Gramophone Douchebag

It's sometime between 1991 and 1995 I'm in HMV on Princes Street in Edinburgh, I've walked into a very spacious shop with lilac carpet and white walls, it looks humongous, it feels like it goes on forever. I'm wandering about checking about the import CD singles (ooh look '˜Pictures of You' Extended single remix and '˜Handbuilt By Perverts') and T-shirts that are available ('˜Sheriff Fatman', a massive Ned's Atomic Dustbin logo in orange and fluorescent yellow.) I'm not buying vinyl here, no, if I want that, I'm off searching Vinyl Villains, hunting down 7" and 12" singles by The Cure, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, The Wonder Stuff, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and Kingmaker. By comparison Vinyl Villains is small, dark and cramped, every inch of space used, notable 7" records and picture discs mounted on the walls, and more prestigious 12" singles and albums hanging from the ceiling.

I loved going round both shops, searching out interesting items, these days Discogs is where I'll find something if I really want it these days, but nothing beats wandering around a record shop to see what treasures I can unearth. It's a shame that HMV stopped being such a place, in the mid 90s, they did some structural work on the building and it was closed for the best part of two years, the Virgin Megastore had been alright, but it wasn't the same, it was dark and dingy but still large, with not as good a selection of stuff as HMV had.

Back to the present, last week I randomly wandered in to escape the office at lunchtime and found it dark, dingy, feeling much smaller than it used to. New albums and DVDs, that was fine, the selection of CDs seeming far smaller than it had used to. I went upstairs and wandered round the DVD boxsets, the entire floor felt cheap and unloved. I'm seeing box sets and films, ultra cheap. Back in the 90s a video with two or three episodes of a TV series would cost about £12-13. It would probably have cost about £50-150 for the whole of a season of an American TV series. Now it's costing £10 for 13+ episodes of a series. Is it me, or do other people get a feeling of devaluation? People stream music and only want to buy one or two tracks, there's the suggestion that the album is dying. Music feels like it's losing it's value, but so are TV series and films, 'œhere have a film out just six month ago, it's only a fiver!' I'm not sure what to make of it, I went back downstairs to escape the depressing air of worthlessness.

I wandered up the back of the shop, where they were now selling vinyl again, new pressings of old classics, The Cure's 'Head On The Door' and a double gatefold LP of '˜Disintegration' caught my eye, pleasantly surprising me, but price tags of £15 and £18 seemed a bit steep. I spotted Blur's 'Magic Whip' LP for £25! Which you might think given my experience upstairs, I am devaluing the art, but for fuck sake! I paid that for a mint copy of the KLF's '1987: What The Fuck Is Going On?'. I have bought vinyl albums by artists on Indie label, they cost £10 or not far above. How can anyone justify £25 for a newly released album, when smaller labels, printing far less copies, without the economies of scale can produce such items, for far less? It's pure greed on behalf of the labels and retailers. Someone needs to remind them that vinyl isn't just for hipster douchebags with gramophones.

FitBawbags

Life has been very busy at the moment, I've got a new job so I've been focused on that. The good news (or bad news) is that the podcasts will be back very shortly!

I live next to a football pitch for a local team. They don't take care of their ground, their fence fell down, they replaced it with fence you see on building sites, but left big wooden fence panels with large rusty nails sticking out of it. This would be fine if it was on their land, but it's not it's in our communal car park. We've been asking them to move it for over 8 months, we've spoken to the council about it too. 

Last weekend one of our dogs ran across said fence and punctured one of her tendons. It's cost around £300 in vets bills, but thankfully she seems to be recovering well. 

You'll notice I've not posted about anxiety in a while, the reason for this is that I'm managing fairly well. Avoiding confrontation is something I've been able to stop doing. My wife and I went over to talk to the "board" of said football club, all three of them. I'll refer to them as Forgettable, Anorak with 'tache and Heart Attack. Forgettable stayed fairly quiet throughout the exchange. The chairman Anorak with 'tache refused to look at my wife in the eyes, as they've fobbed her off for ages with promises of moving the fence and never done anything about it. My wife also gives them a hard time about people goign to the football using our car park. They really don't like her. Heart Attack is named as such as he informed us that he's just come back after recovering from a heart attack. All he seemed to do was stare at his phone when we were talking to him, trying to ignore us and chipping in weak and unhelpful remarks. I love my wife, when she knows she's in the right, she'll take on anyone. I've generally included my small part in this exchange. 

The following excuses were made for not moving the fence.

We've no been able to, we need more than two of us. I've just come back from having a heart attack.

Bollocks I can lift a panel fine, they'd just need to flip it over back onto their land. When mentioned that can you not get help from your players to lift it they're here a couple days a week. There was reaction along the lines that this was an unfathomable solution and that they players wouldn't help.

I'm not sure why Anorak with 'tache thought it was relevant to 

They never answered our question of "To some she might be just a dog, but school kids go past all the time, what if it had been one of them who got injured."

Heart Attack asked my wife what she wanted, she said an apology. Replying in an insincere manner that he was sorry and never once looking up from his phone.

At this point, I decided a bit of confrontation wouldn't go amiss... 

Me: Can you please look at me when you're talking to me? It's really disrespectful to keep playing with your phone while we're having this conversation.

Heart Attack: Ah'm listening tae ye. 

Me: It doesn't look like it, it looks like you're more interested in your phone and that is really disrespectful.

That for a lot of people won't seem like much, but for me that's a massive leap forward. The look on his face was priceless, like a teenager who's cornflakes had been shat on.

My wife then informed them they'd be getting the vet's bill and threatened them with the small claims court. Anorak with 'tache said it would be like getting blood out of a stone.

 

We wandered off after that, but here's the wee survivor in her The Cone of Shame(tm).

Roasterific!

I try not to judge people, I honestly do, but sometimes... yep and I've wandered into similar argument territory of "I'm not racist. but...". I was in Asda recently getting custom made pizzas for tea and there were a couple of scruffy/hard paper round looking blokes in the queue before me. The way one of them talked combined with the facial expression of horror and confusion when he was asked if he wanted any oils* on his pizza. It was a foreign concept to him, and so completely alien he was worried his pizza William Shatner would appear and steal his pizza and beam up to the Enterprise with it.

That made me feel so out of place, here's me quite happy to have garlic oil on my pizza but feeling, not superior, but pity that they seemed so closed minded. It's the inability to embrace an idea, it doesn't matter that it's a trivial matter like pizza. It's that they appeared to be dismissing the concept itself. It was like they couldn't understand why anyone would choose to do that.  They appeared stereotypical for how they were dressed and carried themselves. Pretty much "I agree with what it says in The Sun" types. 

A few days ago I was at a hospital and outside you see some funny sights, extremely haggard 40 a day smokers in dressing gowns and bunny slippers, clearly in hospital for some kind of respiratory illness, outside smoking, and I'm thinking? Just haggard or are they a junkie?

Why am I so bothered about this, I used to be far more judgemental and on sight, assume a lot of people were scumbags, and I was probably right half the time, but I didn't always know and I didn't make 

* They offer garlic, basil or chilli oils, if you're interested

Personal Discovery

From personal experience I often know what I want but need help realising it. Taking a fairly trivial example: Do I want pizza or Chinese tonight? I flip a coin to choose, heads for pizza, tails for Chinese... it's heads, that means pizza. Wait... I feel a little disappointed. I'm thinking about a pizza, imagining how it will taste, but I don't feel that's what I want tonight, I think I'd prefer Chinese, yes that's what I want. I think I wanted Chinese all along, but hadn't realised. 

The use of the coin here is not as a tool to randomly select what I wanted to eat, but to give me an option and allow me to think more about it, and decide if it's really what I want.

I don't know what you believe in personally, and to be honest, unless you're telling other people what to do or not do, it doesn't matter. I think it's possible to use tools like astrology, tarot and I Ching as self realisation tools, and learn about yourself through their use, without necessarily believing in them.

I am respectful of the tools and the processes used to bring about a reading, I feel that if an individual doesn't believe in the esoteric uses of these tools, they can still use them in a similar way to the coin example above. To help give them a different perspective, look closer at a range of decisions or problems to help understand them better and think about their intentions. By the same token, we want those who believe to feel comfortable that we are not taking the use of these tools lightly and are treating those tools respectfully. That way I feel I am fairly accommodating everyone. 

Here's where you think there's a trick, but how much will it cost to use these services? That's up to you, these are being done on a pay-what-you-think-it's-worth basis.

If was going to pay for advice, if it was unhelpful I'd feel aggrieved paying for it. On the other hand if it was useful I'd feel it was worth the money. I'm going to respond to requests for services, create documents, send them back to the user, and let them choose to pay if  a) they think it's worth something b) they can afford it.

If someone does not want to make a donation or cannot afford to, all I ask is that they that they do something nice for someone, walk their dog, make a small donation to a food bank next time they're in the supermarket, help an elderly neighbour garden, something to help someone else out.

There is a Facebook Page here!

This site below will be live as of 16:23 BST on Friday 23rd September. 

Personal Discovery Horoscopes - Offering natal charts, Tarot and I Ching.

*tap*tap* Is this thing on?

I'd been meaning to put a podcast together for about 3 or 4 years, and I never managed to get around to doing it until now. I decided I'd put 5 minute long podcasts that you can listen to while making a cup of tea, with random thoughts, the odd joke and me, well being me.

The idea is that I get things out my head, become more comfortable with the sound of my own voice, become more confident and can try and make something entertaining. Hopefully it will develop into something I really enjoy and get something out of.

It's already taught me, that I pronounce and highlight certain syllables in ways I don't expect, it does not sound the same way it does in my head! It's nice to be able to use it to improve my speech. 

I've put out a few already. One about the fringe while making a cup of tea, the second recorded on a short car journey about kids watching YouTube and bad drivers. The third is thoughts I'd been having about making changes in my life. The fourth which isn't out yet involves ghosts and a bit of spookiness, recording that later so let's hope it goes well!

It's available to listen to here, or you can subscribe via iTunes. 

The 'I Drink Tea' Podcast

Please leave a review, and yes I'm aware of the dodgy audio quality!

It's Written In The Stars

I write my blog to help arrange my thoughts, I write it for me. My wife says she likes them. I share it in case anyone finds something useful in it for them. I've been working on a project, it's not quite ready, but I feel comfortable enough to write about it.

This week something changed, I went to see a couple of shows at the free fringe on my own, which isn't something I do, I always go with other people. There were a couple of shows I wanted to made sure I caught and it's the last week of the fringe, so after work, headed off to the venue, stood around for five minutes, watching three members of staff being confused by several chip and pin machines not working, eventually I got robbed a drink and went to queue early as the show has been really busy. I sat outside in the corridor next to the room happily reading a Fortean Times. Other people started to arrive and I was perfectly comfortable and didn't feel out of place at all.

If I'd been in a similar situation last year, I'd have been anxious, standing, looking around, wondering what people thought of me. Why is he here on his own? Is he a weird stalker? Who comes to a comedy show on their own? I'd not be able to settle, always on edge, feeling uncomfortable, my mind reeling. This year? None of that. I really wish it was possible to develop a simulator to put people in and let them see what some of the range of feelings related to anxiety and depression feel like, because, why outwardly there's not always much to see, the feelings inside can be running riot, or they can be subtly undermining. I find it difficult to try and articulate how that feels to people who haven't experienced such things. I'm really not sure how to explain how pleased with myself I was, I was relaxed and it made me happy and felt like I fitted in.

The show I was queuing for was Ashley Storrie and Other Erotica and I haven't laughed so much in ages, though I notice over the past year or two I seem to be developing a Mutley 'heshh heshh heshh' laugh, which I can't decide if it's cool, or downright bizarre and I should stop it immediately. It's always good to see comedy that fits with my way of thinking. It made me realise we should go see the occasional bit of comedy at the weekends.

I went for a good walk around Edinburgh afterwards and did a similar thing at the next venue, where it was also £4-£5 for a drink. I sat in the beer garden perfectly calm, reading a book and listening to tunes until it was time for the show, Sofie Hagen's Shimmer Shatter. An entertaining show, it made me laugh, but elements of it struck chords with me and personally it was, well I can't think of the word I'm looking for. 'Fulfilling' sounds wrong and 'worthwhile' makes it sound like I didn't think I was going to enjoy it, which wasn't the case. It set me off thinking, to me it seems like, compared to 10-20 years ago, there are more people who think similar ways, have some similar experiences and share them. I realise there were probably always a lot of people like that, but it's far easier for them to identify themselves, stigmas that were previously there were dissolving. I didn't feel out of place and alone, for the second time that day I felt I fitted in somewhere, no remnants of awkwardness.

This would be a great place to end the blog, but I did mention a project I've been working on. It's about astrology now don't go forming opinions, damn to late you probably already have, so what am I doing with astrology. Part of what I do generally in life, is look at things, investigate them (solely for me), then forget or lose interest in them. This time round, that's not happened.

Years ago I watched Dave Gorman's  Important Astrology Experiment on BBC2. I thought it was brilliant and funny. It was something no one else had ever done, yes it was tongue in cheek, but it was fascinating. Move ahead a few years, looking for answers, anxiety and self esteem getting hammered out slowly as what others experience as normality crept it. I started reading about astrology, not daily or weekly sun sign forecasts in newspapers, but from a book I picked up for a couple of quid.  The Ultimate Astrologer by Nicholas Campion. My parents used to have a hardback horoscope book that sat on a shelf in the living room for years. I'd read it when I was 13 or 14, and tried to draw up my own chart and gotten confused and lot in the process, so had abandoned it.

I don't remember what made me decide to revisit astrology buy that book or draw up a chart, perhaps it was desperation to find out more about my social conditioning and behaviour? I started playing with free software on the internet, decided I'd like more functionality, so what I did was I tried writing my own Astrology software, this was great practice for doing more coding, but there were nippy bugs creeping in and it was taking up too much time, so I reverted to other astrology software.

In the near future, I intend to do a more detailed post in the future about what horoscopes are, and what astrology is and isn't. The difference between your horoscopes in newspapers and magazines, vs. a full chart. All I'll say is nothing is written in stone and you've got free will. Whatever your views, I am taking the process of drawing these up seriously. I'm not out to fool anyone or take the piss, I am experimenting. I want these to be as accurate as I can make them. I want someone to look at it with open eyes and agree and disagree, offer feedback, I want these to make people think, to look at the wider world around them.

As part of this, once I have my own chart drawn up, I'm going to look at following it for six months, and keep a diary of what's going on, looking at the best times to do things, and hopefully it will make life more interesting. The idea lifted from Dave Gorman, but done from a full horoscope without going for a comedy element, not sun signs in newspapers. As part of this, I plan on offering natal horoscopes to everyone.

I will soon be launching a website offering these horoscopes on a pay-what-you-feel-it's-worth. After reading your horoscope, if you feel it helps, or makes you think and you feel it's worth something, or if you think I'm bat shit crazy and should be encouraged to stay off the streets because I'm at home writing horoscopes instead then you'll be able to donate some money for it.

If you can't afford it, or don't want to pay, then that's fine, you get a horoscope for free, all I ask is that you go do something nice, help someone carry their shopping, do the washing up, get a couple of items for your local food bank. Whatever it is, do something to benefit others, it doesn't need to be a grand gesture.

Any questions?

Wandering Thoughts/Brain dump

(or The Edinburgh Fringe and some top tunes)

It's very easy to do things when you feel you are in the mood. My general energy levels are up and down, when it's down I can't be arsed and leaning towards wondering why I bother with anything and start to dissect ideas or projects I'm oh so slowly working on and start to pour negativity on them.

Then I get phases like now when I'm happy and upbeat and the world is wonderful and everything has a positive spin. Partly it's the meds and partly it's me trying to change my view on the world and how I think about things. Whereas before if I was to tweet someone or reply to an email, I'd be generally conscious about what I was writing, how I would be seen to come across, would I be seen as a twat, arselicker, idiot, always something negative. Now I can just reply and I am saying what I think or feel without beating myself up about it.

I used to have trouble even expressing ideas to my wife, for fear of thinking I would sound like an idiot, or that she would pull the idea apart. While in reality, she may question, she offers constructive criticism and suggestions. Thankfully the positive days more than outnumber the negative ones. While I'm in a good mood, I'm going to tell you that I have a project I'm working on, which I hope to have the first stage prepared soon, the good news is you can participate when it's up and running. I'll let you know what it is soon.

I'm hoping to start a Podcast soon as well, I can't remember if I have mentioned it or not. It's been an idea that has been brewing for 3 years so I should really get it sorted. For me it's the creating side of things that's important, it's great if it comes out well, but if it doesn't work then, no harm done and at least I've learned something along the way. It may be another 3 years before a podcast emerges but hey, I'm sure I'll get there eventually. This isn't Professional Disorganisation for nothing you know.

It's festival time here in Edinburgh, I fully intend to get along to these shows, which I got into based on their great podcasts.

(The Janey Godley Podcast - Consistantly hilarious)
Janey Godley: An Act of Godley

Ashley Storie and Other Erotica

(Comedian's Telling Stuff & The Guilty Feminist)
Sofie Hagen - Shimmer Shatter

And these...
Limmy - Daft Wee Stories

Kathryn Joseph and The Anchoress (two musical acts, not one)


Do you like music? Of course you do. I've a couple of recommendations for you.

First is guitar based indie pop Kid Canaveral. Their third album 'Faulty Inner Dialogue' is out now. Click the link for a review and stream of the album here so you can go, "That's awesomes, I must buy it." I could try and write about it, but there's a review there that says a lot about it so why not just read that instead. I'm trying to write this on a coffee break and am short on time.

Secondly there is, the new Spray album, Enforced Fun catchy as fuck dance floor beats with sarky and witty lyrics.

If that's not your bag, what about a band named after something from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia ? I heard about this band because Keith TOTP posted about recording their first EP and how it was good, I gave it a listen and agreed. The first track is about surviving mundane office life: Give the whole EP a listen and buy it here: Fightmilk

Until next time, peace out and groovy biscuits!