How To Win The Lottery and Make money on Scratch Cards

Basically don't buy them. It amused me that whet the National Lottery started there were lots of books on "How To Win The Lottery"  (surprisingly there are still lots of books on this, who buys them?)  and I've heard people talk about about how to win at scratch cards. Jordan Ellenberg wrote a book called "How Not To Be Wrong" and it contains a chapter on how to win on certain lotteries where there is a trickle down if the main jackpot is not won, but this requires a sizeable dedicated team and a lot of money to crack it. Remember that for each person to win £5 million on the National Lottery  more than 2.5 million people have to lose, yes you might win, but it is not very likely is it.

Today it is hot but raining and thing is in some ways that's not a great thing , because the water falls then because of the heat in evaporates filling the clouds with more water to rain down on us. The benefit is we don't have to water the garden but is a definite symptom of global warming.

Been listening to a lot of vinyl this morning while relaxing , Boston, Bowie , Brubeck and Split Enz , the laser etched disks still amaze me (on my instagram feed here), and the first side of the Boston album is close to perfect, I should really play the second side sometime, but it is twenty minutes of vinyl perfection.

So what should I share with you, I think we'll go with the best football song ever, "England's Irie" by Black Grape for the chorus lines:

"I live in a land of class hypocrisy, 

We're going to win the National Lottery, 

E I Adio, I don't think so"

Don't you think so?

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. The Never Ending Story - An Index of All My Vocal Writing
2. A Halloween Film Evening
3. A Waterfall of Clouds
4. The Witch's Promise
5. Waiting For The Green Light - The Genius of Bill Hicks

Like A Ping Pong Ball In A Wind Tunnel

I was trying to think of an analogy for "The Illuminatus Trilogy" and that came to mind. It's a loosely noir canvas but this ranges from  American location , proisons, hotels , big cities , small towns with secret societies to submarines and sunken cities and lands such as Atlantis and wars and fights with gangs and armies and societies featuring every continent of the Earth and even some extra terrestrial locations. The whole thing can change between paragraph , one line you're in a seedy New York hotel next you're a Yellow Submarine the you are locked in a southern tale before ending up on a small island off the West African coast.

I am about halfway through the book and despite incredibly long unbroken chapters I am finding it incredibly readable, though maybe others would not.

I'm selling a lot of my CDs on Discogs  but sometimes I hear things on the radio by bands I thought I didn't really listen to then think , no I'm not selling that. That's recently happened with Kate Tempest and Fat White Family , both well worth a listen.

The weather is still absolutely mad  but we still have to venture out. Ever since the leak (temporarily fixed)  I am now constantly listening in case it comes through again , but any regular noise such as a tripping tap or the ticking of a clock or watch can trigger the worry mode , and when you think about various forms of mental illness related to OCD and just somethings taking all of your attention and triggering anxiety , something that is everyday for me can be absolute hell for others.

If you do suffer in this way Matt Haig's "Reasons To Stay Alive" id a book that should be in your position . A friend of mine told me it saved his life.

So it's Saturday and yesterday I bought two vinyl records, Bostons' eponymous first album with has one of the most perfect AOR  vinyl sides ever, and the "Substance" Joy Division compilation and leaving JG Windows met Jonathan Wells-Lee and Hedley Sugar Wells and their young charge who were watching a twenty grans self playing piano in the window. Lovely people, and lovely meeting them for a quick catch up.

So we'll go with a live take of "Foreplay / Long Time" by Boston , showing that they could play taking in in progressive bombast and euphoric AOR . Enjoy.

JFDI

Many years ago when I was still being paid by the PPA , a team played a trick on their manager. In IT there is always a new "better" methodology and you hear word like "agile" , "structured" and many others , we used JSP and Bachman as well, anyway there was an article on JFDI and how it always delivered on time and fast. The manager said they had to sort out training courses in this methodology as soon as possibly (ironic considering what JFDI mens). I'm quite surprised at the number of toned down meanings of the phrase, and Nike dropped the "F" for their tag line, not surprising for a company that has never made any of it's branded products, they outsource everything.

So yeasted after god knows how long I had lunch at Snack Wallah with my friend Nicky Black (one of her many names) and we had a long catch up discussing art and Facebook bans and what we were doing and going to do. Also the fact that last time I saw her I mistook her for another friend, and this is the problem when you don't see people often enough. We always can find a reason to put something off til next week but we should really do things as soon as we can.

I need to go and visit my dad and his girlfriend , see my girls , and know that this will happen eventually but really we should have much more JFDI in our lives, and we will enjoy life much more.

So for no reason other than it's a great record and he was mentioned in the Brian Eno documentary "The Man Who Fell To Earth 1971-77" which I am watching on Amazon Prime , when Island put together the Ayers , Cale , Nico, Eno (unfortunate acronym) gig at the Rainbow  to celebrate the the signing of ex Velvet Underground members John Cale and Nico, I'll leave you with "Barracuda" from the album "Fear".

Growly Night

There's thunder, lightning and rain. It's getting dark early. I'm amazed how accurate the weather information app is though I always look out the window to confirm what's happening . Another lightning flash , another roll of thunder.

Today when mowing the lawn there was a small short shower, but now we have the reall stuff. The positive is that I don't have to water the garden. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to walk into work without being forced to get a bus.

I wasn't going to post today but the image of "growly night" just seemed to be something worth capturing and recording.

My grandma used to say that thunder was the angels playing then pin bowling, which is a fairish analogy.

So given that I've nothing really to say I'll share an appropriated of music, "Night on Bare/Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky possibly rearranged by Rimsky-Korsakov and featured in Disney's "Fantasia" which he created to teach children about classical music and it is largely successful with stunning animation.

"Night on Bare Mountain" was also rejigged as "Night on Disco Mountain" on the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever"

So enjoy.....

Anyone For Tennis?

This is nothing about tennis, which is a game I find generally tedious (I can't play or hit a return serve), although Wheelchair Tennis actually does command my total respect, I cannot play being reasonably fully mobil and these girls and guys do it from a wheelchair, how absolutely amazing is that.

The Bok had a song called "Tennis" but I don't have a recording of that, maybe I should try and recreate it, but this is just about the Cream song which is one of those Cream songs that is like nothing else Cream did and I like it and actually think it's good. There are others like "Pressed Rat and Warthog"(the "B" side) that are just plain silly, and I suppose lots of bands tried and keep trying completely different sounds to the point of taking on alter egos to either be able to play more intimate gigs aor see if it's just their name that sells.

"Anyone For Tennis" is the Theme from the film "The Savage Seven" (a biker film lost in time but available on Amazon.com) and was recorded during the "Wheels of Fire" sessions and released as a single and on the album soundtrack. It was written by Eric Clapton and someone called Martin Sharp

I don't know why I wanted to post this, possibly because I saw a "Best of Cream" (which doesn't feature the single) in Beyond Vinyl but it's Saturday , it grey , and it's the first day of the Football season, so all is reasonably good.

I keep looking at posts I've done and often notice spelling and grammatical mistakes and more and more I think I am being wrongly autocorrected rather than mistyping, or maybe I am just being paranoid. The latest was a post which had "their" instead of "there". Now given that I am a bit of a grammar stickler myself that is not a mistake I think I would make but autocorrect might.

I know it's short (this post) but see what you think .

Realisation

Nothing deep, but due to my rate of posting from March this year , if I post twenty two times a month for the rest of the year then I will have another record year. I'm not expecting to do that though given this is my second post today you may not believe it.

The thing is the more you post , the more you feel like posting. I just wish I could get myself into gear with writing , and writing songs and recording them. I have all the tools so no excuse not to do it, just the extreme lack of discipline.

Today I found a couple more covers of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by The Cure and "Ceremony" by Radiohead. I was completely unaware of these though the song has been covered by almost everyone but it still belongs to Ian Curtis.

These songs don't seem to have been officially released but they are on Youtube so you can listen fairly easily.

So enjoy them , I am off to my pit.

Closer

It's one of those English words that in isolation you cannot be sure of what it means or how it's pronounced. It can mean nearer (and this is probably how you actually normally read it) or the opposite of opener.

The reason I've chosen it it is because of a section in the Joy Division film where they talked of the title of their second album, which I always assumed was the former meaning, but give the tomb on the cover, the death of Ian Curtis and the fact that it was the final Joy Division album the latter meaning makes far more sense.

This is the first post of August and we had another downpour during the night but the sky is just a uniform grey as it was last November recorded in this post.

I watched a film "The Colony" last night which was a lot better that it's 5.3 IMDB rating although there was some Walking Dead grade horror, but my only problem was the extremely sudden ending when there was actually and decent chink of hope.

So we obviously go with "Colony" from "Closer" by Joy Division on this first day of August.