Double Dutch

Again I switched on 6Music  and "Double Dutch" by Malcolm Mclaren on the Radcliffe & Maconie show and it is one of the most uplifting records you will here. "Double Dutch" has (ironically) two meanings:

1. unintelligible language. 
2. the jumping of two jump ropes rotating in opposite directions simultaneously.

The second being the subject of the Malcolm McLaren song which is obviously included here. It is a Saturday so for people like me there is no work, but I am sure that I will find plenty to do.

Currently "The Illuminatus Trilogy" has veered into HP Lovecraft territory in which a protagonist stumbles into a church with rats running between pews and a rusted marble altar, it's not rust it's blood, so obviously not High Church.

That takes me to "Fleabag" which I finished watch ig last night, superb cast and writing and only six episodes in each series so I will continue with "Parks and Recreation" on the Amazon Prime subscription. I am quite surprised, but it's a good business modell to make money, how many people have Netflix , Now TV and Amazon Prime subscriptions but never watch them.

So time to get off now and wander round

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.

Walk or Write?

Just wondering, and I have chosen write. It's the first day back at work, and a wonderful day outside so the natural choice should be walk, but as you can see I am writing this post. Due to the way the month has started I have a hell of a lot of catch up to do when I get to work but that does make the day fly by, I am thinking how the hell will I do this, but at 4:30 I will know how I did it.

So yesterday I finished Westworld on Now TV and as I said previously peer downloading takes a couple of hours for a series and then you aren't sure if it'll work, but Netflix or Now TV Entertainment is about £8 a month , in which time you could watch the whole of several box sets. I have Fortitude , Chernobyl and others to catch up on and it the two months that I have had NowTV this time I have seen Game of Thrones, Tin Star series 2, and Westworld Series 2, think how much they would be to buy. SO basically the TV streaming services( Now TV,Netflix,Amazon Prime plus BBC iPlayer and commercial hubs) generally provide value for money.

So I suppose the only song has to be "TV is King" by The Tubes.

Enjoy Your Monday.

Bingewatch

I know a lot of people, mainly Netflix subscribers, who's normal mode d'etre for watching television series in binge watching. It's something that I can't actually do, I feel that I'm overdosing on whatever I'm watching. I completed "Britannia" in a week due to my NOW TV subscription coming to an end, and i have been watching "Black Sails" but have never exceeded three episodes at one sitting.

I also have a number of series to work through, and often I watch films over two or three sessions, maybe I have a short attention span. One of the good things about Amazon Prime and subscription schannel box sets is that you aren't interrupted by adverts, although what you are going to to watch does take the time it says it's going to take.

The blog posts still don't seem to be getting the hits that they were, but I keep getting chunks of hits like 140 yesterday from Hungary so I don't know how that is working. It maybe that Google Reporting is being a bit flakey at the moment but that is difficult to quantify or identify.

So I've banged on about watching television and my blog and it's probably time to share some music with you, and for not reason at all I am going to share Nazareth's "Silver Dollar Forger (Parts I & II)" essentially for Part 2 which I just love, amazing phased guitar out to coda, from "Rampant", which is a brilliant album, Manny Charlton was a wonderful guitarist.

And One More

Today I didn't really do much except getting some  essentials and refilling the bird feeders. It is still cold and there is still snow about, but it is Saturday night, the middle of the weekend for us Monday to Friday workers.

I've gone on in my last post about the number of words that I writes and I suppose even if I stopped this post now it's just adding to the number of words that I have written today and a few more more for you to find your way through. Well this is just over 90 words so far, so not that many for you to digest.

I've started watching the new Sky production "Britannia" and it's totally mad with David Morrisey and Mckenzie Crook hamming it up with some huge slabs of unspecified mysticism thrown in with this particular Roman invasion. I don't think I've TV like this since Robin of Sherwood , but because I've cancelled my NOWTV subscription (they didn't offer reduced rates when I said I was leaving), I have a week to watch the remaining 8 episodes, so a binge watching week coming up methinks.

This also uses Donovan Leitch's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" as it's main theme tune so that's another plus point,  but I'll leave you with this to listen to before I go to bed.

Sleep well my friends.

Lock It Down

An interesting thing happened this morning , my website has been hacked again. Last time it was some Islamic Group who replaced my home page with an absolutely cracking one promoting their agenda, it really did look brilliant , but not exactly what people were expecting to see when they visited Song of The Salesman. So at the time changed the password and removed the pagese.

This time was a bit different , they hadn't hijacked my site as such , but uploaded a lot of files for what looked like a shopping site. Thinking about this, going off the file times , they took over two days to upload , each file around 40-60K , this would have caused my site to slow down or not be available over that timeframe. I can't really think why anyone could be bothered doing this , my site is not a high volume or high profile and webspace is cheap and you can host it yourself.

So the lesson learned is to keep an eye on things , sometimes when all appears ok , it may not be. This was something that didn't affect my website , it's abit like haveing squatters in because I've got loads of spare space.

Police and Thievery

So very little to report apart from it's a nice day and always make sure your doors are locked if they need to be. After yesterdays cold and fog we have bright sunshine which always good for lifting the spirits. Oh and my mate Keith has started another blog here. So now I'm off to do more chores , set the recorder to record some more TV , maybe set up my NOW TV box which I bought with a free Argos voucher but just haven't really needed to use. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Wasn't sure what song to use but you can't go wrong with Junior Murvin.