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is music hard?

I periodically order things through bandcamp, and one thing that happens when you do that is every time the record label and/or artist you bought something from releases something new, you get a notification. Labels are, you know, kind of stupid and they reflect someone else's taste or their belief in what people will buy, so often I don't care much about the other stuff, but I almost always give it some kind of low-key, quick listen. Usually I listen to the first track of an album (though often, irritatingly for me, bandcamp world decrees a single 3-minute song as an 'album' - that is, everything is an album) just to see whether it grabs my attention. Generally speaking no it doesn't. Sometimes it totally does. I instantly fell for an album by Oiro Pena, which is in a genre. But it is really great.* In many cases I will say that I just don't have the attention span to latch on to new things, though I try hard and try to be open to anything, really. Of course by 'new' I don't mean only new, old can also be new if it's new to me (to state the ridiculously obvious). 

But the reason I ask why music is hard last couple of nights I have been trying to compose some music for a documentary film project I am involved in, mainly because while I have a massive amount of incredibly talented friends who could do it 50 times better than me, I don't want the guilt or emotional hassle of saying 'thanks we didn't use it because...' I figure I can handle rejecting myself. What I've come up with in basic GarageBand with musical typing (and a $10 download of royalty-free Clyde Stubblefield loops - let's be fair, I didn't really come up with it, he carries it) is nothing to march through the streets with joy over but nor is it the most horrible thing I've ever heard. It makes me wonder, is music hard? I know I have no specific talent at it, at very best I aim to reference other things I like, at worst I flail. Of course, the other option is that what I have come up with is actually gruesome but I can't tell. Who knows?! 

By the way the image above is from a notification I just got from Humu Records. The tracks are pretty good. I may purchase it but it's a digital-only release and I am not particularly into digital-only releases, that's how I am. 

*It just occurred to me to find out anything about them. I was further intrigued by this skerrick of a tiny interview here:  'Did you start Oiro Pena?  Antti Vauhkonen: I didn’t start Oiro Pena. Pentti Oironen started it a long time ago. I don’t know the exact year, but Pentti contacted me around 2016. Oiro Pena, myself, and the current band members solely channel Pentti Oironen’s universal vision.' By the way, it seems like Antti Vauhkonen is actually Pentti Oironen, but this is probably something created to confuse me and you. 

five out of the box

Laura and I enjoy watching The Box, it is a very good show, much better than most people would think. It is in many ways quite modern and quite 'meta'. The Box is as you know a show about a television station, and it circulates a lot of the stories and rumours about various tv stars of the period (up to the mid-1970s) with a generous dose of romantic/sexual drama. Some of the characters are clearly, winking-at-the-camera, modelled on actual people. Sir Henry is an amalgam of Reg Ansett and Frank Packer, two television magnates of the period (probably more Ansett as Sir Henry is an industrialist with a rather blunt appreciation of television, rather than a mogul with media consciousness). Gary Bourke is, yes, Irish (like Dave Allen, I suppose, whose tv career started in Australia) but he's more like Graham Kennedy (certainly when it comes to payola scandals etc and over-riffing on products to the delight of particular sponsors, not when it comes to being secretly gay which so far he doesn't appear to be). There are probably others lost in the mists of time, I am sure Vicki Stafford is modelled on someone.  

I have to say that the article below is super confusing (possibly a relic of a time when press announcements weren't very coordinated) because from our perspective as viewers there are weeks and weeks, more than a month I'm sure, between the departure of Graeme Blundell and Lynda Keane, for instance, and any of the others mentioned. Where we are up to in the program, none of the other three have left yet. But I'm not even sure that Susie and Don were in the program at the same time.*

The first half of 1974 was a mindfuck for Blundell I'm sure as he was a megastar with Alvin Purple then appearing most nights of the week on The Box as Don Cook. I think the Don Cook character is incredible, very nuanced, he's a complete charlatan, messing two women around and becoming engaged to both and it's only happenstance that they don't come into contact with each other, the anxiety is palpable. In his memoir Blundell has apparently forgotten entirely the kind of character DC was, as he just says he was a womaniser, which is barely true or at least, he probably was a young man about town (that's how he got Barbie knocked up) but we don't then see him bedding any babes thereafter aside from Cathy who he is pretty reluctant to sleep with but does because he's so weak. 

So for us, 51 years later, Don and Barbie have gone (to Sydney) but Judy, Kaye and Susie are all still in the show. Susie is not such a prominent character that she can't leave without too much fanfare, but Judy and Kaye are pretty important and will make a splash when they go. Interested to see what happens next. 

* I don't know how this pans out but according to IMDB I'm right that Don leaves the show a couple of episodes before Susie shows up, but he does come back later, like, 36 episodes later. Since Susie is in 63  episodes they must overlap at some point. Also, perhaps I'm wrong about Blundell's typification of the character, since he has another 161-220 to be even more of an Alvin Purplesque cad in. 

block near gardiner reserve

I didn't really capture this building last night, or at least, I didn't really capture what it 'means' to me, not that it means much, don't get me wrong. I do like these brightly lit rooms looking out onto the park after dark. They generally seem to be empty lol. Of people. Or people are lying on the floor. 
 

recent things

Me, Sally and Stuart at Sally's graduation. 

The only thing that interested me about this is that there was a small moment when Queen were referred to as The Queen. 

I like to collect images of times when people have still got their Yes placards up. 

 

what is the word for...

old things that have been round forever, but which you now look at and think 'that looks like AI'? 

More generally I would love to know what thinking lies behind this madness, which is on the campus where I work. I must get in to the building sometime and look at the other side of this doorway. 
 

rack off edith

 

This is a photograph of the last time I touched this book (I put it in the Kensington street library, if you hurry it might still be there). I read about two-thirds of it and decided Edith Piaf was such an immensely irritating person that once the context of her origins (interwar Paris) was gone, she herself was not worth reading about. That Simone Berteaut is so incredibly besotted with her does not make it an easier read, in fact, it makes it a less comprehensible one. So rack off Edith. 

Now an Edith Bliss book... that's something I could really take on. 

recent canberra

So I am writing to you from a restaurant in Manuka called Bambusa, it is quite loud but I was basically pleased to find somewhere that was open, because looking around (online, before going outside) it seemed like heaps of things took Sunday and Monday off. As I said (were you paying attention it is quite loud i.e. there are tons of people here, all talking, not eating loudly fortunately, in fact I can't see too many people eating at all as it happens, but yes talking, about Canberran things I suppose. 

I have been here since Thursday night - I joined Laura and Lenny who had been here for a couple of days already - Laura came to Canberra to get an honour for her book, a triumph of a project that she picked up by its neck's scruff and took to its logical conclusion and made a magnificent success. Which I guess was capped by getting an award at a lo-o-ong but not horrible ceremony at the National Library, truly one of the great places of this nation. Proud doesn't cover it. Aside from that, we have done some sight seeing and wandering, and also went to the Liam Neeson Naked Gun, a project inspired (from my perspective at least) by hearing some goofs on the bus discussing it, in the case of one goof, dissing it thoroughly for no good reason. I'd heard it was good and I thought while clearly it is the kind of film one could not too horrendously see on tv or probably even on your phone without feeling you'd missed too much... ok quick switch it is now the next day and I am on the terrace at the National Library, one of my favourite places in the world (the library not the terrace though the terrace is not awful). I have been looking through a wide range of bizarre things (one of the librarians asked me what I was working on and I said everything which she might have interpreted as me saying 'shut up/mind your own business' or 'I'm just this amazing chameleon', depending on what kind of person she is, though also, she might just have not been that concerned either way and not really cared, and that is also pretty fine by me, though I will say I am usually (not always but usually) interested in what people are working on. 

 

It is a tepid day and sunny, not awful at all. When I went out this morning for a coffee to a fuck-off-bourgeois cafe a block away from the hotel, it was 0 degrees and I was definitely thinking, this is what I want more of. To be honest I am still thinking I may have to disappear to Finland this coming summer, partly because I just need to go there frequently and also, because, summer. I mean if there was somewhere closer that was cold where I could go in summer, yes I would but I don't think there really is. Perhaps NZ is at least more sensible, temperature-wise. Perhaps a NZ south island week might be in order. But knowing my luck it would end up in a heatwave. From where I sit I just saw a huge rabbit run across the manicured lawn and a big magpie just scrambled up onto the top of the glass barrier disturbing a little round tit or something similar, I am not good with bird names, I can hear people at other tables (quite a way off) talking about house prices or telling their children not to climb on things. You got to love Canberra. Canberra has everything and a little bit more. Off in the distance there are people cycling on the lakeside and pushing prams etc. It's all so nice. 

 

I am dead keen to get back to my research, I have a lot of good things ordered. Some of them are just silly bits and pieces perhaps to aid my wikipedia projects (like my aim to give Henry Clive a proper entry, he was the Melbourne magician who went to the USA and became a portrait artist and/or creator of pictures of possibly hypothetical beautiful women; he was also cast as the millionaire by Charlie Chaplin in City Lights then refused to jump in the water (as per the script) so was sacked - he had also been the art director on the film, I don't know if he was sacked from that job as well at the same time - ? Maybe there's a way to find out. I don't know if anyone's actually written a book about the making of CL that goes that far into the weeds. Anyway, the wikipedia entry said something idiotic like that Clive played the bad guy or something that ridiculous, and mentioned nothing about him being sacked. But if we're talking ridiculousness I do have to admit I got confused and instead of ordering press cuttings on Henry Clive I ordered press cuttings on Clive Henry - who was or is a sculptor of much later period, so that was dumb. 

 

I've been looking at other things too but now I'm 60 I've stopped trusting the internet because AI and I don't want to have my ideas (or rather my research) fed into the melange. To be clear, it's not that I don't trust you, it's bots I don't trust, and perhaps bots read blogs, I don't know. 

 

Here's something a bot won't care about. Since I have to read a whole lot of shizzle trying to sift out things I want from things I don't, I listen to music, and in this case I decided it was time to check my opinion previously expressed of The Twenty-Seven Points. I remembered absolutely none of it, and it's actually lamer than I thought it would be - just bad versions of lesser songs, in the main.* Then for some reason there's this stuff where MES is telling someone (he's reading this off a page!) to go back to Ireland. I really can't imagine what this is about, or who it's about, or why we should care at all. Did people have fewer things to worry about in the mid-90s? 

 

The one thing I will admit may have affected my re-appreciation of this album is the fact I had to listen to it quite quietly, because I was in a library (though there was no-one else really nearby). Perhaps if I blasted it that joke about the man with the spade in his head being called Doug would really cut through. 

 

Speaking of English music I had a hankering yesterday for hearing some song or other by the Experimental Pop Band, from the Discgrotesque album, but I was suprised (perhaps in some way pleased) to find I couldn't access it online. But I could access another of their albums which I'd never heard (or seen) and it's pretty good. If you're nice I'll tell you what it's called sometime. 

 

Now I'm going back to the trenches. Can you believe idiots like Elon Musk or Donald Trump or, I don't know, Vladimir Putin, who can afford to not work and could just spend their days looking through stuff in the National Library in Canberra but instead they just spend their days burrowing into big mounds of shit to the degree that no-one can tell where the big mounds of shit end and they begin. That does no-one any good. 

 

LATER: So in the afternoon I did listen to This Nation's Saving Grace as I had threatened to some weeks ago to everyone's amazement. It's not a terrible record although that 'I Am Damo Suzuki' is, like, a sort of lazy racial stereotype. I'm not imagining that. 

 

The version on spotify has a whole extra album's worth of versions and outtakes, some of them are pretty interesting. There are neat extra flourishes on some songs that were inexplicably taken off. What I assume is the 'proper' version of 'Paintwork' sounds pretty great without the fuckups. Anyway in the main I can live without it.

 

Got a lot of worthwhile stuff in the NLA, will take a while to process it. Both personally and IRL. 

* 'Free Range' is not a terrible song. 

 

something to snack on

I would certainly like to know more about Mary Donne and her work for the SEC. One of these pages claimed (I assumed inadvertently and not noting a momentary switch) that she worked for the Gas Board. Anyway, I think a great time could be had by all if I were to remake these vegan. That's an idea I'll give you, formulate ways to create gross out 70s dishes (or 1930s dishes for that matter) with healthier and less exploitative ingredients, publish a cookbook, make a million.  Or a couple of hundred, whatever. 

don't worry

 ...I'm still here, just been extra busy lately. More soon

personality

As I've made clear before I always find it fascinating what rises to the top of the most-viewed posts here, and this one which I hadn't thought about and in fact didn't recall at all, has been viewed quite a bit lately. I do not know why. It has no particular currency or importance. I wouldn't even bother going to look at it if I were you, basically TLDR long story short, it's me musing on Sleepy Jackson and The Reels, because I had come into possession of material by both groups. SJ were an extant group at the time, I think, sort of, at least, the Personality album was reasonably recent back then, I can't remember if they were playing shows or they just put out that record and then split up, I mean, they were virtually split up by that stage anyway. But seeing that post I did remember that that album was getting a lot of listens from me for a time, and I hadn't listened to it for at least ten years - surely more. So I listened to it today. Hey, it's not bad. I would love to be able to turn this into something more interesting than that, but I can't really. How about, 'hey, it's not bad but I can see why it's not necessarily regarded as a classic, but it sounds great, and very "up", and fun, and I might even listen to it again in the future.' Nah, that's not really all that interesting either is it. OK I'll just shut up. 

how was your july?

Perry and a dog whose name I think is Toast. 

Ours wasn't terrible, though it was very very busy. I suppose some of it was terrible. It was also very very busy. 

Anyway, looking forward to August I suppose, at least, I never, ever want to experience a 32nd of July. 

I say I'm looking forward to August but I'm kicking it off with major root canal so... how much is that something to look forward to? 

samuel hatty inquest

Let this not be the way we remember Samuel Hatty, a man whose actions in life seem mainly pretty ordinary aside from a healthy disregard for a flag. Let us also meditate on him bleating at a policeman in 1922, which might have been fun or even funny:

Melbourne Herald 8 April 1922 p. 12

more flaws in the portal

Someone actually has a design credit for this cover ffs.

In 1996 I had a disgusting job writing computer manuals (I never got as far as doing any such thing, btw, just flailed around trying to look busy and interested) for a couple of months and I guess I had either a discman or a walkman or both but in any case I strongly recall listening quite extensively while 'working' to the live (-ish) Fall album The Twenty-Seven Points. The Fall had been a great favourite of mine for the previous ten, almost fifteen probably, years, consolidated firmly with their 1982 tour, just after Hex Enduction Hour came out and just before Room to Live. I saw two shows then, including the one after which Marc Riley was sacked. I thought Mark E. Smith was a real iconoclast and if not a hero exactly certainly someone whose pronouncements were worth chuckling over (even when he said he voted for Thatcher which may or may not have been true). 

I was having a bad time, without a doubt. But I came to the sneaking suspicion that perhaps The Twenty-Seven Points actually sucked. I remember the track in particular which sent me to this opinion, but I can't figure out which one it is from looking at the track listing, which by the way make this album in itself look like the world's biggest b-side (or worse. For instance, it has an almost 2-minute track wikipedia describes as 'a dictaphone recording of Smith chatting with a friend - likely Mike "The Haircut" Hill'). The track I singled out for hatred was basically a poem about fireworks, I think, which was disillusioning - it was finally clear that Smith could go a long way with half-arsed writing if he allowed it to be garbled and mishearable, but in this case he was fully hearable and it just didn't work. He more commonly advantaged his work using the brilliant musicians around him putting together amazing tunes, often, but he also often wasted their good work in the service of making his crummy lyrics and ramshackle vision more important. 

Anyway that was the beginning of a thirty year process where I think I can now safely say, I don't like The Fall anymore and I would rather not listen to them again, certainly not for pleasure. Throw them on the pile with XTC who I had completely grown out of by 1990 and [I'll insert the other group I can't remember right now who also go in that category, later, it's not Gary Numan because I never liked him although I did once own a couple of his records, but I do really despise Gary Numan... obviously as a child I liked Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac etc and all of that stuff makes me sick now, but that's different].

House of All make me realise that, well, Smith might have been the candle we all flocked to initially but seriously one of the greatest things he did was attract and showcase talented people, or bring out the best in them, but he also fucked them up and fucked things up for them, and this was ongoing. In fact it got worse and worse in the last twenty (thirty?) years of the group/his life. Ultimately did we need it? 

Perhaps it'd be smarter to divide The Fall into at least two eras - so up till about Bend Sinister they were remarkable, with a few missteps (The Twenty Seven Points comes a little after this time) and then it was slim pickings. But of course as previously mentioned here in one of the most-visited entries on this blog, Smith had already crossed the line at least once, to a place no-one should have gone, particularly not someone smart enough to know better. You can fall in love with your own capacity to push the envelope and push it in entirely the wrong direction, IMO. 

So let's just confirm: Smith was an iconoclast, but one of those iconoclasts who dabbled in domestic abuse, racial abuse, and he also voted Tory (or claimed to, I can't believe I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt on that one). I know that Anna Funder's recent problematic* work on Orwell makes quoting Orwell bad in some people's minds but he does spring to mind for me here: 'If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear.'** Everyone though, even people who he treated extremely badly and people who he would have treated badly if he'd met them, is ready to give Smith the benefit of the doubt. I am sure if he was still alive he'd be a Trump supporter. (This thoughtful and interesting article makes me less sure.) 

So, I looked within my soul and I thought, should I listen to This Nation's Saving Grace one more time and just be clear on this? I might. But at the same time I just got my copy of the vinyl version of At Home With You and that's got all the dynamics and power of The Fall at their best without the scattergun fascism, so that'll do me for the moment. 

* Problematic if only because I think she hasn't really uncovered anything anyone didn't already know, and I think there's something about the way men presented themselves in the 1930s-40s that yes, was kind of cowardly and in many ways even cruel, but it's not like Orwell was the only one doing it. They (almost) all did it. It's important, and Eileen Blair should get her due, but the Orwell side of it is simply not news. 

** In the Trump Mk II era of course you could say, well, a convicted rapist is in office in the USA and many who voted for him knew what he was/is. I'm sure in Orwell's day many of the people in power were similarly rapists, just not convicted ones. I think this says a lot about people who want to dominate and people who want to cheer on a dominator. But unless you want to draw a line between the kind of Stockholm syndrome ex-Fall members seem to still be suffering from, and the losers who go on to justify stuff like 'The Classical', I think this footnote has already gone too far in an irrelevant direction. Stop reading it. 

perry's op - two years ago

I decided to get Perry desexed at the age of 11 months or thereabouts, I didn't see any advantages in waiting longer (and got some advice from good sources that waiting longer might result in him becoming aggressive). Now I'm about two days from taking the cone off (I think - currently on hold with Lort Smith at this point, two callers ahead of me in the queue, the automated message gives you the option of a callback but I'm like nah because they never do call back lol) so I feel I'm almost ready to deal with the bruising experience. He had a bruising experience of actual bruising, it's been emotionally bruising for me. 

When I first got him from the vets after the surgery he kept pulling the cone off his head and I thought this won't do so I hastened to Habitat and got him another 'buster collar' as they call them, but after a couple of days he wasn't looking good and was obviously very distressed and uncomfortable, so I took him back to the vet, and they said the other collar was too soft/short so he'd probably been worrying at his scar, and he might even need further surgery. I didn't care about the money so much as what I'd landed him in, but I think ultimately it transpired it wasn't that he had done that much damage to himself - he was sitting in the garden a lot and he had dirt on him which they interpreted as dead skin or bruising. I don't know really the extent of the damage, if any, but ultimately what happened was he got another big plastic collar to put on. Here he is, with it on. He actually doesn't seem to notice it anymore which is strange but I am happy about that. He is completely fine now - it's 12 days since he had the actual surgery - and I am probably projecting but I think he might even be a little better temperamentally. I guess the real proof of that will be when I take him to the dog park and see if he gets in any fights. He may. 

samuel hatty r.i.p.

I mentioned around three and a half years ago that I'd give you details on the death of Samuel Hatty when the anniversary came up. But first a couple more things about Hatty. As we discovered last year, Hatty was a married father of two (I was confused for a while thinking that he had another child, poor little Victor Baden-Powell Hatty who died aged 2 years 2 months - his death recorded in the Age 9 July 1902 p. 1- but I now think that as per the war memorial's website, Samuel Hatty Jr was born in 1890 and more likely Victor was Samuel Hatty Sr's son).* Anyway that's not important to the story of the death of Samuel Hatty, Basically, F. N. Campbell, a driver employed by Haddy and Co and living at 12 Little Curzon St North Melbourne (now the site of a big warehouse), offered Hatty (who at this time was living in Spotswood) a lift in his motor lorry which he was driving to the Port Phillip Stevedores' Association rooms. The road was wet and as it turned from Flinders St under the viaduct to cross Queen's Bridge it 'swung' and Hatty fell, the rear wheel of the truck passing over his head. He died a few minutes after being admitted to Melbourne Hospital. (Melbourne Age 22 July 1925 p. 15).** 

*Victor had lived at 127 Jeffcott St West Melbourne (where the prison is now), as had Samuel Hatty Sr's wife Elizabeth who died four months before he did (her funeral notice is in the Age for 27 February 1902, p.10) I don't understand what was going on there. 

** Samuel Hatty Sr (I'm assuming - same name, had a son called Samuel) had died in the same hospital on 26 August 1906 (Age 28 August 1906 p. 1). 

Picture of Melbourne Hospital 1910 from the SLV. 

He's in Fawkner Memorial Park apparently. 

outside toilet in Parkville

I suppose some people don't mind having an outside toilet, or should I say, want one. Perry and I were walking down a laneway in Parkville yesterday when I spied what seemed pretty obviously to me to be an outside toilet rebuilt in, I'm going to guess by the bricks, the 1960s to the footprint of a much older one. I'm sure that's what it is (certainly it's post-nightsoil). 

I mean Picasso yeah nah but that 1960s outside toilet is a much more intriguing piece of art. 
 

mystery

 

I thought for a split second this afternoon I saw a person I used to know (or know?) in town, then realised, firstly that it wasn't them and secondly if it was, it would be awkward because that particular person had effectively disappeared out of my life completely a couple of years ago without explanation or warning. I have literally no idea what happened.

Being ghosted is something that I'm pretty sure never really happened to me until about five years ago. There were times when people got the shits with me and, you know, unfriended me on fb or something, but they usually came back (or I didn't notice). But more recently I have had a few people completely absent themselves from my world. Three cases spring to mind. One is a woman who I eventually realised wanted a romance with me, I was unaware, until a mutual friend started talking with me about her using the assumption that we were having a romance - so - I don't know what was going on there. That woman was a bit juvenile I think, the last conversation (?) we had was when she said 'someone just told me something about you', like, what? She wouldn't tell me and we haven't spoken since. I thought we were good friends, but whatever, it's not really that important to me or something I think about a lot.

The other two (intertwined and actually more than just two people) are actually hurtful, though I'm open to imagining it's not anything to do with me, really, but more likely other stuff going on. Chief amongst them is someone I have known since the 1980s, on and off, and who I always felt very close to. Complete as they say 'radio silence' since 2023, possibly a little earlier, we weren't in frequent contact but we could always pick up where we left off. I am baffled, but finally, what can you do? If someone doesn't want to talk to you, they don't. I am not even really imagining that somewhere down the line I will get an explanation, even from a third party. This person is apparently not dead, at least, it just occurred to me to google them and they are still listed in a position in their workplace. 

I think one reason I am bothered is the other connected people. The person mentioned above has a partner and a child who I also liked very much. Put that to one side. They also had a friend, who I was also friendly with, most recently we had a good time in 2019, I think, and once again while we weren't in constant contact, we could be, anytime, I thought. But nah. So with none of them talking to me, I guess I am wondering if it's me... or just circumstances. So yeah I guess it's a double edged sword of not knowing, but that is probably secondary to: I'm worried about all those people insofar as, are they OK?! There's also the distinct possibility that I have deeply offended one or some of them, in a way that meant none of them wanted a bar of me, but I really don't know how that could have happened. 

This is a stupid post because I am going so far away from giving any interesting detail because I don't think they would want to be even slightly identified. Look, it's not an obsession for me but it is bothersome sometimes. A lot of people come and go in your life. A few weeks ago I got inveigled into a conversation with friends about another friend who had apparently dissed me considerably, the conversation assumed I knew this but I didn't at all, but I examined my feelings and realised I didn't care much either - you know - that's someone else's trip. But the people I'm talking about above were, I thought, sympathique. I guess not though. Or something went terribly wrong. What do you think? 

It's probably something that happens amongst people in their 50s-60s. I suppose I better get used to it. People of my generation will cut me off or, they'll start dying.*

*Again. I knew a few people who died from heroin 30+ years ago, but no-one of my age in the last few decades. 

oh, thunder! 110 years ago today

 

Los Angeles Evening Post-Record  5 July 1915 ·p. 7

noom

 
I have thrown away my Noom subscription again. I was grappling with it for a while but ultimately I cannot stand they way they measure things (often imperial measurement, but also, ridiculous cupfuls and half-bowls for things that don't belong in cups or bowls, and many, many perverse-sounding fast food products offered and also constant imprecations that I should eat things I would never ever eat, like chicken). Possibly I got something out of it but in the end I think it has got too much. 

Also I hate that when you write down that you ate pickles Noom insists on 'dill pickles' and then wants to measure them in spears. Spears. Fuck off with your 'spears'. 

Also I have had an annoying cough for two and a half weeks now, and also, my foot still hurts often. What a time to be alive. 

it's good to have a blog

If I didn't have a blog, neither you nor I would ever know that I saw David Kilgour and Yo La Tengo play a show in 2007 (and I didn't enjoy it, but that doesn't really mean anything in itself). Amazing. I literally do not remember this at all, I don't know where it happened and my description of the experience is so oblique I am not sure why I had a bad time. Crazy! I suspect the bad time probably had less to do with the actual show, than I appreciated at the time. I am also surprised to read that I've seen Yo La Tengo six times. Six??? I really like them, but I can only vaguely recollect seeing them once, and it wasn't this 2007 show. Madness!!!

This is a picture of Perry and Nancy yesterday. Perry is at one of his doggy day care hangs today. I would be happy to have him stay at home all week but he really seems to need to expend the energy and he loves going to those places so much I can't deny him. But I miss him. I am fairly sure Nancy doesn't. 

Walking at the moment is not easy because while I am (I'm pretty sure) coming to the end of my four or five-month bout of plantar fasciitis I am still hobbling a bit and every time I stand up I don't know whether it's going to hurt or not. I am also often really, really tired which can't just be the fact that I am 60 now but has to be more than that. Well, I guess I'll find out over time. But it doesn't make me the ideal companion all the time for a sometimes boisterous three year old (dog). 

I got back on Netflix recently, I forget why but to watch something in particular, possibly the Sarah Silverman special which I actually didn't enjoy that much but perhaps it was too close to the bone. Anyway, what I have since discovered is that a lot of Netflix shows have a Finnish captions option, which means I can justify watching any old pap on that basis, as a way to keep treading water on my Finnish. Most recently it was a five-part British crime show called Missing You. The above reads, 'Didn't it bother you that he had a family?' (I didn't translate that all by myself, by the way, though I know some of the words). 

'Did s/he make a mistake?'

This relates to a website called, unconvincingly, 'Honest Aspect': 'I reviewed all Honest Aspect-related documents for errors'. 

I don't know how useful this all is in learning Finnish (my ten-year plan, to be fluent by 2035!) but it can't hurt - can it?