Jim Davidson Writes A Blog

Best of the Jim Davidson blog

It is pretty much as you would expect, poorly written, filled with hatred for others, stupid comments about skin colour and hilarious for all the wrong reasons.  Jim doesn't know how to turn the spell check on and displays only a fleeting grasp of punctuation.

"Talking of the Olympics… Let’s hope that our black people beat all the other black people!" - Jim Davidson.

I am now so old I can remember when Lenny Henry used to funny, I can't say the same about Jim Davidson though.

Be Eccentric

The Eccentric Club

A Fellow Student Writes...

Some blogs written by fellow OU students...

A World Of Music

Mixing and Matching

Write Till Your Fingers Bleed

Artproof

Starship Teapot

The Singing Driver

Cidergirli

Fractured Funny

Ben Dawkins

The Humanities Whistle Stop Tour; Benin to Greece

Along with my fellow students, I am now at the halfway point of the AA100 module, and the whistle stop tour of all points of humanities continues.  In the next few weeks we will be studying...

A Benin bronze plaque

Cultural Encounters : Changing relations between Europe and Africa and the art of Benin

Cultural exemptions and the Musqueam people of Canada

World short stories

The transmission of medical knowledge from Greece to Europe via the Middle East

Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles' Antigone : The Burial At Thebes

Everything is going well so far.  Although our tutor had told us it is not compulsory to hand in every essay, I feel I am getting better value from the course and building my skills better by doing all the work possible.  So far with four essays handed in and marked I'm just a fraction off a Distinction grade.

There are two essays from this section of the module, on the art of Benin and cultural encounters, then either cultural exemptions and the Musqueam people or the contribution of the chorus in The Burial At Thebes.  So far when we have had a choice of essays I have tried to go for what seems the harder of the two choices.  My thinking here is that this is only a level one module so it would be good practise the mentally stretch myself whenever possible.

One aspect of student life that makes learning today so easy is the huge wealth of information via the internet, I kid you not, Melvyn Bragg and the In Our Time guests on Radio 4 are helping me enormously.  Having a group of renowned academics discussing the topic you are composing an essay on is a fantastic help.  Other great sources for research are Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg with their vast collections of texts, audio and picture files. The Open University also gives us access to its vast online library system, so big that sometimes it feels like diving into an ocean of information to find a single pearl of knowledge. It is quite possible to get hopelessly lost / bogged down when searching the seemingly endless OU databases for something you hope to be relevant.

The Benin section is fascinating, and I am very much enjoying the way that the chapters are now drawing the various disciplines of humanities together.  In the the two chapters on cultural encounters and Benin we start with straight history, then combine it with the history of art and a hint of religious studies, then mix in a bit of philosophy at the end.

This section of the course feels like real university work, I had little idea what was meant by the phrase 'cultural exemptions' before this and if asked to describe the philosophical mindset behind 'difference-blind liberalism' a blank and uncomprehending look may well have ensued.  It is all good stuff though, I'm still loving the work.  Onwards and upwards as my tutor says.

Past The Half-Way Stage

Image by cannellfan via FlickrThat's it, the nights are drawing in already, the longest day is done and dusted, we're half-way done with the summer season of 2011.  As per usual in the feast and famine work pattern of the golf club I am overworked and under slept at this time of year, and as exams and injury have conflicted with our busy period we have been slightly understaffed for the first half of the summer.

We have done some hugely busy days and nights in the last few weeks, and I would like to say a special thanks to yesterday's crew, Laura and Rachel on the evening shift, and especially the two Robs who worked like demons in order to get the buffet and bar orders done for Blaize day yesterday.

Rotary Club of Bradford Blaize run an annual charity golf day here at Ilkley Golf Club which raises thousands of pounds for a variety of charities.  This year's event was very well supported and the weather although hardly flaming June was reasonable and dry for most of the day.

From dictionary.com "Summer - the period comprising the months of June, July, and August in the U.S., and from the middle of May to the middle of August in Great Britain." Well, I never knew that the Yanks got shorter summers than us.

Arty Bollocks Generator

Image via Wikipedia"My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and life as perfomance.

With influences as diverse as Nietzsche and Roy Lichtenstein, new tensions are crafted from both explicit and implicit layers.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of meaning. What starts out as vision soon becomes corrupted into a cacophony of greed, leaving only a sense of what could have been and the inevitability of a new beginning.

As temporal impressions become clarified through diligent and critical practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the inaccuracies of our era."

The Arty Bollocks Generator - this is a win, I can't tell the difference between the guff this throws out and some of the stuff I've been reading in art theory.

Pic - Barcelona Head by Roy Lichtenstein.

(Found by Katherine N.)

Do You Want To Show Off Your Art ?

Leeds based art collective Woolgather will be holding a two day event on the 18th & 19th June at a temporary art space located at 31 Bond Street, Leeds.

Woolgather say they will be displaying any and all art that is brought along.

Woolgather

New Young Leeds

How To Scan A Poem

How to scan a poem

Analogy and Metaphor, The Good And The Very Bad Indeed...

56 of the very best/worst bits of student writing

(Thanks to Alex for this link)

Poetry is what we need

HERE is a site (Shadow of Iris) to see a poem or five.
here is one example:

he said, she said   vi


He said,

what’s up?
She said,

I’m trying to make sense of the nonsense.
He said,

oh.

She said,
not necessarily.

red headed woodpecker exiting thte frame

there also many good links there: such as http://shatteredprose.blogspot.com/

Kill Your Dog

Yes dog owners, now you can shoot your dog in the head when it craps on the pavement with the Povodkus gun leash.

Actually, when it comes to shooting things, let's just do away with the small band of moronic dog owners who collect their pet's excrement in a bag, and then throw the bag into the hedge / bushes / river, you people give pet owners a bad name.