For Sale

"Cities without swimming pools*": Version #1 and Version #2. Original artworks from unoriginal artist. To be sold as a pair 🍐. For sale and happy bidding if you're on eBay. 

The usual unreasonable and unorthodox terms and conditions apply - no hippies, long-haired Fifers or robots. Cash only. Thank you.

*The novella "Cities without swimming pools" is due to be published in 2045 once written, along with the true facts about the strange death of Heinrich Himmler; the evil man who knew too much but also overrated his own value and so fell foul of even higher powers and agencies.

Crow Wars

We spent a lot of time and energy fighting the Crow Wars. In the end the outcome was inconclusive. That's often the nature of war; needless damage, destruction and cost to little true effect. The good news is that we're on better terms with the crows these days. Diplomacy can work and time plus distance are great healers and useful things in equations. Our avian friends can better look after their own feathers and welfare now. We don't try to scavenge on their patch or eat in the MacDonald's car park and they don't binge Netflix.

Something Weird

A house is not a home if it's just a pile of bricks and timber. A house is a home if your heart is there. The house pictured here has morphed into an animated boat and is sailing off into the mysterious mist on the grimy waters of a flooded earth. A cat is at the controls, or at least the wheel. All very symbolic and metaphorical or something. It remains primarily a house at the moment. I hope it encounters dry land eventually but that might involve a significant bump. Some of the fish didn't make it.

Tuppence

My tuppence worth. The utter stupidity of Brexit will remain a running sore that will cripple UK politics for years to come. Labour enabled it as much as the Tories because the British (?) people had spoken; despite the facts that they were manipulated, lied to and slowly brainwashed in a toxic soup of misinformation. Now as the consequences slowly unravel, largely unreported, there is nowhere to go for a recovery. The media is in denial of it's responsibility and our political masters have no concept of responsibility anyway. 

The thing is I'm suffering from terminal schadenfreude listening to the snippets of information that escape, as abstract sums of money are supposedly lost and simple business transactions between once cooperating countries penalize commerce and ultimately create more poverty and unfairness. We're now fucked by Brexit (the hate that dare not speak it's name) for at least a generation. Ugh! Writing this down provides no cathartic relief whatsoever.

Those anonymous passengers on the SNP gravy train should've all walked out of the Westminster cesspit the other day and hiked back up the M1 in protest against the ludicrous and corrupt Tory regime. Not that it'd make any difference to the goons on the benches but it just might have been noted or even reported on by the BBC. I'm done.

Kings of a Dead World

 

Items and opinions for sale or free to a good home. 

Photographic and Artificial Intelligence collage: "A flamboyant and disturbing commentary on the state of things as viewed from the empire of things via the good offices of the internet of things. The new green shoots of disaster are clearly visible and quite tempting some may say, I'm not so sure. The red signifies the red-tape that the government are going to remove, simply by doing nothing. Everything else is just wreckage."

"By way of an update there appears to be only a single bullet left in the gun barrel with which to dispatch the beast. It seems than no one in authority has the courage or strength to pull the trigger. We'll just play on with Wordle in an attempt to ease the pain."

"I described my many fears for the future to Alexa. She stayed quite for a moment, you know that kind of processing pause that you get, then she just laughed."

"Nobody could ever say that I excel in answering University Challenge questions correctly."

Dr Who Shoes

Traveling isn't easy and arriving is worse but why is it that I am forever wearing the shoes of Dr Who? The David Tennant Dr Who too. No other part of me has anything at all to do with Dr Who. I have not watched an episode for years and yet these shoes testify to other stranger things. There may be a lack of control out there.

We were bathed in a strange green light. A beam from afar. Some saw golden sparks of golden fire. I'm not a religious person. It was last night when a falling asteroid nearly hit our car. Our car was on the road and not in space. My shoes were safely at home but my feet were in the car wearing other shoes. Hardly a coincidence. I tapped the accelerator pedal. The rest of the journey was uneventful, as I later told the puzzled young army officer back at base; "The skies shone like cathode ray tubes, just for a moment."

What if you travel forward in time, do something and then return to the past and do that exact same thing but accidentally? It could be something as simple as a simple spelling mistake or a piece of bad handwriting. Hardly unusual these days. Nobody can execute decent handwriting anymore, not even the pious monks or bankers. You should see the letters I get. Then I look down and see the shoes that I'm wearing. Quite unexpected. I wonder who's shoes they may be. I'll never truly know. 

All of their operations are tricky, requiring dexterity, nerve and what some may describe as pure pluck. The design concepts we work with are sure to fail me at some point. Why have they never fixed the cloaking circuit on the TARDIS that keeps it stuck as a blue police box from the 1950s? There are so many other looks it could assume. All of that makes no sense to me either. I'm thinking script writer's block and production costs v viewer's expectations and tradition. 

For example: Upon opening the heavy door I was greeted by this ...

Art is Everywhere

Our House

"Preparando la tavola"(c. 1888) 

    Olio su tela del pittore danese Carl Vilhelm Holsoe. (1864-1916):

 

Lunch time and it's tuna noodles for me and tuna bagels for Ali, that's how we seem to survive these days. Mustn't grumble though. The storms of life pass over one and all and sometimes cut the power if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. No noodles or toasty bagels for you.

Vimes Economics

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Some wise words from the pen of Terry Prachett. They don't publicly teach this particular theory but I'm certain that it's a fundamental part of how modern business operates and how political strategy is forged to support it. It also masks the true facts of inflation and product pricing and sizing; some of the many levers that companies use to maximize returns. Jack Monroe has statistically demonstrated this quite effectively in recent times. 

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder

As the title suggests here's Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder playing "Hooray Hooray" in Ry Cooder's front room. Something to cheer up your day. Lots of interesting musical notes getting bundled together with a great bit of backing from a makeshift drum kit. Time well spent.

Ambushed

 

In the so called real world absurdity has become normal as the musings, desperate mumbles and piss poor excuses of our pathetic Tory rulers are exorcised and lampooned on a daily basis. I quite like this one.

Victim of AI

When the key making robot in B&Q tells you your fortune, or at least is intuitive enough to know roughly what might be going on in your head. Turns out the robot is extremely good at copying keys too, though it is it's chosen profession so I expected that. We had quite an interesting conversation but I cant recall the details. I think he/she may have wiped a few of my memories during the process. Three keys and a cleaned up mind for £10. I'll be back for the complete valet.

Monday Morning

The soft machine speaks: Probably a faulty sensor, carbon on the valves, a loose connection even. Typical Monday.

Internet Scavenger

All hail the beauty of a life lived in monochrome without the tyranny of time and colour bearing down upon it. 

Microscoped Oxygen

When the world is running down you make the best of whatever Rory Stewart is saying. The shatteringly bad news is that the fragile supplies of oxygen in Earth's garden of oxygen are running out. I've been conducting tests in the spare room and it turns out that the blue globs of CO2 and used chewing gum are depleting the breathable atmosphere (see illustration above) at a rate of knots. Humans and animals and plants etc. please note. More brackets coming ... (As you might expect nobody is listening). 

My research is incomplete but basically I'm just repeating something we all knew to be true in the 1970s. In fact the Groundhogs made an album all about the problems of pollution and sustained public apathy, it was called "Who Will Save the World?"  We all understood the message then (well the album went to about No.19 in the charts) but as usual we failed to act. A Labour government was in power at the time but they were riven by their own internal problems and battles with the Trades Unions. The weather was mostly dull, the beer watery and that influenced attitudes.

When I was an optimist: In my own head I had assumed that Joni Mitchell would eventually become US President and that things would sort themselves out and there would be outbreaks of kindness and honesty everywhere. In the UK I also imagined Ian Dury would be PM and that politics might take on a more self effacing style of humour and attitude. Based on this imaginary evidence I think I understand why we are somewhat adrift at the moment and why music and media stars are a bit unreliable when it comes to attaining positions of political leadership.

Cats Sitting

No text (apart from these words) and no drama.

Bill Murray on TV

After what seems like a short but lengthy spell of self imposed itinerant eternity we've returned to our renovated house complete with a renovated TV. It's time to relax in front of the big screen. For some reason Channel 4 is championing battered looking actor Bill Murray and his cellist pal as they are playing gigs here and there. As some kind of career change it makes the news in a day mostly filled with the usual tripe and self inflicted misery. 

That's my tired out feet at the bottom of the picture, supported by some surgical device pretending to be furniture. Because today was a moving day we feasted on fish and chips as is the local custom (I was taught never to begin a sentence with "because", this must be the first time I've done such an unspeakable thing since 1967). Now I almost feel free from the puritan curse of a dour Scottish education.

Final Thoughts

FFS. I guess I'm politically naive, I expect better things from people. Straight lines to be drawn between things. Simple arguments rather than complicated ones. Getting to the point etc. Being transparent enough so that the general public will at least understand where you're coming from and going to. But modern politics isn't like that, if it ever was.

The SNP have a strategy but it's not clear, no matter what they say because they don't indulge in straight talking (OK maybe they're not so bad with Covid). They have become a closed shop, a machine and I'm done with that sort of thing. The rot began in 2014, it's not stopped and it will get worse. They are weak, distracted and mostly self serving, careers before country etc. Mr Rushdie puts in well enough.

I can't be bothered anymore. None of this really matters. 😕

New Planets

 

While we slept they erased the known solar system and replaced it with an exact replica (apart from the fact that it's quite different). You may have experienced some mild discomfort or turbulence as this occurred. There are reports of injuries and damage to equipment. An official apology was published at the time but no one was ever named as being responsible for the turmoil. 

Understanding this new media based universe will now become part of the normal school syllabus and curriculum so that a consistent view of this re-imagined reality can be upheld. The UK government fully supports this change of view and has described it as being in line with their own rapidly forming chaotic ideology.

Want Want

Enjoyable things can happen to you, just be ready to look out for them.

An inspired and original piece of artwork by one of my grand daughters.

Want Want rice crackers, a small gift passed on from our Chinese neighbours because we took a parcel in for them.