A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from 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.
Fife is blockaded this weekend, held hostage by FETA terrorists bent on preventing the escape of millions of doe-eyed, straw sucking Fifers hoping to stretch out their credit card advances on the streets of Edinburgh, but FETA says "thou shalt not pass". The reverse is also true with central Scotland now sealed of from the bonnie southern banks of the Firth of Froth to the bonnie ex-banks of the credit crunch. I may sneak over into Fife tomorrow, early in the morning when no one is about and the border guards are occupied with the Sunday Mail crossword or queuing for a sausage and egg McMuffin breakfast at the golden arches drive-thru.
A pile of equipment litters the dining room, almost joined up by imperfect leads and devices looking a bit like the inside of Neil Young's barn after it's been robbed. Pedals and power supplies are lying across the floor in tribute to the failure of the music industry to standardise connections. A guitar waits patiently in the distance eager to rush up to Gm7, D and then back to Amaj for a last hurrah.
The trouble with silver cars is that a) they are common as muck and b) muck is very common, so returning to a large open car park after dark and trying to locate your ride home can be tricky. Usually at Edinburgh airport I park in the multi and manage to just about remember the level, the rest is easy. On Wednesday I chose the open air long stay in a burst of economic anguish and thanks to a quick bus pick up and little thought on my part, on my return I could not find my car.
Sometimes it's good to get into things later than everyone else. This series is honestly funny, well acted and there still are a load of unseen (for me) episodes to come. Some little touches are perfect, the blue Saxo is great, the fat friend and the surreal Nessa, Wales and the extended family. The house in Essex is a study in contemporary life style that David Hockney would love, thank you BBC channel whatever your number is.
Art is everywhere, art is out there to be enjoyed, disliked or tolerated - in unexpected places. Art has little to do with galleries, £20 million price tags, diplomas and cocktail parties. Art doesn't need more funding or prizes, receptions or patronage by corporations. It just needs to be conceived, carried out, looked at and appreciated.
Many contemporary church sermons, methods of teaching and pillars of thinking remain based on these early writings, available to all as the books Genesis to Deuteronomy, translated and incorporated into the Holy Bible. To unpick one part undermines all the other passages, so if Israel’s status is threatened then so is the creation story, the doctrine of original sin and the fall, the Ten Commandments, the moral absolute that is the Hebrew Jehovah and the need for a messiah to arrive to redeem fallen mankind. The rest of the Old Testament and the significance and relevance of the New would also fall apart as a piece of joined up literature and template for life. It’s a bummer of a theological trap that the USA’s political system and its church based followers cannot allow themselves to fall into, otherwise we’re (as stupid white people) all completely guilty of all the (western) colonisation and evangelical crimes of the last 2009 years and we’ve no mandate to move forward.
The violent and intolerant situation we’re now seeing is worsened by harkening back to the latitude God apparently gave to early Jewish heroes like Joshua and Caleb to go out and ethnically cleanse the tribes that were occupying the promised land of Israel when the Jews returned from captivity in Egypt. That thinking still lives on and in various forms, both practically and metaphorically and influences a great deal of modern political thinking and Christian teaching. There are Jews, there are Christians and there are the rest of us, so sending air strikes into schools and hospitals in Gaza when you view the victims as being outside of the love and care of your God is easy. The Christian religion is very good at the convenient use of exclusion, separatism and the drawing of hard, judgemental lines, often despite what the very core values of the religion may profess to be about.
As a further complication the numerous Biblical prophecies about the progress of the Jewish people, their dispersion, persecution (no joke) and their return to Palestine in 1948 all add weight and depth to their beliefs. A further problem is that the other “yet to be” stories at the far end of the Bible work backwards towards the present day. They contain a huge amount of prophetic writing that shows the end of the world, Armageddon, occurring above or around Jerusalem following a long series of violent wars and conflicts all fought out in the Middle East. What good upstanding, church going Christian or God fearing Jew can afford to deny the significance of these current events when seen in the context of a Biblical wipe-out? The whole of the Middle East has now become a huge self fulfilling prophecy that cannot be overturned because so much is a stake for the credibility of our (sic) cherished beliefs, rich, fat and obstinate churches and wayward parliaments. Never mind the oil either.
Everybody wants a little certainty and justification in their lives and that’s what the Bible, when interpreted in this fundamental way gives. Good guys, bad guys, slanted eyed Arabs or dark skinned godless tribes from the edge of the world, they are sheep or they are goats. Sadly the people of Gaza are all in the wrong place at the wrong time and because Hamas is bad (which it is) and the vengeful God has said so, we need to fix it with our tanks and aircraft regardless of where that leads (and in the minds of many because it leads to certain Armageddon).
This is soothing and almost fun, click here.
Shopping for Placebos in the sticks.
My favourite news story of the day has to be that of a UFO colliding with a wind turbine, I'm more inclined to think that a big boy did it, hit it with a stone and then ran away - but then aliens will be aliens. 
Edinburgh's Secret CDs night isn't as you might think a pub night out for Midlothian cross dressers but is the recurrent showcase night for local original music run by Jim Igoe. Jim tries hard to put together a varied combination of acts and in the process allows them to hawk their CDs (on the night and via the web link in the blog title) and hopefully gain a wider audience.
The people who write or broadcast about history make it their own and interpret it on their terms, often very narrowly and with only very shallow insight. Apart from my general dissatisfaction with Scottish history not being taught properly in Scottish schools I can now add to that my annoyance at Prog Rock continually being rehashed via the Beeb and summed up as "truly" represented by the efforts of Yes, ELP and bloody Genesis. It's as if ten years of music and loads of bands have to be succinctly summed up in 40 minutes - so we'll use stock film and interviews to "capture" our version on the cheap. Punk and Glam rock hardly fare better with the same old protagonists getting credit for inventing whole genres of music that in fact evolved over time in a thousand different ways. The real life development of rock music isn't lived in sound bites and vox pops nor was it exclusively summed up by the Old Grey Whistle Test, the disastrous Isle of White Festival or any Reading Festival. I was there or there abouts as I recall.
Thanks to Paul for this test of belief, logic and the amplified mechanics of the wheels and cogs all spinning in the heavenly spheres that circle our pretty little empty heads: Battleground God.
The lucky cats at Ocean Terminal welcome MMIX
She walks, talks and roller skates.
The Fleet Foxes: easily the best band of the year, let's hope they don't die from over exposure now that they've made the Radio 2 playlists.
Today I am doing my best to overcome the head cold that has been dogging me for a week. The small selection of American sourced Walgreen remedies I rely upon haven't dented it so far, I may have to seek specialist advice. The trouble is I get up feeling awful then slowly recover until early evening when the pain and the splutter return, my cold is a creature of the night. It thrives and grows in the dark and warm and then scurries away, complaining bitterly when daylight finally comes round but leaving nasty traces behind. I've also carried out brief sorties into it's territory using Beecham's products and some ASDA paracetamol, it's a war of stealth, patience and attrition now. I will get the better of it before the first rays of 2009's golden dawn or die trying.
We're in that limbo period between the big seasonal days, stupid sales are on, between the world of work and real life and feasts and leftovers. The house is full of family and the dishwasher is on overtime and AC/DC are on the radio. So what's that to do with what I know today I didn't know yesterday?
Who can be bothered blogging about what they did over Christmas time? Not me - but happy Christmas.
Now it's downhill all the way to Christmas Day and I'm home and ready to start preparations by reading about turkey cooking times, doing some fridge unpacking and plunging my hands into cold water to rescue drowning vegetables. I also now know that there are few available chestnuts in the world, holly doesn't seem to come with red berries anymore and though the cat is trying to pick up a pen with his muddy paws and can never succeed at this. It probably wont snow either but I never did expect it to.