blog.djstead.net

My what a pretentious title. Even the picture is mildly pretentious [although this is basically what you get when you search for “the human condition” in google images, and ask for Exactly… 630x250 in size]. So what’s it all about? Well this is a recurring theme that keeps coming back to me, and - for no obvious reasons - was at the front of my mind this morning. A long time ago in a mental state not too far away, I came to the logical conclusion that I couldn’t ultimately share my life with someone else; because of the infinite impossibility that person can never experience directly what you experience - it is always an inferred experience. And vice-versa. Ad infinitum for everyone you ever meet. But of course people do have relationships - I’m sure that has barely escaped anyone’s attention; be it from the broader and less defined social relationships (close friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, everything in between), to the more elusive romantic relationshi...

Let it not be said he shied away from exploring that which he did not understand. ~ Someone, Probably So I had an interesting experience earlier in the week, which - as is often the case with these experiences - played on my mind for a good while after the event. Which has resulted in me writing up this article in a bid to get a better understanding of that experience and a variety of points that came spinning out of it. As with most of my articles, these are pretty much articulated-stream-of-consciousness so please attempt to engage in intelligent discourse as a result, not judge this to be my final position. This started with a mundane event - my car going in for service and MOT - and, joy-of-joys; it failed on a number of points resulting in an unexpected bill just shy of four figures. Coming off the back of an expensive January (also included an unexpected boiler repair), and - more importantly - right off the back of the high of my 30th; this was a kick in th...

Aside from having one of the finest character introductions on film in recent memory , another ingenious aspect of Pirates of the Caribbean was one of its plot-driving devices - that of Jack Sparrow’s compass. Jack Sparrow True enough, this compass does not point north. Elizabeth Swann …Where does it point? Jack Sparrow It points to the thing you want most in this world. And, dotted at points throughout the Pirates films, there is always a moment where Captain Jack takes the compass out, and it is simply free-spinning, indicating that - at that particular moment - whoever holds the compass has no idea what they want at that point in time. Ladies and Gentlemen; welcome to the somewhat laboured metaphor for my life in the last year or so. My life has no direction. In part this is nothing new - I have always (and maybe will always have) no real drive to achieve something in particular in my life. And by that I mean academically/careeringly (hah, I used a different...

Apropos of nothing more than the usual banter between friends a few Tuesday nights back, the question was raised of “truly great films since 2000”. The ones that - at least in 50 years time towards the end of my estimated lifetime - could truly be held up as “classics”. So for the indulgence of nothing more than revisiting a few old favorites, here is my list of 10 in nothing more than alphabetical order: Almost Famous (2000) No other film can sum up perfectly for me that feeling of breaking away from childhood; growing up in a few respects and the often mystical quality that - at least I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter - one or two women posses. Happily set in a fictional-but-informed hey-dey of Rock and Roll, following the almost-coherent (indeed almost-famous(!)) mechanics of a travelling rock and roll show - Stillwater, and their entourage led in part by the enigmatic Miss Penny Lane. With a soundtrack featuring a then rare appearance by Led Zep, amongst other gre...

First off, although I will not be specifically discussing the events of Series 3, Episode 9 "The Red Wedding"; spoilers of some level or not are inevitable, so if you have not reached this point in the series, turn back now. Also, I have not read the books. I know a lot of you will be screaming that I should; but I will maybe explain why I probably won’t later on - for now this article is based on my experiences of Game of Thrones as a TV series alone. I am being such an awkward bastard right now. Over the past few weeks I have been watching Season 4 of The Wire [note, potential spoilers; I have not got to the fifth and final season yet], and I’m really enjoying it. This is despite the fact that at least one major character has been killed off, and lots of other characters that I had an emotional support for, have also been killed off. By contrast, I have just finished watching Episode 9 of Season 3 of Game of Thrones (“The Red Wedding”), which brings me...

I know that sounds incredibly melodramatic - but it’s the truth. If you haven’t heard the story before; allow me to explain: In May 2012, myself and another friend went to visit our mutual uni friend who now lives in Vietnam. 2 weeks of sun and adventure in the (for me at least) hitherto unexplored East. And it was all going well for the first 5 days; sure the flight was long and the weather was even hotter than I had planned for - but on the Sunday morning we arrived, I was on the G&T by about half 9 in the morning, and we spent the whole day recuperating around the pool. The next few days let us explore Ho Chi Minh further - including a memorable trip to the War Museum {if it wasn’t for what follows, I would still be having nightmares about the not nearly infamous enough ‘Agent Orange’ used by the Americans during the Vietnam War}. And then a few days later we decided to embark on a bike ride in the middle of the country, near Đà Nẵng. And so it was, that ...

For the first 28 years of my live (well the latter half of those years at any rate) I had life figured out. By challenging everything I knew about the world, philosophically speaking, I came to establish my own Ultimate Philosophy , which views the universe from a central, internal-to-me, point of access and reasons that only I can share my unique view of my world. Now this brings two things: An irrefutable underlying logic to the world that removes me from the widespread perceived notion of an absolute shared existence with other humans. Loneliness. Once you accept that your existence can never be fully shared - ultimately your own universe will collapse in on itself - you logically assume that attempting to share your existience with anyone save your is illogical. For 28 years I have held this view - the only logically possible one when you truly think about it - and became resigned to the fact that I will spend my existence in a smug-to-others, self-controlled bub...