Half Gatsby

I am halfway through "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald and to me, it is very American and reminds me a lot of "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger. Like that book, I find it boring but oddly captivating, but I am fine knowing that it is fairly short so I know I will finish it this week.

I am listening to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band who make even the most mundane music more than listenable to the point of being absolutely excellent.

I wrote a Vocal story called "The Great Catsby" that you can read below.

Also Leslie West of Mountain was a great guitarist and a very big man and I think he had an album or nickname called "The Great Fatsby"

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Everythings Gonna Be Alright" by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

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 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 Great Gatsby

 

I have finished "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen and it is worrying that charlatans have their hands on the power in the world. It is a book that everyone should read.

I don't know about you but there are so many books in my house that I haven't read and I wanted some fiction and didn't realise that we had "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald.

I wrote a Vocal story called "The Great Catsby" that you can read below.

Also Leslie West of Mountain was a great guitarist and a very big man and I think he had an album or nickname called "The Great Fatsby"

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Theme From An Imaginary Western" by Mountain.

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 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

Send Out The Clowns

"How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen worries me more as I read it. Don't get me wrong it is an excellent book, but the remarks on the front say it is hilarious and funny, to the point you expect comedy, but it is genuinely frightening, just going over the fatwa issued on Salman Rushdie and how western governments and religion seemed virtually OK with it.

I feel Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rishi Sunak are treated as jokes and figures of fun when the reality is that the clowns are very dangerous. They are bullies who think they are above the law when they should be behind bars. People defend them, saying what they do is legal, but it is their mates who make the laws and if they don't like them they just ignore them because they are allowed to get away with breaking the law.

This is my first post in July and I am hitting three thousand visits a day, so if that keeps up, in theory, I could hit a hundred thousand this month, but we shall see. Last year I did twenty posts, this year I am already up to twenty-six.

Recent posts were usually lucky to get twenty visits but recently they are hitting fifty and the last one is up to seventy-four, so I don't know what is happening.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "They Murdered The Clown" by Graham Parker, just an amazing song.

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 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

A Near Miss (Isn't That A Hit?)

I thought that I might hit a 100K visit by midnight tomorrow, but it looks unlikely. I had over 5K visits yesterday, but today it's just 3K at the moment meaning I would need 6K tomorrow. It might happen but I can see it stalling at 99,999 but that is still an unexpectedly decent achievement.

 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music "Rings Around The World" by the Super Furry Animals

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 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

Oh My God

 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on politics but is now on the Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month, over 80K.  I am now starting to get greedy and need 18K reads before midnight on the 30th to hit 100K in a month. That would need 5K visits a day, and yesterday hit what was probably a high for a day at 3975.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child featuring Demis Roussos and Vangelis from the album "666"

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 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 End Of Entropy

I finished "The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcockwhich was only 152 pages long and it was different to say the least, jumping physically as well as paradoxically through time.

I am getting a little annoyed with Grammarly which is now indicating things that it thinks might be wrong but are only available in the professional version. I will still keep using it though, but it is annoying.

My next book is a reread of "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen which has started with political and philosophical observations and I know it is thought-provoking and but this may take a little longer than my lost book.

THis blog is still getting over three thousand hist a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Sombre Reptiles" by Brian Eno with some video I took at the Mouth Of Tyne Festival in 2011

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 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

Wandering Through A Parallel Europe

"The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock is a wander through a parallel earth, mainly in Europe with trips to Canada and the East. It is only 152 pages long so I expect to finish it this week.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M.

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 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

Dancing The Entropy Tango

I am still getting high figures on the blog this month with just over 26K visits this month, there were 7K last month, but 3.5K yesterday. The only thing that I have done is add a nofollow attribute to all my non-Vocal links. The figures are below.

I finished "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson which is both entertaining, funny and very worrying.

I was thinking of going for another Jon Ronson book but decided to go for "The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock as he is a favourite author and this book has provided some input into my Plagiaristic Poetry series. I was surprised to see that he made an album with his band Deep Fix which you can see here

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcock and Deep Fix

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 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

Seven Days In Some Numbers

I am still getting high figures on the blog this month with just over 20K visits this month, there were 7K last month. The only thing that I have done is add a nofollow attribute to all my non-Vocal links. The figures are below.

I may finish "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson this week, but it is getting more disturbing with each page I turn, but there are only another forty to go and then I need to find something else.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Don't Tell Me" by Blancmange as it is on my player at the moment and it is a superb record.

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 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. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

The Goat Still Stands

I may finish "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson. this week, it has been entertaining but disturbing. I am not sure what is coming next, but it may be something similar.

Grammarly is being awkward, but I thought I would just drop on to say a little bit about where I am up to and share some music with you, which is vaguely appropriate.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Dirty Water" by The Standells and a great easy-to-play riff and archetypal sixties garage punk.

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 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. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Still Staring At Goats

I  expect to finish "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson. The thing about this is on the one hand it is funny because it is so ludicrous, but it is scary because these things really happened. It is just going on about torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay but has included methods such as playing Barney The Purple Dinosaur to Iraqi prisoners none stop in order to break them down. There are funny bits laced in with horrific bits.

Another thing that has happened this month, well it started on the last day of May is that visit figures have gone through the roof for the blog. The only thing I have done is add is added the nofollow attribute to my Amazon links. The figures are below and there are already 900 today and it's 7am. I have already passed May's total, also since I did that my Vocal reads have been high, I don't know if the two are related.

Changed my bookmark from the one I got made for me for reviewing a book on Norse mythology to a freebie I picked up on my last visit to Barter Books (link below).

It is really useful because it is like an old wooden ruler with lots of measurement conversions written on it. Check it out here.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

I've included "She Knows" by Melanie Garside as I rediscovered her excellent "Fossil" album this week that you can read about here.

I recently found out 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 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. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Finished Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker, and it was very funny finishing off not wanting to go Glastonbury Glamping.

My next book is "The Men Who Stare At Goats" by Jon Ronson. The thing about this is on the one hand it is funny because it is so ludicrous, but it is scary because these things really happened.

This is my third post this month which I certainly didn't expect to happen, but have a feeling I will post more this year than last year.

Changed my bookmark from the one I got made for me for reviewing a book on Norse mythology to a freebie I picked up on my last visit to Barter Books (link below).

It is really useful because it is like an old wooden ruler with lots of measurement conversions written on it. Check it out here.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

I've included "Make That Handjive Mine" by The Bronte Brothers which is just one of the most life-affirming songs I have ever heard.

I recently found out 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 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. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer