Still running out of time

The world according to Beachcomber: Today, the last of something called twenty thirteen and a topic of some excitement here and there, the sun shone so I cycled and wondered about a bit fuelled only by strong cauliflower cheese and weak tea. Out exploring my favourite things discovered were a) the washed up ladder and b) a big and useful (?) log. The log was eventually retrieved from the beach using an unreliable wheel barrow and a fair amount of physical effort. It's now in the garden awaiting the allocation of some proper and permanent function once the weather stabilises.The spooky wee shrine can be found in the local derelict graveyard. It seems to have been disturbed by the wind and weather and a few essential artifacts are missing (animal bones, voodoo dolls, dead flowers, human blood etc.) so I imagine it's delicate powers are running at a bit of a low level right now, the rites of spring will no doubt perk it up; that and the Satanic dancing and chanting.

Late Great Christmas Message: On a more philosophical note my questioning type of advice to one and all would be to ask you; "just what voices are you listening to and believing in and why?" A lot of people are listening to incorrect or wrong and distorted messages that are coming from their brain's left side, their fuzzy feelings, the BBC, their cats, their peer group, imagined gods, their dead budgies, rap artists or junkpile magazines, music, social media and websites. So get yourself sorted out and listen to some of the positive messages about yourself that are broadcast regularly from friendly forces in deep space and act upon them. In closing I'd ask you all to stay classy in 2014 and watch a little more of Sky Arts 1 and Discovery Turbo and buy some more useless shit on eBay and Amazon in order that the economy can remain highly stimulated and active and my pension pot can flourish.

So here's to 2013...

Christmas video posted late

Ali filmed this using a remote time lapse camera on delay and so compressed about 6 hours into a minute. The soundtrack is an edit of "Seasonal Strut" by us. It's been on FBook and now gravitated to YouTube. Anyway that was Christmas, next it's New Year I believe.

29th December

Grumpy stone lion tile has gloomy potential in or around the new wing.

Out seeking a fresh air cure for the usual  self induced hangover and being led along the shore road by enthusiastic grand children. As it turned out a full Atkin's Diet style breakfast and a Coke eventually did the job a few hours later and normal service has now been restored. 

Spotted today in a Fife car park. This cheeky conversion of what I think once was a Suzuki van is a  clever piece of work.

Winter Warming

The roar of the pyromaniac induced solid fuel burner, the roar of the winter winds and the roar of the boiling seaside. All strangely comforting at this time of year.

TFWM

Here's a player from Bandcamp where you can listen to and download our Christmas type extravaganza (it's also on Jamendo now). Other than that and  I know it's only the 23rd but I may not blog much over what I hope is a busy and enjoyable holiday spell. End of message, Happy Crimble one and all.

Woodland Daily Motors

Picture 1. This old (they all are old now of course) Porsche 924 is apparently abandoned in a back garden nearby, it reminded me of Neil Young's Trans-Am song; "the old Trans-Am by the side of the road that needs a headlight fixed." This Porsche needs a bit more than that if it's ever to get back up and running. Blood, sweat, tears and black finger nails. Shame it's finished in "60 day blue" paintwork.

Picture 2. Blocked in by a Fiat 500, it could've been worse I suppose.

Just pay attention, out there, in the countryside, in the woods, maybe down by the beach; there are many lonely and unwanted cars that need a home for Christmas. Will you help please?

Ding Dong - Digital Litter

I say, this looks rather good if a little over sized and formatted without the finer points of Blogger and basic spacial awareness being taken into account. Is it possible to purchase a copy or are these foolish but generous individuals just giving it all away again?  WTF is their business model and why are they even bothering? It'll all just  end up as more digital litter on some file sharing website in Eastern Europe and they'll have loads of fans in Israel and the Philippines and fail to engage with any of them, believe me. Sometimes when I think about IS I just feel that they really don't care much about the money or the under exposure, it's all just red wine, Christmas cards and Maltesers to them, really.

Artificial Intelligence

"Hello Dave...aka CBQ."

Understanding 2001(the film) in 8 easy steps:

1. Aliens put a device on Earth that fast-forwards the evolution of apes to a higher form.
2. The higher form (us) find a similar device buried on the Moon.
3. When found, it sends a wake-up call to its buddies' portal, left out near Jupiter.
4. We take a hike to Jupiter, entrusting the lives of the crew to an A.I.
5. The A.I. goes loony-tunes and wastes most of the crew (later we find out why it went bananas).
6. The last crew member slips into the portal and is whisked across the cosmos.
7. He ends up in a kind of zoo, built from blueprints of his memories, and therefore a place that he will understand.
8. Time is an illusion. Doubly so in that place, which can hardly be described as real. He sees himself as he is now, as he will be as a dying man, and how he will be when advanced to the next stage of evolution.

Got that?

P.S. The device or sentinel also looks like a cinema screen on it's side but moves through various angles, cinema therefore captures, describes and changes history...that's another theory.

The word or term or whatever "artificial intelligence" (A.I.) was first used/coined/spoken in 1955, the year of my birth.

Trivial but

It's a nice enough ham salad sandwich on brown bread but was supposed to be a wholemeal roll with roast beef and salad- at least that's what my brain told my tongue and mouth and larynx to order at the cafe counter. Alas my own severe Central Scotland speech impediments cannot be translated clearly across the great divide of wide open lands and barren glens leading up to Brechin in the far north (About 65 miles away). You can understand how easy it is to start a civil war or carry out a decent tribal feud when there is so much simple but effective linguistic misunderstanding going on in the world.

I wonder...

...if any of these carefully placed books might be copies of The Quran or Das Kapital or even The Hobbit? 

Busy with a piano

Mad but friendly, dark and liquorice microphone tells us in strange microphone language that  we're all too busy with the seasonal nonsense to make any sense and then somehow send silly material out all over the place in blog form. We're also busy with a clever piano bit.

Dunfermline Daily Photo

Here's the Moon Kid's custom art installation and  modified bench located on a public path a few yards from Dunfermline's own Carnegie Hall. This bench is available for use by the general public 24/7 most days, weather and advance bookings permitting. Suggested uses include: having a wee rest, sitting doon fur a fag, swigging Buckie, a five minute meditation interlude, dog pee venue, snogging a bird, a spiritual retreat (temporary), sorting out that troublesome shoplifting spoil, reading yesterday's Daily Record, adjusting yer kegs, spying on folks in cars, taking time out from sk8boarding,  or just sipping a quiet can of fine Polish lager and scoffing a Greggs steakbake. The choice dear reader, is all yours.

Looking Forward

It's official, I'm looking forward to Christmas this year (is that a new thing?). Perhaps it's age, battered hormones, sense of entitlement, dutiful weather, unread horoscopes and unseen alien interventions in my life all finally coming together to celebrate both the great meaningless and the mighty but tiny meaningful. The best of everything and worst of very little, materialism, greed and relative safety, a new way of seeing just punching me in the face. We're not so badly off in this badly run country, that probably makes no sense but it's true. So forget those media darlings, talking heads and political twats that have annoyed the hell out of you all year. Most of them are just fuzzy images full of ignorant wind and discoloured fermented urine. So dig the pants out of Christmas despite them. Simmer in the unfair heat and the oven like warmth, some strong red or amber drink, ridiculous food and noisy bairns and ignored new toys, all scattered around in some chaotic storm of warped religious nonsense with the promise of scattered anti social snow. Nothing matters apart from driving out any Winter demons that by now badly need driven out and then enjoy the slow process of delicious blame, delight and extended recovery. All I really need to do now to experience the most from this bizarre and selfishly internalised festival is to get my car's exhaust fixed, record an album, do a little shopping, go to work a few times, tidy up, iron shirts, wrap up things, drive north, drive south, spend money, have a few good ideas, find a tree, make things up on the spot...etc. And don't forget out there, above the skies and for as far as Brian Cox can clearly observe, it's only a big fat hologram of a thing that we're seeing. Something about that thought gives me an appetite for life.

So another storm passes over

Songs that I've woken up to by mostly singing to myself in a comforting way (or possibly are being sung by weird and sinister  celestial choirs stuck in a loop playing inside my head) this week:

Hue & Cry - Violently (no idea where that came from, truly awful).
Steely Dan - Deacon Blue. Turns up from time to time.
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Power of Love. Heard it on the radio.
The Smiths - Charming Man. Not a surprise.
Neil Young - There's a World. Hadn't even thought of this one for years.
Theme from Sir Prancalot - ?
Random and forgotten Christmas Carols. Putting it down to the time of year. It's better than having tinnitus I suppose.

This is never as bad as it looks.

Somewhere in Central Scotland.

I strayed out past Grangemouth the other day and in the moody grey morning caught these odd, giant so-called Kelpie Heads roaring with no voice at the uncaring motorway traffic. Sometimes everything looks like art and sometimes there is just no art to be found  in anything. Scotland's struggle to understand continues...

Beginning to look...

... a lot like a good time to form up a comprehensive to do list that I can sign up for. Of course it's a bit too early for the pre-Christmas panic, that's next weekend but I can hear it's still, small god-like voice whispering and nagging, hoping to get it's own way and break me down into a quivering shopping hungry mass. Amazon, eBay and Black Friday were not all they were cracked up to be, just lists of dumb gifts from the Generation Game conveyor belt brought up to date, digested and digitised. All the consumer mantrap things I said I would avoid this year, based on last year now surround me. Most of that rude learning I've so quickly forgotten. The simple solution is of course to take an afternoon off work and just go mad, the trouble is that the opportunity to grasp that precious, obvious  and fragile moment is fading in a kind of comedy slow motion way, all vague and grainy and unfunny. So it's beginning to look a lot like panic.

Just a feeling

In the great and over arching cosmic wondering of it all it can sometimes feel like you're not really making any progress at all - sometimes plus and extra (ditto) ordinary sometimes and sometimes heavy plus. That of course is quite untrue, just a feeling you get. Ignore it if you can.

Bannockburn B&B

Not the actual mural.

In order to avoid any risky drunk driving or excessive taxi charges we stayed out on Saturday in an SQ B&B, about 30 miles from the Bannockburn triumph that the SNP are so keen for us to recall. There we found that our over familiar hosts  had decided to deck out the dining room as a shrine to 1314 and the famous battle. A huge mural of the event had been painted on the wall by an art student (Primary 6 level at least) some years before, the rest of the room was festooned with tartan, flags, swords and various Braveheart motifs. It was an embarrassing and uncomfortable venue for breakfast there amongst the badly drawn bloody and severed limbs, snorting horses and brave but anatomically challenged archers and foot soldiers. Any guest from South of Berwick upon Tweed would no doubt feel a little threatened by the clumsy and bloody scenes and might wonder exactly what had been boiled into the haggis and tattie scone ensemble being served up. Next time it's back to a safe but bland chain;  Best Western, Dakota etc. etc.

Daily Dream Kitchen Photo

The elegant if understated swoosh of the wood and granite doubled up experience is clear to see. Ignore if you will the potential porous natures of the materials and the possibility of unplanned staining and the colour scheme (oh yes), for this is high art and high technology married into some awesome design consequence. While we're at it we can't wait to tell you about the unique blown glass shatterproof splash back experience.

Hydrophobia

The cloaked and secret menace of the H20, ready salted, seaweed and sewage cocktail that at any given moment may engulf and indulge itself upon us and over us. We live in quiet, stoical fear borne from bitter experience but confident that come the day that the great and vengeful flood arises our super dog "Lassie" will waken us from our stubborn sleep with a gentle lick on the cheek (?) in good time before the Hellish torrent washes upon us all and destroys everything in it's merciless and dirty path. (At that point we head for the hills etc. led by that oh so smart yapping dog). The plan has a few flaws in it but we're working on them.

Low tide high tide

Calm and normal last Sunday.

Big storms come and go, that's just weather types for you. Today the weather and the tides combined and we saw a freaky high tide come and thankfully go. Forceful and unrepentant, like Biblical revenge. No one and no nearby property was engulfed, phew! Living by the shoreline you tend to notice these things and become increasingly wary. Staying dry is also useful. So said the Forth wise man.

Raw Materials

When I first saw these trees all lonely and entwined together earlier today, I had some really smart thoughts going on in my head. Mental pictures, concepts and all sorts of good cosmic stuff that made perfect sense to me at the time. Sadly I have now forgotten them completely, like they were just dumb birds stopping off on some random roof somewhere, but the trees are still in the same place so I  guess that's all OK. Typical.

Excuse for a film

Tate Modern: Summery summary detail.

Maybe I just want to watch the waves, or make a film that's just an excuse for something, or wear sunglasses like Jesus would or send everybody an acoustic Christmas card - in digital format.  Keep warm with winter soup and find ingenious ways to maintain the freshness of bread and the heat of salty whisky from romantic sounding islands decked in summer's best green. All pyscho-babble and turnups, grinning selfies and the Discovery Channel set on pause, that's entertainment.

Recording makes you sweat. You need an idea, you need ideas. Then they get built up and the timing has to work and the balance and the mix and the faith. The faith in your idea or at least the faith that says your idea may somehow come to something having followed due process, pain and endless accidental twiddling. During this time you pick up and put down musical instruments a lot and check the tuning and trip up on cables and forget quite how those various unfamiliar devices might do things. But it works, it all works eventually.

The rest is history

The books that I started to read in the Summer I shall finish in the Winter.

The guitars that I started building in 2013 I'll complete in 2014.

The music that I started to record in December I'll sort out...soon.

The soup that I made today is made today.

The phone that I switched off five minutes ago is back on now.

The laundry that I started is underway.

The TV show that I recorded is still somewhere on the Sky Box.

The journey that I began in 1955 is still going on.

The doodle that I scribbled is lost, someplace.

The idea I had in August is kind of forming up.

The photo that I took a few minutes ago is at the top.

The cat that I fed has run off outside to play.

The dessert I didn't eat is in the fridge...waiting.

The other cat that I annoyed is asleep.

The new T Shirt I received is on my back.

The uploads I attempted to upload are stuck.

The Christmas shopping is progressing, in a virtual sense.

The rest is history.

A huge and incredible bag of PB M&Ms.

The Puzzles of Caravaggio

Caravaggio's woman illustrates the strange arcs, cycles, angles and influences that govern our everyday moods, actions, outputs and creativity to a young disciple. We are all travellers on some vast cosmic highway but none of us can see the route or the destination, we don't even know quite where we came from. As a result there are quite a few collisions and there is much confusion, general uncertainty, friction, discomfort and unhappiness; and that's how it is but when it's good it's fantastic, deal with it. Look deep within the glass - the answer sits in there.