**** IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

It always makes me laugh the concept of a four letter word being offensive, The sort of people who use that term and the sort who are continually looking to be offended. "ooh he used a four letter word!! How disgusting" , well I use lots of four letter words. At this point in this post I have used about fourteen four letter words . Are you offended. It's like the Americanish of the bathroom or the rest room or if you are really daring the john, actually there's no bath in there, and you don't go in there for a rest. It's for a wee or a poo.

Ironically I suppose a thing that offends me is people finding something to be offended by without actually checking it to see if it's actually offensive. Remember Monty Python's "Life of Brian".

People get offended by women breastfeeding , and an exposed female nipple is deemed mor eoffensive that an assault rifle by some people. I saw two armed policemen at Central Station with machine guns. That offended me.

 So four letter words, what about :

• WORK
• LOVE
• POLE
• HOPE
• NEWS
• WHIP
• STOP

The list could go one, but I think you get my point. If something is demonstrably bad you a free to be offended and take appropriate action, but not cos someone comes from Sunderland, wears a short skirt , feeds her baby , is a morris dancer, likes a kebab, wears a hat.... these are not reasons to take offense.

So we'll go for "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" because is cheerful , funny and will only offend those who want to be offended, so they won't be reading this..... or maybe they should be ... think how offended people could get with me.

Books, Evolution and Heavy Metal at Download

A lot of my reading recently have been influenced by books I've been reading , namely "Tom Waits on Tom Waits" (I don't know if the pun was intended) edited by Paul Maher and "The Age of Bowie" by Tony Morley , so I thought my next would be fiction, possibly in the realms of Michael Moorcock, JG Ballard or John Niven. I'm amazed to find this is the first time ever in this blog that I've mentioned JG Ballard as he's my favourite author. But no, I picked up "Darwin's Armada" (another FOPP capture from Edinburgh) by Ian McCalman and very good it is, essentially the grounding for the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin and contemporaries. Here's the blurb:

"Darwin's Armada tells the stories of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker and Alfred Wallace, four young amateur naturalists from Britain who voyaged to the southern hemisphere during the first half of the nineteenth century in search of adventure and scientific fame. It charts their thrilling voyages to the strange and beautiful lands of the southern hemisphere that reshaped the young mariners' scientific ideas and led them, on returning to Britain, to befriend fellow voyager Charles Darwin. All three crucially influenced the publication and reception of his Origin of Species in 1859, one of the formative texts of the modern world. 

For the first time the Darwinian revolution of ideas is seen as a genuinely collective enterprise and one that had its birth in a series of gripping and human travel adventures. Many of the most urgent ecological and social issues of our times are seen to be prefigured in this compelling story of intellectual discovery."

I do find it amazing that the idiotic anti thought concept of Creationism actually exists, but when you look at how easily people are influenced , a thoughtless concept that means you don't have to think becomes attractive to some people.

I'm agnostic, there might be a God, but I have certainly seen no evidence of a God in my lifetime and doubt I will. Also the "you can't prove that God doesn't exist" is not really a valid argument. The only God I will acknowledge is on Facebook here. In fact I just this minute signed up to his mailing list.

So today's #ATuneaDayinMay obviously has to be "Charlie" by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing , who I first saw at the behest of my friend Gillian and recorded it on Spoongig here in November 2014. I found a live performance of them at Download at Donington and "Charlie" starts about three minutes in after some serious metal assault. I once described them as a cross between Anthrax and Chas and Dave. Watch the clip and you will see what I mean. Enjoy.

It's a beautiful day, so enjoy yourself and I hope to see you soon.

Always Crashing

Tried the drone again tonight. Crashed it several times . Doesn't want to fly when linked to my phone but it takes photos and videos when it has crashed. It is resilient I'll say that.  You can see it in action below but I am along way off that at the moment.

I've passed 100K in the Million Step Challenge after nine days so I am just slightly ahead of schedule, but I do need to keep ahead of the game because I don't think I will hit 11K every day. Rainy days make it difficult , and we are supposed to be getting rain at the weekend , plus I have a wedding of two great friends to attend, so walking won't be at the top of my list.

Another slightly worrying thing is that my knee is giving me a lot of pain tonight. My joints are generally ok (though I am no athlete), but hopefully it is just an extreme twinge. Pain however is a way of telling you that maybe something is wrong. Though I remeber true pain being my burning hands when I received the ferula at school (I was an annoyance to authority then too, and it never stopped throughout my life).

Anyway that scenario has just brought to mind Malcolm Mclaren's take on  Puccini's "Boy's Chorus" from the wonderful album "Fans" , a heavenly choir juxtaposed  with Mclaren's cocky cockney artful dodger figure. I loved it when first heard it and I love it. If you don't have the album get it, a culture and rebellion cocktail, and it'll do for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence,

Sleep well my lovely friends

Doctor Who?

I wasn't going to write anything this morning, but I have a friend, Richard, who does a lot of walking and running and it's his birthday today, so I thought I'd post The Proclaimers' "500 Miles", a bit obvious I know, but  you know.

Then I saw this Doctor Who Cast version and it is brilliant, it's soundtracked by The Proclaimers version but it it a truly brilliant video, watch it and have your spirits lifted.

Also listening to 6Music I heard a great song by The RPMs called "Oh My God" which you can listen to here , and that led to "Satellite" by  Bouncing Souls (listen here) . The RPMs feature among their number Jack Valero , Billy Bragg's son.

Anyway it's time for work now, so have a great Tuesday everyone.

Too Many Things

I'm male.. so I can only do one thing at a time. Sometimes if I am well prepared I can start things off and let them run on their own while I get on with something else, but often that means I forget that I have kicked things off and then usually I'm pleasantly suprised when that task is done.

This morning I was feeling under pressure because I needed to print a CD with my new Canon printer but the software included is atrocious and and only has pre prepared templates that you can use. I also knew the lawn needed mowing and some of the  surrounding jungle needed cutting back. But it looked like rain.

Add to that that I wanted to fly my new drone , and also needed to do my 11K steps for the Million Step Challenge , I sort of feel that everything needs to be done at once.

The thing is , it doesn't. I sorted the lawn out, had a wander out and then had some unfruitful searches to sort out the printer. I tried the old Epson CD Printing software but that only works with an Epson printer. I eventually found some free software from NCH. and it does the job perfectly, I've been trying it with these vinyl style CDs here. 

I didn't get to fly the drone, but did get my steps in for my Million Step Challenge .

The thing is you need to schedule things, which means sometimes putting things off to the next day. Also when you get something new it takes time to learn it. I'm still getting the hang of my Sony Xperia, but I know things will come good.


So another for the #ATuneaDayinMay,  sequence Imelda May and Jeff Beck's cover of the Shangri-La's "Remember, Walking in The Stand" from the Les Paul Tribute Concert. 

Sleep well my friends.

Sunday Morning

And it hardly looks like summer, the ground is wet and the clouds are grey and it's cold out at the moment. Yesterday the five o' clock EFL League Two program was very exciting , if heartbreaking for Hartlepool fans, and their most famous one Jeff Stelling. Sky have cruelly put it up on their web site here , am I evil for sharing. The thing is they will be winning next season and that will put a smile on his face. The coverage was far more animated that the Premier League coverage early in the day.

Anyway it's Sunday morning and I have some much to do today I can't begin the think about it. I have a more reliable step counter (I think, for my Million Step Challenge, I'd hit 68K steps in the first six days and this was missing, I reckon about 10K steps from Thursday and Friday). I'm using Google Fitness and manually recording my daily steps on Google Sheets.

Anyway I will leave to with John Martyn's "May You Never" for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence. I have a feeling I won't keep this going, but this is a week so far and I have had only one deviation with David Bowie's "All The Madmen" , but I did have to include that.

So have a brilliant Sunday my friends, either relax or do something really fun and positive.

Sometimes The Dream is ... Well ... Weird

I had a dream last night. The bit I remembered was looking out of my window on to may neighbours' garage / extension (they don't have one) to see their big cat sitting on the roof. Then I something and said something along the lines of "Bugger .. look at that..." A rather large snake appeared and made short work of the cat ... my neighbours' cat world never get bested by a snake. Just a totally weird dream.

I have found a solution to my Step Counter problem, I installed Google Fitness and then found a "Track Workouts" button in Samsung Health, switching it on seems to have let it capture the steps I'm making, I will be able to certify that tomorrow.

Anyway today I got my drone and crashed it three times, also got a few photos out of it. My new Canon printer has been set up and used to print a couple of duplex sheets. I also want to print a couple of CDs so am going to try that tomorrow, as well as mowing the lawn and watching the Championship season come to an end.

I also want to look at printing a copy of The Hawkwind Log from the album "XIN Search of Space". I got a vinyl copy of the album to add to my collection for the wonderful Barney Bubbles cover and packages , but the Log would complete it but an original copy would set be back about fifty quid. I managed to acquire a PDF version of it, so that is a challenge for me as well.

It's time for bed so I'll leave with "Hair Like Brian May Blues" by Half Man Half Biscuit for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence, sleep well my friends.