Go - 50 Years Since Apollo 11 Lift Off

Sunny days can lift your spirits, and we have a sunny day this morning and hopefully it will be like that all day. Yesterday, without making any particular effort I did over 20K steps (6 Miles). I walked into work for the first time in a while and had to walk round town a bit so that's where it came from, but it was really no great effort on my part. That is really the best way to do things, so they are either part of the norm , ideally pleasurable and afterwards you can feel satisfied with what you have done.

One thing I keep noticing is spelling or grammatical mistakes in my posts and tweets but they seem to have been done by autocorrect but there is also the possibility that I have made the mistake, but I know what I wanted and intended to write and that is not what is in front of me.

Today is fifty years since Apollo 11 was launched and sent the first men to the moon.Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, but you got to feel for Mike Collins who just had to stay in Orbit while the other two went down , but you can read more here.

So really it's gotta be something from "The Race For Space" by Public Service Broadcasting and we'll go with the highly positive "Go", which is based on the Apollo 11 mission.

The Oblique Grapefruit

Thanks to reading 2023 I am probably going to end up buying the book "Grapefruit" by Yoko Ono , metamorphosed in 2023 to "Grapefruit Are Not The Only Bombs", essentially a series of instructions to direct people to do things to create radical art or change the world in radical ways. The book consis of "event scores" such as:

"Imagine the clouds dripping. 

  Dig a hole in your garden to 

  put them in.  

   — 1963 Spring"

There is more information here. and a few more event scores here

This reminded me of the "Oblique Strategies" card set by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (who also collaborated on the cover of "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy". You can use and online implementation of it here.  , and the first card says "Is It Finished?" the answer , for me, on this post , being "No"

The second card says "Don't Be Afraid To Display Your Talents" so you can see how this could randomly help you in the creation of an artistic piece. I often say to people that for something to be art you just have to say that it is art, and that should cause an effect in the viewer. The effect may be positive or negative but if you have an effect  then the art piece is valid.

Follow the Oblique Strategies link and see where it takes you.

If you want to produce something these two methods may help unblock any mental brick walls, and these are probably just two high profile art aids or directors and they may help with everyday life, not only art.

"Emphasize Repetitions"

So will take the opening song from from "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" with an image of the album cover.

EYE LIVE:EVIL EYE

I do like wordplay and it's amazing how much you can rearrange the letters in the name "ELVIS" , so "Elvis Lives" has an anagrammatical pair. I chose the title because I saw a book on one of Fiona's piles called "Evil Eye" and then it set my mind off, as things do, I am easily distracted.

Today has been very much a do nothing day, and I spent a lot of time just listening to vinyl while I did a crossword , Sudoku and read a bit more of 2023. I still feel tired and this week apart from work have an eye test and my annual diabetic review.

As the sun goes down, I do feel really tired for some reason , when I should be rested an energetic. My walking has been fine with 13K done today, but that is hardly very far, not even three miles. So that is definitely not the reason.

So as I titled it EVIL EYE and the started on about Elvis maybe we should have my favourite Elvis song , and I could go on about the Turkish Nazar charm for warding off the Evil Eye.

Then another thought pops into my head , this is post 1985 so what about "1985" by  Wings from the "Band on the Run" album and we'll leave my favourite Elvis song for another time.

Now it is time for bed.

Twitteringmore

Facebook is definitely finished on my phone but I feel I am getting too much political stuff on Twitter, well that has replaced the stuff I used to see and share on Facebook. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but it's nice not to let Facebook really track me as such, so no check ins or film sharing as such. I use twitter to share my blog posts as not many people read them on Facebook and Twitter gets me more (robot) attention. Twitter does however open my eyes to a lot of political stuff that I then try and check from other sources, and I do enjoy Mike Harding's posts which are often funny but always with a serious point, and Matt Haig's posts which are always helpful.

I do share the odd positive or funny picture but I am just waiting for my three month ban, as Facebook doesn't play by it's own rules.

I don't know if this will be a short or long post, but I got a couple of classical vinyl albums today (Bizet's "Carmen highlights" and Elgar's "Enigma Variations") from a charity shop and hopefully that will satisfy my vinylisation for a while. IT is good to just put and album on with no remote option and let it play, and that applies to classical and contemporary albums.

I also need to mention this is post 1984 and 1984 was the year my youngest daughter Kirsty was born and she has turned out to be talented, well adjusted , sensible with a reasonable taste in music, books and media , taking after her elder sister Juliet in many respects while being chalk and cheese in some areas. However as sisters and daughters they are as perfect as you could expect.

While I love "Carmen" I also love "Carmen (L'Oiseau Rebelle)" Malcolm McLaren's "Fans" , his take on the theme from Bizet's opera, which is a much harder edged piece but extremely listenable and that's what we shall go with.

Control

I've mentioned how not having control of a situation can make you stressed. Manty times part of that is caused by not knowing what is causing the situation. So I have a bad leak in the spare bedroom , right above where the bed is. So I know the roof is leaking and I can't get in touch with my roofer. Last night I took the plunge and went into the attic and saw exactly what was happening. I can't do anything about it but I can now tell the roofer exactly where he needs to target. The attic is not a great place to navigate and one slip will see you dropping through the ceiling. Need to think about getting flooring in there, but that's for another day.

So I am (for me) whizzing through 2023 , it is very stream of consciousness and random ideas and will definitely not be to most people's tastes , but I am enjoying it. It's not something that is destined for the Charity Shop immediately, but how many books do you keep and never reread. I have quite a lot , and think , really I should let them go , I will never read them again and someone else could benefit. I have multiple copies of "Lord of The Rings" and "The Hobbit" , now there should be really no need for more than one copy of a book.

Similarly with albums although since music became digital multiple copies of exactly the same song (not counting remixes) is the norm. I remember the shock of discovering I had some Bay City Rollers songs. While "Keep On Dancing" (one of their early singles) and their covers of "Rock'n'Roll Love Letter" and "It's A Game" were good I had no desire to add the Bay City Rollers to my collection... but there they were on the soundtrack of "The Filth and The Fury" the julian Temple feature about The Sex Pistols.

So I found a "live" performance by The Bay City Rollers featuring two of their best cover.

Phlox Redondo

Two unrelated words that came into my head today, I haven't a clue why but it's always good to put together unrelated items to see what happens , assuming there's no danger and you know what your are doing. So it's not a good idea to drop phosphorus into water but Phlox (Greek for "Flame") is a genus of plant and Redondo because of the reggae based Patti Smith song "Redondo Beach" from her debut "Horses".

I found a live take from Stockholm in 1976 and there's a tour of the actual place here.

The weather is still hot and muggy and the house heating is decidedly off. I have it at 19° though I hear of people who's norm is 25° to 30° so I must be a naturally cold person.

So just wanted to share those two words with you on this Friday night, have a good one.

Not The Worst (Good Things ARE Happening)

This morning I was feeling to apathetic, lethargic to even have a shower, but it has to be done, like taking medication. Over the last week I have noticed myself forgetting things, just very briefly like taking my tablets and just as I'm about to go out I remember. The thing is we all forget things and the fact that I always DO remember actually confirms the confidence I have in myself.

Yesterday I was trying to do something , following all the correct steps and the software was just ignoring the parameter I was supplying. After narrowing the fault down to the software (it was to produce an email with a subject line but was ignoring the subject parameter) I wondered if it was just ignoring the first parameter and would it take a second subject. It did. So working that out showed I do know what I'm doing (there was nothing in the documentation).

It is a grey day but we can expect sun and (maybe the odd shower). Fiona is doing her first mighty hike this year for MacMillan Cancer Support and if you want to drop a few quid in go here. , so the fact that people are doing things for others is a great thing, and it is Friday.

Given that Chris Hawkins played the record on 6Music and Fiona is raising money to help Cancer sufferers and it is Friday , we go with " It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" by The Wonder Stuff.

Pure synchronicity ... and that is good and spirit raising.

Also this is post number 1981 and the year 1981 is the year in which my daughter Juliet was born so if I can remember things like that (admittedly very important but that's another good thing, and I love catching up with Juliet and Kirsty whenever I can)

Now time to go out, all tablets taken 😀👍 oh that's that's the first time I've used an emoji in a post !!