Blue Saturday

nor am I, tbf. about to watch game of thrones. for inspiration, natch

natch

nartch

gnaaaritch

the novel may or may not have been started you slavedriving pest

GNNNNAWWWRIIIDGETCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHKKKKKKKCHCHCHCHHHHHHHHHHh

just fp'd myself

GNNNNAWWWRIIIDGETCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHKKKKKKKCHCHCHCHHHHHHHHHHh

man this is even worse than "malty" as nicknames go, give nilmarzinho a break

anyway darragh I think we are basically in agreement and talking past each other re "disengagement" will maybe elborate when sober but prob not

thought there was some kind of Ready Brekekekex joke hapning for a moment there

elborate is boris johnson's nickname for himself when he's abroad y/n

el borat

is that the joke?

elbow rate

he pays for lots of handjobs you see

it would be a scandal for any other politician, but not our boris

Mayor
Sex Tourist
Legerrrrnd

ha

inspiration: kill off half my characters!

i think my brain might be made of porridge. i have started reading Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism. i don't know if i like him or trust him yet. i'm waiting to reach the bit that will change my life. i'm intercutting with Capital and Vaneigem just in case. i'm supposed to be doing something else, but i think my brain might be made of porridge and it's pretty damn hard to think. i think i might have always been a very shallow reader/thinker.

Is Capital any good? I like Lanchester a lot (assuming it's him you're reading and not Marx) but am a bit wary of his attempt at a ~State of the Nation~ novel...

i assume the Lanchester is terrible - see Fizzles' epic thread - i'm reading Marx

:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Axt_80nsfU

these is the only Emeralds i value

Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism

oh I tried to like this because iirc Crabbits said nice things but there was one particular chapter where he became firmly wedged in the Them Not Us pigeonhole of my brain and after that we did not get on

I would not like to prejudice your own reading with further details but given your reservations on this thread you may very well know it when you get there

interested in your thoughts, anyway

been reading various self-help/pop-psych books of late trying to find What Is Wrong With Me And How To Fix It, mainly just reaching the conclusion that Everything Is Wrong With Me (But Not In A Very Interesting Way) And Nobody Knows How To Fix It

i'm guessing that Seligman is gonna tell us that that way of thinking is What Is Wrong With Us and we can unlearn it and make ourselves free - i'm just afeared the implication will be "free to be happy and useful under capitalism. am trying v. hard to stay openminded, sometimes a douchey sentence is followed by one that seems less douchey.

and then the big unanswerables are along the lines of - maybe not everybody is equipped to function well in the society they inhabit, is learning to function well in said society a necessary good?, is even asking that question a sign of resistance and the result of lazily clinging onto safe bad habits of mind?

free market capitalism needs unemployment and criminality as functional elements in the appropriate doses, maybe it needs discontent or failure or dysfunction in small doses too, either as moral exemplars or as draining off of potentially disruptive influence

evolution as a mechanism depends on its failures as much as its successes?

possible reaction to being and living and working amongst human detritus for long time

by Nobody Knows How To Fix It perhaps I mean Nobody Is Very Interested In Fixing It bcz most of these books just shrug and go "look at these people, they are defective and sad and insufficiently productive to work as salesmen or investment bankers, if only they changed their entire way of thinking they could be like these other people" - the author would rather list their flaws instead of explaining how to change them

or if there is any "how to change", it is that next time you catch yourself thinking "this will go wrong and these people won't like me" you are supposed to go "well la-la-la PERHAPS it will all go just fine and PERHAPS the people scowling at me are just a bit tired but we'll all hit it off super great once we get to know each other!" which seems to leave you shit out of magical change potion when it turns out you were right the first time

sorry, I have veered off-topic on my personal hobbyhorse du jour

from what i've read so far Seligman insists he isn't on some "power of positive thinking" steez, in fact he's quite snarky about it. the kicker will be how "learning optimism" differs from "positive thinking" i guess.

but i think Nobody is Very Interested in Fixing It because there's more than enough human capital to go round. While I was doing something else I just came across this piece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22764034

which seems like a solid example of a socioeconomic system that wilfully wastes the potentially of many of its people and then blames the people themselves for being waste

in fact this is the heart of where we are perhaps - our failures are still purely products of our sins and character flaws, so we're told, so the world has it

Hull is huge swathes of real, but realness of different vintages lie scattered and overlapping around the place. I shall take these considerations to a relevant thread.

The Sculcoates/Bev Rd enclave I live in now is certainly real, but the frothy blend of European and non-European immigrants, playing park boozehounds and weedfiends, old Hull working class kids and old people - no middle-ground - is a v. new thing for Hull as Hull, certainly no older than 20 years.

Hessle Road is the city's spiritual home of realness, the ghost shanty of the trawling industry defiantly refusing to melt right away, factoried and government agencied into some kind of objective correlative of the Thatcherite slaughter of working class innocents.

Preston Road is its mirror, geographically and culturally, a purpose-built future that turned to post-apocalypse so fast it's hard to believe the houses weren't built pre-boarded and the taps not fitted "hot", "cold", "white lightning".

800 years of arm-wrestling poverty and mostly losing while i few merchant oligarchs built their castles along the riverbank and walled them high to keep the helots at bay.

What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?

To spend my life doing things that motivate and fulfil me. At the moment I don’t believe that a large hierarchical organization can provide me with that. I’m content with the job role I have now, if only I could perform to the best of my abilities and prove to myself and others that I am capable of achieving everything the position requires of me and going beyond those requirements to add value to the service we provide. I have no idea what my ideal job would be – I currently have ideological and temperamental objections to employment. But if I can overcome the self-destructive behaviours and attitudes that I have lived with as an adult I will explore all the possibilities that the future might hold for me to make a living that allows me to live with myself.

Firmly believe this is a reasonable answer.

The Sculcoates/Bev Rd enclave I live in now is certainly real, but the frothy blend of European and non-European immigrants, playing park boozehounds and weedfiends, old Hull working class kids and old people - no middle-ground - is a v. new thing for Hull as Hull, certainly no older than 20 years.

Hessle Road is the city's spiritual home of realness, the ghost shanty of the trawling industry defiantly refusing to melt right away, factoried and government agencied into some kind of objective correlative of the Thatcherite slaughter of working class innocents.

Preston Road is its mirror, geographically and culturally, a purpose-built future that turned to post-apocalypse so fast it's hard to believe the houses weren't built pre-boarded and the taps not fitted "hot", "cold", "white lightning".

800 years of arm-wrestling poverty and mostly losing while i few merchant oligarchs built their castles along the riverbank and walled them high to keep the helots at bay.

Just imagined that I was reading a 'Hull City: who are they?' Premiership magazine preview.

would subscribe, obvs

can only write as an outside observer, even after being here for 25-odd years, so my sense of the real is filtered through my permanent exile shtick.

if I had to gossip about City itself, well, I hear stories that all is less than harmonious in the boardroom

that's the case all around the hyperinflated world of loss that is football

oh Dr Seligman your scientific principles seem quite reasonable but yr conservatism and moral realism make it a real struggle to have faith in the mindset you're promoting. still you seem to have my number, thinkingwise. one more line about brokers and i swear i'm throwing the book tho.

pished and shlipping into shleep is no way to go thru work, son

felt like i scrubbed my teeth for an hour this morning and i still feel like i've got a mouthful of kebab

and i think i can see a way thru the mire but it mostly involves not getting drunk

and no longer staring into the void of self-help gurus

so many perversions of the Tao

it's a beautiful day to be a tree

a sell-out, not so much

Dr Seligman tells me i shdn't think of myself as a sell-out, just somebody who has sold out a few times

this civilization is dirty and sick and wants bulldozing

Lord grant me the etc to etc

yah i know i just wanna sleep under a tree tho

i'm secretly listening to Eno/Budd and trying to throw out the odd comment that looks like i'm in the zone

dammit why isn't their an album rip of Fisherman's Blues on Youtube?

far away from dry land and its bitter memories