Stalking Stork

 


Production date: June 2006
Playout date: 8/7/2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: None
Location: From Motel Petro in Torzym
Soundtrack info: Not sure of title, it was an early experiment with Audioswap when that service was still at Beta Version. Unlike some tracks I chose then, this one remained free and I didn’t have to replace it, but the credits are not showing and I don’t have them. I’ll be glad to add here if anyone knows.
Languages used: None
Animals featured: European stork, Ciconia alba

This was a nice close-up of a stork just walking the roadside near to the hotel where I stayed the night after the Copenhagen conference.

When we went to the Copenhagen conference I met the other guys at Motel Petro in Torzym on their way out and left my Chrysler in the guarded carpark there. We took Adam’s one to Denmark. Then we got back to here, Adam and Kasia went on to Katowice to set her off, but I had to go the next day to Gorzow Wielkopolski – some of the footage from then I already had placed on YT before this – and so I went my own way from there.

It was a simple ornithological piece, which I hoped would interest some people. If you click through and look at the stats on YT, though, you’ll see that there was very little interest in this piece for the first six months, which did disappoint me, but then gradually the hits started to come in, and now it is coming up to 6,000 hits, and running at a healthy rate.

Swimming Self-taught

  

Production date: 6 July 2006
Playout date: 6/7/2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: WMM, subtitles.
Location: Home, terrace.
Soundtrack info: karaoke track of “Oh what a beautiful morning” from Oklahoma!
Languages used: English, Some Polish

This shows how Sophie used the paddling pool we had out that year to familiarise herself with water. She pretty much taught herself how to go under water and how to move in the water. She has had swimming lessons since, but the essentials she taught herself.

Thomas P Jameson III sings a medley of patriotic songs

Production date: 6 July 2006
Playout date: 6/7/2006
Camera: Logitech Webcam
Post Production: WMM effects and chipmunking
Location: Home desk, evening

This wasn’t popular and I don’t really like it either, nevertheless, I haven’t – rightly or wrongly – binned it yet. At least I have the guts to let the crappier ones stand out there for inspection! Quite a few folk got offended by their patriotic songs being sung frivolously. To these, I can only say, grow the hell up.

Over-the-counter Counterknowledge and Nogoarrhea

(first published in online Daily Telegraph 12/1/2008)

Browsing through the various word-offerings in this morning’s online Telegraph, I notice that we don’t have a normal virus situation, here; we have a Norovirus. Is this like one of those Nogoviruses that presumably create the Nogoareas that Bishop Nazir-Ali was warning us about during the week? Is it worse or better than a retrovirus, and, if so, will there be a Noro movement in art and music to go with it? In any event, the answer seems to be “over-the-counter” diarrhoea treatments. Just squitting it out and drinking copious amounts of rooibos is no good, it seems.

Hooded crow in Warsaw winter

On to another new word I learned here this morning, “counterknowledge”. It has, I learned, nothing to do with knowing which of the wintersquits remedies is the best buy in terms of ringsting avoided per pound paid, as I was hoping. Instead, it is the latest piece of name-calling the so-called rationalists and skeptics have chosen to smear the targets of their hate, lumping together ludicrous theories with well established faiths such as the Creation of the world in a smug and offensive propaganda buzz word that is nothing more than a dressed-up argumentum ad absurdam. Continue reading “Over-the-counter Counterknowledge and Nogoarrhea”

On the Power of Love and the Weakness of Money

A karaoke box in a skyscraper in Shinjuku, Tok...
Karaoke Building, Shinjuku

Production date: 6 July 2006
Playout date: 6/7/2006
Camera: Logitech webcam
Post Production: None
Location: Jazdow Office
Soundtrack notes: “The Power of Love”, karaoke version mp3.

This is the video where, inspired by the Russian Proverb “Don’t have 100 roubles, but have 100 friends”, in order to get one hundred subscribers (which seemed a tall order at the time, but there are 32 times that number now!) Viktor dropped a hundred rouble note in the fish tank and the fish ate it. He then goes on to sing the Power of Love, but gets interrupted as ever by a phone call.

Unfortunately the voice was too loud for the microphone settings.

Now I like to think Huliganov.TV is a place people can come to get all the “insider secrets” on my films, and so here’s a couple for this film.

1. It was not 100 Russian roubles (worth about 4 dollars) it was 100 Belarusian roubles (worth a few cents) I put in the tank,

2. The fish didn’t actually consume the note, I fished it out again afterwards. This was just to prevent the printers inks from contaminating the water.