Amazeballs

If anybody needed further proof that the nation's (?) intellect is on a bit of a decline, then here's some more, courtesy of a pack of Co-op haddock. FFS. I'm considering the launch of a "haddock" type scale of some sort in order to carry out further research into acts of stupidity. This fits nicely with the infamous instructions found on bottles of bleach: "Do not drink". A certain American idiot president struggled with the concept during the recent pandemic. That being the pandemic that we've now all forgotten about. Unfortunately, he did not try it out or test it upon himself, as far as we know.

Meanwhile, in Dundee, fans clearly have strong views about football match security and crowd management. Nice one. Safe-Tay is, of course, a local contractor for, err ... bouncers.

Here is the installation of the £9 eBay, burnished aluminium pickguard onto this psyched up Strat. Turned out alright in my opinion. As an added bonus it acts as an electrical shield, so no need for copper tape or shield paint in the cavities. No, I'm not getting matching tone knobs either. It's a vibe.

Cats doing what they do.

Early Morning Amazon

Got up this morning, 6.30ish, showered and let the cats into the garden. Quite blustery beyond the glass. Checked out the fruit bowl. Had some tea and toast and for some odd and reflective reasons wrote this load of bollox.

"I once was a soldier in the Amazonian army of a man callled Jeff Bezos. Took the King's Shilling. A darker side, so some say. Shop local; £16 for four golden croissants. Power and exploitation. Same as it ever was.

The daylight free fulfilment centre was my territory. From 7am until 6pm I patrolled the aisles, upright and moving, handheld unit or stood at a workstation, it didn’t really matter. I was on the front line and it's always hot down there. A shorts and trainers weather system. You need to keep your wits about you.

The workforce was a shifting cast. Snowbirds and rookies. Students and the retired. Misfits, wrong-uns and travellers. And, of course, the permanents, the contracted staff. We were all paid the same, but they would remain when the rest of us moved out and on. When the season ended, when the shifts and the bulge of activity died down, they would be there. Planning a couple of weeks holiday perhaps, or hoping for a step up the ladder.

But some lines are not designed to be crossed. Moving up is rare.

Men, women, machines; sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. You don't get noticed unless you generate poor metrics. Poor looks like a 1% failure rate. Some college kid comes along with the numbers on their iPad. You nod and move on. You see people there who’ve clearly never worked anywhere time critical before. They don’t quite grasp it. They won’t last long. They don't come back.

What did I learn? Back then the fastest moving items were phone cases and chargers, sex toys, socks, and cheap children's toys with no real play value. These are the things that the customers want. That knowledge is enough to make you wish for some kind of selective Armageddon.

In a fast moving work space people adapt. It can be fun, in a relentless kind of way. If you can motivate yourself and want to be fit it's like being paid to go to the gymn. That's the main reason I was there. Getting myself back into some kind of age appropriate shape.

The workdays seem long but they pass quickly. I liked the busyness, though maybe not the business itself. Free coffee is not much of a perk when the breaks are short and rushed. Most of the stories you hear about toilets and timekeeping aren’t really true. Fashionable moans.

The ethos is simple enough: nobody really matters. Nobody is trusted. Don’t trouble anyone with your feelings or your ideas. Keep your observations to yourself. Only the process matters. Box shifting, pushing the tin, blanket stacking; that’s all it is.

Is there any future in it for the staff? Not much of one.

Could it mostly be done by AI and robots*?

In time. I’d say so. But there's a lot of new engineering needed and that just fries my brain. 

Ethical practices are nice to have. The problem is that Amazon is very good at what is it’s core task. Logistics. Right thing, right time, right place.

That's all I have to offer."

*What if the AI code is just full of slop? "Slop" meaning - to cause liquid to flow over the edge of a container through not taking care or rough movement. How did we adopt "slop" as an AI description and why does AI turn sloppy so easily?

Deliver Me From Nothing

 

Back in the day people made records. Short for recordings. Some were clearly better than others but all of them have their stories. There was no spell-check-auto-tune-digital-anything. But there were always real things and fakes. I guess Nebraska would be considered a real album. I watched "Deliver Me From Nowhere". It's a film that's as bleak as the album. I saw it on the Disney Channel. Somehow that doesn't seem right. But the Beatles live there too now. Modern culture is a strange soup. Eventually they'll make a movie of everything and that will slowly over write all our memories with an alternative version of history. A creeping correction or just another more diluted “visionary” adaptation? I don’t know.

I first became aware of the Springsteen sound when my drug dealer neighbour played "Born to Run" over and over when "friends" visited. Then a rival drug dealer smashed in all of his house's windows one night. The music stopped for a while. I kind of missed it but the kids got a little more sleep. Then I heard "The River". History hasn't been so kind to that song, academics and critics might pan that simple and dark explanation of the times, but in 1981 and at 26 years old I felt I'd already lived every verse. The lyrics strangled me. I stayed stuck for a while. I can't listen to it anymore.

Springsteen rode the myth. He became a stadium act and a symbol. Millions heard his songs, hummed the tunes but missed the meanings. It's hard work to stop and think when there's always another song coming up as the algorithm pushes your taste along in whatever direction. Rich pals fly to New York to attended those rare shows. It's an experience. Springsteen's on your bucket list. He's not on mine because there's no bucket and no list.

So "Deliver me from Nowhere", the film about Nebraska: It seemed honest and paced about right. Troubled families and the monochrome 50s. Familiar shit that I can understand. I just never was gifted with a singing voice that could express those things. That's why I'm sitting here today supping tea and thinking about scrambling some eggs. Memories of factories, fights, family, religion, women and troubles; they haunt me, almost like that famous curse. Those records provided an accurate but mostly unwelcome explanation, but nobody really wants to be understood anyway. It's all this film tries to do now in it's cinematic short-hand. Cut them some slack. Irn-Bru for Coke. A bag of chips for a hot dog. A Volkwagen Passat for a GTO. I've been down in dead man's town too.

Not Me

 

"It ain't me babe, it ain't me you're lookin' for."

Click here.

Sorry I Clicked

I read an article this morning about this White House video and being the curious type I clicked on it. Do the same and you'll be sorry too. These people are just not right in the head. For them it's all about making everything worse for everybody.

"My profession is supposed to be fixing pianos but there's nothing I like better than smashing up a good piano."

The Tools We Use

Click if you wish to proceed, then read. The usual terms and conditions might apply, I've no idea. You may find this depressing, but I don't. Maybe you won't be impacted much if you're a robot or an AI spider from Singapore - or just disguised as one. 

Access Prohibited

I can't lie. I am very curious as to what is going on in this room somewhere in a certain building in the heart of Edinburgh. I'd like to think some special, unworldly event is taking place in there. Nothing too bad, maybe just a bit strange or experimental. You know like dogs playing poker, some counterfeit financial process getting up and running or an illicit meeting of the local branch of the illuminati where they discuss further improvements to the city's system of cycle paths and cycle friendly road schemes ... all in order to act out their terrible revenge on the stubborn citizens of Auld Reekie. That does sound bad, but also realistic. So who actually has access to this place? Who made up the sign? Not that any of this really matters.

Another eBay time wasting, head numbing bargain. Nine English Pounds and free postage for a very neat and tidy, unused aluminium Strat scratch plate.

George the cat soaks up some March time golden sun flakes.

Economical With The Truth

 

Substack can be a few days ahead or a few days behind, you can  never really be sure. Anyway here's an overview of modern economics and personal anxiety. And I'm blaming Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for about 99% of the trouble in the world but you don't have to take my rather obtuse words for any of it. Click on the pic in the traditional style.

Food Facts

"The cauliflower soup may contains slight traces of scallops - but frankly I have to doubt that statement."

Today's BLT: Why do healthy foods i.e. vegatables, salads etc. get themselves stuck in between your teeth as if they were bits of bacon or toffee? You think you're eating into the good guys and then find a few moments later it's their green and (at this point) unpleasant remains and debris that are clogging up the tooth and gum gap area. Perhaps I'm just not chewing correctly or my mouth has some design flaw that gets worse with old age. Maybe nature just wants perpetual revenge on humans via any quick oral way that becomes available (?). No point in trying to get proper dental advice on this either, you'll just get that smug, waggy finger lecture that you already suffer every six months.

Yesterday's lunchtime unhealthy potato crisp, cheese, rocket and mayonnaise on sourdough sandwich. 7/10 approx. No post sarnie tooth blockage excavation or rescue work was required.

Telegraph = Time Wasted

Breaking the unwritten rule of avoiding posting shit on a weekend. Fake headlines might make more sense than real ones. The media just keep on saying things and we just keep on reading them. Thanks to CBQ for this amusing headline generator tool. Anyway it's the last day of the month.

 

Another fleeting moment captured at some World Heritage Site or other. As predicted by nobody, but earlier in the afternoon, a rainbow pulled up outside. It could've ended up looking like this, but that was only part way through the editing process.

Child Psychology

Ode to Billy Eilish: It’s a game changer. A lottery win. A lucky strike. Against all of the odds. You’re the wreckage of an old band. 80s or 90s vintage maybe. Bad hair, wrong attitude, same old story. Years later a modern performer moves in, swoops down and picks up your dusty and forgotten material. 

We all (well some of us) fantasize about experiencing such a rare moment of accidental fortune and chance. "Everybody's been burned, everybody knows the pain" ... but the music business can still be full of surprises.

"Black Box Recorder" are a recent example. Livin' the slow dream and it might just happen for you. Well you can only dream if you can get a proper sleep. 

Click the pic for more mixed up tales from the dark heart of the music industry.

Your Mojo or Mine?

Click-Bait: This piece is nothing whatsover to do with Leonard Cohen but if it seems to be dark, disturbing or obtuse in some twilight way that he might have liked, I'd be reasonably happy with that.

Hot and Cross

I’ve always been eager to prove the insignificance of religious significance. Truly, I’ve never proved anything of the kind in my life. Proof just slips away overnight, like some rogue ex-US ambassador or Epstein's financial advisors operating their pocket calculators for the artist formerly known as Prince Andy. Feasts, festivals and seasons come and go. Nobody cares apart from retailers and avid followers of wayward public opinion. Hot cross buns are different. This year (as usual) they’re in the shops at the same time as Easter eggs, and I’m not complaining.

So I’m on the hot cross bun diet. Two a day. I’ve been on this diet for exactly one day. It’s holding up fine. No side effects. As an added bonus sometimes you can find weird human face lookalikes in or on the buns. There’s definitely an angry, or at least perplexed, God like grimace worn by the top bun in the photo. Maybe it was the size of the knife I was brandishing. As Kevin Bridges once joked a few years ago, “God’s a wee bit out of his depth now ...”  and 2026 just might do it for him.

P.S. There needs to be a “classic” British comedy film made about rival bakeries in some mythical Yorkshire village: “Top Bun.”

The Alternative Dead

A very short, short story. You must commit by making a click above, otherwise nothing happens. References to Hitler, Stalin and Alice Cooper. You might be slightly offended or disturbed. I might not be bothered.

Outsourcing Responsibility

Mondays must be the day I catch up and dump materials and links here and there. This one's been out for a while, so it's here in it's full and unedited form.

It's often said, half way towards a joke, that the world went downhill after David Bowie died in January 2016. Over ten years ago now. There’s no evidence for that. His death did not tip the planet from it's axis. It marked a moment. It did not mark a measurable collapse. But it's an interesting thought. David Bowie's being is somehow responsible for the stability of the world and the progress of all the stupid humans left behind, including me and you. He passes away and right then a new era of decline is upon us. Slow to begin with but with the passage of time measurable. The power of popular culture, film and music is not to be underestimated. That’s something that most politicians fail to understand, but for the people the signs become visible, then clear.

Bowie shifted shape throughout his life. He refused the honours that others of his generation lapped up. He was a cracked and bad actor. A bee hive drone, an image junkie and an off the wall, cut up poet. The man who fell to earth and the Goblin King. There is a theory that he was super human or a god of some sort. He held onto an elevated status for fans and media types alike. Then he moved away to some other realm. Higher, cleaner perhaps. If he was a god at all, I'd say he was a modern, updated version of Pan. A 21st Century Pan, playing the saxophone rather than the pipes or a woodland harp. A Hornblower at the Gates of Dawn who made a few bad albums along the way.

We like anchors. When someone large in our lives goes, we fix the date in our minds. The years that follow feel harsher, so we tie the feeling to the loss. Nostalgia does the rest like a comfort blanket. We see changes differently. The past looks clean from a distance. It was easier when things were as they were. We forget the real muddle and constant noise of life and keep the low light of a better memory flickering. Those unaware of the Bowie magic can't see the obvious, so it goes. They have their other gods to deal with. Root causes are at the root. Sin came into the world via one man they say. Not David Bowie though. This time around.

The data, numbers and the feelings tell a blunt story. Some long trends kept improving after 2016. Extreme poverty, over decades, has fallen sharply and did not suddenly reverse that year. Other problems grew more visible. Climate change deepened but arguments remained polarised and amplified within an always quicker media machine. Politics hardened into schoolyard battles and bully-boy tactics. Even Bowie's conflicted take on politics may have looked attractive to the faithful.

A pandemic swept the globe in the early 2020s. Wars and invasions run on and still run to and fro to please the industrials. Epstein’s tacky, ragged ghost still haunts victims and his rat faced fellow criminals. Tragedy and suffering still are everyday things. Unreported and misunderstood. Crime and punishment, boom and dip, false dawns and unpleasant lottery winners. But none of these began or emerged from some new Frankenstein style swamp with Bowie’s unexpected death. They were already in motion and have been since the first stone was thrown in anger at some rival hunter gatherer.

So the claim doesn’t hold up as fact. It works as a metaphor. A great artist moved on. The years that followed felt unstable to many. It is human to draw a line between those things. Bowie was a touchstone, a life raft, an icon and also an incomplete and flawed genius. He was a fragile human and he became sick and died, sooner than we might have expected. It is not evidence of anything. It's a fantasy.

The logic of existence persists and pushes away against such a far fetched theory ... but it makes a kind of sense. If you want it to. Stepping back and looking at human activity there is a sense of absurdity and the ongoing repetition of futile behaviours that leave us static in some muddy rut, somewhere we don't belong.

It's a familiar rut. Almost comfortable. We've been here before and perhaps rather than settle for Occam's Razor and the obvious and simple truth, let's try another angle. A fresh explanation. Take a gamble on a piece of thinking. Clear blue skies overhead, not a cloud in sight. Our investments go up and down, according to some stiff market breeze or with the movement of a butterfly's wing far away in Africa, or so it seems. What difference does one more death in a billion make? Maybe more than you'd imagine.

Bring Me Your Disappointment

Another slice of opinions on old rock music that's been available on Substack for a bit (and no where else apparently). Looks like I've screwed up once again. Click the Pic if you're remotely or even mildly interested. It's slightly less intrusive and shorter than a podcast.

Compositions of Moonpig

More incomprehensible nonsense.

Available by simply clicking something nearby.

Wolf Fleece Appreciation Society

It does my heart good to see that such a group exists in this day and age. Hosted on the ever reliable but totally fucked up Facebook site, as you might expect. There may be other versions at large. However I will not be joining this one for personal and security reasons, but I wish them well in the good and vital work that they are engaged in. Over two hundred thousand members can't be wrong. Naturally I've always had a secret craving to own and wear one of these fine garments. Oh, wait a minute that's yet another lie I'm telling you. "Good luck out there", I say, on behalf of urban foxes everywhere. Click the pic to browse and join up if you dare to dare.

Jumpy Hilly Downers

They're young and fit. The fabulous Big Air boys and girls. Flying across the blue Winter Limp-Pig skies in Cortina (once famous for it's tin worm cars). Braver than the Hulk or Thor. They are either very stupid or simply superior humans who will eventually live on Mars untroubled. Their future is bright. Mostly (rich?) white kids and the odd fully formed adult trying to beat some long standing injury, they rule the air with their crazy dreams and tricks. A cooler than cool elite little set. 

Everything, every stunt, every move is "HUGE!" or "MASSIVE!" according to the wannabe teenage sounding commentary team. It's over in seconds too, blink and you lose the plot. Just don't have the camera drone collide with your helmet as you race down the mountain. I'll miss it all when it's gone, or until the next hyped up media distraction comes along.

China, Japan, USA, Canada and all the snowy/mountainy European counties are the top dogs. There's a few flyboy/girl smatterings from elsewhere but I find it odd, and it's across a range of Olympic winter sports this year, that I just can't root for the USA in anything right now. I don't hate Americans or wish them ill, far from it. But with the current toxic regime looking to capitalize on and brag about anything that you can wave a flag over, I don't want them to have a chance to do that with these competitions. See the athlete and their performance, not the country should be the rule. But ... it's tough to see past those other American idiots.

Linked In or Left Out?

You can read this on Substack with a simple click on the pic. I can't be arsed publishing it here because there's just too much clutter.