Villains and Villains

Johnsone, Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump.

There's a lot of traffic on here that appears to be centered around Russian, then the USA, then various random countries. I can't really make much sense of it other than to conclude that it's primarily bot driven and just at a very low level combing the net for intelligent life based on references. They won't find much actual information or deep criticism here, this is really just a temporal personal playground. I do wonder at the effort expended to infiltrate it however, the point of it all, which is I suppose to make the point that it can all be done, easily. As if we didn't know that. 

All governments share degrees of corruption and the desire to manipulate, it's a planet of humans we live on so what else would you expect? The joke is that the unspoken truth (by them) can be clearly seen despite the clinical and cynical masks the media and their grinning spin tries to provide. The puzzle is untangling it, an exhausting and possibly futile process for those hoping to get to the truth. I'm tired of that. I see the dark side of governments as weeds, you expose or destroy or restrain a clump in one corner of the garden but just as they've been dealt with up pop more in another corner and so on. The weeds tend to prevail. Politics is a career toilet and there are mostly villains and then more villains.

Fishing Cat

A day at the Zoo: No, just No. This cannot be a thing nor an actual product of so called Mother Nature.

Putin Test: So I place the name "Putin" randomly in the blog and check the daily hits and traffic location counters later. Hmm.

A walk in the park

Finally the rain gave up about two o'clock, by which time we were drookit, shoes muddy, clothes wet, hair dripping, not feeling too good. Returned home and dumped everything into the washer. Then, risking more rain,  back out into the afternoon again and behold, the parting of the clouds, the removal of the moisture, the clearing of the heavy air and some late July sun at last. Now enjoying a relaxing walk in the glowing blue green world of underbelly of the park.

Burgh Surveyor

The old windows on the local council offices hearken back to more simpler times when local services,  building works and sanitation were carried out "in office" and not contracted out to some multi-faceted conglomerate with shareholders in Russia, China and the Middle East. My first ever job was a trainee sanitary inspector. I wasn't a star performer and only lasted about five weeks before moving onto a progress chaser post in a factory making potentiometers. Anyway the standard council joke back in the day went along the lines of "she was only the Town Clerk's daughter but she let the Burgh Surveyor" and so on. Those in the offices loved telling this to any newbies, it was all part of some tame initiation into a long lost world of clipboards, dark wooden desks and box files. Seeing these window's faded lettering brought it back, briefly.

Putin's little helpers

"Nothing to see here, nothing bad or unethical has happened, everything is fine, we're in complete control, we're getting things done, sorting out Brexit, curing the current virus, world beating tracking and tracing, getting "it" done  and of course we're all working very hard all the time on the resolving these and the other important  issues that matter to you. So can I be really clear and remind you that we always have your best interests at heart and we will never compromise our standards, integrity or long standing principles, we are the Conservative UK Government and we know what's best for you. You can trust us 100%." 

P.S. And all you stupid, surly and ungrateful Jocks can just fuck right off back to your wasted glens and pathetic crofts, thank you (we'll be dealing with you later).

My P.P.S. from @coldwarsteve.

The Wearing of Masks

Some folks say that it's a patriotic duty, you must be a good citizen and don a mask when required. Saltire designs and Joker smiles, football teams and floral patterns. So I'm slowing growing used to, perhaps even becoming almost fond of mask wearing. A new part time ritual. I only wear a mask in shops where there is the threat of humans and I'm not in shops very often, maybe a few times a week and only for a few minutes but the mask is fine. It brings a strange kind of anonymity that's enjoyable, maybe I wont be recognized, maybe if I committed a crime I'd somehow get away with. Maybe I can frown or mouth swear words and nobody sees. Most likely I wont behave like that  but I might try. 

But if it did, "The masked man did it!" They'd shout as I ran out of the shop with a wad of cash and all the other masked men would be suspects and would break into a run also as people everywhere panicked. In the comedic chaos and confusion I'd make my get away. Then, in some safe place I'd stop to think and wonder why it is that panicked has a k in it. It would help me de-stress after the robbery. After a short period of reflection I'd find a discrete way to return the money (unless it was from a shop I didn't really like or it was a business supporting Brexit or donating funds to the Conservative Party) or give it to some noble cause. 

So that's a new genre of fiction, a mask triggering over confidence, insanity and uncharacteristic behaviour in the person wearing it which leads on to some kind of epiphany and redemption all the time avoiding the spread of the infection. Maybe that's already been done.😊

Four Riders

Rider One: PAIN.

Rider Two: SUFFERING IN PEACE.

Rider Three: A MORBID OBSESSION WITH SOME KIND OF WEIRD SPAGHETTI AND MUSHROOM BASED BODY PASTE.

Rider Four: THE POSSIBLE TACTICAL INDIFFERENCE ENCOUNTERED WHEN FIRING A ROCKET DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN.

A local interpretation of the The Four Horsemen of the Apostrophe rendered in broken glass, dumped carpet and lawn shavings. It's been a long running and exhausting project. Exclusively photographed and rendered in some digital form and inspired by materials found beside the South Queensferry recycling centre due east of the Scotmid. If you don't believe any of this then simply visit the site and see for yourself. Strict parking restrictions and troublesome terms and conditions nearly always apply and please be mindful of social distancing requirements. Undue noise after dusk will not be tolerated and may result in prosecution. This includes throaty laughter and all statements made using overstated regional accents and verbiage.

Sunday Morning Cats

Cats enjoying the Sunday morning sunshine, safely indoors.

Sunday afternoon washing machine (detail).

Panoramic Pictures

Dundee Panorama. The question that nobody ever asks is: "If you put a panoramic picture on your blog what is the best way to make it a reasonable size without allowing it to bleed over the edges and into other areas and still be fully visible to all viewers?" I'm not sure that what we have here is the actual solution or just something else. Unfortunately there is no practical application for this knowledge.

Dundee Daily Photo

I know why the caged bird sings.

Our mast, our communications, our conversations, our data, our weakness. Somebody else's profit.

Let Dundee flourish, a few weeds here and there don't matter.

A city profile dominated by waterfront oil engineering.

The Tay Railway bridge takes quite a bend as it leaves the city, some say that it's headed for Fife.

Capa-Choo-Cho

Home built Capa-Choo-Choo complete with stirring spoon (CCC built from a kit that is).

I'm not riding on a train, not rushing to get to a meeting, hoping for a taxi, not got lots of thoughts and business plans swirling around in my head, not travelling or waiting, not anxious about that call or email that I hoped would arrive, not chatting on the phone or WhatsApp, not really stressed or searching for a new idea ... anywhere, haven't skipped lunch or left my laptop somewhere, not lost the papers or spilled coffee on them, no nasty stain on my tie or scuffs on my shoes, no change jangling in my pockets, not arguing about cuts or staff or changes, not worried about expenses, no deadlines, no pressure then. It's July 2020. In some ways it always was.

Two cats fighting

Feline's fighting in School Lane, Auchtermuchty, Fife, Scotland. Oil painting (Completed 1909) by Verne Delorean from Dundee School of Art. Sold at auction in 2011 for £8K. If you'd like to purchase it by all means comment below. I'll see what I can do.

It was a day of drama today. By that I mean I was sitting in the car watching two street cats fight. One black and mean, one grey brown and slightly dumb looking. Like kids in a playground they snarled and posed, pounced on each other and strutted back and forwards across the road. Fur began to fly on the July breeze in the bloodless battle. They seemed to communicate via tail flicks; interesting but pointless, I thought. Then in a nearby garden a bonfire suddenly was out of control, flickering flames and dense smoke floated across the hedges and two fire appliances arrived on the scene, all in a few seconds. There's a back story here but it's either stupid or trivial I imagine.

The cats however ignored the blue light stramash and continued their fight (which was by now hotting up). At one point two fire fighters stopped to watch the cats, I suppose they were revising their priorities for a moment, saving life and property v breaking up a cat battle. As the road was blocked by fire engines I just sat tight and looked on, clearly no person or cat was in any real danger. The fire was quickly put out, it wasn't serious and the cats, now somewhat bored with each other like pole dancers at the end of the night (I imagine) walked off together, exit stage left and into a hedge. Performance over.

John's Nihilistic Breakfast

For a very short period of time I dabbled in a breakfast based nihilism but in the end it seemed as pointless as anything else. I spent some dreary times listening to "Obscured by Clouds" and "Desertshore". I also looked at busy clumps of black ink letters forming unfamiliar words placed together along invisible lines in papery books hoping they might tell me something; I found that to be a tedious and laborious line of programming to try decode. It was clearly not a serious intellectual exercise but then I was searching for something, mostly an easy, lazy life doing next to nothing. 

The harsh reality being that I never did eat anything for breakfast, just cigarettes and coffee. Eventually I realized I'd have to earn money doing something in order to sustain myself in this made up, comedic world of misunderstood and ineffective nihilism. So I resigned myself to my fate. In the blinking of an eye many years passed. Thankfully I'm much better now. I'm back in with the Shreddies and the Cheerios and those curious eggs that simply cannot be unscrambled no matter how hard you might try.

It was all a dream

I bought a copy of After Bathing at Baxters in the unlikely environs of a high street Electrical shop in Fife (a shop selling light bulbs and appliances) back in 1971, it was 7/6d. That's seven shillings and six pence or about 35p. They only had a few records for sale and this one was clearly "left on the shelf" amongst faded James Last and Val Doonican records. It was an odd ball bargain, I felt sorry for it. I decided it had potential because of the cover art, so I hoped that it would be interesting. I took it home and listened to it a lot, I only had about three other LPs so any new record was a big deal. Jefferson Airplane were a good band, I decided. It was a kind of early concept album, there was a story, somewhat badly formed as it turned out but that didn't matter. Nobody else had a copy either.

As my collection grew it was slowly relegated to the dark void that was the lonely place in the cupboard where older, worn out records stayed. It was buried by new material from Pink Floyd, CSNY, Bob Dylan, Soft Machine and the like. Eventually, along with pretty much all my remaining records it was sold, thrown out or borrowed and never returned as my life grew more grown up and even more crazy. Possessions mattered less, or so I thought. I now have close to zero original vinyl and only fleeting memories of my old long lost noisy collection of ill gotten gains and guilty pleasures. It was all a dream, a fuzzy, noisy dream.

Cloudy Observations

Nice, odd shaped, right angled cloud formation hanging out over the A90 somewhere north of Brechin, 10/07/20.

South Queensferry, 11/07/20, vague and wispy clouds messing around above our garden. No clear purpose or obvious intent shown. Weather sunny with some blustery blustering features.

Later that day: I stood a little further back or did I just change the distance setting on my phone/camera? Note large, overly photographed, intrusive piece of heavy Victorian engineering spoiling the otherwise pleasant view.

Posh Pie: An Apology

Dear Bots, an Apology and an Anthology: It only seems right and proper that I re-render what was actually quite a posh pie picture (the pie not the picture) with a more artistic and some might say appropriate finish so as to attract a better class of viewer. A throbbing pie in garish oils and badly applied palette knife debris if you will. It just might do the trick.

I'm always hoping to attract the kind of individual reader or viewer that knows a thing or two about cheese or coffee, game pies or smoked salmon and isn't up for any bullshit excuses. Not just those pesky Russian bots intent on bringing down Bulgaria or the fast food networks in the USA. Tedious. If only we could be at peace with ourselves.

After all some folks just might be "informed", well read and only slightly bigoted. Possibly a little up their own arses at times (but aren't we all?) and liable to follow the wrong strand in a story. Someone who browses regularly in flavoured farmer's markets and shooting estate shops, expensive delis and inner city cheese-mongers, but is also happy to queue in an orderly fashion for the reopening of a friendly punky pub chain or a Primark store. You know the sort.

That's exactly the type of person I think would enjoy the bright and classless diatribe that I indulge in here on this hallowed, slightly bleached cyber-space of overlooked and under cooked erratic brilliance and nonsense. There, I'm glad that's off my chest. Over to you then you kind and benevolent old school bots of sorts.

Some struggle with these things

I laughed when I first saw this on Twatter-patter, I know it's a wee bit cruel (and American) but I rather like the precision implied in the 40 feet west part and the suggestion of reflected selfishness. Actually I'm still laughing, well sniggering to myself rereading it. If it wasn't a sign but a spoken statement there would be some nice added expletives here and there in the text. I'm already adding them in my own head. Today is the day that you must wear a mask to shop anywhere in Scotland, I wonder how that will go. Our people don't like being told what to do.

Hot Jenga

In the rarefied presence* of a more lukewarm, refined, abstract but traditional Jenga. Family Edition.

We built a temporary and experimental fire pit using paving blocks. Also invented a new outdoor game in the process. Try to remove a key brick or two once the fire is alight. Hot Jenga with real flames. Try it if you like, I'm not going to recommend it though. Alcohol doesn't help with actual game play either.

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Google releases the contemporary, troubled poet hidden within the algorithm of the beast:

*Slightly better album than you might think, need to be in the right mood though.

Shameless Product Placement

Irn-Bru: I never really drink this sweet and traditional Scottish softy but I know it to be OK, that's about all I can say. Classic fare for the Scottish taste buds. I could be more enthusiastic but I'm biding my time. I'd like to be able to add that I've been offered a significant sum of money to post this picture here and wax lyrically about the drink. Well I haven't yet but I live in hope. Is that not how these things work?

Nice Place

Nice house, shame about the bins.

South Queensferry High Street: A lovely place for the most part but we're let down by the intrusion of real life when ugly bins are the unfortunate ambassadors of otherwise respectable households. In simple terms because of historical design limitations we are stuck with this situation until a practical household version of "Mr Fusion" comes along. Any day now, I hear it's 2020 in most places.