Friday, April 25, 2014
100% Britpop
Britpop. To celebrate 20 years since Blur's Parklife came out we're now suffering a range of awful reminders about a fairly dodgy period in British pop history. Blur, Oasis and Pulp are the only bands I remember, in fact I don't think I ever knowingly bought a Britpop record. Even the splendidly stupid and meaningless genre's name is off putting and hard to divorce from the grinning face of Tony Blair in his full manic 90s splendour. Not a good modern history lesson. So all the splendid and once radical Britpop rock gods have either embraced full and well deserved obscurity and gone onto normal careers as inner city social workers or they're playing out their days building up ever more pretentious projects and churning out the same old sixties type shit as if they'd actually invented it. Others have gained some kind of Hipster and cultural respect and write self centred articles for the posh Sundays or curate art galleries and run organic farms while their Gibson 335s and their Rickenbackers gather dust under beds or on wall hangers in Cotswolds farmhouses. They infiltrated the great British consciousness like cheap burglars who steal your couch but leave your Tag Heuer whilst in the dusty background the shallow voices of Radio 1's near dead DJs sycophantically compliments their every cliched move through a tinny loudspeaker. Oasis sadly sang about being in a rock and roll band and being stars, if only, they didn't even come close. They were stuck in a British built loop of slowed down and turgid musical soup like a Morris Marina groaning in third gear trying to tow a caravan across the Thelwall Viaduct on the M6. Meanwhile, the people that did know how to do rock and roll stayed safe and creative on the other side of the Atlantic and the English Channel. Britpop? Shitpop.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Cloudy and clammy
Paint stripper: slow-mo action shot in B&W. |
Here's a beer I had earlier, sinking into a tartan worm hole. |
Here's a cat thinking deep and profound thoughts about inter-cat and inter-human relationships...and food. |
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Being exceptional sucks
Having driven 200 miles today on a mixture of business and pleasure related things I'm a bit tired and maybe dehydrated in a mental way. Too tired to blog and so explore and go on to find deep and meaningful things to say and describe. It's not as if they've disappeared (those issues and things), there are more things there than ever. All excruciatingly important and crying out to be said or critiqued or spat upon with some derisory comment or tirade or laughed at, mocked or built up into some fantastic and creative mind palace of presentational perfection, but not now. Not now when I'm tired and I want to watch trashy TV, drink strong dirty coffee, suck a Cadbury's creme egg and sleep in various stages of shallow awareness and deep, vivid, fitful dreaming. In other words I'm not feeling at all exceptional right now. Normal in other, other words.
And another thing...
Monday, April 21, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
From the scaffold
As Scotland breathes in the unseasonal and unfamiliar warm air of the pseudo summer we assume for a brief period that as it's dull down south then our own cruel and vindictive god may well love us or even feel some other close thing to it. Maybe a mild indifference or accidental weather management problems in heaven's nerve centre perhaps, could it be the Devil's own global warming? So we enjoy our meagre ration of vitamin D straight from the Vatican and let Easter Sunday melt away into some strange, green and muggy salad memory. It's really too nice to blog or even think too much.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Travelling without moving
Small and quirky guitars are big news in my tiny mind right now. What a discovery they are. Here are three, so small that they can fit in the passport pocket of a Levis jacket folded up and placed in an Easyjet overhead luggage rack and still stay perfectly in tune and not sound in the least distorted nor will they hamper any of the pure enjoyment you might get from supping on your overpriced tepid Nescafe Gold Blend from a recycled paper cup. Just watch out for the bright and gobby sales representative in the sharp suit and stilettos who may well clunk her bulging Antler wheelie bag right on top of your minuscule travelling musical treasures.
Whilst on the subject of travel, one of these devices has now been set up in Kinross Services on the M90, incredibly and thanks to a European Price Fixing Charter they (doughnuts) cost the same as they do in Tesco.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Drop test
I can confirm the the Sainsbury's white chocolate celebration cake can fully survive the trauma and forces incurred during a high speed 1m drop onto any hard and unforgiving surface. Useful to know in the event of one of those awkward birthday cake butterfingers moments occurring during the special day at a critical moment. I'm about to write to Sainsburys with my findings and to offer my congratulations on fabricating a cake that is both tasty and robust, I'll also copy in What Cake and Cake Advisor. Job done.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Busy day
I can produce art work like this in seconds. |
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
My Purple Eye
Headlines and thought sketches.
What is the mysterious black ring in the sky above Leamington Spa? Might just be the International Space Station or a facsimile of Mars. There’s a lot of it about.
Why has my eye turned purple (purple) overnight? Foreign body, bug, fate or badly applied make up perhaps. A mishap in the dead of that once moonlit night with Mars (once again) high up on the shoulder of the aforementioned Moonplace.
How do you take a huge dinosaur skeleton across the US? I assume that it’s already dead so I don’t see a major problem.
Should offices change from places where people sit down to places where people stand up? Generally people can sit down or stand up as they wish, most of the time that is. Some office cultures can be a bit restrictive as can be their chairs. Religious ceremonies, office parades and things remain a bit more formal but I have stood up and sat down when attending them from time to time.
" Dip a cereal biscuit in the yogurt" is not some euphemism but a genuine snack suggestion.
So…
My Purple Eye
I woke this morning with a purple eye.
Purple to blue I can’t explain why.
There’s no real discomfort and no big pain
But I wonder when my eye might be normal again.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Culross Daily Photo
Culross is a lovely wee place; curious little buildings, eccentric cobbled streets, abandoned houses and part ruins, car unfriendly and stuck with the modern mismatches that occur when time, planning and money come together without a common or understood purpose.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Meg
Sad to hear that a great little rock n' roll kitty passed away yesterday. Meg was a regular and impossibly photogenic feature on the CBQ blog and a vital member of the Reilly family. So sad when pets leave like this, they fairly get to you and soften you in ways you'd never have imagined.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Despair - not so bad really
A passing ship in the night seen during day time, a rare thing. |
Sun tunnel before the eclipse. |
Grave expectations
According to a deal I made with myself I was going to post this on the 5th of April to mark the 38 years that have come and gone since my father passed away. Naturally I forgot, I'm doing it now so that it's done and that's that. The photo marks a belated attempt at collecting some precious family details and preserving them before the East Neuk sea winds and the relentless winter rains blast any more information away from the face of this stone and the back of my mind.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
The Forces of Darkness etc.
Lord George Robertson of the Back of Beyond intriguingly suggests that forces of darkness would love it if the good and downtrodden folks of Scotland were to vote yes in September. It does make me wonder where he gets his information and quite what part of the legion(s) of forces of darkness he is in this instance referring to. It also suggests that he and his Labour, Tory and Liberal cronies represent the forces of clear, bright and shining light ceaselessly battling evil in all it's many forms. The true Illuminati. Anyway if you do wish to follow the forces of darkness or make some casual enquiry into their possibly nefarious business I've added copies of the kind of correspondence you might need to prepare in order to sell your mortal soul to the Devil himself, easy peasy. You'll thank me later no doubt.
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Universaily Challenged
When Cambridge met Oxford there was a predictable outcome, one of them would win and then go on to run the country via the offices of some dark and secret sect like the Roman Catholic Church. Anyway as an innocent spectator and with a few lucky breaks I reckon I'd score about 50 points but lose 20 by interrupting with wild and incorrect guesses. That of course assumes I'd get to my buzzer before the young chap with the plumber's mate glasses and slogan T shirt, the pretty posh girl with the short hair and the grey and mature student who looks a bit like Vic Reeves.
Habitual watching of this show makes it so easy to kid yourself that somehow your ageing brain coupled with a lifetime of media trivia hoovering and despite a lack of true academic prowess might just get a seat on the bench or even a shot in the team. Perhaps it could come about if one member had a really bad hangover, lost their sense of decorum or suffered a highly inflamed bout of acne, maybe then my name would be drawn out of the sweaty woolly student hat. It's a pipe dream (is that an expression you can use these days and "by the way," says the bold and clever cos' I've all the answers Jeremy, "who first coined the phrase?" "Was it C S Lewis, Rudyard Kipling or Charles Dickens?". BUZZ. "Might it have been Sherlock Holmes?". "You stupid man, he's a fictional character..."), yes it surely is.
Editors note: Way too much TV talk this week. Next series will see us back to music, ranting about politicians, religious intolerance, Airfix models, home improvements and real life. I promise.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Unbalanced week?
I can't help but wonder how Monday night TV is suddenly so good, so spectacular ... well not quite but amusing and engaging anyway, compared to the rest of the week's dull output. Perhaps it's just that my uncultured tastes and primitive needs that have somehow slipped into the random scheduling algorithm in some accidental piece of televisual planning. Maybe I just like crap TV and everything else for the other six weeknights in brilliant and beyond my grasp and comprehension. I suppose it'll never happen again. Me and and my perfect rapport with a flat screen and SKY box. It's over but it burned brightly for a short time. The moment has come and gone and now orbits the outer reaches of the universe, brought to you oh undiscerning one by the services provided by red wine, Southern Comfort, a cheeky and tepid Stella and small bits of ex-Xmas chocolate. So what was it all about? Game of Thrones, University Challenge, back to back Modern Family and Rev. As good as it ever gets in these dark days.
Monday, April 07, 2014
Next
Overhead spies from China. |
A fine, organised mess of broken tiles. |
Sunday, April 06, 2014
Candles in the bin
Following from last month's dead mouse in the boiler situation I've slowly become addicted to scented candles, tea lights and that sort of thing. I've not eating them or licking them yet, just mildly inhaling and absorbing the healing properties of those exotic slow burning fragrances. I'm not sure if there is a further stage to this situation, some worse and blindly destructive path on to certain ruin. Perhaps the urges for candle highs will all die back or perhaps I'll end up chopping them up to add to coffee or stir fried food or I'll just get on and chomp into their highly coloured and attractive smooth waxy centres. Then I'll mourn with appropriate reverence as their burnt out bodies are cast into the oblivion of the waste bin.
Today at Dalgety Bay's almost human friendly ASDA store I bought some lovely Wild Blueberry & Tame Crayfish Essence, Amazon Hummingbird & West Lothian Cannabis and Absinthe & Italian Dark Chocolate varieties. Yummy.
Anyway, moving beyond mucky candles etc. and in anticipation of the return of Game of Thrones for whatever new season it is and despite the fact that I abhor violence here's some pics of that mean little King Joffery getting his comeuppance. It won't do any good anyway, they are all doomed and corporal punishment doesn't ever work.
Today at Dalgety Bay's almost human friendly ASDA store I bought some lovely Wild Blueberry & Tame Crayfish Essence, Amazon Hummingbird & West Lothian Cannabis and Absinthe & Italian Dark Chocolate varieties. Yummy.
Anyway, moving beyond mucky candles etc. and in anticipation of the return of Game of Thrones for whatever new season it is and despite the fact that I abhor violence here's some pics of that mean little King Joffery getting his comeuppance. It won't do any good anyway, they are all doomed and corporal punishment doesn't ever work.
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