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 ...
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.
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No need to turn the excess or unloved bevvy into a nice sauce, a fruity punch, rustle up some moules marinière, do a spot of spontaneous pickling, some stain removal, or create an exotic drizzle for those nearly fresh but not quite left over salad leaves. Life is complicated if you decide to make it complicated by coming up with complicated solutions (and possibly expensive ones) for simple problems. Down the hatch!
Quite a few pairs of pears. All small, hard and inedible. There are too many for a) the good of the tree b) the quality of the fruit and c) my tollerance to all things pear like. A cull was carried out and umpteen of the blighters have ended up in the brown bin and will make some fine compost come the day. I hope so anyway. It's my small but regular urban contribution towards a nice, green, clean, watery planet's flimsy future. Bollox to your feeble data centre planning applications and the equally feeble planning system which is without doubt a complete mess. Please excuse the informal rant.
There are a few things wrong with the UK so I hear, and dear old Andy Burnham is trying hard to fix some of them. Fair enough. As a partial solution he's created a No10 in the North to go with the ever present No10 in the South. A quick look at this map illustrates fairly clearly how the government views the "North" and "South" divide. Nice to see that the Welsh have made it in, but the Janners, Geordies, Irish, Jocks and everyone else outside of these lines are maybe missing out on something. Can't say too much about it at the moment, we'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, geography doesn't lie. (Just don't say anything about spread of population or sheep farms).
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Moving along slowly in the Phoebe Bridgers' universe of sounds and songs on a rainy day: Mostly done within a speeding vehicle of some sort. It's an immersive experience. Headphones might help, but as you all know, that's an illegal thing to do whilst driving, so I'll not be going there.
So it's all a bit like slowly sinking beneath the waves in some kind of lost and floundering boat. To begin with, the music laps around your ankles and then, after a while, you're up to your neck in warm water. I am, however, able to concentrate on the driving, so it's maybe not as "immersive" as I'm making out. My sense of direction remains intact. Safety first.
I do question myself as to whether or not I'm trying too hard to keep up to date with contemporary music and if I'm really enjoying it. I've become accustomed to listening to older stuff or just Radio 4, neither of which ever allows me to get close to drowning, though I've been known to swear at the radio from time to time. I'm of an age where I can take offence or just be annoyed at some puerile drivel or outlandish opinion being aired.
Phoebe Bridgers has not brought about any swearing so far, and when I did get round to reading the twee lyric booklet (not whilst driving), it turned out to be mostly OK. She's no Joni Mitchell or Judee Sill, but she's headed in the right direction.
I did have a moment or two when I thought about getting hold of some of her earlier stuff, but I decided I'd cool off on that idea until I know this isn't just another passing phase. I have an old heid on an even older set of shoulders.
Lost Weekend: It was released into the wild yesterday (not really sure about that). I'm amongst the first two million early adopters ... can't beat a CD with a twee wee booklet enclosed. Hidden in the left pocket but it could be swapped around. CDs are so versatile. All very shiny. One sunny day I'll get round to listening to it. Phoebe Bridgers is quite the darling of all the proper darling darlings. She may be a nihilist, just like the rest of us, or maybe she isn't. Not all nihilists are from Los Angeles.
We happily gave up on whatever fake optimism might look like a long time ago, but nobody really noticed. It's a "Jones Generation" thing, a Boomer subset. Not a position Phoebe belongs within, she's way too young and bright. Certainly she has issues to discuss, so what's not to enjoy in her plaintive pseudo dirges? Maybe, sometime soon, I'll try to read the tiny print in the nice booklet and seek out the substance. Or I could ask a nearby AI agent for a quick summary and save myself some time and eye strain. Next rainy day then, I'll defo do it.
Patterns of activity appear before me and off I go. That's what you get with a big family, big ideas, big skies and a mixed bag of ill matched resources. Things just happen, fall apart or stick together. So there was no actual holiday for me during this blazing summer season, nothing that followed the customary structure and I think I feel all the better for that.
Holidays are fine but maybe overrated because ... well there's a whole "holiday" industry we need to support; flights, airport parking, buses, hotel rooms, pavement cafes, riverbanks and of course cathedrals, museums and quaint little trinket shops to visit. An economic powerhouse to feed and nurture - but I've mostly ignored it. The cats had a nice time however. They had a virtual week away in some soporific feline dream zone. Looks fine to me and they can visit it any time they like.
Another project rises from the battered bed of the old Black and Decker Workmate. Red wine coloured wood dye has been applied. Not drunk either. Some sanding, some varnish but the end is not in sight. More sanding, dye and even more varnish are required. Then we glue and screw.
It's the hair of the wood. It just keeps rising up like a group of down trodden activists or some hidden urban army, hell bent on usurping the quiet hand of my control. But they'll never win. The spheres are alive. The sandpaper works. The long cat watch has begun. Hairs on the guitar wood begone!
Just keep plugging away because the man who made time made a lot of it and what else are we really supposed to do other than fritter it all away endlesssly on mildly amusing but pointless projects?
Also: Here's a short poem Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) wrote for guitarist Winged Eel Fingerling (Elliot Ingber). They're both dead now.
They (?) call them the "eclipse chasers" but I don't know what they call themselves. They fly across countries to stand in a field and wait for the sun to disappear. They have special glasses to stay safe. Special cameras. Special websites. Special opinions. They know the weather in places they have never been and will never visit again. Then the moon moves across the sun. It gets dark. Everyone looks up. Kind of a primitive way to be, but "in the name of science" is there in their heads.
For a few minutes the world stops being ordinary. Just a bit darker. Some people might cheer. Hopefully no human sacrifice (or any other kind) takes place. Then the sun comes back. Some other people might cheer. The eclipse chasers pack their bags and go home. They have seen something that has been happening for billions of years - so I've been told. They are very pleased with themselves. They will absorb the costs and no doubt do it all again.
Cat wrangling - not as hectic as it once was. The cats have settled down but there always is the odd time they require a rescue or return for a decent meal.
Guitar - some practice and the occasional repair project. Currently trying out learning huge swathes of Bob Dylan's material. I work mostly in fits and starts, followed by great leaps forward (then backwards of course).
Garden - loads of things here, too many to mention. Pond pump restoration and maintenance and bloody solar panels is currently top of the list. Some thoughtless self sabotage may have been involved before the "fix" came along.
Misc - repairs to the log burner's inner liners. Yes it's a real and awkward thing. Dirty and fiddly but if it all works ... great.
There are many other unavoidable artists out there. Most of whom have been dead for even longer than Andy Warhol.
The late, great and very short non-review. I saw Hail Mary about a month ago but was reminded it existed in a conversation yesterday. It's a kind of a cross between ET and Robinson Cursoe. An interesting mash up of themes and storytelling. Currently watchable on the Devil's own Amazon Prime for free, apart from the fact that nothing is ever free. Four Stars 💥💥💥💥.
This post was thought up, fueled up and runs on a reheated haggis, beans and French toast breakfast (with a side of chilled Toblerone). That's how we roll around these parts.
Not quite sure why I'm being targeted by AliExpress with special offers on dental teaching models(?). I did have a slight contretemps with my ex-dentist a few weeks ago when I decided to "seek a second opinion" and, as a result, left that Fife-based practice in favour of one closer to home. Hopefully one that's a lot less dodgy too, so I won't need to try DIY.
In no way am I qualified to teach or assist students of dental health. It's just not my thing. I'm no teeth geek. The chaotic nature of today's tech-driven offers, however, keeps me both confused and amused, up to a point.
So, if I'm seen by some hive mind to be interested in dental education, guitar machine heads, and some unknowable device described as "not bevelled", then that's fine. They're all cheap as chips and most likely of poor quality, so why should I even care? Always good to be a little misunderstood by these hungry, shifty, demonic algo-bugs. Get right back to your data centre you little bastards.
Life and Transience.
"Life is all the things of mortals and all things pass us by;
but if not, then we ourselves will pass them by."
or
"Everything passes. If it doesn't, we do."
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