Lords and Gods of Progressive Rock

Vague truth: When you download it is it really down and when you upload it is it really up and where exactly is all this material kept anyway? Does it exist at all or is it an illusion? As history unwinds it's tortuous story down a fairly uncertain path why are there always more questions than answers and why have the great gods of progressive rock with all their lyrical flights of fantasy failed to stumble onto even the vaguest of truths? 

Of course you could argue that they have pursued many vague truths quite diligently and neither proven or disproven any of them because the subject matter is mostly fictional, which is an answer of sorts. Word salads from the creative corner isn't any better than word salad from anywhere else. It's still salad. Don't start me on country*, punk, hip hop or AOR salads either.

Protest singers, god bless them, are far more certain in their chosen line of business, they tend to deal in facts but allow for a certain amount of warping in the process. Their salad is warm or just around room temperature (that used to be a thing). Right on. Somehow I find that rather more satisfying. I still like mellotrons though.

*Just taking a moment to reflect on the enormous contribution made by the oh so tragic country duo Sunflower and Catfood. In the end Gram Parsons was so proud to have been associated with them as was I.

Sunflower and Catfood

 

Sounding very much like an up and coming country and western duo we have here, as special guests on the blog, none other than the fabulous Sunflower and Catfood. Sunflower is in the first bloom of the (summer?) season, short and to the point. The taller and more beefy looking plants have yet to flower. Will they ever? I wonder, it's getting late.

Cat food; here it is specially prepared to entice the not so hungry kittens at bed time when we're hoping they'll quietly settle for the night after a decent meal. To attract them to the table, the food is cunningly garnished with squirts of a cat friendly street cocaine known as Liki-Lix (available from all good super-markets). It works, they certainly eat it all up but are not so eager to fall asleep.

As an added bonus feature you might like to see the photo below not as a high class feline dish but rather as an artistic attempt to create a version of Micky Mouse rendered as cat food. A barbed social comment from the wider cat community as they strike back at the Disney empire.

When you ask AI all about the fabulous "Sunflower & Catfood" and how they're musical careers are going, this is the image you get. Marvelous people and great entertainers according to the stalwarts of the music press. Great to see you both looking so happy and well, folks everywhere are so glad you're together. You make a lovely but unreal couple.

Concrete Plans for Schooling

A stick-man government fails to invest in school infrastructure. They sit on their arses. They cut the budget by 50%. They hid the facts. It's deliberate. Nothing to see here.

In simple terms Conservative governments don't care about improving the standards of education for ordinary people. Quite the opposite, it matters to them that the education of the masses is delivered to a poor standard. This applies to every aspect of education from pre-school to university. Nobody in power wants a well educated electorate actually understanding the history, nature and levels of corruption that exist deep in British high society and maybe then trying to change how the state is run. That's a threat to their system. And they're pretty safe in there.

So keep the plebs stupid and ignorant, dirty and drunk, hopefully to the point where they will be apathetic about politics and just not bother to engage or vote. That in very simple terms is the plan. Survival  through substandard. So if a few state schools are broken or off line for a while they will be quite happy. It wont affect their kids will it?

Sorry, Tuesday brings out the worst. Tomorrow we'll be back to light weight surrealism or something similar.

The Scarecrow's Beautiful Wife

Available for sale as a composed NFT only: Multi digitized image of imaginary Chinese celebrity scarecrow "Footsy" on a coach tour holiday with his wife visiting active volcanoes in and around Indonesia in the early part of the 2000s. The scene depicts the infamous incident that took place when their tour bus had a flat tyre as a result of accidentally reversing into a pool of lava on the edge of the parking area whilst all the wardens were on their lunch break. The lunch menu has never been recovered.

It was thought that the hostages would escape at this point but Footsy calmed them with a hastily conceived meditation bomb. Nobody was injured as a result but prayers and thoughts were asked for by multiple social media users all across the world's scarecrow community. Some say that they fell on deaf ears. As you may know scarecrows are currently threatened with extinction as result of recent aggressive and biased economic policy amongst at least nine countries in the G7 group and also guitarists in the F#m group. Price(s) on application. Crop rotations are not affected by this offer.

Photos of Food

Last week's menu: Actually just a food related photo taken prior to warming these trays up. Waitrose fish pie* smells like cat food but actually tastes fine. Is this true for all ready meal fish pies? Probably not. It could also be that cat food aromas have become trapped in my nostrils since the kittens came to stay as I'm on fairly regular preparation duty dishing up their high protein meals. In other words everything smells like cat food.

Fish pies don't always taste "fine" (which is hardly a scientific measure of anything but reflects budget buys mostly) but they may well all smell like cat food prior to being heated to perfection assuming you're regularly scraping cat food into cat dishes with nostrils that are slightly conflicted. This revelation and observation follows on from very little extensive research and too much imagination. 

*Reduced to clear etc.

Below: That time when somebody forgot to order the fish pies in time for the meal.

Pond Life

Unsightly garden features - continued: Following on from the reasonable success of the log store project I also up-cycled another pallet and somehow managed to build this elevated garden pond. Obviously it's only pallet sized but I tweaked it with extra timber to make the pond about a foot deep. You Tube experience and guidance can be a good thing, I've confirmed that there is clearly nothing new in the world. Fish are not part of the plan at the moment, more like "lower level creepy crawly wildlife", water happy plants to keep things clean and occasional support for bird baths. It's all gone very Zen recently. Yes that is second year asparagus growing on the right.

Taylor Swift: The Complete Eras Megamix

I'm impressed: But I don't much like the term megamix even though it's an accurate description. At some point I'll no doubt write something critically meaningful about this and the impact of Taylor Swift on things in general, but just not today. It actually has everything. 

More Logs

The up-cycled log store* I built a few weeks ago is now full of logs following a delivery on Saturday. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Part of me never wants to remove a single log from the store. It's quite a big part of me. My brain I think. Fortunately we have another (smaller) log store and also some surplus logs put aside in the shed, so time is on my side for when to I have to decide what to do with them. Perhaps by that time I'll have matured into a better person or suffered some kind of health breakdown where trivial things like logs wont bother me. 

I feel like an evil billions bloke hoarding his log-based wealth that grew from a hedge (fund). Maybe we'll be living on the moon soon, logs will be obsolete then. We'll be burning Tesla batteries instead. I shouldn't think like that. Incidentally the logs are two deep on the shelves and I figured out that there are about 300 in this store, maybe 100 in the other one and about 50 in the shed. That's 450 logs in my collection of logs. Do I have enough for the horrors of winter and what about the smoke and fumes given off by actual burning? Damn. The future is bright, probably lit up by smouldering logs and burning EVs.

*Other garden projects are available.

Deviants

 

A Scottish politician is upset because somebody called him a deviant, twice apparently. He's informed the polis. Something will happen eventually. He might have been frothing at the mouth in rage, he takes things like that seriously being a public figure. He may have led a sheltered life (?). I'm not so well educated but I do know the meaning of deviant. It just means "different, not part of the norm, having different standards etc." Seems to me that's not really an insult either but a fairly accurate way to describe any modern politician. A sorry, funny but humorless bunch in my opinion (on both sides of the border), all hissy fits, posturing and taking the line however ridiculous.

Deviant is quite a useful word. In fact I just might be a deviant of some sort. I'm pretty sure I can quite easily disagree with many of the "popular, populist and woke" opinions that slide out of the orifices of many of the spokes-people who occupy positions on social media and unsocial media too, so I'm qualified. Anyway, who really gives a shit? Above is a photo of the 60s band "The Social Deviants". Writer and journalist Mick Farren was their leader. Back then you could be proud to be a deviant, it was a badge of honour, up to a point.

Unfair World

Simple things too complex for our simple minds: Why did it take so long for some kind of socialism to rise in the world and why does it ultimately, always fail to deliver on it's ideals? It must be a people problem. Greed. Fear. Religion. Maybe all human systems of rule and power are tyranny. Even if we started again with a clean slate it would all go the same way.

Delete the Internet

 

Burn down the mission etc.* I confess that I have just watched twelve (entertaining but ultimately disappointing) episodes of  "The Traitors - Australia". Now I've come to the conclusion that for the most part the human race is doomed. Watch it yourself and see if you agree. I also think this doom will fall upon us sooner than we think. Maybe next week or perhaps later in September, who cares anyhow?  Anyway that's because we're mostly smug and stupid fucks that don't listen, miss the point, are easily distracted and are totally unprepared for the consequences of our own irresponsible actions. Apart from that everything is going to be fine.

So what does any of this have to do with deleting the internet (clearly not a technical term or reasonable option)? I don't know I just like the phrase. Now that the internet drives everything it cannot be deleted ... but we can. If and when everything stops so will the irritating 80's style post punk soundtrack that seems to accompany every media snippet as an intrusive backing track. I'm quite looking forward to the silence.

The doorbell talks to the microwave. The curtains are in a relationship with the light switch. Alexa does whatever the flip she likes whenever. The oven is brooding over the fridge's somewhat frosty attitude. Hive just want's everybody to be cosy so that more deadly germs can breed and that it's masters make a fat profit. There's a Tesla in the driveway that thinks it's the only conscious being in the area or even the world.  Deleting it all might not be easy after all. It's a good thing that the phone is always on the alert.

*This type of post appears on a regular basis and generally adopts a gloomy but slightly self deprecating tone. As you might expect they are written by a benign chat-bot from an open source, most of the time.

Sometimes

Photo by Fife Jammer: When you, through no fault of your own, find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time but don't actually realize the significance or danger of your situation. It's now been more than a full week since the last Friday came around, I can't quite understand what happened to all that time and probably never will.

C A C G C E

 

C A C G C E: Re-tuning a guitar is a fine way to both bamboozle and convince yourself your having some kind of self inflicted nervous breakdown. A major re-tune (as above) can be likened to driving a car without a steering wheel or possibly driving a car without any wheels at all. I'm sure it's good therapy for some obscure part of the brain that would never be exercised in any other way and that eventually a flood of bright, shiny endorphins will descend from heaven like some musical manna bread. 

Of course locks of precious hair may be torn out before anything like that happens as you think to yourself "why would anyone do this to themselves?" One easy remedy is to simply get a slide out and pootle about up and down the neck in a state of  blissful ignorance hoping a tune might emerge. Yes it's really about scattering that five pepper hot chili sauce onto your songwriting's arid wasteland expecting a beautiful flooding accident to occur, and it just might. It's also proof of how bad life long influencers Lowell George, Jimmy Page, Ry Cooder and Nick Drake turned out to be; in a good but perverted way. 

Thinking of Lisa

Tried the tricky game of on-line Clone a Lisa, didn't really work out well. Single figures % accuracy isn't impressive. It's been that sort of day so far. Clearly my skills reside elsewhere. However it could be retitled as Peppa Pig's Ghost.

Unexpected Bundle in the Amazon Area

Quite why a guitar chorus pedal and four five litre containers of white vinegar should be bundled together on Amazon makes no sense to me but there you have it. I've been offered this deal at least twice and have successfully managed to resist buying it. The world of on-line retail has it's own quirky rules. I can't think of any pattern of past purchases that might have influenced this either.

Age Related Ineptitude

If you can't quite work the coffee machine nor comprehend those simple pictorial instructions designed for idiots, if you struggle with digital work station technology for recording music (just getting it started even via the "quick" instructions), if touch screen devices seem to have a life of their own when you oh so carefully touch them, if you yawn during an important conversation and so render yourself deaf at the vital part, if you miss the point more than you get it, if you giggle at trivia, if you seem to fall into a succession of Darwin Traps then ... you're probably OK but ARI (Age Related Ineptitude) just might be headed your way. 

There is no actual cure for ARI (apart from death) but there are numerous self soothing treatments, all of which are bad for you apparently. Popular society and culture might describe these treatments as vices but hey ho. When you're befuddled by the world then relax, have a cigar and a dram and cuddle a cat; if you happen to have one. Also speak to your loved ones, they won't mind you droning on and on about the complexities of nothing in particular ... then simply sit back and cover your head with a copy of the Financial Times (proper old school).

Koln Daily Photo

Stylish photo images from Koln captured and taken by LB a few weeks ago. Nice.

For no particular reason this Jackson Brown lyric has been in my head today (well yesterday by the time this is posted). Today's inside the head lyric is "Metal Guru" 😏. There's no clear explanation.

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
Gonna pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day

And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again, Amen
Say it again, Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening?

I've been aware of the time going by
They say, in the end, it's the wink of an eye
When the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again, Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor

Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

(Ah the laughter) ah, the lovers as they run through the night
(Leaving nothing) leaving nothing but to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm gonna find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams

And then we'll put our dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm gonna be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Where true love could have been a contender

Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong only to surrender

Say a prayer for the pretender
Are you there for the pretender?
Say a prayer for the pretender
Are you there for the pretender?
Are you prepared for the pretender?

Written by: Jackson Browne

Album: The Pretender

Released: 1977 etc.

Whisky

 Irish whisky, from Ireland. 

Seen here in a mostly natural setting, the warm inner glow calmed by misshapen ice cubes slowly splintering and melting. The scene whispers "do not disturb" with no hint of accent or irony. No disturbance comes. Well maybe the odd intrusive thought, I'm not quite on top of that yet.

Everything is equally insignificant and significant all of the time. I can say that easily as I'm not a religious man nor am I a philosopher. There's no audience. I don't serve him/her upstairs or a rogue voice inside my head either. I'm not a drunk or a whisky geek but I have wobbled at times. If it comes along I'll drink it but I'm unlikely to go out a search for it. That's never a good sign of being OK.

I think that it's an easy relationship at the moment but one that I realize can become complicated. I could be wrong. So Irish whisky is good, a nice drop and there's still room in my world for the traditional Scottish as well as American and Japanese brands and any where else that can be bothered to make it.

Quick Response Code Art

Of limited interest I know, the dull QR Code. Art that's also functional. It can take you and your device somewhere that might be useful or not. This one goes to ... you'll have to scan it to find out. Please ignore the T Rex. Actually I don't know why he's there but he may be a vital part of the code. Below we have an obvious non-functional fake quietly masquerading as art.

Unlikely Doppelgangers

Doctors and scientists are pretty much agreed that one of the first signs of madness in a man of some reasonable age and experience is that you begin to think that one of your cats might look a bit like Sophie Ellis Bextor. Nothing against Sophie here or her looks or her singing career, she seems like a nice person etc. but I'm not really a fan. It's just that I think Georgie, a male kitten of ours does strongly resemble Sophie in a feline way ... at times. Obviously he doesn't sing yet and is unlikely to, I imagine. So that's the end of that. Yes I know that the photographs don't really work either, but somehow I lost the will to carry out any further research or photo editing.