tohm's Fashion Week (Or 5 things I don't like about fashion): 3

[Ed: I added a conclusion to yesterdays post which really got away from me structure wise, though if you found it had interesting tidbits scattered without, you may want to go back and read the last twoish paragraphs.]

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but Identity theft is a crime. Purchasable lifestyles is the topic of today.

Let's make it personal - there are certain traits that people see in anyone, and with it comes the burden of recommendations based on that trait originating from people who don't possess it themselves. Say you are a literary critique, sooner or later somebody will recommend the most 'brilliant' book they've ever read 'The Da Vinci Code' and then want a long and painful conversation about how clever Dan Brown must be. Or say you are a comedian, at some point somebody is going to tell you 'Major Payne' is a laugh riot.

Now imagine people think you are a 'bit of a character' a bit 'out there' or that you 'like alternative stuff'. The tragedy of my life is that people think I find somebody who looks like this:
image sourced from SWPL #121

More interesting than somebody who looks like this:


But think about it - What Don't you know about the girl in the first picture? vs. the girl in the second picture?

Clothing is a communication, just like packaging is for a product. Clothing can communicate about our identities and values. But the message can also become disingenous, conflicted or hypocritical.

It is the sad truth, that some of the most toxically boring people I've ever met have been bedecked out like a cast member of ABC's hit TV series 'Heart Break High'.

Perhaps think of it this way - if you were to go to a job interview and quietly and calmy announce 'I'm interesting' you might have a chance of being believed. If you were to walk into the interview and yell 'I'M INTERESTING PAY ATTENTION TO ME PLEASE!' People would perhaps be more inclined to think you weren't.

Now... Have you noticed how everyone's a designer now? Thanks to stores like T-Bar, the online Threadless and Typetext and so fourth, and the things I talked about in my first post - namely the high fidelity and speed with which fashon can spread now a walk around the CBD is the clothing equivalent of a drive through a traffic jam. so many people are 'honking' their clothing horns that there's no point paying attention to anybody.

Perhaps in no other time was it harder to be unfashionable than now, it takes far more effort to go out and buy some clothing that is out of style than it does to keep up with the trends. There are far fewer places to buy a plain white t-shirt than a colurful print t-shirt by some freelance Danish designer.

We are all individuals now. And its annoying, and most shockingly - boring. Back in my theatre sports days at college the terrible amatuer comics made classic mistakes like 'dressing funny instead of being funny' we'd see teams turn up in crazy ties, or pulling their pants up to high and it was always a tell tale sign that they had a weak grasp on anything remotely representing a sense of humour.

The funniest people often dressed in the blandest clothing, you'd probably describe them as 'bookish' yet these were the crazy motherfuckers that kept me guessing the whole time.

Same applies to plain old 'interesting' I don't advocate obfuscation as in revealing nothing of yourself in order to seem mysterious, but usually the most interesting and witty people I've met have just been wearing a polo shirt and jeans (for women) and tracksuit pants and thongs (both men and women).

For them it's hard to guess what they do on a weekend, what they study, what movies they like, whether they are 'Planet Terror' or 'Death Proof', or 'Mystic River' or 'Gran Torino' and you end up asking the questions.

Perhaps the answer lies in 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' in the counter intuitive revelation that in any conversation the person that listens more than talks always gives the more favorable impression.

Same applies to clothes, the less your clothing says, the more interesting (I at least) find you. The most alternative clothings always seem like the cliched desperate cry for attention. I've been guilty of it, at one time or another, perhaps because I was a middle child or some shit. But some people truly do come across as desperate.

Some people can get a lot out of some simple listening, so I am prepared to extend the benefit of the doubt but often it turns out exactly as you suspected and first impressions do count: The person has put on a uniform they call 'Individuality'.

In broader fashion terms I simply hate the waste of trying to think clothing can transform somebodies personality.

Bicycles as fashion accessories, there's nothing particularly interesting about riding a bicycle, and no matter what type of bike you ride you will gain membership to the most interesting conversation you can have with someone about bike riding - the 'bikes vs. cars vs. pedestrians' arguement (as in who's most annoying on the road). You don't need to have a customized fixed gear with chopped and flopped handlebars and track geometry. It just necessitates the need to come up with excuses as to why you bought the bike for 'practical not fashion' reasons.

Now imagine if you met a sculptor at a party. Wouldn't that be interesting. You almost never meet sculptors and people no very little about it, yet sculpture has some of the highest exposure out of any art in the community. Do people bother to dress like sculptors? What does a sculptor look like?

It's hard to deny that of all the people you could make small talk with, a sculptor would be a winner vs say a bank employee, a doctor or a lawyer. Yet you don't see teenagers toting around welding masks, aprons or chisels to try and appear more interesting. It would be too overt, and one could be too easily caught out.

Purchasing an identity through clothing though is both flatery and Identity theft. If somebody impersonated you in order to clean out your bank account you would definitely call it theft. What if they didn't take your money but something else you had earned but they were stealing?

Johnny Rotten is an interesting guy, but are his fans that dress like him necessarily so? Tony Hawk is an amazing skater, but is every teenager that dresses like him as charismatic? Daniel Craig strikes you as sophisticated, does anybody that puts on that watch achieve the same amount of polish?

That's what the people that cash in on these things are motivated to have you believe. But just like money, character is earned, not purchased. To be interesting you have to do something, something more than diving into goodwill clothing bins to pick out the good stuff before it goes to some charity op shop.

But alas, everyone can be a designer and the myth that you can buy an identity seems to be overpowering the reality that you can't. The only way around any of it I can see is to adopt a strong 'utilitarian' pose. If you see somebody in basketball gear you should press them for their knowledge of basketball. If you see somebody wearing a Greek Fisherman's hat ask them if they are Greek or a Fisherman. (thanks to the Chaser for that one).

Only when people regularly 'hmmph' at people who dress above their weight division will people stop trying to create an illusion and perhaps dedicate their energy to creating a reality.

And people will stop introducing me to boring scrubbers that they think I would be into. :(

tohm's Fashion Week (Or 5 things I don't like about fashion): 2

Fashion is behind the times. Globalization has sped up the spread of fashion memes, but it can never move fast enough. Fashion is for the wrong people. That's why.

Yesterday I said about 25% of people rely on their own opinion (self referential, intrinsic esteem) 50% rely on other people's opinion, and about another 25% don't care about clothing at all.

Now if you lump the two quarters that don't listen to other people together you could call them 'opinion makers' whether it results in 'out-there' fashion or just think fashion itself is completely stupid. The other 50% we call 'opinion takers'.

Fashion is for opinion takers. I may speak with a lack of charity, but its people for various reasons that need permission to wear what they wear. And my best guess is that it's based on some vertical heirarchy that flows out of the Paris/London, New York and Tokyo epicenters, down into the Myers and David Jones of this world.

For half the world the term 'in style' is redundant, meaningless or whatever. It is not sufficient explanation to justify buying a new outfit each season just because what they wore last season isn't in style anymore. They don't think like that. Clothes are simply good or bad, evaluated by them and what choices others are making with their clothing are irrelevant. (But perhaps interesting).

The other half have clothing made for them, they have fashion aggregators to seek the reassurance of, Trinny and Suzannah touring their local Westfield Shopping Mall to tell them what to do or not, they have catalogues, magazines, hip-hoppers, sports stars etc to provide instructions for them and they obey.

Again I uncharitably said that 50% does as their told yesterday, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'they try to do what they are told' because many of them simply don't have the figure, or finances or whatever to successfully emulate what they have told is acceptable. (Show's like 'What Not To Wear' and 'How To Look Good Naked' are dedicated to correcting people applying Fashion's general advice to their own unique circumstances and the resultant fashion travesties).

So it's understandable why I don't like this aspect of fashioon, but i understand it, and rationally it is what is going to make money.

But where does fashion get its ever evolving seasonal standards of acceptability from? I'm sure I've covered this before but I assume not everyone (or anyone) could possibly be a dedicated reader of this blog, so I'll rehash. It's the facility of coolhunters to find out what opinion makers are wearing, present them to the opinion seekers who then imitate them after the fashion industry has muted it, mass produced it and applauded itself enough to reassure the nervous dispositions of the opinion takers.

It seems counter intuitive, but if you follow the fashion trends, you are permanantly behind the times really. By definition the cutting edge can't be what is in your local store because it takes so much time to design, approve , source etc. all the components that go into making this seasons style. This seasons style I'm confident was always somebody else's 'last seasons style'.

Now it may seem I have something against the sartorialist or fruits from yesterdays post. But I don't, I don't think they are 'anti-fashion' or promote bad fashions necessarily, infact one look at the sartorialist's blog and you can tell he has an eye for finding 'opinion makers' and capturing them. the man is good at what he does and definitely doesn't need me to tell him.

I don't wish to trudge over yesterday's topic though, lets just say col-hunters are good at what they do, they spot and capture people who think for or define themselves and then help replicate that for people who in a manner of speaking don't.

I want to delve into the psyche of people who short of 'not thinking' at the very least take their queus from others. I presume I will fail at this endeavor because I just fail to see any upside to this behaviour, its the limits of my imagination.

Generally I hope we can concede that living 'extrinsically' (taking queus from others) is sad. In the corporate sphere it would be called 'management by exeption' in academic terms it would be the pass/fail, approach to life. In cognitive behavioural psychology it would be called negative reinforcement, and elsewhere a demerit system.

That is to say, you aren't so much rewarded for success as punished for failure. I am lead to understand it is at its most extreme in Japan, where Ayumi Hamasaki's lipstick lines have been known to achieve 100% (that's EVERYBODY!!!) market penetration. Obviously if literally every girl and transvestite is wearing the same lipstick what ever social/sexual advantage you hope to gain is lost, there remains only the avoidance of disadvantage, that is by not having the same lipstick as everyone else you would somehow be percieved to be less attractive. (disfigurement by default, maybe?).

So while Valentino the last emperor may say 'Women want to be beautiful' I have a feeling that for most following the fashion circuit - it's the opposite, they buy clothes to avoid feeling stupid, ugly, out of shape, ignorant, old, out of touch and any myriad negative qualities they percieve to follow them around if they don't keep up.

And it's going to be the same for guys aswell.

The central argument I seem to be making though seems self defeating 'the mass market should not be catered to', which I know will never happen. Sad as taking confident people's styles, emblazoning a reassuring brand and selling it to an insecure person may seem, (again I'm sure I'm guilty of a lack of charity), it will always be happening and the perpetraitors are always going to be there because there is always insecurity to cashi in upon.

So what am I saying? I don't like it. I wish that these people could be cut loose, or at least catered to better.

Clothing is made for the wrong people because people demand the wrong clothing.

Let's start with guys:


Time was (and to some extent still is) that someone designed attire to make sumo's look good. Sumo's aren't shaped in a way that lends them to be described as 'fashion models', but why can't they be.

In Sumo size is equated with the positive qualities of 'strength' and 'power' ropes, headress etc are all designed to accentuate these positive qualities. I don't hear of Sumo garment makers crossing over into fashion design though. I suppose they are thought of as artisans.

Guys it's easier than girls, because you can interpret any physique into positive attributes, if not presently certainly historically.

When I say fashion is designed by the wrong people, I'm thinking of comic book artists being perhaps a viable alternative...

Wtf? - Take Oh!Great (pen name) author and illustrator of Air Gear. As a writer he borders on one of the worst out there, but his ability as an artist is actually one of the best in the Japanese comic-sphere.

Comic book artists create characters in all different shapes and sizes (if they are good) in order to differentiate their characters and make them distinct. (something a fashion designer I assume is supposed to do).

So they deal with fat characters and still try to dress them so they look cool and intimidating.

linked via Onemanga.com

or...

linked via Onemanga.com

For an extreme example. But it isn't just the realm of fiction. What about fashion icons like Biggie Smalls?

Someone at least designs clothes to take what somebody has and emphasise it in its most positive interpretation.

Women unfortunately it's harder. If you are 'plus sized' whatever that is, clothes are designed to in essence apologise for your existence. To utilise diagonal sweeps of fabric or whatever to conceal your stomach and so fourth and so onwards. The positive qualities of different figures seem simply not to exist for women because traditionally women have had a very marginalised function in human history.

If I taught a fashion school I would have my students start out dressing animals, walruses, elephants, cheetahs, antelopes, dogs, cats, horses to teach them to start with the model and dress them. Hopefully they wouldn't interpet this as making clothes from the aforementioned animals.

After a year of that I'd move onto circus freaks, then eventually the average human proportions aka the vitruvians.

Then and only then would I be willing to concede and talk about fashion designers 'creative abilities', again I must employ a lack of charity, but I simply see no achievement in making clothes that look good on a 'good looking' person.

For a telling insight, check out the list of books that come up on an amazon search for 'fashion illustration'. The covers say it all.

I kind of feel, with the models proportions being so universally agreed upon then all that designing a dress should involve is taking a paper doll model, drawing a tangent to it's nipple then using that line as the basis for your dress. If you want to be avant gaurd, draw two different tangents for each nipple then figure out a way to join them up.

There are a few designers I do understand the methods of and respect. Issey Miyaki comes to mind, for his technological innovation and engineering/architecture approach to clothing.

And that's about it. Otherwise the approach seems to be, make impractical 'concept clothing' that will never be worn on the streets by anyone but can be exhibited by models at a fashion show. Incorporate some small concept into a mass produced line, sell them in department concept stores the world over to convince dull people they can purchase an interesting personality.

But now I'm getting into tomorrow's post...

I guess some kind of conclusion is necessary so I guess I'm falling back on the old systems engineering principle - Garbage In = Garbage Out. If demand is what drives mainstream fashion, and people demand what they 'want', and what they 'want' is based on unrealistic expectations or deflecting their behavioural shortcomings onto the clothing they wear, then that's Garbage In, and as a result Garbage will come out.
There are all kinds of desirable qualities, but 'sexy' is to fashion as 'pop' is to music. Sure everyone wants to feel sexy, but there are more flavours out there and each will have their own strengths. Sure I like to feel sexy when looking at somebody I find attractive, but I bet you like to feel powerful when walking through an underpass at night? hmm... there's all kinds of things fashion could do, but doesn't. At least not in the sense that the very word 'fashion' brings to mind.

Thus the process flows: people don't know what they want, so they are the wrong people to make clothes for, there-to-fore the wrong clothes are made for the wrong people perhaps inevitably by the wrong people.

tohm's Fashion Week (Or 5 things I don't like about fashion): 1

Globalisation is a tricky thing. Because it is impossible to feel the effect of globalisation by standing still. You have to travel (ironically) to feel the full weight of globalisation on this world. That is the feeling that no matter how far afield you travel in the world you are standing still.

To be sure, you can get sushi (nori) hand rolls in Ballarat now, and Thai Green Curries with actual Kafir leaves floating in them and this seems like an increase in consumer choices in sunny Ballarat. Before it was bakeries, and in the budding days of globalisation - McDonald's and KFC. So Ballarat seems to be a more colourful and exciting place thanks to globalisations.

But if some small Australian city in the corner of the world has Thai curries and sushi handrolls, then if you look in the opposite direction say the small Bavarian town of Bamberg and looked at your choices of cuisine you will find: Thai Green Curry and Sushi handrolls!

You see, to the individual standing still the globalisation seems to make the world a more interesting place, but to the individual moving the world has lost its luster in its homogenized state.

Ballarat to Bamberg the world is truly becoming a global village. All we need is for Middle Eastern and African cuisines and soon everywhere will have the cuisine same as everywhere else. (admittedly in Germany you can find the sausage stands which you can't find in Australia...yet).

But what of fashion - you don't see shirts saying 'Paris, London, Tokyo, New York, Bamberg, Ballarat' but that's what globalisation means to fashion. The distribution chanels have changed such that the epicenters are more influential than ever.

When 'A Bathing Ape' founder Nigo started out, he would fly to the US and buy up stock to send home, back in the late 80's early 90's. New York would heavily influence Japanese fashion, but back then it required a 20 hour round trip flight.

Which sounds incredibly fast, but 20 years on the internet has made the process of 'coolhunting' much, much, much faster.

I hate cool hunting, and you know the saying 'by the time you hear about the bandwagon, it's already too late' well if the aim of being cool in its unrefined form is to express yourself as an independant individual, that bandwagon moves at a blistering speed through fibre optic cables to just about any corner of the globe that isn't dfependant on an Australian government to give it bandwidth.

For example, let's stay in Harajuku and look at Fruits magazine.

If you click on this link you will go to the magazines telling home page.

Why I say 'telling' is that it has 'japanese' and 'english' on it. So the magazine isn't exactly a hard to come by local publication anymore. What started as one guy documenting the handmade fashion of Tokyo youth has ended up as this. And inevitably that lead to Gwen Stefani putting her name on imitations of Japanese kids fashion creations and selling them right back to them. And publications like the sartorialist.

I know there are London spin offs of Fruits, and varying imitations of the Sartorialist, ranging to Copenhagen Chic (which adds bicycles to the voyeurism) and well anyone can find these places interesting.

What is the what? I hate globalisation but anyone (including me) can find these coolhunting, fashion agregators interesting?

What am I saying? If you combined all these pages together, you would have about 200 different styles a year from sartorialist alone, 900 or so from the fruits franchise, and eventually 1200 new choices every year. Only some kind of statistition could filter through all the aggregates and determine the 'style trends' in one monotonous glob right?

Well there's always choices, even when it comes to school uniforms. Long socks or short socks? Socks up vs. Socks down? Shorts in winter? School boy knot or double-windsor? long sleeves vs. short sleeves? top button open or closed? shirt tucked in or not? Traditional buckle or modern? etc.

But as far as I know from marketing about 25% of people in the world think for themselves, another 50% do pretty much what they are told and another 25% don't think about other people at all. (you can pick them by their IT and Engineering attire).

That 50% band is what gets up my nose, and has become increasingly odious as globalisation has spread. Think about it, 10 years ago there would have been 100 coolhunters in New York getting roughly the same amount of business. Now I would guestimate that there would still be 100 (if not 1000) cool hunters in New York, but 1 of them (ie. the sartorialist) would be getting more clientelle (even if they don't pay him anything) than the other 999 combined. His blog proudly proclaimes 'selected as one of Time magazines Top 100 design influencers'.

The way most ladders work particularly in the commercial realm is that no.1 will have 60% of the market share, no.2 will have 30%, no.3 10%, no.4 3% and so on downwards in ever diminishing supplies.

The internet has meant that fashion 'trends' can be preserved and transmitted in greater quantities and higher fidelity than ever before. The result? If you are in Ballarat or Bamberg, it means you are dazzled with the 1200 new choices every year, because back in the day it used to be roughly 4 new choices every year.

But what has been lost is the vast opportunities for mutation.

Take for example the following test (no mouseovers):

Q: What city is this in?


Can you honestly answer that question? My guess is - no. You can't.

Only those studying psychology may guess that I was too mentally strained to try and recall another across the world and out of the way city to use as an example so I just googled 'bamberg graffiti' even then I can't say for sure that this picture is in Bamberg. There was no caption.

An architecture major might recognise the roof tiles as germanic...

Anyway, graffiti is one of the most globalised fashions in the world. Whereas in the 80's every city had it's notorious players, the notority of the city stars has shrunk and Banksy's has grown to engulf everyone everywhere.

But it's interesting to pick up the book King's Way documenting Melbourne graffiti between 1983-93. it demonstrates fashions ability to mutate.

Globalisation had started for sure, with the advent of MTV and stuff as our first fashion agregators (or coolhunters) but when you flick through the pages of King's Way, what you won't see is a bunch of Melbourne Graffiti artists dressed in the same exact clothes as the graffiti artists of Brooklyn, but kids that look like they are living in Orbost today. Denim jackets, mullets, freckles etc.

Like a game of chinese whispers the underground culture originating from Brooklyn mutated with every ear and eye it passed through. The expense and sheer effort involved in sourcing clothing and styles from the US made local manufacturers and surf brands preferable and easier to stock.

1200 new styles a year may sound like a lot, but before fashion started globalising, there would have been 1,000,000 new styles a year - you just didn't notice them because you had no portal to see them through.

But I'd take a big bet that back in the 1980's if you took a train (or whatever) from New York to Chicago the teenagers in each city would look different. They would dress different and whatever. The most homogenous items (yet still localised) would probably be sports attire. At any rate, there would have been more distinct styles on just the east coast than there is today where sports attire is probably now the most differentiated attire. I'd be willing to bet I could find a couple of fashion journalists who had done such a thing and would testify to it.

But I'm just taking the principals of 'scalability' from 'The Black Swan' to predict the past (not an easy thing to do) of something I never experienced personally.

But I have experienced culture shock of passing through different country towns of Victoria. The rules for acceptable attire changed more than they do now. Billabong and Quicksilver (and now Roxy) being primarily responsible for the homogenisation of bogan fashion.

Thus in conclusion we are left with a prisoner's dilemma, when you are isolated from world fashion aggregators (coolhunters) you have less choices (say 30) albeit of local mutations of fashion that are actually more unique. When you do use world fashion aggregators you have more choices (say 300 for the average individual) that are in fact carbon copies and not really unique at all.

I see no way to combat globalisation apart from making your own clothes, but then there's nothing to stop the sartorialist or some other coolhunter wandering up and snapping a photo of you and next thing you know you are buying a copy of your clothes off Gwen Stefani. Perhaps the simplest thing to do is just displace yourself linearly in time, and simply read last years Sartorialist post corresponding to todays date... but then again fashion moves in ever tightening cycles (remember the 80's revival in the early 90's).

More tomorrow.

P.S. Incidentally this post was inspired by the ironically stupid 'Secret Melbourne' group on facebook, yet I haven't needed to mention it until the post script which is superfluous to the thesis. I checked it out, although its name pretty much says it all, and its only saving grace is that a constant stream of wall posts make it a very user unfriendly fashion aggregator. Furthermore people's 'secrets' are impossible to evaluate in any objective way. Further to that I assume its going to appeal to a kind of person unlikely to contribute something worth keeping secret, but really with 1,400 fans and counting to scour the CBD for 'cool' spots, they are bound to find everywhere eventually. If you want more mutants and less clones though, dropping this group may be a good place to start.

Derailed by Realism: Video Games

I thought I'd flesh out this ol' post with some more specific examples.

Now in my lifetime there have been a number of game titles that have dominated the world (like mini-Michael Jordans) every couple of years. But I'd be hard pressed to think of a game bigger than Street Fighter II, for sheer mindshare in the early 90's.

SF2 was everywhere, in every lobby that an arcade machine could be plugged in. Kids would pump $40 in to these machines on a weekday to try and haduken their way through M. Bison, back when $40 could buy you a house AND a family.

I spent my first $1 on 36 seconds of glorious E. Honda hand slapping action. I would stand back and look at the little 'move guide' laquered onto the arcade whilst other kids played, dreaming of my big moment when I would flawlessly pull off the forwards backwards joystick move that would send Honda through the air.

Even now I feel like crying over discovering how dissapointingly bad I was on my first attempt. Mind you I was much younger than the typical smoking, spiritually crushed arcade frequenters of the era.

Arcades have pretty much gone now in Australia, and good fucking riddence really, they were ineffecient, unwelcoming, unfriendly, expensive ways to go blow your whole day.

But before they died, Mortal Combat appeared, and perhaps making a bigger splash - mortal combat 2.

The hypothesis I'm presenting to you is that 'kids' think they want 'realism' because it's somehow more mature, more intelligent and better executed. They will describe something as more 'real' for being graphic, because they don't know what 'real' is and they don't know what they want, aside from looking childish and stupid. This probably isn't a young kids fault, but almost always those superior to them in age, who make them feel stupid for being a kid, which is what they are and don't do their actual intelligence credit.

Another way of putting it is my old chestnut 'crime fiction is what adults read when they are too embarrassed to read fantasy'.

One caveat though - I'm firmly on the Moorcock side of the Moorcock vs. Tolkein debate, beyond the realm of fiction, but to everything. That is to say, I'm not anti-realism, because I think we should watch, read and play things that are pure escapist fantasy rather than about actual ideas, emotions and social situations. I think either medium works for writing stuff that is 'about' something, which Tolkein was vehemently against (although I've heard 'The Lord of The Rings' was an allagory of Tolkeins views on race).

The thing is that MKI and then MKII with it's 'realistic' character designs, fatalities and what not took over, and wiped Street Fighter off the map, except its loyalists. Myself included. I can remember standing for hours jaw open on bourke st, roughly where JB Hifi is now but a huge arcade used to be - watching a guy play as Shang Tsung on what must have been one of the first Mortal Kombat II arcades. (It may have even been MKIII now that I think about it).

The real question is how did something that looks this bad:


overtake something that looks this good:



Now obviously, what looks good and what looks bad is a tad subjective. But SF2 predated MKI by a year. What I mean is the design element of street fighter, the animated sprites look so much better than the posed digitised photos employed by Mortal Kombat.

Street Fighter series stuck with the animated style to this day and it looks beautiful, Mortal Kombat only adopted animated characters when it went 3d (another dud tech trap in video gaming that ruined many a franchise), and even then they were based on the live action precedents set up by MK1, 2 & 3. That is to say the characters where drab and boring.

Going back now, I forgive Street Fighter II's original crappy graphics (they got modified and upgraded several times over the games ultimate lifespan) to the shitty resolutions available at the time, but from concept art right through to finished game you could tell an actual artist had touched each stage of the game design.

Whereas some crappy hack had borrowed some costumes from a shop for Mortal Kombat.

Just to hammer home the argument, this is what MK4 ended up looking like:


The pursuit of the latest technology and realism to win fans (like a 3rd dimension) ruining the game experience.

Whereas Capcom stuck to it's guns and this is what Street Fighter 3 looked like:



It probably didn't even use the best available tech, drain your processor power or anything, they put their effort into design and execution. Great characters, great story, great look...

It equally applies to other fads like adventure games that went from poorly animated VGA sierra adventure games to live action monstrosities like 7th Guest, 11th Hour etc, or 3d world explorers like Myst and Zork. These tech innovations I feel did nothing but expedite the death of adventure games in the face of 3d shooters.

In turn 3d shooters like wolfenstein and Doom rather than taking a more designed base approach to make the games less monotonous, where replaced by the same games with 'better' graphics like Quake, some one about a cult with a zillion weapons including a baseball bat (I think it was Cult of the Wolf or something), and so fourth. I was never a fan of the first person shooter, but could have been if the efforts had gone into level design, game play and making interesting characters, not trying to accurately sculpt the environments and guns to match something you could actually buy in texas.

All in all, it still isn't 'real' in any real sense. Nobody actually solves their problems with guns, or ends a fight by ripping somebodies head off. If Mortal Kombat was 'real' after each fight you would go to court for manslaughter at the least. If Golden Eye was 'real' you would go deaf from operating machineguns without protective gear and get post traumatic stress disorder from shooting living human beings in plentitude.

realism is a delusion.

More Great Feedback

The feedback continues to come in - this time from a philosopher:

Ok, here's what I got: you sometimes express yourself a little
dogmatically. On
quite complicated and controversial topics, for instance, you sometimes say
stuff like every right-thinking person agrees with you, when in fact the
consensus opinion might be quite far off. That isn't to say that you're wrong
about these things, just that your way of expressing them doesn't always come
with the appropriate level of epistemic humility. That's something I've found
annoying in the past.

While we're on epistemic humility: very relatedly, as I recall, you sometimes
tell people what their problems are like you are in a special position
to know,
when there is no obvious reason why that should be. Again, doesn't
mean you're
wrong, only that you should be a little more cautious coming to such
conclusive
opinions, and expressing them.

There is definitively a theme emerging I think, and my best course of action short term is to simply shut up, until I can learn how to listen and speak. I think the 'let right be right' is on track but its also great to get feedback because no matter how many times you read it you still learn something every time.

I must remind myself of the words of Mark Twain - "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." but alas I am a fool, it doesn't seem too productive to be ashamed of it.

I wish I had these feedback people on hand to help me correct the behaviour...

Let Right Be Right

I thought I'd give a progress report of how I'm doing at bettering myself and my self destructive behaviour.

One of the wake-up calls from my feedback was how disenchanting my tendancy to crap on with long winded stories could be. How it gave the impression I was a know all.

In 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' which I just lent to a friend so I forget the author Marshall's last name, he talks about the counter intuitive observation that if you put two people in a conversation and ask the participants what they thought of the other it typically breaks down as:

1. The participant who said the least, asking questions about the other to keep the conversation going is often thought of as a 'great guy/girl' by the other.

2. The participant who contributed most of the content (dominated) the conversation, is not thought of as nearly so great.

I never thought about this. Nor would I have thought my tendacy to dominate a conversation was offputting, or even a conversation killer.

I had assumed that an 'intelligent' listener would see the sincerity and thoughtfulness in what I believed and appreciate that I was a thoughtful and sincere person.

Besides, there is right and there is wrong. If I have more insight on a topic a provide more value by speaking up right?

I'm not sure if I'm guilty of 'adding too much value' or 'an obsessive need to be "me"' or whatever, but that I just don't impress people by proving how knowledgable I am on everything and everything. Infact more often than not the contrary is true.

Once enlightened my mind cannot become endarkened again. When I think of my 'smart' friends, many of them never talk about their knowledge unless explicitly asked for an opinion yet everybody knows they are smart. I know they are smart, often really really smart. I do get impressed to see their reasoning minds in action and all. But they don't seem to have the compulsive need to weigh in and settle arguments for other people like I do, with a smug 'you're welcome'.

I also mentioned in my excuses post that I have been taught through high-school debating to sound like I know what I'm talking about even when I don't. Which is just plain dangerous.

So following a depressive funk after recieving the feedback, I intellectualised this counter intuitive gem. Basically I asked myself if their were any situations ever where I would need to prove I knew more.

The only context is where I have an organisational responsibility to speak up and stop somebody from making a costly/dangerous/negligent mistake, say trying to pick a clog out of a food shredder. That's the time to risk sounding like a know all - to save somebodies hand and/or business.

Otherwise my new maxim has become - 'let right, be right' I don't need to be right. I don't even know if I am when it comes to forecasting. But something out there is right, and that's how it (anything) is going to play out. Right doesn't need champions to speak up for it in most situations, (following orders from a tyrant may be the exception) it will speak for itself in due course.

Unless you have an explicit responsibility to make your opinion and the information you are basing it on known, you (I) should just shut up. I find it very difficult, especially when people are talking about one of my pet topics like Japanese culture/history, 90's music or comics.

If you will think of it like a movie, a mystery, say you are watching a piece of shit like 'Mystic River' and the director introduces the mute brother of a kid and it seems suspicious and superfluous to your keen intellect and you yell out 'That's it, the mute kid's the murderer!' even if you turn out to be right, is anybody really going to benefit from your keen insight? The movie is going to play out regardless.

Life is like that. If you came out and called the GFC (somewhere between 11-50 economists managed to worldwide) it wouldn't prevent it from happening. It happened precisely because people weren't listening to any rational arguments for the investment products. You may have a responsibility to make that call for your clients who are paying you for the advice, but everyone else isn't asking you for it, and the net result is probably only going to serve yourself.

What you want to do is inform yourself, and that's something I'm still terrible at yet at least conscious of. Seeking information rather than giving it out. Asking questions and trying to see what people know, to give them a chance to impress me. And most do, usually through their kindness and sencerity.

I've also since having this revelation become more sensative to conversation killers. If you needed a conversation killed and turned into a monologue these are the people to hire. My mother's family are the Conversation assassin professionals, which tells me where I got these skills from, and am guilty of myself, but seeing their Xmas lunch in action was an eye opener with my new perspective. Anytime anyone was talking about anything, somebody be it aunt or uncle would interject, often gracelessly with offering some opinion on what was being said, and too often nothing relevant at all.

I've also seen people that just talk incessantly about themselves. I don't think of them as egotistical or self obsessed either, I just think they are probably unaware (like I was) of the effect they have on a conversation. They see somebody listening, they hear somebody talking and no uncomfortable silences. Bingo! A conversation. It doesn't matter that only one participant is talking, incessently, about themselves.

I smile at the thought that the guilty parties (and probably even myself) upon hearing the above example would probably launch into a long one sided monologue beginning with 'I know exactly what your talking about this guy/girl I know...' while I or you nod along mutely, trying to surpress your laughter.

Thus if in doubt, at the moment I'm just shutting up, saying 'yes' 'mhm' and 'I know' I try to ask questions when I'm on my game but listening is a really thought intensive process, and when I do make a statement I can get on a roll and go back to my old habit.

But at least my current job provides plenty of interruptions and escapes for both speaker and listener so that I can kick myself after fucking up and try and think of a question to throw the conversation back onto them and their lives.

It's hard, but I'm working on it. Most days I fuck up. Let's see how i go.

Naive Investor Interlude 1: The First Investment Decision

Most people go for financial advice after they have already made the decision that will have the greatest benefit on their wellbeing.

If we adopt a simple principal of investment, that we should concern ourselves with the scarcest resources first - then many fail to look at or evaluate the most precious one.

Many may argue that generally land is the scarcest resource since 'they aren't making any more of it.' But by the same logic, crude oil becomes the scarcest resource because not only are they not making any more of it, people are actively destroying what remains every day.
But from a personal standpoint the scarcest resource hasn't yet been touched - time.

Time is unique in that you only have so much of it, and it gets spent whether you make a decision or not. This usually points to things like 'time management' no doubt important, but thats still a bit too advanced a question for this interlude.

The first investment decision is how you are going to spend your time, and most people will get financial advise without touching this question at all. Likely because a 'financial advisor' is not a 'career advisor'.

An argument can be made, for not saving and not investing for later life because we should enjoy our lives while we are fit, healthy and unattached. Not only does this lead to disastrous youth financial management (being up to their eyeballs in debt before their first full time job) but its premis is false.

To assume that the 'old you' will not desire to enjoy life is a big and incorrect assumption. Nobody resigns themselves to 'I'm not at my athletic peak anymore, therefore I will accept the good times are over and lead a life of poverty and misery.'

You will desire International Holidays and beach resorts as much later as you do now. The reverse argument though is also false - the 'defferred happiness' syndrome.

That is where you sacrifice now in order to afford a better tomorrow. Resigning yourself to a miserable 25 year career in order to afford some luxurious orgy of a retirement.

Most people can reject the 'deferred happiness' on an intellectual level because it is uncertain whether through sheer fortune you will survive long enough to enjoy your retirement.

But still many fall into the trap.

Assume 1/3rd of your day is spent sleeping, 1/3 on recreation and 1/3rd at work. 30% of your time portfolio is dedicated to a job.

Do you like that job?

That is the first question of investment. How are you investing your time? While it may seem important to earn money, no amount of money can buy back time. Vast amounts of money may be able to buy some time when you are at your physically least capable but the exchange rate isn't efficient. Still the price of time goes up like anything else when it becomes most scarce.

Nobody would take on a $500,000 mortgage at 20 to buy 13 more days, but you could bet the late Kerry Packer would have.

Furthermore we can assume that 1/3rd recreation time wil be spent with your family. Do you like your family? Is your marriage a happy one? Difficult questions but vital to your day to day quality of life.

Work and family contributes so much to happiness, that its surprising more people don't get career advice before financial. As if 10 years of great retirement are more valuable than 25 years of day to day office life.

Work should contain enough stress to keep you buzzing, enough challange to make it interesting, a social outlet for you, and it should tap your talent reservoir. Getting those things will make such a difference for you now, the cumulative benefit over your career may be more valuable than a vast retirement nest egg.

Furthermore, there's no reason really that you can't have both. Most people just skip right over the first question: 'How are you investing your time?' and go straight to retirement plans. Cutting out a whole stack of obtainable lifestyle goals.

Vocation

I have a new found respect for parents who live vicariously through their children. Although, this may mean I respect all parents, which certainly isn't how I feel.

You see that parent that says 'little Andre, go on outside and hit 1000 serves before dinner.' or 'Pete, we're going on a drive and you are going to dribble that ball out the window or I'll take your damn arm off!' or 'Michael if you don't hit those high C notes I'm going to punch you in the eye!' are at least trying to break the cycle of banality, if not for the children's sake.

But most parents under the guise of 'wanting it for their childrens sake' vicariously look for a secure life absent of any pitfalls. And I think, certainly the private secondary system has come to reflect the strong market demand for 'all the things we didn't have in life'.

But it's more like an insurance advisor got in the ears of private schools and said 'what we want to do is spread the risk around such that everybody leads average mediocre lives'. Any kid aspiring to a 'dreamer' profession can be resolutely crushed by denying them electives and streamlining them into subjects they would never want to do in a million years like further maths.

In fact vocation type courses is now firmly aligned with kids that are struggling, kids that have nothing else. Except for those kids that do have something else, this something is what I have come to term as 'the fallback fallacy'.

Most true vocations of dreamers are 'scalable' that is if you look at the job market for that vocation the average wage will be somewhere below the poverty line, and those that call themselves 'artists, actresses, actors, musicians, table tennis pros, custom motorcycle builders etc' are more readily identified by society as waiters, call center workers and factory line workers.

But if you look at the top of those professions the best in these professions earn 'obscene' amounts of money.

It's because they are usually globalised professions in limited demand. Thus a few hundred people can fulfill all the studio needs for actors in big budget films for the whole world 1 in 10,000 artists can produce enough art to fill all the offices and museums in 3 cities. You only need 20 AFL players out of all the hopefuls to make up a side. You only need 5 starters for an NBA team. And so on BUT, the value they then generate is immense. These scalable professions are 'winner takes all' professions, and the rest live below the breadline.

This it is high risk, you have say a 90% of never making it, a 9% chance of earning a living and a 1% chance of hitting the jackpot. Thus parents vicariously wanting 'a better life' for their kids will in most cases get anxious at all the 'actor' and 'artist' and 'drummer' talk and try and encourage their kid into becoming a statistician or some shit as 'a fallback'

Now the odds I gave above are meaningless. If say you put 4 years concerted effort into your desired vocation as a teen your odds will be more like 80% chance of never making it, 17% chance of making a living and 3% chance of hitting the jackpot.

If you hadn't guessed it, I'm just making these numbers up. It boils down to 'you have to be in it to win it' or 'you miss 100% of the shots you never take' or other reassuring sporting/lotto cliches. The point being, that sometimes these scalable proffessions are vicious cutthrought dog eat dog, fish eat fish darwinian battle royals... aka actually worth fighting for. But the thing that makes you a minnow in this ocean full of sharks is dedicating time and resources to a 'fallback' career.

The logic is thus - it's hard to be a popstar (allegedly) so just in case you don't make it get a degree in pharmacy, just in case you don't make it you can still enjoy a 'quality of life'.

So young girl slaves away through years 11 & 12 gets into uni studies for 4-5 years blows some money on a gap year or touring round the world and discovers that they are 22 all of a sudden. Most of the chart topping popstars are onto their second album by that stage and they haven't had a singing lesson in 6 years.
Good thing you have that fallback career now?

Fallacious, absolutely fallacious. Putting effort into a fallback qualification is in most cases the very act of 'not making it', and what is the fallback career anyway? It isn't something you wanted to do. It's not your first choice in life, it's at best your second, it comes often with huge debts and as is often the case, the only security to be had in this world - the security of failure.

There can be no prize to pursue or claim now that you have fallen back, it isn't your dream to be a pharmacist, engineer, chemist, actuary, lawyer, doctor, whatever... you wanted to act, you wanted to hold a championship trophy aloft, you wanted something that would bring tears to your eyes not through love, not through religion but sheer effort.

Instead you are left with a career, a career that could have waited for your decent and dedicated attempt to make something special of yourself as an artist, singer, writer, acrobat or budding entreprenuer.

And what is a career, Bob C* Cock aka Adam Gates summed up what I call the 'cycle of banality' in a way that spoke to me at the age of 16 so vividly that I remember it today:

Obviously any half-intelligent dimwit would see the folly of pursuing a "quality of life". This very pursuit reduces your life quality to that of a lab monkey. But they wave the golden carrot in your face. When you make this much money THEN life will finally start. THEN you can relax a little, read a book , enjoy a good fuck . When you get that raise, enter that income bracket and swallow without thinking. Perhaps that's all our modern educational system really is, the elimination of the choke reflex.

Now mind you, many of your teachers won't fess up to the intellectual laziness on their parts. That's all part of the game. An obstacle race really. Just get through High School and things will be better. Just get through college and things will improve. Just get that promotion and life will start. Why bother filling kids heads with IDEAS? What good will Camus do a freshman anyway? And that my friends is where the true sickness really lies. They simply cant be bothered to remind themselves (as well as you) of the association of thoughts, ideas, creativity,critical thinking etc. to the "real world". For to do this requires not only hours of hard work, caring and intelligence it demands that they fight the one mind set that most of them have been entrenched in for years and years-

Boredom.

plus it's worth reading the whole thing.

This is what I have struggled through and come to accept, it seems vicious and cruel and whatever to encourage a kid to pursue something that seems almost impossible. ALMOST impossible, but the alternative is really to 'sit this round out' but the round is your life and you only get one shot at it.

Sitting it out, if not as melancholic as Bob Cock describes, involves exactly what most lives amount to - study for the first 21 (to 23) years of your life in the most developed and priveledged nations in the world, then get a job, then get married, (these days buy a house each before you get married) buy as many houses as you can until all your descretionary spending is taken up by mortgage repayments on investment properties. Then have kids. Then flip your properties at (hopefully) a profit so you can afford to send your kids to a private school where they will be faced with the same dilemma. Spend their life pursuing something worthwhile (to them) but ALMOST impossible to obtain, or play it safe and sit this round out?

Propogating the species, your genes and your memes may seem noble. But not if they are just using up resources consuming goods made unsustainably for offspring that within 4 generations will bear almost no genetic or ideaological resemblance to you at all really isn't. If nobody breaks the cycle of banality, what's the point?

Furthermore, in a country like Australia there really is no risk. If you spend your years 18-26 pursuing a stand up comic gig and you never make it and one day you accept that you just don't have the fire in the belly, the eye of the tiger anymore so what? Quit. Go to school, go to uni, it's much easier to get in now than straight out of highschool now you are a mature age student. You will almost certainly be in a better financial position than them. You will be relaxing when your own high school buddies are prematurely ageing from mortgage stress thanks to taking financial advice from the same qualified source that gave them career advice - their parents.

You will outperform the other students I guaruntee it, because you will care about this course. You've had 6 years to think about your decision. They most likely had a matter of weeks to lock in their preferences. Most of them will end up changing career anyway at some point. The most annoying ones drop out. An employer will hire you once you are qualified and then your colleagues will find you more interesting than themselves because you spent 6 YEARS AS A STRUGGLING STAND UP COMIC.

Doing it hard will have taught you something that most people if not born with it, never get - kindness, sympathy and persistence. You will have the precise education a private school fails to deliver - the ability to back yourself, to take risks and live with the consequences. To haul yourself out of deep funks by your own bootstraps. THAT is a fallback career. One where at 35 you don't wake up at night and think 'What could I have been' one that involves no boredom.

Even if your fallback career fails, what of it, back to uni again. Or buy a franchise, make gourmet burgers. Learn woodturning, sell all your assets and set up a business. Whatever. Do anything, just break the cycle.

' Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' said Samuel Beckett.

Words to live by, any other life is not worth living.

It is why I fear not trying more than failure itself.

*The 'C' is for 'Cock'

Should Drawing Be Fun?

I must confess, there's something I don't know... at least two ideas have collided in my head. I had accepted both statements to be true but they suddenly seem mutually exclusive. What George Orwell called 'doublethink'.

1. The slower you go, the faster you learn.
2. Learning should be fun.

And of course, it's more complicated than that...

Right now I know I want to learn how to draw a human face in realistic proportions for my next comic project. I can free hand scratch out a pretty good attempt on one of the 'How to Draw' instructional books, and then having learnt something (like the standard unit of measurement for a face is in terms of eye width = the eyes are 1 eye apart, the nose is 1 eye wide etc.) I can move on practice some head tilts.

I accept as fact that the one way to learn how to draw is - to draw. You can leave it at that, draw and draw furiously and eventually you will tighten up your style and create drawings that have at least one fan.

That said, my old bass teacher really emphasised the 'the slower you learn the faster you learn' paradox. The really good guitarists know their scales inside and out, on bass or guitar. They have engraved rhythm into their muscles and that makes playing the difficult pieces seem easy. Or you can do what is fun and just learn a bunch of songs by rote. Fun now or fun later in other words.

If you know the fundamentals you can improvise, but the fundamentals are tedious and painstaking, whereas you can copy and trace artists you admire, but later you will depend on references for everything.

I'm pretty good at working from references freehand (as in not tracing) already, I think this is what people would call talent.

And technically I could most probably have powered my way through 3 instructional comic drawing technique books in the weeks I've spent on the first few pages. But I know, if I don't carve the realistic proportions into my muscle memory, it will result in painstaking trial and error character design later on. As in if I don't get a feel for when my characters proportions, I won't be able to improvise.

So for example I'm currently diong this:



These are the 'in proportion' guidelines I whipped up so I can practice a face 16 times in a row. Given that my instructional book is targeted at 12 year olds, it knows drawing is supposed to be fun, so it doesn't have a single phrase like 'repeat until you have it down then move on' or 'practice for '4 hours then move onto next exercise' its implied message is that you draw each picture once and move onto the next one.

SO I created this guideline exercise to streamline the tedious process of drawing up the guidelines. It reduces it down to my having to draw in the features and contours and expressions, but the aim is to do enough to get the jawline (the hardest make or break contour I'm finding) into my muscle memory so I can feel the proportions. I also have one for drawing in profile.

But you know something, after each one I complete, I find myself staring blankly, not thinking, not anything until I shake my head and think 'woah, how much time has passed?' and reluctantly draw the next one.

It most definitely isn't fun to do, not like drawing a cartoony figure, but the thing is that I can already draw cartoony figures and that I can see improvement the more I practice. I have no intention of drawing carbon copy realistic figures for my comics, but I just want the skills to improvise on this 'realistic' theme.

Eventually I want to draw more OTT realism like Greg Cappullo made big in the 90's with Spawn.

But honestly I don't know. I don't know if I wouldn't be better off just ploughing head first into what I want to do. Or whether the benefits I percieve in learning these tight realistic models are illusory.

I guess I'll find out if I give up.

Naive Investor Chapter 4: Addendum

Ed: I will slow down with these chapters, as afterall 'The Intelligent Investor' has 20 chapters and is the culmination of Graham's life work. I'm up to 4 already and don't have as much to talk about.

I had a sudden insight that expresses Chapter 4's core message more succinclty. The Naive Investors default risk profile is this:

They desire maximum exposure to the upside with minimum exposure to the downside.

This is something Maquarie Bank's television ads capitalise (prey) on.

This win-win mindset is what makes the investor naive. Most people posess enough sense to know that on the whole the stockmarket will rise and fall daily, 'it will fluctuate'. You will notice the Naive investors risk profile above incorporates the word 'desire' an emotional, lustful feeling.

Desire is not so intellectual and this is why an intellectual framework and discipline is necessary.

To illustrate it think about the sharemarket. The default risk profile may tell you that Shares go 'upwards' in a jagged line. The market on average goes up one day (the price of some companies rise by an amount the is greater than the greater collective fall of the other companies) and on other days the market goes down (the value of some companies fall in price is greater than the collective rise in price of the other companies) The naive investor likes the rising parts of the jagged line, but they don't like the falling part.

This gives birth to the naive investors emotional strategy of 'direct shares'. It is based on a desire for the upside of the jagged market line without the unpleasantness of the downward market line.

How to do this? It seems simple enough, (enough to be naive) buy only the companies that will go up in price, and don't buy the companies that will go down. 'Pick Winners' in other words.

It is not enough that an index fund's net result over a year may be to increase your wealth, it becomes necessary (on a sheer emotional level) to 'beat the market' as the new 'minimum' performance level. Something increadibly hard to do over a year, and near impossible over the long term.

Why do I think this stems from naive emotional desires? Because it is incredibly rare for any managed fund to beat the market in a given year, and even rarer over 5 years, and almost unheard of over 10 years.

Yet people put their money into direct share 'growth' funds year after year that underperform a mindless 'index fund'.

The basic risk profile of 'I want exposure to the upside, and no exposure to downside' is crucially important. It has to be overcome before you start investing.

It's this emotional profile that I have in mind when I ask 'do you deserve to be rich?' if you aren't willing to take responsibility for your decisions (not just financial) then no, I don't feel you 'deserve' to be rich and I will put no effort into making you rich.

But accidents do happen.

Derailed on Realism

There is really one type of Tool Fan, the 'real' Tool fan, they get it where as all those other jerks 'don't really understand' the depth of the music, they are just there for the metal or whatever.

I'm proud to call myself a Tool fan and think its a massive achievement for a band to gain such a widespread supporter base that fails to identify with eachother. The IT type nerds with their glasses, aspergers and downloaded HD torrents of the Tool filmclips look down on the metal crowd with their tasteless black t-shirts, long hair, peircings and air-guitar playing antics, who in turn look down on the IT types. And it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum, any variation is enough to earn the displeasure of a fellow tool fan. In a pinch a simple height differential will do.

But there is another source of division, that probably falls for the milder form of debate - 'which is the seminal Tool album? Aenema or Lataralas?' Both are great albums, both have killer tracks. One doesn't take itself seriously, the other does.

I'm in the Aenema camp, because it has these filler tracks and interludes that are comic, without them the album would be far too serious. I suspect there are fans of Tool out there that feel the opposite, they can tolerate 'Useful Idiot' as an intro for '40, 6 & 2' but they can't stand 'message for harry manback' they loved 'Die Heir Von Satan' until they discovered it was a recipe for cookies, or that Bill Hicks standup routine cameo's in a song. 'Hooker with a Penis' just removes the whole vibe of the album being serious and heavy with an actual track being an angry and hilarious rant against fan's that accuse them of selling out.

Lateralus is much more to their taste where the only joke track is the craptacular 'Faaip De Oiad'. The rest is a well intergrated start to finsih heavy musical experience.

I feel I would be in the minority of fans who think skilled artisans should inject some humour into even their most serious thesis', and certainly I wasn't always this way.

But I think there's something adolescent in the desire for 'realism' that is far from real. The idea that something is ever complete or a complete experience. Thus if anything for me Lateralus suffered from its perfection, if nothing else the annoying fellow fans and how much they jack off to it. Taken to an extreme this perfection creates blandness even in perfectly crafted music, art etc.

'Realism' is I use it is a malaproprism of 'mannerism' for lack of a better word. I use mannerism because it is michelangelo's artistic style and I think to someone who doesn't think much you could be captivated by one of Michelangelo's paintings or sculptures and talk about how 'real' it looked. I used to, but then when I look at them now and actually copied some of them, mannerism is all about exagerating and elavating what is there. The anatomy is all subtlely emphasised. Michelangelo's use of colour illuminates ordinary people that they look divine. He found a way of drawing eyes that human brains respond to as beautiful and serene but in no way accurately depict the construction of the eye. (as near as I can say it involved constructing the eye lid as dropping in at a tangent to the pupil of the eye instead of following the curve). You can recognise his works by and large by the eyes of his subjects.

But people would describe it as 'realistic' because the simplified and exagerrated characters resonate with them.

The real turning point where I think almost everything got 'derailed' by the 'realism' appeal was 1989's Batman. As a child I credited Tim Burton with reinterpreting Batman from campy and vibrant to dark and twisted. This is because I didn't read the comics at the time. But Burton and Nicholsan in effect did effect the comic movie market, as Batman was the biggest thing in the world in 1989. The soundtrack is Prince's second highest selling album.

But Burton was just riffing off Frank Miller's work in the comic 'Batman: Year One' which in turn was just a standard fair transplant of Miller's dark and gritty style he applied to Daredevil onto the face of Bruce Wayne whom in essence is the exact same character as Matt Murdoch/Dare Devil (in archetype terms). It doesn't mean the story wasn't clever or well written/constructed. But when I recently watched Burton's Batman from 1989 I found I liked it for the exact opposite reasons I thought I did.

It was the blending of the Miller-esque dark and gritty with the subtle influence of the Adam West 'Campy and Hilarious' Batman. Burton did it in masterful touches like the scene where Batman picks one specific batsuit from several identical batsuits hanging on coathangers. Or scenes where Bruce Wayne gets up in the middle of the night to hang from gravity boots upside down.

One could argue that silly scenes like these ruin what could have been a perfect run of dark gritty 'realism'. I think too much time has passed for anyone to care.

But many regard 'The Dark Knight' as the perfect realisation of the batman universe, I don't get it personally but people love Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. It's hard to tell whether its the writing or the acting, but personally I think there's 'the Joker' character that combines incredibly sick with incredibly funny, and then there's the lazy version that is just some crazy random psychopath which is what Ledger brought to the screen. But people I guess love this Joker for its 'realism' in that he doesn't have the incredible permenant clown makeup disfiguration - just some chelsea smile scars and crappy makeup. He isn't motivated by humour he's just an anarchist terrorist. etc.

I think in the comic book movie world this dark gritty realism has invaded. X-men instead of being bedecked in the campy yellow lycra and out their costumes, just had everyone wearing more 'realistic' leathers and it was dull and boring. Spider-man clawed back the excitement for viewers, only to be crushed by The Dark Knight and Watchmen's 'realism'. Its a sheer intolerence for the ridiculous.

I don't know how to articulate it, but its more that - 'realism' is wholly uncreative and more often than not, done poorly. Directors, writers etc. will scrap the bright coloured costumes without shedding a tear and call it 'realism' and then not bother to write an actual decent story.

We respond to actors playing parts in the same way we respond to Michelangelo's art pieces, because they simplify and amplify what's there. Bruce Wayne or the Joker aren't 'realistic' characters. All manner of complex thoughts have been stripped from them to accentuate the basic motivations. Thus Batman is a simplified cop with a black and white view of justice, and an arrested development. Joker is just some crazy fucked up clown guy with no real motives or desires.

Those efforts that get remembered though, long after some bigger budget reboot buries the 'realisticly' dated 'masterpieces' are those that try to inject more humanity into the characters making them actually more realistic in that regard even though they may have them wandering around in the same campy costumes or with a bat head shaped grill attached to the front of a car.

Or indeed Iron Man, where they cast the semi-ridiculous but talented Robert Downy Jr as Tony Stark and had him fly around in a campy red-gold suit. Downey recieved no Oscar consideration for his perfect portrayal of Tony Stark because the caddish, rich, spoilt, immature tech company moghul isn't as 'realistic' as an amorphous psycho clown. Yet even with all the pure fantasy in Iron Man, people forget completely that the 'Iron Man' is computer generated, Robert Downey Jnr. isn't in the suit, but the audience buys in completely that there is a man inside it flying around and punching up terrorists.

I could move onto cartoons, and how they were derailed by a move from very unrealistic Disney and Looney Tunes characters to the realistically proportioned characters of the Scooby Do kids (except Shaggy, the only character apart from Scooby which anyone fondly remembers) right through to rap moving from the tongue in cheek 'Native Tongues' posse to the more 'realistic' Gangsta Rap, or the music scene in general which seems to have moved from alt-rocks exaggerated escapist moods and emotions to 'mellow' ball-less beardo-rock. The muted emotions of modern music being a reflection of the 'realistic' muted emotions of modern teenagers. Even Emo music is less angsty than the teen angst bands of old.

'Realism' as far as I can tell is a fanboys concept of 'perfect' and if you've seen a fanboy lately I don't think you want to live in their ideal world, given what they've done to themselves already.

As Yogi Berra says 'if the world was perfect it wouldn't be.' And that really would be the conclusion of any thesis on realism or how far deconstruction should go.

All of this could you believe it is preamble though, for tomorrow I am going to point out that the true tragedy of the 'realism' movement is that it creates an environment where Grant Morrison and Mark Miller are called 'creative' and 'geniuses'.

Things You'd Think I Would Have Been Taught 1

It took me working through Fear Of A White Planet to discover that drawing is in essence a two stage process:

1. Thinking/Problem Solving
2. Filling in

1 is hard, the better you get at it the better artist you are. 2 is relatively easy.
To get better instantly at 1 here is my first handy hint I can't believe nobody taught me in my 13 years of art education or 3 years of graphic design (primary through secondary of course).

1A: Background Music -
Wrong Ipod setting

Right ipod setting

The reason being that whilst music can serve as inspiration it can also inspire bursts of energy or transition into a mood that is detrimental to the piece and then, just the plain old simple fact that I'm not smart enough to multitask. It may seem innocuous but when you remove the distraction of music you draw better, as in step 1 - thinking, problem solving because you are concentrating on the lines you are throwing down.

1B: The thinking man's grip:

I can't believe nobody taught me that in the composition/blocking stage of a drawing you don't grip the pencil like this:
Wrong

But like this:
Right

If the difference isn't immeaditely obvious to you, its basically the art of holding the pencil as far away from the tip as you can. You only adopt the handwritting grip for filling in details. Why? It just works in a number of ways, firstly gripping the far end of the pencil puts less pressure on the point leaving a lighter line that is easy to erase. Secondus it makes it easy to draw curves and straight lines through manipulating your wrist. The turning circle is much wider than gripping at the point, just like a compass creates bigger circles when you open its arms up widest.
Thirdly you can see what you are doing. Fourthly you can move the tip around the drawing area without having to shift your whole hand giving you greater control over the relative distances and proportions, something you need for composition.

Both lessons 1A + 1B will instantly improve your stage 1 drawing, I guaruntee it with a full money back on the purchase price of this blog post.

1A I learned two days ago from reading a book on animation, 1B from watching a DVD of Takehiko Inoue drawing. No teachers thought to mention these 101 basics. Then again by the time I got good art teachers they weren't teaching the basic techniques anymore.

The 7 Highly Ineffective Habits of the Japanese Education System

I'm an athiest, and usually when I have a crisis of faith and panick that I might be pissing off some omnipotent being that is concerned whether I believe in him or not but not concerned enough to go to any effort to convince me of his existence... the remedy I find is just to think a little.

I think the only faith I observe as being able to crop up anywhere anywhen in anycommunity is atheism. Maybe pantheism, but get any more specific or detailed you get into something I just can't see people spontaneously discovering those faiths. And people don't/didn't. The Inca had monotheism before the Spanish bought Catholicism, and right or wrong their god that they discovered was not Catholocism.

There's certain beliefs right, that need no reinforcement, they get reinforced every day. Like gravity, you may not understand it, nobody does - but you don't need to go to a meeting once a week to get told that if you jump off a cliff gravity will punish you. Whereas if you believe that lightning (or a tsunami) will strike you for being a homosexual you do need to go to a meeting once a week where a person has dedicated their life, their entire life's worth of energy to reinforcing this belief because it is the only way that such a belief can persist because lightning and tsunamis certainly aren't going to reinforce it for you.

That said, nationalism to me is just another form of belief that needs constant reinforcement. You take any two people on the planet and throw them down anywhere on the planet and they will act... like people. They will eat, sleep, shit, talk and with a little luck probably bone. They will show generosity and selfishness, they will get frustrated, fall in love and where all their emotions on their face. And no matter which two people you grab (provided they both have faces) they will be able to read each others faces and understand the tones in the voice.

The point being that what binds us together will always be greater than what sets us apart. My oft cited 'best response ever' to my question at the intercultural forum held in melbourne a couple of years ago when I asked how some 'new Australians' felt when Australia day rolled around and Today Tonight and A Current Affair do stories on 'Australian Mateship' and shit and one panelist said 'there's nothing Australian about being decent and polite and a human being'.

Nationalism always makes me angry, no matter when it shows up like on 'Black Saturday' when the news anchors started talking about how great Australians were for giving to charities and helping out people effected by hardship. Here's a news story: Everybody, everywhere helps out in times of hardship. Human beings are social animals.

Manager Tools have a great podcast about 'Cultural Diversity' that addresses the damage of generalisations.

But there is one 'culture' you will come across from time to time if you live in the world that does come across as particularly unique but in practice is actually a 'system' that is reinforced in one of the most energy intensive wastes of time ever: The Japanese Education System.

Here's a rundown:

1. Nakama: Any human being meeting another human being is going to approach a stranger warily, and probably in most circumstances actively try to determine wether they can trust them or not. Probably stemming from Humanity's early evolution where it was hard to tell whether coming across another tribe was going to bring competitors for food or fresh breeding partners to stave off inbreeding.
The Japanese education system reinforces a concept of 'Nakama' or groupism, actively. Many teachers have been caught up in the bullying of the students, all comonly stemming from 'Nakama hazure' lit. 'cut off from the group' these games teach children that their very life depends on group membership and it flows through to every centrally organised manner of Japanese life. 'Kaisha' the word for company is a reversal of the characters for 'Shakai' and company life reflects Japanese society in the same way. You share the fate of your group or 'tribe' people are 'ie' (house/tribe) or 'soto' (outsiders). There is no grey area.
Classes are organised into tribes so that for the most part you will follow your class through high-school with very little mix up. Softball teams and baseball teams study together, eat together, practice together and sleep together.
The net result is that by design Japan has isolated itself as a country and has become 'Nakama Hazure'. Oh the bitter irony. But is their any other country that has more willing devotees, fanboys and girls from all over the world besotted with the cutesy comic culture and 'crazy' fashions that just think Japan is the bees knees and study the language, apply for teaching positions and go on rotary exchanges arms wide looking for Japanese friends and... they get pushed aside, given a 'gaijin' (outsider) card to produce for the police at any time on demand, denied loans at 0% after 20 years residence, denied citizenship, their children labelled 'halfs' and then treated 'specially' or 'differently' from the pure Japanese. As an outsider you are never permitted entry into any existing 'Nakama' and it stands to reason (since it was taught through Juniour and Senior schooling) that you as an outsider are not to be trusted, not to be treated respectfully (just condescendingly 'honored' as a visitor for your life).
My experience has been that the older a person in Japan up to say 60-80 the more they are just a human being like everyone else and I think its the distance they have lived from the education system. It is ironically the younger friends of mine that are less progressive often than their parents, that you feel the real push to stay out of their inner circle as 'you can never be one of the Nakama'.
Nakama is ineffective because it A) invariably leads to xenophobic behaviour. B) inveriably envolves bullying in its reinforcement.

2. Nihonjinron: The laughable thing about Nihonjinron - the study of 'Japaneseness' is that it tells every Japanese kid educated in Japanese schools that Japanese people are homogenous. Which annoyingly qualifies every Japanese kid as an expert in being Japanese, because it in effect states that 'If Japanese people are homogenous, then a sample of 1 is statistically significant for determining Japanese behaviours, I am Japanese, therefore I am a statistically significant sample of Japanese people to infer the behaviour of all other Japanese people from.' Which shows up as 'It's not Japanese.' and 'This is the Japanese way.'
But what people are really saying is 'I'm not like that' and 'I like doing this' the former set of statements are almost certainly going to be false, where the later sets are unequivocally true.
Nihonjinron is ineffective because it A) contributes to the 'Nakama' obsession. B) Is very easy to invalidate, and refute (given the large size of possible exceptions to any hard and fast rule about Japaneseness). C) is just plain racist.
Nihonjinron has been used to try and ban foreign ski-gear companies because Japan has 'special snow' and justify blocking US Beef because 'Japanese intestines can't digest it' the whole study is just a waste of fucking time.

That's really it, and they both follow on from eachother, but they are responsible for pretty much everything that through my long affair with Japan has ever made me go 'that's it I FUCKING HATE this country.' even though rationally I know countries and cultures only exist in the mind.
I could talk about the coupling of cleanliness and beauty and how it has destroyed nature and shit, but there are much better books on the topic.

This post could have gone much quicker if I'd just written:

'Japanese schools teach Japanese kids they are in a gang, and when you are in a gang you can't trust anyone outside the gang, and if you are thrown out of the gang then nobody else will trust you and they shouldn't and you are better off dead. AND you are all part of one uber gang - the Japan gang and every member is a member because they are the same but we are unique because their is no such thing as a gang called 'Humanity' there are just Japan gang members and outsiders.'

Can you see the trouble this could cause?

Naive Investor Chapter 4: Expectations and Emotional Framework

There are decisions to be made. So its important to reign in and get a handle on your expectations. Why do you want to invest your money?

Most likely you will want more money, but why? How much? What for? The vast majority of people with pocket change in the world simply want an income that will preserve their current lifestyle when they stop working/having an active income. But other people want to be rich, to win big. Yet other people it is about keeping up with the jones' and investing becomes a largely negative experience.

Hence Benjamin Graham warns against not having an intellectual framework to overcome the emotions that break down discipline. He has the powerful metaphore of 'Mr. Market'.

I don't want to go too far into the various investment classes, but lets look at shares to illustrate 'Mr.Market.' A guy who is taken by chronic pessimism followed by chronic optimism on a daily basis. He is an annoying friend that comes by every day offering to sell everything he owns or buy it all at fluctuating prices. You are under no obligation to buy or sell or even listen to Mr. Market but you can feel free to take advantage of his wild moodswings. Because he just determines prices based on his erratic moods, not the underlying businesses he has (or hasn't) got shares in.

Mr. Market tells you nothing more than what mood he is in, thus it creates good and bad prices to buy at. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The point is that the market 'will fluctuate' as per JP Morgan's prophetic words. But whether the various investment markets go up and down is largely irrelevent until you put a context on it.

We have established as per chapter 3, that the minimum expectation we hold of our investment performance is that it beats inflation. Or it's net performance (after tax, fees etc.) is better than inflation. That way at least you will be getting richer with your savings in terms of purchasing prices. This is a reasonable expectation and is generally not too hard to do.

Many though go beyond inflation and look to your financial goals, your goals will have some quantity you can affix to it, some annual return and it should have a firm basis in reality. Something to the tune of an average 6% etc.is much more reasonable (more than twice as reasonable) as a sustained 14% per annum.

It is highly possible that the market itself will generate this return, thus there is no reason to try difficult operations like picking winners from the share market. An index fund will track the market's performance (making the news more meaningful because they will always report the index performance).

Historically 'beating the market' is notoriously hard, particularly over the long term. The only success stories that are sustained are Ben Graham's value based investor progeny. But for most financial goals it is largely irrelevant, an index fund will share the fate of the market as a whole and will generally generate an adequate return provided the majority of businesses stay in business because they are fundamentally competent.

Even performing poorer than the market average may result in wealth.

Your expectations as such need to be rooted in a concrete goal, and all performance should be measured in the context of this goal. Who cares if you could have performed even better, if you have achieved everything you set out to anyway. Breaking a world record is nice, but it should be sufficient to just win.

Enter the Jones' whom we are all constantly trying to keep up with, they introduce the best and fastest way to possibly lose. It's the breakdown of any discipline into chasing the next hottest investment strategy or class. It means breaking from your strategy and suffering the consequences. To change up your strategy in the pursuit of a few more percentages, will incur transaction fees, tax and generally higher risk. Because profit = risk.

Good financial performance is always in the past, the future is always uncertain. What worked for the Jones' is irrelevant, because the price they bought in to that investment doesn't exist anymore. If it did there wouldn't be anything for the Jones' to brag about. That is a mathematical certainty.

Emotion also provides other losing behaviours, for example an amateur investor will purchase several types of investment and after a period of time some will have performed well, some better than others and others will lose money. What does an emotional investor do? Sell the winners to realize their success and reward themselves and hang onto the duds in the hope they turn good and correct their losses.

Lastly we have to look at cognitive dissonance as it applies to the unrealistic expectation of 'getting rich'. In many ways investment opens a theoretical path to being rich no matter what occupation or vocation you choose. Which it does if you make infallible timing decisions etc.

But let me wax ethical and say: if you haven't taken the risks, and put the time and effort into being rich you have no right to be. It is well established that there is no justice in the world, but really for your sake one of the best investments you can make is to not be an arsehole.

To say profit = risk is to state fact, the wealthiest people in the world have the most concentrated investment portfolios. They backed one horse and won. Bill Gates with Microsoft, Ted Turner with CNN etc. if those businesses had failed we would never heard of them and they would be on the street asking for change (a decent living it would seem).

They exposed themselves to this downside, in order to gain exposure to the upside. If you chose a nice stable profession in Engineering, Law or Medicine with steady income and regular hours you have no business shooting for the moon. You were never aiming there.

It is enough to simply preserve your purchasing power (through savings) and protect these savings against inflation (through a modest and realistic investment strategy).

If you want the big prize you have to accept the possibility of the big losses. The emotional default though is 'win-win' as in people want the profits, but no exposure to losses. Its why people speculating on the sharemarket feel outrage that company CEOs aren't thrown in jail and often recieve bonuses. They feel angry at a government not bailing out their investments.

If you don't have a healthy fear of the downside going in you are far more likely to experience it.

Thus the most important thing to develope is an intellectual framework for investing. Discipline.

Its a two step process:

1. What do you need? (want)
2. Are you willing to pay the price for it?

If you aren't willing to have your portfolio drop by 30-50% you have no business betting on a 'hot stock' to gain the 17% upside.

More later.