Tuesday talk

Lots of things to say today...

Over the past couple of months I have grown weary of blogging. It is such a tiring affair to force your opinions on people who wanted to hear your opinions but secretly didn't give a damn for your opinions. But I will still blog, don't you worry about it. Anyway Coffee Lover has a neat essay on the state of blogging.

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Pity the Lib-Dems. After all the negative publicity last month when it came down to the actually business of election, nobody gave a shit. Here is one tucked away deep in the BBC site. Hell even I didn't know that the election is approaching its climax. And who the hell is Chris Huhne? Like David Cameron before him, how did he get from a nobody to a bookmaker's favourite?

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Yesterday, during my lunch break I was rushing past a GAME store hurrying to a cheap fast food. I doubled back when I noticed the sheets of white paper with the word "Xbox 360 in stock" plastered on the shop windows. So Microsoft has managed to replenish 360 stocks over the past week. I walked into the store and went straight to the back of the store where the preowned section was.

While digging through and admiring titles that I will never buy I stole a glance at the counter to check out what people were buying and whether people were actually buying into Microsoft's hype. This isn't a scientific study nor is it statistical. It is merely an observation.

It was a quiet afternoon (hei, it is a Monday). A lad stood in front of the PS2 section and playing his PSP. It was kinda distracting. Here was a guy playing his PSP in the middle of the store, not window shopping or anything. What a fucking tosser.

Anyway during the 5-10 minutes I was there nobody asked or purchased a 360. A father was asking one of the staff about The Sims 2 (6.5/10) while a kid the age of eight wanted Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (9/10) A bunch of kids were hovering over the PSP section looking through pricey UMD film titles. A lady bought Mario Party 7 while a twenty something guy bought We Love Katamari (8.5/10).

A couple was in the DS section debating which game to purchase. Someone also asked about the difference between the fat PS2 and the slim PS2. I then hovered above a DS demo pad but it had no game card in it! Somebody must have stolen it. The screen was scratched to hell. The guy next to me was waiting 10 seconds for Pro Evolution Soccer 5 to load on the PSP demo pad. Heh.

Feigning stupidity, I walked up to the counter and asked for the release dates to some games. Striking conversation with the staff I asked whether any 360 were sold that day. She said none before asking me whether I wanted one (cheeky). I said thanks but no. She was genuinely surprised by the lack of interest on the £280 console but she did mention that most were waiting for the PS3 and Revolution. After the dates were given (which I already knew anyway) I thanked her and scurried out before she attempted to sell me something I didn't need.

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I visited the V&A not a long time ago. It was an impulse visit. I happened to be in South Kensington anyway. I have heard about this exhibition that involved Sony. They call it the 'video art experience'. Right... 50 small flat screens were hanging from a giant chandelier with video feeds through or from a PSP. Whatever. I will leave the explanation to Jason Bruges through this rather old post.

Not wanting to waste my trip I did a quick wander around the museum. I have been here before a couple of times but you never ever get to see everything. The 20th century section has always disappoint me as it is only a small section. Of course there are rare things that you can please your eyes with in regards to the early 20th century European modernist movement.

Among the fine things you can find is a 1916 broadsheet which shows the famous Johnston sans serif type which is now the main type used by the London Underground, and a political experimental children's book titled Suprematicheskii skaz: pro dva kvadrata v 6-ti postroikakh by Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky. Other designs by European Dadaist and De Stijl designers are also on display. Further down you will find the famous Modernist tubular chair designed by Marcel Breuer when he was at the Bauhaus.



There will be more to see this April as a special exhibition on Modernism will be held at the V&A. Among the items on display is the 1931 diagrammatic LU map sketch by Henry Beck.

Technorati tags: Blogging Lib-Dem Xbox Modernism