Ready, steady, OK, Go!

Colon cleanse benefits are touted to be many and varied, but for me a much greater benefit was gained from watching the following music video, which starts off as an ordinary knock-over-the-dominoes piece and becomes ever more wild as it progresses. It appears to have been shot in one continuous shot, and on the couple of viewings I've had so far, that may well be the case. However, it becomes so improbable as it nears the end that perhaps the thing isn't quite so seamless as it seems.

Nevertheless, however it's done - and it's done very well - it's probably a good deal more cathartic than having one of those colon cleanses, the very thought of which sends shivers up and down my spine. They may be for some, but they ain't for me!



The video of This Too Shall Pass' comes from OK Go's new album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky" available here, where you can also get more information about their tour. If you have time to focus on the song while the video's playing, you've got the ability to multi-task in a great measure.

It was directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs over the course of several months.

PS - Just discovered that OK Go is in fourth place on the Time Magazine's list of the top 50 videos on You Tube (top in terms of having been viewed the most). It's another very clever piece of choreography, taking place on several moving treadmills.

Whatever happened to?

For quite a while there's been something puzzling me.

When I used to go on the buses - which wasn't often, because for years my wife picked me up from work on her way home from her job - people basically spoke to the driver when they got their ticket and that was that.

Since I've been getting the buses again, over the last several years, I've noticed that a new thing has come in. People, particularly young people, say 'Thank you' or 'Cheers' or something similar to the bus driver when they get off. While this is a good thing - the acknowledging of the driver - it's odd that the same people, especially the young people, won't give other people the time of day. How do I know this? Because these same people who are so happy to call out to the driver, can't even say 'Excuse me' if they need to get past you - especially if they're sitting next to the window and you're on the aisle. They just expect you'll notice that they're about to alight, and that you'll get up.

Which is fine, except what happened to 'Excuse me'? We seem to have done a colon cleanse of 'Excuse me' and a silicon job on 'Thank you,' if you can see the analogy...

Photo by Thomas on Flickr.com

Heating up and cleaning up

Yesterday I wrote about the superb collection of advertisements on the Guardian.co.uk site. Today I've just come across the many photographs taken during the heatwave in England.

A book that belonged to my grandparents is still on our bookshelves. It's a collection of black and white photographs by some of the past masters of photography. I've drifted through this book umpteen times, (particularly when I was a child), and the photographs are now like old friends. The faces in most of the photos are long gone, of course; a few of the children may still survive as elderly people. But these shots are the top of their range. And yet, the photos that appear on the Guardian website are as good, in many cases, if not better than these old masters.

The digital camera has such an ability to snap some moment in time, and capturing the moment is often what's needed to produce a work of art, photographically. Furthermore the superb rendition of colour that digital gives us excels most of the colour photos that were formerly regarded as top quality. If not excels, certainly equals.

It's a bit of a leap from there to colon cleanser reviews, but I'll leap it anyway. Does anyone else feel a little queasy when colon cleansing is mentioned? Colon cleansing is apparently a name for a broad range of alternative medical therapies. These are meant to remove fecal waste and unidentified poisons or toxins from the colin and intestinal tract. The cleansing is either done orally, or (yechh) by using a hose - a bit like cleaning out the gutter in late Autumn.

But the thing about this cleansing process is that it's doing something that doesn't need to be done. The body quite happily cleans out its own system (that's what you have all that wonderful inner tubing - the bowels - for), and flushing stuff out of there (apart from being a job I would not like to do to anyone) can actually damage the interior of the rectum. Stuffing more pills or liquids down your throat in the hope that it's going to do you some good is, to me, not a good idea.

Well, at least in the link above they warn you about the pitfalls of going in for this sort of treatment. Personally I think we take enough chemicals and mixes as it is.

Connecting curious things

How might the arts be in any way connected to the idea of a colon cleanse? With difficulty, I think! C/cleanses don’t appear to be the sort of things that opera singers get into, nor artists, nor musicians - or at least, if they do, they don‘t talk about it much. (Colon Cleanse might be a good name for an aggressive pop group however.)
One blog that talks about both writing and colon cleansing is Write Niche, where one writer mentions a diet called the Sacred Heart Diet (also known as the Cabbage Diet). Sacred Heart Diet? I wonder what Catholics think about that.
One of the writers on this blog is Peter Petterson, who apparently writes on New Zealand. Unfortunately, access was denied to me when I tried to get more information about him.