These are just fleeting thoughts from the heartland of the UK's colonial dustbin somewhere beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down. As ever AI and old age are to blame. I'll just leave it there ...
Where in the world are we? The splendour of some extravagant tile work. Odd boxes were opened and applied. What might it mean? It addles the brain in a confined space. Keeps you on your toes. Heaven knows. I'm certainly not miserable right now. I may have done some damage to my retina. It's the high price of artistic appreciation. Be economical with your time staying and staring. After all it's only a toilet wall. Nothing that matters.
Undiscovered chocolate found in the fridge behind the tomtato puree. I quickly moved it to the fruit basket, as you do. A morning without slipping into tiresome rant mode. A verbal shopping list of things and issues that probably don't bother me that much but I feel like they should. So I bite. At my time of life I should know better etc.
Anyway I enjoyed a nice haircut yesterday. As I live close to the shop I can carry out a recce quite easily. Too many people waiting and I retire homewards to wait. Maybe one person and I'd risk it. The sweet spot is of course nobody else being there and I can pick a chair. Have a quick chat with their pet budgies and then get down to business. If you're over 70 they charge even less, so you can leave a decent tip and feel good about yourself.
It was one of my better impulses. My Jellycat (direct) parcels arrived. Almost quicker than Amazon and including some custom printing, all in 32 hours. Whatever your JC opinions, I can only say "expensive but shit hot". I like it. Grandchildren deserve this stuff.
Kill switch. I have one on a Fender lead but I want to install one proper. I'm doing research. It's a guitar thing that I can't quite put to rest. Easy job but a small pain in the arse to drill into a guitar body. Hmm.
I've reached the point in life where murder mystery TV shows have some limited appeal. I never thought it would happen to me. I could stop anytime and I probably will. The whole detective drama exercise is over rated. Real life murder is the worst thing, too many ripples, no controls. TV degrades and distorts. It (murder mystery) belongs in books.
Next episode ...
Faraday Cat: I was wondering what it was that took up most of my headspace back in the day. I mean, before we had one AI thing after another, (data centres, music and films, total world domination), ongoing serial fuckwittery from Trump and then the state of Israel behaving like Nazi Germany in 1939-ish. I suppose there’s always some set of complete bastards who are going to spoil everything, ad nauseam. I should be used to it by now. I just need a break, or a good bottle of red.
I can’t really blame anybody who builds their own cabin in the woods or constructs a Faraday Cage thing and tries living in it while raising chickens and growing broad beans. Cut out the signals, turn down the noise, get into a safe (?) and quiet space where you can read books, listen to music, sip nice coffee and not gulp it down, harbour your thoughts and then write them up in a notebook. After a while, put your stuff on Substack, where it'll be sweetly ignored by that faraway, wispy world that forever seems like some foreign and disturbing place right now.
If that’s not your thing, I’d recommend the Faraday Cat. A shield against the electrical spikes of reality. Just let a cat or three into your life and enjoy the soporific and cooling atmosphere they create. When they’re not throwing up, shitting at 3am or wandering off near busy roads, that is.
Cut out the noise, lose the news, fuck the zeitgeist, stop making stupid people famous, be one with your own universe, buy another guitar etc.
That’s already way too much, tbh. Now, I wonder what AI really thinks of me?
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Edited itinerary: A very short snapshot from a long modern journey that rivals anything Marco Polo or Genghis Khan ever tried. Shipping from east to west in detail. Logistics are a fine art these days and every event is logged. This is just a small portion of the great chunks of random information available about this item's journey from there to here.
I tune in most days. Just so they'll know, in the AI system, that I care. I'll never visit any of the exotic sounding staging posts and markers that flash up on a regular basis. I've nothing to reference what or why they are there. I'm a faraway spectator.
Weather is often a feature and an excuse as well. What the driver had for lunch or whether he had a good night's sleep. Sometimes I imagine it's travelling by mule train, bicycle or tuk-tuk and not in some frigid container stuffed with other stuff. Some days by train, other days by road, maybe a ship at some point if it ever gets close to a body of water.
Not green, not clever, I know. Just relentless, slow progress over a few months. It's how things are done. What's the precious cargo? Can't say too much about it at the moment, but I doubt it's no more than a reasonably sized and battered Jiffy bag identified with a grubby barcode label.
So in the foreseeable future the doorbell will ring. I'll open it and meet this seasoned traveller, dumped ignominiously onto the front step on a wet Friday afternoon. The delivery man is already walking off with his back to me. I wave a feeble "thank you" wave but he doesn't turn around.
The Jiffy bag is in my hands. I'm in no hurry to open it. Take a little time. I suspect that there will be yet another Roy Batty "tears in the rain" moment for the package and me, now that its epic journey is finally over.
It's what I told myself as I opened the tub.
The noodles looked harmless. They had the usual appearance of something that had travelled a long way, been doctored and had seen things. I put the boiling water in and waited.
Outside, the rain was coming down. Real slow. It was September and the summer had gone without saying goodbye.
The noodles were ready.
I ate them.
They were good.
Not great. Not bad. They did not change my life. But they were noodles and they had done their job.
There are worse things. There are always worse things.
We don't speak of these things.
I finished the tub and sat quietly for a while. Nothing happened.
This was reassuring.
Perhaps strength comes from surviving small things. Bad noodles. Bad weather. Bad decisions. The slow news and the quick news. Advertisements. The internet. The endless enigma.
You eat the noodles.
You wait.
You carry on.
Tomorrow there will be another tub, or a stir fry.
I am writing this at breakfast time, there is no mess however.
Back in 50 Shades of Black, with a couple of daft cat photos.
A source of endless amusement for oldies like me. Cat antics are just absurdly entertaining and always a little strange and unexpected. Hours of entertainment, apparently conjured from absolutely nowhere. They don't seem to need much of a reason to do anything.
I have the details, but I'm not sharing them. There’s plenty of crazy Chinese cat behavioural data available elsewhere online, should you feel the need to investigate further.
I also believe they did put a man on the Moon. Not so clear on the truck stop, however...
Gone are the days of this sort of niche songwriting turning up on the radio. Nobody really talks about R.E.M. anymore. We all just moved on, as did the band members, I imagine.
Nothing really lasts.
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There are many odd things that you can think about trying, but you know fine well that you can never actually get round to doing them. So don't stress or sweat the impossibles' too much. Simple is best.
A volunteer prisoner trapped inside the glitter wall dimension takes a selfie and considers his life choices and current position while also wondering what modern day physics/magic might make of it all.
I encountered this young seagull up in Dundee. She decided to stand for a while on the bonnet of my car whilst I fiddled about with the settings of the car’s music player. Eventually, we struck up a kind of conversation. I’m not fluent in seagull, but I tried. A nod and a wink, etc. Through a glass darkly.
I suggested that this part of Dundee, Asda just off the Kingsway, wasn’t the best place to settle. OK, there’s a Greggs and a nearby Costa but it’s all a bit basic. I won’t say tacky but you know what I mean.
“There will be titbits and messy crumbs and wrappers to explore, but ... you’re not so far away from a better, perhaps more challenging life. The coast’s nearby, as I’m sure you know. If you can, head south across the city to the V&A, don’t be tempted by the ice cream vans and ignorant visitors with their chips and M&S meal deals, although half a macaroni cheese pie stolen from the grasp of a security guard on a smoke break might just work for you. But best to ignore these treasures. Follow the coast to Broughty Ferry or head straight up to Arbroath. There are the relics of a fishing industry up there, though pickings will be slim. The silver darlings moved on. In fact, they’re almost extinct now.”
“Better still, follow the coast to the south, round Fife Ness. I’m not sure what your range is, but stop at the Toasty Van by St Andrews’ harbour for a snack break and you could be in Crail by the early evening. Have a kip up on a roof there somewhere. Then look across and you’ll find the May Island. She sparkles like a cold diamond on the Forth and humans don’t really go there. Maybe a few twitchers and loose Americans in the summer months. Boat trippers with field glasses. It might be a bit Mad Max out there, but you’ll be with a good crowd. You’ll need to pick up a few skills; survival in a hostile environment (by human standards), eat some shit, but there will be crabs, whelks and mussels. Seals, fish maybe? A mate? Not any good to me, but ... I’m not a seagull.”
“Anyway, it’s worth a pop. Nothing against Dundee, but you’re wild and free and these old grey Scottish cities can break a person real quick, or a seagull.”
The bird didn’t say too much, but I had a strong sense of what the tone of her reply might be before it finally arrived. She stamped around on the bonnet. The metal was warm with the sun and an hour of plugging along on the motorway. The young don’t really care for advice, however well meant. I’ve seen a few things by now, lived about a dozen gull lives ... not that I’m counting.
“What the fuck do you know, you big soft prick? Sitting in a metal box fiddling with buttons. You don’t have a clue what it’s like to be out here, alone, fending for yourself. Rawk!”
“Anyway, despite my animal feelings, thanks for the advice. I might check it out, but I’ve got a date at the Burger King by Tesco. Some protein to be had there, so they say, and as you know there’s always a bit of fresh roadkill on the Kingsway or A90. I just have to watch out for those twats in their sunglasses and Teslas, oh, and the electric scooter boys.”
“Yeah, my mum told me a fairy story about the May Island. Guess I was an egg then. Don’t know if she ever saw the place for real. Perhaps I’ll head there some day. By the way, you forgot to thank me for not shitting on your windscreen. Rawk! Rawk! Now get on with your own stupid business.”
I turned the key, the car’s engine lit up and away flew the seagull.
I’ll never know if she made it to the May Island, but I’d like to think she did.
Only kidding: It's not really #99 but I can call it that if I like. $99 guitar. Body from France. It's an SG Junior Partscaster. I dyed the wood a wine red. Messy of course. Red fingers for a while. A lot of tinkering was involved. Set neck, no bolts, no neck plate. Glue and clamps. It was sanded down and I built it up, added a few extras, pickguard, brass nut, electrics - and so I faked a fake Gibson.
Yeah, fake it till you make it. Used a gallon of pure elbow grease. Only took me three weeks of shed time, and I don't even have a proper shed. Plays 100% OK, will add some Mojo idc. That's what Joe Walsh might have said. Could make a lovely wall hanger for your home or office ... but that would be a waste and it's not even for sale. P90 cult rules apply.
We're all very busy now getting tangled up in social media's curated version of the greedy world, endless political junk, regurgitated AI slop that nobody asked for and the values of creative living and originality being worn down. We're on a familiar and historically proven road.
So, if there's one thing that cats understand, it's the concept of the "long defeat". They live their lives knowing this is the backdrop to reality and scoff at how we humans fail to grasp it or how we just ignore it.
From the relative safety of a cardboard box Bungle stares into her inner void and recognises the familiar (and arguably glorious) path of the long defeat stretched out before her.
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"Please help this one travel.
Share the page, comment when you see it online, send it to someone, put it somewhere I can’t reach on my own.
This project has zero (literally) budget and I’m making it deliberately outside the normal machinery of music and the pretty crazy truth is that the difference between it reaching 2000 people or 20,000 can come down to whether actual human beings decide to pass it on.
If you’ve ever wondered whether liking, commenting, sharing genuinely helps an artist?
It does!
I’d love to see how far we can push this one together.
140 voices.
One very big song.
It’s yours now."
T xx
Incase anybody has any doubts, the future is made up of the daft things that are just about to happen. Amazon drones are dropping parcels here, there and everywhere. Some land on grassy knolls, some in garden ponds, on trampolines, concrete driveways and on small woodland creatures or family pets quietly going about their own business. It's a kind of carnage of some kind.
I've no idea where this will end but what are a few deaths on the rocky road to progress in order that you get your junk delivered on time? I do worry about things being dropped into our garden. I spend a lot of time there and don't really look up too often. There's the twin towers of safety and security to consider. It's going to be tough. There may be blood.
A solution to a problem nobody wants: So an idea has landed on/in my head, just like some random buff coloured Amazonian package from high above. The Lord spoketh unto me. The answer is simple. From now on all houses will be required to have "drone chutes" fitted on the roof line (so it's chutes not shoots). These chutes will be secured by a hatch mechanism that senses the nearby drone.
The drone emits a signal and the lid then opens and the drone drops the package in. It travels down the chute and is arrested by an arrestor device that stops it and holds it until the customer opens the hatch at the lower end of the chute to receive the package inside the "secure and safe" home. Meanwhile the drone heads off to it's next address. What could possibly go wrong? Also: package size, weight and contents matter. Everything has it's limits, apart from infinity.
We already have a prototype drone chute fitted in the house (see below). It just needs a few design enhancements and it'll be ready to haul in the goodies come rain or shine, as they say. Father Christmas is going to have an easy time of it once these become common features on the modern dwelling. You read it/saw it here first.
P.S. Other providers will soon be available; Just Eat Drones, John Lewis Drones, Post Office Drones, Tesco Drones etc.
