Deltic

An easy way to feel your age (if you're me) is to visit the repair yard and workshops at the Bo'ness railway museum. Up in the observation deck you can look down on the engineers working on old rolling stock and locos. It's all there; overhead cranes, lathes, heavy presses, drilling machines, greasy rags and gas bottles and the mechanical noise of it all. The glorious whirring motors, clangs and clunks, chatter and banter of a working workshop. Real people working with real metal today but at the same time each one stepping back in time to save part of the past somehow. 

Outside in the yard are piles of precious rolling stock and junk. More than is ever likely to be repaired here. It seems that there's a can't say no policy when equipment is offered here so it arrives and sits. Nobody wants to scrap anything. Some people just love those discarded machines, even on this huge and almost unworkable scale. I don't know what the plan is for the Deltic (above), it's rough and needs a bit of tinkering. The (Deltic) engines are out, maybe being refurbished, so I'd like to think, but the engine and chassis look like they need major TLC. A real tyre kicker and project for the black fingernail gang. 

White Caterthun

Only a few hundred feet up above the rolling Angus fields but it still feels like being on the roof of the world. A biting wind coming in from the North Sea like some icy invader doesn't help either. It's early April but never underestimate the Scottish weather conditions even at a modest altitude. It's an easy wee walk up here but the views are great and the sense of a ghostly history is almost overpowering. People chose to live in this space over 2000 years ago and made an enormous effort to make the hill top safe and habitable. Times were tough ...

Jellytot's Hate Crime

Of course it's all just an elaborate prank for April 1st and to piss off the electorate and right wing press but never mind that, imagine living in a country where infantile images are used in order to illustrate and communicate serious and complex issues. Then for that move to be policed by clumsy, unnecessary and makeshift laws that will all be a bit of a "work in progress". That means the details, judgements, and sentencing will all be done on the hoof*. "Laugh? I nearly voted for the Greens."  

Welcome to Scotland, where we like to make up new laws because we can't quite rely on the simple old laws to be acted upon or to fit the curve of the zeitgeist. We've become home to the brave new thought bully, trolls and revenge junkies and all those anonymous paranoid fantasists. No adult human ever enjoyed Jellytots.

*I do realize that law by it's very nature has to progress and evolve but this is all a bit different.

Dune II

 

Better late than never: Went to see Dune II in the Bo'ness Hippodrome last night. I ate quite a lot of sweets there too. No spoons of actual blue eyed Spice were available to try in the foyer unfortunately, just candy and coffee. The film was noisy, disturbing and impressive. A spectacle. The threat of too much of an earth based and scripted allegory hangs in the air like a dangling sword.  Technically advanced galactic warlords unable to detect and find people hiding a few inches under the sand. Religious overtones. Bloody and strange at times, but that's the Dune universe. Probably not everybody's cup of banana and antelope tea though. 

Dune II, a roaring success with all the right, pretty and successful people making it into the cast: It's already made well over $500m million so everything is OK and the entertainment industry will survive at least until next year. I'll not see it again though, I seldom watch a film twice even if I really like it. Just seems like quite a difficult thing to do. The first cut, first punch etc. I know that not everyone is like this. My time is precious but I still waste it.

Happy Robot Says

The happy groovy robot says that the bestest tiny insult you can ever use is quite simply "You little shit!"  Try it on a friend or enemy today and quietly enjoy the impact and the lifestyle altering outcomes. 

Tesla Ownership

In this ill divided world we're all anxious sometimes about where we might sit, or float, or even sink*. We're part of a battered humanity that needs constant reference points that can give us some positional certainty, at least before the next slump; all suspended in a competitive soup of values. For a few that looks something like Tesla ownership, any badged product will do. A historical name and a set of concepts loaded with meaning, emotion and a confusing history. 

Nikola Tesla must look down in bafflement at the abuse and associations his good name gets now that it's risen to become a badge of honour, tech marketing and social division all across the world. Even David Bowie added his star to the Tesla myth. Tesla's resurrection towards some synthesis into pop culture and branded immortality is complete, (actually this applies to both Tesla and Bowie). Nicely wrapped up in a  cult of redemption and ongoing significance long after death grows, and you can take a long drive in it.

So Tesla ownership is now much more affordable should you crave to become part of such a divisive and crazy but aspirational thing:  £6.99 for four "Future" Gold AA Tesla batteries. I'm done.

*I know, nothing new here really.

West Lothian Floaters

Strolling along the footpath of the Union Canal today, low sun and vanilla drizzle. Chilly indeed. The canal is named after the infamous union of West West Lothian and East West Lothian that took place (on this day) in 1812ish, so unreliable versions of history tell us. Prior to that it was simply known as Onion Canal because of the numerous onion plantations in the area. For a long while West Lothian was the home of serious onion smuggling across this part of northern Europe until the Calvinists poisoned the soil. The other notorious and illegal union of clowns, chumps and parliaments (1707) has of course nothing to do with the name Union here. 

Many strong willed, brave and reckless tattooed people have chosen to live upon these turbulent waters in narrow boats and canoes. These boat people are sometimes known as "Floaters" as in the sci-fi genre of beach combing. Some venture ashore at times to plant great field fulls of crops such as iceberg-blue-lettuce, sweet Chinese tobacco and liquorice root. While living in makeshift yurts along the canal banks these "Floaters" harvest their crops, steal nearby donkeys, burn damp logs and generally mess with the heads of local old people. They are story tellers and mystics. Their vegetative goods are then sold on at nearby markets, mostly to American tourists eagerly searching for recreational drugs and their family roots in what they term their "homeland" or "old country".

The canal winds it's way from Fountainbridge in the charming district of Edinburghshire to somewhere out there beyond the shape of Falkirk. No one I know has ever gone that far into the dark west and lived to tell the tale. The outline of Scotland and it's many warring counties and tribes has never been fully understood or recognized. Viewed from space it remains a vague and fuzzy enigma. Overall the Romans, who actually built the Onion Canal as a watery wall, seem to have done the best job of providing a ruling regime that at least worked for a time in a few regions. They are long gone now but fondly remembered in our many fish and chip and pizza establishments.

Heading westwards on the Onion Canal.

Emergency on Planet Scotia

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We are experiencing rain but not really in a bad or destructive way. It may well be affecting the general outlook of parts of the population but this is the current version of Scotland. Scotland 2024 for want of a more descriptive title. Mist, lochs, missed opportunities and the ongoing struggle with some nameless internal misery that can't quite be explained but is tolerated as some sort of national quirk. We don't want to be understood. At first glance it may be amusing, whimsical even but in the long term quite deadly. Beware the maniacal laugh or sinister snigger at the end of those well structured sentences.

You'll always know us by a mix of our friendly but blank demeanor, the positively negative body language and the overuse of a poetic and over amplified drawl. There's trouble in using too many words too, apart from when swearing. Oh bother! We'll be badly dressed mostly, like somebody who's just come in from a day of picking potatoes in drizzle. History tells us that it'll all be fine once the oppression and the rain stops; then everything will be like the weather ... fine. Nothing new to see here.

Weekender Daily Photos

Visited god's own country, the town of the green oak where quite a lot of faded engineering glory and heavy metal is on display. I'm there in order to witness and celebrate a narrow win for Dunfermline Athletic. Three valuable points as the struggle continues. A day of outandaboutery, sunshine, showers and a reasonably priced Lorne sausage roll at the game. Never actually seen the Pars beaten in Greenock.

Early Sunday morning saw the mysterious appearance of four mystical symbols on the outside wall of a nearby house above the waste bins. This cannot be explained by anything we know about so we just quietly and reverently celebrated witnessing this spectral passing spectacle. Strange events are common enough around here on a mad March Sunday.  Meanwhile we're getting through the equally mysterious "Three Body Problem" over on the Netflix channel. There's been a lot of hype about this show but so far it's certainly delivering and not at all disappointing. Weird, scary and believable. Also a big improvement on continually watching the daytime Cat TV channels on YouTube.

This is George, one of the trio of cats, performing a spectacular head roll and some extendable paw grabs on Saturday night. The inner joy of living lives within and is real.

Fill Your Head With Rock

 

In the interests of scientific experimentation I asked Alexa and some random AI bot that I met in a pub to "fill my head with rock". It was of course too vague an instruction and so fell upon deaf mechanical ears. My requests all just silently clattered into the great imaginary recycle bin in the sky.  My head was not filled with rock or indeed any kind of music or any actual buried minerals or stones. I just can't seem to get through to these things and their adopted devices, it's as if I'm the one who isn't real. And that ladies and gentlemen may just be closer to the truth than any of us dare to imagine.

A once mandatory listening experience: Too old now that it hardly matters and with so many peculiar (and dead) people playing on it. Perhaps the AI culture feeders were doing me a favour or adhering to some censorship instruction from on high, but this was what I had in mind: 

Edinburgh - Not Quite Live

The things that pass for "news" reporting around here: Apparently a giant "battleship" arrived in the Forth and the locals were "awestruck". This style of shallow, puerile reporting really gets my goat. Firstly it's a broken aircraft carrier that was being towed into Rosyth for repair. The RN hasn't done battleships for about sixty years. As for the awestruck locals, well the two RN aircraft carriers were built here and we've seen them come and go numerous times, we're not over excited feckin' idiots. It also came up the river and under the bridges at 6:45 in the morning, there were not any cheering or bedazzled crowds on the shore. I watched it, in the still of the morning, from my window just before doing a Joe Wick's session. 

The absurdity of the media's habit of upgrading the mundane and dare I say normal routine of things into some kind of sensation kills me. Even writing about it is painful. "Edinburgh Live" is nothing more than an irritating advertising site that sneaks in occasional bits of waffle and tittle tattle between the pop-ups, click bait and noise. I never asked for it but somehow it's embedded in my phone if I dare to swipe left. Sadly it's not alone.

What's the point of the internet if you can't just moan about it? Ho hum.

Untitled

Yeah, the music business is a mess, nobody at the creative bottom end makes real money, what's the point? The suits hoover up any profit, the middlemen and the touts get the rest, the media is corrupt, the poor artists starve and those quirky graphic designers just get abuse, blah blah blah! Oh and we're all doomed and plagiarism and skull duggery rule and who is buying 24 million guitars from China every year? All of this may be true but we can't fix it at the moment, too many other pressing tasks in the pipeline. We've decided to just be insanely happy instead. So should you and without any further ado also get all the digitized sonic spice from our latest efforts here. 🠜 or 🠞 here.

Friends With Egg Benefits

 

On a busy morning there's nothing better than a nice cup of egg or two to slow down your  highly active metabolic and thought processes. Take the stress out of the everyday ups and the polar opposite of everyday ups. Quite soon you will be your old laconic, chilled, dry mouthed but energized self again. Life is indeed a bowl of cherry flavoured yogurt that contains absolutely no real cherries but on the bright side, no stones either. You must seek the pathway of ... something vaguely reasonable or wholesome. 

Failure to self medicate and so calm your unnatural inclinations can increase your chances of well-being related pompous grandiosity and arrogant long-termism and may even result in extreme cases of you becoming a high risk passenger aboard this sort of thing 🡇 ... the temperature on Mars sits at around -60C. A rather extreme alternative to living with global warming really, maybe just wake up and fix this planet first?

Attention Visitor of Boots

 

Always a sucker for a good slab of spam so the pithy and attention grabbing title "Attention Visitor of Boots" had me right away. It's so hard to resist clicking further into such a well worded invitation and thereby gain access to world of digital and financial pain but somehow I avoided doing so. I chose to screen shot it and then delete it but what a promise ... just complete a simple survey involving only your bank account details and you shall receive what looks like a 1 litre bottle of j'adore. I presume that this isn't quaffable alcohol but something suitably exotic that you might splash all over your person after a hot or even mid temperature shower. What a deal! Truly hard to resist and of course the girl looks really pretty, happy and honest ... OK then, just take all of my personal info and send me the fancy red box. 

Film Noir in the 90s

Clarke Ladle, Emily Frankfurter and Dolby Enterprise.

Obscurity Knocks: They* were never really troubled by movie success or the dangers of over exposure and those airily intoxicating wafts of flickering fame. The mini boom in *Film Noir as a genre in the 90s was just that and always much more maximum mini than any kind of earth shattering boom. Still for a brief period of time there was some excitement generated by these folks but that quietly died away when something else more commercially successful and better written came along. So here are some of the potential great, forgotten would be stars of a valiant but failed Noir experiment. Do you remember any of them? Where are they all now?

Smith Zippo, Teardrop Chicane-Phillips, Valerie Hicksville and Fingal M Blossom.

Holly Wally, Bernadette St Joan of Arc, Stevie Von-Zeppelin. 

Categorical

The not so fine art of regular blog posting is basically a long running brain dump (and I know it's mostly complaints, moans and awkward photos). Perhaps not quite for everyone who practices this futile pastime but it is in my case anyway. Here's what an over exposed brain dump actually looks like if it's retrieved from the dump, stretched out and displayed. It probably makes more sense in this bleak but organized image than most of the stuff I put out. So here am I wasting energy on my best attempts at mangling the English language with pithy observations and abstract ideas only to find that it's reduced, reformed and translated into coded nonsense under the digital engine's glossy cover.

Here's a real (?) brain dump.

Psychic Cat TV

Dateline 15th March 2024, about 8ish in the morning. Cats are happily watching TV. There are many special programs etc. As an added warning my own experience is that nearby humans slowly become hypnotized also. There is no known cure or antidote.

Film Noir Daily Photo

 

Another day spent out and about in the oblique world of Film Noir, taking the occasional picture of course. There's a cast of characters here but they don't really mean much to me. Some are badly written, some badly imagined. You can never tell. Everyone has a story. Everybody wants to get somewhere, maybe even out of this town. They all have weaknesses that will become obvious. Cigarettes and coffee. Desire, passion and money. The good old days. Personal clouds hang overhead. It's a spectacle of dank atmosphere. Tight shoes, neckties and rain. Forever rain. 

Hear them whisper their dark and hungry motives out loud in the soundtrack's crackle. All set up to try to do bad things, things that they think will end well for them but they'll soon sleep with those silver fishes. They are as unreal as their monochrome images. Spectres and ghosts breathing, trying to sound sincere as they mouth their fictional lines at the counter in the joint. The audience long to dwell and become lost in this dramatic world, a world before smart phones and distractions.

Real names are for losers and only ever mentioned in the final credits, those blurred up things that nobody bothers to read. The state of the greasy hairdos is no one's business either and the music is as intense as a weighted blanket thrown from a third floor window. It was a cheap and grim production but I'd go again. I'm devoted. Silently we all leave the cinema and embrace the rain.

B Movie Cast, L to R clockwise: Stig O'Tracy Snr. Jackie Whatabout, 

Miles Ducktop, Hannah McBiggins.

C Movie Cast, L to R no-clock: Alex Fingerbob, Dick Steel, 

Tallulah Ivory-Merchant, the Sinister Hidden Man.

Versatile Pasta

This is not ordinary pasta. This pasta is versatile. Apparently it can be eaten either hot or cold. It's hard not to be impressed by almost casual statements like this and the other hidden gems often found in the small print that is so often ignored on pasta packets. Get yourself down to the supermarket and just, for once, pay attention to the details and the specific advice that somebody has worked so hard to create for you. Eventually it all came together as both tasty and versatile once the brightly coloured sauce had brewed itself into a spicy conclusion and been added to the mix. Then we ate it.

Don't Ask Me

"Poor Things".

It seems that everything is broken but that's not new, arguably it always has been. What does anybody actually expect based on thousands of years of human activity and behaviour? There's no evidence to suggest we can resolve conflict and ideological differences. We can master technology but not ourselves. We're mostly unable to work together to find solutions for common problems and when we do we still squabble over the outcomes and the distribution of any powers that develop or profit that might be gained. 

There is no fair, sustainable and/or reasonable way of living and organizing ourselves that's actually being promoted either by religion, education or political process. They all just talk across each other. And while I'm at it your heat pumps, farmer's markets and EVs aren't going to save you. Best thing to do is develop your photo editing skills and rewrite your own story for posterity. Then find new ways to recycle, clean and reuse your own domestic water. You'll thank me later. 😉