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I picked up a free copy of the Evening Herald in Bus Aras the other day. Unfortunately there was no recycling bins where I could dispose of this waste of paper so I left it on the bench to pollute someone else’s mind after me! Anyway, I could write an in depth piece about ‘free’ newspapers and the waste that they are, but I will save that one for another day.

This story is related though and it stems from this piece that I snapped from this free rag to pass the time while I waited for my bus. The article talks about Anti Social Behaviour and the photo cites graffiti as being such that. But yet, graffiti is not mentioned in the article and I wonder if it is in the report at all.

Now I’m not going to defend all graffiti here. Some of it, is of course rubbish. Tags could be seen as just the work of bored teens rather than a piece of art or a statement. I don’t really get tagging to be honest. Some of it is good, especially on a big scale where there is obviously preparation and thought put into the design. But some is just crap, the “I woz ere” or “BA luvs GB” variety, as much to say “I own this here bit of wall, look at me”. Now I know a lot of graffiti artists will disagree with me, but you have to draw the line somewhere and by that I mean where you don’t write on walls. For example, if it is going to piss someone off enough to start addressing their local politicians about cleaning up the neighbourhoods and imposing tough penalties on people who draw on the walls no matter if they are just inconsiderate bored teens or creative street artists. In other words, painting them all with the same brush.
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Four posts last month and feck all at all this month. Right, well I’m gonna to have to fix that. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I gotta do more of this blogging thing. There’s been too many distractions and I’ve been holding back on posting stuff here for a few reasons.
The first is the documentary I am making. It is about the ongoing disgrace that is the M3 motorway being build through the Gabhra Valley which is the ancient capital of Ireland known as Tara. I will be putting the making of the documentary online on the sister site ITISON.TV. Lot more to come there too. Well I guess I’m in a state of limbo with so much things on and I’ve knocked on practically every door looking for funding for this before I unleash it. But it’s not that easy and maybe because it’s current affairs. Well, I don’t want this to be a piece of trivia so I want to get it out there and engage the public in it in a unique way while the destruction of our heritage is ongoing. There, now I’ve shown my cards. Some would think that to be a mistake but I don’t care. I am looking for all sides to tell this story and there absence will speak volumes more. So many doors have been closed on me already with this and I have to overcome brick wall after brick wall. Well I must be doing something right. I won’t go into too much detail here. I will save that for another post. But I will say this – that so many people have wasted my time on this and stuck spanners in the works. And this is just with the production of this project. Collaborators have turned out to be quite the opposite. I thrive for collaborations, it makes for much better work and to back out of these opportunities after agreements are made with new agendas is just plain wrong in my book. Maybe I give unfamiliar people too much kudos. But my intuition is always acute and I need to go with it more. Sometimes I test it though until I know I am right about it. This is when people make slip ups, and the ones I am looking for to prove myself right. Moving on. I have immersed myself in a massive amount of research on the subject since June and have shot approximately fifty hours of footage so far. But there is still much more to do (I nearly used a Bertie phrase there!). I know it’s important and I won’t stop now or cut my losses as I have been advised. This project has changed a lot of things for me and I will continue with it. Anyway, I will talk about this more in a future post, I just had to write something on it here.
The second reason I have not blogged as much as I would have liked to and related to this is because ITISON is my business, I did not want to get too personal on this, in case it were to scare off potential investors. I am at a crucial stage in the development of that and the Tara project has side tracked me a little but it ultimately represents the kind of work I intend to do with ITISON. But I’ve change my mind on that a bit. I’m not going to censor myself. From here on in its no holds barred. This blog will continue to feature what it already has, but if also now start to become the independent media voice it has alway intended to be.
And the third, well, Facebook is such a distraction dammit!! But it’s a very useful tool. Say goodbye to email! Well not really, but it does have amazing potential and is by far the best social network available today. Opening the platform up to third party developers was the best thing they could have done. I’m excited to see where it will go and the overall impact it will have on the web.
So here we go. Expect more from ITISON in the blogosphere. IT IS ON ….
“….dude,…. it is on”