In Transit

 

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.

New & Improved

These itsu noodles are actually OK. You have nothing to fear. What does not kill you makes you strong. This is no mean parody.

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.

Breakfast Mess

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.

Never Forget

We all know this fine well. Inner peace is an elusive thing. In many ways the PYT button reminds me of the magic 8-ball. However it also gives out accidental non-advice in some form of broken Spanish from time to time. Around every third press. It's not really a very precise form of research that I'm carrying out. Bugs. It's still good to spot them. Reminds me of working with MFG-Pro on UNIX back in the 90's. The golden age of Birds Eye hybrid production control systems.

What do I have to Upload?

 The Big Sleep - Bogart & Bacall. 

Cinema Poster by Vincent Cristellys.

No. 42 in 100 films you need to see.

(Before you die, obviously).

A curious list of recommended films.

Curated by me.

But sadly incomplete.

All work in progress.

**...**

Cat power: I'd be further on with this but I spent most of yesterday morning (or was it the day before?) clipping back the intrusive ivy that grows along the top of a rather long wooden fence. The top of the fence is also a well used "cat path". If it's overgrown then the cats are unable to go about their regular business i.e. getting out of the garden. That causes disquiet. 

Cats like to follow set and established routes within their own territory. They are unwilling to compromise on this. So it follows that I must tend to the fast growing ivy and tame it as best I can, even in the rain. Ivy makes me cough and sneeze for some reason but my health and welfare is not their concern. Anyway now the ivy has been cut back so I can move on with various other pointless projects. Perhaps.

Great Moments in Sci-fi

 

Space Teriyaki. 

 The couch at the end of the universe.

There will be no place for you upon it.

I'll put it simply.

It is because you do not fit in.

Art by Shusei Nagaoka.

The mechanics of the modern gravity based digestion system. 

For diligent and houseproud robots only.

See them. Try them.

They're at your local virtual Waitrose.

You are already there.

Sculpture by Lagarrigue.

In the 1950s the future was always heralded by the plaintive toot of a short barreled but long winded cartoonish trumpet.

Now we are no longer quite so confident.

We suffer in a restless sleep pattern.

Dreams arrive in ink boxes.

Traffic lights turn blue tomorrow.

Loose hands fly free.

This is because the more that time passes, 

the more we realise that people do not change.

Art by Yvang.

All words by me.

PYT Button

Press the button please.

Not my own words (see them, read them here),

but worthy of a quiet red button press. 

Do try it out.

ꜛ

"Pyt" (pronounced like "pid") is a uniquely Danish word that has no direct English translation but holds profound significance in Danish culture. The expression "pyt med det" (literally "pyt with it") emerged in the mid-19th century as a way to brush off minor annoyances and setbacks. It embodies the Danish philosophy of not dwelling on things that cannot be changed, a mindset deeply rooted in the pragmatic Nordic approach to life's challenges.

In Danish society, "pyt" functions as both a word and a cultural concept. It represents the ability to accept situations beyond one's control, let go of frustrations, and move forward without unnecessary stress. Danish schools even have "pyt buttons" physical or figurative buttons children can press when they need to reset emotionally and let something go. This practice helps develop emotional resilience from an early age.

The concept of "pyt" is considered a cornerstone of Danish happiness and is often cited as one of the reasons Denmark consistently ranks among the world's happiest countries. It aligns with the Danish value of "hygge" (coziness) by fostering mental well-being through acceptance and letting go. In today's fast-paced, often perfectionist world, "pyt" offers a simple yet powerful reminder to save our energy for things that truly matter rather than exhausting ourselves over minor setbacks.

Peace of mind can be free if you're prepared to pay the price of your cherished beliefs and expectations. 

P.S. I did try to purchase a real PYT button ($18) but T&Cs apply, I don't qualify: You must possess a reasonably sound mind and body, be under 65, not live in a failed and bruised colonial state, have a GSOH and be 100% as Danish as a value pack of unsalted Lurpack (that's all very Danish isn't it?).

Smokie Pie Factor

 

Another fitba day oot. First visit of the season to Gayfield Park,  Arbroath. So nevermind the result or the fact that the Pars had about 16 shots on target whilst Arbroath had 1 and yet we ended up with a miserable 1 - 1 draw. Far better to discuss the pies. This is my favourite "pie" football ground. Three fine, top of the range, hot pies are on offer. The Steak pie, the Steak and Black pie (black being black pudding) and the veritable king of off-kilter, local pies, the Smokie pie. 

The Smokie pie is a bit like thick Cullen Skink but shoveled into a normal shell pie body. So it's smoked fish mainly. First class. Obviously these pies are also available from bakers outwith Gayfield Park but I've never ventured into Arbroath itself to try any of them. That's for another day. When you're out of town to watch a match it's fitba first (which includes the pie factor) ... then get yourself back home asap. The local economy can take care of itself. That's how we roll.

If you've read about these pies here before then it's just because it's worth repeating the fact that they exist. The simple pleasures are the best. By the way the coffee at Gayfield, like most fitba grounds, is total pish.

Surf the Paper Ocean

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.

More Randoms

  

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. 

Craigtoun Park ex-Hospital viewed from the tiny camera of some Temu drone on a summer's evening, so I imagine. My esteemed but now ruined birthplace captured from the air. It's going to be redeveloped as a redevelopment. Handy for the gowf, a few decent cafes maybe and the rolling Fife countryside. Might be an expensive place to stay. We'll see come the launch day. Gonna be a few ghosts there though and maybe mine might pay the residents a wee visit now and again, come the day.

High tech matters are effectively dealt with at this Shetland clinic.

Also a potential data centre site.

Karl Marx is regularly and deliberately misunderstood and often blamed and vilified for all sorts of stuff (I wonder why?), but let's not get into any of that right now. However this (other) guy is creating a new and effective redemption arc for the great man by matching up some his quotations and statements along with old Richard Scarry illustrations. The spoonful of sugar theory perhaps. Nothing's likely to change as a result however. Everybody just keep on rollin' in the trad media's slippery pish and stay safe out there. I'm still trying to keep alive those vague dreams of a one time "young" socialist.

Dundee Daily Photo

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.

Project #99

 

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.

The Long Defeat

 

If you think there are too many cats featured on this blog, then you're quite right. I do think that we can learn a lot from cats, but... we're clearly not cats and are unlikely to evolve in that direction. It wouldn't be a good thing.

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.

Korean Cats & Thea Gilmore

 Korean cats in artwork. 

Magpies are often featured too.

From Thea Gilmore's ECHO project; it has produced a tune. Click! It's here.  Her words below:

"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

Album Art

 

"When you boil it all down it's only album art", so said the critic who knows better. Pleasant packaging and mostly meaningless. But perhaps there's more of this sort of thing growing wild and free out there - however I've lost the will to pursue the subject matter any further. There's a thread running through every piece, if you can find it. For tonal enthusiasts and colour freaks only, so I suppose.

In other news I had a long conversation with a short cortado the other day.

Drone Chute

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.

Moules Marinière Anyone?

This article appeared in the Guardian. I read it at speed. What special, world beating, middle-classic (?) fuckwittery have we here? I can only say that this isn't really a problem in the special little places that form the lands, north of the "North". Och aye, leftover wine etc. We just hoover it up at the end of the night and scoff it the next day. Never mind the headache, the dry throat and the non-specific angst regarding what you may have said or done. Have another drop. Simple, pimple. Regrets? I have a few ...

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!

Pear Cull

 

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.

One Direction

 

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).

😒

Day Two or Maybe Three

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.