Shore Poets

Following Noel Fielding back from Edinburgh late last night, not following in any kind of weird or obsessive way however. Here he is headed for Bo'ness.

Earlier in the evening we attended the monthly reading at the Shore Poets get together in St John's Cellar Cafe, Henderson's in Edinburgh's west end. It was a low-key, quirky and atmospheric affair, the venue being cold and dark and in other circumstances it would have been a perfect Gothic evening. Some of the material recited was very strong but some was trite and sounded like it had been lifted from the Sunday Post or the People's Friend, you get what you get I guess.  I'd expected more of an intellectual powerhouse with debate or political stuff being thrown around and less kitchen sink drama; wrong again - it's civilised. The main themes were dead grandparents, dead parents and family events, so nostalgia for the war years and our lost industrial past was hanging heavily in the air. With the poets and their band of followers the average age profile is also pretty high, I was of course within the overall metric so at least I felt at home, grey hair and wrinkles abound. A nice couple from Dunbar sang a few songs, sweet tunes and lovely harmonies and there's always a bizarre lemon cake (never chocolate cake) raffle going on - I hope to maybe win it one day. 

Their Satanic Majesties

SAY WHAT?

""It's completely a spiritual thing. This is God's will...A mission to make the culture a better culture, more pleasing to God.""
—Karen Santorum on her husband pursuing the presidency



From the Daily Slate.

Out on a Saturday night

Just to prove we are not total sofa potatoes, TV junkies and that family, work, life and other balances can be brought into balance we ventured out into the soft underbelly of the Live Music scene to see what was what. Turned there was a lot at Montague's Bar and gorilla up the toon in gloomy but French themed Edinburgh. CBQ, Norman and James were of course excellent and entertaining. Other noteworthy performers; John Wotton - mind blowingly good guitar player with a blistering technique, truly awesome, his son Tom, no mean player himself and Nicole Strachan, an American songwriter, not strong live but who has at least one pretty decent song in her catalogue and might be worth watching judging by the CD she passed on to us.

Mr CBQ with added and unwanted publicity background, not likely to be used as an album title. Where is George Michael these days?

One man quartet complete with those, meaty, beaty and complex backing tracks

These boys have loads of exotic and incredible stringed instruments and can play them skillfully, often seated but occasionally standing up for the sake of variety. Their witty banter is also pretty good and you can sing along if you wish, or just thump the table.

Live music viewed through the very clear but tiny lens of an iPad. You could almost be in the same room but sitting on a couch drinking beer and fiddling with other random devices or pieces of your own or a friends clothing.

Bananas in regalia

I think they're just having an innocent wee cuddle, others see this pic quite differently.  It may well be something to do with your religion or upbringing or nature v nurture.

Relaxation

And so it was that I came to put my feet up on the desk and started to consider my many daydreaming options. There were just too many themes and situations that I could plug into and frankly I wasn't really wanting to have to think too hard. Not at all in the heat of this particular moment. I also knew that somewhere the sun would be going down, inspiring or depressing random groups of people in odd numbers and outfits everywhere. Would that thought be my springboard? It turned out not to be and so I continued in my blankness with nothing substantial to flesh out the dream balloon structure I had constructed in my head. Usually it came in black and white, from the past, not the present and certainly not from the future, that was hard work and relied upon a very active and detailed imagination, too many things to piece together and explain, too many distracting rabbit holes. The past was best because it could be understood, explained but still manipulated. I had of course been there but not everywhere in it and the surroundings and most of the situations were familiar, all very helpful. Everything, even a day dream has it's limits and it's range. Ok here we go...someplace, probably in the stone kitchen, haggis and neeps were being prepared and the cookery process had just created a fantastic smell.

Impossible Thongs

 Here's an early shot (D Jones) of a 60's Celtic tribute act loosely based on Impossible Songs but called (humorously enough) Impossible Thongs.  Left to Right; Stig O'Driscoll – guitars, vocals and five skin joints, Robbie Dunwoody – bass, drums, penguin and oil drums and the lovely Heather St Kilda - vocals, bagpipes, knitting and harmonium. It's all almost true I tell you.

Eliot Spitzer of Slate.com argues that the prevention of future credit crises should be focused on the size of the consequence. Having any bank in the system that is ‘too big to fail’ is undesirable; having many smaller banks allows the system to cleanse itself from failing financial institutions. Reduce the consequences of the failure of a financial institution, instead of ‘betting on accurately predicting the odds’ of a failure.

Before the credit crisis started raging on the international markets, econometricians (THE financial risk experts) were primarily managing on the odds. Humans, for any non-linear problem, are extremely bad at estimating odds. Econometricians may be better at estimating odds than the average person, but that seems a moot point now that they have convincingly proven they can screw up to the point of destroying the entire financial system. 

Managing on the consequences instead of the odds seems to be a better way forward, and Eliot concludes that” We need to stop using the bailouts to rebuild gigantic financial institutions.” What’s the point in trying to rebuild structures that have already been proven to fail?

Our current approach to dealing with the credit crisis causes two major negative effects: “we are creating the significant systemic risk not just of rewarding imprudentbehaviour by private actors but of preventing, through bailouts and subsidies, the process of creative destruction that capitalism depends on. We hope Eliot’s most important conclusion for governments ends up being implemented: “The better policy is to return to an era of vibrant competition among multiple, smaller entities—none so essential to the entire structure that it is indispensable.”

His article can be found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2205995/

Moving on: other than the ongoing global financial problems and how they are being addressed a far weightier problem is the dilemma of what to do in that awful moment when you realise you’ve got chocolate stains (from the crumbly biscuit you ate earlier for elevenses) on the crotch of your pants. How long has it been there? Who might have noticed it? How the fugg did get so ingrained into the fabric? Why has it now turned that horrible colour? Will it come out by rubbing it (and who might see this awkward process being enacted) or should I just cut my losses and go home?

Remi Ochlik

Some examples of his work here, RIP.

Tall and helpful

Most days I don't get the chance to be tall and helpful, two rare things I quite like being. Today I had the opportunity to be both. A nice, tiny wee woman asked me to reach up to the top supermarket shelf and pick a pack of Canderel 300 (whatever they are) for her. I did wonder why such a tiny woman would want these little sugar pills and I did wonder why they were on the top shelf. I'll never know the answer.

Coffee evolution

How coffee's image and consumer perception has changed from being simple Nescafe bits drawn from a foil topped tin to some weird and over priced milky thing that comes accompanied by an expensive Italian biscuit that'll take few of your teeth out in a single hasty bite. Delicious though. I wonder if they have it on other planets? Today I drank four cups and feel fine.

Nothing to say on Twitter

Snowdrops by Duncan Jones.

Twitter beats me most of the time, I'm unable to make that jump into #territory even when I could/can. I can't quite think and summarise or sum up in 150 characters, most days. Tonight there was ample opportunity, the (irritating) Brits, football, Glasgow Rangers, the poor sound quality for Blur, Adele being cut short, pasta and cheese for tea, the M90 traffic, Volvo S40, bird shit on the roof of a car, breakfast biscuits, the dentists, apple pies, the wind or a tall furniture van knocking down tree branches, a dogging traffic jam in the Newton lay-by, Chelsea, River Monsters and the Wolf Fish, slow motorbikes, Nick Clegg talking pish. It was all there to be recorded and reheated and re-Tweeted. #couldn't be bothered.

Part of the machine

Winter Trees, photo by Duncan Jones.

It’s not easy being part of the machine with no means to opt out; inextricably stuck and trapped in the gunged up system, seeking a route to claw back to the surface, some white light and clean air perhaps. I am of course pondering the unthinkable consequences of a mass supermarket boycott. Following from the Tesco PR gaffe over work experience for benefit credits (which may or may not have been accurately portrayed), can I, can we live without the comfort factor of a regular supermarket fix? Let’s face it, Tesco is annoying in its blandness and ubiquity, it’s cloying “every little helps” campaign of brainwashing and it’s manipulation of our appetites and aspirations. I want a world where supermarkets exist but don’t really matter, where they don’t dominate and suck the life out of town after town, where there is some semblance of commercial coexistence and less of a blur between suburbia and nowhere, that funny place where most Tescos are located. But it’s a dream that comes wrapped up in an uneasy sleep though, go elsewhere, pay more, get less, and is that really the true consequence of abandoning the big boys? Has the propaganda made us all so dependant and afraid that any extra cost or inconvenience is just too hard to bear? Or is nothing in the game really worth the cards anymore? Certainly the fact that loss leaders and special offers are only possible because the grunts and stackers just get minimum wage (or qualify for benefits) isn’t good news and are we so naive about capitalism that we thought it could be put together some other way? If it’s too good to be true then it’s not true and it’s making me pretty uncomfortable. I may return to Fife (home of the Amazon low pay long day model) and onto the Fife diet for inspiration.

Meanwhile Iran sneezes out a slippery isotope, a few sanctions are launched, and the fiddly, jittery oil market reacts by bumping up oil prices to $120 a barrel. That’s a good piece of international diplomacy and cooperation, the value of which of course I don’t believe in. Somewhere in New York, Singapore or London the balding, stressed out diesel brokers sleeves are rolling up and their eyes are watering and rolling in their heads at the nice little margins that are suddenly possible here and here and there. We all pay more instantly, as if Shell and BP petrol pump price gauges were linked by long stretched out Heath Robinson elastic and pulleys to the taps and valves in Iran. All of which are still turned on but running temporarily down another pipe and in a different direction but ultimately into the same grubby pool of dirty oil and money. And by means of a valued customer survey feedback piece I’d like to say that buying petrol and shopping in those overpriced calories infused aisles that lead to the gapping wide tills is not a pleasant nor economically sensible experience. Of course for the simple customer and end user it’s all explained away by the old chestnut of supply and demand – the trouble is there isn’t a problem, there’s only full scale world-wide manipulation by those terrible lizard people…but it is still a penny a litre cheaper in Tescos (and you get Clubcard points).

Thought collections

Catch 22 as a diagram, by Joseph Heller.

Thoughts are really made of helium (and sponge cake), lighter than air and impossible to suppress and capture. They float away though, despite everything;  they're unstable, hollow, unformed, ghostly and constantly anxious to escape. And they do. I've just spent  a whole loose weekend thinking up a fresh batch and now, lo and behold they've all evaporated leaving me with only a pan of salt, some granules only fit for preserving a dead fish. It's the price of a muddled mind, a blunted pencil and procrastination. Perhaps I need some more regular stimulants.

If I see another cheese cake then that'll be three I've seen but I'm not planning on that.

Under your very feet

Geologist's Dream: A ground breaking and secret report commissioned by Cadbury's Crème Eggs has revealed that large areas of the UK are siting on top of a vast lake of molten chocolate. It is believed that the lake may at least a mile below the surface of the land and follow, almost exactly, the surface profile of this great and sceptered country. The molten chocolate is believed to be at a constant temperature of 40 degrees Centigrade and considering it's peculiar location is in a relatively stable state. Plans are afoot to harvest this unique discovery and use it as a source of power, heating and nutrition though experts are divided on the actual full potential of the resource. There are of course numerous technological problems and many of society's most deep seated prejudices that will have to be overcome. There are also issues over cowboy or gypsy type white van miners who may well, by using cheap and unhygienic equipment, attempt to draw some of the precious hot chocolate from the bowels of the earth and introduce it to the food or energy chain. A special task force is planned to counter the possibility of this. So below our green and pleasant and minted land a chocolate sea is churning...

Cheap guitars, eyeshades and guns

A fine example, one careful owner, then three others that were not so hot.

Setting yourself a limit is no bad thing. A self imposed ceiling on spending or expenditure allows you to live within you and your credit card's  means, in theory. And so it has been for me with luxury car purchases; never spend more than £2000 on any random vehicle and stretch that meagre amount to get the best deal you can. Following this Puritanical principle I've now obtained a different car, I've had it for two weeks and 700 earth miles (no light years as yet) so far the sub-£2k spend looks ok. That's the problem of course, ongoing peace of mind and holding onto it. It's all trickery, I learned about it in Far East, Cellardyke.

Welcome to reality

The only chase that Rangers would welcome right now are Chase Manhattan, assuming of course the bank were prepared to stump up £75m to clear the team's accounts. It wont happen however. Rangers have reached too far over too long a period of time, been sold for £1 to an asset stripper and are headed for err...survival I guess. The humiliation will pass, there will be a struggle but they'll return and probably try to employ the same business model that has just torpedoed them. Lessons generally don't get learned that well anywhere in Scotland, we're not that type of nation, and it's hard to feel sorry for those same fans that have crowed over their golden years and abused and belittled all the "lesser" teams who ultimately fell in their overpaid and unaccounted for wake. Dunfermline Athletic are now £80k down following last week's drubbing from this crooked outfit. Will we ever see that money? Not likely. I'm just glad that I've put little or no cash their way for about twenty years, Hell and handcarts spring to mind (and no more blogging about this, I'll move onto cars and music any day now), speaking of which...I now own a car with a CD player and a cassette player. All the long undead music can be played; Steely Dan, the Gin Blossoms...mmm.

No Valentine for Old Men

In Swedish folklore, to capture someone’s love, you should carry an apple in your armpit for a day then give it to your intended. There could be a grain of truth here: “We humans have very smelly armpit regions capable of producing molecules that it is difficult to see the function of, other than sexual signalling,” says Dr Peter Brennan, an expert in olfactory processing at Bristol University. A 1998 study from the University of New Mexico also showed that during their fertile periods, women prefer the smell of “symmetrical” men.

What's wrong with this picture?

My soup collection: it's been coming together steadily for about two years, the Ainsley Harroitt pretentious packet soup collection in my desk drawer bottom, an eclectic mix of soup vapours and colouring atoms that populate the space besides my breakfast crackers and one cup coffee sachets. The trouble is that I've lost control of it. It started with a few Stilton and lookalike Leeks, then some Mulligatawny and now it's grown like floppy bunny Topsy into an encyclopedic display of unknown but coded packets of mysterious powders, each one containing the basic ingredients of some exotic soup or other. As they are mixed and anonymous I have to guess or imagine the contents; Carrot and Bamboo Giraffe, Merseyside Mud Pie and Wensleydale, Chicken and Plum with Scrotum Lemon Grass, Suet and Blue Budgerigar, Italian Matto-Grosso with Chick-Pea Turpentine, Seaweed El Greco? Mmm can't wait till lunch time.

Glasgow Rangers RIP: Over in Scotland's favourite city fans have been rocked by the news that their great bigoted and ignorant institution has been quietly run into the ground by a combination of swollen headedness, ineptitude, chronic failure and Karmic consequences. Yes, Rangers FC, now ready for anything including the administrator and are up to their Broxi Burgers in debt. “It's like watching an ill relative that's not going to recover.” said a commentator. More like an ill dictator or despot hanging on the barbed wire or from a lamppost in my view. The fans will of course rally round, sing a few heartfelt and plucky folk songs and then quickly desert the sinking ship as if it was the Costa Concord on a barrel roll. Then as Rangers slink slowly into the West so will the rest of Scottish football along with them as the golden goose chokes. It really should be so easy to succeed at success but then again it's heartening and possibly humbling to know that nobody is too big to fail. I wonder if the SNP will band together and bail them out from the Tesco tax coffers? Maybe one fine day we can all relax, forget about keeping up with the Champions League, the pressures of Sky and stupid salary levels and just play decent and entertaining provincial football that we can all follow set at reasonable prices and within realistic costs.

Science comes to the rescue: Scientists and clever students with Persil white coats and Nike shoes have stumbled upon the elusive mathematical formula that even Leonardo Da Vinci failed to find. In a announcement that will be celebrated by men of a certain age all cross Scotland it's become apparent that the answer to middle aged nasal hair growth and stimulation has been found. Using only a simple Casio calculator and some ex-Post Office rubbers bands scientists have made a full genetic model the predicts and illustrates the possible outcomes and consequences of certain key genes on nasal hair development. “It's a great day for all fashionistas and sufferers,” said Doctor Kelvin Bidet. “No longer will blokes be worried about nasal hair projections, root dysfunction or impulse tweezer purchase from Boots the Chemists, they'll be able to enter in their details on a simple web site and monitor their growth prospects and follicle projections on line.” An Ap for those fiddly about to be obsolete iPhone things is also planned.

Never mind the Snake Oil

Greatsnakes Oil Company Ltd.  From the mouths of babes (or grandchildren): "The old cat's just trying not to die." Never mind your religious snake oil, philosophy, meditations, prayers, petitions, fetishes or argumental political sciences, they won't provide the big payoff you're looking for. As the young man observed in the cat's natural actions, that's all we're really busy doing, trying hard to live and trying equally hard not to die. Enjoy the moment(s).