A place to park those random thoughts, stolen images, hidden conversations and incoherent babble from beyond the wall of sleep. Odd bits of music and so-called worldly wisdom may creep in from time to time. Don't expect too much and you won't feel let down.
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A big thanks and shout out to all the good people from the land of "Other", 148k views for this blog in eight years* is good going. You know who you are. Cheers.
*To be clear this blog has been going since 2004 but for some reason the CIA and MI5 web crawlers (possibly following the instructions of the Russians and the Fessbook Mafia) decided to delete a large number of years and traffic records from my scattered and battered files. However the good news is I'm no longer considered a threat.
Do I feel better for this? Not really, but if something has the potential to drag you down maybe it's better to let go of it before it's poison really starts to work. In other news, for the few remaining years that I'm likely to be driving road vehicles, I won't be purchasing any Tesla products. It seems like only yesterday when that whole thing was futuristic, cool and inspirational; little did I know how it was going to develop. I've also returned my one way ticket to Mars. I doubt I'll get a refund though.
Dear Mr Netflix Person,
I've now watched two seasons of Graham Hancock's revisionist views on world history. I'm sure you're aware that he proposes that, in a nutshell, a race of highly (?) superior beings somehow survived an "ancient apocalypse" (the flood of legends) about 14000 years ago and set the other more "primitive" survivors back on the track to civilisation by passing on their wisdom and practical skills. In so doing they laid the foundations for the modern world. Sounds fair enough to me but nobody in the mainstream of education or science is agreeing with this right now. I wonder why?
Hancock spends a lot of time picking at pieces of unchallenged evidence to support his theory and I actually like that he's out to disrupt the established view and it'd be nice to think he might be right (and I suppose he just might be) as it would kill off the various creation myths religions have fed us and also explain many mysteries surrounding the numerous huge and ancient stone buildings, ground works and sophisticated ancient structures that are out there. Academics often need a shake up - history does teach us that too. He's maybe just not the guy to do it IMHO.
Of course the format, his quirky victim attitude, laconic delivery and the tedious editing style used throughout the show undermines everything he says. It's flawed and disjointed as a structural piece of documentary story telling, always jumping across time and places rather than going deeper. I thought the old Discovery Channel documentary format was bad but this is even worse. Fictional animations, all slow paced for maximum cheesy drama, false starts and the repetition of statements abound as does a pounding and unsubtle musical score. I did like many of the computer graphics and views of the ancient sites, they were all quite well rendered and watchable and much of the detail was new to me so I'm not totally negative about everything.
You should note also that when GH is in front of the camera, using those weird shot angles during conversations coupled with the style in which he delivers his dry and progressively more unconvincing narrative, the overall experience is quite infuriating. Having said that I willingly watched it just hoping that a shaft of light might be stumbled upon that would perhaps clear up a little of the darkness from humanities history (for me and every other viewer no doubt). That's the whole point of the show. There is that tantalizing promise of red meat in each episode but the actual payoff never comes. So it was an interesting but flawed and bumpy journey. However many episodes spent wading through the snake oil and enduring GH's unblinking stares into the camera was uncomfortable for me. In the end I guess Netflix earned some revenue from the adverts and viewing stats and pleased the community of radical historians out in the left field. I'm done now and can only really say, so long and thanks for all the lovely fish.
Respect and Smarties
Wee John fae Fife (age 69ish)
The cats remain a torment and an inspiration but I know I'll never climb a tree or scale a fence with their level of attack and energy. I'll never manage any of Joe's fully adult sessions either, it would just lead to injury and self inflicted pain, the worst kind. Slow and steady and quietly follow on at your own pace and level of competence and confidence is the mantra. "Nice and easy does it", as Mr Sinatra might have sung in his world weary, lounge lizard style. Back in the day I was a long distance, short attention span runner you know. I don't miss any of that.
Farewell and adieu to one illustrious pork pie and one that is most definitely not a piece of headwear. I might say more but probably wont. This brief and lightly worded elegy is to a real pie that has now passed. As must all pies.
I'm currently existing at a critical point of life where sausage rolls disappear, slow punctures happen quickly, ancient history is unraveling before my very eyes (thanks to Netflix) and I may well finally understand the use of the Oxford comma. Stimulation is constantly there or thereabouts.
None of this is helpful I know, not even to me. Tomorrow some poorly named storm is likely to hit us and it's also my birthday but I already have at least one birthday bottle of whisky under my control so there's hope for us all. The cold never bothered me anyway.
Every so often you'll see dead electrical switches like this on odd walls, mostly in rural locations, the rusty pumps and storage systems long gone. Petrol and diesel were not the dirty words they are today. We know better now but we don't really because it's all someone else's fault and we're as much the victims and part of the cash/taxation fodder as the third world crude oil workers who's products are cleaned up and sold on to us. Sad to say, interesting but ultimately ugly and over weight EVs shipped over from China don't really do it either. You know they'll be unsupported tech junk in seven years. We just might need a better solution.
We took a wee break off and into the bright Perthshire amber of autumn's passing. The four seasons in a single day magic still happens. Rain, sleet, hail, snow and sunshine passing before us in a single afternoon. Nearby Schiehallion getting a white top as did the further away peaks of Glencoe. Hotel breakfasts, big glasses of wine, comfy beds and all manner of people determined to run marathon distances. The long and winding roads to there and back again made good driving, all reasonably well maintained as if to prove that an independent Perthshire might be a viable thing - even if it's run by a small Conservative majority in the council (?).
And on the subject of independence, the untimely death of AS surprised us on Saturday night. History will not be kind to him, the media, the current SNP lineup and the establishment's own mechanical grindings will see to that. What ever narrow side of things you inhabit never forget the long screwdriver of colonialism's inbred injustice and the power of privilege will always have their sway in this country (other countries are also available for this). Thirty nine years spent in the thick of it, via the military, taught me that, but thankfully I remained a successful misfit and am still able to enjoy this land for what it is (whatever that might be). If I hadn't taken the Queen's shiny Shilling I'd write a book about it all.
