Music

Music: The strange art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
Music can also be vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.
Simply put a musical composition is music.

Next time you're near one, pop into a branch of Guitar Guitar and have a listen to what's going on in there. It's probably music but it's hard to be sure. Maybe it's something else, something greater and higher, something that's progressed past the audio appreciation of the common man. I don't know. You have to experience it at least once in your life. Then you can die happy.

South Queensferry Daily Photo

 

The seasonal gloom descends on the close knit community that is SQ. Shrouded in some self inflicted mist and at times horizontal rain we cleave together secure in the knowledge that we're slightly better off than those unfortunates freezing in the American Midwest. Mind you they have automatic weapons, big trucks and copious amounts of weak beer with which to battle their extreme weather. I'm still happier here for the time being apart from getting upset by the regular Facebook bulletins that tell of lost cats and dogs and people trying car doors in housing estates. 

Our supplies are less volatile and mostly consist of flat Prosecco, snack foods and slowly discolouring leftovers. In fact the humus sticks are about to be placed in the oven. We'll consume them soon. Our oven is so right on that it has an actual setting for humus sticks. Humus also means "vegetable mold", a fact I've just discovered. Yum. 

It hardly seems like two whole days since it was Christmas and we'll have to wait another 363 till the next one. I am considering setting up a petition or a crowd-funder to lobby for Christmas only to be celebrated once every 5 years. David Bowie wrote a song about that very idea, or am I mistaken? It'll probably just generate unintended consequences and the "festival of excessive landfill generation" (as I like to call it) will likely just be driven underground and become even more powerful.

Christmas

 

"It's been a wonderful Christmas here in the Kingdom of Fife. We all received lovely new outfits and hats from the Christmas faerie-folk's visit. Later we took a walk in the snow and then released the hounds into the village streets. It was such fun, we'll probably do it all again next year if we're spared. Did I ever mention to you what was prophesied for 2023? Never mind if I didn't, it'll catch you soon enough."

Trickle Down Economics

 

A seasonal  piece from Cold War Steve. The ever resourceful Michele visits the "bank" because we all know that god always helps those who help themselves. "What business are you in these days?"

Small Penis

 

It's a great (OK reasonable) advert. It certainly worked for me. I'm a simple kind of a soul.

As Christmas approaches I find it difficult to resist falling into the trap of grumpy cynicism when I consider this tarnished and exploited season. A festival of capitalism and joyful misery combined. A machine that has carried us along on it's greed and religious pointlessness for our entire lives as we became happily brainwashed and ground down. The good news is most of it will be over by next week and we've only to endure the shallow optimism of new year celebrations.

Small penis, large salad. Also stop posting dull photographs of nondescript foods that don't reflect your actual lifestyle.

Seasonal Fault Code

 

So today's lucky (seasonal) central heating boiler fault code is number 228. If you, like us, are the recipient of such a code message sent out from your boiler and visible on the control screen then ... well maybe you're not so lucky. The good news is of course that temperatures should not drop below zero for a few days and that a repairman may call by on the 23rd. Can he fix it? I've no clear idea. First world problems.

John Barleycorn (Must Die)

Idly creating collages of things that I randomly encounter.

Happy to be ignored.

Ghost in the Machine

Slithering up icy pavements on a curiously cold Edinburgh morning. I don't think my soul fully left my body as it was pulled upon by the warm exhaling of my breath and my stoic determination not to fall on the frozen concrete. The older you get the more you fear falling. Experts say it's a possible end of life/end of mobility moment at certain ages. Climbing ladders isn't recommended either if you're a male craving adventure. It creeps up on you but then everything does in life, like some slow motion catastrophe you're catching in your peripheral vision. 

I was wondering if other people, some pulled along by dogs, had pairs of magic shoes that grant traction and stability in frost. I lacked the courage to ask why they were progressing along so much quicker than me. I'm never sure if there's some universal truth or power out there that I've simply missed while others just use it continually and quite naturally while I struggle. Am I one of those people? 

Anyway everybody should have a near death thought experiment when heading for a health check and interview. It makes life all the more wonderful and appreciated when you emerge out at the other side under the illusion that you might just be immortal providing you can stay indoors all winter.

As I slid back down the hill from my encounter with the world of medicine I slowly careered into a chilly but welcoming cafe and ordered and ate some Scottish soul food. Braw brunch at Braw Brunch, East Fountainbridge. I'd score the food a generous 7/10 and the service was very good.

Hollowing

They're hollowing out the world

As we quietly stand by

They say it's something of little importance

I don't understand why.

Snow Apparently

The chimney sweep can't get here today because there's snow apparently. I presume all the chimney sweeps are stuck in it. Now the chimney won't be swept until 2023, a whole long period of time away. One health and safety situation just creates another and so it goes on. As a mark of respect and show of solidarity with those frozen chimney sweeps I lit the log burner anyway, mostly as a test but also to generate heat. There's snow apparently. 

The Roads to Freedom

When you're busy trying to understand and map out your younger self's life and attitudes but retrospectively. It never did look quite like this but perhaps it came close at times, or so I imagined. I simply wasn't that deep. "Tried picking up guitar but stopped because he wasn't immediately good at it", sounds a bit familiar. We've all been there. Good choices in music and clothing though, if a bit obvious, spanning a few generations too. Where's Jack Kerouac when you need him?

Edinburgh Daily Icicle

At this time of year Edinburgh is at it's shabbiest. Grit and tinsel on roads, pavements and ground into potholes. Fairy lights, buskers and beggars. Fairgrounds and stalls have "popped up" in order to cash in on some seasonal rush of outdoor activities despite the weather being sub zero and canned music fills the grey air. Desperate and frankly half hearted attempts at Christmas cheer abound, they mainly consist of contracted out tat supported by perpetual scaffolding works. The stalwart locals carry on despite the ironic sense of gloom while the blinking but eyes wide tourists are politely fleeced on every street corner. I can't quite fathom what is needed to fix this. We have as much culture as a fucked cement mixer it seems. 

Would Scottish independence transform this delusional paradise? Bail out the fabled Athens of the North though it has more economic woes than present day Greece? A nice idea but I doubt it. Politicians can't deliver miracles or traffic solutions and God clearly hates us all at Christmas and you cant blame him for that. On the bright side I did see these interesting and 100% natural ice forms and I also had the pleasure of purchasing the world's smallest latte and largest pain au chocolate for a measly £5.50, this is known as street food now and is all the rage apparently. 

Long Twitter

 

Are there any people out there who don't like or appreciate geometry? There's a bit of the golden ration going on here, in a less developed form. You could of course apply this to any piece of composition. That doesn't make it any less interesting. So hardly a month goes by without me making some cheap and predictable reference to the work of Caravaggio but I can't help myself. Elon Musk, inventor (?) of the burning Tesla also likes this, that doesn't count as any kind of Musk endorsement or supportive message from me. Since he bought Twitter it's become ... a bit different. Either that or I've just flip-flopped into following other types of accounts and it's been more interesting. They've reworked some gears behind the scenes. Upping the character limit to 4000 is not a good idea either. Nobody wants "long" Twitter. Nobody wants change. 😉

To be honest I found eating this chocolate bar to be a bit of a disappointing experience. I may include it in my thesis about why modern generic chocolate is all a bit shit really.

Argus

Blethering on about Angus made me remember Argus. Good, tuneful stuff from Wishbone Ash, a band I occasionally think about or sometimes even listen to. They probably are still chuntering on in some form here and there but I think this was when they hit their high water mark. Happens to us all. They're like musical granola, a touch now and then keeps the system clean and regulated but you don't want to over do it.

Maybe I'll be buried in Angus to the strains of Argus. Buried by a red Kubota mini digger, dragged up the glen's winding roads behind a Transit pickup truck. Not by a team of silent workers wearing flat caps and blue dungarees one of whom is holding a Clydesdale horse steady as the work progresses. Then again they might all be convicts sent out on a forced labour trip to dig out my one and only grave. They work on in the hole with little concern over who might occupy it. That really doesn't matter. My executioner has already walked away from whatever the scene was. I just hope the ground isn't hard frozen at the time. This is quite a strange line of thought for a Tuesday morning. All very Wednesday Adams.

Angus

Peaceful scenes amid the rampant stupidity that surrounds us all as it oozes in from the TV and squelches underfoot from social media and unfettered "opinions". World Cups, politics, celebrity nonsense and non stop weather warnings. A tedious soup that's impossible to avoid or navigate, like some clogged ring road you simply must use to get home, but there's a blizzard and a thousand other idiots daydreaming behind the wheel and your traction is lost. 

Positive thinking. Some time in the peaceful glens of Angus, birthplace of Scotland (so Angus says but doesn't quite explain) might be an antidote, a cure or at least a temporary form of relief. No signal, no waves, no electrical connections, just the wind and the weather and a smattering of elements across the landscape.

Friday Gibberish

It's Friday, it's December, it's not Christmas but everyone else seems to think it is. I realise at this point that I live in a slightly different world to, well not everyone but a fair few. My world is full of slow starters, late adopters and streams of thought that might be considered gibberish if tuned into by others. Sharp encounters over these differences never happen so I'm hardly bothered or affected. The season of assumed jollity along with the mighty tinsel avalanche that we are headed for will pass, like everything else and soon we'll be back to cultivating rhubarb and thinking of future pies, crumbles and reasonable harvests if the fates allow. 

Meanwhile artists are getting annoyed by AI high-jacking their stuff and remodeling it as even worse bits of tacky art. It's a fair if slightly Luddite styled objection. Those hard working artists may down tools and leave us to stew in our AI juice and where will we be then? Eh? We all want recognition and credit even after the destruction and corruption of what we believe we built. Future researchers will study the rubble to check for AI jpegs covered in dust and cobwebs and try to decode their source and muse about "what it all meant" and "what kind of people were they?" We'll look down from our ageless matrix homes, groan and whisper "None of this matters, you should just concentrate on finding a decent, straight, well potted Christmas tree for the house."

I Had One

I didn't draw this but at least I owned one of these beasts for about three years and 130,000 miles. Happy(ish) days.

Dial of Despair

Another movie franchise bites on the credibility dust it seems. Indiana Jones' last hurrah is about to burst onto a bemused public thanks to the lemon squeezers at Disney. I suppose it never was believable but this one features a time travel twist that will make a bonfire of even the worst of the previous films. A slow but predicable death of a legend as Disney churns the life and fun out of once solid gold creations. Frail old Indy travels back in time (I presume once he's discovered the dial of destiny under the Pope's throne or some other unlikely spot), of course he encounters his younger self and along the way ends the Jones' timeline in a muddle of time paradoxes and flying fists fighting against the Nazis.

Thankfully his younger and leveled headed assistant (played by the snappy Phoebe Waller-Bridge from Fleabag) survives and takes on the Indy mantle (as per Dr Who) for the foreseeable future (?) in subsequent films*. You can imagine the scenes of joy and table thumping when the producers and writers came up with this idea. Not too much to think about now for the next ten years, just keep the contracts solid and the cast alive. We can confirm that the public will watch any diluted shit for a given period of time if the title rings a bell for them. 😕

*None of this may ever come to be but the rage and outrage in the internet rumour mill is a wonderful if bitter sweet thing.

Cat Food

The internet is going crazy for cat food, three brands I've never heard of are bombarding me with offers on various platforms. The pressure is intense but don't they know we buy our pet food at B&M? All other cat food doesn't even contain meat apparently. There's something rotten at the core of the world of cat victualing they say, hardly a surprise, the competition is stiff but then their full menu is "slow cooked" and that makes all the difference. As for the cats, they just like chewing on Tesco chicken pieces from the cooked meats aisle, at £1.79 a pop.

Warm Wishes

"Warm Wishes". My charity shop bought Christmas mobile motto. To be honest "warm wishes" sounds a bit like somebody has wet the bed or partaken in water sports of some sort but then it's an official Chinese Disney jumper. I'll wear it with some pride and a seasonal dose of irony. Hope it's not itchy. The older I get the more I fuckin' hate Christmas (well the warped mass media version of Christmas that's been shoved down our throats since October). First of December and I'm ready for a Christmas rant.