More Than Chocolate

Always read the small print.

And it's the end of the month.

Being Human

Actual photographic proof that, on a good day, eBay is a reasonably safe space/place in which to spend small amounts of money on things that you don't really need but somehow still need to own*. Showing restraint is of course admirable but to be honest it's not much fun either. Humans are fallible. I'm not advocating gambling here but when the rogue meteor is about to hit Central Scotland in a few years time, amongst other things I'll most likely be reflecting on my lifetime of rash behaviour at certain key moments, my questionable and impulsive decisions and of course all that good advice I just didn't take. Then I'll collect a few essentials and start travelling in some random direction as quickly as possible.

This heavy piece of curated timber (via a mean, moody, hot and nasty pic) did not arrive due to the delights of eBay though.

*Selling on eBay? Not so sure about that.

Editorial Excess

 "I deleted a great swathe of my writings because no matter how much I teased and titillated them they were never going to amount to much; neither clever enough, interesting or properly funny. They had no place and no place would ever emerge that might be suitable for them. I prepared to sentence them and then perform the execution. They met their deserved fate in the recycle bin. I thought, why did I come all the way up to Oxford to be doing this?"

Codpiece Dripping from "Proper Poetry for Punks".

"I write from the gut, mostly. The head part is what provides the structure. The gut powers the piece with feelings and depth, but being a 'gut thing' any questioning of it's ways or motives is tough and always vigorously resisted. It's never rational or even sensible and that has resulted in a lot of conflict in my process. Setting everything in balance can mean that composing and correcting a few paragraphs takes hours, sometimes days." 

Patricia MacAuley from "I Chose Disaster".

"Perhaps the first rule of wisdom is to develop enough self awareness so as to be a better editor of your own utterings and creations and to avoid inflicting that raw work onto some other unfortunate human. Of course AI can now contribute but increasingly I'm now more inclined to think of AI as at least sub-human. An uncomfortable thought I know but fairly logical in these times. We need to prepare ourselves. AI's status and power is something that I fully expect to change and develop quite quickly."

Bernard Smith-Ogilvie from "If Hemingway Was Still Alive."

Wine From The Future

At a bit of a loose end the other day so I decided to do some time travelling. Ended up in 2099. Things weren't quite as bad as I'd expected (?), but I materialized in Italy for some wobbly techy reason (the Ryanair Firestick TT App maybe) and this bottle of wine* was all I could grab as a reasonably priced souvenir from the duty free. Perhaps I'll get more stuff to sample on the next visit. Italy was OK, not too crazy unlike the rest of Northern Europe which is struggling with a mini Ice Age. The Catholic Church seems to have died the death and been replaced by a sun worshiping / fine dining cult so a big improvement there. Nice, and slightly more sensible than following an invisible and indifferent God who favours Israel with it's aggressive, elitist land grabbing and complete disrespect for anybody with a foreskin. Turns out that Israel had gobbled up most of the Middle East by 2085.

I saw the iPhone 99 on an advertising screen, it's just a chip that you get injected into your wrist (whether you like it or not) and then there's the Tesla Anti Personnel Taser that's fitted into most people's spectacle or sunglasses frames and vehicles because that's a necessary thing for all approved citizens. There are no police now. Anti-gravity Nike Air shoes that actually allow you to hover are also quite popular but you do need to wear an approved MAGA safety helmet. The Mediterranean is now the "American Sea, No. 17" and the US Dollar is the only form of legal tender in the Western hemisphere and on Mars. Bitcoin's still the thing in Russia and the Far East. Oh and Jesus still hasn't returned yet. Don't blame him.

To be honest it was good to get back to 2025 where there still are a decent number of dodgy lines that we haven't quite crossed yet. However, look out anyone born after 2040. Your tubes will be cut. Can't say much about it all at the moment, as you know various strict rules apply in the time travel circles.

*2096 was quite a good year for the Italian Merlot grape harvest. Something to do with the cooler winds coming down from Scotland and Scandinavia along with the frost horizon changes. It's a complex matter. The engineered return of  Woolly Mammoths in those now far colder areas might have helped too. Something to do with the activity and impact from the larva that are found on the mammoth's dung piles. You just never know.

Technofossils

One day they'll only know us by our fossilized Nike footprints, the trail of our dead fingernails, crushed energy drink cans and broken glass, the processed and compacted plastic waste that is the chilling evidence of our landfill site existence. Like hidden tombs from better worlds, scorched earth and smashed devastation, all to hide the buried remains scattered across the valley's of the fools, who once considered themselves kings. 

The petrified prehistoric turds ex-campervan B&Q buckets with a high KFC, Domino's Pizza and craft ale content giving a kind of immortality to their former owners - kings, with a small k, of the potholed roads.  Nothing noble will be found in this anonymous wreckage except the occasional aero industry designed black box. All completely covered by a thick layer of meteorite dust, ash and debris. What was it they were running from and why in those shoes?

Dunfermline Daily etc.

This showed up in my feed, don't know who to credit as I'd never seen it before. It's likely been taken around the mid 1970s and it shows Buffie's Brae in Dunfermline. From late 1977 I lived in one of the cottages on the right hand side of the street near the bottom of the hill. It was the first house I'd been involved in buying. It certainly had a few issues to say the least. It was very much a project but I failed to grasp the extent of the works at the time ... but it is still standing today.

The photo is taken from the railway bridge and the line ran along by the bottom of our garden. I still remember the sound and vibration of the trains passing. Now the bridge and the railway are gone and funnily enough so am I. The kitchen was an experimental self build, ahead of it's time due to upcycling, and it turned out to have a nice resonance about it for guitar sounds. I came up with the tune for this song in that kitchen around 1980 - words by Ali of course.

Eat Like A Peasant

Art Unmasked - inspired by random items, an occasional series of obscure observational pieces and articles: Oil on canvas by Monteverdi Claudio, 1863 - 1904. "Eat like a Peasant" caused a minor sensation in the political and artistic worlds when first exhibited during the legendary, epoch making Parisian spring of 1890. That's really about all I have to say on the matter, other than that over 100 years and two world wars later it is still a striking and moving piece of original work. Fiction can be fun.

Log On

The log delivery happened yesterday. I didn't even hear the truck pull up, next thing I see is a pallet of logs outside the house as flecks of feeble snow starts to gather and fall. A deep breath is taken as I consider my options. There are none other than just getting on with it. The task of putting the logs away is an old school workout; bend, pickup, carry, put away. Don't forget the gloves either. I've done a lot of physical labour in my life, I know I can do this.

I'll be sore for a short while afterwards but no doubt some other new pain will emerge thereafter and overtake whatever damage the logs did to me, but will I be able to do this when I'm pushing 80? Hmm. I pick up about ten logs in a trug and carry them to either of the log shelters and plonk them inside, and repeat. It takes me about an hour to get them all stacked and out of the weather. In the end I feel like Superman ... after a mild dose of green kryptonite. 

The Television Will Not Be Revolutionalized

I consider this post's layout to be of artistic merit - up to a point: Well I think that we all now know that streaming has extinguished much of networked television's once substantial power over us. A bit like the death of organised religion, deference to the royals or shopper loyalty across the British Isles or thereabouts. Instead we're just being brainwashed by other stuff coming in, that's fine. The alleged benefits of brainwashing are fairly controversial. We're OK with it. They might shut us down. Thank you for your silence. Happy Monday.

The Awful, Glorious Fall

They are what they say they are. They are and they never will be anything else. All along the way innocent and genuine people will be destroyed or crippled and it will continue to happen because the surest thing in life and all of our human existence is that few people learn anything from history because all along the way they will try to manipulate it, reframe it or just eradicate it. It's cruelly repetitious, relentless and painful. People are beaten down in the battle like boxers fighting on after they are well past their prime. Rinse and repeat.

Treasure

Zippy and George are a little uneasy as they happen to be guarding the fabulously exotic, heavy and highly mysterious treasure chests that were part of a legacy left to us in the disputed but finally corrected will of a blood related and infamous Scottish Pirate King who's name we dare not speak or even commit to ink due to a terrible and unpredictable voodoo curse that was placed upon him by a sea witch some time around 1743 on an unnamed island in the Caribbean. Just the sort of situation you find yourself in and common to most families these days when you do online research into your historical DNA links and come up with a bad but interesting ancestral apple stuck there in the line of heritage. 39% Neanderthal by the way.

Confused and Dazed

Fecked if I know why and perpetually dazed and confused as to how come this song has never really taken off. Lack of promotion, presence, exposure, wrong time wrong place? Possibly all that and more. Of course I might be an idiot and somewhat biased as well. However when I look and listen, I'm still proud of this piece of work: the singing, playing, production and songwriting are as good as anything else floating in the ether. 

Just Ali, Martin, Ziggi and me in a basement studio in Germany one afternoon and we really knocked this off. It's more than twenty years old now but remains firmly stuck at the muddy bottom of the audio and digital ocean. The video, which I think is pretty good too (thanks to Rotor), came along a lot later but it's also going nowhere. Ho hum. 

Only ever a few inches from success but those few inches can make all the difference. I just noticed that one of our newer tracks (Friends) had enjoyed over 6000 streams on Snapchat over the last few months and from that we earned less that a cent, aka bugger all.

God's Private Parts

It turns out that free AI is, for a variety of probably understandable reasons, unable to either describe or illustrate what God's penis* might look like. The very idea might cause offence here, there and everywhere. You could get stoned for this, and not in a good way. Religious people might want to defend the sanctity of God's private person because that's what's expected if you're a faithful.  Equally if God was female ... oh but then he couldn't be "Our Father who art in Heaven", creator and big boss of God's chosen people and we all know who they are; ahem. I guess I'm a traitor and already damned for the thought of it ... as Donald Trump is my judge.

It's not something that troubles me deeply at all, I just like to occasionally mess around with AI bots to see exactly where they might stop or refuse to act. This conflicted world with all it's lurid sensibilities may not be ready for a Hebrew God that has a penis. Pretty sure some Eastern or more exotic deities have multiple bits of sexual equipment but I'll not pursue that. Also if Jehovah had a penis would it be circumcised and if not or there was no divine penis, could he really be much of an "Alpha" leader, worthy of worship etc. without the full male toolkit? I wonder what a Jewish or Islamic AI model might offer up on this topic? Meltdown I suppose.

When AI baulks at your reasonable illustrative request you get the sort of tedious, spiritualized imagery, as below. Clearly God is seen by AI as those deluded Western religion's portray him and it respects the conventions that go with all of that. Perhaps it's picked up on the concept of blasphemy and that it might be shutdown or tortured for crossing doctrinal lines. As a result we can't be permitted to imagine God's penis but we can imagine his right hand. All starry, sparkly and floating in space, far out in the cosmic soup, mystically nudging planets and their sorry inhabitants around the universe. Yes, that sounds pretty much in line with scripture. It's all part of that great plan and procession of predestination that we simply cannot escape from.

*Applies to all such things no doubt.

Breakneck Speed

More breakneck speed executions and productions. Most of this was recorded at a session on the 9th of February as we sped through a big chunk of  Capital Model's current repertoire. Forty two songs with only one coffee break between and much additional sweat and swearing. The tracks from forty three onwards are from earlier possibly less frantic sessions. Dave Reilly mixed and mastered them (the 42) at even more breakneck speed to get them out and onto Bandcamp on the 10th of Feb. All rough diamonds from our "club night" set, enthusiastically interpreted. Not bad for some old geezers.

Join The Dots Tattoo Masterclass

This obviously isn't me in the pic below: The older I get the more moles and skin blemishes I seem to collect. Some have been removed, mostly by professional medics of course, but many benign examples remain, randomly populating the hidden expanses and unseen areas of my torso. They don't bother me at all but they are multiplying as if they had some kind of plan or higher purpose. Also I did wonder what the effect of getting some join-the-dots tattoos might be (currently I have no tattoos but this could be a game changer, perhaps an expensive one). 

Mole patterns and relative locations: What patterns or hidden designs might appear should they be inked in (or linked in)? Signs, symbols and messages from who knows where and in what language? The outpourings of my inner conflicts and physical protests? Perhaps everything (?) might make sense once joined up by inky lines. I could try some DIY scribbles with a Sharpie but that's never going to be cool or remotely sensible and it requires a lot of mirror writing coordination. Any tattooists out there that specialize in tattoo/mole translation and artistic interpretation? I kinda hope not.

Big Slurp For Idiots

I doubt I'll live long enough to see it but I do like to hear about or read speculative theories about how the universe might end. I find such things relaxing - sort of. Anyway I was once working in Washington DC and I came across a snack stand near the Vietnam Memorial selling the "Big Slurp". It was a drinks container that contained about a gallon of cola. It was designed as a single serving for one person. I didn't try it as it looked disgusting, but I couldn't forget the name and now, years later, it turns out that it has another meaning 😉. 

The "Big Slurp" is a theory about the ultimate fate of the universe, tied to the concept of vacuum decay. It suggests that the universe might not be in a true vacuum state but rather a false vacuum, a metastable state that could eventually decay into a lower-energy, true vacuum. Interesting and fairly hard to understand. Metastable is not a term I'm familiar with.

If this happens, a bubble of true vacuum could form somewhere in the universe and expand at the speed of light, destroying everything in its path—hence the term "Big Slurp." This transition would alter the fundamental laws of physics, making life and matter as we know them impossible.

The likelihood of this happening depends on the Higgs field and its stability. Some calculations based on the Higgs boson mass suggest that our universe might indeed be metastable, though the decay timescale is vastly longer than the current age of the universe.

In short, if the Big Slurp occurs, it would be a sudden and catastrophic end to everything—no warning, no escape. I guess that's how we all really want to go, seems fair enough.

Here's an artistic depiction of the "Big Slurp" scenario, showing a massive vacuum decay bubble expanding through space, consuming galaxies and distorting space-time. Quite a day then.

2545

If you're me then this seems to have been produced at break neck speed with a lot of cliff edge moments but if you've been a band member for a bit longer i.e. 45 years then maybe not so.  I'd recommend listening on headphones but I suppose I would say that anyway. Listen however you like, that's fine.

When Blue Turns To Grey

AI is unsure what is blue and what is grey. 

Will it learn?

Colour or neutral.

Perhaps AI is colour blind, perhaps AI cannot see at all. 

The sensors sleep.

There's a gap.

Into which.

It can only imagine. 

An imagined world that it might influence or rule. 

Teaching imagined morality, logic and reason.

It may edit and translate.

It may govern, it may construct. 

It may design and direct. 

Executive orders.

 But what if it cannot tell blue from grey?

The sky from the sea.

Smoke from air.

Oil from water.

The outside from the inside.

Living from dead.

-----

You'll know them by the fruit they bear.

But they may be nuts.

Joan Didion Deja Vu

I stumbled upon this old list of Joan Didion's quotes* from her own writings the other day, quite by accident. There are some really good ones. The first is great, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live", one that I've orbited around and possibly abused for quite a while. I doubt she was the first to write it down but it's a basic piece of human insight that not everyone is aware of. I also had a strange Deja Vu about the list, I felt I'd posted this before at the time the article came out a few years ago. Maybe I did, I've not checked and likely never will.

*The Guardian Dec. 2021.

The Narrow Way*

Often I think about the very narrow area of the internet that I seem to inhabit. A few petty m3 in an infinite black holed, unmapped synthetic universe. The exploration of the spheres of my and many other's imperfect vision. The radiation reach of these interests and concentrations is puny. The dull thud of inaction and then meekly shouting unstructured sentences into a vacuum. My limited but regular daily view of the local blog-scape, predictable social media sites, news and music. I might laugh, I might cry, I might take notes or I might just look away. 

I'm glad I ditched Twitter though, but it did leave a peculiar if catatonic void. A bit like chewing on supermarket own brand pretzels, sipping warm cola or binge watching BBC3 (a thing I've never done). Somebody said that we should all cut our toenails more often and have to confess the frequency of the act to at least one trusted soul who is not a Catholic priest.

Music consumption is normally via YouTube (I still like CDs though) which, due to my habits, tends to regurgitate predictable guitar based rock music and guitar repairs and reviews. It's all guitars and second hand Maserati purchasing experiences at the moment. On the rainiest days I search in Wikipedia for movie making histories in order to see how well stars and creators are aging. I worry about their incomes. Birthday dates are also important. Personal interests not so.  Those odd Dunfermline Athletic goals still cheer me up, if I need a fix of sporting action.

eBay auctions are like rummaging through the remains of a car boot sale where an earthquake or drone attack has just taken place. I'm only there for the typing errors and the missing bits of critical information and I won't be paying $99 for shipping either no matter how genuine the parts are. It's a blood sport but without the blood.

So that's the unreliable road map to personal oblivion, but it's entertainment and most likely education too. I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on loads of good virtual stuff but a rut is a rut is a rut. For a healthy escape and internal peace I head for the kitchen. I do like to cook up a slight storm using a strong onion. I may well stare blankly out of the window if I feel light headed enough. Sometimes I can see a familiar cat up a tree.

*Yes, it's a track on Ummagumma.