Not As Harmless As I Thought

"Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams (#5 in a trilogy in five parts that combines wit and intelligent writing) is the final installment and I think the longest one. This has been the most difficult book for me in the series. It is readable but I still have forty pages to go, and can't seem to read more than four pages at a time so it is going to slip into December no doubt.

I am not sure where I will go next but if you follow this blog and I can be bothered to share, then you will find out.

One of the good things about this blog is that it seems to continually unearth interesting pieces that I can then share on  Vocal. Does that make me lazy? Maybe.

Seven Days In seemed to be grinding back down and for the last two months has had three thousand visits each month.

If you want to buy a book of my poetry there is one on the link below.

The music is "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon because that is what is on the player at the moment

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

The Problem With Attention To Detail: Bellingcat

On the final chapter of  "We Are Bellingcat" by Elliot Higgins and it has just been dealing with the pressures on the organisation and individual members in investigating crimes using their open source method. The nature of the work is incredibly intense , and because it involves war crimes, images and videos on social media and a lot more this can result in PTDS for some investigators.

I wont go into the details and would suggest you read the book to see what this incredible team are doing.

The final sentence in the "Mice Catch Cat" is very pertinent , not just to Bellingcat  , but to other organisations and teams that I know are developing.

"While it's true I could do little to stop an attack, our opponents can do nothing to stop what we are becoming"

Bellingcat are a force for good as are the people that I speak of, and I have just found there is a film here

Appropriate music is Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" , Peter Garrett being an active ecological politician as well as still fronting the band.

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle
2. Keep Me In Your Heart For A While - Warren Zevon
3. Five Funny Facebook Friends - Stalwarts of The Stand In Newcastle
4. Become A Vocal Facebook Group Member And Bathe In The Positivity
5. A True Folk Hero - Nic Jones

Tollbooth - #FruitfulSeptember #4

 I was in Edinburgh at the weekend and at one point when into Deacon Brodie's . Now I know nothing about Deacon Brodie apart from the name and the fact it's a big pub on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

 

Ben Johnson's words:

"A greatly respected member of Edinburgh‘s society, William Brodie (1741-88) was a skilful cabinet-maker and a member of the Town Council as well as deacon (head) of the Incorporation of Wrights and Masons. However, unknown to most gentlefolk, Brodie had a secret night-time occupation as the leader of a gang of burglars. An extra-curricular activity that was necessary to support his extravagant lifestyle which included two mistresses, numerous children and a gambling habit.

It is said that Brodie’s bizarre double-life inspired Robert Louis Stevenson, whose father had had furniture made by Brodie. Stevenson included aspects of Brodie’s life and character in his story of a split personality, ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde’."

I also found this account of the trial of Deacon Brodie 

The titular character of the novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark claims to be descended from Deacon Brodie. His double life serves as a metaphor for her duplicity, as well as her self-imposed demise.

I must have misread the name in the quote of his final words , I thought that one of his forenames was Tollbooth but that's where he was held before his final demise. 

The only other time I have seen Tollbooth used as human nomenclature is it the title of the Paul Kantner and Grace Slick album "Baron Von Tollbooth and The Chrome Nun" which I think I bought for the title alone.

So for #FruitfulSeptember I am going with "Raspberry Beret" , the Prince song , by the Hindu Love Gods which is a Stipe-less REM with Warren Zevon

Keep Me In Your Heart

I've been wanting to post this for a while , essentially to share the wonderful Warren Zevon song "Keep Me In Your Heart For A While" which he recorded shortly after he was diagnosed with inoperable pleural mesothelioma (a cancer of the lining of the lung), and it was released just two weeks before his death on September 7, 2003. It is a truly beautiful song and has been covered by many people including Jorge Calderon on the "Enjoy Every Sandwich" tribute album, and a recent cover by Alfie Boe, a classical based singer but impressive taking the lead in the orchestral "Quadrophenia" and fitting right into the alt-folk / country for his take which I discovered below.

I have a lot of close friends who have lost parents , partners and children and if they read this I hope this will warm their hearts. All three takes are beautiful. I lost my mum thirty years ago and due to my (unscientific and non religious beliefs) I have dealt with that, but loss affects everyone in their own way.

I really don't know what else to say on this, it is a great song , by a great artist and no doubt we will see more covers in time , but here is the youtube search if you want to discover more versions of this wonderful song.

Windows Media Player?

Yesterday I tried using the recommended Windows 10 Media player Groove which would not recognise the music library. For years I've been using iTunes , but that is just slow , cumbersome bloatware,  and Amazon Music is not much better.

I then went to Windows Media Player and accidentally pressed a small icon which changed the view and very shortly had logged all my network music in it's library (iTunes took about two days to do this) , the only slight problem being that it defaults to the 32 bit version , but I have put the 64 bit version on the quick access bar.

So today I have listed to a Joy Division boxed set, a best of Julian Cope and a best of Warren Zevon. While the sound quality is a bit imperfect , it's great to listen to my own music collection rather than my normal 6Music diet, not that there's anything wrong with 6Music.

The thing is I am very happy with my musical options around my computer.I'm now listening to "God Save Us" by The Oz Elastic band which was released on Apple Records (and featured John Lennon) to raise money for the Oz Magazine Obscenity case.


So we'll go with "Mr Bad Example" one of my many favorite Warren Zevon songs, I think it's a polka , the lyrics are just perfect. Just a thought he looks very like Heisenberg (Walter White) from "Breaking Bad" which would be very appropriate ......

A Play(List) For Today

Thanks to Sky Comedy I am working my way through Veep and 30 Rock. 30 Rock is not on demand and is broadcasting three episodes a day, which I am trying to keep up with, and am now just two episodes in arrears after watching four of five episodes a day for the last few days. It is an easy watch , and the episodes are short as well as being on the nail funny, but am I watching too much TV?

I'm also going through Lucifer and Picard on Amazon Prime as well as having two Clive Barker books on the go, sio am I doing to much being entertained rather than actually doing stuff?

Also today I went to a local supermarket who's shelves were being cleared by panic buyers and the queues at the tills were backed up with huge loaded trolleys, I laughed , walked out , and went to a smaller local shop, got what I needed and came home. Most of this is fuelled by a lying media and a government that is only bothered about lining pockets of the already wealthy, but c'est la vie , what do I know.

After my earlier post I thought I could list a few songs relevant to our current situation, though it's still not that long when you had to put together a tape in real time rather than a playlist. All the songs link to a Youtube video for you to watch and listen to.

So here we go:

• Panic in the World - Be Bop Deluxe
• Spreading The Disease - Queensryche
• Isolation - John Lennon
• Panic - The Smiths
• Virus - Iron Maiden
• Splendid Isolation - Warren Zevon
• Virus - Bjork
• Shake The Disease - Depeche Mode
• Isolation - Joy Division
• Hot, Hot, Hot!!! - The Cure

I had to have something by The Cure in , didn't I? And from 30 Rock we have Alec Baldwin in a quartet singing on the underground.

Sleep Now

A lot of this is coming from Matt Haig's book "Notes on a Nervous Planet" and it is so good that I am about to order "How To Stop Time" which I think was inspired from a page in "Reasons To Stay Alive" which is another of his excellent books. I have read others, my introduction to him was "Humans" which I gave away on  World Book Night before it degenerated into commercialisation. The thing is I'm not sure if I have read and bought "How To Stop Time" because it is a paperback book and my real books are not stored digitally although Amazon will tell me if I've bought it before, then I just have to find it.

Anyway one section I have come to is a short section on sleep and the fact that generally we don't get enough. We need seven to nine hours per night and lack of sleep does cause problems. The odd night or two is fine especially if you are interacting withe real people of real things. The problem is that people use what should be sleep time to bings watch TV, be on their electronic device, with phones replacing alarm clocks and therefore living on people's bedsides. This si not a good idea.

The CEO of Netflix said that their biggest enemy was sleep and it was a huge area to increase consumption of their product. I have not yet taken out a subscription to Netflix, because by TIVO Box is filling up from my Virgin subscription, I also have access to Amazon Prime, and NowTV which I can stop and start when I want it. I worked out that it will take six hours to illegally download a TV series or film yet for £8 you get a month of Netflix or NowTV, a far better use of my time to pay that rather than steal, though we have been conditioned to think we shouldn't have to pay for digital content.

When we sleep we cannot be consumers so the whole commercial world hates us because we are not buying, but to buy we need money, but we are always having credit pushed at use rather than being paid enough to actually buy without going into debt.

Another point that Matt Haig makes is to turn off notifications on your phone to give yourself control, and that is something I have always done as I can't deal with things popping up all the time.

So it's gotta be "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" by the sadly missed Warren Zevon as the music to accompany today's post.

Monkey F

Yesterday evening I was looking for iced lollies in the local supermarket freezer and for a split second saw a sign the said "Monkey Kiev" or "Kiev Monkey", I looked again and it was Chicken Kiev, I couldn't see any sign of a monkey anywhere, unless you count me.

It got me thinking how many times our brain sees something that isn't there. This probably explains the majority of ghosts and UFOs but people are still adamant that such sightings are real, even though there is no concrete proof. I have had a few supernatural encounters, but everyone could explained logically. I've probably written about before but I'm not going to expand on it here, maybe later.

I am currently melting keeping cool by eating strawberry splits, but that can only last so long.

Anyway this is just a short post on mistakes, so we will sign off with Warren Zevon's "Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse". Sleep well my friends.

I Love Polly Jean

This is a great reason for me to smile. One of my favourite artists PJ Harvey is to release a new album in the spring The Hope Six Demolition Project. a wonderful taster here

My Dad

Today is my dad's 81st birthday , I've sent him a card and present and a text and will phone him at a reasonable time. That's a pic of him as a boxer.

Really he can be a curmudgeon , but has always been there for me and always encouraged me to do what I want , I totally love him. He doesn't pressure me but does exasperate me at times. but can't all good parents be like that

Anyway we are nearly at the end of January , and nearly at the end of the week , and looking forward to lots of amazing stuff at the weekend and next week





Next week I have 3 nights out already penned in , so I cannot complain my life is boring, feel free to come with me , the ride is going to be immense and intense. As it's my Dad's birthday I am including two of my favourite boxing songs , "No Mercy" by Nils Lofgren and "Boom Boom Mancini by Warren Zevon.

Have a great Thursday everyone.

Health Report and Yakuza Fast Food Delivery

Since Thursday I've been feeling full of a cold, Friday was a very long day with lots of waiting at bus stops and train platforms , freezing wearing nothing but a light suit, the result of which was yesterday I spent all day bar five hours in bed, hot and not feeling too good. It's not 'flu because I think I'm getting better, with the help of lot's of drugs like LemSip, Paracetamol and Chocolate. Yesterday throat felt like I'd swallowed sandpaper and every time I coughed really did hurt. But the main thing is I seem to be a lot better this morning although still full of a cold.

The lump that I was worried about after returning from holiday is now almost gone, so it probably was an abscess and the antibiotics that I finished yesterday seem to be doing their job, though I'll have a wander over to my doctor's surgery this week to make sure all is ok. Thanks got I'm in the UK and have the NHS so my first thoughts aren't "Can I Afford this?".

The final thing is that last night Fiona had a Chinese Take Away for tea. At 9:30 last night there was a fairly insistent knocking on our front door. I stumbled downstairs , managed to open the front door and was confronted with a shaven headed stocky Chinese guy telling me in no uncertain terms that I had ordered a meal and I owed him £15. I said he must be mistaken as we'd had one earlier, so they must have duplicated the order or something. He then showed me the printed bill , which I took about a minute to focus on, then pointed out that he was on the wrong road!! His demeanor changed and he was very apologetic, after which I went back to bed to continue my recovery.

I've just thought Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London has a beg section on Chinese Food , so that's the song for this post.