Evolutionary Progress

Whilst Darwin style evolution is the default choice for explaining how things came to be, and I get that, sometimes I wonder why some obvious directions of evolution have not been taken. I'm puzzled that we have so few flying mammals. How, with all their voracious hunting skills, appetite for birds and energy did cats never manage to fly? Had they done so small birds would pretty much be extinct and battles between cats and raptors might be commonplace in our skies. 

I'm not saying that this would be a good thing but cats with wings has to be a logical step in their own progress as predators. You could argue that because cats have not developed wings (and flight) there may some inherent cap on evolution that prevents a creature becoming too dominant in it's field. This doesn't apply to humans though (that's a bit of a stretch) as we collide with everything in our path. Blah blah ... getting back to cats; we have interfered with feline evolution by domesticating them to the point that there's now no need for them to fly, so they don't.

Bigger cats, cougars, pumas etc. maybe could've gone this way but as most of their prey is ground dwelling there would be no need so it only seems a worthwhile extra attribute for smaller cats. If there was/is a god who controls evolution in some limited way or within creative boundaries then that god may have decided that wings would be a strength too far for cats versus the rest, so it never happened. Otherwise it's another random act of unintelligent nature limiting the success of one strand of creation.

I've really no idea or scientific insight into the whole theory of evolution (as is obvious), I'm just checking out one animal at a time and then, as the full weight of history and biology crash down on me, giving up and rambling. Of course this entire train of thought was inspired by me dreaming of one of our cats was up a tree attacking and subduing an owl in a very violent and unpleasant manner. "Don't fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult was playing along as the soundtrack to these slow motion Spaghetti Western style events. I awoke somewhat disturbed. I can't quite see cats the same way anymore, despite the fact that the cat in the dream was not equipped with wings of any kind.

Marveled Comix

A recently completed panel mock-up.

A silent world without word balloons but full of CGI explosions: I'm steadily getting more and more bored with the ever expanding Marvel Universe. It used to be an artistic if disturbing place, not any more. Now re-imagined as the centre of disasters and diversity so extreme it is as boundless and silly as any real universe. The melted faces of the reviewers, the disbelief of the audiences, the drunken staggering of the producers, the hum of the devices processing the payments, the capitulation of the sponsors, the reduction of the alcoholic mind-soup back to steam and heavy vapour. All in a bolder than bold script.

Cardboard cut outs, inky blocks of pain, fakes and dramas and half formed things we can't ever care about. At this point comics become a pointless distraction, then rendering them into the playground reality of action films making them even more ridiculous with each release. There was a time when fine, multi-coloured roses bloomed there, now I'm not so sure. Dead artists slowly spin in their finely inked, detailed and cross hatched graves, stricken by the exploding spaghetti of exploitation.

Cija Li Je Livada

Branko Mataja

Nice little tune from an obscure but talented musician, (that puts him in with the majority I guess). Sadly long gone but his music, very much home grown and inspired by his heritage lives on via the curious thing that is YouTube. A place where we all might gain eternal life.

Unexpected Life Form in the Bragging Area

The promise of a steady drizzle or a bout of hail may be enough to entice me out once in a while. The magnetism of the fresh air on flesh. The glory of lungs filled with celebratory low cloud. The joy of avoiding unexpected and unplanned roadworks by means of stealth. Eyes still on the prize of non-political correctness but set at an acceptable level. 

I'll also visit a supermarket of some sort to buy chicken pieces for the cats. In a parallel universe I know I'm also buying pieces of cat for the chickens. In a third kind of universe the cats are buying pieces of me for even more chickens. I'm glad not to be living there. Unexpected human sacrifice in the blogging area.

Upon Us All

According to Robert Plant "upon us all a little rain must fall". Weather maps and forecasts usually show patterns of rainfall from quite a distance, maybe a mile high or thereabouts. I'm not sure, at a personal level, that's the best way to display such information. Here's what you get when you map the rainfall pattern from where it lands / hits the ground when you roll out a grid to capture it. You also get wet graph paper. After a while it's pretty much useless too, perhaps an alternative to feeble paper is required for the data recording to remain meaningful. I suppose nobody is ever 100% happy with the weather forecast whichever way it is presented.

Backwards of Downtime

Art is either everywhere or nowhere.

Try to address it if you will.

A categorical eating of pickles.

Less fuss and furor than your average Oscars ceremony.

A nasty bite from the Metropolitan Police's toothless squad

All hands on deck for BBC Scotland's  journalistic standards.

When you're low you're low.

The Royal Family: it's own dysfunctional cash machine.

A guitar shaped like a fish does not need a bicycle.

You are in way too deep for yourself.

Alternative LED bulbs from Latvia.

Computers are easy to take apart with a claw hammer.

Unexpected load in the washing machine.

What the world needs now is love sweet love.

That's the only thing there's just too little of.

Too Late for the Humans

 

In the morning I usually eat muesli.

IKEA on a Monday morning, store just open, piano music on the Tannoy, a few shoppers in masks looking and pointing. There's a synchronized shuffle in the way we move, all maintaining a safe distance. It's a peculiar place to be. Walking idly around, not really planning a purchase, just following the arrows and staring into simulated rooms on the left and right. Like a strange voyeuristic out of body trip, empty spaces, plastic fruit, wine bottles and pretend notes on pin boards. My mind is now filming it all, as if in an abandoned house or hospital for some shaky, hand held YouTube Channel.

I continue my retailing shuffle as if I'm sneaking through that vacant care home, or a mental health ward just after a false fire alarm had sounded and the evacuation exercise was complete, though nobody bothered to switch off the piped music piano track. Somewhere up above, beyond the golden clouds, perhaps God's great judgement is finally underway. All the beds are made, objects are placed here and there but nobody touches them, too late for the humans now, we've run out of sleep time. It's an immersive experience being here at the edge of the rapture but still without the full picture.

After a twenty five minute wander and ponder I was done. At the robot till I handed over an electrical signal to give them £17.50 and received a bamboo tray, a soap dish, a phone holder and some sticky pads in return. Then across to the cafe for a packet of muesli and a take away coffee. Unfortunately there were no jars of roll-mop herring available from the fridge, I was somewhat disappointed to find this out. What a time to be alive (assuming that we are indeed alive).

Beginnings of Wisdom

Cat you spot the hidden cartoon cat? 

The famous optical illusion has been circulating for many years in the veterinary sector where it is used to try solve what is commonly known as the "canine syndrome". Dogs being dogs basically. There is also the "feline syndrome" which is tackled by quite different means, using Liki-Lix mostly.

Sunday

 

Happy Sunday.

Sign Language

Are you a corpse or are you feeling wet down low?

Perhaps you're taking part in a Highland Dancing Show.

Just some other sorts of things, I'll never really know.

You can tell that this is a short poem because the text is positioned centrally on the page. A sure fire sign of poetic intent. Positioning is important. So some say. There are lots of things that some say, for example:

"Can three not very entertaining lines of forced humour actually make a poem? Maybe more space between the lines would help. Oh and a fourth line with additional detail might make it more interesting. Just a thought. You need to try harder."

Now Playing

1. Now playing on YouTube. Well it was playing there. A strange album and unpopular at the time of it's release with many people but not me. I think it's fair to say that this incarnation of the band were better without (contributions from) Jeremy Spencer. Nothing against him but that's how it is. 

2. "What do you want?"

     "To be found out ... the same as everybody else."

       From Nightmare Alley.

3. Sounds to me like your average, run of the mill ostrich. Nothing special.

4. Meanwhile let's consider the earth's atmosphere, protecting the unworthy from the great vacuum that exists beyond the firmament. As is now traditional I must credit this photograph as having been taken from a Canberra. 

5. I promise you that it's forever, it's cast iron.

Dundee Daily etc.

A former furniture store and repository now derelict, open to the weather and the current home to a large number of pigeons. Very close to the city centre it seems an odd oversight that this remains standing and undeveloped. Sign of the times I suppose, there are quite a few more development blights nearby.

On the waterfront by the V&A we have this peculiar whale sculpture. Not easily recognizable as a whale from every angle so on approaching it you seem to see a large and incomplete bus shelter. It's also surrounded by some interactive pieces that don't seem to interact or offer helpful instructions. Perhaps we visited on a bad day when the systems were down. A tribute to the many dead whales who's oil was burned up to light the lamps of our forefathers.

The Tim Tam: It's the Australian version of the Penguin biscuit and is better quality but smaller and much more expensive. A tasty if short lived treat and a footnote in my biscuit consumption history.

Cats don't have a plan

Having lived alongside various cats and been an active member of their workforce for a number of years I've finally come to the conclusion that cats do not really have a clear plan of what they might be doing. There are noises they make (incomprehensible meows mostly) that mean nothing but are still full of expression. Paws are extended and your leg gets scratched but there is no obvious meaning in the gesture. It's puzzling for the human.

Then they circle the chair you are sitting on so to encourage you to stand up and follow them but then they go nowhere. They lie on your tummy and deliberately ignore you because you are a couch now and when you need to move they are upset. They hang around by their feeding dishes as if hungry but as soon as you put some fresh food in the dish they escape via the nearby cat flap. 

It's a bit like living with some benign and almost human looking member of the Conservative Party who abstains from parliamentary votes they said they'd take part in or an elderly, regular reader of the Glasgow Herald who is unaware that they are now living in a care home. God love them though (cats, not the human equivalents), for some reason I'm addicted to this odd and slightly abusive treatment.

Spelling Mistakes on Twitter

What is the point when most things are pointless? Nothing undermines or frankly destroys the power of your witty or pithy Tweet like a well placed spelling mistake. OK I'll be generous and allow for typos, they happen, usually in the searing heat of the social media moment. Then there's also some bits poor of punctuation and grammar that are questionable, additional pieces of delight for the critical and uncaring reader. Of course looking back over my own body of shambolic work I've little right to even make such puerile observations. But I will.

On a positive note I've designed a special font named "Eagle Eye" that hopefully will mask any errors caused by hasty or thoughtless typing. It's main strength being the fact that it is mostly illegible. Examples are as below (a short extract from Finnegan's Wake). It's free at the point of use.

Your Own Daft Ideas

Outside, in the shimmering cold a puffy, poisonous cloud sinks below the moon, sneaking along some uneven path in the night time air, like an old man on his way back to the barn after an unexpected and over indulgent night out. Alternatively some alien life form or a ghost from outer space drifting along with no particular purpose. Maybe even a lost weather balloon from the Soviet era.

I saw it with my own two eyes and took a photo with those same eyes. Plain as day but at night. It was a revelation but only on a small scale. It hardly counts. In the dark you can make up what you like. When I awoke it was another day.

Often humans just invent their own reality and then decide to inhabit it. As George Orwell said "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."

If the M6 was the M9

The break up of the United Kingdom by asphalt based logic (except for viewers in NI who seem to lack a useful road numbering system): Some clever person came up with the idea of splitting the septic isle into administrative regions that correspond to the main road network. So you get your boundaries from the road routes, A1-M1, A9-M9 etc. It kind of dings away some nationalistic ideas (or does it?) and creates new, maybe even warlike tribal areas in between the potholed carriageways. Scotland looks OK in the main, we could lose all those stuffy border Tories and rugby twats whilst declaring Edinburgh a free if slightly fractured state. 

It's a lesser plan than the SNP's independence idea; oh wait. they don't have any ideas currently, just wind, pish and being busy featherbedding themselves. Anyway I might start a political or even a pagan movement based on this so we can storm the cultural barricades. 

We're in District 9 by the way, the surly pink zone that also annexes Orkney and Shetland. Sorry about the other island communities, you're still floating away and ignored. Meanwhile in certain, even more dystopian scenarios, the Mayor of London could rule almost anywhere that the Russians might allow.

Pickle Sandwich

A few days ago I mentioned my requirement for pickles and how forgetful I had been when trying to buy them. I finally got a jar from an actual shop* and started putting them to good use. So here we have two kinds of sourdough bread, ham, cream cheese, mustard and pickle forming up into a pleasing pickle tribute of a lunchtime sandwich. 

*The shop was one of the latest "horse free" supermarkets where there are no horses roaming around distracting or possibly intimidating would be and otherwise carefree shoppers. I'm quite glad that the concept of a "horse free" supermarket has finally caught on around here. It certainly alters the retail experience in a good way. I realise that this is a topical topic but if you will just imagine going in to do your grocery shopping and not being even gently harassed by a horse (however friendly or nice it may be) and it certainly makes for trouble free Polo Mint and apple purchases, including the multi-packs. There's also a lot less dung in the aisles and fewer confusing altercations at the check outs when people try to buy the horse as part of their shopping tally and cant find the barcode. If any of this seems ridiculous to you then we're clearly living in different universes.

Grateful Dad

This is where it all began, in a book by Jasper MacSweeny Esq, written and illustrated pretty much in the days of yore and profundity in a farm cottage in Tullibody. Some scary hippies stole it, shipped it to the West Coast (Greenock) and the rest is a kind of blurred and garbled bit of forgotten history. Incidentally my imaginary tribute band name is of course the Grateful Dad*.

*Obviously already in use by various people far and wide so forget it. 

CRIMSON KINGs etc.

Robert Fripp isn't one of my heroes but he might be one of yours.

Looking for pickles in Tesco, no particular type, just pickles. Walked up and down a few aisles, didn't see any obvious pickles. Promptly forgot about pickles and bought some fresh peppers, tomatoes and bananas instead. Back home I'm thinking "I quite fancy a pickle, a pickle like the pickle the bloke in that film, the name of which I can't remember, was eating from that pickle jar, in France." Then I remembered that I forgot about the pickles and failed even to find their aisle in the shop. Now I'm thinking that I should just visit another shop and start all over again. In some ways this explains my relationship with King Crimson, in other ways it doesn't.

Thin Wines of the World

 

Another superficial film and drink review: Wine now comes in cutting edge design, ultra thin, recycled something or other bottles. There's no glass or anything. A triumph of modern fabrication in a satisfying shape. It's from Australia but bottled in Basingstoke or someplace. It makes a few journeys and there's a manufacturing process that are not too helpful for the green credentials but it's a reasonable try. Saving the planet one skinny weird bottle at a time, though your fridge shelves might need to be adapted for a good fit. We sipped the red and white varieties whilst watching the new mumble-core movie adaption of Dune. Quite thirsty work with all that heat, sand and wanton destruction.