I love the fact that ‘hello world’ is the title you get for your first post, just like it’s the first thing you learn to output in the PHP 4 book I have. There is the suggestion that this is being transmitted outwards to an audience globally even though without direction it is very unlikely that anyone will stumble across the site when it consists of only one post.
I wasn’t really sure what to put in the first post to what is hopefully going to be a more ‘serious’ blog than any previous online journals/blogs I have made. Whether to create some form of mission statement or just dive in with a standard ‘article’. I think I’d prefer the latter but I also think that this will be somewhere in between, the idea behind this site is to provide some outlet for the opinionated ‘fanzine’ writer in me that has been dormant for a few years but also to share some of the gems that I discover in life.
Personally I am hoping to update on average around once per week, but looking to recruit some of my opinionated friends to add and expand the content on this site. I don’t want to limit this site to one particular topic but encompass the interests that myself and my friends share and hopefully provide something that is insightful, occasionally amusing and generally worth reading. At some point I’ll write an ‘about’ section to expand on this and a who’s who of authors (which currently is a cast of one as I haven’t asked anyone yet).
And now the gem, today via ‘How to Avoid the Bummer Life’ I came across a Canadian film ‘Carts of Darkness’ which is frankly one of the best films I’ve seen this year, bearing in mind that most of the films I’ve seen this year have been Hollywood blockbusters that isn’t a surprise but being up there with Watchmen is not something to be sniffed at. Well that is if my opinion actually mattered a damn. I digress the film is only an hour long and frankly most people have a spare hour so I encourage you to watch it. It revolves around a group of homeless guys in Vancouver who collect bottles and cans and ride shopping carts down hills. A simple premise but the film manages to be as much an extreme sports documentary as a glimpse into the lives of the homeless. In addition the director isn’t afraid to weave in his own experiences of life and the challenges he has faced into the film which adds something else altogether at times.
I’ve read a few books/articles about being intentionally unemployed and/or homeless and mechanisms of survival and the film manages to both offer them up as being entirely possible and worthwhile whilst at the same time removing the romanticism which is often shown in ‘alternative’ depictions of homelessness to show the realities both positive and negative. This lack of bias is good and helps to show the characters in the film as normal people who make normal choices about how they live and survive just like you or I do everyday. I am actually just now realising how much it manages to cram into that hour, watch it and let me know what you think.
Questionable Time 