Private Obsessions; White Whales; The Quest!

[luka]

its pretty good for sport. david beckham and johnny wilkonson both have ocd

 

[IdleRich]

Part of me envies the singular drive of having a quest, but it often seems to be something of a curse for anyone who actually has one - and for the people around them.

I wanna clarify a bit what I said then. I don't have a white whale and I don't think it's a healthy thing or a recipe for happiness, but, I'm not saying it won't help someone achieve things. In fact in terms of getting things done and making things happen I can well believe it's effective. Probably for humanity as a whole and the lifestyle we live now it's great that driven psychos wanted to beat each other in being first to fly or whatever. But it ain't for me.

 

[Mr. Tea]

You obviously wouldn't give anything or you would have bought a fucking dog by now.

It's a figure of speech. You cunt.

 

[IdleRich]

The night I went to see Osunlade dj in 2008, aka the night I was fully converted to house, he played Ron Trent and Chez Damier's Morning Factory (the highlight of an incredible set) and I've wanted to make something that could stand up to it ever since.

Does that differ from "trying to make a really good house track"? Genuine question, I'm not being facetious, there's clearly a specificity there, were you trying to emulate the sound at all or just the quality? Do you play your creations next to it?
Edit: gonna check the track out at least.

 

[IdleRich]

i think werner herzog is an example of someone living now who sets himself unrealistic goals then fulfils them but not all the time. some of the method acting people possibly relevant too

Maybe so but I think it's different... it's artificial.

 

[IdleRich]

the great white house

"If you want to ride, don't ride the white whale"

 

[IdleRich]

There's got to be at least one person on here who's spent years on the hunt for a particular record or something.

I used to do that to some extent, but too many "successful" hunts that ended with me spinning it once and then putting it at the back of a pile of a thousand records made me realize how stupid it was.

 

[IdleRich]

Wonder if Bernie sanders qualifies? He’s been preaching the same socialist agenda for decades, his eternal battle against “millionaires and billionaires” way before it was made fashionable by the recent wave of progressives.

Certainly I wonder what would happen if he actually won - thinking of the second of my issues with having this kind of obsession. You could maybe say the same about Corbyn, you could make a case that he banged on for decades from the side and then when he actually got to be leader of the Labour party it... wasn't really what he was hoping for. But being real, it wasn't that he utterly succeeded and was left feeling meaningless and empty, it was more that he got into a position from which it was actually possible for him to attempt that final push to success and at that point it turned out that, for whatever reason - his deep-seated anti-semitism/unfair sabotage by the media and Deep-Labour (delete as appropriate) - he was unable to achieve that last crucial climb.

 

[IdleRich]

Work related and a mix of fun, absolute grim Britannia but satisfying is trying to find the purest heroin batch profiles. 2 types mainly, street hauls and more occasionally dealer/network seizures. The counterpoint is identifying which batches are the most fentanyl and benzo heavy and their source distribution hubs, ie where’s it punted. Relatively easy lab chores, cutting agents prove consistent but it’s anomalies and rarer profiles which denote a specific region say, over x number of months etc

I always wonder what they cut heroin with. It seems to me that if you were selling cocaine and wanted to step on it there are countless white powders you could mix into it that would do the job of cheaply diluting it and look roughly right to the typical punter trying to quickly snort it in the bogs before the bouncer busts in. But, if I somehow found myself in the same situation but with heroin, I would have no idea of what you could add to it that would look right and which would also melt at the right temperature and run in the right way. It's something I always kinda lazily wonder... but never quite enough to actually google it. To be clear that's definitely not my brown whale.

 

[IdleRich]

@WashYourHands what are the main cutting agents for skag? Just out of morbid curiosity

Ah snap, great minds clearly think alike.
Though not about untouchable house tunes I have to say having checked that one out.

 

[IdleRich]

Caffeine, aspirin, paracetamol, laxido, brick dust, Benadryl, fentanyl, carfentanyl, every benzo on Earth and quinine

If it looks the part it goes in, cocaine is increasingly levamisole because of the fish scale double take

Levamisole: A High Performance Cutting Agent

Levamisole is an imidazothiazole chemical most frequently used as an antihelminthic agent in cattle. Over the last decade, levamisole has been increasingly encountered as an additive in both powder and crack cocaine. A white powder with a “fish ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

But do these things all run at the right temperature? I've often heard people say caffeine is used and makes total sense to me cos of that totally counter-intuitive effect you so often see "Why is that guy so fucking hyper?" "oh he's smoking smack".

I always wonder if there is actual brown sugar in there. There are these caramel mousse type things that I used to buy sometimes when I lived in London and when you eat them the taste is really strangely similar to how I've heard heroin tastes.

 

[IdleRich]

"The Great Work" as described by Crowley is the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley used as his model The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage which is a process where you purify yourself and prayer in increasing increments - 2, 4 then 6 hours a day for 6 months (or 18 according months according to other versions of the text). I do know (or know of) a few people who've done this which is pretty amazing in the modern world.

I guess it is amazing but, I personally would use other words for it.

 

[IdleRich]

This is pretty literally the pursuit of the Grail.

I don't think I'd be very keen, I've already got one you see. It's very nice.

 

[IdleRich]

It’s all about making an effort, you can’t just vaguely ‘want it’. I’ve had loads of white whales over the years, mostly obscure/forgotten archival material, and would spend a lot of time hunting it all down – one newspaper mugshot took me the best part of a year to unearth, and I’ve contacted various local councils, primatologists, New Orleans krewes, TV and print journalists, even the North Korea Friendship Association, to track stuff down or get info. You’d be surprised how many people get back to you. But then again, B2B publishing's been my 'real life' job for 23 years now, so I'm used to firing off queries.

My success rate has been pretty good – it’s as if making the effort fires up some psychic multi-beam echosounder that helps track whatever you’re after, and once you’ve hit one hot lead the others follow fast. It’s good fun, you can turn these investigative jaunts into holidays. Don't be surprised if you pick up valuable info, then randomly bump into someone who mentions something connected to it.

I'm not sure I fully understand the above but what I do understand I like.

That last bit reminds me of a story about a couple of my friends. This is something I can only explain by some kind of magical attraction. So for some reason this girl I knew and her boyfriend decided they were gonna make, or re-make, the Wicker Man but with only the two of them in it (and a few dolls) and condensed to about ten minutes long. But they actually went to Summerisle and shot it as much as they were able on location. So they were driving up there and on the way they stopped in a service station cafe for a coffee, maybe a sandwich, quite likely a huge shit who knows, they had to share a table with some guy I think and got chatting and he asked what they were doing. They said we're on our way to Summerisle to re-make The Wicker Man - as much as we are able with two people and no budget, I mean, obviously we won't be able to do the very first scene when he flies in on a seaplane cos there is absolutely no way on earth we could possibly get such a plane, I mean we wouldn't even know how to go about it and even if we knew someone we couldn't afford it and... this guy interrupted them and said "It's your lucky day, cos there are only 17 people in the country who have a seaplane and a licence to fly it and I'm one of them, and it sounds like fun so I'll help you shoot that scene for free if you like" - and they did.
(@DannyL, @Mr. Tea it was Joe's ex-girlfriend, did you ever see the film I'm talking about?)

 

[IdleRich]

ive often wished i was an obsessive but im very well adjusted and level headed. exemplarily sane.

The phrase that often comes to my mind is "stable genius".

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm not sure I fully understand the above but what I do understand I like.

That last bit reminds me of a story about a couple of my friends. This is something I can only explain by some kind of magical attraction. So for some reason this girl I knew and her boyfriend decided they were gonna make, or re-make, the Wicker Man but with only the two of them in it (and a few dolls) and condensed to about ten minutes long. But they actually went to Summerisle and shot it as much as they were able on location. So they were driving up there and on the way they stopped in a service station cafe for a coffee, maybe a sandwich, quite likely a huge shit who knows, they had to share a table with some guy I think and got chatting and he asked what they were doing. They said we're on our way to Summerisle to re-make The Wicker Man - as much as we are able with two people and no budget, I mean, obviously we won't be able to do the very first scene when he flies in on a seaplane cos there is absolutely no way on earth we could possibly get such a plane, I mean we wouldn't even know how to go about it and even if we knew someone we couldn't afford it and... this guy interrupted them and said "It's your lucky day, cos there are only 17 people in the country who have a seaplane and a licence to fly it and I'm one of them, and it sounds like fun so I'll help you shoot that scene for free if you like" - and they did.
(@DannyL, @Mr. Tea it was Joe's ex-girlfriend, did you ever see the film I'm talking about?)

I did! Was she called Jeannie or something like that? It was a very nice little film. That's cool about the guy with the sea plane.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah that's it! Was trying to remember her name.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There was a very tasteful recreation of Willow's Dance using a naked Barbie, I recall.

 

[catalog]

You wanna get that short film for your film night rich.

Reminds me of a brilliant short film I saw years ago, when I was trying to set up my own TV channel.

It's called "I'm Bobby" and is an experimental cover of a famous bollywood film ("Bobby") except using children as the actors and massively over egging the pudding to the point of absolute farce.

Someone's done a review in imdb:

Bollywood "Bugsy Malone"... with a twist.
"I'm Bobby" is a high concept movie. The concept is this: Take a Bollywood film from the 70s that's massively popular in Bollywood circles but which probably won't mean much to the average film festival viewer (Raj Kapoor's "Bobby" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069810/). Keep the soundtrack. Go to India, and dress street kids in 70s gear, wigs and sunglasses, to re-enact scenes from the film.

The result is a bit ragged around the edges, and obviously as mad as a bag of knives, but you can't say it's not entertaining. For added weirdness, scenes where filming wasn't possible are replaced by crude cardboard cutout puppetry.

The kids are clearly not trained actors, but that is exactly the point. The main thing I got out of it was the impression that everyone involved had a lot of fun, which raises a big smile in itself.

The other one that springs to mind is "Superstar" by Todd Haynes, where its the Karen Carpenter story but with barbie dolls. It's on YouTube.

 

[Leo]

Certainly I wonder what would happen if he actually won - thinking of the second of my issues with having this kind of obsession. You could maybe say the same about Corbyn, you could make a case that he banged on for decades from the side and then when he actually got to be leader of the Labour party it... wasn't really what he was hoping for. But being real, it wasn't that he utterly succeeded and was left feeling meaningless and empty, it was more that he got into a position from which it was actually possible for him to attempt that final push to success and at that point it turned out that, for whatever reason - his deep-seated anti-semitism/unfair sabotage by the media and Deep-Labour (delete as appropriate) - he was unable to achieve that last crucial climb.

some people are better suited -- and more effective -- to be outside forces who push a certain agenda, as opposed to being the actual person in charge.