The Magic of the iPhone

So, I made a deal with the devil and moved away from Orange after quite a bitter few months of problems with them and instead sold my soul to get myself an iPhone. Jonathan's had once since they first appeared and has been trying to get me to join the cult ever since. The first one had some problems I couldn't get past: the keyboard made too many mistakes, the camera was iffy and the tariffs weren't exactly favourable for new customers.

Now, I know Orange will have the iPhone in a month or two so I could have waited to see what they'd have to offer, but I'd be very surprised if they beat the deal I've got on a PAYG O2 deal at the moment where, so long as I put £10 a month onto the phone, I get unlimited data and unlimited texts. Also, for registering my account online I got an extra £20 credit. So, after sending about 500 texts in the first week and spending all my life online, I somehow have £29 credit after just putting a tenner on it when I bought it.

So, I've joined the ranks of the legion of iPhone zombies staunchly ignoring the world around themselves in favour of chatting to boys on Grindr, playing Scramble and, most importantly, working out while using the iPhone as a personal trainer. I've just started on the strength building programme on iFitness and I'm enjoying it - it's a 5x5 workout, so rather than doing three sets of about ten reps, you do shorter sets but more of them, so you can push yourself to do heavier weights. Oh my, but it's hard work.

Anyway, this is totally a stupid vain post with a photo of me with no top on in it. I spent the weekend making pompoms for peace. So there.

Even Forbidden Planet's excited.

Baby Badger is born on Tuesday!

Are you excited? I am!

Solipsistic Pop

Solipsistic Pop, originally uploaded by zombiecoterie.

The thing I'm currently working like crazy on is a piece for the wonderful Tom Humberstone's Solipsistic Pop anthology on the theme of Broken. I'm trying out muted colours for this one since I've got to re-draw it when all the scans came out too feint to use properly for something that's going to print. Add to that that I want to get the Badger book finished by the end of the month and we're looking at a mahoosive double deadline for me!

This is all awesome stuff, though. I might just never see any of my friends for a while though.

Do we like the colour?

Watching yourself change from the inside out.

hair, originally uploaded by zombiecoterie.

...and I don't mean this cock-awful photo of me without anything happening to stop my hair looking like a tonsure. Well, maybe I do.

Every time I've tried to grow my hair out, it hits this stage and just looks dense, shapeless and impossible to manage without a bucketload of product. It's a very long time since I managed to get past the hell of in-between hair and got to show off the rolling waves my hair wants to fall into once it gets long enough.

Yes, that is an analogy you can smell there. No anal bleaching needed to notice that.

In the last couple of weeks, I've started doing the MA, had my last physio appointment for my numb hands, started on methylphenidate for ADHD, started back at interpreting work and generally, the dim and distant nimbus of life I'd had lurking in me burst into a supernova.

Methylphenidate is having some very interesting effects on me. I'm much less distracted than normal; my focus at the gym was incredible and I've been able to knuckle down and get a few weeks ahead on drawing Badger. The things I've been dithering about doing are finally getting done - from anthology pieces to cleaning out the washing machine. I'm pretty much exactly like a 1950's housewife, necking speed to get the chores done, only I'm not feeling like I'm tweaking on it and god knows I'd know what that's like. I'm feeling quite chilled out and just quite content.

Things are good, right now - I think I've got the right products in place (the right pharmaceuticals and the right people supporting me) and I think even though it's a bit thick and lumpy at the moment, it's a good period of growth I'm hoping I won't back away from again.

Alternative Village Fete

I'm going to be there helping people make Pom Poms. Fancy it? Here's the blurb, hold on to your hats.

Watch this Space Festival, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1

Saturday 26th September: 12pm - 7pm

Sunday 27th September: 12pm - 3pm

For the second year in a row, innovative live art and performance company, Home live art, presents a riotous weekend of artist’s, craft and produce stalls, performances and participatory activities which re-interpret the traditional village fete for the urban environment of the National Theatre.

At 12pm each day the Fete will be opened by a special Guest Star from the National Theatre….

Saturday will revolve around a vibrant stage programme - including a mass ukulele jam, contemporary barn dance, participatory skipping & hoola hooping and a spectacular bird of prey demonstration – alongside a wealth of fun, participatory fete based games and interactions that bring our traditional craft making practices into the 21st Century. The Legendary Miss Amy Lamé invites you to make a pom pom for peace, while you can brush up on your knitting, sewing and craft skills with The Make Lounge, I Knit London and Rockpool Candy, as well as play fete games with The Society of Wonders and sample beautiful cupcakes and herbal teas. There will also be handmade toys and crafts using recycled and found fabrics.

Sunday's lunchtime programme will mark the seasonal move towards Autumn and Harvest with a series of innovative food and horticulture projects where visitors can share in the art of preparing, cooking and tasting to the sounds of anarchic Balkan beats from the Transsiberian March Band, ending with the fabulous School of Dance, where the audience can learn the Samba alongside the legendary Miss High Leg Kick and Boogaloo Stu.

Food artist Prudence Statie will be sculpting in chocolate, whilst Sharon Baker invites you to vote for your favourite bread breast bun, alongside cup cakes, home made jams & preserves, and innovative food interactions from performance company Curious and artists Lisa Cheung, Miche Fabre Lewin and Sophie Herxheimer.

Participants: The Benoit Viellefon Band, Bo-Peep Kids, Blue Field, Chrissy Cromer, Curious, Cut a Shine, The Dulwich Ukulele Club, Golden Co-operative, The Hawk Experience, Hedgerow Provender, Miss High Leg Kick and Boogalou Stu's School of Dance, I Knit London, Lisa Cheung, Liz Bentley, The Make Lounge, MC Paul L Martin, Mary Mathieson, Miche Fabre Lewin, Peggy's Cupcakes, Pom Pom International (Amy Lamé & Shane Waltener), Prudence Staite, Rock a Hula! Rockpool Candy, Roots & Shoots, Ros Badger, Sharon Baker, Simon Withers & Chris Jones, Skip Sisters, Skip Theatre, Society of Wonders, Sophie Herxheimer, Sugargrain, The Transsiberian March Band.

Skeletal

Skeletal, originally uploaded by zombiecoterie.

I started on a portrait commission this morning and got distracted when I couldn't get his nose right and he just looked too young. I think perhaps I've got a bit on my mind at the moment, all about chapters ending and beginning and anxieties about things I can't change.

This week's been pretty monumental in terms of changes for me and as September came, so has every change I'd wanted. I've enrolled at college and I start properly next week. I'm starting doing little bits of interpreting work again, which in turn means I should have a little more money again. I've been discharged from the physiotherapist with instructions that I'm to keep doing the exercises I've been given for the rest of my life and to avoid particular types of movement wherever possible. That's a bit weird.

I'm back at the gym, just not doing certain types of movement (that means you, men in the showers), I should get my report from the ADHD clinic that has the potential to completely change my world, I've decided to press the complaint against Lewisham hospital further and I'm trying to sort out stuff with Student Finance England.

Um, am I not meant to be making more time to draw?

Perhaps I'm not the best person to manage my own time, am I?

Words and Images

Chicagothulhu, originally uploaded by zombiecoterie.

So, as soon as I've finished this cheese and pickle sandwich, I'm off to enrol for the MA in Visual Art: Illustration at Camberwell. Apparently this means I'm an art student again and a super cool illustrator or something.

I looked through some of the course books in Foyles yesterday and didn't like the writing style in most of the ones they had in stock. This is good, it saved me buying them online and wasting money never reading them because of something nebulous about the way they structure their sentences.

Hmm. Nervous now. So many things changing this week, it's hard to know which doors I need to close, which to keep open and which to slam in the faces of fucktards. (Orthopaedic surgeons, you might want to make a maxillofacial appointment now. You're getting a ultramega slam, you know that?)

My Jeans Don't Fit

My Jeans Don't Fit, originally uploaded by zombiecoterie.

...and I've only been back at the gym a couple of weeks. This could get expensive! Apologies for the substandard guyswithiphones.com style photo.

I think I still like my hair, though, so there.

I'd write more, but it'd either be about bats in Ravenscourt Park or Grizzly Bear Thursday and I can't finish a sentence at the moment that doesn't somehow end up being starting the MA this week. My poor little brain.

College.