Redemption and Rehabilitation

As the nights have drawn in I've been amusing myself by taking some guitars that are in my keep on a journey of redemption and rehabilitation. These were mostly unsaleable stock from my on-line shop of a few years back. In the aftermath of gradual failure I kind of gave up on them and allowed the weeds and moss to gather and grow. 

Times change and so far I've redeemed two that were fairly useless planks due to faulty electrics, poor set up, action and notation problems, dodgy bridges and wonky machine heads etc. I know I should have done this sooner and I can be a serial procrastinator if left to my own devices, but I'm now working through my self generated backlog and actually getting somewhere. 

So this is "Bodge" a black cat pyro'd Partscaster that I've been building and adjusting for about twelve of your Earth's years. Over time everything has gone wrong with this (hence the numerous bodged solutions naming), partly due to my incompetence, poor choices and apathy which also resulted in me ignoring it for quite a while. Somehow I awoke and I've finally got it playable; not great but not a guitar that you really have to fight with to enjoy (anyone who's played crappy guitars for a bit knows what I mean by that). 

Another reason for this limited whiff of energy and success may the occasional and obviously seasonal visits of a small magical friend. We all need a little magic now and again.

1

1  AI and the gift of alternative history. Grains of truth, buckets of fabrication. On display but hidden in clear view. I suppose it's a bit like the history you were taught at school. Somehow not quite correct, a different version of real events, in a nutshell false but passable. We've all absorbed so much alternative history by now that we can't really discern what's fact from fiction. It's such fun. It's for the best too according to evidence. None of this matters because a) it's the way it's always been and b) what difference would knowing or even embracing the truth make anyway? 

Thinking is hard work and best avoided if you want a quiet, comfortable and settled life, just accept their narrative and you'll be fine. Let it wash over you,like some warm drug overdose. Maybe a wee drop of fear, just to keep you focused. You get the scant pension support, what passes for health and social care and the faint and fragile belief that you're living in an upright and just country. It's all well governed and democratic, it's never done anything evil or outrageous and we're on the right side of history. Our wars were just wars, each and every one and nobody ever died in vain. God is on our side along with our precious Royal Family and structured Monarchy. 

That's the rambling Monday morning message, just stay with it and you'll be fine. 1

2

 

2 Sandwich of the non specific day. Anchovies, Boursin, French Mustard on toasted white sourdough. I'd mark it at a reasonable 6.5 out of a non decimal 10. I made and designed the sandwich so I'm scoring my own slightly disappointing but edible creation in a fair manner. A curious mix of flavours and textures that didn't quite work so I won't be recommending it to Greggs or Pret any time soon. "Not marketable in a meal-deal." I imagine that there are a team of sandwich chefs always on hand experimenting with the next big thing in that rarefied and exclusive world.  I don't suppose suggested sandwiches from amateurs are all that welcome there either. Then there's the inevitable problems of royalties, rights and plagiarism. 2

3

 

3 If I had a fear of teeth, dentures or even dentists then I'd find this gaudy art work pretty troubling. I find it troubling anyway. The execution and composition with the keyboards, accordion and swirls, the colours, the cartoon style and the guitars, none of it is good. It's just way too toothy and mouthy for me so alas it has no future (other than to be pasted up here and so stuck in some futile orbit around the world of the blog-sphere for as long as the servers allow). 3

4

 

4 Numerous consumer items (i.e. yogurt as above) that are neither reasonably priced nor a decent size. It seems to me that the only things that are getting bigger are motor cars, they're also getting heavier, more complex and more expensive. They are not getting better either in terms of reliability or looks. I suppose everyone of a certain age thinks that. 

So back to yogurt, Chunky Kit-Kats and various other random products that I can't be bothered to list. At what point will these items cease to be viable and visible as they shrink to an almost microscopic size to fit the sales, marketing and production budgets that are now looking increasingly unsustainable? 

We may need to breed a race of tiny people with reduced appetites if we are to survive. I believe there was an unsuccessful project pilot run on this a few years ago. It was based in the East Neuk of Fife and members of my family may have been a part of it. The records are either lost or buried somewhere out by Flanders Moss. The once well curated collective memory has also been erased.  4

5

5 Your time is up. When you're stuck in the shit, snow or nuclear waste, keep digging. Five o'clock somewhere but not here. Not now on this page. It only ever happens twice a day, every twelve hours, everywhere. Whether we like it or not. Did your granny ever say, "the man who made time made plenty of it" ? I tend to think there's never enough time to sort anything out properly. I'm not sure old people are all as wise and as sensible as they'd like you to believe they are. Maybe that's why I'm all for assisted dying but also all for assisted living. Must be a sort of black spot, nouveau monde, neo-socialist kind of thing. 5

6

6 When Epiphone was great and independent, though it's still alright and more affordable within Gibson these days imho. I like the Beatles, god knows I grew up with them and their relentless success but why is my small corner of the internet so obsessed with them still and why isn't Ringo in this photo? A drunk guy told me that I looked like Paul the other night. For some reason that troubled me. No one has ever in my life compared me to a Beatle until now. I can't help wondering what it was he (the drunk guy) was on. 6

Channeling Noel Fielding

 

Our recent trip south was nearly thwarted by an early winter wishy washy white out. Traffic chaos was reported everywhere and the journey looked to be too tough to make. We decided to wait and see, so after some extensive research via Fife Jammer, we left early in the afternoon rather than first thing in the morning. Crazy how established news and formal travel websites are totally unable to pass information in a timely or clear manner when bad weather hits. Local knowledge and common sense actually works. The weather was always going to be poor, the roads well dodgy but we made it all the way to a cold and rainy Manchester without becoming another statistic or getting stuck. So how was I channeling Noel Fielding?

Maybe it was the late night banter about collecting slugs in order to feed the local badgers, living off grid in the backwoods, daft things we believed and did in the 70s. Maybe my eccentric and totally sober attempts at dancing and falling from an unbalanced chair, then relaxing in the cushy red room before soaking up the sounds and beats of a Manchester urban sound system. Could it be scoffing through the Tibetan inspired menu or just too much chilled out Coca-Cola in my system? 

I'm no comedian either nor do I live in Narnia. I'm just an alien time traveler who inhabits the damaged inner sanctum of a lost soul which causes bits of my conversation to lapse into spiraling childish thoughts and quips that are Fieldingesque and unfunny. Thankfully this doesn't last and probably goes unnoticed ... but it does made me smile and giggle at bit, inside only. My face remains deadpan. Perhaps there's something in the air.

Perpetual Screenshots

I have fine collection of screen shots. They are all in a folder of the same name. Snapping just a few times while just going about your business as you discover or create images can be habit forming. There may be a backlog waiting to be culled. I tend to export most of them elsewhere onto the web where no doubt a few are ritually revered by idiots but the rest are completely ignored; that's all fine. 

They're just cheap screenshots after all, though the originals lead quite different lives, popping up all over the place and enthralling the general public whilst generating huge amounts of cash for us to spend on whimsical pursuits and fripperies. Self generated, self deprecating and self destructive sarcasm is never a good look 😉 but so what.

A Blur

This image surfaced randomly into my Instagram feed, posted by an Alex Harvey fan apparently. There's still a lot of them about. Indeed I was at this festival as a spotty teenager and of course most of that weekend (and the days around it) is now a bit of a blur, for various reasons. I do recall the weather being a bit on the damp side, dull and overcast but I did witness some decent bands, I think. Looking back at the line up I now wish that I'd been paying a bit more attention to the stage and not "other things".

Well that's age, appetites and experience for you. The £5.50 advance ticket fee seems crazy today. I think that it was about 50p more expensive to get in on the day itself but there was hardly any fuss, other than being in a queue for a few minutes. I'd like to end by saying something like "good times" but I'm not so sure that would be correct. Certainly not bad either, more easily described as completely out of reach, in some neutral and detached kind of way. You just lose touch really.

Suitable Photos

What if all the usable photos have been used up? Nothing decent is available and it's whatever day of the week and the weather is questionable and it's yet another month with an "R" in it. I guess everything you've thought about and planned for must remain on hold, until you can find a suitable photo. But what if photos are not really necessary? You just might get by on words alone. If only there was a sensible and meaningful combination of words you could cobble together that could work without an added image. Real writers do that all the time ...

Rubbish Modern Life Is

My twisted, frosted jpegs are too much for the internal whiz-bang memory system of this laptop. There's a price to pay for the repeated processing of things, going down to threadbare parameters and incredible spelling mistakes and poor naming conventions. They turn the digital air blue. Graphic sex, violence and design, with a smattering of foul language, but what is life without time to pause for reflection?

Making a birthday card on Moonpig has become as complex as editing a Ridley Scott movie using an etch-a-sketch (patent applied for). All those key swipe robbers of time and brain cells dictate that we must live in a visual world except for ...  other people who may either choose to or are made to do things differently. Other "other" people have few if any choices and that's never good. I blame those now long gone collective memories of conquest, still embedded in our brains; the silver psychopathic alien creators.

UPDATE FAILED!

I'm creating these artifacts as an alternative to keeping sour dough in the cupboard and giving it a pet name and allocating it some kind of (sour dough related) assumed personality. You may wish to inquire of your sour dough what pronouns it might prefer to go by. I'm going to be sticking with collages, all so topical and abstract that they can mean anything but mostly nothing. 

To avoid offence don't ask me for my views on whatever kind of music you like, or literature or modern chocolate. Inner conflict results. I'd want to give an honest answer but in the end I'm more interested in being a people pleaser and just making opinion related things up. Truth matters but not that much really, not if it's hurtful or petty. 

I'm still bitter about the Glastonbury experience but I can't tell anybody. I feel the same about the National Lottery and the two weeks holiday nearly everyone in a useless profession is granted at Christmas time.

A Predictable Outcome

How it started v how it ended, as per last year, so a mild feeling of deja vu or something vaguely similar. They very kindly put a new ticket allocation system in this year and so successfully reduced the torture time from about an hour to a mere 37 minutes. This marks real progress but I, like many others, am left with no tangible benefits. At least this year there won't be too many hurt and offended yoofs and boomers diving onto Twitter's (X) titanic hulk to complain.

Inside Outsider

Edinburgh daily photo, seen through glass, apologies to the purists. The view from inside the Outsider Restaurant, set in the fair but flawed city of Edinburgh. Restaurant is one of those words (and there are many) that I can never quite spell correctly and therefore have to check up on each time I try to use it. It seems that my brain can no longer easily accept new information because it is so full of toffee and media trivia. Be warned younger people, this will happen to you all one day. 

Having had a nice lunch in the Outsider and now back home I'm still feeling full up despite the portions being only reasonably sized and not excessive or large. So to sum up, human digestion and brain systems do appear to have finite limits that may reduce with age and maybe that's a good thing. System overload is likely but also tolerable.

P.S. I still stand by this unrelated comment or observation or whatever:

All Chalk No Action

Chalk marks before the rain (original).

 

Sounds like a 90s guitar band, probably based in the midlands, nothing wrong with any of that. Some free joined up information that came with a set of locking tuners from eBay. What a time to be alive.

A culinary word to the wise old vegans. When cooking up fresh broccoli it is essential that you suffocate it first. The process is said to be painless and humane. As advised by various reliable ancient writings found in the Pentateuch.

If You're Feeling Sinister

Actually there's nothing sinister going on here, just a repeated clip from our music video "dancing" (not sinister or scary at all but serious enough) coupled with a still from Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog, one of my favourite movies. These things have nothing in common other than the happenstance of Google's random interventions, whatever that may be about. 

Perhaps interventionism is the future of art, by that I mean humans and digital beings(?) accidentally working together but moving from different starting points and then arriving at the same conclusion at the same time. This has probably been done to death already and I've missed it all somehow. Apologies for my delayed arrival into the arena.

The Wax Candidates

The wax candidates

made in god's own image

confirmed by their mirror's

pale reflections

or so they believe

planning and musing

over

the future of the parties

in systems and organisations 

close to you

seeing themselves as role models and leaders

influencers and practitioners

bringing it all together

or pulling it all apart

with their idiotic ideas and

feet of finest clay

they pray

for prey

but who can tell what's really going on

and who can say what must be done

to save us from this fate?

Cat Tales

Miscellaneous cat related trivial events No. 99: The alternative Frankenstrat guitar has been having some minor surgery carried out because of a faulty jack socket, truss rod adjustment and some slight blemishes on the body. There's a little more to do but that'll come later some day when I can be bothered. Bungle the cat isn't too interested in any of this at all and demonstrates excellent examples of feline indifference whilst remaining focused on searching for a warm spot in which to curl up and take an afternoon nap. Something I think we all need to be on the lookout for.

Baked Off

Homemade biscuits never fail to please.

Sometimes I seriously doubt the sanity of others. Then I remember that erratic or odd behaviour is pretty much normal, like making spelling mistakes or putting too much sugar in your coffee. As a species we are mostly thoughtless and clumsy - apart from people who can dance really well, walk in a straight line when intoxicated and maintain a good posture as an audience member during some boring performance. These are our modern gods but I still wouldn't trust them to allocate planning permission to quite simple home extension projects or do well on "Bake Off". 

This TV show teaches us that everyone has a capability that they can exercise and perform quite well in, up to a point, but that maintaining sustained brilliance or achieving consistent high quality results is a tough hurdle to get over. Almost impossible unless you're a certain type of serene Japanese engineer. The Scots are a decent but mostly mediocre bunch really, terminal dullness abounds, apart from our  famous and mostly crackpot inventors.

Outside 195/45R16 84V

Sometimes it's best 

to just say what you see

Outside one nine five / 

four five R one six

eight four V