I haven’t posted a blog in ages, so I thought I’d stick up some general witterings of the meandering variety. (As opposed to my usual blogs, which regular readers- hi! and hi! to you- will know are always laser sharp in their precision.) I don’t keep a diary, which I understand is the usual subject matters for blogs, and I really don’t think I’ve got enough Puzzling Things kicking around to fill a blog at the moment, so here we are. In any event, everybody’s twittering the most inane guff these days, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t join in. Not that I’ve had any twitters or tweets or whatever they’re called; maybe you have to sign up or something. I neither know nor care.
Anyway, I sang ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ before I got out of bed the other morning, in an effort to stave off the moment when I had to face myself in the mirror. (I’ve become convinced, of late, that I now resemble a jackal with the eyes of a very elderly tortoise, said tortoise having led a life of not inconsiderable debauchery.) However, I started the song in the wrong key and couldn’t hit the high note at the end. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Not that it was my official birthday, in case you’re thinking about getting me a belated present; that’s not until September. Incidentally, did I mention that I’ve started collecting Zippo lighters? I’ve got three so far, but I’m cheating a bit since I had two before I started the collection. I picked up the third one, which has a metal CCCP/Lenin emblem on it, when I was on holiday in Bulgaria. It’s a fake Zippo, but I’ve decided to support free enterprise by allowing fake Zippos into my collection. (Thought I’d get that in early doors; that way, the information’s got home even if you get fed up and can’t be buttocksed reading any more.)
Bulgaria is very nice by the way, and not at all like Callander, a comparison I heard one lady make on the plane home. (Well, I say ‘lady’, she was more of a fat scratter, really, but good manners cost nothing.) Callander, for those who don’t know, is a small town of some 2,800 souls in Central Scotland. The average temperature in July is about 15 degrees, which makes the rain nice and lukewarm, and the major tourist attraction is Ben Ledi, a medium sized mountain by Scottish standards, which is quite a nice walk in the summer as I recall. The town’s main claim to fame is that Helen Duncan was put on trial there in 1942, immediately prior to becoming the last person in the UK to be convicted of witchcraft. Bulgaria, on the other hand, extends to around 43,000 square miles, has a population of over seven and half million, and temperatures ranging from 3 degrees on the ski slopes of the Balkan Mountains to 40 degrees on the beach resorts of the Black Sea. Founded by the Bulgars of Central Asia, it has been invaded over the centuries by the Romans, the Byzantines and the Ottomans, all of whom left their mark to the extent that local people think nothing of sitting in the ruins of magnificent 6th century churches to eat their packed lunches. It’s had emperors and kings, and in living memory has been allied with both Germany and the USSR. No harm to Callander, but I’m afraid I don’t see the comparison, really. Maybe someone will enlighten me. And if anyone from the Bulgarian Tourist Board reads this, the answer to your inevitable question is ‘Yes, I’d be delighted to return to your beautiful country at your expense, in order to undertake further research which I’d be happy to write about in my blog, as often as you like, my friend.’
So, what else has been happening? I’ve been having some difficulty with frozen food lately. Specifically, fish fingers that come in packets of fifteen, and frozen potatoes which say ‘one serving = 170g’ on the packet. In the first instance, who ever eats an odd number of fish fingers? You want six, or eight, don’t you? Maybe two or possibly four for the kids. So there’s always one left over. How annoying is that? And secondly, what in the name of the wee man does 170g of frozen potatoes look like? What kind of esoteric weight is that? And before the smarty-pants chime in, they come in a 680g bag. If you’re up to that kind of mental arithmetic when you're hungry, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
And now, to music. Leaving aside chip-pan monkey Paulo Nutella’s ubiquitous whinings in his new ’septuagenarian with no teeth and a mid-Atlantic accent*’ stylee, there’s an awful lot of damn’ fine music about. Although I’ve been getting into ‘60s soul and R&B lately to the extent where I’m thinking about getting some sta prest and a parka, I haven’t been able to help but notice that there’s some staggeringly good new-ish music out there. In particular, I’m thinking about Glasvegas, whose debut album is so good it’s painful to listen to, ‘Hands’ by Little Boots, definitely my album of the year so far, and The Phantom Band, who are as good live as recorded and who are producing music so indefinably hypnotic that I suspect the involvement of voodoo. Are any of them going to turn out to be as good as Smokey Robinson? Well, probably not, but only time will tell.
Also, Jim Morrison; was he a musical genius, or just a steamin’ drunk guy shouting the bit out?
And finally on the subject of music, what about Susan Boyle? Now, if that’s not cruelty on a Brobdingnabian scale, I don’t know what is. I’d say leave the lassie alone, but it’s almost certainly far too late for that. There are times when I’m ashamed to be part of this society.
Speaking of which, we’re fighting two wars at present. Well, not wars as such, since, as the late, great Bill Hicks pointed out, a war is when two armies fight, but certainly there are British soldiers getting killed out there. I wonder why nobody seems to care very much? Aside from the occasional (and doubtless government-prompted) TV news and tabloid press soundbite splurges about our boys coming home in boxes, it’s as if it’s not really happening. We seem to be divorced from it, emotionally and intellectually.
Something similar happened during the days of the British Empire, when British soldiers were fighting in parts of the world the man in the British street had never heard of. Apart from staged (and definitely government-prompted) victory celebrations in Blighty whenever ‘we’ won a big one by massacring some assegai-wielding opponents with only two or three battalions of riflemen, a couple of cavalry regiments, and some cannon, the general public simply wasn’t interested in the activities of the military. Then, like now, the main function of the army from the point of view of the ordinary citizen was to remove a number of otherwise undesirable young men from the streets of our towns and cities.
But I digress. It’s obvious why we’re in Iraq; I’m not so sure why we’re in Afghanistan. I am, however, pretty sure that the average citizen of the UK- and for that matter, the rest of Europe and the USA- is not in any way threatened by either of those countries. As I’ve said before, there is no ‘war on terror’. The various governments made that up. Being at war is very handy for keeping the population in line. A scared population is easier to control, and easier to lie to. And if you were the type of government which felt that invading the privacy of private citizens and curtailing civil liberties was a good idea, why, war’s the perfect cover. Who’s going to complain about having to provide ID when trying to pay cash for a one-night hotel stay when national security’s at stake? Obviously, money-laundering funds terrorism, and we’re at war with terror, aren’t we? Jesus wept. Listen, folks, if you haven’t read 1984 lately, you might want to read it again. The parallels are staggering. There’s one surveillance camera for every 14 people in the UK, we all have ID cards whether we know it or not (cash cards, credit cards, bus passes, store cards, etc), Western governments put men, women and children they don’t like the look of in detention centres, despite the fact that they have not committed (and are often not even accused of committing) any crime, we have micro chipped passports which allow our movements to be tracked... I could go on, but you get the picture.
Leaving all that aside, it’s a sad day for our society when we are so seemingly devoid of human empathy that we’re unaffected by the casualties of these wars.
On a lighter note**, here’s a prediction, which I initially made several months ago, and which already seems to be coming true: the UK is about to go retro crazy. For between the next five and ten years, retro will be the big theme in popular music, clothes, furniture, TV, and popular culture generally. With the credit crunch, people are feeling insecure, and they will look to the past for comfort, since they believe that the past was a time when they felt safer and happier. So we’re probably going to get even more keech ‘80s music than usual. And before you dismiss this out of hand, let me just say that I know of not one but two old-fashioned sweetie shops which have opened up in West Central Scotland recently. New businesses opening up in a recession? Hmmm.
On an even lighter note, here’s a Roman Law joke for you: after the introduction of Lex Fannia, there was ‘less fannia-ing’ about. Boom boom! I made that up myself, you know, just today. Hope you like it. (Ok, maybe I should have thought about it a bit more before slinging it into a blog, let it mature, given it consideration after the passage of time, but I thought, hey, you’re a long time dead, so feck it.)
Anyway, that’s about it. I’m not sure I like this new direction; it feels a bit unstructured to me. How was it for you? Now that you’ve finished, do you feel the need to have a contemplative cigarette, or are you rushing headlong for the bathroom? Do, please, feel free to let me know.*** I’m off now, for some bacon and fried egg sandwiches, and I defy any man alive to stop me.
Syd.
*Actually, it’s more a mixture of Cockney, Nashville and faux-Scots. (C/F: Lulu.) God knows what he’s playing at, but for some reason it seems to be working. Maybe if I get all my teeth kicked out and start singing like Lloyd Grossman, the mighty Adjournments will sell a lot of cds. Then again, it’s a bit risky, isn’t it? I’ll have to think about it.
**Or is it?
***Although very few people seem to be bothering these days, despite the fact that the old blog’s getting more hits than ever. It would appear that, like Simple Minds, my appeal is becoming more ‘selective’. Ach, well.
THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG IS COPYRIGHT BIG PAUL 2009 AND IS USED WITHOUT PERMISSION BUT I’M SURE HE’D BE OK WITH IT, BEING A NICE BLOKE AND THAT. AND YES, I AM JUST MESSING ABOUT WITH THE FONTS NOW. DOESN’T MAKE ME A BAD PERSON.
COMING SOON: WOMEN’S LIBERATION, SPECULUM PARTIES, AND THE EXPONENTIAL INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF GROSSLY OBESE WOMEN: THE CONNECTION REVEALED.