Oh so I have to talk about what I’ve been up to like a “log”! Sorry…

So today I got up, had a bowl of cereal, looked at Teletext. Then I got in my car, drove to work. I logged into my computer and sat sorting out peoples electric accounts until around 9.30 when I had a break to have a cup of tea. Then at about 11 I went for a massive poo and took my phone in the toilet and failed to break my personal best of 55 on the game Bananas.

I took lunch at 1 (ham and mustard sandwiches). I had around 4 tea/coffee breaks in the afternoon and left at 4 in my car to go home. I had a slight argument with my girlfriend at about 4.45. I then practised with my friend Gareth for a couple of hours ending in me farting into a microphone and looping it through my amp.

I have just had another cup of tea and drawn a picture of a nob in photoshop.

Later on I will have a shower, I might have a wank beforehand so I’m clean when I go to bed which should be around midnight depending if I watch the last hour of The Burbs that I taped last night.

chris

x

I have been thinking about getting a Playstation but they cost so much and I don’t have the time to use them. Talking of which my finances are a nightmare because of my car. I love my car but TWENTY THREE MILES A GALLON. Jesus. And it’s hardly a fanny magnet.

Oh so I have to talk about what I’ve been up to like a “log”! Sorry…

So today I got up, had a bowl of cereal, looked at Teletext. Then I got in my car, drove to work. I logged into my computer and sat sorting out peoples electric accounts until around 9.30 when I had a break to have a cup of tea. Then at about 11 I went for a massive poo and took my phone in the toilet and failed to break my personal best of 55 on the game Bananas.

I took lunch at 1 (ham and mustard sandwiches). I had around 4 tea/coffee breaks in the afternoon and left at 4 in my car to go home. I had a slight argument with my girlfriend at about 4.45. I then practised with my friend Gareth for a couple of hours ending in me farting into a microphone and looping it through my amp.

I have just had another cup of tea and drawn a picture of a nob in photoshop.

Later on I will have a shower, I might have a wank beforehand so I’m clean when I go to bed which should be around midnight depending if I watch the last hour of The Burbs that I taped last night.

chris

x

I need to alert all you film-makers and friends of film-makers out there. Or dance groups, or anything silent and performance based really. Me and my friend Gareth are involved in doing a music project called EOM. We played one gig doing it but we really started it to soundtrack films or events or installations maybe. Basically we want to collaborate with other non musical types to create something musical and visual as an end result.

Here’s the official word:

“EOM (Economy of Motion) is a two-piece guitar duo based in the East Midlands of England comprising of Gareth Hardwick and Chris Summerlin. We create semi-improvised ambient music that is both sinister and calming.

EOM would like to work with filmmakers/visual artists to create a soundtrack to their work and if possible, perform the music live at a screening or exhibition. EOM are also looking for offers to play at any interesting spaces or installations.

More information, together with mp3 samples of music can be found at http://members.aol.com/hardwickgj or contact us at hunniisfunni@aol.com”

But if you want to work with us let me know on the email above. I guess some reference points for what we do would be the Twin Peaks Angelo Badalamenti stuff, maybe Charalambides if you were lucky enough to catch them at atp, Sonic Youth, Stars Of The Flid. You know what I mean.

Ooh, I’ve got a new column up on the main page. Aside from apologising about the couple of spelling mistakes in it, I thought it might be worth mentioning a couple of asides:

Firstly, I saw Growing at ATP last week, and they were excellent. Everybody else I spoke to who caught some of them said they were insufferably dull, but I really enjoyed that fact that just a bassist and a guitarist (not sure what happened to the third guy) built up a wall of sound based around precisely one note for twenty minutes, before exploring its textural possibilities for a further fifteen. They even added some proper melodies and everything towards the end, and it was quite entrancing. They were the first band I saw that weekend (after walking out halfway through a song by the pathetic Converge), and a warm introduction to the weekend it was. I also saw their guitarist wandering around as part of a bizarre musical troupe after Shellac had finished on Sunday night, armed with a guitar, candles and tambourines. Welcomely odd.

Secondly, the reference I made to Oneida live dates is sadly now long out of date. Suffice to say, they were great, they did play a couple of long songs, and managed not to be blown off the stage by the mighty Wolves!(OfGreece).

Enough. I’m off to the continent for a week. Enjoy the forthcoming content on diskant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gaming recently and why, after 4 or 5 months of Gamecube ownership, I still only own three games. The reasons I put down mostly to lack of money, waiting for my sister to just buckle down and kill Ganondorf so I can borrow Wind Waker and that the two games I was playing (Majora’s Mask off the free Zelda disc and Billy Hatcher) were just TOO HARD and/or too time consuming.

My favourite games are the Zelda and Pokemon series and my favourite parts of them are just wandering around collecting stuff. You can guarantee I’ll have done all the sidequests way before I get anywhere near the final dungeon.

My least favourite gaming experiences have been bosses and impossible (to me) puzzles, usually involving jumping. I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve completed to the final boss and then got frustrated never to return and see the world saved.

(Coincidentally, there’s a similar thoughts going on at the Do You See? blog)

Thank goodness, then, for Animal Crossing. None of my friends seem to understand the appeal of this game and my best shot at describing it has been, “imagine an RPG without any bosses, or any plot”.

Basically the game runs in real time as you go about your daily life in a town populated with up to 15 animals. Every day you read your mail, buy clothes and furniture at the shop, go fishing or bug catching, chat to your neighbours, write letters, do errands, dig up fossils for the museum etc. There’s no plot whatsoever. You can work towards getting a perfect town, a completed museum and a huge house or you can just re-arrange your furniture and play NES games in your basement.

I was looking around today to see if anyone had started an Animal Crossing blog which I think could be really funny in the right hands. Instead I stumbled across a discussion on www.gamegirladvance.com which I found interesting for a number of reasons, the main one being how you only need to play Animal Crossing for 15-45 minutes at a time. I hadn’t quite realised that this what I most enjoy about AC – getting home of an evening, loading up AC and just reading my mail, checking the shop and chatting with the animals. And then I can switch it off and get on with all the other stuff I need to get done or get more involved as I try to pay off my debt and get some new trees to grow.

This is why it would be a tragedy if Nintendo stopped making games. Forever accused of making kids games, what they actually make is accessible games, games that anyone can play. In some ways, yes, that does often mean they’re easy. But in other ways, it means you’re not frustrated from enjoying huge parts of the game because of a lack of skill. Instead you get an immersive experience where your friends are encouraged to help out or join in through connectivity or multiplayer. And surely gaming should be as much about entertainment as challenge. Even with Grand Theft Auto, for all the talk of what an amazing game it is, people I know seem to just spend most of their time arsing about, kicking in prostitutes and doing ridiculous stunts in fire engines, much to the general amusement of onlookers. Zelda and Animal Crossing for two I think are really fun games just to watch someone else playing.

Surely now it’s time for all games to have realistic difficulty levels where Easy can actually be completed by your little sister or your gran and SuperHard can give those people who will happily stay up half the night trying to complete a level a real challenge.

Or even better, can we just give Nintendo a monopoly on games? Aw, go on…

So Cat Power surprised pretty much no-one by being really inconsistent last night (at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire). Parts of it were gorgeous, notably a couple of what I presume are new songs, and versions of ‘Metal Heart’ and ‘I Don’t Blame You’. For reasons best known to her, she decided to turn up the house lights and sit looking at her illuminated audience for the last ten minutes while she smoked a fag and muttered things into the microphone. There wasn’t even the payback of a triumphant final song, just: ‘You all have to go now, or the government will attack’. Possibly the most anticlimactic end to a gig I’ve ever seen, but then you’d expect nothing less infuriating from Ms. Marshall. Having said that, it was wonderful to see her with a (mostly) attentive audience in relatively-civilised seated conditions, punctuated by a constant stream of stewards telling people to stop smoking, and a stream of people slinking off to smoke guiltily by the bar. And I still love her.