“If You’ve Got Something Interesting To Say Then Say It.
But Don’t Say It In Glitter.”

So says Matt Sheret’s little note, stuck to the door to the morgue, there. But really? Is Matt right? We think it IS possible to say something interesting in reflective material, and we want you to prove it. Let’s see some glitter manifestos. Send us pictures of words of wisdom, aphorisms, jokes, anything written in or on glitter (or anything shiny or reflective. Hundreds-and-thousands. Cats-eyes, etc) to josie@hundreddays.net. Let’s show Sheret.

If any of you have any heart I demand you show 100Days some glitter hate. I have a new slogan for you: Glitter = No!
(Worth asserting now too that the whole glitter thing came from a conversation with The Girl. She’s as much to blame as I am)

EDIT: Chrissy Williams is fanning the flames over at her 100 Words blog with today’s find, the sparkling “Phlogiston”. Chrissy, Phlogiston = Glitter = No!

www.hundreddays.net

Before November arrived I managed to escape to Oslo for a few days. It was colder, prettier and a lot more welcoming than expected, which is just about perfect in my book. I hit the docks, the Opera House and the finest coffee shop in the world while I was out there, and managed to find the time to catch up with Einar, a magnificent local touchstone and one of the Touch team responsible for mapping the RFID field. A lovely man and clearly a very very clever man.

A really lovely bit of calm before the workstorm. I’m in deep on two paid projects at the moment, including the continuing adventures of the Newspaper Club guide, as well as a few personal ones too. I’m taking We Are Words + Pictures to the Comiket on Sunday 8th November and to Thought Bubble on Saturday 21st, and will be excitedly showing off Solipsistic Pop at both.

Had a lovely catch up with the BERG team last night at their Laika drinks, as well as Team Phonogram, most of Last.fm and James Bridle, who demonstrated the matchbox computer he built and shared some of his theory of awesomeness.

Now I have to do some work.

Click for a field recording of the drums circles on Park Mont Royal, 05/07/09 (mp3)

At some point the idea takes shape that Montreal is an opposite of London. Here the sound of drum circles leak through the park like the smells of toffee and weed; sickly, pervasive and compelling. And this is regular, a clockwork Sunday chime that attracts a city in the summer to the shade of every copse, a dandelion picnic spreading ideas. In London such explosions are self contained, these expressions closed affairs to which onlookers and the curious are discouraged. Here curiosity is in the national character, but nobody seems to be on display. They’re just themselves, all collectively, uniquely comfortable.

Stevie Wonder slides onstage, croaking his hellos across Hitler’s own distorted soundsystem. He bellows Cthulu’s fury to the legion of acolytes braying below his foetid gutline, and smiles like a landlocked shark. He drags a girl onstage beside him, locking her to his waist with a fearsome grip and slobbers into her ear, his lascivious demands picked up by the mic with grotesque clarity.

“DAAAAANCE FOR ME BABY! DAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNCEEEEE FOR MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Aanand, fearing for our sanity, took us up a nearby tower to stay clear of the street-level orgy of violence. To get even this far we’d had to pick our way through mobs of wall-eyed Montreal natives, shambling towards the plaza like cattle. Radio had broadcast information about this demented emissary’s proclamation, but we hadn’t expected a whole city to turn up and willingly court this psychic death. Leeches crawl over my body, falling from the skies with raindrops, fat with blood and spraying alcohol, further dulling our senses. I retreat inside, climbing down the roof hatch the wipe ichor from my limbs. While I’m down there Wonder unleashes a new assault, holding a CD player to the microphone and playing tracks from Jackson’s Number Ones on shuffle, the wail and screech of the dead King a final call from The Times Before The End. Quinns’ ears bleed.

A moment of calm: I appear to see an owl. Perched on this rooftop, staring calmly while buildings warp around it, it seems to suggest there is hope in this carnage, an escape, if only we could take flight. I approach, with due caution, eager to placate this muse, only to discover that it too has been petrified by the maelstrom below. It is an ex-owl, it is no more.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here”

We run uptown towards the mountaintop, hearing the voice of Wonder leak from bars and clubs all around us. We pause for refuge in a late night pizzeria, only for the cashier to ask if I’d been in before that evening. Were we that twisted? Had the fallout from the plaza taken us already? Were we one of them?

“Nah, s’alright man, musta been your doppleganger”

“I uh, I maybe ought to meet that guy, you know. Hah, catch him one on one, mano y mano, face myself.”

“No way man, that shit’s messed up, all quantum. Cause a singularity. That’s just fucked bro.”

“True words my friend, how right you are. Here, keep the change, just don’t follow me. You’ve seen my evil twin, God knows what comes next.”

Note:
All uses of Stevie Wonder should be considered parody.
Everything else is true.

We attempted to collect Aanand’s television today.
Click the images below for Field Recordings.

Oh, empty desolation.

Shipping a TV over the Atlantic was supposed to make things easier and cheaper for the boys, which turned out to be false.

Opening the box led to our celebration being undermined, mostly via a last minute foodfail.