11°C

This holiday(and every single day of my life) I am thankful for both my blood and adopted families, who give me the strength and motivation to go on. I couldn't imagine a life without you all, and I am so happy for the home we've built together in London. Good times keep coming xoxo

XMAS 2011

                  

XMAS 2011

Buy me a Himalayan cat and I will love you for ever, for reals.

Unicorn Power

Been dying for some good weather the last couple of weeks so today is an absolute godsend. The sky is a proper shade of blue, the temperature is somewhere above 10° Celsius... and I'm about to eat some tasty steak sandwiches for lunch!! (At Lantana which is literally opposite my flat. We're lazy people.)

Also these mock over the knee sock-ings are amazing because I never have to worry about slipping socks again. For a mere 8 pounds it saves me a lot of mental energy, which I can now channel into my essay and other awesome stuff. Rock on

Sex and Death

 

Storm Queen - It Goes On (Vox) by PhilippoM

Are you an obsession

Or are you just my life

Answer me this question

Will I feel this way forever

Joy 2 The World

Pic via Sarah + Rough Trade Record's holiday photobooth!!

Boozing and cruising through the holiday season like never before!!

Self-Knowledge

 

Pinback- Good to Sea by MissLadyfinger

xoxo

1. Free will is AN ILLUSION A METAPHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY!! If you really had free will you'd be able to go back and forth in time, live parallel lives, erase mistakes and basically do whatever the fuck you want. Unfortunately humans are subject to their natures and circumstances. Of course we are able to make some choices out of that but we are desperately limited in both our capacities and the possibilities the world is willing to offer to us. We don't really have a choice except to make do. There is of course, paradoxically, some empowerment to be found in a clearer understanding of our helplessness.

2. Beliefs are not equatable to knowledge!! Yes, we can only know what we believe. However, you're free to believe what you might not know i.e. what you cannot find justification for. The phenomenology of belief is separate from that which makes knowledge (some kind of epistemic justification like reasoning, inference or observation). Maybe that'll give you some basis for belief, but is it necessary or sufficient? NO. Where exactly do we find the basis for belief? Epistemic and psychological immediacy. No time to explain that now but I think what this means is this: the only way to change your mind isn't to talk yourself out of your beliefs, but to game your brain out of it!

God, I'm restless. After I hand in my essay on Monday I am going to drink myself to death.

The Uncanny

Sorry to disappoint but I have not actually died, just spending a helluva fun time with my favourite German buddies, Siggy Freud and Hans Bellmer who are officially freaking me out. Just a peek at what I'm writing about and because I think I need to share my pain with the world:

Hans Bellmer, Le Jeux de Poupée, 1949

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh why oh why I love this class but I hate myself now

Smoke and Mirrors

2 weeks to Christmas Break!!!!

Excited about:
1. Snow - even just a powder layer would make me happy
2. All the homies in the UK/EU centralizing in London
3. Christmas dinner
4. My London to-eat list
5. Bro-time in Spain
6. Daytime drinking
7. Finally seeing Gerhard Richter at the Tate Modern

21 Incredible Years

Best day ever:

0. Fabric & good times

1. Waking up to a ceiling of balloons

2. Burgers for lunch

3. Steaks for dinner!!! (Hawksmoor's mind-blowing Chateaubriand)

4. Stupidly good times with buddies
5. Cake!!!

Mad love for my awesome friends they are the best people in the world, they keep me going and they fill my heart with so much LOVE. I must always remember how stupidly lucky I am and be grateful for the wonderful life I have known.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

- Percy B. Shelley

I love this poem so much.

Being unwell has forced new awareness of my self-determination - getting out of bed in time for class feels like a small miracle considering what an absolutely shite state my body is in. It's enough to make me ditch all (chocolates, cold drinks, cigarettes etc) so that I'll be good and ready to eat my heart out this weekend - burgers(Lucky Chip/Meat Liquor), bloody steaks and beef drippings chips. MEAT.

Uncanny Valley

Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, a human observer's emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.


Wikipedia

HIGH MAINTENANCE LIFE

Today marks a new wave of productivity that will last me until Christmas break!! Although I am such a lazy bum I managed to get a few things done this weekend:

1. Picked up photographs
2. Hung out with my almost-gay BFF + other cool people in Manchester
3. Discovered the trashiest nightclub in London
4. Broke in 2 new dresses ~
5. Doubled my wardrobe space (my room is always a work in progress)
6. Killed a small forest somewhere by printing 300 sheets of readings for the next 3 weeks
7. Read some studies on self-knowledge
8. Cooked something more complicated than truffled grilled cheese sandwiches for the first time in a looong time (baby steps back to functionality)
9. Watched the Science of Sleep which is so so so amazing Michel Gondry is beyond brilliant

This week I really need to get my body clock back on track with the real world God Help Me

 

  Mars (Jack Beats Mix) by thinkingofme

BTW Jack Beats!!! is playing Fabriclive this Friday. Sick. I can only think of one person who would be excited but too bad you're not in London.

NYC #5: Wonder Walls

Love is just a dream you wake up from eventually

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

- Sigmund Freud 

What does it mean to dream, anyway? Sometimes I wish I had a brain scanner so that I could look my dreams over without the distortion of lucid remembering. Winter hibernation drives all my mental energy into my sleeping self and I've been dreaming about the strangest situations and people and things. The most alarming fact is that when I wake up I know that the experience has changed my beliefs in a way that feels almost involuntary, which I can't decipher for myself.

I Wanna Be Your Man

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met.
-- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

NEVER SETTLE FOR LESS AND YOU'LL ALWAYS HAVE THE BEST

Bodily Awareness

 

  The Knux - She's So Up (Rebecca & Fiona remix) by Rebecca & Fiona

This week for the purposes of seeking gainful employment I am going to be a GOD and after that I will face all my mortal emotions and sink into hell/depression/hibernation.

NYC #4: MOMA PS1 9/11

Really loved MOMA PS1 I wish there were more museums like that. Saw Roger Hiorn's atomized jet engine at their 9/11-themed exhibition and it just made me wonder.. how does one transport something like that??

NYC #3: Random Snaps

What a amazingly coherent set of pix

1, 2. James Turrell: Meeting, Moma PS1. Incredible site-specific installation, literally breathtaking.

3. Shake Shack + Madison Square Gardens = Best burger experience known to man

4. Classic Park Cheese - Soho Park (better than o.k.)

5. Best fucking sandwich in the world - Luke's Lobster

6. Saw this in the Museum of Arts and Design's jewelry exhibition... Great way to accessorize with cigs

If you wanna read more about the food go check out the NYC page here! 

Love Will Tear Us Apart Again

Today I got two packages in the mail - one was a Radiohead t-shirt I ordered for him, and another one was an American Apparel sweatshirt which he has, in my size.

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Took a couple of photos at the Royal Observatory on Saturday. The green laser line indicates the Prime Meredian which is pretty cool. Greenwich is so pretty and spacious I wish the weather wasn't so grey and sad all the time now :(

On Aura Tout Vu

Watch the video in fullscreen... Even in crappy internet resolution the drop still makes my stomach drop. One day I will ride this rollercoaster for real.


Reading week was underwhelming, I really prefer going to class and dealing with the day to day readings and work. The best thing was having my dad around and visiting my cousin... Family is the best thing in the world, even though capitalism has supposedly caused the disintegration of familial relations. Reading Marx is really the most uplifting yet depressing academic experience I have had in a long, long long time. 


Also, I ate at Nizuni 3 times this week, so I think our relationship is getting quite serious. It started out as a convenient affair (literally 2 minutes from my flat) but the service is so endearing and the food is so good I really can't be bothered to go anywhere else. 

Sake Don

LOOK AT THAT BEAUTY. I almost burst into tears when the waitress brought this to our table. For around £10, you get: 

• deceptively large serving of rice
• a veritable Bitchload (12 pieces?!) x salmon sashimi 
• 1 x  good load of roe
• 1 x pickled ginger, wasabi 
• 1 x tasty salad (i need to know what dressing is this, it's so #@^%$@ tasty)
• 3 x hunks of tamago (why?? why not??)
• 1 croquette (again, why?? but seriously, i don't care)
• 1 x quail egg (when was the last time I ate a quail egg???)

And all this time I had been living with plain salmon+roe+rice Sake Don... God just look at the picture, the composition is so perfect!


*** Alright this is by no means an objective review, I just love this place so much and it is really, heads and shoulders above the many Japanese restaurants in Soho/Fitzoria so if you want to get in on the awesomeness, head there asap >>


Nizuni 
22 Charlotte Street
Fitzrovia
London, W1T 2NB
Tel: 020 7580 7447
http://www.nizuni.com/


Even the website is adorably quaint and super Asian~

Growing up

I love having them around, but being with my parents in London always feels a bit strange. I wish I could be excellent and successful and happy, show them that all the pain, money and distance was worth it. But somehow it's always the guilt and helplessness that rises to the surface. 

310509

Having experienced for myself the self-fulfilling properties of my beliefs
I systematically reject everything that points to failure.

Great Story

"In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!"

- Woody Allen (seen on http://jesoutiensque.tumblr.com/)

Peace & Love Paris

So I was in Paris over the weekend for Pitchfork, for the fourth time in my life. Weirdly enough I don't even like Paris that much but it's always a convenient and comforting place to visit. Every time I go to Paris I do the exact same things:

1. Spend at least an hour sunbathing around the fountains in Jardin de Tuileries
2. Visit Rue Saint-Honoré
3. Consume unhealthy numbers of croissants

Eating is a big part of Paris for me... I don't love the city half as much as its restaurants. Paris still isn't that great a place for eating, but I've visited a ton of great restaurants in Paris. I love love love these in particular: Les Cocottes de Constant, Le Fumoir (sunday brunch) and newest discovery Derrière. 


Anyway straight to photos!!!

NYC #2: Coney Island

 

Sorry New York but your aquarium really sucks! The best thing about Coney Island was the Cyclone... the part where Bong almost lost his glasses. I have never been so afraid on a rollercoaster in my life, not because it's scary but because it was just so rickety and violent I thought we might get derailed and shoot straight out into the sea... 

Anyway Happy Halloween!!! I missed out on all the parties because I was in Paris catching the Pitchfork Festival Paris... worth it? For Aphex Twin(omg), Lykke Li, Bon Iver, Wild Beasts, etc etc I'd say hell yeah. Pics soon :)