This is a very delayed blog post, mainly due to the absolute awfulness of Windows Vista. I bought a whizzy new laptop about six weeks ago as my old one had completely conked out. I hadn't wanted to upgrade to Vista as I wasn't sure iTunes worked with it, but that seems to have been sorted out, and to be honest there's not really any ability not to get Vista when buying a new laptop (before you ask, yes I've had a Mac before, and eventually sold it as being incompatible with most things I wanted to do at the time). Irritatingly, Vista crashes all the time! I mean, about every half hour. Sometimes when it's not even doing anything. I'll turn it on, leave it to boot up whilst I'm getting some food or something, and suddenly the dreaded blue screen of death (such a pretty colour) will appear and it will restart itself. Great. All that makes blogging rather more difficult - I do save my work but not every 30 seconds. I think I've tracked the problem down to incompatibility with my graphics card, but not a great deal I can do about that with a laptop. More fiddling tonight I think.
And I just found out about NaBloPoMo which would have been fun but I've missed the first day and somehow it would feel very wrong to me to start it a day late. Not that I'm obsessive at all, of course.
Thursday night was busy busy busy as I flitted between engagements like a true social butterfly. First up was a drinks thing held at the Freemasons' Hall on Great Queen Street, the HQ of the United Grand Lodge. An interesting building - I love big Art Deco/Stalinist architecture like this and Senate House - especially all the symbiology in the Grand Temple. And yes, I did find this fascinating before Dan Brown.
Pain in the arse (and feet given the heels I was wearing) finding a taxi outside afterwards though, as one of the hotels next door seemed to be disgorging a number of bizarrely dressed people holding strange props. They turned out to be auditionees for Bloody Britain's Got Bloody Talent. Great. Get out of my way, reality TV wannabes!
So onwards to the Barbican for the adult-themed art exhibition Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now. Thursday night was hosted by Torture Garden (and I don't usually attend so many TG events in one week, in fact the last was several years ago, so this is purely coincidence). It was free entry for anyone dressed up, which sadly did not include me given I'd just come from work and those drinks. An awful lot of people had, which was fun to see, and made the whole gallery smell of latex - not a place to go for the allergic. Highly distracting from actually looking at the artwork!
The exhibition was amusing but very heavy on the antiquity side, with not an awful lot of twentieth century or later, and extremely heavy on the nymphs, seeing as classical scenes of Zeus rogering mortals were pretty much the only acceptable erotica for quite some time. Also seeing as I was quite late getting there (see taxi stress above) we had to rush the upper floor, where most of the modern stuff was including some great Jeff Koons and Robert Mapplethorpe work, in order to get round before the gallery closed. Recommended though, especially Thursdays which are open late and include free cocktails. There are some interesting talks coming up there over the next couple of months too. Here is the one exhibit I photographed before I realised it wasn't allowed, and perhaps the only example of modesty in there: a giant figleaf cast by the Victorians to preserve the decency of Michaelangelo's David. Honestly!
This was inaccurately written up in today's thelondonpaper as "Gimps in the Gallery". Incorrect as I only saw one gimp.
I think I may need to purify myself by not going anywhere else fetish-y for at least a week...
And I just found out about NaBloPoMo which would have been fun but I've missed the first day and somehow it would feel very wrong to me to start it a day late. Not that I'm obsessive at all, of course.
Thursday night was busy busy busy as I flitted between engagements like a true social butterfly. First up was a drinks thing held at the Freemasons' Hall on Great Queen Street, the HQ of the United Grand Lodge. An interesting building - I love big Art Deco/Stalinist architecture like this and Senate House - especially all the symbiology in the Grand Temple. And yes, I did find this fascinating before Dan Brown.
Pain in the arse (and feet given the heels I was wearing) finding a taxi outside afterwards though, as one of the hotels next door seemed to be disgorging a number of bizarrely dressed people holding strange props. They turned out to be auditionees for Bloody Britain's Got Bloody Talent. Great. Get out of my way, reality TV wannabes!
So onwards to the Barbican for the adult-themed art exhibition Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now. Thursday night was hosted by Torture Garden (and I don't usually attend so many TG events in one week, in fact the last was several years ago, so this is purely coincidence). It was free entry for anyone dressed up, which sadly did not include me given I'd just come from work and those drinks. An awful lot of people had, which was fun to see, and made the whole gallery smell of latex - not a place to go for the allergic. Highly distracting from actually looking at the artwork!
The exhibition was amusing but very heavy on the antiquity side, with not an awful lot of twentieth century or later, and extremely heavy on the nymphs, seeing as classical scenes of Zeus rogering mortals were pretty much the only acceptable erotica for quite some time. Also seeing as I was quite late getting there (see taxi stress above) we had to rush the upper floor, where most of the modern stuff was including some great Jeff Koons and Robert Mapplethorpe work, in order to get round before the gallery closed. Recommended though, especially Thursdays which are open late and include free cocktails. There are some interesting talks coming up there over the next couple of months too. Here is the one exhibit I photographed before I realised it wasn't allowed, and perhaps the only example of modesty in there: a giant figleaf cast by the Victorians to preserve the decency of Michaelangelo's David. Honestly!
This was inaccurately written up in today's thelondonpaper as "Gimps in the Gallery". Incorrect as I only saw one gimp.
I think I may need to purify myself by not going anywhere else fetish-y for at least a week...
No comments:
Post a Comment