Listened to the news a bit What I apprehended was: Mentally ill people should work. Physically ill people should work. It’s good for them, I imagine. Can’t prove it, but it suits one’s privileged world view And then we grind their bones to make our bread. It’s what Thatcher would have wanted

The last 2 days have not been top drawer, but the kindness of other people has got me through. I haven’t done anything to deserve this astonishing largesse. My gratitude is sky high. As Randy Newman & Alan Price once put it, “It’s just amazing how fair people can be.” youtu.be/sVulPluv5jo?...

Fucking hell. Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure.

One year on and I’ve hit the twenty percent survival window. I’m sorry for those four out of five fuckers. Perhaps I didn’t spend your hours as you’d have wanted, I mean I listened to a lot of prog rock and watched Armageddon at least three times. But I tried hard to do neither hurt nor harm.

Today has gone off the rails slightly. Back on #Frightenby25 tomorrow.

Ah bollocks. That’s the world a less jolly place then. Booksellers of the world salute you, Madame. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

Still knee deep in other folks’ entrails I feel that #Frightenby25 day five may be a bit frivolous. This is secret code for “I want to give Young Frankenstein a spin” 16) Young Frankenstein 17) Ghostbusters 18) Ghostbusters II WE GOT ONE!

Another week. OK, then. Waris, Verity, Sydney: I will do my best not to let you down. ❤️❤️

Grease Friends Buffy (TV series) The Office (US version) Gavin & Stacey Nothing personal. It just never happened and god’s green earth on my time is dwindling here.

And now I’m gone.

Cheating fucking owl prick. Les chouettes ne sont pas vertes. You’re not my real owl.

Fuck, yeah. Fight while you have it. Once it’s gone you’ve lost it forever.

I cannot stress this enough, and I am tired of saying it: British white people, everything you are seeing in the US is coming here and you cannot watch Eurovision or Great British Bakeoff or sign petitions and think you can stiff-upper-lip or ignore your way out of this. Learn to be UNCOMFORTABLE.

Highly recommended to all my Who friends. @melvinpena.bsky.social is an articulate, enthusiastic soul who always brings a perspective I would not otherwise have had. I love that. @sihart.bsky.social remains the Whoniverse’s gentlest, but most effective interlocutor. Thanks, chaps.

This is such a helpful podcast as I try to weld together my empirical science upbringing with my developing interest in consciousness. Every episode reminds me how ignorant I still am. I adore that. New project: Sufism podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Day five of #Frightenby25. Only Fulci can help me now In their various states of glorious restoration: 11) Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) Gates Of Hell - 12) City Of The Living Dead (1980) 13) The Beyond (1981) 14) The House By The Cemetery (1981) And 15) Murder Rock (1994) if I can find my copy

Well now. Got my @arrowvideo.bsky.social 4K Zombie Flesh Eaters today. I’m down the fathomless Fulci hole now. Maybe Murder Rock later. Definitely the Gates Of Hell tomorrow though. #Frightenby25

Day four of #Frightenby25 and we are going H.G. Wells mode. He’s not often thought of as a horror writer per se. Just the pioneer of every major SF genre ever. But these are great: 9) Island Of Lost Souls (1932) 10) The Invisible Man (1933)

The power of imprinting: whenever I hear about a new Robin Hood release I get parallel ear worms of what I remember as the two distinct Rocket Robin Hood themes…

If you want to get into Buster Keaton movies (a worthwhile use of one’s limited time on earth), would recommend The Goat, followed by Sherlock Jr., as your way in. youtu.be/_6kE2JfkJ1c

The Highland Hospice is opening a new charity shop in Inverness, based I assume on the treasure I have recently moved from my flat. Truculent members of the local FB community would rather the property remained empty than have “another charity shop.” Well…

Bad to the bone. #Frightenby25

It’s #Frightenby25 day three. Stephen King adaptation day: 6) Christine (1983) 7) The Dead Zone (1983) 8) The Langoliers (1995)

Day 2 of #Frightenby25 and it’s a Carpenter triple bill in 4K: 3) The Fog (1980) 4) Prince Of Darkness (1987) 5) The Thing (1982)

First time in ages that I’ve had the desire and capacity to cook. Pan seared salmon fillets with a sweet chilli, honey and lime sauce of my own devising. Presentation needs work, but god it was tasty.

Starting October with a creature feature double bill: 1) Alligator 2) Alligator II The Mutation #Frightenby25

Home after a fortnight in the hospice: one week of grimdark, one week of recuperation I’m getting care visits twice a day to cover the things I now struggle with We are so lucky up here with the help that is immediately, joyfully available I bought myself some flowers because I’m a fancypants

Perhaps anyone who threatens to leave the country to protect their wealth should be compelled to leave within the fortnight They obviously have no cultural attachment to the UK. Any contribution they make is grudging Any party we throw the minute they leave will probably be about something else

Saw a chap on Instagram yesterday making a meal he called “macaroni salad” Not “mac and sal” Confusing

Great call regarding Gödel, Escher, Bach on today’s @trapone.bsky.social I was married to that book in the early 80s! And it did inform my viewing of Castrovalva, big time. #DoctorWho

I used to have a favourite podcast one of whose presenters used the word “ostensively’ where I would have said “ostensibly” After years of grinding my teeth I looked it up. Turns out ostensively is perfectly acceptable, but slightly different in meaning & rarely used There’s always stuff to learn

At some point in the last two years the phrase “set foot in” seems to have become “step foot in”. It’s not important. I don’t think there’s a vast semantic difference between the two. It would be interesting to find out how and why it changed though.

We have a shape and that shape is amorphous. I wonder what he thinks amorphous means. Glad we’re killing all the cows though. They’ve had things their own way for far too long. Bovine bastards.

Who to believe? The millions of people who have trained at length within a discipline and understand how to construct and test a hypothesis, or a man who thinks you can lower the price of something by one thousand percent? It’s quite the noodle scratcher.

I know how you feel, mate.

Fresh air. Hydrangea. Yellow chairs! You’re always playing yellow chair.

I went to a different Rapture. You wouldn’t know it. It goes to the heaven two afterlifes over.

Blocking pricks It’s very therapeutic If people want to be philosophically minuscule, regressive thugs that is one thing, but don’t drag that feculent cant onto my TL I’m not having it

Day eight down the hospice. I’m usually in and out in two, three tops It’s all gone south this time to an extent. I’m optimistic about getting home for a bit sometime soon, but who really knows? I haven’t gone mad with boredom exactly, but I have started journaling Fucking hell. Who even am I?

I thought this jumper might come with a free “pleasant, open face” Alas, my friends, it did not What I have is most charitably described as “a face” #DoctorWho #TerranceDicks

Quixotic tosh syndrome. #TheArchers

Ruairi, Ruairi tell us a stuairi Ruairi, Ruairi tell it like it is #TheArchers #AnimalKwackers #niche

Reading Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld books* as a teen I was struck by one of the characters being delighted by the arbitrary food dispensers finally providing bananas AND peanut butter. Tried it. Total convert. Still am. SF. The literature of ideas. *PJF was great.

Well, quite. Although like Errol Brown I believe in miracles. I just tend towards thinking that they are unique experiential phenomena. What happens in your head stays in your head.

I was twenty-one when this came out. Has anything changed as a result of anything I’ve ever done? Probably not. That river’s flowing. That river is flowing. Got the sads today, big time. open.spotify.com/track/2t77hj...

My VPN (not for that, careful now) has been doing over a bang up job protecting me from iPlayer, BBC Sounds and the STV Player. Bravo tech, with your ability to alienate your innocent users whilst simultaneously facilitating (presumably) black hats. (I saw a film once.) Am I just an old man?

Does CE3K get slightly lost in the Spielberg discourse, I wonder. It’s my favourite. It’s the only time (I was 12) that I can remember Dad taking me to the cinema and seeing things the way I saw things. He was patient, God bless him. I miss him every day.

Fucking John Williams man: Jaws Star Wars CE3K Superman ESB 1941 Raiders ET Jedi Jurassic Park Sometimes we are given, and it’s OK to say thanks. Thank you.

Stephen King is a good example of how to be a proper person. Have a talent. Work the talent. Don’t be a prick. (He does beyond this to a considerable degree according to two of my friends in Maine.)

Another time I read The Dead Zone between my maths and further maths A Levels*. What a fabulous book that is, and one of the greatest movie adaptations ever by King Cronenberg. *A and C. I don’t hold King responsible.