Breadfan

September this year seems a bit weird for me. I feel there's a least a week left in September but it ends on Monday meaning that Tuesday we're into October and incidentally my birthday. Thought the week after it's my daughter's birthday and I always think I have more time to sort her card and present out and often end up consulting her Amazon wishlist the day before. I will do that this weekend.

The other day I went to the Strawberry and was thinking while I like their toasties I'm not really that much of a bread fan these days. Really if you are trying to keep the weight off bread is best avoided. That reminded of the seventies Welsh Metal band Budgie who had a song called "Breadfan" (covered by, among others , Metallica who do a more than decent cover) and thought that would be a good title / subject for a post. Some more of their excellent titles include "In The Grip of A Tire Fitters Hand", "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman" and "Crash Course In Brain Surgery" (Budgie not Metallica).

Still on "The God Delusion" and it is teaching me a lot about Cosmology and Physics and I'm finding it more scientifically instructional than anti God / Religion although Dawkins has no time for ignorance and using God as an explanation for things we don't yet have an answer for.

So it's Friday morning , time for work, and I'll leave you with "Breadfan" by Budgie with excellent static Roger Dean cover.

Anthropic

When you are reading a book it helps if you know what the words you are reading actually mean and I am still sort of getting my head round The Anthropic Principle which basically means that if the universe were not capable of supporting life then we wouldn't be hear to wonder about it . This is the weak version, follow the link or search google for more information.

It is coming up a lot in "The God Delusion" where I am up to so far and does sort of make sense to me but I also feel it's far above my intellectual level (which is not very high anyway, 2 "A" Levels , 5 "O" Levels and something in Business Studies) but I wont let it stop me from reading this book.

The blog visits are probably going to hit 300K in the next month and at this rate half a million could happen in the next six months. That is something that I didn't expect as the Feedburner thing is continuing unbroken this time, although it may stop after two months, but we shall see.

September has seen 34K visits which is an all time record following the previous record of 27K last month and 25K in June which smashed the previous record of 10K in October 2013.


So we'll go for "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" by Pink Floyd from "A Saucerful of Secrets" which seems vaguely appropriate for me with a suitable video. Apparently Stanley Kubrick wanted to film an adaptation of Dune with a soundtrack performed by Pink Floyd... it would have been 14 hours long. This song was the only one to feature all five members of Pink Floyd Phas I

I'll set my mind to understand more.

Bed

This morning the alarm woke me up from a dream in which I was taking an online survey about why I was taking an online survey. Recently I've been sleeping extremely well always being woken by my alarm.

Bed was so comfortable that I decided to have another hour under the sheets but after twenty minutes stretched and and got out. For some reason I vaguely worry that I'm not going to be in work for eight o'clock though they are very flexible with work ours and people come in from any time from seven thirty to eleven. It doesn't stress me and I'm writing this at seven thirty so it's highly unlikely that I'll be in before eight, well I wont be, even if I get the bus. But I am certainly not stressed.

I am aware that some people become stressed over very small things and often it's their psychological make up that cause it. I have every sympathy for them. I also believe that stress is caused by things we can't influence or control, and can be reduced by stepping back and evaluating the situation, but usually you can't do this on your own, it helps to speak with someone. I have helped a few people who have been very stressed and talked and chatted and when we finished they were in a better place in their mind and more confident of being able to deal with the situation. I just did this as a friend, and friends are brilliant to have so always cultivate friendship.

I would recommend any book by Matt Haig who's "Reasons To Stay Alive" once saved a friend's life, it really is a book that everyone should have.

So I still have to take drugs, get dressed, and then get to work and choose a tune for this post. I think we'll go with "Sleeping In The Devil's Bed" by Daniel Lanois from his second album "For The Beauty of Winona". I first came across Daniel Lanois from his work with Brian Eno on the "Dune" soundtrack and U2's "Unforgettable Fire" . His first album, "Acadie" was an immediate purchase and I do love is franglais littered languid and brooding songs.

Wet

Today it has poured down. There has been a lot of rain. I was in town and was surprised at the number of people who just stand blocking doorways. If you are going to go out , go out or else get out of the door way. Apparently the precipitation is going to get heavier and given today was the Autumn Equinox we can expect the weather to get a little less summery to say the least.

Again I wasn't going to write this as I really need to go to bed, but  just wanted to mention that in about two weeks the number of visits to this blog will hit 300K given that there about 1200 visits a day, that's 50 an hour and just under 1 a minute.

Today I went for a Liver check up and everything seems to be going in th eright direction although my body is showing signs of wear and tear with calcification around the heart, but sensible living will keep that OK.

I'm gonna close with "I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have" the coda of which metamorphosed into "Loaded" (check out the studio take and the live take of both songs running into each other here), Primal Scream are just one of those bands who are not limited by any style and are one of the most enduring bands ever.

Alarming

For the past two weeks I have been woken up by my alarm from a deep sleep. This is a good thing really but each time comes as a slight shock as I normally tend to wake up before the alarm so it's just a question of switching the damned thing off.

Today is extremely cloudy and rainy, but we are in the second half of September so it's not exactly unexpected. I have been bingeing on some TV programs, mainly Parks and Recreation , Defending the Guilty and Vikings .

Last night I actually started on recording a song, and maybe I will complete it this week and put it on Soundcloud.

This is just a short throway post but I'll sign it off with with a live take of  "Framed" from 1974 as I've been chatting with a friend on Facebook about how brilliant a front man Alex was and Zal Cleminson's evil clown costume predates todays Joker and Pennywise from It

Break

One of the benefits of listening to vinyl is that you listen to a whole side with no option for a remote break, and on a normal well planned album those sides seldom pass twenty minutes and definitely not twenty five minutes, so you are given a natural break. Todd Rundgren's "Initiation" clocked in about thirty five minutes a side which always needed to be played with a new diamond needle. That was not a good idea. Also somewhat strange that his classic "Todd" clocked in at just over sixty minutes and was a double album.

When Van Der Graaf Generator's "Godbluff" was released the NME reviewer said that we needed a continuous play medium (actually one side of a C90 cassette or an 8-Track tape would have provided that) but CD and MP3 satisfied that perfectly and some albums are best listened to in a non stop sequence.

But I bought four second hand albums at the weekend for a tenner from Vinyl Guru and on Sunday morning listened to side one of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band followed by side one of "This Is The Moody Blues" especially for the closing song "Legend of A Mind" one of my favourite songs of theirs.

Digital music has no limitations and vinyl has lots , but vinyl is more of a personal experience and you feel closer to and more in touch with the music. The may sound trite but the sounds produced from an analogue vinyl source are always a pure curve whereas digital is always a series of defined steps however small they may be.

So how do we soundtrack this, of course Youtube is a digital medium and this is a digital medium but we shall go for "Action Strasse" from the first album I played yesterday.

Goodnight and God Bless,

Delay

This could have been titled an Airdrieonian , A Native of Ayr, an Italian, and Australian and a Prestionian got in a taxi in Morpeth and went to Newcastle.. This was the end of a very long day as due to work on the East Coast Line Newcastle to Edinburgh was via Carlisle adding an hour and a half to the journey.

Coming back two trains were cancelled so we ended up on a coach from Edinburgh to Morpeth which was a literally last minute thing but the coach journey was fine although lengthy.

Once we hit Morpeth the train to Newcastle was going to be another 50 minutes so the five of us above got together and commandeered the only taxi in the station to get back to Newcastle. It was a pleasant ride back and we found that the Airdrieonian girl who had originally suggested the taxi lives in Gateshead and works for the NHS, the Australian guy was trying to get to Cambridge, the Italian girl (who had an American accent) was trying to get to London.

Everyone in the taxi was really positive and pleasant and this was a very small lesson in coming together to get a good result and that is what happened. The taxi driver was very talkative and the journey was over very quickly and a very reasonable £30.

So cause of the title we'll go with "Long Time Coming" by The Delays, always been a favourite of mine.

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.

Satellite

At the current rate of views I will have had 300K visits by mid October. The Feedburner boost is still continuing so I'm getting more than a thousand visits a day. This is a huge surprise but do wish it would translate into actual followers or something, but what the hell SevenDaysIn is popular with someone or something.

I wasn't going to write this, like I wasn't going to write the last post, but I am feeling weirdly tired but also wide awake. I think my mind is tired and so is my body , but my body does not want sleep, it wants to keep doing things, hence the fingers to keyboard causing this bog post to take shape. I am expecting maybe a hundred words or so then I will crash into bed and fall asleep maybe.

This morning when the alarm went off I was in some kind of deep sleep state and I really did not want to leave my bed, but, as always, I did and crawled to the bathroom still wanting to turn around and sleep.

Stepwise I hit 17.5K steps today that's about  five and a half miles.

I heard the sing "Satellite" by The Hooters today and it is still brilliant taking it out of the televangelists so sort of appropriate given I am reading "The God Delusion".

So before Saturday comes I will share this nugget of prose with you.

Connection

I'm just writing this to share a great song which I heard on the Warner Brothers Music Show compilation that I bought for 59p on vinyl when it first came out, and to be quite honest every song on it was, and still is, excellent. The song is Montrose's cover of The Rolling Stones' "Connection" and is a universe away from the dreadful "Insania" by Peter Andre that I shared in my last post.

"The God Delusion" is providing a lot of thought provoking entertainment, and it's shots are mainly at organised religion, which mostly has as it's foundation an unquestionable belief in a God with an evidence free existence. Richard Dawkins just listed a few or the reasons given supporting the existence of God with a full list here

It's Friday morning and time for work. I know this is very short but I really couldn't get motivated to write, but also wanted to share the Montrose song and would highly recommend that LP if you can play vinyl. You should be able to pick it up for a fiver.

Have a good day.

Spiderversary

I don't know where that title came from. Maybe it was wandering past Be More Geek the other day. Add that to the Spiderverse that I know nothing about apart from it's something to do with Spiderman  but it's another area of Marvel Comics that loses me , along with the DC rivalry. It's a way you can extend and make up words the "verse" bit obviously taking me to "adversary" / "anniversary" . Peter Andre would be proud.

Really starting to enjoy "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and was surprised that his seven point scale from Total Theist ("I Know God Exists, I Don't Need Evidence") to Total Atheist ("I Know God Doesn't Exist, I Don't Need Evidence") I'm at the same level that he puts himself, level six where on the evidence so far there is no God but if he turns up I will change my mind because that would be hard evidence.

My Google Pixel phone just took an age to update to Android 10 so we will see if anything changes with that. It took quite a long time and the download size was 1 Gigabyte which is fairly hefty especially over wifi.

So I am tempted to use Peter Andre's "Insania" because he was so proud that he'd "made up a word" but good taste says that I should not include such trash, but then I love trashy music and film so that says I should include Peter Andre.

So why not, we will have Peter Andre's "Insania". I've just realised that this will be the first time I've ever heard it I think. I may have just blanked the horror of it from my memory though. Listened to it and it is bloody awful ☺

It's also National Talk Like A Pirate Day and Lambchop have a song to celebrate that. I only just found that out. C'est La Vie.

Enjoy Thursday.

Alarm

Is there anything more disappointingly annoying than waking up warm and in the dark, checking the time to see it's one minute before the alarm is meant to go off, then do you wait, switch it off , get up or what? I waited.

Continuing on "The God Delusion" and the treatment of atheists is absolutely disgusting bry religious zealots and idiots. We are seeing this is the USA today where Christianity has been engineered as a power grabbing money making machine and woe betide anyone who questions it. One example was an atheist who wanted to protest against a faith healer who was telling diabetics to throw away their insulin and cancer sufferers to stop their treatment and pray for a miracle. He contacted the local police department about protection from the faith healer's supporters and was threatened in no uncertain terms by everyone in the police department because he was questioning "god's work".

I keep using a lower case "g" for god because in my sixty one years I have yet to see any evidence of a god, though seen plenty of evidence of the harm caused by religion.

It looks like another cold but bright day today and I was surprised to see that I was up to series five of "Parks and Recreation" so still 55 episodes to go but a lot nearer the end than I thought, and thoroughly enjoying it.

So this weekend Sky Arts are screening a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film of "Quadrophenia" and to be honest I have never watched it, although I love the album and thought the classical version with Alfie Boe in the was very good. I will be recording all the Sky Arts programs and will get round to watching the film which one of the many unwatched films in my DVD collection.

So we will go for a live take of "The Real Me" the opening song from the the "Quadrophenia" album.

Answer

I am enjoying, if that's the right word, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins but seems to be more against  organised controlling religion and by extension the monotheist "god" which is the focus of most religion. I'm a tenth of the way through the book and think that at some point he will take aim and my own belief that evolution won't waste our consciousness but I have no evidence or reason to believe that, but you can never satisfactorily prove the non-existence of something, and also the fact that we cannot explain something means we have not found the answer. I couldn't really explain how a plane flies but it's not supernatural, magic or the will of god.

Also I wonder if Richard Dawkins would have a problem with people who worshipped the Earth and believed when they die become one with the Earth. He couldn't really argue with the basic premis.

Often religion is a search for "the answer" and two books spring to mind that provide the solution.

The first being Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" which gives that answer as 42 but the tells us you need to know what the question was.

The next is "Venus on the Half Shell" written by Philip Jose Farmer under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, a creation of the amazing Kurt Vonnegut. Basically the protagonist is searching for God to ask, in his opinion, the ultimate question:

Why are we born to suffer and die?

Through many adventures he eventually comes face to face with God and asks his questionand God answers:

Why Not?

A great ending to the book.

And just a thought, why doesn't the Christian God have a proper name? It's like calling your dog Dog (ironically a palindrome of God) and what the heck is the Holy Ghost ?

So what to go with this morning , maybe "Converted" by The Alabama 3 from "Exile on Coldharbour Lane" which my friend Tom glared at me as they broke into the chorus "Let's Go Back To Church* but by the end of the gig even he was converted.

Follow

Just a short post about an odd thing. I didn't really use twitter until Google ditched Google+ and I looked for new ways to share my blog post as Facebook also seemingly stopped feeds. I'm not sure how many I followed or how many follower I had (this blog after twelve years has FIVE followers) so I am not the most popular person on the planet, but I am sure I had about seventy followers and followed a similar number of people.

Every few days I get a new follower but the number of followers I have seems to remain at a constant 77 (just checked it's now 78) which is a lot more than this blog (despite it's now daily 1-1.5K visits (and yes I know a lot will be robots and apparently French people (Merci, Merci pour les visites)  so overall that is a success and it's only since sharing the blog on Twitter that these visit spikes took off. Below are two images showing the spikes and the fact that France is the source of a lot of visits.

Big In France

Big In 2019

So since twitter , Feedburner picked me up and that I think is the main reason for the reason hike in hits. I would like to hit 300K by the end of the year and at the current rate that could happen by mid October , but that is assuming I sill get over 1K hits a day.

So I though I would just post this listening to the Giorgio Moroder album "Deja Vu" , and while it's OK it's not as adventurous as I expected although "74 is the New 24" is quite good and the first song that would fit with the "From Here To Eternity" album which is one of my favourites. That was followed by an excellent take on Suzanne Vega's "Toms Diner" with Britney Spears, which shows it's always good to listen to a whole album. Not as good, in my opinion, as "From Here To Eternity" but more than listenable with some good points.

I've also realised that Giorgio Moroder's moustache is almost as iconic as Frank Zappa's (see below)

So "74 is the New 24" would be a good one to share with you and the video is cool too.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Atheist

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and the foreword tells me that anyone reading this will be an Atheist if they finish it. This is the sort of evangelical preaching that annoys me about Richard Dawkins. I ton't like being told I am wrong without empirical evidence and I almost want to say I believe in God just to spite him.

I was made to go to church  by my parents until I was ten then it was my choice. I went to Catholic schools and some teachers every week tried to trip you up on what had happened in mass and certain pupils would tell teachers that you hadn't been to Church which resulted in various fors of denigration and punishment.

Jesuits taught me at secondary school and some of them were extremely logical by admitting that only faith could justify their position. That earned my respect because they were fine with people who were "unbelievers" .

Through my life I have come across lots of great religious people and none of them have tried to convert me.

In 62 years I have seen no evidence of God but I am always open to be proved wrong, that's PROVED wrong not told I'm wrong.

And I do have faith, faith that the sun will rise, faith that the light will turn on when I flick the switch, faith that the kettle will boil when I switch it on, a little less faith that I will get a phone signal or Amazon Prime will work when I want to watch a prong.

Because of evolution I believe that our minds continue after death, so it doesn't really bother me, but evolution tends to keep the good adaptable bits and in a lot of humans the mind is the most interesting and flexible part.

So "The God Delusion" is four hundred pages and quite a large book so think this will take me about a month to finish.

I'm still getting a thousand hits a day on the blog so the Feedburner thing  (something to do with syndicated content) is still working although a side effect is lots of visits from France for some reason though I can't say I'm complaining.

To go with this I'm going with "Faith" by George Michael just because I like it.

Morning

Is Saturday better than Friday? Friday has the anticipation of the two day weekend combined with the fact that it's the last day of work , whereas Saturday you can get up when you want , you don't have to go to work but you only have one more day before Monday comes around. This is not true for many people who work in retail, banks , call centres and the like so apologies to all those.

I once read of an American car shop who noticed that most of their sales came on Friday afternoon and Saturday so they changed their working week from Monday to Friday to Friday to Monday (that doesn't seem to make sense but it does) so employees went from a five day week to a four day week for the same pay and profits increased. This model wouldn't work for everything but is definitely an example of how you should always look to improve situations in a way that benefits everybody.

As I said I finished "Brief Answers To The Big Questions", the final Stephen Hawking book in around a week and it is a very interesting, easy and thought provoking read which I would recommend to everybody. My next book is going to be "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a far heavier tome but I do like Dawkins' sensible and logical arguments although he does, ironically, get a bit evangelical at times. Still I will see how it goes.

I;ve been enjoying the single "Ibtihaj" by Rapsody with GZA . I though "Ibtihaj" was some kind of acronym but it's actually the name of Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first female Muslim-American athlete to earn a medal at the Olympics. The chorus, male backing vocals sounds like a eerie Bowie song like say "The Bewlay Brothers". It is a great sound and I heard it again on Radcliffe and Maconie on 6Music this morning but Chris Hawkins has also been playing it.

Take a listen and definitely check out the books.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Friday

Yes it's the 13th and had an early night last night . The Feedburner feed seems to be dropping off but this time may be because I haven't posted for a couple of days through essentially laziness, apathy and tiredness.

Last night I watched at excellently subversive comedy  film called "The Brand New Testament" which relocates God to Brussels and he is nothing but a git , and his rebellious daughter is brilliant , there are some very funny scenes especially after she escapes through washing machine after Jesus advises her what to do is a very small cameo and God's wife follows the evolution of her personal copy of "The Last Supper" painting. Really enjoyed that.

According to the doctor I'm getting old but in very good condition so all is fine on that front.

I could go on about it being the 13th but I've written about that in the past here so today will be just working before the weekend and picking up my pre ordered copy of "Hypersonic Missiles" by Sam Fender on vinyl and signed by the lad himself from Beyond Vinyl.

After yesterday's rain it looks like another summery day though no doubt it will be cold, it is Autumn after all, not Summer any more.

So it's Friday , the weekend is nearly here so what do we go with. As it's the 13th we'll go with Beck, Bogert and Appice's cover of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" for no other reason than I 'm too lazy to think of anything else.

Today could be a lazy day.

Phone

I've just watched a short series on Amazon Prime called "Silent Eye" and it was shot on a Samsung Galaxy S8 (see here) . I remember seeing the film "Tangerine" that was shot on an iPhone and it's quite amazing that we still refer to this devices as "phones" . They can do everything in a hand held package.

I still think they are not ideal for watching a big film, but when they work on normal or holographic projection even that might be just another thing to do. As yet we can't use them to teleport (like Star Trek tricorders and communicators) but how near might that be, although that is something that has always philosophically confused me. If you are teleported then you need to be deconstituted and reconstituted so is the reconstituted you really you?

Obviously reading Stephen Hawking has got me (over) thinking big thoughts, but that is not a bad thing, and I've included "Star Trek Dreaming" by Spirit from "Future Games" for your enjoyment.

Crunch

I'm really enjoying the final Stephen Hawking book which while I don't understand a great deal of it, it is a great book for stimulating thoughts and while it is not explicitly stated I like the "Crunch Theory" of the Universe that it is a constant state of expanding and contracting from a singularity where eveying contracts to a pin point resulting in a big bang which causes the whole thing to start again. If course this happens over millions if not billions of years and implies that the universe is effectively eternal although at the point of singularity time doesn't exist.

reading a bit further about the singularity it's a place where time , space and everything becomes infinite therefore unmeasurable so I think that also fits with my interpretations.

This post sounds as though I know what I am talking about, I don't really, but things to catch my imagination. So definitely a worthwhile book to have in your collection.

Also this morning I got a mention on the Chris Hawkins Show (about seventy five minutes in if you follow the link) plugging a few local record shops and the fact that I have ordered the forthcoming Sam Fender album.

There's only one song for this post, the scientifically accurate "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python and I didn't realises Stephen Hawking had done a version as well.