Thanks to my old mate Thomas who always seems to find this sorta stuff… while holding down a high pressure day job.

The song is pure gibberish, was the brainchild of Italian singer Adriano Celentano and was recorded in 1972. It’s actually very entertaining, in a bizarre kind of way, and for some reason I love it when Celentano makes the “OK” sign. From now on, this is definitely the way I’m going to indicate that everything is okey-dokey with the world.

The Voodoo Logic:

But wait, is this really all that much different to the experience of an English speaker listening to a song in German? Check out, for example, Nena’s 99 Luftballons below, from 1984. If you replaced the lyrics with gibberish German, would you expect German intertubers to be sitting in their living rooms going, “Das seltsame ist, klingt es fast, aber nicht ganz wie die deutschen!” [1]

Oh, and bonus Voodoo Logic points awarded for the title in the video above — “What English Sounds Like To Foreigners” — because of course, if you don’t speak English, you’re the foreigner, baby.

Find out from the following video. It may seem a little uneventful, but stick with it andHOLY MERCILESS GROD WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROAD?!!

LiveLeak.com – The Collapse of a Road over 2 minutes

I feel like 25 different types of carefully hand-crafted, directly imported, individually-wrapped-for-your-convenience crap. Again.

But that will go away. Again.

So. Awkward. What day is it, Again?

He felt it was important that he should be inscrutable on a regular basis, since this was the sort of thing that was expected of an Oriental Manservant, along with the ability to punch through solid chunks of timber, as well as running madly across open spaces yelling, “Aiiiiieeeee!”

The problem with all of this, as Phon Du had often privately acknowledged, was that he wasn’t Oriental by birth or even particularly by nature. His name wasn’t even really Phon Du – it was Bernie Smathers – but he’d answered a job ad asking specifically for an Oriental Manservant And Sidekick, and since he’d been the only one who had applied for the position, he’d won it by default.

He’d tried his best since then to learn how to be Oriental, with mixed results. He had, for example, ordered a book from a web site entitled, “Everything You Need To Know About Being Inscrutable,” but when it eventually arrived he’d discovered that all the pages were blank. He’d decided this was probably Zen, since as far as he could tell, when things were Zen you didn’t have to understand them, and he’d gone on to use the book as a sort of private journal.

In those pages he’d catalogued his attempts to become at least a little bit more Oriental. A whole section of the book, for example, had been dedicated to his martial arts lessons, which pretty much turned out to be a growing record of the number and nature of the injuries he’d sustained at Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo Of Learning How To Kill People While Doing Oddjobs Around My House.

In particular, there had been the infamous Breaking Logs With Your Bare Hands Because I Need More Firewood lesson, which had simply resulted in Phon Du breaking all his knuckles instead.

There had been much snickering about this in the Dojo, until Phon Du had returned the next day, hands heavily bandaged, carrying a small hatchett, a chainsaw and dragging an industrial woodchipper. What had followed was a session of woodchopping that had been so hideous that Phon Du had been given his Black Belt that very afternoon and pushed out of the grounds of Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo with a polite but firm explanation that there was nothing more that he could be taught, basically because everyone was now terrified of him [1].

Consequently, while he knew The Three Basic Forms Of Fixing The Guttering, and The Kneeling Style Of Repairing That Bloody Fence, not to mention The Seven Infamous Methods For Building A Small Pergola In The Backyard And Have It Done By This Afternoon If You Know What’s Good For You, he had no clue how to use any of this allegedly esoteric learning in an actual fight.

And it was as he sat crosslegged, perched on a small packing crate, pondering the relative merits of Terrified Student Raking The Leaves In A Category Four Hurricane versus Polish That Car Again By Grod I Can Still See Smudges On It that he felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. Had he not lost consciousness instantaneously, he might have been pleased to know that it had been delivered by a Blokeworthy Number 13 Shifting Spanner.

***

Max Damage, superhero, hurried across the Wisdom City docklands.

He had received a call from his Oriental Manservant to say that something nefarious was possibly (or possibly not) happening down at the waterfront, and since the waterfront was the kind of place where 48 nefarious things could take place between 3pm and 3:15pm on a quiet Sunday afternoon, he was reasonably certain his Manservant was onto something. Hell, he thought to himself as he jogged, even if Phon Du had got himself over-excited by being inscrutable again, he’d actually had to hurry past 6 nefarious things just in the time since he’d parked his car.

***

“What should we do with him?” Asked Clutch Badway.

“Forget about him,” Said Fondle Badway, eldest of the Badway Brothers. “He’s tied up and unconscious, he isn’t going to be bothering anyone.”

“Yeah,” said Clutch with some concern, “but he’s, like, Oriental, isn’t he? They’ve got devious methods, they do. Plus, if he ever gets free he’ll probably get all inscrutable at us. All that, ‘What is the hand of one sound while someone else is clapping,’ stuff. Gives me a right thumping headache.”

“Look,” snapped Fondle, “he’s not bloody Oriental, I already told you that. He’s got lines drawn in the corners of his eyes, see? So he’s about as bloody Oriental as wossname was in that show where he had to go around doing things.”

“David Carridine,” said Sheldon ‘Really, Really’ Badway, youngest of the brothers, who had remained silent up to that point.

“Yeah, him,” said Fondle. “So why don’t you just shut the hell up so we can-“

“And the show was called ‘Kung Fu’,” Sheldon added helpfully. “It was set in the Old West.”

“Right,” said Fondle, who had a feeling the conversation was getting away from him. “Like I was say-“

“Did you know that the role of Kwai Chang Caine was originally going to go to Bruce Lee, but the producers decided that audiences weren’t ready for a real Oriental actor, but that for some reason a really fake Oriental actor was fine.”

“Really?” interjected Drool Badway, the fourth of the brothers. “Wow, he’d have been so kickass in that show!” And then he and Clutch and Sheldon had spent several minutes waving their hands in the air and yelling, “Waaaah?!” and “Haiyah!” and “Grod, Sheldon, that really hurt! Show me how you did it?” and “You did it again! I only wanted you to show me how you did it! Come here you little bastYAAAARGH!”

Fondle stared up at the ceiling of the warehouse and counted to 10. Then he did some long division, and rounded out the exercise by calculating Pi to 112 significant digits.

“Right!” he said brightly, once the seething red tide of hostility that often washed over him while dealing with his brothers [2] had finally receded. “That’s excellent! Do we all think we know enough about the show with the guy?! Great! Now, how about we do some actual fucking work?! Anyway,” he added with scorn, “Jean-Claude Van Damme could take Bruce Lee with one arm tied behind his back.”

***

Max Damage was one with the night.

This had nothing to do with his ability to move stealthily, since he carried so much weaponry with him wherever he went that he sounded very much like an entire orchestral brass section being pushed down a steep crevasse followed by a small avalanche of rocks. It did, however, have a lot to do with the fact that his superhero costume had been made of an experimental fibre that absorbed every bit of stray light that was unfortunate enough to shine in his vicinity.

This made him effectively invisible during dark nights such as that particular night, but had the opposite effect at any other time of the day. Essentially, it was hard to miss a moving patch of blacky-black-blackness moving at a scurry across a well-lit space of ground. Particularly one that jangled and clanked and tinkled with every step.

Still, Damage had a way of approaching a heavily armed position with so much noise and obviousness that most guards were still going, “Wow, he’s like… I mean, who does he think he’s kidding? Look, he dropped one of his bandoliers and he’s… he’s really going back to get it. See? He’s standing right out there in the open, putting it back on. You could shoot him from here. Seriously, that’s just so-“, so that by the time he reached them he had plenty of time to basically blow them off the face of the earth with his personal arsenal of weapons of localised destruction.

***

Phon Du gradually regained consciousness.

He was vaguely aware that a group of men were nearby, and that they were having a heated argument about who would win a fair fight between Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Judge Judy.

Currently it appeared that the Judge Judy contingent was carrying the debate, but a spirited counter-attempt was being made by the Jean-Claude camp, with the observation that he would just do one those horrible, horrible splits of his whenever Judge Judy came in close with her gavel, and that Jean-Claude would show her who was really out of order.

“Don’t be daft,” said another voice. “Jackie Chan would just…,” there was the scuffling sound of movement, “and then he’d…,” more scuffling, “and then he’d grab this chair, right, and he’d… like this… and then he’d do this! You telling me Jean-Claude’s got an answer for that?! Hah!”

The argument descended into indistinguishable bickering, leaving Phon Du to begin working at the ropes that were binding him to the packing crate.

It’s time, he thought to himself, to get inscrutable. And then he thought, What is the sound of one hand getting free of some ropes? And then he thought, It is probably the sound of one man whimpering softly as he loses most of the skin on his fucking wrists…

***

Max Damage crept closer to the warehouse, with only a little bit of tinkling. He was going to need the element of surprise when he launched himself through the doors, and he briefly considered removing some of his more noisy weapons to assist in this endeavour.

Then he discarded this notion, particularly since he realised it would probably take him two hours just to divest himself of the 3 different grappling hooks that were attached to his costume, let alone any of the rocket launchers, grenades, pump-action shotguns and / or ritual disembowelling spoons.

He paused. There were voices coming from within, and it appeared that they were arguing about something.

Good, he thought to himself with a sneer, so much the better to take you by surprise! Aha ahahahahah!

And then he swore softly under his breath, because he was certain he’d accidentally said that last bit out loud.

***

It had been a quiet night on the docks for the lads who worked in Warehouse 9C. Technically they were supposed to be busy shifting crates and shipping containers back and forth, but the boss was never there for the night shift, so who was to know if the lads took a break every now and then to indulge in the favourite past-time of every burly, masculine dock worker.

“Are you sure,” Legless Dave said with a suspicious tone, “that you don’t have a 9? I think you do have a fucking 9!”

“I do not have a fucking 9,” said Spiteful Warren, “or any other type of 9, for that matter. This is why, when you asked me if I had a fucking 9, I said, and I quote, ‘You can go fucking fish’.” [3]

“Listen, Spiteful,” said Legless, “if I come over there and find out that you’ve got a fucking 9, I am going to beat you into such a bloody pulp such as what your wife and kiddies will be able to keep your remains in a small mayonnaise jar. Without, I might add, taking out much mayonnaise first.”

“You are welcome,” said Spiteful, “to come over here and check whether or not I have a fucking 9, Legless, and while you are at it how about you bring some buddies, for the purposes of dragging your mutilated body to a funeral home wherein they will be forced to employ many and subtle funereal arts simply to identify your corpse.”

“I think I will come over there, Spiteful, to check whether or not you have a fucking 9, and then what I will do with your genitals afterwards, will be written about in medical journals with accompanying high definition photos to establish the true horror-“, but he didn’t get to finish this thought as one of the other players held up a hand for silence.

“Shhhh!” said Hearing Things Trevor. “Did any of you hear that? It sounded like someone said, ‘Aha ahahaha!’, and there was also some tinkling.”

Everyone else at the table sighed.

“There is a reason why we call you Hearing Things Trevor,” said Legless Dave, “and this is because you are always, not to put too fine a point on it, hearing things. Now, how about you shut up while I sort out if I need to go over there and tear Spiteful Warren’s head off his still living body for hiding a fucking 9 on me.”

“I am rampant with expectation at the prospect of you coming over here, Legless,” said Spiteful Warren, “for I am looking forward to the opportunity to push your face into an industrial shredder, after which I plan to-“ but he also didn’t get a chance to finish this thought, because it was at that moment that the warehouse erupted in hellfire.

Amidst all the noise and screaming and the subtle sounds of four dock workers simultaneously soiling themselves, there was also the sound of someone yelling, “Aha ahahahaha!” accompanied by a lot of tinkling.

***

Phon Du had freed himself from the ropes.

I wish the Boss was here, he thought to himself as he hid behind the packing crate, he’d know what to do. Then he gave this observation some careful scrutiny, and decided that what the Boss would probably do was blow everything up, and that maybe it was best all round if he wasn’t there, after all.

He slipped his trusty Number 13 Spanner out of his flowing robes. It appeared that the four villains were still engaged in their squabble, with one having sunk into a splits that had obviously sprained his groin, another hovering on the periphery with a small hammer and yelling, “You’re out of order!”, a third hopping around madly while frothing, “I’m going to enter the dragon! So help me Grod, I’m going to enter the dragon!”, while the fourth was doing complicated and possibly illegal things to a chair.

Okay, thought Phon Du with a little bemusement, maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.

He hefted his spanner aloft and then, because he was trying to be the best Oriental Manservant he could be, he issued the obligatory blood-curdling, “Aiiiiieeeee!” before rushing across the open space of the warehouse.

***

“Look,” called out Max Damage as he stood in the middle of the blazing warehouse, “I did say I was awfully sorry!”

“Thank you,”  Legless Dave yelled back from where the four workers had managed to hole themselves up in the warehouse’s pay office. “We accept your apology and we would like it very much if you left!”

“I’m sure you can clean up the place!” Yelled Damage. “I’d be happy to come back later and help, if you like! It’ll be as good as new!” He added doubtfully, looking around at the bullet-ridden carnage.

“No, that’s okay!” Came Legless Dave’s voice. “We’re happy to do it ourselves!” There was the sound of several voices having a hushed but passionate conversation. “And we’d also like it if you promised to not ever come back, ever!”

Damage scuffed a mildly embarrassed foot back and forth. “Well…! I’d have to come back if you were doing anything illegal! It’s a sort of professional thing!”

“What the hell would you do if we were?!” Yelled back Legless Dave. “Nuke the entire fucking city?!”

There was a short pause, and then, “Actually, there is one thing you could do! Can you check to see if there’s a 9 in the hand of cards closest to the door?!”

Then another voice yelled, “Are you still going on about that fucking 9?! Sweet Merciless Grod, Legless, I swear I’ll push you out to deal with him if you don’t fucking drop it!”

However, Max Damage was no longer there to help with that particular request. He had heard a familiar “Aiiiiieeeee!” from a neighbouring warehouse and had legged it into the night, tinkling and clanking as he went.

***

There was nothing left for Damage to blow up when he eventually arrived at the right warehouse, by way of levelling two other warehouses along the way, just to be sure.

There was his Oriental Manservant, squatting on the concrete floor in the middle of a circle of tightly bound Badway Brothers.

Every now and then he deftly clubbed one or another of them with his spanner, just to maintain a sense of status quo.

“What happened here?” Damage demanded, finding it hard to hide his disappointment at having missed the real action. He was holding what appeared to be a gently smoking flamethrower, which was also gently setting fire to the warehouse ceiling.

“Well,” said Phon Du, “first I employed The Three Hidden Forms Of Operating The Weed Wacker, and then I went straight into You Don’t Get To Use The Ride-on Mower Again Until You Learn How To Make Straight Lines. And then,” he added, because he was essentially an honest Oriental Manservant, “I hit them with my spanner.”

“Right,” said Damage decisively, but that was as far as he got before several tons of burning ceiling beams collapsed on top of him.

Phon Du shook his head and sighed, and then got busy dragging his Boss out from under the burning beams and into the cold night air. After a few minutes he returned to perform a similar operation on the unconscious Badway Brothers.

***

Later, once he had got everyone out of the warehouse, Phon Du had squatted next to his gently smouldering Boss and had looked out over the waterfront.

Most of the warehouses were ablaze, and the sound of sirens were beginning to fill the night air. [4]

In the foreground a fistfight had broken out amongst a group of dock workers, and occasionally the sounds of one or the other of them yelling about a fish had wafted over to him above the sirens.

You know what? He had thought wisely to himself. Something very fucking Zen must have happened here tonight.

At that moment Max Damage began to gurgle as he surfaced closer to consciousness, and Phon Du reached over and very tenderly thumped him in the head with his spanner. “Yaargh,” said Damage, and sank bank down into the depths of unconsciousness.

Phon Du smiled an inscrutable smile, and looked out over the flames. He had earned a little break, and, he had thought, Wisdom City always looked its prettiest when it was burning down at night.

Just about every movie nutjob with a cause, a speech and a wooden crate on which to stand and yell it at a group of people who probably just want to get home alive, can be found patchworked into this cleverly crafted clip of YouTube inspirationalness!

Go on, press the play button, you know you want to…

Because my previous PC could barely run Solitaire, I had let mainstream PC gaming pass me by for a few years. My only real contact with playing computer games of any kind was humiliating thrashing beating Darren Saturday on a weekly basis at Xbox 360 Basketball at his place [2], and playing an occasional round of Far Cry on my boss’s PC.

So, here I was at age 40: new PC, new game, and a rekindled desire to escape, if even only briefly, from the reality of growing older.

***

The game is Far Cry 2, the eagerly awaited sequel to Far Cry, and it’s surprisingly different to the original. In Far Cry, you play a soldier of fortune who finds himself caught up in Some Very Bad Things when he is marooned on an island on which genetic experiments are being conducted.
Things get ugly very quickly in Far Cry, leaving you with the impression that Jack Carver (the character you are playing) is a little short on diplomacy but long on using sniper rifles to do most of his talking. Not that anyone – or anything, for that matter – in Far Cry ever stops to ask questions or offer any small talk. No, it’s straight down to the business of shooting, stabbing, clawing, and having your head torn off in dark places by mutant monsters in the original Far Cry.
Far Cry 2, on the other hand, is a very different experience.

***

I’m banging around the back roads of the African countryside in a battered old jeep.

In the original Far Cry you followed a linear storyline – you had a little bit of leeway over how you completed each level, but you essentially went from scenario one to scenario two to scenario three and so on.

In Far Cry 2, you are instead dwelling within a map – yes, there are still missions and objectives, but how you go about pursuing and completing them is entirely up to you.

For example, I’m currently on my way to a town called Mosate-Selao to kill a guy. I have no idea why. The town is crawling with militia, and this is not going to be pleasant for anyone [3].

***

There’s still a basic storyline in Far Cry 2 – your character has arrived in a desolate, war-torn part of Africa, hunting for a legendary mercenary and arms dealer known only as… ‘The Jackal’ [4].

As you begin the game, you have a sense that you’re there to free the oppressed masses from the tyranny of a very evil man. However, as the game progresses you quickly come to realise that all you’re really doing is leaving behind a growing pile of bullet-ridden corpses, and that it’s unlikely that any of the oppressed masses will still be left alive when you’ve finished to feel like they’ve been liberated.

There’s something annoyingly philosophical about this whole situation, but it’s escaping me at the moment.

***

The guy is trying to escape, but he’s not going to get far.

He’s yelling: “Bloody Hell! I wish I hadn’t got on that plane in the first place! I wish I hadn’t come to this country! Jesus Christ!”

My gun is jammed, so I’m chasing the guy through the undergrowth outside Mosate-Selao. He’s not the guy I was sent here to kill – that guy is already dead. This guy is just part of the militia, but I like to be thorough.

I’m saying: “I’m disappointed in you Ralph [5]. That was very anti-social of you, hiding in the bushes back there. I think we should bring this up at your next Performance Development Review.”

He’s yelling: “Where is he? Where is he? I can’t see him!”

I’m saying: “I thought you had a bright future in this organisation, Ralph, but you’ll never get ahead if you don’t step up to the plate. You want to get ahead, don’t you Ralph?”

He’s yelling: “I see him! He’s over-“

I’m standing about 30 paces away from him when my gun finally unjams. It’s an AS50 Sniper Rifle, and Ralph gets his next Performance Development Review cancelled in a very messy way.

I trot back to the jeep a few moments later – it’s time to go get another mission.

***

Later, the philosophical observation that was escaping me before finally takes shape.

I came to this (fictional) place to save the (fictional) people and to hunt for The (Fictional) Jackal. Instead, it seems I have become a plague upon the land, an avenging angel from one of those Old Testament style religions where no-one has a sense of humour, a man driven to kill and kill again. Each mission I accept is a tiny fraction more morally ambiguous than the last, and I’m beginning to wonder: am I really here to really kill The Jackal, or to become his replacement?

I guess the only way to find out is to play the game and see how it ends.

War is hell, man.

Even when it’s fictional.

[08:31:02 AM] Sally says: Hi there Darren, got feedback from the client about the creative for their product and brand launch.

[08:31:14 AM] Darren says: Hi Sai Li, that was quicker than I expected. Which one of the options do they want to run with or have me work on? Transvision Vamp, INXS, or the Teriyaki Boyz?

[08:31:27 AM] Sally says: ummmm well the thing is they really love it all but they want to use their Classical signature tune to open it up before going on to something… more contemporary. Know what I mean?

[08:31:33 AM] Darren says: Not really. Classical as in what? Joan Jett? Simply Red? Older – what like Janis Joplin? The Temptations?

[08:31:35 AM] Sally says: more like Bach.

[08:31:37 AM] Darren says: your shitting me right?

[08:31:40 AM] Sally says: no I’m pretty sure that’s his name, German I think. Anyway have a listen and see what you can do. It’s a bit dreamy… and boring. Bach.

SAI LI FROM SHANGHAI HAS UPLOADED

[08:34:08 AM] Darren says: ok, it’s hugely different to the songs we’ve been working from but we can do something with it. Is it their company theme song?

[08:34:21 AM] Sally says: I’m pretty sure it’s German… or maybe Austrian even.

[08:34:24 AM] Darren says: right. So we’ll use ‘soundforge’ to marry this opening track to another track that has a more contemporary vibe to it in keeping with the new look. A brand rebirth as such! Do you have anything in mind or are you happy for me to select something that’ll work with the show design Sai Li?

[08:34:38 AM] Sally says: I like that English band STEPS.
[08:34:45 AM] Darren says: no.
[08:34:51 AM] Sally says: The Veronicas?

[08:34:58 AM] Darren says: no. needs a high energy beat to it. Something with a proven commercial pedigree. Like something from Moby.

[08:35:01 AM] Sally says: Moby.

[08:35:04 AM] Sally says: The guy that hunts whales for scientific purposes?

[08:35:20 AM] Darren says: ok so let’s go with the Bach and then we’ll beat mix it with Moby’s Bodyrock.

[08:35:23 AM] Sally says: when can I have it?
[08:35:25 AM] Darren says: when do you need it?
[08:35:29 AM] Sally says: now. The client is here sitting next to me waiting.
[08:35:33 AM] Darren says: bloody hell Sai Li this is pretty ordinary stuff.
[08:35:37 AM] Joyce says: this is Joyce from SePTeM, we are waiting.

[08:36:12 AM] Darren says: yes ma’am… imagine… if you will…. the following –

A massive white canvas dominates the back of the stage and spills out and across the stage top itself. The stage floor has an intriguing ‘Luna’ feel to it. White and barren. Peppered with plenty of folds, bumps, deep hollows and strange moving shaped peaks.

The SePTeM signature song, a beautiful and melodic classic piece starts to filter across the stage and out into the audience. As the music builds in volume so does the intensity of dry ice and theatre smoke clouds – seeping up from the billowing landscape. Rays of light cut through the smoke creating a fairy glade atmosphere.

The classical music advances and as it does six ballet dancers appear one at a time from within the stage environment. They join as one and dance across the stage with white water cans in hand – watering concealed mounds within the stage. The audience is spellbound as showers of silver glitter pour out from the water cans over the mounds.

Magically the mounds start to take human form, growing into floral characters all in white. They join the ballet dancers in a celebration of song and dance. As the sequence reaches it’s theatrical climax, a huge wind storm can be heard approaching.

The soft materials that covered the stage billow to life, twisting and turning in rage as the ballet dancers are tossed about the stage. A strange character runs across the stage chasing a kite that is being blown out into the audience. The storm has arrived blowing the classical music away and in turn the ballet dancers are one by one are swept from the stage. The same strange character returns – pushing hard against the winds in a classic mime pose before a crack of thunder sends him tumbling away.

Another thunder crack followed by a series of pyrotechnic flashes within the room. Full blackout… and then pulse lighting developed from back stage before the room is dramatically filled with the high energy classic hit “BodyRock” from international dance heavyweight Moby.

This is a high energy track that will surprise and lift the audience from the beautiful slumber of the classical opener and really inject energy into the performance.

To the Moby beats, the back stage line reveals, through a motorized reveal or a simple parting of the sheer chiffons forming the backdrop to reveal five dancers dressed in funky white dust overalls – covered from head down to full shoe covers. Behind them are huge alloy industrial fans set at various heights rotating and blowing hard. Long shiny strips of silk in all sorts of bright dance out from the fan faces like clutching fingers.

A formal bow is extended to the audience by the ‘Bodyrockers’. As they return to a stiff upright position a series of pyros exploded from either side of stage before meeting at the stage center. Armed with pots of paint and big hand brushes, the dancers spin away from each other and race to the middle of the stage and indulge in a highly stylized choreography that involves manically body painting each other with bright SePTeM colours.

Cutting through this fantastic chaos, an artist armed with two holstered pistols presents herself. She quick draws the audience before firing fluorescent paint into the air above her and at the other artists. Once tagged, the other artists start to paint. Paint like there is no tomorrow! Once finished the gunslinger turns on point, and skips away.

The stage is a manic whirlwind of activity. The transformed artists leap, jump, and lunge at the backing canvas. Armed with pots of bright primary colours. In broad strokes reflective of their own distinct individual styles, the canvas starts to take on a life of it’s own.

The canvas starts to resemble some sort of surprise Pollack inspired mess-tapiece.

From underneath the various peaks of the stage surface – other artists dramatically reveal themselves. Dragging out canvas surfaces with them. The once pristine white surfaces are struck again and again by bright colours. It lives. In a highly choreographed dance movement, the artists flit move from one surface to the next in a strange painting circuit. Various sized ladders are introduced into the mix with startling results.

From above the stage another artist drops from high above the stage. She swings back and forth across the face of the canvass backdrop with a water pistol in both hands – spraying bright paint as she goes by at the artists below.

From the back of the room – a massive scaffold trolley is pushed into the room. At speed it races down the room’s center aisle towards the stage. On top of the trolley are a dozen children of varying ages all dressed in white and waving madly to one and all. Woo-hoo!

The gunslinger returns, spinning artfully in the air before coming to a ramrod halt center stage. The others mass around, completely covering this individual in block paint – head to toe. Springing from her like she was on fire, she is fully painted and ready. Picked up and employed like a giant human brush, she is swept back and forth across the series of canvas surfaces the other dancers present to her. She is released as the other artists tumble and roll about – creating a strange collective art work from the various canvas elements.

The trolley arrives at the main stage releasing the children who clambered down and up on to the stage where they jump, prance and roll about in the paint as well as dancing with the big’uns. Living art to a pulsating urban soundscape.

As the track comes to it’s climax – all the splattered cast gather as one for a highly stylized group photograph. The photographer takes the shot – pyro flash followed by lights out and a stage and backdrop bathed in UV light. Previously invisible to the eye – the UV now reveals the new logo painted across the entire breadth of the backdrop canvas.

SEPTEM colours my world !

[08:44:42 AM] Darren says: so. What do you think? Ladies?
[08:44:55 AM] Joyce says: it is okay.
[08:44:58 AM] Sai Li says: it’s okay Darren.
[08:45:06 AM] Joyce says: I like the paint – it’s fun.
[08:45:08 AM] Sai Li says: Joyce says it’s fun. The fun paint is fun.
[08:45:13 AM] Darren says: okay. So should we run with this?
[08:45:28 AM] Joyce says: it is okay.
[08:45:30 AM] Sai Li says: Joyce says okay.
[08:45:32 AM] Darren says: I’m getting her chat Sai Li – it’s fine.
[08:45:35 AM] Joyce says: let’s do this.
[08:45:37 AM] Sai Li says: Joyce says we should do this.
[08:45:41 AM] Darren says: well that’s great, I’ll get on to it straight away. I’m pleased your pleased.
[08:45:44 AM] Joyce says: don’t forget to include the blue monkeys! Very very important.
[08:45:46 AM] Sai Li says: Blue Monkeys Darren – don’t forget.
[08:45:49 AM] Darren says: WHAT???

SAI LI FROM SHANGHAI HAS LOGGED OFF.