Insomnia

Are you troubled by insomnia? Night terrors, wee small hours starvation, itchy feet, over active imagination, wandering thoughts, anxious musings, a weird and unwholesome dread for what tomorrow might bring, hearing strange noises/voices, zombie nightmares, sleep talking or walking, monsters in the wardrobe, icy cold feeling, captivated by shadows moving across the ceiling, jumpy legs, enemies who might just be friends, over attentive pets, the need to pee, mysterious outside activity, drafting a novel in your head, distant alarms and disturbances, a dry throat or a persistent cough, far away train whistles, badly deconstructed guitar lines, tomorrow's shopping list, fear of the angel of death visiting, night sweats?

Well I'm not (so far), but none of this is true.

12 Years Gone

This started life as a so called bargain kit guitar bought on eBay with "parts missing". I can't actually remember what parts were missing and it hardly matters now. That was about 12 years ago and I had some enthusiasm for the project because I was selling pyro decorated guitars as a sideline. I put the cat design on it and fiddled with it for a while but it was never finished and never playable. I just couldn't get the neck level right, it went through a few necks and it was all a bit of a bodge, so I thought. There's a broken drill bit stuck inside there as well but that's another story. Needless to say it went on to gather dust.

Fast forward: It's now complete (I bought some crappy wooden neck shims from Temu that actually worked) but maybe it still needs a few adjustments. The guitar plays well enough and actually has a decent Tele sound, I didn't expect that. OK it's a bit of a mess but ... twelve years on and still a bodge. I'm lacking in the development of the necessary skills but I keep plodding along with this. Might just use it for slide. 🤔

Slouching Towards Bethlehem etc.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

...

Incomplete verses by my own editorial action, 

all still by W B Yeats, but you knew that anyway.

These words should get an outing on a regular basis.

Slow Moments

More detail than is actually required.

Enjoy the slow moments. We all need slow moments now and again. Time is made up of many moments, linked and stitched together but forever out of reach. Moving along on the narrowest way, walking beside some unfamiliar landmark, then standing under a tree to avoid the rain and wandering aimlessly to get nowhere. We are scattered across the dust, trapped under those heavy clouds. Always unprepared for the next time. 

Meanwhile cats just stay focused on those odd, floating, tiny particles, while remaining upside down and uncaring.

464 Articles

Now I'm being lectured over the fact (?) that I've read 464 Guardian articles in the past year, a bit more than one a day. In fairness it's a better browse than the rest of the mainstream press I suppose. To be honest I can't really remember much about it all. I was trying to recollect which articles stood out ... couldn't quite think of any. In one orifice and out another it seems. Too many words, bad news, tales, opinions, events, reviews and general bullshit out there. I doubt I'll even remember writing this in a day or two. That's my level of engagement.

It's nice to be one of their top readers globally but I'm not sure that a couple of reads a day is all that an impressive statistic. What's the average strike rate? Things must be tough for all these well intentioned and noble writers out there, and just because I read it doesn't mean that I enjoy it or agree with it. What's the point of holding politicians and businesses  to account when nothing actually happens to them as a result? I do look at the glossy ads by the edges sometimes, perhaps that's not good enough if I don't buy the stuff. I wonder why? I'm just tired of it all really.

Anyway I'm being scolded for being mean they say. I get "incredible value". It's worse than shoplifting. Pay up for the privilege of clicking on our page and stumbling over our hard work. There's an idea. I get the customary commercial point but I don't really care that much. It's all bad Karma's doing; because of me being a victim of the infinitesimal Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube scales of payments. Sadly nothing has any value if you create, only if you distribute. The economic model (is it a model or a blatant conspiracy piece?) is broken. You read that here, for free. I'm a terrible person.

Happy Tuesday

 Everyone needs a happy Tuesday.

A golden shoes day.

I don't really understand what golden shoes might mean.

Sounds interesting.

Illustration by LB.

Imagined Daily Photo

Inner mediocrity: Turns out that my imagination is a fairly dull place with rather blunt edges and a lack of sympathetic tonal application. Some coin operated appliances may work up to a point. The property is available to rent via Airbnb but with limited seasonable availability even in the low to medium seasons. Forget the highs. Sleeps four. Pets and shoes welcome. Swamp parking conversion in progress.

Stories That Can Never Be Told

The Wager is a good book that I'd recommend. It's also nice to find subtle but subversive revelations and hidden truths in unexpected places. This makes me feel less alone in the world. A world which is a terrible place for too many people most of the time. Dark enemies, dark deals, dark silences and no real prospect of change.

"Empires* preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don't - the dark silences they impose, the pages they tear out."

*David Grann is of course referring to the British Empire here. Not much about it's operating methods has changed since 1740.

Fire Walk With Me

Lego: Back in the days of the crazy cults movement this might have been a useful part of an initiation ceremony. You could tackle it dry as suggested above or of course add petrol and a lit match for the full early disciple, hot, sticky and life changing experience. Those who fail or refuse can't ever join but might be able to walk home from the meeting physically unscathed though some kind of mental health damage is likely. Anyway the abstract plastic hail storm that is deconstructed Lego remains both a marvel and a baffling enigma for most adults. 

Many modern homes will have a bin full of it somewhere, all the stray pieces that are never likely to be reconstructed into anything remotely recognizable making this also a study of pain, frustration and considerable expense. It could fit nicely into your team building sessions as an extra task if such things are still common in the workplace. Otherwise very useful as a prank when carefully set up on the parent's bedroom floor for late night high jinks and swear fests. All of this is very good for the Danish economy and certain aspects of Viking mythology.

Tokyo Skyline (Offical Visualiser)

Obviously at some point I was bound to use the sweetly pretentious "official visualiser" term with a video because ... I'm addicted to using bullshit descriptions and well, why not? However no high scoring hit count or forecast of some reasonable extra income whatsoever is predicted. Fame, recognition and notoriety remain elusive and far away helium filled balloons that I seldom think about these days. I also have a morbid fear of balloons. This is actually known as globophobia. There, you've learned something new and so have I.

Spectral Musings

"The light enters the room and bounces around onto walls and through glass objects creating pretty patterns as it travels. It actually does this at the speed of light which still seems a rather strange description to use despite the fact that we experience light speed every day because we see everything at the speed of light. Light speed isn't just for describing distances in space, we live all of our lives immersed in it. God save the Queen!" 

From the diary and journal entries of Dr John Claude Boscoe, 14th February 1842. Chief Scientific Officer on the sloop HMS Twigberry.

Dead Pigeons

Because we have sinned (obviously) in various fairly regular ways, God has sent a plague of dead pigeons upon us. Well at least two ex-pigeons have been encountered in the garden recently. Strangely the destroyed corpse of one of them ended up perched on the top of our seasonally bald willow tree. About half an hour after I took this shaky photo a small raptor, probably a sparrow hawk, came along and carried the stiff pigeon's remains off into the woodland nearby. It was lunch time after all. I saw it with my own two eyes but unfortunately not with a camera to hand.

Idiots Guide

Idiots guide to blog posts: Waking up on a strangely sunny February morning and having nothing much new to say about anything, what to do? Easy, simply post a picture with a quotation from some reasonably interesting historical figure. Dead or alive doesn't really matter. The quotation should be profound enough to cause the reader to think for a moment (that's all anybody ever does), then they can move along and get on with their day. The blogger then feels like something has been achieved despite knowing that it's all trivial, unconnected and unable to be properly measured because of the abstract nature of all things.

Of course none of this applies to the higher life forms who post messages, kitten and puppy pics, car crashes and advice and incidents of all sorts on Insta or Tiktok. The strike rate is robust and the energy is intense. They not only survive, they thrive and all is well in their world other than some users may suffer from a strong sense of  "I'm sure I've already seen that, I wonder where it was?" 

There are holes in the sky where the rain gets in but they're ever so small which is why the rain is thin. SM.

(Official Visualiser)

.

Welcome to the world of the official visualiser.

Apparently a thing that bands use these days.

Thinking of picking it up.

The use of brackets is optional.

 

"Pick up the things you love. Put down the things you don't. 

No matter where you are, that will feel like home."

I'm OK with this.

Willie is Well

Alternate Title - North Queensferry Daily Photo: A bit like Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul from LOTR, North Queensferry and South Queensferry look across those cold northern waters at one another comparing fortunes, favours and an uncertain future. I doubt that it'll ever come to an all out fictional war though, not even in this troubled and sleazy century.

Whatever else might be going on we can also take comfort from the fact the Willie is well, if a little ignored as a tourist attraction. To be honest NQ is a bit ignored overall but I imagine that those living there are quite happy with that. Peace of any kind is precious. 

Rankine's cafe is a nice, friendly spot, good coffee but the hot food is served on cold plates, something I've come to expect in Scottish eateries. I take this as a sign of the times and a measure of the slow decline of civilisation and one which people seem to put up with. The photo below is clearly not one of Rankine's cafe either. Everything in the shadow of the famous bridges isn't clean and pristine.

Dunfermline Daily Photo

 

Groan: This was a grand and important house once, now it seems to be abandoned. That's pretty much of how most of the centre of Dunfermline looks on a grey February morning. There's something very wrong happening in small towns and villages that's working itself out in the gradual ruin and abandonment of places. Structural decay is rife. No I don't have an answer. Nobody does.

In Search of Kerning

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms while tracking adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. In this video some numb-skull makes a simple kerning error early on, once seen it can't be unseen. It is however forgivable and frankly I'm not really bothered. Perfection is only for those who can afford it. Always good for the soul to own up to mistakes though.

Meanwhile George volunteers to put an M&S paper bag through it's paces. I'm glad to say that both cat and bag survived the crazy ordeal.

Why?

Why me? For the first time in a while I'm almost excited about the release of new music that's fairly conventional and obviously made by some relatively older guys. OK it's really about the guitar playing of John Squire more than the Gallagher drone and his overplayed dumb attitude but I'll be giving it a robust listen come March 1st. Not on that golden vinyl over priced shit either but in it's purest form; the bright, spinning, whizzing laser read CD format. I'm old but not fully ready to be old school yet.

Meanwhile from the twitter poetry library:

Perth and Kinross Daily Photo

 

"Something can't be truly representative of everything": Discuss and agree or disagree if you will using no more the 2000 words. You have two hours and thirty minutes to complete this task. 40 Points are on offer.

Unspoken Truths

Some people can't go through a single day without thinking about the Romans (gods, roads, cement, sanitation etc.). Some others perhaps find that the Vikings (rape and pillage, tattoos, axes and long-ships) occupy their minds at times. Others will see a cow somewhere every day; in a roadside field, as a design on a milk carton, a bar of chocolate or maybe a label on a leather item. Perhaps every day you hear a Beatles song or there's some reference to them, a lyric, a photo or an item of iconic 60s fashion maybe. I understand that whilst I get some of these thoughts, mostly regarding the Romans, I also find that in any room I happen to enter where there are people I know, I always think about the elephant.