Paywall Blues/Golden Globes

Above: When somebody's shared a juicy story link on social media and you click it and you get a screen like this ... nope, I won't be bothering with anything like that no matter how interesting the topic might be.

Below: Due to our busy schedule and a warm Chinese dinner we missed attending the Golden Globes last night but dressed up for them anyway. The theme was "When the Cubist, Surrealist, Impressionists attended the Golden Globes having purchased two rare tins of anchovies at Dalgety Bay Aldi earlier in the day". Tough Gig.

Sardines

A lovely can of sardines gifted to me. Nice art work and I like sardines. I feel there's nothing for me to explain but it's disturbing that we currently live in a world devoid of anchovies. How long before it's the sardines? This will grow into a list of things that can only get longer until it's not really a list anymore, just a means to jog distant memories. The things we lost in the "warming". None of us have done anything wrong other than being a willing but tiny part of a global concoction of crazy appetites within badly constructed markets. We've really fucked everything up proper.

Viking Roots

It's a bubble that will burst any second and I'm already late with finding and filing my stylized viking image. I already know it's not part of my brown eyed, dark haired background; a typical mixed up saxon/celtic mongrel of a human. Because, naturally everybody wants to be a viking, everybody wants that DNA % trace somewhere in their bloodline. You're a proper romantic outlaw then with a vivid if misunderstood back story; a violent heathen warrior for a distant grandfather and some willowy blonde shield maiden as a far away granny. Every little helps and I suppose and nobody really wants Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler or Attila the Hun as a relative.

Edinburgh Airport Daily Photo

The cost of picking up or dropping off at (the fabulous) Edinburgh Airport has risen to £5 for ten minutes and thereafter £1 per minute. What a privilege it is to drive there on such finely finished roads and into the well drained, ventilated and designed "welcome to Scotland" area where visitor's first (and last) impressions of our wonderful land are formed. It is a fitting tribute to the sharp minds, generous spirit and extraordinary vision of Scotland's top transport and infrastructure companies and their highly professional people. Thank you all for another wonderful personal motoring experience*. 

*I may well have overcooked the sarcasm on this one, I'm truly sorry.

Cracked Plastic Boxes

Now we're into 2024 with our high hopes and low expectations. The once twinkling decorations are down, packed away with something quite close to meticulous care but already forgotten. They sleep on like hibernating bears, randomly placed in the cracked plastic boxes that we bought from B&Q many years ago when the world was young and a little brighter. Some say that the seasonal slump is upon us but experience tells us that we're likely to survive in some form. Plans are afoot. An alcohol free January is also unlikely. No quick wins for the retired gamblers. A normal if quirky routine beckons. There are a few more well chosen words that I could apply to this graffiti ruin of a blog post but I'll leave that until later ... maybe February.

Now Approaching

We are now approaching the year of our lard 2024. Please remain seated, extinguish all cigarettes, tie your shoe laces and (please) no swearing. It'll all be over in about 300 days or so and you'll hardly feel any pain because nothing will really be any different unless it's all a little worse. Should you encounter any well spoken drunks or French existentialists dancing in the streets just try to ignore them. I'm assured there's portions of cold scrambled eggs and haggis awaiting them in some friendly fridge.

I'm in quite a hurry now as my laptop's battery has been surgically removed for health reasons and so my external connections may expire at any moment. If you're looking for me I'll be out there exploring the kinder, more gentle Bluesky app, writing things down frantically and then losing the bits of paper. Failing that I'll be hiding under this table (as above) along with a cat accomplice of some sort. It's all worked out reasonably well for me so far using this simple technique. Anyway it's just another year.

Arbroath Daily Photo

A few days ago I was in Arbroath, a small seaside town in Scotland, for the football and the pie(s) mainly. The weather was a bit dodgy. I also saw a strange and rather sad looking house that made me think, (house as shown above).

Satsuma Consumption

Expendable

Surreal Christmas

Welcome to another surreal Christmas.

The symbolism is lost on us but ... 

Make of it what you will. 

Take from it what you need. 

Leave what you'd only waste. 

Show respect for this world.

Judge actions not words.

It's not over till the end.

Just believe in yourself.

Twelve Bananas

 

Bananas: Somebody very quickly ate four and nobody noticed or perhaps there never were twelve bananas. I confused this with the film Twelve Monkeys but since I only had eight bananas nothing really made sense after that. I don't believe a crime was committed here. I think that the photograph was staged. The photographer may have been a primate of some sort. At this time of year you can't really take anything seriously. Those stripy coloured clouds that are everywhere on Instagram but never seen by anyone I know and now there are volcanic eruptions. 

Outside I heard a scream. Somebody had slipped on a banana skin and fallen hard onto the pavement in broad daylight. I did notice that it was rather icy outside or was it just my imagination? An Asian lady in nurses' scrubs ran up and kindly tended to the victim. I was unable to help as I was carrying a cat in a basket. Somewhere somebody wondered if today was the correct day to just leave the world behind.

Best Tweet of 2023?

I keep on thinking of X as Twitter despite the relentless passage of time and the various X promoting outbursts that have taken place. I'm not alone in this. It's a position that's unlikely to change. A man of my age has only so much brain elasticity and focus. I also dislike pandering to and giving way to rich idiots who of course can call things whatever they like and tweak them beyond recognition. It's their train set anyway so let them play. My resistance is pointless. Plus, of course X is just a stupid name. It cant be used as a verb and it looks shit as a logo. 

I've pretty much stopped using the X platform apart from the odd bit of lurking (it turned this gem up the other day) and the other replacement alternatives and competitors are pretty rubbish too. This small part of the world and some vague golden age, briefly useful and fun for a while is now broken. Actually it was well on the way to shambolic brokenness before Mr Musk got involved. So what. 

Soft Underbelly

 

This is a view of the (old) Forth Road Bridge's private parts that most people never see. That's because it's the subway on the south side. It's not soft either, more of a sort of damp, drippy and muddy utility tunnel for lost pedestrians, but it's definitely under the roadway.

Cult of Added Brown Sauce

N might well stand for Nonesuch. A mysterious pie scoffing cult that both worship and sacrifice hot meaty pies encased in seeded bread rolls, consumed upon a midnight clear as is the custom. Circles of stones provide the clue along with a trail of crumbs. Brown sauce aka "Blood of the Crow" is added in the pattern of the holy Nonesuch cypher. It's a mix of the yummy and esoteric elements of whatever you may think and goes back a long way. Lilith (Adam's first wife) is credited with the invention of the lamb pie, Genesis: something or other. It's a tradition at this time of year.

Seasonal Preparations

The cats remain fairly bemused as to why we'd bother to bring a tree (more of a shrub really) into the house. "Out of place items in absurd settings" really should be the title of this post, maybe the entire blog. Trees don't belong indoors and (I'm stretching the point here) neither to some animals. I guess domestic cats are ok to be brought inside and away from the elephants. They're needy that way. You can't expect them to be out there 24/7 ridding the town of plague carrying rats and other rodents as well as the occasional accidental bird; a violent trait in cats that I don't much care for. As they slowly adjust to the new indoor tree/shrub we are considering what type of "cat safe" Dickensian style decorations to apply to the Christmas shrub in all it's stunted glory. A satisfactory outcome to this cat related challenge is not expected.

Laïcité

"Most historical events were actually quite different from what you were taught or even imagined" (Detail). 

We need something like *this in our country (I forget the name and sometimes I don't even like to say it out loud as it's actually a bit of an embarrassment these days). I **wonder how things would be now if ...

*Laïcité (secularism) is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as the separation of civil society and religious society. It discourages religious involvement in government affairs, especially in the determination of state policies as well as the recognition of a state religion. It also forbids government involvement in religious affairs, and especially prohibits government influence in the determination of religion, such that it includes a right to the free exercise of religion.

**Everything that I know I stole from Wikipedia.

World's Best Coffee

Nescafe 3 in 1 with a little real milk added and in a Moomin cup.

The thing about thinking of the Romans and their influence every day is a bit like seeing a cow (real or as an image) every day. Once you're aware of this and that you might well be doing it then it's almost impossible not to do it. Every day there are thousands of thoughts running through your mind. You could try to make a list but then that would be a lot of pointless work as the list already exists in some form or other in your head. 

A brain print out or some kind of consciousness spreadsheet record would work best and maybe save time. Then when you'd read the list, which in real time might take longer than a day where would you be? Highlighting all the Roman references and cow image entries with a yellow pen and tabulating them to see where in the day they occur? Are there patterns or is it all just random or is it triggered by experiences and circumstances? I just don't know.

Everything I don't know

When it all boils down to the burnt noodles at the bottom of the stir fry pan, pretty much everything in life is a bit of a bad idea. Probably the best method of avoiding bad ideas going really bad is to commit only to relatively small ideas whenever possible and avoid unintended consequences. Use a disaster scale and perspective to trim them into a more comfortable size. Deciding to have coffee, not go out in the rain, changing your socks, spit out a fly that's landed in your mouth etc. Fewer things can go wrong with trivial matters. 

The people who invented the robot vacuum cleaner, submarines and nitro glycerine might think more about safety and stuff but then as a species we'd not progress technically. We'd have tiny fixated brains, appetites for junk products, be prone to mindless violence voyeurism and superstitions and would not understand the correct use of the apostrophe or how logistics works. Ideas and acting on them, then adopting them is all a bit of a mixed blessing.

On This Day

 

Great moments in modern music history #72. One this day back in 1981 the Scottish skiffle group known as the KLF (Kelty Leftist Faction) burned up a brown bag of cash containing £1 million Englandshire Pounds on a remote beach on the island of Jura. The dark deed was witnessed by only seventeen music journalists who had been flown in by helicopters from the mainland for a junket. An STV film crew was also present but all too late in the day their equipment was discovered to be faulty due to salt water exposure and pollution so no actual footage exists. 

Witnesses say that the money was withdrawn from a cash machine in the nearby village of Dunbar. The KLF described it all as a piece of "art and unmasking".  They were never heard of again ever, but there are rumours and there might even be speculation regarding what happened next. Some people believe that one day this incendiary and almost action packed event will be the subject of a major Pixar film starring Tom Hanks and some animated characters but I'm not so sure. Nobody asks where the potential audience is.

Egg Carton Spex

Once upon a time your new glasses would arrive in a robust case that looked like it was fabricated in a Clydeside shipyard, all shiny metal with a leather covering and able to withstand being run over by a 20 ton Scammell truck or survive being trapped in some blazing chemical burner. My new glasses are quite nice and quite comfortable but were handed to me in what is basically an egg box. A simple container that's most likely completely recyclable but unable to withstand exposure to the sneeze of a kitten at 10 feet. Let's not mention how peculiar the actual colour is either. 

These are of course just some silly observations and not a full blown complaint. The glasses were reasonably priced and all kinds of cases for glasses are readily available out there in the marketplace. Why should a good case have to come with a new pair of specs anyway? There's straight thinking and there's crooked thinking. Things change, real life business economics are not for the likes of you either, so suck it up all you stuffy old moaners (like me). 😎