Wednesday, November 09, 2022
Cat: No Filter
Here's an unfiltered geriatric cat adopting a sitting freeze position which he managed to maintain for pretty much three hours. Most of this time he was purring and to all intents and purposes staring into space, happy with his lot. Frozen insomnia. I guess we've all been there.
Tuesday, November 08, 2022
The Elusive Melody
Monday, November 07, 2022
Nihilists for Nothing
Sunday, November 06, 2022
Roll Up for Glasto!
Roll up and get your Glastonbury 2023 tickets here, or not as the case may be. We live with the constant threat of disappointment, it's 2022 after all, the year of further shit happening. Losing out on this virtual queue is a pretty common experience as it turns out. Staring into the barrel of a 20 second countdown style void that judders along for 72 minutes is a cruel and slow form of torture for the elderly. Then the ugly truth emerges. It's all sold out and you might die without ever getting there. The promise was real but now it's gone. Now it's over for us. We retreat in abject failure and will, in due course think again, fingers at the ready.
Saturday, November 05, 2022
Here but not Created
Studio Diary: A worthwhile day was spent in the recording studio yesterday. As ever I'm learning all the time. 9v power cables generate a lot of unwanted noise, you may need to do away with them. My memory is unreliable. The abilities to count and concentrate are not linked. Click tracks only work up to a point, writing two rhythms into a song doesn't help. Auto-tune is everywhere, just embrace it's use at least in limited areas. A loud and dirty guitar sound leads to loud and dirty guitar music. The rule of "three takes for a guitar part/solo" holds up even after all these years.
There is always a song that says, "you need a 12 string guitar for this". Every so often you should have the inside of your head scooped out like a boiled egg, this may sound bad or disturbing but it will help you in the long run. In a sensible world (?) petrol sold near to the refinery where it was refined should be cheaper in price than at places that are further away from the refinery. Glastonbury tickets go on sale tomorrow, we have two personal registration numbers; one has 9 digits, the other has 10. Hmm.
Friday, November 04, 2022
Uncanny Valley
Parking this here due to my own personal forgetfulness and self doubt as once again I must enter the valley. I'm clearly not a robot or some auto-tuned voice but sometimes I wish I was (just a bit).
"Uncanny Valley" is a hypothesis that AI style human replicas that appear almost but not exactly like real humans elicit feelings of eeriness and revulsion, among some observers but not all.
"Masahiro Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some observers' emotional response to the robot becomes increasingly positive and empathetic until it reaches a point beyond which the response quickly becomes strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels."
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Pleasure and Happiness
The new old urbanism: A wet Wednesday evening. Shoppers are queuing to buy tat in glossy shops where the label and bag logo mean more than the contents. Few things are "nice", they're just the shiny bright totems and charms that beckon the beholder into some pretend place of pleasure and temporary satisfaction. Like candlesticks and crosses in a gilded chapel, they suggest the great beyond, the supernatural and a wider horizon but the payoff never arrives. In the end they lead nowhere as the lights dim and the candle's wax cools into chilled drips that cling to their holders. The inner light has failed. Nobody is going anywhere and the fun of existence is sucked into some black hole of continuous credit and hypnotic greed. So suck up some more snake oil and don't bother to review your life or purpose. The open road that led back to simplicity has closed it's black and yellow barriers.
Anyway, it's hard not to wander around a mall and not feel you'll be picked up on CCTV as a bad egg, a misfit, walking in circles, going up and down escalators and not taking part in the shopping spree. Staring into windows isn't enough, you deserve to be ejected back out into the rain where you belong. Security sees you and the fingers point. If you want to stay then get in the line for a bubble tea, jewelry for a loved one's gift, some impossibly designed trainers or a perfume that will transport you to some exotic location where Jonny Depp might be waiting. Shopping breaks even more promises than religion or politics and nobody holds it to account as it just rolls on 24 hours a day, in the flesh, on line, over the phone, through TV. We seem to have the wisps of pleasure but never get to the heart of happiness.
Monday, October 31, 2022
Halloween Pumpkin Ideas
Withering testimony and reality check from a pumpkin impersonator:
"I had considered spending the day disguised as a pumpkin and completing several low key local journeys by train in order to ascertain the quality and integrity of my hastily put together costume. The purpose of the test being to measure how convinced my fellow travelers might be that I was indeed a person who might have morphed into a pumpkin and also how the October weather might impact on my apparel. After a few sharply taken selfies I saw that I was looking more like the elephant man than anything else so I decided to stay at home with my original head wedged in a book. The pumpkin part of my head came away easily leaving only a few red marks on my neck. I then discarded the pumpkin. An unpleasant smell also remains in the air so don't try this at home. It was then that I discovered the wolf hidden in the large flower vase..."
Clearly none of this is a good idea.
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Seasonal Greetings
The day before the 31st. This pumpkin has already expired, one of the many that just didn't make the big day. Pulled too soon from the warm earth, sold into a type of modern slavery and exploitation, hacked and chiseled into an unpumpkinlike form with little significance to the history of the fruit. Then only briefly and sporadically illuminated by a cheap tea light candle and finally ignored and discarded as a collapsing, mouldy husk. October may be the cruelest of months ... if you're ever reincarnated as a pumpkin.
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Medieval Times
The clocks go back tonight. Nobody really knows why. We just do what we're told. It's something to do with farmers, school children and cyclists I think. They need less gloomy conditions and a grey safety curtain to perform their duties. Maybe the butchers, the bakers and those very busy candlestick makers or the remains of the Holy Roman Empire need it too. Perhaps it saves us money.
Friday, October 28, 2022
Strange Fruit
The leaves are rotting and tumbling from the tree but those stubborn pears remain. A long summer in the pale sun, drying out and fattening up hasn't improved the quality of the crop. Tough, sour and tasteless they remain, a strange and peculiar fruit, hanging like unfortunately and unjustly sentenced criminals in the October gloom. They have two states now, on the tree or on the ground. There is no redemption or resurrection here, they are in some temporary limbo before they settle down into their winter home, the dreaded brown garden bin.
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Thank You for not Smoking
Itchy ankles. A closed and closeted world that doesn't exist. Burning things and puffing smoke. Clubs and societies with devotees who have very small eyes. Those mysterious groups that seem to operate in shadows and half light but really do nothing. Setting up and off intruder alarms. A cruel smile. Loud triumphant music played on brass instruments on a damp day. Card games under a spotlight. The kind of subjects that a bad artist might paint. People who are more like dogs than people but don't realise it. Locked doors that nobody bothers to try to open. Flickering neon signs with letters missing, mostly the vowels. Imitations of life. Bricked up windows. Using the word spectacles when you could just say glasses. Weird drinking habits. Dining from cold plates. Ugh. These are the things that haunt us.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Tuesday Ruby
"Goodbye Tuesday Ruby, who is gonna hang a name on you? And when you change with every new day, still I'm gonna miss you." Jagger/Richards.
"Tuesday's dram is still only an imagined thing that, on a Tuesday morning doesn't exist, it's only an idea or a desire that will come to be at the right time later on in the day. All good things are worth waiting for and should be realised at the best time possible, say in the early part of the evening when the mind is still sharp." Robert Burns. The Crest of the Broken Wave.
Monday, October 24, 2022
Dram
A nice wee golden glass of Scottish whisky. A dram. Very relaxing and the prelude to a good night's sleep but don't take my word for it.
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Figure in Red
The footy competition in the Scottish Seaside League goes on. This week we're in the municipal mega city known as Montrose. A lovely place mainly remembered for being mostly Montrose. Under blood grey skies the game was played out in a fairly dull and grey fashion. We (the DAFC visitors) were beaten by two quick goals and that was the end of our afternoon out pretty much. The understandably much abused Tory MP Mr Douglas Ross was running the line (the figure in red in the photo). Despite my obvious dislike for that party and it's representatives I couldn't actually fault his performance as a linesman. Perhaps that task should be the main one he focuses on for the future. Are you stuck in the wrong career and fed up with things? Why not get out then? (It's not so simple is it?).
Pie, coffee and Snickers score: a healthy 7 out of 10.
Friday, October 21, 2022
Ages of Consent
Another year another birthday. What an unexpected surprise it was to my absent minded absent mind. I am however pleased to have reached an age where, quite legally, I can purchase and enjoy a liquorice pipe. I find that it alleviates the many stresses we are subjected to when, as residents within the UK, we are being governed by utter fuckwits. This ancient and serene cure for the jitters is only one of the many benefits than can come your way as you get older. Looking at sunny, bright pictures a clever grand child coloured in also helps.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Economic Solutions
Sixty seven years of philandering and curiosity. No one knows how hard I worked to earn those 203 blue stars on eBay. "You lived what anybody gets, you got a lifetime".
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Gasoline for Water
In keeping with the great folk/blues lyrical singing traditions i.e. "I asked her for water and she gave me gasoline", I'm thinking of writing an eBay version. It may or may not go like this: "I ordered a 28w fluorescent 4 pin light bulb but they sent me a PRIMA hot & cold thermos flask." Doesn't quite scan that well really but you just never know when you might need to introduce an unsung line with an unexpected element into a tune. Not sure how may stars to add for their review, five for imagination would be fair enough.