The Reluctant Juror's Day Off

A whale oil and deep pastel based study into human emotion and bigoted resolve painted in 1947 by the legendary American artist and hair stylist Hugo Einstein-Oppenheimer. The same Einstein-Oppenheimer who vanished into thin air at a champagne reception in a black and white New York gallery in a monochrome 1950. The painting was said to be the silent inspiration for a major Hollywood movie that has become a household name after winning various awards and honors for a load of trumped up actors and tedious film people. For many years this piece of work was considered to be lost but then one day it just sort of turned up somewhere and that was that so it was declared to be "found after all". 

It's value has been set at a sum of money that so far has not been disclosed by whoever set it but it has been described as uninsurable by insurers. It was voted to be Cultural Item of the Year and an International Treasure in 1948 by the then Chinese and Mandalorian Governments. It is instantly recognizable by most intellectual types everywhere and has been used as a test piece. The artwork remains a stiff, solid but slightly vague and rubbery enigma for a variety of reasons that I'm unable to disclose due to personal ignorance and privacy issues. If you want to see it or download a copy then the best place to do so is here. There will be no charge at this time but then again you never know who's going to come after you.

Apple

I was checking our material on what's a fairly sluggish Apple Music account. Somewhere I rarely go. It's a mysterious on line place where you can stream or even buy music for a small fee. Incredible I know. I was then offered the chance to create a "promotional" tool so obviously I took it. Somehow I imagined that as it was Apple they might construct something wonderful with their vast resources, something slightly more sophisticated than the above MP4 file which does next to nothing. It doesn't even come with a sound clip or anything, other than you can add your own link to Apple Music as you see fit. I wonder what they are currently ploughing their profits into? Here's the link they didn't bother to add. (End of the low key rants for the time being).

Fundamental Facts for the Freak Bros.

Apart from Fat Freddy and of course Fat Freddy's Cat who I can both remember, I can't recall the names of the other two Freak Bros. Did the other two actually have names and why don't I know them? I could just do a Google but sometimes a spirited level of ignorance without the extra burden of holding onto unnecessary facts and snippets of useless information is the best way to be. If I was the spiritual or cod-philosophical type I might even say something along the lines of "but the scriptures tell us ... the longer you live the less you need to know" (unless it's guitar chords). 

Bite the Hand

Nothing new here: A common enough pastime around here is how we regularly bite the hand that doesn't actually bother feeding us, the music business. There's no money in music because it's all a one way traffic system in favour of everyone expect the musicians. Our music has been on various platforms for years and has some decent numbers, there have been plays and sparks of interest but never any real money. Now I'm just relaxed or maybe comatosed  about making progress, just swim away in your own personal lane. Also, to all the Bot factories selling the 5000+ plays con trick; no sensible person's up for that but I admire your confidence.

In my experience and opinion the likes of Spotify does nothing to help promote or support the creation of music and  really the platform offers little extra for the customer other than the music that it pushes. But what does the customer / consumer really want? I'd say Robo-pop, Rap and Hip-Hop if I'm being honest and I guess Spotify know that better than me otherwise they'd not be operating. They say that streaming is the way ... but it's not the best way forward for creators.

But look 👀 it let me make up some free artwork ...

Educational Advice

From elsewhere in the purple ether: Say what you want about Rick and Morty but the line "Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come and watch TV", is something they should teach in schools to stop everyone developing main character syndrome. Then show an image where a "main character" is clearly featured but all alone. That'll confuse them all nicely. Educational direction isn't ever about factual certainty after all, it's only about learning the best most expedient version of anything available at the time.

Extra Large

Amazon; forever on the Instagram push with odd and ridiculous suggestions. Other than caterers doing industrial sized portions of cheesy toast who would actually buy this? Perhaps you can power through on painting temporary henna tattoos with it or do over the garden fence? Suitable for intravenous drip feeding following a Pizza Hut salad overdose? Sauce junkies? Maybe it's now a greener alternative to motor oil? Four of your European Litres would certainly fill the average internal combustion engine though hardly lubricate it. I won't be shopping now, never, not enough of a need, no storage space or enthusiasm. Why am I even seeing this? (It has four and a half meaningless stars).

Impydomps Revisited

After a twenty year absence the fearsome but fabulous Impydomps have returned to this blog. Created back then by my youngest daughter (who was really young) they are now realised and rendered thanks to the scurrilous and controversial works of various AI gremlins (often featured here in various guises). So thanks to the progress of some sort of technical thing we can now see the little rascals as they probably are wherever they are. 

Edinburgh Daily Photo

A wet and windy January Monday, Edinburgh still looking pretty scruffy after all the end of year mayhem and activity. I have a sense that nobody really has any clear vision for what Edinburgh's (once) public spaces should be used. There are too many contradictions, pressures and little in the way of positive financial interventions. It's all a bit tired out. Perhaps a year of actually just doing nothing might help?  Let the tourists eat cake.

Had a nice meal in what a food critic might describe as an "unpretentious" French restaurant while the weather tried to rage against brave, scurrying members of our civilisation trapped outside. Now we float in a sea of relative calm awaiting the next highly anticipated big wave. It has a name, they all do now. This of course is all perfectly normal for the time of year but these forecast methods of dynamic risk assessment rule over all our lives now so we remain duly warned and quietly obedient. Close your eyes and think of nowhere.

Arctic Zombie Viruses

I can't be the only one who read about this over the weekend and thought: "This is almost exactly how it should all end. A proper blast from the past and finally Mother Earth get's her revenge on those stupid, greedy homo sapiens". (Well it's a bit better (?) than the ending  forecast according to Biblical interpretations. All that trouble and tribulation in the Middle East and battles all round Jerusalem and thereabouts before Jesus returns in fire and terror and we're all sent off to our final eternal damnation. Don't really see any actual signs of that happening 😳.)

"Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists* have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say. Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past."

*Always it's those pesky scientists and experts, no wonder politicians hate them.

The Monkees - What Am I Doing?

The chorus from this somewhat obscure old song (as above) has been going around within the tiny circumference of my head for most of this week. Not so much annoying as persistent. This morning I blundered into Blue Sky, an app I've only recently started to use - you need a special code 😉. One of the first entries I read is "What am I doin' hanging round ...?" Neil Gaiman responds as you might expect. So I am probably caught in the universal flow of something or other. That's all I know. I didn't feel the need to add any further comments.

KIng Charles' Enlarged Prostate

*The prostate of King Charles III has grown to truly regal size

And if you're unfortunate enough to witness it

You'll not believe your eyes.

The Daily Mail says "let us pray for the royal family's health"

For they matter more than you.

The eventual downfall of those parasites

Would be the best thing to pursue.

But as a fellow sufferer I know a little bit

How a king size feckin' prostate will make you really sick

And frustrate and annoy your personal rhythm stick

(Please note for future comment: I avoided saying prick).

One day you piss against a wall

One day you just piss blood

One day you cannot piss at all

Prostate like a Jersey spud.

They'll insert tubes and pipes and drains

You just want rid of it

With surgery and lasered pain

You'll really feel like shit.

Even though it's technically a urology problem.

*My unofficial bid to become Poet Laureate for 2024.

From China Eventually

 

Going out with a whimper followed by a surgically reduced bang. So I could've had an all electric Chinese Volvo but you know I just thought that maybe that's too much too soon. Assuming the trade routes remain open, in a decade or so we'll only have Chinese cars on the roads so maybe best to stick to the second hand market and buy up the old European tubs before they fall apart and rust away. I think that's more ethical than adding to the (insert widely misunderstood issue here ...) by using up things that are already made and that have a chance of being recycled. Fossil fuels will either dry up or be unaffordable too, so the slow death of our old and unsustainable 20th century lifestyles will be complete. With that in mind I'll continue with Porsche tech till whenever. 77% of all Porsche cars ever made are still running. That's a good statistic. Welcome to my cosmic soup.

Roll With It

 

This photo is not about the centre stage money box, which is looking empty as, quite naturally, we've now moved on to being a cashless, baseless and thoughtless society living in their* tacky idea of our dream. There will be no subversion here 'cos they can track every transaction. You're all very visible. No, this is about the sausage rolls. Those big fat ones that you only really see at farmer's markets and the like. Ok, I know that farmer's markets are not at all cool. They're a mystery product of our baffling times, odd fashion whims and a certain strain of privileged attitude.

Just more overpriced and average products masquerading as your ethical, clean and superior purchases driven down from the farm in a rusting VW van by somebody who may well be from farming stock or possibly a vagrant student needing money. Anyway these are sausage roll royalty in a whiny republic of dim witted mass murdering bakers. Pricey? Yes, usually about £3 a pop though cheaper if you buy in bulk. They are the business and the selections of flavours and ingredients are to die for. Death by sausage roll indeed.

*I'm never sure who "they" actually are and I can't be bothered to speculate.

Fairy Light Solutions

Unsure as to how best protect your precious fairy lights from the claws of mischievous kittens? An easy life hack that resolves this matter once and for all is to simply place the lights into a switched off slow cooker, cover with the lid and hey presto your lights are safe and the kittens can get on with the more serious business of disposing of the Taiko drums, junior spider plants or maybe your collection of too thin to be useful plectrums.

Here they are killing time between dangerous missions by watching pigeons on YouTube, naturally.

Food Photos

Pasta, pesto, chicken, tomato and cheese (consumption in progress).

There are strict rules about posting meal photos on social media:

1. Should be prepared by the uploader. Don't nick foodie pics.

2. Verified to be clear of salmonella, fluff, finger nails, snot and other possible bug sources.

3. No baseless bragging saying that it "tasted great" or "fed a family".

4. Photos should be in colour.

5. Don't crow if you've just prepared a basic meal, nothing special about that you dumb fuck.

Applies to all bloggers/posters. Please note. 

All the Best Artists are Dead

This isn't the genesis of a Grateful Dead related rumour: All the best artists are dead and all the mediocre ones remain stubbornly alive, out there, taunting us with the poor quality of work and displaying before the paying public their artistic and imaginative limitations. They still win prizes and adulation from the establishment however because ... well why wouldn't they? Everyone else is either dead or has left the interesting but not really functional newly restored building/gallery. I could be wrong here, it's just another crazy mad theory from a jaded revisionist mind. Like most other modern things it can easily all be blamed on AI, polarizing politics and the over use of the words existential and modern.

Home Entertainment

Future proofing: Thinking about getting a new and more stylish home multi media system. Something right up to date but still subtle and easy on the eye. A device that is standalone and might offer some distracting entertainment if things outside ever get "really bad*".  Also I'm fed up with remote controls, flat screens and all that wireless and streaming bullshit too. You can't beat having proper ownership of the actual solid lumps of content on tapes or disc. Come the day you'll thank me for this advice and don't forget how easy it is to roll a juicy five skinner on an LP cover and you can read and enjoy the sleeve notes at the same time.

*Requires a Honda generator.

Wire Cutters

Modern dilemmas: When you buy some new wire cutters but you find that you need some wire cutters to remove the packaging from the new wire cutters. Moments like this remind me of the Kafkaesque laws of worldly affairs that I seem to often encounter and that are never far away from the version of reality that I currently inhabit.

Body of Water x 2

"Innocently walking across a large body of water when I collided with a confused swan and nearly dropped my drumstick."

Yet another album we could have produced but didn't.

Politically Off-Grid

Soloing on a laptop that's now without a battery. Powered, I like to think, by ether sourced from some ancient star system's dust that's passing across our current earthly orbit. It gives life for the failing laptop as it progresses into eternity, or somewhere. It might also provide disease, cosmic radiation and retribution in those same actively charged spores that it shakes off like some kind of seasoning. It makes an interesting, useful but terrible friend. Oh well ...

Meanwhile in my imaginary field of well maintained grass: This is the end, beautiful friend, the end (as goes the song). I woke up this morning (as goes the other song) and saw that all my political ideals and allegiances had somehow floated away over the dim horizon into some pale blue yonder beyond care and despair. This leaves me with no one to vote for because, as far as I can see each party is a complete turd of a party. Some with added sweetcorn attached but they still remain turds of the first order. The people are turds too; walking, talking turds with their turd clothes on. 

So I'm now floating freely off-grid in some kind of bleak but comfortable space where their words, opinions and bullshit cannot hurt me. (They can obviously still hurt me in various real world ways but in terms of engagement I'm imagining that I'm out.) (I'm now worried about the bracket use and the full stop's placement but I can recover from this.) (It's only punctuation after all.) So I'm back once more to making any vote I fail to make as absurd as possible for the time being. Such is the benign but quirky influence of those cosmic particles.

Paywall Blues/Golden Globes

Above: When somebody's shared a juicy story link on social media and you click it and you get a screen like this ... nope, I won't be bothering with anything like that no matter how interesting the topic might be.

Below: Due to our busy schedule and a warm Chinese dinner we missed attending the Golden Globes last night but dressed up for them anyway. The theme was "When the Cubist, Surrealist, Impressionists attended the Golden Globes having purchased two rare tins of anchovies at Dalgety Bay Aldi earlier in the day". Tough Gig.

Sardines

A lovely can of sardines gifted to me. Nice art work and I like sardines. I feel there's nothing for me to explain but it's disturbing that we currently live in a world devoid of anchovies. How long before it's the sardines? This will grow into a list of things that can only get longer until it's not really a list anymore, just a means to jog distant memories. The things we lost in the "warming". None of us have done anything wrong other than being a willing but tiny part of a global concoction of crazy appetites within badly constructed markets. We've really fucked everything up proper.

Viking Roots

It's a bubble that will burst any second and I'm already late with finding and filing my stylized viking image. I already know it's not part of my brown eyed, dark haired background; a typical mixed up saxon/celtic mongrel of a human. Because, naturally everybody wants to be a viking, everybody wants that DNA % trace somewhere in their bloodline. You're a proper romantic outlaw then with a vivid if misunderstood back story; a violent heathen warrior for a distant grandfather and some willowy blonde shield maiden as a far away granny. Every little helps and I suppose and nobody really wants Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler or Attila the Hun as a relative.

Edinburgh Airport Daily Photo

The cost of picking up or dropping off at (the fabulous) Edinburgh Airport has risen to £5 for ten minutes and thereafter £1 per minute. What a privilege it is to drive there on such finely finished roads and into the well drained, ventilated and designed "welcome to Scotland" area where visitor's first (and last) impressions of our wonderful land are formed. It is a fitting tribute to the sharp minds, generous spirit and extraordinary vision of Scotland's top transport and infrastructure companies and their highly professional people. Thank you all for another wonderful personal motoring experience*. 

*I may well have overcooked the sarcasm on this one, I'm truly sorry.

Cracked Plastic Boxes

Now we're into 2024 with our high hopes and low expectations. The once twinkling decorations are down, packed away with something quite close to meticulous care but already forgotten. They sleep on like hibernating bears, randomly placed in the cracked plastic boxes that we bought from B&Q many years ago when the world was young and a little brighter. Some say that the seasonal slump is upon us but experience tells us that we're likely to survive in some form. Plans are afoot. An alcohol free January is also unlikely. No quick wins for the retired gamblers. A normal if quirky routine beckons. There are a few more well chosen words that I could apply to this graffiti ruin of a blog post but I'll leave that until later ... maybe February.