Turn The Page

I am tired and wasn't going to write anything , but think I should write something, so may as well do it now and then maybe have  along walk tomorrow morning before work.

I finished "Behold The Man" by Michael Moorcock and it is short , but , in my opinion well done, stopping at a good point to make you wonder and think about the Bible and the nature of history and truth.

I'm am doing another revisit "A Shadow On The Wall" by Jonathan Aycliffe , a local writer who apparently frequently visits the Oxfam shop where I spent some time when I left EE and joined up briefly with Geek Talent before my present post.

Thanks to the lockdown I seem to be watching more TV but not getting as much walking done as  I would like, though I have discovered another excellent Post Office to despatch my Discogs sales. I seriously don't think I will hit 340K this month, though I am slightly ahead of my target at the moment , but the problem with walking is that it takes time, maybe I should attempt to run, but feel I am too fat and unfit to take up running, but walking is surely a decent second.

So really a piece of music to see me to bed, and what should that be, for some reason te song "Valerie" by The Zutons  came to mind , a great song ruined by Mark Ronson's Stars on 45 arrangement of it for Amy Winehouse, so you can hear the original and the best. I can't listen to the AMy Winehouse version , she was far better with her own stuff , and sadly lost talent.

Bore

I keep wanting to write a really short post , one or two words to see what happens, if it causes any reaction, but as you can see it's not going to happen in this one. I once saw a blog where every post was just a link, I don't know if it was paid links but there was no description so it seemed a little pointless although if it was a pay per click link that could be lucrative if robots actually count as clicks.

This blog has links to Amazon as you will see from the strib at the bottom , plus Google ads that pay me about a pound a week,  and links to Topcashback who give me £7.50 if you join and sign up. These days that's about it. Amazon however keep introducing more rules not to pay, but this is after it becomes so integral to your site that it's more hassle to remove them than just leave them in.

I've sort of decided that I want to hit another annual record for posts but we shall see if that happens, I need to post about 25 times a month til New Years Eve.

This must rate as one of the most pointless, uninformative, boring posts I've ever done because it tells you nothing interesting or outside of my life bubble.

I am a quarter of the way though "The God Delusion" and Dawkins is currently pointing out the glaring error that are the various bibles which the historical inaccuracies and the the scriptures that were deemed "not good enough" (ie  too ridiculous).

6Music music played something from Penguin Cafe now led by Arthur Jeffes since the sad death of his father and have dropped the Orchestra part of the name. I went to their site and found this fifteen minute Tiny Desk Concert which is very good. I love the brilliant use of repetitive motifs in their music which continues their sound in an almost hypnotic fashion. I counted four "Peaky Blinders" caps in the video

So it it turns out that I did find something worthwhile to include in this post.

Have a great Saturday.

666

I've just passed page 666 in "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and was expecting something apocalyptic or at least interesting , but barring Moses crossing the Red Sea there wasn't too much out of the ordinary barring a reanimated Nazi army rising from the bottom of a lake near a rock festival close to Ingolstadt which is fairly normal for that book.

I can only think of two other books that I've read have a page 666 that's "Imajica" and "Lord of The Rings"  and maybe of of Michael Moorcock's Corum collections. I suppose The Bible and Quran also have one.

666 is defined as "The Number of The Beast" and features in many biblical and occult writings and films. as well as being an upside down 999. Aleister Crowley modelled himself as The Great Beast and many metal bands such as Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden , and jazz artists such as Graham Bond tapped into his legacy.

I remember visiting a youth club as a teenager and we brought records and one guy brought the "banned" "666" by Aphrodite's Child (featuring Vangelis and Demis Roussos" and I was well impressed with a lot of the album and have a copy in by collection. "Babylon" and "The Four Horsemen" are well worth tracking down. Click on the name for Youtube links. But we'll go with the more obvious Iron Maiden rampage on this Saturday morning.

Mary,Mungo and Midges

The weather has been wonderful but one of the annoyances is the clouds of midges that I run into when I am walking, that end up in your eys, nose ears, hair and you feel like you have been infested with nits. I'm enjoying the uplift that the sun gives me but maybe not so much the visitations and close contact of the insect population. You can sometimes avoid them , usually by stepping out into a road but cars are usually a bit more dangerous than a midge.

I stole the title from the children's TV series "Mary,Mungo and Midge"a childrens TV series which I was aware of but never watched , but the title has obviously stuck with me, and exercising my naturally tangential nature now I have mentioned midges for the Midge part of the the title I have to link in the other two characters.

Obviously Mary was a major character in Philip Pullman's "The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ" as she was the mother of the main protagonist and is a very big biblical character.

Saint Mungo (real name was Kentigern) was an apostle of the Scottish Kingdom of Strathclyde in the late 6th century, and the founder and patron saint of the city of Glasgow, and Saint Mungo's is a  charity that helps the homeless and unfortunately we still need them in th etwenty first century due to western society's avarice and worsip of money.

But actually I am am going to leave you with Mungo Jerry, Ray Dorset led seventies rock and roll jugband unfortunately generally onlty remembered for the seventies misogynistic / sexist "In The Summertime" and Ray's sideburns. I loved them because they brought out their records as EPs so you got four or five songs on your vinyl and there was a lot of fine stuff like "Alright,Alright,Alright" and "Baby Jump" but I will leave you with my favourite at the time "You Don't Have To Be In The Army To Fight In The War" . They are a band worth looking into if your band wants something to cover.

Enjoy the good weather and avoid the midges my friends.

"They grab you by the collar and throw you throughthe door,

You Don't Have To Be In The Army To Fight In The War"

You Gotta Have Faith

We all have it in one form or another, and one of the problems is that concepts of faith is usually hijacked by religion to get your support without any real promise of a reall benefit to your reself. Your life may be bad but you need to have pain and poverty and then you will get unspecified rewards in heaven, really? I am agnostic and there may be a god but I have not seen any evidence in my lifetime or any real evidence from the past. People cite The Bible as support or evidence, but that book is continually being rewritten and amended. There's a King James' Bible , sixteen hundred years after the events supposedly happened. You think that would be accepted as evidence in court, yet we swear to tell the truth on The Bible!!

The faith I do have is the faith I have in my actions adn what they cause. I work and therefore onece a month I receieve money in my bank account to stave off poverty. That is then used to pay bills and I believe that the people requiring money with receive it.  We put a hell of a lot of faith in eletronics and people and most of th etime it is well founded, although tis week two things happened where my faith was not rewarded.

Firstly Betfair withdrwals are nrmall y in my bank in two days, and this week withdrawals from Wednesday and Thursday have still not landed. A worse example is my insulin prescription that I ordered on Monday. I went to pick it up from the chemist (I'd injected my last on Saturday morning) , and they said they had received nothing. Insuling is fairly important to a diabetic. The first thing they said was " .... and as it's Saturday we can't ring the doctors" ... that was swiftly followed by "but we'll give you an emergency box but could you ring the practice on Monday". The NHS don't usually let you die and I am thankful I don't live in the USA. These two failures maybe say we  have to be aware that sometimes things we have faith in fail us.

You thought I was going to include a George Michael Song, though you will have seen The Who picture when you opened up the post. I always like this song from their "Odds and Sods" compilation.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday