I hope you agree this find was worth sharing. In its way, its almost as coruscating,
nourishing, and unstoppably funny, if only – as Americans say – on
accident. The central message of "Emptying Yourself for God" is a hell of a hook, and the total lack of rapport between unrehearsed host and puppet creates a tension I find it hard to grow tired of, however much the deranged animated inserts start to drag.
This Lucy and Friends is also the kind of reminder I always enjoyed getting, that before hitting its stride with wall to wall,
parasocial direct address and crafted video essays, YouTube was once a lot
more like the show Takeover TV, a kind of petting zoo for anonymous projects as its name suggests. Like Macbeth and the taste of fear, I had almost forgot.
* I'm trying to make formidable happen as a noun, a bit like spectacle even though that was never an adjective. Pronounce it as French as you like.
from Notebookery 1, where you'll also find the Artist and the Exterminator
Here's another record of a stepladder-set tale told in my dyed-black days of 2000 or so, this time at shunt's cabaret in its original venue of Arch 12A Bethnal Green, and accompanied by Jeremy Hardingham. I'm so happy to have any record at all of anything Jeremy's done, and of the messes we made in those days. His approach to physical illustration looks – at least from what can be made out in this video – more chaotic than Tom's work on Phonella's Shopping, but no less precise. I also included a tiny bit of footage he took of his flat with my Hi-8 camera as prelude, because I liked the pull out and reveal.
Inspiration for The Bed-Daughter probably came from the idea a myth is a real person's life mangled beyond recognition, in this case: the biographies of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera – a potentially souring insight I share only because the floppy-haired twenty-something who originally wrote this would want you to know. The music is by Mouse On Mars.
Content warning: tobacco use, live flames, hair othering, face shaming, insect powder, mention of nails through extremities, an almost entirely passive female protagonist, and David Rosenberg in a vest.
UPDATE: As with the Phonella's Shopping video, I added a transcription to run as subtitles because the sound isn't great, but for some reason both still just play the auto-generated captions when I hit CC. Does anyone have a clue what I'm doing wrong?
Sticking with politics, it's been a while since we checked in on the folks at Lembit Opik's zero gravity baby farm. The following is taken from the "Weekly Q and A with the Chairman of Asgardian Parliament" held on the eighth day of the month of Leo in the Asgardian year 0010 (full video posted below) with thanks to YouTube's transcription function...
12:31 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Yes, I believe we are live. Um and while we wait on the Chair, Peter,
would you like to give a summary of our um chair's meeting from an hour ago?
12:42 - Deputy Chair Peter Maughan (pictured):
Yes, Sarah. [clears throat] We're looking forward very much in the the meeting of the chairs [clears throat] looking forward to further discussions of our trip aa of the uh
Antarctic potential. We also are looking forward to whatever we're going to be able to do to
celebrate the uh anniversary of Asgardia and uh we had a lot of chairs there at the meeting tonight.
So it was very very good. Um we're waiting for some reports back from Lembit (Opik, Chairman of Asgardian Parliament)with regard to the uh discussions he's been having with Head of Nation
and with uh the Prime Minister. So we're hoping we might get some more news from him him at uh at this
meeting. But as it stands at the moment, we're really sort of waiting, absorbing,
looking forward to what we can do, and hoping that I can find a cure for the hiccups that I keep getting every two minutes, um, courtesy of the new drug that I'm taking and it gives me uh it gives
me hiccups. So, don't let anybody tell you that it's easy to lose weight with these
injections that you have because it is. But unfortunately, it also gives you ter terrible indigestion which I
have.
But no, we had a we had a very good meeting and we're now looking
forward to what Lembit will bring back to us. Lembit's in a in a conference in London at the moment (GB News' and Jordan Peterson's ARC). So, he's having to work around that. But, uh, we're hoping that he'll have some good news for us [clears
throat] in a few minutes when he manages to come to us. So, that's pretty much all we did. We didn't come to any huge conclusions
about anything, but we did uh we did have a good meeting and uh and that, and now we're waiting for Lembit.
15:12 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Thank you, Peter.
15:13 - Deputy Chair:
But now, now we're live. I should say that uh that my name is Peter Maughan
and I'm de deputy chair of the parliament of Asgardia which is the first space
parliament and also the first fully digital democracy and that if anybody's
watching this who is not a resident of Asgardia this is a good time to join. It's €100 or the equivalent in your currency per year and that gives you access to
all of the facilities of Asgardia. So if you're not [clears throat] already a member, get joined. Uh we
love it. We come together once every week as chairman of the committees of
Asgardian Parliament, but we also we also enjoy ourselves. We're all friends. It's all quite nice. Those of us who've been involved in politics for a long
time, as I have, know that politics is a dirty, filthy business. But this is not politics. This is politics with a small P in the sense that we are looking to
guide the the destiny of mankind in space and looking to safeguard the residents of Asgardia, but not to fight with
one another. It's very easy to fall out with me. I mean, I'm in lo local politics in
the northeast of England and everybody falls out with me. Although I try to avoid that, but we're just all friends. If I'm in
trouble with regard to anything, I can reach out to all of my colleagues in the Parliament of Asgardia and they're always
here to lend a helping hand. So, it's worth it to join to have that constant on constant friendship
just at the end of a phone and it's lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, I
don't know who's here. You can't ask Lem any questions because he's not. But if anybody wants to ask any questions of any anyone, I'll try.
17:48 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Peter, you are you're muted, Peter. And I think Lembit has joined us...
I'm glad they've kept the intro, but why change perfection?
