Tag: light

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Worship The Sun

1. It’s Got Super Powers. Before you say I’m mad, think of it like this: on a lovely summer’s day, no one looks directly at the sun for fear of going blind; therefore, it demands the respect of its subordinate underlings. And, if you’re vain enough to laze under its UV command all day long, it will punish your vanity with burns, peeling skin and a short life. Sounds a bit like a wrathful deity, right?

2. The Statistics. The centre of the sun is 15,000,000°C. It contains 99.9 % of all matter in the Solar System and a million Earths could fit inside it, with room to spare. It weighs 333,000 times more than the Earth, is at least 4.5 billion years old and resides 93,000,000 miles away- yet it can still burn your skin to a crisp. Boom.

3. It’s Just Another Star. You know when you look up on a clear night and see all of those fire-flies stuck up in that big blueish black thing? Well, Pumba was right, they are balls of gas burning billions of miles away, and our Sun is simply the closest one to the Earth.

4. It Giveth Life And It Taketh Life Away. Without our closest star, we would not be able to breath. Like, seriously, life on earth would be annihilated. I shouldn’t have to tell you about photosynthesis but, for the benefit of those who fell asleep in biology, here’s a very detailed scientific diagram.

5. Don’t Worry; Be Happy. Research has proven that sunshine produces an extremely important vitamin in humans. You know when the sun is shining and you feel like you could take on the world and nothing bad could ever happen again? That’s vitamin D coursing through your veins, and it’s very good for your well-being.

6. Be A Green Warrior And Save Dollar. If you invest in a roof light in your home, you could save money and lessen your carbon footprint. This is because skylights let lots of natural light into the room, reducing your need to use artificial lighting, reducing your bills, reducing your energy consumption and reducing your overall carbon emissions. Not to mention solar power, which gives you FREE electricity!

7. From Darkness Comes Dawn. Sunsets, sunrises, whichever you prefer. It is just so pretty.

May 22, 2012
7 Reasons Not To Have A Staring Contest With The BBC One Ident Hippo

For one reason – which is why it doesn’t qualify for this site – I had to live pause the TV last night so that Claire and I could watch The Apprentice together. I paused the TV when the Hippo ident was showing. The exact point at which I paused is shown below. Knowing that I had at least fifteen minutes before I could press play, I had a choice. Start the ironing or have a staring contest with the hippo. I chose the latter. This is my story (of why it was a stupid idea).

1. Winning. From the moment I even contemplated staring at the hippo I knew I was going to lose. The only way I could have won is if we had had a power cut. (An unlikely scenario unless I was to attack the fuse box with a cucumber). And yet, despite being fully aware of the highly probable outcome, I still entered the battle. It was pointless, it was a waste of time and I was always going to finish second. Or last. Whichever didn’t come first really. For someone who enjoys winning it was a bizarre and futile decision that did me no favours. When the inevitable did happen a little bit of my aura had been destroyed. I’m was no longer the man I once was. So if you are ever tempted, don’t do it. You’ll never be the same again.

2. Distractions. A couple of minutes into the contest my phone rang. Now, even if I don’t answer my phone, I nearly always look at the display to see who I am going to ignore. It’s a habit. While on this occasion I was strong enough to ignore it, my mind was no longer on the job in hand. It was on who might be calling me. Was it Claire saying she’d be longer than she initially thought? Was it my Mum wondering where the rest of her Mother’s Day present was? Was it Marc wanting to sell me a baby? To this very minute I am not sure if my line of vision flinched towards my phone or not. It’s impossible to say. What I do know is, it did me no favours. When you are staring at a Hippo – especially a picture of one on the TV – you have to be in the zone and you have to stay in the zone. Distractions are zone killers.

3. Fish. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. I told myself that my line of vision had not altered and so, if I was able, I may re-enter the zone. And, after a few minutes, that is what happened. I know this is what happened because my focus began to drift. The hippo was now a blurred hippo. And then the blurred hippo wasn’t a hippo at all. It was a fish. A fish in side-profile. A scary fish in side-profile. I mean this thing was ugly. It had a pair of lips Leslie Ash would have been proud of and a scaly body that reminded me of this. I am not sure this will work for you – in fact I am not sure I want it to work for you – but if you have a spare ten minutes just stare at the hippo above. If you’re unlucky the fish should appear across the lop of the hippo’s head. The lips appear in the hippo’s right eye if that helps.

4. Guilt. Having rid myself of visions of Piers Morgan and Leslie Ash’s illegitimate child, I then experienced severe pangs of guilt. The hippo was drowning. I had done that. I had paused the hippo and made him tread water. Twelve hours on I am pretty sure he wasn’t drowning at all. I am pretty sure this was pre-recorded footage and all I had done was paused its progress. But at the time, when you’ve been staring at a hippo for approximately thirteen minutes, that type of rational thought doesn’t enter your mind. You really do feel like a hippo murderer.

5. Terror. This is when you realise that the hippo is staring back at you. And he looks angry. Probably because you have made him tread-water for fifteen minutes. He also looks a bit like a crocodile with his nostrils protruding from the water. And that’s when you start panicking. Are you actually on BBC One? Are you sure you’re not watching – and recording – Animal Planet? Do you even have the Animal Planet channel? Is there even a channel called Animal Planet? So, yes. Staring at a hippo for too long makes you go mad. Really quite mad.

6. Visions. When Claire eventually arrived beside me on the sofa and gave me an opportunity to end my ordeal, I realised it wouldn’t be over for a little while longer. All the staring at a bright screen in an otherwise dark environment left me looking through those annoying colour blotches that you are only supposed to get when your eyes are closed. As one does in such circumstances I shut my eyes to try and get rid of them. This didn’t work. Instead I was faced with a vision of the hippo. In sort of a yellow and red mosaic. A mosaic that slowly began to disperse. Which is when I decided I was through and settled back to watch The Apprentice. With the occasional appearance from a fish.

7. Tea. I can barely bring myself to write the words. It went cold.

May 12, 2011
7 Reasons That Lampshades Are Stupid

1. Dimness. Lampshades dim the light in a room. You knew that already, but no one ever asks why we want to dim the light in a room. Why do we go to the trouble of installing a light and then surround it with a device that hampers its efficacy? We don’t put semi-transparent curtains in front of our televisions or our fingers in our ears when listening to the radio (except for Talksport listeners) so why do we cock up our lighting? Stupid.

2. Heads. Short people are left in charge of putting lampshades up in their own homes. There should be a law against this. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve banged my head on lampshades in the homes of short people, which is probably a good thing as having the number to hand would make me appear weird. However many times it is though, it is too many. I don’t need another hazard to worry about when I’m concentrating on not falling over their child or treading on their dog.

3. Walls. You go to the trouble of selecting a colour scheme for your living room and then, once it is complete you go and hang a lampshade up: A device which changes the colour of everything in the room, turning your white walls rosy, your blue walls turquoise, your yellow walls brown, and your orange walls red (I am using four different lampshades and rooms in that example, not one. There is no need to panic.) The only wall colour that’s impervious to light filtered through a lampshade is black, which means that only the bedrooms of teenage boys and serial killers are safe from their effects.

4. Art. While we’re on the subject of colour, the damned things change the colour of art too. Try appreciating the subtle use of colour in a print of Manet’s Olympia when it’s bathed in a ghastly light filtered through a green paisley lampshade. Ever seen a lampshade in an art gallery? No, of course you haven’t. Well, unless you’re reading this next year, that is, after I have won the Turner Prize with my latest work entitled Stupid Stupid Stupid, which is a photo-montage of a hairless cat wearing a pair of Crocs balancing atop a green lampshade. (I was being deliberately fanciful when I concocted that artwork, but it actually sounds better than Tracey Emin’s Bed).

5. The Planet. Lampshades are killing our planet. If we had no lampshades then we could use lower wattage light bulbs which consume less power. This means that we’d need to produce less electricity, which would be better for the environment. Think about it: lampshades are actually causing us to use more of the planet’s resources than we otherwise would. For what? If we didn’t have lampshades we could probably use the energy we saved to put electrical lights on trees for a couple of weeks every year. Or perhaps not. That would be ridiculous.

6. Cleanliness. While it is oft said that cleanliness is next to godliness (which seems fair enough), it is never said – until now – that cleanliness is next to lampshades. This is for good reason, as one of the things I have observed when banging my head on many of the things is that copious amounts of dust fall from them when I do so. This is because people don’t clean them. They don’t dust them and they don’t hoover them, which means that the lampshade in the dining room – above your dinner – is covered in lots and lots of bits of dead skin. Yum. Now imagine how much you’ll enjoy your meal if a tall person should accidentally bump the lampshade when sitting down to dine, causing dust to fall on your food. Eating it would not only be unhygienic, it would probably be cannibalism. So there you have it: Lampshades cause cannibalism. I bet you weren’t expecting to learn that today.

7. Stupidity. Lampshades are not merely stupid, they also cause stupidity. Here I am wearing mine.

********************UPDATE********************

I have finished my masterpiece. The 2011 Turner Prize will be mine!

August 26, 2010