You were having a dump

Righteous Singing

There was a style of singing in the 70s which was really earnest. Overtly passionate performances, not matched in any way by the lyrical content. 

The antithesis of Dylan, whose passion is all in the words.

Saying that, I love this. 

I too would be equally passionate if I too lived in a capital I in the middle of the sky.

The following on the other hand, sucks balls. Dean Friedman and Denise Marsa. One of the cheesiest songs ever. Friedman also demonstrates another weird vocal affectation of the time, with his voice pulsing in and out like Radio Luxembourg on medium wave (one for the Gen Xers).

A lack of enunciation on the consonants too.

Tsk tsk.

“Your enDEARing MOTHer called toDAYYY. “

Meaningless drivel. 

I would urge extreme caution before deciding to watch/listen.

I warned you.

Biggest Regret 

About 30 years ago, somewhere in central London - possibly Leicester Square/Piccadilly Circus - I was minding my own business, and I felt gentle hands on my shoulders and a soft 'Boo' in my ear.

Turning around, expecting to see a friend, I instead saw a complete stranger. A large but harmless fellow in a bright pink shellsuit.

in a Black Country accent, he lent in and said "I saw you then, and just wanted to come over and say 'Boo.'"

He then started walking towards another street and said "Hey, you’ve got to come and see this. This is brilliant."

I politely declined, but I've always wondered what it was he wanted to show me that was so important.

After all, he may have been God in disguise!

That happens.

Come away, child...

...from the detritus of sots, lollygaggers, socialists and druggies with their mange-ridden hogs.

High on cannabis and government hand-outs.

Burdening the state with their flat screen televisions and Dr Marten’s boots.

Small twigs left in their wake, their abandoned nests replete with cigarette butts, bottle tops, broken glass and syringes with perfectly good heroin still within - wasted on them.

Poo, Grandmama! What a smelly man!

Do not look upon them Petunia dear, for they will sully you with the odour of badger and the wanton behaviour of The Krankies and such like.

One never sees this at Wimbledon or Henley!

Can you imagine?

Never read the Daily Mail, let alone The Telegraph.

Only ever entered a church to steal its pews for firewood or to defecate in the font.

Gussets filled with yoghurt and compost.

Armpits oozing with peat.

Not a single Marks and Spencers cardigan in sight.

Shame on you!

Bring back National Service! 

No! This human is soiled.

Just shoot you in the head and be done with it!

That'll learn them!

"Don't be silly, Geraint."

The answer to everything I said when I was a child. 

Can I have a mint choc chip and raspberry ripple ice cream together? 

Can we get the musical instruments out of the cupboard please miss?

Can I put a curtain on the alcove to separate my bed from the rest of the room?

Can I buy some sweets please miss?

My feet hurt miss.

I don't believe in god.

Can I go to the toilet please?

I don't want to do dressing up. I don’t like it. 

I hate it here. It's rubbish!

I want a pair of red jeans.

I don't want to go there. They smell.

This is a girls' comic.

This book is shite.

Keep me cool, fatty

Bingo wings on Beryl Cook women, flapping away as they attempt - in vain - to shoo the wasps away. 

Not just in vain, but making the wasps angrier and angrier and more intent than ever on getting to their sugary crumbs.

At least the wind produced from their flappety arms is keeping me cool. 

I don’t mind the wasps: cheeky little punk rockers. 

In fact I admire their guile and tenacity!

The downside is those bingo wings are really putting me off my blancmange...

'Ere! Mind they wappsez!

"Just ignore him: he'll go away..."

So I've had man-flu..

Yeah, I know. This is the 6th week now. It was really active over 2 weeks and knocked me out, enough to not walk Tomos for the entirety. But it's also hanging on. 

One retired nurse told me what I had was a coronavirus of which there are many - the common cold and the covid virus being two of them.

I'm still bunged up. I sound like Tom Waites first thing, and my left ear is completely blocked, despite the litre and half of olive oil I've sprayed in it.

Having my ears syringed on Wednesday, which I've never had done before. I want to keep all the wax that comes out, and put it on display in a little jar.

But during this time I didn't get as frustrated as I normally do by not seeing people. 

I've noticed I'm not going out as much any more. That I'm more content to just stay in and do the same thing - YouTube and computer games. 

In particular I'm rewatching old Time Team episodes!

This is a feature of FTD - you withdraw until you've isolated yourself. You no longer see your friends, nor feel any compunction to do so.

And while I'm still a social animal really, it's one of those incremental steps down in my condition that I notice from time to time.

Even writing a blogpost has been extra-difficult. I just don't feel I have anything to say, which is - in itself - a thing worth saying, as I normally have tons to say!

It's all part of the change that happens to your personality with Behavioural Variant. 

Your interests and get-up-and-go, have got up and gone.

Back on the dog-walking block

But at least I'm back on earlies. I used to wake up at 6 or earlier when I was working. 

Early is now 8.10am.

Usual crowd of dog-walkers were out. People were nice  - some were concerned about me.

So today I was walking Tomos and I got embroiled in a white goods conversation. 

Oh my god...

I had a Meile washing machine that lasted 14 years and then I had a Zanussi that when you opened the cutlery draw was in the shape of a penis, which used to make my third wife laugh every time.

Really? I had a microwave that was in the shape of a ball bag. And I bought a terriyaki chicken from Morrisons that lasted 4 years. 

Of course, that was back when chickens were chickens. Did I ever tell you about my Aunt Ida? She used to be a zebra...

(Continues until the heat death of the universe.)

I had to make something up which took me a while with all this brain cancer coming through me ear'oles, and then I buggered off. 

Heroin without the upside

Every morning the first thing I do is reach for my phone or iPad and look for 'what's Trump and his idiots done now?'

I know a lot of others with my predicament.

I have TDS: Trump derangement syndrome. That's what MAGA call it.

It's basically a filthy drug addiction. Like fentanyl, without the upside. 

There is nothing positive to come out of it. There is no high. It's just a spirit-sapping dirge. Plunge into a vortex of shit, and immerse yourself in it.

Then you watch Fox 'News' which is a Trump's propaganda network, where smug buffoons shout down any dissenting voices, character-assassinating or doing whatever it takes to besmirch them, and then spin lies and ridiculous nonsense where their guy can do no wrong and everything's the fault of 'Libs'.

Someone explained that the reason the MAGA crowd hate Europe is that the political landscape in the US is now Oligarchic Authoritarians vs Liberal Democracies, and the US is now the former, which is why they're now ballsdeep with Putin, Erdogan, Orban et al.

With secretaries of state as inappropriate and out-of their-depth as Steve Witkoff, Pete Hegseth, Matt Waltz and Tulsi Gabbard and the recent Signalgate where war plans were shared using Emojis on a non-secure (by military standards) commercial platform and accidentally included the Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic magazine, that the US is no longer our ally.

I feel really bad for the rest of America who haven't drunk of the Trump Kool-Aid. But this is where we're at.

White punks on dope, the lot of them.

I wonder what Fee Waybill would do in his first term?

Gaming

While I was ill I managed to put 100 hours into an old game I started years ago and never finished - Fallout 4. Post apocalyptic alternate 1940s sci-fi. Great aesthetics. The game is good but when you're in maximised powered armour with a fully uprated plasma rifle and level 50, being asked to kill a bunch of Raiders terrorising a farmstead becomes nothing more than a chore.

I do have a new CRPG: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. It's okay so far. The interface is not as intuitive as Baldur's Gate 3 but it has potential. 

D&D has been cancelled a few times again. Little bit frustrating but there you go. Not that it can be helped. 

Itching to play though, and I'll be DMing in Pilton over Easter again.

Threads and Drugs and Rock and Roll

Drugs

It's surprisingly easy to drink all the time. 

It's also surprisingly easy to not drink all the time.

I just can't find a middle ground.

I drank every day for months. I seem to have to do it until my body disgusts me. Belly oozing over belt, belt down a notch and still too tight. Saggy-middle, flabby, atrophying muscle. Ghastly.

I had my last drink on New Year's Eve. I had a Baileys: the guilty pleasure of many!

I've been alcohol free all week. I can already feel the benefits. Stomach no longer bloated, toileting (I won't - you'll be thankful to know - go into details) easier, concentration marred by cold on back-burner, but less hazy brain due to alcohol-freedom. 

Marvellous.

Here are my opinions (and I have many strong ones on multiple subjects as I'm sure you're aware) on some common drugs:

Beer: tastes so wonderful - myriad flavours - easy, complex, bitter, smooth, fruity, malty, hoppy, dry. The drug that tastes nicest of all. What a quantity a pint is! The perfect measure: 0.568261 of a litre.

Cannabis: any drug that makes it okay to watch the same episode of Neighbours twice in one day has to be bad for you. Disgusting sickly smell. The stuff kids smoke today is like heroin compared to the rabbit poo of yore.

Cocaine: have you ever met anybody who took cocaine who didn't turn into an arrogant arsehole? Overpriced (like Champagne) for city and media types to make them feel special about themselves. A drug to bolster one's low-self-esteem. Not to mention the cost in human lives.

Champagne: the most overrated drink of all time. Tastes like ass unless you spend upwards of £50 a bottle. People eat oysters, caviar, smoke cigars and eat other stuff that has the texture of snot and tastes of rock-pools as it's traditionally what the aristocracy gorged themselves on, so it's more about aspiration - 'eating-up' in other words - rather than imbibing it because you actually like it.

'Never go ass to mouth.' - Marilyn Manson

Cigarettes: leant a friend £20 to buy some cigarettes. The change was in coins - less than a fiver - for a packet of 20. For years you see people outside offices standing in the rain to 'enjoy' a fag. I last smoked 21 years ago. I'd given up for years and taken it back up. I still have dreams where I'm smoking. Shit drug - way too expensive and makes you a social exile. 

And if you’re a bloke it shrinks your weenus. 

Threads

I'm still trying to work out what Threads is. It's a bit like a free app version of Twitter/X (if you had to pay for it). Less toxic, fewer features and rather anodyne in its content.

Like Facebook with strangers?

My feed is oddly full of middle-aged women whose entire content is selfies: cleavage selfies, butt selfies, driving selfies and big hair selfies. 

Their posts often read like this: 'Successful Lawyer, humanitarian, nature-lover, athlete, vegan, art connoisseur, mom of 4 super-smart kids.'

If that wasn't enough their post is just full of pictures of them. Is it boasting or is it a deep-seated insecurity that yearns for our approval? 

What have we become in the 21st century?

I understand people are looking to boost their low self esteem but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep demanding love and receiving positive affirmations and you quickly develop a need and eventually an addiction for other people's approval...

Ultimately I don’t think Threads knows what it is. You can’t really define yourself by saying this is what you're not.

I’ll await a proper definition. 

How to alienate your electorate

So I look online and see lots of footage of Trump supporters being ridiculed and made fun of. And it is unbelievable. 

Yes they have bypassed any form of half-decent education, they are ineloquent at best, but their vote counts as much as anyones’. Surely the liberals need to appeal to them instead of berating them all the time for being dim?

After all, if I called you 'stupid', or where you come from 'a shithole' would you vote for me? The chances are certainly lessened.

This is one reason the MAGA crowd hate metropolitan liberals - it's their painfully aloof intellectual arrogance. We have a similar thing in the UK between town and country but to a much lesser extent. A mistrust, as though the 2 sides share the same language but an entirely different culture. The countryside being socially conservative, and the townies being socially liberal, but illiberal to the socially conservative. 

Social media gave us anonymity in towers of judgement where we yell expletives and insult and threaten people who disagree with us. There is no serious debate on social media. You pick your binary side (woke and anti-woke) and that's it.

The Rock and Roll bit

Not been listening to music recently, although I did see a marvellous clip of the wonderful Dick Cavett chatting with the great Oscar Peterson, which I then I watched again with Mum and Dad.

These days I do secrete myself away in my man-cave for most of the day as I can't abide what they watch. And I'd be too embarrassed to attempt to watch The Boys for instance, with them. So it's great when we can watch something we will all enjoy (and I won't feel embarrassed about).

Not rock and roll, but just great, great music.