shotgun Prank... Pink Oboe Virtuoso Found Dead In Barrymore's Pool... To a Guitarist these are routine ways of shuffling from this mortal coil. It's Heroic. It's natural causes...

Paul Simonon - The Clash.

(London Calling CBS)

Cartoons copyright Rob Kirbyson.

Stay tuned for more Rock and Roll....

http://www.acrylicsandoils.com/