Ethan D. Roberts

London, UK

"Ideals have remarkable qualities, among them that of suddenly turning into their opposite the moment one tries really to live up to them." Robert Musil

I like right angles. I read books with a pen in hand. Everything happens for a reason; most of the time the reason is you made a decision. Time is not only a healer but also a clarifier. You never know what's around the corner. Things seldom break of their own accord. Stop brooding about having been a fool and get on with being a man. What you put in is what you're likely to get out. If you get anything more, you got lucky. If you get anything less, be content. Relax; things can always get worse. It's easier to say "I was lying" than to admit you were wrong. Go out on a Sunday night. Sleep in on a Tuesday morning. People that say they don't have any regrets are lying. Take it easy but take it. Two half measures do not equal a finished task. Some memories I refuse to forget, others refuse to be forgotten. Love is rarely planned; it sneaks up on you suddenly and unexpectedly and is relentless in its pursuit. I am the sum of my actions multiplied by an unquantifiable factor. Just because your likely to fail at something doesn't mean you shouldn't try. You cannot change the past but it needn't dictate your future.Veritas vos Liberabit.

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Current Projects

Manager, SySurvey.com - Online survey research solution combining powerful survey tools, panel management and data-analysis features to help you undertake time-critical research.

Senior Analyst, Syclick Ltd. - Software solutions provider specialising in bespoke application development, back office development, web development, crm, content management systems, e-commerce and multimedia design.

Former Projects

Artist Manager, Rox - Inspired by legends such as Fitzgerald, Cassidy, and Havens and influenced by (near) contemporaries such as Winehouse and Róisín Murphy, Rox fuses the inspiration and emotion of the muse with the humanness and imagination of the stage performer into an epic whole which she calls "Theatrical Jazz". Several majors are already vying for her attention and those in the know have tipped this 19 year-old music wonder as the next Big Thing to spawn from the resurgent British Isles.

Artist Manager, The Rum Circus - The Rum Circus are a dark melodic quartet hailing from London, Newcastle and Serbia. Their sound combines raw rock and roll, murderous blues and cinematic songwriting. They are the love affair between Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, Polly Jean and The Bad Seeds cavorting in a bubble bath of sonorous, raucous guitars and dark erotic bass lines. They self-released their first single, Four Points On The Compass, in early January '07 and played in festivals in Canada and the UK this past summer.

Artist Manager, Jody Thomas - After eighteen months performing at acoustic lounges in London and venues such as the Soho Revue bar and Cedar Room, singer-songwriter Jody Thomas released his debut EP, the 7 track We Are in September '07. Previously fronting the London based band Hera Crush, his first solo offering mixes his previous experience with a good measure of rich harmonies poured into a tall glass of melancholic kick-arse folk and slow shaken over some very fine melodies. Just don’t mistake him for yet another troubadour– the boy knows how to rock out with the best of them.

How about that?

My brother's finally finshed his first novel - how about that?!!
It's called Easy Pour and follows a 20-something as he lives in the Big Apple and tries to figure out what it's all about. From the sleeve: "You know the guy - the young, smart, college graduate who lives in a studio apartment in New York City, spends his days flipping through job listings and his nights weaving in and out of bars. This is the story of his search for direction, and purpose. Through the ordinary and extraordinary, he begins to learn what is binding about his twenty-something life, including a frustration with his own inaction. With Unflinching honesty and a cutting sense of dark irony, Easy Pour slowly grapples a poignant question of burgeoning adulthood: Is life controlled by the uncontrollable?
I highly recommend it, and you can get your own copy at the Xlibris website. Well done bro!

Predilections & Aversions

Good: serendipity, discovering and sharing great music, cooking, dancing, road trips, ambiguity, politics, cats, breakfast and papers in the right company, bowling, grammar, sleeping in, moreovers, rhyming couplets, Scrabble, worthwhile reading, Hope, loaded statements, staring at the moon, rollerblading without destination, romping, second chances, gardening, Lilies, 24th May, chunky jewellery (not on me though!), Dunhills, sleeplessness, brown curls, sleep, words, spontaneity, what ifs, travelling, mowing lawn with slippers on, rhyming couplets, Patriots, Red Sox, 2004 ALCS
Bad: mushrooms, Rod Stewart, brussels sprouts, lima beans, raw onions, slothful people, TV licenses, non-promoting promoters, 9th April, regrets, poor grammar, incessant prattle, indicator-incapable drivers, eggs, New York Yankees

You Don't Say

Non-dairy creamer is flammable when spread into the air. You stand a greater chance of dying while dealing crack in a Chicago housing project than you do while sitting on death row in Texas. Before the 1800s, there were no separately designed shoes for left and right feet. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) didn't like carrots. The dot at the top of the letter "i" is called a tittle. The likelihood of death by pool versus death by gun isn't even close: little Johnny is roughtly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Sammy's house than in gunplay at Freddie's. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. Cities in which radio stations play an above-average amount of country music have higher than average suicide rates. In the summer of 1959, the United States Postal Service experimented with the delivery of letters by guided missile. In 60 BC a Roman soldier was killed by a mob because he acciendetally ran over an Egyptian cat with his chariot. In 1924, a monkey was found guilty of the crime of smoking a cigarette and forced to pay a fine of 25 dollars, as well as trial costs in South Bend, Indiana. There has never been a recorded observation of an Ostrich burying its head in the sand.

¿Quotables?

In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. Edward Gibbon
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age. Richard Lindzen, MIT
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiencey, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. Blaise Pascal
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. President John Adams
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain
I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. To approve such spending would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. President Franklin Pierce
The alternative to respect for external authority is not necessarily respect for internal authority: it may be no respect at all. Edward C. Banfield
Leaders from the eight wealthiest countries in the world gathered in Germany for what they call the G8 Summit...The G8 was created in 1975 to give Europeans who aren't into soccer something to riot about. Jay Leno
Global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for 10,000 years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance: the survival of ourselves, our children, our species. Lowell Ponte (1975)
When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto ... when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy. (2007) Pontificator John Kerry, who voted with his Senate colleagues (final vote, 95-0) to reject the Kyoto Protocol in 1997
A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him. Walter Williams

Hearing, Seeing, Digesting

Aim, Air, Alice Russell, Amos Lee, Annie, Aromabar, Azure Ray, Ben Folds, Ben Harper, Bob Schneider, Cagedbaby, Carly Simon, Chick Webb, Counting Crows, Crazy P, Damien Rice, Del Amitri, Doves, Duncan Sheik, Ed Harcourt, Elbow, Elliot Smith, Emiliana Torrini, Erykah Badu, Eva Cassidy, Fiona Apple, Fleetwood Mac, Fried, Frou Frou, Gary Jules, I am Kloot, Imogen Heap, Jack Johnson, James Taylor, Jason Mraz, Jeff Buckley, Jem, John Legend, John Mayer, José González, Journey, Jude, Kate Bush, Keane, Kings of Convenience, Nick Drake, Nickel Creek, Nitin Sawhney, Over the Rhine, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins (it's true), Plumb, Radiohead, Roisin Murphy, Rufus Wainright, Ryan Adams, Sam Roberts, Seal, Sixpence None The Richer, Sparklehorse, Starfler 59, Tenacious D, The Czars, The Rolling Stones, The Shins, The Weepies, Thea Gilmore, Thirteen Senses, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Tom Petty, Tracy Chapman, Travis, Van Morrison, Vaughan Williams
The Big Lebowski, Groundhog Day, Donnie Darko, Anchorman, House, The Simpsons, Swingers, Breaking the Waves, The Empire Strikes Back, Arrested Development, Family Guy, Police Squad, Seinfeld, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, 24, Quantum Leap, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office
Most anything by C.S. Lewis, Thomas Sowell, Steven Pressfield, James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, and John Irving.Especially: Till we have faces , Jude the Obscure , Out of the Silent Planet , Ulysses , Vision of the Annoited , The Great Divorce .Also: The Intellectuals and the Masses , Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass , Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds , Townhall , For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health , The Drudge Report , The Patriot Post , Closing of the American Mind

Moreover

Somethin' in you brought out somethin' in me, that I've never been since
That part of me that was only for you,
That kind of romance
Comes only once, that kind of love
That kind of fever dance
That you love because you become someone else in an instant
Fleetwood Mac
Too many shadows in my room
Too many hours in this midnight
Too many corners in my mind
So much to do to set my heart right
It's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready
But if i take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
I am in repair, I am in repair
John Mayer
When I saw the break of day
I wished that I could fly away
Instead of kneeling in the sand
Catching teardrops in my hand
My heart is drenched in wine
But you'll be on my mind Forever
Jesse Harris

Some Friends