More camp twattery from your resident demented

Trying to make sense of it all

This is a tough time of year for many - perhaps even most of us. Post-Christmas and the dull, damp, cold, short days, seem endless. It's not until April that we properly see the green shoots of Spring.

I've tried going out over Xmas in Wells - but not very much. It's difficult to meet people. It's a bit like being the last people on the dating app. You soon realise why you're there - no one else will have you! 

You're half-cut when you do meet people, you swap numbers, and when you do contact them for a drink or to give them a link to your erudite and hilarious new blogpost, they either ignore you or don't open it at all. 

Oh god - it's him!

People have busy lives too. I'm there all the while shouting "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"

I chatted with a chap from London and he said he found it difficult too. I spent most of my life in the city (that's London btw, not the City of Wells) and was a reluctant returnee.

I know I'm intolerant and opinionated but I have tried over the 18 months I've been here. 

Wells and I are just not meant for each other

It could be that my hitherto brilliantly concealed madness is seeping out all around me, thus giving the game away as I stand ankle-deep in puddles of undiluted insanity .

The only answer is to get out more and visit/bug existing friends, so I shall have to do that this year.

I've been watching a ton of movies and I just watched Inland Empire - David Lynch's last feature film from 2007 which he self-funded. What I like about Lynch is his reliance on dreams as puzzles to slowly elucidate for the watcher. And if they don't that's fine - whose dreams really ever make sense or have a comprehensible message?

The best hair, ever.

Having done the Mindfulness course and looking back at my past actions with my customary self-criticism (I am my harshest critic) along with my cynical attitude to just about everything, I can see I have fewer answers and more questions.

Just another minnow in an ocean trying to make sense of the indefinable, incomprehensible chaos.

Trump's inauguration doesn't help of course.

My Dad suggested I'd have been better off if my sister had been running my business. 

The whole thing is I always hated work, even when it was something I enjoyed doing. I know that that's the system, but I was born into it. I didn't have a choice.

And I've met so called life-coaches who say 'if ya ain't lovin' whatchya doing it's the wrong job for you!'

Well I say bullshit. Where’s it written that you have to love work, or even like it? 

It just sells a bunch of dumb self-help books on Amazon.

It's easier for some people. The rest of us just have to mug on and get on with it.

I’m also of the opinion that work stress and sleepless nights contributed to my dementia.

Excerpts of unwritten novels (in my head)

Talking of David Lynch who sadly died recently, he loved to sit in silence and the ideas would come to him, like a solitary angler waiting for his first bite.

I get silly lines in my head, usually spoken in a particular voice, when I'm least expecting it. Walking the dog, doing the dishes, that kind of thing.

Example: the start of another forgettable Merchant Ivory film based on the boring novel of some Oxbridge stately homo about the unrequited love from Smedley minor, in the voice of some luvvie or other:

'It was at Ebstone where I wrote my third novel; 'The Crimson and The Beige. Ahhh...Ebstone...'

Or a children's book for girls about ponies, narrated by Kenneth Moore:

'Ginny loved to ride, and everyone loved to ride Ginny!'

I never got any further with that one...

But Ginny did! 

Good old Ginny!

Film reviews

The Substance - amazing body horror from French director Coralie Fargeat. Demi Moore plays an aging starlet who now has an 80s style aerobics show. To her horror, she discovers her grotesque boss played by Dennis Quaid, wants to replace her with a beautiful sexy young thing. But luckily someone has slipped her the details of a new wonder ‘thing’ called The Substance. What could possibly go wrong?

Fabulous performances, not only great set design and cinematography, but incredible sound design too. An awesome tale about women, their bodies, aging, beauty, the patriarchy and the price to be paid. 9/10

Poor Things - released last year. Bonkers Alice in Wonderland meets Frankenstein in a steampunk wrapping. Based on the book of the same name by Alasdair Gray (which I actually read many years ago) this is a bawdy tale of a child’s brain in a woman’s body, and how she experiences the world as she grows up feeling neither guilt nor shame.

Check out the architectural jokes of the set, if you're that way inclined.

Very refreshing and enlightening. I loved it. 9/10

Nosferatu(alt title: 'Sleepin’ and a-creepin'.) 102 years after the Max Shreck original, this beautifully designed and rather characterless film neither creeps us out nor scares.

It looks beautiful in incredibly low-light which at a modern cinema works brilliantly. But the characters are essentially cyphers and the last 3rd does drag a bit. 6.5/10.

Eerie, weird and tragic.

For proper nightmares, the Werner Herzog version is properly unsettling - a bizarre, eerie film shot mainly in natural light. It’s like a Breughel painting come to life. It also has the most rats I’ve ever seen in a movie, with the ethereal beauty of Isabelle Adjani and the hideous tragic monster fittingly portrayed by Klaus Kinski.

Toilet of the Week

They don’t make them like this anymore. Back when Sheffield steel meant quality and Britain led the world in toilet construction: a vintage Unitron. 

Built like a tank, it can cope with anything. 

Very high water level in the bowl which was a thing back then. 

Now that’s a man’s toilet. That’s not sexist as I know some of you women can really let rip.

Great is a word often overused but coupled with Andrex quilted toilet paper, this is a truly great toileting experience .

Seat: 8/10

Flush: 10/10

Ambience: 7/10

Total: 8.3/10

I am NOT a bloody hipster

I've always been into prog, fusion, Zappa, as well as all those wonderful themes from library music.

And people like me have a fancy moustache as we can't grow hair where it’s intended (on top of me 'ead) so it's compensation: a sporran/mirkin for my face.

In fact, if anything I'm trying to emulate my hero, the inventor, Wilf Lunn.

Wilf, and dragon.

One of the many great inventions was this owl scarer. Why it never went into production I have no idea.

British invention you know.

Copy-wrong

Bullshit copy seen this week on a Leica website: 

"It fits seamlessly into your creative lifestyle."

Just like my Tom Ford buttplug.

The best writer since sliced bread

The subtleties of language

I read in the paper, that pompous old curmudgeon Kingsley Amis in his book 'The King's English', bemoaned how illiterate the world had become that he was having to devote a chapter to the difference between 'he might' and 'he may',

I had to think about this and without having had an extensive education in English grammar (comprehensive education - in the UK sense) I had to think about the context and tone of the two phrases. 

If you think about a rich boy and a poor boy, the rich boy may get in to Oxford, but the poor boy might if he tries hard enough. 

Or you ask your uncle if he has a non-percussive drill bit. If he's a DIY enthusiast he may just have one. If he only dabbles now and again he might have one.

'May' is just the higher likelihood.

That's it. 

Aural hallucinations 

I always put on ambient music from the Calm app when I go to bed. I have to have absolute darkness as well, so I wear a silk eye-mask which every time I wake (at least once every night for a pee) is around my neck.

But I've recently been hearing music in white noise, and the other night just as I was dozing off a trumpet fanfare. 

Bear in mind this was at 1am and despite it coming from the music room - and we do possess a trumpet - no one was minded play it at that time.

Luckily it only lasted a second, but it was a little startling.

Coupled with my slight visual hallucinations of white objects in my peripheral vision suddenly pinging into existence like a like they've just been switched on, this must be a taste of things to come.         

Pilton psychos

I just spent 2 days Dming in Pilton for the older kids. It was good fun, but as usual utterly exhausting. I realised on Thursday that the adventure I'd hoped would last the 2 days was almost complete, so I spent another couple of hours on Thursday evening setting up a concluding part. 

It was a bit of an obvious adjunct to the first part but their parents had paid for the time so that was all that was important. 

The whole premise was the party had met up as the only non-goblins at an ancient citadel. One of the party had found a large oval crystal on a dead goblin. They fled the citadel with the goblins in pursuit, fleeing into a valley. But the goblins eventually caught up with them and a battle ensued, ending with a stray arrow hitting a hornets' next and scattering the gobbos.

The main part of the quest was a whodunnit as 2 warring families in a vibrant market each accuse the other of sabotaging their respective businesses. 

Initially the traders were reluctant to talk to strangers, so the party had to endear themselves to the locals by taking part in 'It's a Knockout'-style games, and the locals would more readily impart clues that would lead the party to come to a conclusion.

The lad to my left was getting frustrated as he just wanted his character to kill everything then set fire to what was left, so for the last part on Friday I put in a ton of extreme violence to satisfy him. 

We were like that at his age too, and look how well we turned out!

Kids, eh?

I guess this is how writers of sagas set things up - have a bunch of threads which you don't know initially where they’re going to go, but which you can work out later. 

It's better to have unresolved threads which can become plot-hooks, than none at all.

Not having them means you have to start again with a brand new adventure each time. 

3 days later and I'm still absolutely wiped out by this 2 day session.  

What I'm reading

Earth to Moon - by Moon Unit Zappa. Autobiographical tale of growing up in a counter-culture family with a workaholic artist for a father and a long-suffering wife for a mother. 

I'd read the real frank Zappa Book which was pretty dissatisfying. This is far more honest and thorough as to how Frank’s behaviour affected his family. For instance, he would sometimes return from long tours with a groupie to sleep with - leaving his wife Gail upstairs to sleep on her own. Nice. 

Then he’d be in his recording studio in the basement for the rest of the time, sleeping during the day.

So we see the flip side of the artist - the solipsistic, narcissistic, self-indulgent, tyrant. The art comes first; everything else is secondary. The genius must be tapped.

The parents would wander round naked, and shout at each other, there were murals of orgies the kids hated and all the while her mother got increasingly frustrated and angry.

All Moon wanted was to spend time with her dad and get a hug from her mum, which were never forthcoming.

Moon writes brilliantly and I'd give it an 8/10.

I'm also reading another autobiography, this time by Adrian Edmondson, called 'Berserker.' It's supposed to be funny but having been a fan of Rik and Ade back in the day, the humour feels so familiar that I feel I've heard all these jokes before. 

I'll plod on with it as I'm still at the beginning.

What I'm watching

I was watching multiple YouTube videos on politics, but it's just an endless loop of the same shit. 

So then I started watching interviews with the very out-there maverick film makers I really like - David Lynch, Russ Meyer, John Waters and Werner Herzog.

Great Russ Meyer montage from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but may be a bit rude for Alison...

Waters and Herzog are just brilliant speakers and I could listen to them for days. I do a pretty good Werner Herzog impression. He is a one-off and his early works like The Enigma of Caspar Hauser are like a Bruegel painting come to life. He doesn't make films like other people. His documentaries are also wonderful.

John Waters is a great raconteur and there are a ton of interviews on YouTube which are hilarious. The 'Pope of Trash' started off making films with all his misfit friends in the late 60s and ended up making Hairspray (the original - not the musical), Cry Baby and Serial Mom - the latter which I've never seen. 

Herzog shares a joke with his leading man

It's nice to see people like this succeed, especially when cinema is dominated by the likes of James Cameron and Michael Bay🤮.

I've also watched Silo season 2 on Apple TV which is terrific. And I'm currently rewatching the totally unique Severance, created by Ben Stiller, in preparation for season 2 which premiers on January 17th.

The most original programme in years

Plans for 2025

The usual: drink less, exercise more, go to the cinema, theatre and take some walks in the country. 

What's more important than the above is to improve my rather crap social life by visiting friends.

So ideally all of the above but with an emphasis on getting out and about - which is precisely what Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) prevents you from doing! The old executive functions being offline and all that.

I shall have to battle forth and keep going.

VERDICT: Must try harder!

Vote Wilbur!

 Wilbur - a Eulogy

I called J as I was passing the house. That happy/sad feeling of nostalgia. 

Like listening to an Abba song.

Wilbur ran out to see me, falling base over apex, but he recognised me instantly. I think we were both in shock at seeing each other again.

I was once contemplating setting up a website called Wilbur’s Shits, which rather like those swatches of marbles and granites would show the subtleties and differences from say yellow ochre to jet black with carrots in. 

I never did it of course but now I’ve given you the idea, haven’t I?

I’m good at that. Many of Rob Porteous’s commercials were my ideas.

I never did get that pint, Rob…

ROB!?

Anyway,  Wilbur was a year old when I met him. I didn't like him at first. He used to sleep on the bed, and I would shoo him off. He would try and eat everything. He would have these frond like hairs over his face that used to drive me nuts. 

I just thought it was slovenly.

Always one for the underdog, was Wilbur.

Over time, I gave up and actively encouraged him to sleep on our bed, made canapés for him, introduced him to the finest cheeses in the world, took him to D&D sessions, and shared bananas and other exotic foodstuffs with him. 

He rarely moved, choosing to teleport instead with pizza in his gob, out to the garden to munch it.

He would growl if you came near him - only when he got older.

I used to say he was the only one who was pleased to see me when I got home from work.

He came on games holiday with me. It all went wrong when he discovered the compost patch on the farm we were staying and after gorging himself on rotten apples barfed it all up at 2am in my room.

He was a puker and a shitter; that much is true.

In fact he was obsessed with food. Like a lot of show-cockers, he possessed an under-active thyroid and by the end was blind with cataracts, deaf, senile and had had some strokes.

I ended up loving Wilbur, and it was great to see him just before he shook off this mortal bone.

Dogs are just great. 

We see in them the kindness, honesty and unconditional love we wish we possessed as humans.

US Election and what now?

Some people don’t understand how you can get so embroiled in US politics when you don’t live there. 

I’d say the repercussions on the geo-politics of the world are going to be felt by everyone. 

Trump's policy of isolationism is going to affect the war in Ukraine, the world’s economies, Europe, the balance of power with India, China and Russia, not to mention Taiwan…

The tariffs alone will affect our GDP and growth. and Europe's even more.

(As an aside there has been a spike in search terms on Google for "What is a tariff?" and "Are tariffs good?" in swing states, after the election...)

Just watching the election post-mortems on YouTube, TV and in the paper. I know I know - these are ancient monoliths people have no time for anymore. 

Frank Zappa said American culture can be summed up in ‘what’s the bottom line?’ I recognise people hadn’t felt Biden’s policies had improved their cost of living, and the Democrats were talking or accused of being obsessed with identity politics. 

However, the economy is booming, more jobs have been created than in decades, people are - despite the prevailing zeitgeist - improving their standard of living. And yet and yet...

"They're poisoning the blood of our country."

"They're eating the dogs and cats; people's pets."

Blaming poor people and immigrants, the traditional methods of the far right.

Zappa also warned of America turning into a fascist theocracy in time, which most people of course ignored. 

Check out a guy called Doug Coe and an institution called “The Fellowship”. A covert organisation whose intention was to make Christianity at the heart of US politics, despite the Founding Fathers writing a deliberately secular constitution. 

You can see it all starting in the 80s with the Reagans. 

By the way, it’s intentionally non-publicity seeking.

So back to 2024, the Democrats went knocking door-to-door, but the data they were using wasn’t effective in targeting the people Trump’s team had already got through to using digital media.

What the electorate heard were (justifiable) attacks on Trump’s character rather than what would benefit them.

Democrats laughing at people who are clearly dumb and ignorant (MAGA) who don’t agree with you, didn’t help. 

It’s easy to see 5 minutes after the event some of what went wrong..

As Vlad Vexler pointed out, we live in a world of Post-Truth, authoritarian populists who disguise themselves in traditionally Conservative clothing.

They communicate disinformation repeatedly in 5-10 second bites on TikTok. No time for reasoned discussion. No time for journalism. 

Fox News, Rumble; 18 of the top 20 political podcasts are MAGA-supporting. The left or centre are losing the information war.

40 ex-high profile employees of Trump's previous administration have been vocal in their condemnation of Trump saying he is a fascist and utterly unsuited for the position of POTUS.  

Can you name any other president whose previous employees have done that?

What’s so good about democracy anyway?

I thought the whole point of modern democracy was we could get these guys out after 4/5 years get our guys in, and the whole system balances itself out over time.

That will not be the case anymore in many countries. Hungary and Turkey spring to mind immediately. 

In the 90s, after Apartheid and the Soviet Union had fallen, the world felt genuinely good. There was a visceral optimism about where the world was and where it was heading.

How naive we were!

Of course, it proved to be just a blip.

Move forward to 2024 

"Don't bring politics into this!"

Well, I will if you mention Christian nationalists in an anodyne context when they are in fact rather unpleasant people.

Maybe you could learn something by what I'm telling you rather than shoot it down in flames? After all in the 80s during Apartheid, people said the same thing.

"Politics shouldn't come into sport!"

Say that to black athletes not allowed to take part in the Olympics, rugby or cricket because of their skin colour.

Have we all forgotten this or are we simply unaware or uninterested in our most recent past?

When one is tired of Gurn', one is tired of life...

Well, Wells actually, but Gurn’ sounds better.

Jesus it’s small. I haven’t really established the social life I wanted here. Evenings spent inside, drinking, playing on the computer. Not ideal. 

Wandering up and down the barren streets, with the exception of market days when it's joyously bustling, 

An astonishingly acute case of gonorrhoea...

The people I know have busy lives and why should I expect them to make an effort when I haven’t with them prior to living here?

Cue trips away visiting friends. More reading and watching of substantial things. I no longer watch TV other than the news, partly because if something doesn’t grab me entirely - and I’m prepared to watch a couple of episodes - I’m going to drop it. 

I feel the content of most dramas is so lazy or algorhythmical that they just don’t merit watching.

"Oo, let's see how many willies we can get into this programme!" seems to be the remit for most programming.

And Michael Macintyre and Simon Cowell and their ilk must die. 

Trumpian I know...

 Of course, I should be more gregarious but what with the executive functions almost always offline, it’s difficult.  

Bath beckons. So even does Glastonbury, if only - like Camden Market - to remind myself why I haven’t been there for years, and therefore prevent any more silly deluded thoughts for another few years.