All posts by Armand

Current affairs, Film

Borat opens this week

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Regular readers will know I saw the movie back in September, and loved it. Been following the hype with some interest, from Borat’s response to the Kazakh government following their criticism, to his appearances at premieres, and more, and simply can’t get enough. There’s something very captivating about that silly man.

Interestingly, in my hunt for more Borat related content, I found a couple of relatively sane interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen (playing himself). I don’t think Sacha does interviews any more (only Borat, Ali G and Bruno), but its definitely interesting to see the man behind the mustache.

Kazakhstan the greatest nation in the world, all the other countries are run by little girls…

Music

We’re big on myspace: The Public Betas

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Ok, so Tom was around today and helped finish a second song for the Public Betas. Also gave me the motivation to fix the bridge on the other song and now they’re both up on the band’s myspace page. Sorry if it sounds a bit amateurish – a professional musician/sound engineer I’m not. But it’s fun, and hopefully funny. You can listen to the first two songs – the Firefox Love Song and Transparent Emotion (the Google Talk Presence Information Song) on Myspace.

The band is me (all instruments and some vocals), Tom and Chris (songwriting expertise and geek knowledge), Mazmo (vocals on the Firefox love song and hopefully more in the future) and Pob has helped out (general whiz on all production and musical things ever). Mazmo and Pob are The Minutes Music, so you should check that out — they sound well good.

Enjoy! And add us as friends on myspace if you’re that way inclined! Chris, we need to work on music videos. Think: youtube sensation.

Miscellany

Halloween party

Ninja brandishing swordThe Ninja finally made an outing last night at Kate’s Halloween party. Photos here for the curious.

It was a very fun evening, and was very honoured to be given third prize for my costume (some stickers). Have never won a costume prize before! It may have been something to do with the fact that I promised to mop the floor with everyone’s souls if I didn’t win something, but hey… Ninjas do as Ninjas are.

The first and second prizes were more highly deserving than me of those honours, though, so I let them live. It was the Ghostbusters of East London and Lorrie as a very frightening ‘The Ring’. Was even more frightening with the Maggie Thatcher mask on… ooer. And there was a masterful perspective picture of Tom too…

Miscellany

Ninjas used manbags?

Dressed as a Ninja, stalking across London last night, I realised some of the more practical issues Ninjas must have to face. First of all, whilst a Ninja may not have keys or a mobile phone (they would never enter a building via a door and communicate via advanced telepathy), the costumes have no obvious place for storing Shuriken. Ninjas have NO POCKETS.

So do they use Manbags? Another question for Ask a Ninja, methinks…

Music, Writing

The bearable meaning of song lyrics

When I was fourteen, and the Weezer blue album was new, I remember having a conversation with my Dad. “Daddy,” I said, “when they sing: ‘I write these stupid words/And I love everyone’, do you think they mean they love every one, as in everybody, or every one of these stupid words?”

It was a question of some importance to me. And my Dad said “You know, Armand, I really don’t care.” It wasn’t an insensitive statement — he just didn’t understand why I was curious. I can’t remember if I was upset or not at the time; I suspect not, but rather just wrote it off as a generational thing.

And at various points over the last few years, I’ve lost my curiousity over things like that, and have been worried that I’ve fallen up a generation. But for the last few months, I’ve been curious again. Maybe it’s just that I’m doing more writing at the moment, of song lyrics, the novel etc. But it’s nice to think idly about these things again, as they flit in and out of the pile of things that matter to me. And its a big pile.

Personal, Writing

Repeating old arguments

You may have noticed I’ve gotten slightly more, erm, esoteric in the topics of my posts lately. (oh no, a blog post about blogging, run run run!!).

That’s for a few reasons.

Reason number 1: I’ve gotten bored (bored bored BORED bored bored) with reading fifteen takes on the same thing. Google buys YouTube, Edelman fakes blogs, company XX launches new web2.0/social media tool, David Blunkett is crazy, David Cameron is tedious, here’s a video of one videoblogger interviewing another videoblogger etc etc. I mean, I still like finding out about those things but the repetition was wearing thin, so I won’t add to it unless I really really want to. And I should probably extend my blogroll…

Reason number 2: Despite the ridiculous traffic I’ve been getting (apparently around 1,600 unique visitors a month, between 14-16 RSS subscriptions per day, and a total of 700MB worth of traffic a month)… well, there was no real need for me to tell you that. Just showing off. But really, the point is, I’m writing this for me and I’m glad that some of you seem to enjoy it. But I’m not going to try to anticipate what other people expect of division6 and try to write a bit more from the heart.

Reason number 3: I have been inspired. Askaninja, Scary Duck, Ze Frank… these guys do stuff about nothing every now and then and they do it brilliantly. A show about nothing… where’ve I heard that before?

So I hope you like the ‘new’ division6. I will rebrand a little soon (perhaps following some of your suggestions) and am on the look out for a catchy tagline; something as ground breaking and inspired as “Scary Duck: Not scary. Not a duck.” — would be nice.

Miscellany

Endless possibilities

As I faced my reflection in the early morning autumnal haze brought upon by the natural passage of the season and the unnatural passage of myself through about three weeks so long that space time itself has been distorted, I noticed something, and not for the first time.

I have big hair. And that hair presents endless possibilities.

Given some styling wax, and a lot of patience, I could sculpt a variety of different ‘head-hats’ for myself, to suit my mood. I could be Elvis, Superman, even, as things stand, Lord Vader. Who should I be? I will leave whimsy to be my guide.

And tomorrow I may get a haircut.