Saturday guitar lessons

Edward and Hugo doing pretty well with fingerpicking in their weekly guitar lesson.

 

Who the hell was Jane Austin?

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering." -Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817) - as per the wordsmith site

We know she wrote a certain book that was made into a movie, but that does not make her into less of an idiot. The greatest idiot is however not Jane for having said some idiotic things, but rather those who quote her as if it was words of wisdom. We do not know the context in which she said quoted words. I am definitely not planning on trying to read all her books just to find out in what context those words were said, so if anybody want to point me in some direction, please feel welcome to do so.

Quoting somebody out of context is just either lazy, or displaying a lack of understanding of those words. I am willing to give quoted site the benefit of the doubt here. The person who made the quote probably don't have any idea what those words mean, or he or she just had a job to do and possible just randomly chose a quote. It is possible that that person might have actually found inspiration in those words and wanted to share these pealrs of wisdom.

Truth is, I hate a certain place, which previously had conjured positive images to my mind. I Iike to refer to that place as the Ghost Town. Millions of people think that place place is a wonderful place. I have suffered psychologically at that place and therefore I love the place less. If I am abnormal in this kind of reaction, then I will gladly accept my defeat, but as at today, nobody has at yet even even attempted to convince me of my own ways of error.

I keep similar negative image in the back of my mind concerning other places as well. As I write these paragraphs, more negative images apear in my mind that can be linked to places I hold no affinity towards.

I have no interest in ever again visiting the grounds at which I did my military training. I have never gone back to that place to reminisce about the good old times. I have no plan to ever return, and if I by some circumstance drive past that place again, I will do my utmost to excrement upon entry.

I hold very similar feeling towards the place where I held my first job a 10 year old child. I had certain traumatic experience there in the scrap yard, which I have no interest in being reminded of. Similar feelings are in my mind regarding the location of my job as auditor.

Come to think of it. Seems like I had a traumatic childhood, without actually realizing it!

Come to think of it, if the words of esteemed Jane held any truth whatsoever, man would have been extinct by now. Man's very ability to recognize places of danger and thereby avoid such places is not very uncommon.

 

The ghost house near Alma

 

 

 

Alma part 3

The school

 

The students

 

Alma part 2

The Alma shopping centre

School playground

 

 

 

Pictures from yet another ghost town

 

This place is real. It is a little town in the northern side of South Africa, and is still inhabited. It is a little town called Alma.

 

 

 

These pictures here are of the school playgrounds. No, there was no Chernobyl disaster. This is normal life.

 

The joys of writing songs

Drew Lane today posted on his blog something that touch me. Every songwriter feels something special when hearing a crowd of people spontaneously singing a song we wrote. It is something that gives writing thoses songs and the long hours behind the computer real meaning and value.

 

Are we getting dumber, or are movie directors running out of ideas?

Watched 2 movies yesterday. Chernobyl diaries and The apparition.

 

Neither of these movies should have been released prior to the zombie apocalypse. They were not meant to be watched by people with any thinking abilities. On the other hand, both movies would have been great for watching for pure passing of time.

 

I hate wanna-be horror movies that does not feature any horror at all. Chernobyl diaries has many startling loud noises and blurry images flashing past on the screen. The directors were however too cheap to spend any money on make-up or monster costumes, so you never have any idea what was supposed to be so scary. That is a fine trick for once or twice through a movie, but it gets tiresome if that is the only trick the director knows.

 

Chernobyl diaries could not decide if it wanted to be a found-footage movie or a proper edited and scripted film. At times, the camera shots are well thought out and very professional. Other times the camera just swirl around and blurs out any vision, adding to the impression of just being cheap - see previous paragraph.

 

The apparition is, well, just dumb. Ashley Greene stars in the leading role and does a real great job. If it was not for her, this movie would have been banned from the shelves even after the said apocalypse. It is such a pity that her great acting was wasted on a poor script and poor directing. Once again, this movie has plenty blurry images and no real monsters. Not as cheap as the movie mentioned earlier, but still annoying. In the very last scene some attempt at cgi was made, but it was simply too late to save the movie. I have seen many movies where the plot line was given away in the first scene, but then usually, the rest of the movie would attempt to build further on the plot. In this one however, you end up thinking at the end, "what the hell. We knew all this after the first 10 minutes."

 

If you have seen any of these movies, please let us know what you think by adding a comment below.

 

What's for supper tonight?

This is a weighted question. We face this problem every Saturday late afternoon. During the week, this question is not up for discussion. You see, the wife cooks during the week. She cooks, you eat, end of discussion. No democracy. On Saturday we have take aways. I am the one to do the taking.

 

 

So we vote. Never is there any form of consensus. Some kids only want pizza. Other kids hate pizza. Mom wants chicken. Is that McD, Kfc, or Nandos? Whatever choice, somebody will hate the choice. I end up doing the rounds to 3 or 4 places.

 

Problem is not with kids who can not get consensus. Problem is with my failure to take charge and leadership and just tell them that there is no choice. I will decide. Discussion over. Hate me for the rest of the week. You'll get over it.

 

Reality? I will try to be a cool dad and please everybody. I hate people hating me. I do not want a fight, but alway end up starting the fight because I want to please too many.

 

Very much the same problem in my professional life. I try to avoid conflict and please everybody. I feel bad saying no. I end up pleasing nobody and get taken advantage of.

 

OK. Off to start the fight and get food.

 

Untill next fight.

 

Another Ghost Town

Welcome to another ghost town.

 

Here I will post my views on life, love death, water and, well anything I can think of.

 

Or not think of.

 

I will post anything I feel the urge to post about.

 

If you are OK with that, then follow me, like me, hate my or just ignore me.

 

If you do not care, then tell my all about it.

 

If you do care, good for us both and tell me about it anyway.

 

And the Ghost town?

 

 

Mr Minister, how many tickets will I sell?

When you produce a show, whether at your local school hall or on Broadway, you would want to know how many tickets you are likely going to sell. This would make it easier for you to plan how much you can spend on costumes, set design, designers, directors, and all the other creative aspects.

Your financiers will ask you how many tickets you will sell before they give you a bag of money to spend. What do you expect them to say if you reply that it is not your problem? You just sell the tickets.

If this is so important, you would want to know; how can you forecast how many tickets you will be able to sell for your show. Every producer - and every business man - should ask this basic question when planning a show - or running a business. Question is, who's responsibility is it to make that guess?

 

Your first port of call could be your minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, but can you as a local business man or producer expect the minister of finance, or secretary of the treasury, to give you the answer to that question? The minister has an economy to run. He or she does not have the time, not the ability to forecast ticket sales at every school hall or theater in the country. You can expect the minister of finance to give you a reasonable accurate forecast of what the growth in the economy in general will be. If you however expect to phone the minister and get an intelligent answer to your question about ticket sales, you are missing something big in the picture.

 

Well, if you can not ask the minister, who else can you ask and expect to give you an answer? Why not phoning the local intellectual rights licencing agency? At least, they are the ones selling you the rights to produce your show. Should they therefore not also be able to tell you how many tickets you will sell?

 

If we think about this one for a moment, it may sound like a reasonable answer to our question. They have the industry knowledge and they have a vested interest in this. However, do you really think that they have the time and resources to do a detailed forecast for every school hall around the country, each and every local theater, and for every show? Do you expect them to have this secret super computer where you punch in your location and your show name and then it will tell you exactly how many tickets you will sell? (42?). If you later-on sell less tickets than their computer predicted, do you then have a right to accuse them of incompetency in planning or sue them for the losses you made? Do you think it is reasonable to accuse them of incompetency if the union went on strike and you had to close the show for 2 weeks?

 

I can tell you that the licensing agency should be able to give you general guidelines about how many tickets shows are selling in the country in general, or maybe even in your area. They might be able to give you some indication of capacity achievement on Broadway vs. the Market theater district, etc. They can even tell you that you should be able to sell a certain number of tickets if you do everything right. Some organizations will go as far as telling you that they expect you to sell a certain number of tickets and that you can earn certain bonuses by achieving those targets. They can even incentivize you by way of annual awards programs like the Tony or Naledi awards. Whatever you can get from them, do you think you can now accuse them of incompetency if you discounted your tickets beyond norms and more people attend your shows, but you are still making losses because your revenue is not enough to cover your winter Holliday?

 

I hope, in general, you are getting the idea by now. You, yes you, you and you, have some responsibility here as well. The number of tickets you sell will depend on many things, most of which are under your own control as producer. The quality of your show, the quality of direction, the competency of your actors and musicians, your advertising effort, etc. have a much greater influence on the number of tickets you will sell than the growth in the country's gross domestic product. If you put up a poor quality show and do not bother to advertise for it, you are neglecting your basic duty as producer and business man. Please do not blame the licensing agency, or the minister of finance, for your failures.

 

Now, for the final take away.

 

You, as a producer, have a responsibility to plan your show. You have to plan your show like a business. As a businessman you have to make a prediction or forecast on the number of tickets you will sell and plan the rest of your show around that number. You will have to do market research locally, in the industry and nationally and then come up with a number. There are many ways to make this forecast, and with experience you will get better at it.

 

Do not accuse your licensing agency of incompetence if you are to lazy to do some work yourself. This is your show. It is your business. Now go out and run your business like a professional. Any public outcries of how incompetent your minister of finance is because he could not forecast your ticket sales accurately is not really needed and only impress those who are just as lazy as you are.