Posts filed under "lifestyle"
That’s what I want to be surrounded by right now. Creative brains drawing, sculpting, moulding, painting, etching whatever. Over the years I have definitely understood that your enthusiasm and energy is boosted by those around you. You gravitate to people with positive energy because they make you want to actually get on with life as well. Your surroundings play such an incredible part in this.
For years I have been lamenting the fact that I’ve not been able to get creative with my art. I’ve not been able to nurture the graphic novel that I’ve been writing for nigh on 5 years now. The truth the story is all the better for this incubation time because although the idea was sound (the very basic idea) the execution was lacking.
Yesterday I went and saw a collection of student movies (this isn’t a review of the work that was presented, but more of an observation, when you have no budget, the story has to work cleverly within these constraints - which i don’t feel was captured). The one thing i took from the evening however was the collection of minds in the room and how they all fed off each other.
So I’ve decided (and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier) to try and find a studio to share with a bunch of artists. Now if it was up to me I’d round up the crazy Danes, maybe a couple of Americans get a big warehouse in London on the waterfront and have us create awesome stuff, pushing each other creatively…something which clearly cannot happen.
I’ll be sure to post the results of my research in my hunt for a design studio to get creative in.
The Cult of Done Manifesto - Brilliant in every way. I also like the posters, which are under a creative commons license, so I might write a quick post of which printers to use to make posters out of these.
London’s Liverpool Street Station Dance - As guerilla advertising goes this one is definitely one of the best ones I’ve seen in a while.
http://www.brokenkode.com/londons-liverpool-street-station-dance
5 years ago today, I sat in my room and decided to start blogging, and what an amazing 5 years it’s been - here’s to many more years of online presence.
The above photo Deadlock by David Maitland is without a doubt the best of all the photos in the Wildlife Photography of the Year 2008. I only wish they’d put it in the prints on demand from the shop.
Where the hell did a year go? The general consensus I’ve established from people close to me and others not so close to me is that this year has been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether I would consider it a classic year or one to put to bed and try and forget as soon as humanly possible.
Work
2008 started on a bit of a high professionally. I was coming off my largest project (and probably my favourite project) but the future looked equally fun and challenging. What I considered a complete dream team of engineers started work on a pretty prestigious project in early January. Unfortunately the project didn’t continue. As they say when one door closes another opens. I had my fair share of these this year. One lead me to Dubai, another lead me to Abu Dhabi, others kept me in London.
Ultimately however my absolute biggest achievement was finally getting chartered (which funnily enough had a lot to do with that project at the start of the year). The whole process took me around 8 months to get done and another 2 months to get a certificate from the Engineering Council. So a tip to all your prospective chartered engineers out there, it takes the better part of at least half a year to get this stuff sorted out.
Inbetween all of this I was able to actually continue teaching (and learning from) the younger generation of engineer working up through the ranks, which is something I’ve always enjoyed, especially with those that I can see the changes happen.
Pop Culture
The year can only be described as the year of the 1hour drama, or more accurately, it is the year I discovered HBO and everything was right with the world. For the first time in a really long while, I can probably count the number of movies I was genuinely excited about watching in the Cinema. Obviously the ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Iron Man’ come high on this list, but in addition you had a Lebanese movie ‘Caramel’ and the excellent ‘Persepolis’. I found ‘Juno’ incredibly well put together and enjoyed it immensely. In terms of anime, there really wasn’t much new going on for me to get excited about. And of course my surprise movie of the year, SuperBad. It should be just that, super shit, but it ended up being extremely good fun to watch. The only anime movie I watched this year was ‘Origin’, but that movie doesn’t come close to ‘Paprika’ from last year.
However what I wasn’t ready for was this attack of truly inspired 1hour dramas from HBO. To kick it all off I started watching ‘The Wire’ The problem with starting on ths series is that everything else doesn’t come close to it’s perfection, it’s character development and it’s overall 5 year story. I could go on and on about the Wire but it would take too long. Shortly after that I followed it with ‘The Sopranos’. Now this was a series that I had started watching when it first came out, but the Greek television networks fucked it up and I lost interest. Finished this series as well and while most got annoyed by the ending, i thought it was masterful.
Following on from ‘The Sopranos’ was ‘Entourage’ and ‘Oz’. I’d never seen any of these series before, and they all blew me completely away.
The writer’s strike did one thing, and that’s give me the chance to actually discover previous gems from HBO. In my search to fill the void that Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Prison Break, Heroes had left I discovered the best television series ever made.
Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, only a couple of weeks to go before the start of the new series, and that is something I’m seriously looking forward to for the start of 2009…thankfully not a moment too soon, because I think I’ve run out of good HBO series to watch.
Sports
This year saw me quit basketball. This was a tough decision to make and I actually went back in September only to remember the reason why I quit in the first place. It’s about the people now not only the sport. I have to make a great deal of effort to play (compared to Greece or Uni) and the problem is I can’t bring myself to keep going in week after week for a sloppy game with stupid egos and arguments. Maybe (like a Phoenix) I’ll grab some games this year, but I’m not very hopeful.
Family
I was meant to go down to Lebanon for my cousin’s wedding. However due to complications with the groom’s health the timing never came about and I didn’t end up going, which is a shame. However in a weird way I was able to see several of my cousins that i hadn’t seen in years (some bordering on 10 years). I also lost a grandfather figure in my life and my grandmother suffered from a stroke. Thankfully I didn’t have too many health issues, except my ongoing saga with my teeth, which I should be sorting out in the new year when I get my wisdom teeth taken out.
Internet
Without a doubt this has been the worst year for the ‘Kode. For some reason I couldn’t get around sorting out a design for the bloody place and that had a serious effect on the place in general. I had a huge amount of work done on Habari in the opening months of this year, and then I moved on to other things as I continued work on the ‘script’ (more on that in a while). I don’t intend to increase my exposure on the net, but rather i intend to consolidate all my efforts for the past 5 years. I want to make sure
Artwork - Sadly this was probably the one area of my life that really took a serious hit this year. I don’t actually know if I actually got around to drawing anything significant in 2008. A couple of sketches here and there, but nothing of any significance - easily the most disappointing aspect of the year for me. Here’s hoping 2009 can be completely different.
Story
There is a threshold. For me to write anything, I really need to disassociate myself completely from my daily life for me to create. My brain just cannot handle the onslaught of information. I need to time. This year I had the opportunity to do this in Greece a couple of times, however the first script is not done yet but at least some decent progress has been made from the year before and the general building blocks are apparent.
So was it a classic year? From a creative, productive pov, no it wasn’t. This was the year that I burnt out, or at least felt like I was close to burning out. I think I achieved some goals professionally that I’ve been working towards for the past 6 years, which I feel great about, and getting citizenship will change my life completely.
I view 2009 as a year for regrouping and a year for consolidating my thoughts, efforts and creativity into one goal, and I view it as a year for focus.
The 2008 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion houses the first structure by Frank Gehry in England (engineering by Arup). Highly recommended if you’re in and around London until the 19th of October.
My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.
This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.
In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.
I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).
My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.
See those last 4 letters at the end? Yeah got my confirmation from the IET that my application was accepted for Chartered Engineering status. Those 4 letters are the culmination of 29 years (shy of 1 month) of both studying and working as an engineer.
It’s difficult to describe exactly what it all means consicely unless you’re part of the industry to understand what is expected of you and what you expect of other people that hold that same title, but needless to say I’m seriously happy about it and was one of my two goals that I had to achieve this year. This is partly one of the reasons why I’ve taken a step back from my various online endeavours to persue other things that have/had been put on hold for sometimes years.
Now it’s time to start working for that other thing (hopefully I will be able to talk about that in November sometime).
Oh my that is a first. First time in 5 years of blogging that I don’t actually say anything for an entire month. I’ve been busy…if you’ve seen me in the office, you’ll attest to this fact. Thankfully it’s not been just work, as that would make Khaled a pretty dull boy all around….which I hope never to become.
Life has taken over, so much so that my online activities have been curbed to an absolute minimum. So much so that I even got rid of my Blackberry today. I was THIS close to waiting till next week for the new iphone. What made me stop? The reason is pretty simple actually, I’m trying to step away from this constantly connected all the time fashion. It wasn’t doing my psychology much good and I really felt wired all the time, which was a bit much for my sensibilities. There is something called too much information.
Does this mean I’m going to be back online anytime soon? Nah, probably not. I’ve got more important things to do right now. My focus is shifting and I’m actually really ok with that. The main reason for moving offline is to try and concentrate on the script, which has been going slowly but actually very well.
One thing I will say about creating a story, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult to create something cohersive. So much so that I have an even greater appreciation for those people that can come through with their vision and create something that truly is beautiful to behold. I will have some sketches online sometime soon because it’s the story is part of the reason for this haitus. I’m becoming 29 this year and I will have the fucking thing done before that birthday, so that I can actually have a chance of drawing it before I’m 30. Tall order I know, but alas strive for the hard otherwise what’s the point?
I’ve been looking for a good messenger bag for a really, really long time, but there is such a massive gap in the market for men’s bags it’s unreal. Now I think I’ve found something that I would really actually enjoy, this reproduction is pretty damn sweet - now all I need to do is steal $800 for somewhere :).
Found this pretty cool calculator at the WWF site. I’m acting like I need 2.1 Earths to support us, you?
Probably been around for a while, but I’ve never actually used the damn thing, to actually see how ‘green’ I am. The honest truth is I think I’m moderately green, in that I do the bare minimum. I recycle (things that the Council of Barnet will allow me to recycle), never use the tumble dryer, don’t have a car or any other personal means of transport, will walk to many places rather than jump on the bus or whatever.
I’m not very good with plastic bags, which is something I’m going to try and work on. I’d like to be able to get stuff that doesn’t have tonnes of plastic involved, however the reality of the situation is that just about anything I buy from a supermarket is probably covered in plastic, so unless I actually start to complain to the supermarkets to change their packaging there’s little I can do about that.
The thing is that plastics should be fully recyclable as well. I should be able to buy something and do it the Japanese way by making only food stuffs go down the waste disposal and have my paper, plastics, glass and aluminium all taken separately.
So I woke up this morning and it honestly felt like 10-15 bed-trolls hijacked by body while I slept and preceeded to beat me with the blunt edge of a feather. Every bone in my body was on fire and my head was about to explode. Of course this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, but luckily I actually hauled myself out of bed ready to tackle the day…kind of. Of course what I hadn’t counted on was forgetting my ipod shuffle, until I got to the tube station.
Now this tiny little bit of kit is like an extension of my morning routine. I NEVER leave the house without it. It’s like going out of the house without my keys, wallet, phone and shuffle. Like my day wasn’t going to be hard enough, I had no tunes to pull me through the graveyard shift (post-lunch). What can i say I’m mediterranean, I need a siesta after lunch. trust me I’ve complained several times to get siesta couches, but alas it falls on deaf ears.
This got me thinking to things I’m generally dependant on and that constitute as habits bad or good. My realisation is that I’m a very methodic person, in fact so much so that if the police were tailing me I’d be caught on the second day.
So went to Jongleurs yesterday for part of Reid’s stag-do and I’ve got to say that apart from the compare (is that how you spell compare?) and the last act, the other three were mediocre to bad. The first comedian to come on stage, was mildly amusing but crude as you like, the second guy got confused and decided to do something singing but would mumble his lines when he spoke and didn’t come out very well, by the time the third guy came out we were hoping for someone funny, alas we got death on stage. I’ve never seen that before to be honest. The guy was dying on stage as NOTHING he was saying was striking a real cord with anyone. Also as it happened our table was the lairiest of the bunch (get 15 guys on a stag-do will do that) and having most of his material come off as completely ignorant (there is funny and then there is just plan wrong,…since when were people from Sudan, Asian?).
Thankfully the last guy did save the show slightly and had like 100 or so jokes that he kept rattling on and did a very good job of keeping everyone under control. Which basically made me think about standup comedy in general. The first of which is the fact that it is EXTREMELY difficult to do properly (I knew that was the case, but until I witnessed someone really die on stage I wasn’t clear as to the real extent).
The thing is I’ve been listening to the AWESOME Bugle podcast, which is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a really long time. Different format admittedly, however the point still stands that new comedic talents do exist however sadly they were not at Jongleurs last night (and based on that I’ll probably steer clear of the place and look for my standup fix in other establishments).
Part of my ‘live a little once a month’, yesterday was Jose Gonzalez live at Shepherd’s Bush. I’ve got to say that I really loved the concert. His voice seriously resonated perfectly in the venue and the atmosphere in there was generally really warm and receptive. There was a completely crazy screamer in the background that was pretty funny (even made Jose stop for a little while and smile just before he was about to play ‘Heartbeats’).
Obviously no gig would be complete with the obligatory annoying assholes that somehow seem to gravitate towards me and mine with some bullshit or other. In this particular case it was this couple; now I’m not a man that condones this type of thing, but if for some reason so bored youths with nothing better to do on a Saturday night want to happy slap a couple with a penchant for checkered shirts and EXTREMELY white teeth, then please by all means go forth an conquer with Uncle Khaled full endorsement and blessing. God those two were fucking annoying. They were sticking their hands in each other’s backsides (read: scratching each other’s arses) and kept kissing each other every time a cord was played….sorry it was annoying seeing as I was trying to maneouvre away from them but once the gig starts and you’re standing, there’s little where to go. Top tip, if it’s a mellow affair, then definitely try and get some seated tickets.
What was also interesting was the fact that support ‘band’, Death Vessel. Never has a name and personal style ever gone in complete and direct CONTRAST to the actual music being played. One guy comes out with his guitar. That was Death Vessel. From the website and from the half garbled name the man in question was Joel Thibodeau, easily one of the softest voices I’ve heard on a man in a really long time…since Puressence I would say. So much so that Lizzy was commenting on what a great voice SHE had….lizzy hadn’t clocked what he looked like and yeah that was a surprise. But the great thing was that by the end of his set he had more people than would normally come up for a support act really listening and generally enjoying themselves. One man, one guitar.
So what was the highlight for me in terms of the main act? Apart from the stonkingly good voice, I personally loved ‘Crossroads’ to be honest. You’d think it was something like ‘Heartbeats’ but nah, it was ‘Crossroads’. Behind Jose was this large canvas that was playing loads of white animations on black and blue backgrounds and the lighting was fairly decent, but nothing to right home about.
Next gig I guess will probably be ‘Radiohead’, bring it on :).
I was thinking about this today and basically, blogging involves removing the additional thoughts that are in your head that take up valuable space. Things that you should think about but not necessarily keep in your brain knocking about. That way it leaves you with more time to do other things, like in my case watch ‘The Wire’ (best police series EVER created) and read a few books (got a couple of reviews for books you really should read) and most importantly for my sanity, create things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating stuff.
The issue with me is that that part of my brain has been laying dormant as I began thinking and doing a bunch of other things that seriously didn’t really add to my being,…overall…in hindsight and all that. Part of the problem I guess is that I’m not angry enough at stuff, so it’s time to start getting angry again and flex that muscle again. It’s time to start creating again, it’s time to start blogging again, none of this 7 posts a month bullshit.
To the internet. So last week we were offline at casa Khaled. Yes, that’s right, no net access whatsoever. At first I’ve got to admit that I was REALLY angry. Not at anyone but at the situation itself. I mean seriously, my computer felt like it was neutered. I felt completely cut off from the world and all because as it turns out one of the cables coming into the house decided to collapse on itself. Maybe because it finally decided to give up the good fight because of the cold weather? Maybe it was because the workers outside moved it a fraction and it was to frail to deal with it, either way I was cut off.
This has happened before to be honest, however this one I was a bit more composed with the whole thing. I was actually able to deal with a few things that I’ve been meaning to deal with for a while; like do a bit of writing, do a little bit of drawing and generally do a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. One thing I did miss was this site. I realised that I need this place for venting, something which i’ve been doing a lot less of in recent times. One of the main reasons I continued to blog was because I liked the cathartic process associated with brain dumping, because after all that ALL I’m doing here. Sometimes I rattled a few cages, sometimes I make a couple of people smile, so I think I’ve found that spark that I need to really start making the words on this site start coming alive. So as of tomorrow, you can expect a lot more ‘Kode action coming your way, daily even.
It’s also time I kicked WordPress like a bad habit. Seriously, this shit takes FOREVER to log in. Once you’re in it’s kind of OK, but honestly SLOW as a fat man in water. Some things in 2.5 are nice, but alas I’m thinking too damn little, too damn late, I guess I will write something about it at some point.
Now see that’s fucking weird. I was having a pretty rough Tuesday at work, so we went out for a couple of drinks after work. I work in Mornington Crescent, which is like at the bottom of Camden towards Tottenham Court Road, so most of our Friday evening are spent in and around the Camden area. It’s an area that’s got enough food choices to keep even the most fussy eater happy. It’s got it’s cinema, Regent’s Park is a stone’s throw away and there are 100s of pubs and bars around the area.
That’s not the weird part in case you were wondering, the weird part was the fact that on Wednesday we ended up in the Hawley Arms that night. This was actually the first time I had ever been in here, even though I’ve been working in and around the Camden area for nearly 6 years now. That’s what I’m trying to get at, the place has got soo many bars and stuff that it’s impossible to have been to all of them unless you make a real concerted effort. Now the pub (which is famous for bringing in the celebrities in the past…not so much any more I guess) was partly burnt in the fires last night. So I kind of just saw it in one piece just in time, even though I’d past by it 1000s of times in the past 5 years.
Hell, yesterday we were in Old Street and Stathi and I were thinking about dropping by Camden along the way, but decided against it since we were both pretty knackered, had we gone up we would have seen the fires. No doubt I’ll see that sometime tomorrow.
So yesterday I finally saw a celebrity I actually gave two shits about seeing. I creator who’s work I’ve actually enjoyed greatly. We went for a few drinks in Belsize Park yesterday and then decided to go for a bit of food after that. Of course, four people trying to decide on food sometimes can go smoothly and sometimes can go horribly wrong. Well in this case as we were walking up the road towards Hampstead and we see this little French restaurant that’s part of a hotel. I instantly dismissed it as not something I’d really like to go for, however Sophia had been there and recommended the food as being pretty good. So we go have a look at the menu and it was wide enough to allow us to actually cater for everyone’s crazy mood of food that night.
I was last in line and Stathi was right in front of me, so he quickly turns around to me and says ‘Dude, is that Helena Bonham Carter? I quickly turn around and say “Nah, her hair’s all over the place, she’s not looking as glam as i would expect”. In that split second what I hadn’t noticed of course was the person she was with. As we got seated, I did a quick glance over and lo and behold there was Tim Burton. See for me THAT is a celebrity. The actors are not the important bit (more on this later). The director is the captain of the ship. He’s the one that touches the movie in absolutely every single way, story, script, casting, sets, money, promotion, the whole lot. A great director will take unknown actors and make a great movie. A great actor won’t be able to make a bad movie great. He’ll play his part in a great way and shine himself but the movie doesn’t really benefit…not really because it still remains a pile of shit, regardless of how great the actor’s performance actually was. So I generally will follow directors, rather than actors (there are VERY VERY few exceptions to this rule). This little snippet was the source of a relatively heated discussion yesterday as i tried to explain to everyone that I was properly star struck by a creator’s who’s work I’ve been following since Edward Scissorhands, and well I liked Helena in Fight Club, a lot. But i wouldn’t exactly consider myself a fan of her body of work, since except for that movie I’ve only ever seen/heard her in….Tim Burton movies (Corpse Bride and Sweeny Todd).
So there you go, the first ‘celebrity’ that I actually was kinda star-struck. See NEXT week I will be 100% COMPLETELY and utterly star-struck as I am going for the Alan Moore signing in London. For all those that don’t know who Alan Moore is, you guys really have not been paying my attention.
This weekend I’ve decided to finally get down to completely my chartership forms. For those in the dark, part of a professional engineer’s life (and I’m not talking about your electrician or telephone repair man, who while both are great fields, they are definitely not engineers) is to try and achieve his chartership status. The status means a lot of things for different people and once you’re in the group you are really part of a group of people that have fulfilled specific criteria (ranging from their technical knowledge to their project management skills to their people skills and so on) and therefore you look at them in a completely and different manner.
I felt it most recently when I was sitting in a meeting this week with another consultant from another company and his business card had the letters CENG. That was in many respect enough for me to understand that the guy in front of me wasn’t pretending, he was the real deal and therefore I could discuss things with him on a specific level. Obviously he couldn’t really look at me with the same light as I’m missing those 4 little initials after my name. The thing is that after 6 years of work experience in the construction and building services industry, I’m no longer pretending either. I’m doing these things that are required of you as a Chartered Engineer. The only thing that is stopping from going forward is myself. So this weekend in the History of Khaled, I will be spending nearly EVERY waking hour to dealing with these forms once and for all. All that vigor that I put into my art, into my work on a regular basis, into my online contributions will now be put into my Chartership status. I will not go into work on Monday without that form completed as a draft and ready to go to my mentor as a first stab for him to pass comments.
However in order to do this, I’m probably going to need to sort out my supplies early in the morning for the weekend, and I’m going to have to turn off the internet. I’m only allowed specific toilet and food breaks. I’ve got the evening off, however the entire weekend is dedicated to this goal, fully and totally. Lets see if I actually get things done.
Loads and loads of things to write and talk about, especially as this blog is now officially 4 years old today. Got a great deal of exciting things to talk about in the coming month but I think I’ll share this excellent quote by one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
Seems like the most apt way to begin this new year off. Happy new year everyone.
So I had myself a bit of a Facebook purge today. As Facebook is becoming more and more part of the cultural landscape it’s become a bit more important to be a wee bit more careful regarding which people can actually see your details. Maybe I’m being a bit too cautious but the thing is I have been slapped once before regarding the ‘Kode at work. I know sounds strange since I’m extremely careful to make sure I don’t really say anything about what’s going on at work except regarding which projects I might be working on and having a picture taken off the architect’s website. The point is, you never know when certain information is going to come back and really bite you on the ass, and as such I’d really rather not get into too many of those situations in the future (hey I am a blogger and therefore I will no doubt get into trouble at some point down the line).
So I’m off any groups, won’t find me as part of any networks. The only people that can see me are the few that I allow in. Any photos I don’t like I take the tags off and hope they never get seen (exceptionally bad ones are asked to be removed).
The thing is I find Facebook as a concept to be awesome, and I love the implementation of it as well. I like it’s clean lines and distinct design. I like how functional it can be (although finding a decent Flickr plugin is like pulling teeth) I just want all my Flickr photos to be part of my photo albums and that’s it. However as with everything moderation is the best option.
It’s time we all took the word ‘average’ back. I’ve been thinking about this (and actually mouthing off about it as well to anyone dumb enough that will listen to me) but basically one of the things that I have found lacking in the use of the English language is the proper use of words to describe things. When you ask someone about how they felt a movie or an event was, unless it was terrible the general response you’ll probably get is ‘Yeah it was pretty good.’ Or ‘Yeah it was good’. Don’t lie to me dammit. It wasn’t good because if it was you’d be talking about it with a little bit more conviction, a little bit more enthusiasm. Good implies that it had merit to speak of. Clearly you have none to express. No dear sir (or madam), what in actual fact you’re trying to say is that it is merely average. Average is a good word to use when it fits the bill. When something doesn’t shine but moves forward in an adequate fashion it can only considered average.
So for example ‘Cars’ can only be considered as an average movie when you put it in direct comparison to John Lasseter’s previous outings. It had good moments in it for sure, but as a movie it cannot be considered anything but ‘average’ in comparison. Of course there’s the issue of being kind to people. As another example, most definitely do not say: ‘Thanks Grandma, that dinner was most definitely average.’
So like Randall in Clerks II, I’m taking back the word average. I strongly urge you to do the same. Hell you know you want to.
