Gatsby or not

An over simplistic view point maybe but it's either the Great Gatsby or the Grapes of Wrath, you have to settle somewhere in there or in between - that may even end up being the very same place at the end of the final chapter. As ever I remain confused and also overjoyed at both my lack of familiar  space and my surplus of home space - so I'm nowhere, a fairly familiar location if you can be honest enough to accept it. Seeing slices of life is good, experiencing slices of life is a lot better, sharing it is the best; sadly some folks struggle with this floating spectrum of behaviour and opportunity. As you can perhaps tell I spent a lot of time on a long train this weekend and had too much time to think but not enough time to make sense of any of it. Something in those wrapped and dusted Virgin Train sandwiches and the still, clear water?

Everything about contemporary life in one gif. pic.twitter.com/UJZy3IUsuv

— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) July 10, 2015

I nearly saw the sign

For some perverse reason I'm a big fan of obscured and neglected signs; those well meaning tools of navigational guidance that cannot be clearly read or seen because they're either dirty, faded, part demolished or overgrown by untamed vegetation. They are common on motorways with the added bonus of often being hidden by those slow grinding HGVs that you may be passing. Now modern sat navs do cater for this but I'm choosing to ignore that. A sign that can't be seen or read is extraordinarily pointless and also quite interesting...almost. This sad wee sign in the photo has only taken nine months to become...ignored. In a couple of years it will be gone altogether along with it's irritating and patronising message (and you never know but  that could be true of me on both counts). 

Dull time

Welcome to the dull time; head thicker than a lost cat, no clear thought, uninspired and with an after taste of tomato sauce and sardines slithering about inside my head. If I didn't know better I'd swear I was on holiday and vegetating quietly looking out to sea and being blinded by a sparkling haze on the water. Maybe I'm in a walking and waking conscious coma or I've been inhabited by a non-kindred spirit that's up to no good but without any precise agenda, just sort of feeling it's way. Perhaps I have a new disease yet to be discovered; the dull strain. Sufferers are of a certain age, have been institutionalised by routine and like to sup milky drinks and check their kneecaps for unfair wear and tear. I have had four cups of coffee mind you. Some day soon I'm going on a trip on a train.

Shove it BBC

A graphic clearly more interesting than the lyrics themselves.

What is it with the slimy and fear mongering remarks of George Osborne and the BBC? He said in his finely rounded tones that (blah blah) because of Greece (all round bad boys and morally reprehensible in every way) we (?) need to get our house in order (so let's have a bit more austerity here you thick feckin' plebs, so pay the never ending price for not voting Tory) and the BBC in true brainwashing fashion repeat and reheat the stupid soundbite and lie five times in an hour between 5pm and 6pm on the rapidly deteriorating Radio Scotland news channel.  Well there's utter contempt for the listener and relentless brainwashing and pushing the fear factor where it just doesn't belong, in my humble opinion. BBC, you just lost another dumb ass listener (apart from Brian Matthew on a Saturday morning, get yourself up at 8am sharp!).

A graphic more interesting than the music.

Enjoy the spectacle of doom

Just in from the garden, rain stopped play as usual but I did save a struggling little tree from choking. Sitting sipping a cool milk bomb and eating a sugary cake whilst watching the British Grand Prix (complete with the national anthem sung karaoke style by some American X-Factor judge) on the BBC, it's hard not to reflect on the utter pointlessness of pseudo life and the numerous dumb diversions that pass for entertainment. While we fiddle and watch and I search on-line for Mini run-flat tyres at a good price; Greece burns, ISIS executes, migrants scramble to get away and get somewhere and foodbank volunteers collect basic items from dull eyed shoppers at the Tesco checkouts. Maybe we need to go beyond just prophesying doom as we in our own foolhardy way waste effort trying to avoid it...just let go, savour the impending catastrophe and set the controls for the heart of the sun. I'm saying this of course because I've just read this article. You could too and then join me in feeling jaded, worn out, slightly amused and strangely optimistic.

Bonny Scotland

Just the usual bleak and abandoned type of uncredited and unexplained images I'm prone to capturing badly. Time to pause and reflect. Scotland is really quite beautiful the way it is, hot and sticky then wet and cold, air thick with midges and then clean and clear as a Swiss mountain top, beer warm and strong, lager cold and fizzy, chips fat, hot and greasy, wimpy French fries in a tin bucket, traffic crawling at 10 mph for miles because of badly planned summer roadworks, great open spaces with twisting curves and fast and straight gradients, moaning bastards and cheerful, helpful people, trees standing up and trees that have fallen over, folks who use commas and apostrophes correctly, others who just don't. Deal with it.

Failure to evolve

As a postscript to yesterday's astonishing admission that I had to break into my own hotel room having been unable to, as I thought, unlock the door. Turns out I was pushing said door instead of pulling it.  I may be going through some slow regressive process whereby I eventually turn into a slow, slobbering ape like creature confused and challenged by everyday objects...but happy enough in my ignorant state none the less. Is this the comedy ending that fate has in store for us all? If so I will continue my struggle, I'll eat more fish (the grilled sea bass was fine), listen to more new music from the current century, read books with no pictures, take brisk walks and practice mental arithmetic. I'll also approach difficult doorways with a better attitude and have proper conversations with myself rather than fall into the trap of chatting to myself  with small talk and circular, puerile gossip. I may drink copious amounts of draft craft beer to dull the dull pain of existence. I'll also doodle diligently in Sharpie and photoblog each piece I produce. There that's better already.

FFS

David Cameron famously failed to understand the modern meaning of FFS, of course it's Franz Ferdinand Sparks. FFS, the raucous and witty hybrid supergroup made up of two interesting but patchy bands getting together in some uneasy Glasgow v USA marriage that no one could have seen coming. I just downloaded an entire copy, all sixteen deranged tracks of it. Hysterical and possibly a bargain.

I also locked myself out of a hotel room tonight, apologetically borrowed the master key from reception only to find that it didn't work. So I'm outside in the rain...Tom Cruise moment you might say...I checked the window...unlocked...after a small struggle with myself and my belongings I opened it enough to climb in...surprisingly despite the various inhuman stretching manoeuvres involved I made it without injury. Ninja. Now I'm inside but I find the door lock is in fact jammed...so I can't get out...sit down and listen to FFS for a wee while then...there's always the window I suppose. I do deserve a quiet pint now.

Double Decker

It's the slut and slag of British (brutish) snack bars. It's like a mixture of type 2 bottoming, concrete and gunge wrapped up in dirty, filthy chocolate and it probably should be illegal.  It also doesn't seem to have shrunk to a shadow of it's former self like Mars and Snickers have and it does still have the latent power to fill and satisfy. Even Kraft's clumsy takeover of Cadbury has not completely killed it.  I salute the Double Decker, still going reasonably strong in a diluted and shrivelled up world.

Worth a try

A simple enough solution you'd think, everybody in that glutenous and dysfunctional family mess/mass known as Europe stumps up €3 each and then we resolve the Greek financial crisis. Simply taking a bit of responsibility and for less than the price of a Starbuck's macchiato the good people off Greece could start to grow their economy, jail a few bankers, shipping magnates and politicians and so restore Greece's economic fortunes. Is that too much to ask as a small way of saying thanks to the place that formed the foundation of modern civilisation? Probably yes but if only this kind of thinking could be applied successfully, somewhere, just once. Follow the impossible saga around about here https://twitter.com/indiegogo.

Not a dead cat then

In daylight everything is much clearer.

So we've had about five days of our cats being sick, so much so that one ended up in catospital on a drip. The radar is therefore turned up to eleven for anything that sounds faintly like the pre-vomit noises a cat might make. Day or night. And so it was that one cat duly puked at about 23:59 last night rousing me from the merry old land of nod with an impromptu chicken fricassee on a blanket. Grrr! Fast forward to 4am and I'm awake and looking out of the window, chasing sleep with no success. In the grey light I look down and see what looks for all the world like a dead cat on the rockery; not good. I look again, that is a ginger cat, there on the stones. Still and not moving like a living cat would. Shit. In fear and trepidation I go downstairs  to get a closer look. Sure enough, it's a ginger rock and back upstairs on the bed, about two feet from where I was standing is a snoring, snuggling non-vomiting ginger cat. Not dead then.

Entertainment systems

A room with a view.

We have a picture but not for long.

Enjoyed a very pleasant sleepover in the capital city last night staying in the Scotsman Hotel for the first time. The grandiose old newspaper HQ has been converted to rooms for a while now but I'd not been inside the ghostly halls. There where low chairs litter public areas inviting people to sit down when they clearly want to stand up, the German language may have a word for this. It's a  strange, wiry kind of dark place where space is compressed, lifts don't work and the eager staff seem confused and are programmed and scripted in an over attentive way.  Asking people if everything is OK isn't the same as good service. I did have a marvellous sleep, a punchy hangover crunching shower and a good breakfast. What I couldn't fathom was the complex black box 90's style room entertainment system which promised a lot but delivered very little, I managed to switch it on once and only long enough to hear 23 "amazings" from the BBC's now formulaic Glastonbury Goonshow. After that the numerous buttons, a full key pad and a featureless central control unit remained dumb and unresponsive, a bit like me I suppose. The kettle turned out to be more user friendly and with it's successful operation (two teas) I realised the limit of my abilities. 

Not going to Glastonbury

Not going to Glasto' because we're going here (as above). Can't type anymore as there is a cat on the keyboard...purring loudly now he's back from the vets.

Still in that green world

Applies strictly to dogs on leads, so take care. 

Yes, there is a gorilla parked in that garden propped up on sticks.

Days later...still trapped and a little confused in the green world with only a small g and a normal sized w. Here everything drips in lowercase and then floods you and washes you away in upper case. Basic motor vehicles make crunching noises as they cross the car park making their progress sound determined and sophisticated. People are eating meals and the physically disabled are standing up for their rights as best they can but sometimes overlooking the rights of others. This whole rights thing can be a bit of a minefield as Princess Diana used to say. It may be the last taboo.

Meanwhile the mentally questionable are failing to answer any of the questions on the grounds that their rights are being compromised by the presence of the more physically but less mentally able. I turn, ready to play the gender card when my excessive age and raw indulgences trip me up and my compromised racial history accompanied by years of white male privilege and disrespect serve to remind me that my  car may be badly parked despite all the gravel noises and squelching I enjoyed making a few moments ago. Don't get me started on sexual abuse v equality either. We can all be victims if we choose. Life us tough but can also be what you make it and who, who I ask you will ever truly speak up for the colour blind, stateless and dyslexic?

Welcome to the green world

A testimony to the power of time and a relentlessly damp atmosphere. Over there in the west things stay wet and rot and grow moss and slowly blend back into where they came from as the great green carpet covers over them and slowly strangles the life and the strength from their materials. One day they'll be gone altogether, drowned in the putrid cosmic soup of eternity. Well that's a nice wee thought then.

A path of silver jellyfish

So the unbridled outdoor life continues as the solstice passes and the midge bites irritate and the caravans trundle slowly, east to west like dying white elephants. The other night whilst almost relaxing and chatting to the locals I discovered a silver path of jelly pod bods littering the shore and generally disturbing my peaceful environment. How untypically sad is the passing of a jelly fish swarm and how pointless. Nobody mourns their demise, you just try to avoid stepping on them and looking at them too close.  Poison springs to mind and raw zombie brains. The thing is they are successful, they float around on the warm currents and most seem to avoid dying for quite a while and are content to look a bit like cat's vomit (another story). Perhaps, if my beliefs ever allow it, I'll return to this earth (or at least the watery bit) as one and just meditate around the Gulf Stream area for a period of time.

The bombing of Bing

I accidentally stumbled back in time the other day and crashed into Bing Crosby's image as he was enjoying a quiet half pint of Tennants at some point in the 60s or 70s in Central Scotland. Possibly on this exact spot. Time travel can be a little clunky and hard to control. Fortunately there was no serious impact on the space time continuum (I hope).  I can't explain it any other way really.

Swimming the Clyde

Crowds gathered by the abandoned crazy golf range in order to view the aquatic spectacle that was unfolding before our tired eyes. The sun shone and the wild applause was deafening.

Pretzel; little or no logic however.

OK, you cant see much really but in the top photo lots of people are swimming across the Clyde from Gourock to Dunoon in a race. My heart goes out to these exhausted and dripping heroes and heroines. Apart from thinking they are both daft and brave they are also inspiring, so much so that I have resolved never to attempt to swim across the Clyde, ever. Neither will I come down it on a bike.

I picked up a rare treat whilst loitering without intent, baffled and still within Dunoon's paved and crowded bosom. A super raspberry ripple 99 style cone accompanied by tasty bite sized pretzels filled with peanut butter. £1 for a generous portion in a paper bag. Old school. Few of my travelling companions were willing to share this treat so I ended up scoffing the lot pretty much alone and misunderstood. There were vivid dreams and few hallucinations later in the evening but no stomach upsets so I guess I got away with the pure random greed of it. 

The life of meaning

As I've failed to fathom much about the meaning of life, (mine or anybody else's) I routinely collect quotations that in some way provide some temporary meaning or that when added to other quotes as if in some kind of quotation bible make there own kind of cumulative sense. There are many more where this one came from and they are all as profound and sadly tend to be quite difficult to remember and therefore are hard to refer to or find comfort in during those dark nights of the soul that may occur from time to time.

50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums?

I do belong to that long lost and much lampooned generation who, for a brief moment believed that prog-rock was the unending answer to some kind of unending question(s) about life and more importantly music, hair and loon pants. After a while it turns out that nothing really happened and the albums were churned out in some self indulgent fashion and judging by the list here in Rolling Stone I certainly missed a few as they rolled by. Now I've a pile of virtual  catching up to do and of course I never will. I've still to read the full list but I do wonder what's better...try to listen to all of these (those I'm unfamiliar with anyway) or just try to catch up on Sparks' enormous and no doubt highly entertaining back catalogue.