Blue Saturday

It's a mesh, is it kidding themselves it was how it had to be, comforting themselves that it's true and just, making sure by god if I had to go through it these little shit have to as well, never did me any harm, who wants to live forever and yeah pay the pot to the grizzly survivor you'll be there yourself some day lad

Ben thatchers britain

"nobody's going to tell me I wasn't master of my own destiny" is probably one of the main underlying thoughts yeah

suddenly reminds me that petty officer evans -- the only one in capt scott's polar party from the lower decks -- had a plan when he returned to open a pub in rhossili (called "the south pole" obv) and end his days as a landlord comfortably being bought pints as he told the relevant stories

in event he was overworked and underfed and first to die and (… takes it to the conspiracy thread… )

Tom Crean!

how much of exploration and the Scott party in particular was "proving yr masculinity by exposing yourself to suicidal risk and effort"? especially from the 20th century onwards where these things weren't really done for material trade benefits

also for some of the working class lads adventure must've felt more enticing than the life they'd otherwise have mapped out for them

Xps Not polar party, withdrawn :)

make yourself a strenuous man!

there was a significant element of prove-you're-not-an-aubrey-beardsley-style decadent, yes

more complicatedly, sir clement markham, scott's mentor -- who had been on an arctic expedition as a young man in search of franklin's bones -- was obsessed with the necessary manliness of never using dogs to pull the sleds: brawny manhauling was the only acceptable way for the empire (also amateurism: amundsen was bad bcz he was a professional explorer)

x-p: tom crean was present at key stages on several of the madder expeditions! heroic but taciturn, saved another evans by a 35-mile one-day solo march across the ice, ended up running a pub i think -- not in the actual polar party, but in the last one sent home

complicatedly bcz markham's tastes ran to brawny young men

how the hell do you people do it? how do you do it?? how is it done????

is there a foreign object in my head that's impairing some essential survival mechanism?

sorry, carry on

:(

i don't know, sometimes the best i can manage is a near-functional blankness, apparently that'll do.

caveat: all i know abt trawlerman culture is (a) in this thread (b) when the boat comes in (c) that old ad that said "gone fishing gone away"

but am guessing it's a culture where, rather than the whims of the factory boss that everyone faces, you are mainly confronting the market directly (if you catch and sell enough, your family eats) -- so that cutting across the shared knowledge and tribulation of the other adversary (the sea), where you feel at one with those who know and disdain for those who don't, there's an intense competitive rivalry... cultural solidarity but not really economic solidarity?

not sure how this extends to docker culture (abt which i also know nothing obv except for on the waterfront)

marcus rediker has argued that the tradition of libertarian constitutionalism began with atlantic pirates: radical individualists by persuasion (they called themselves "masterless men" in an age when this had huge meaning) , they were nevertheless all in it together ("or we all hang separately" etc) and collectively recognised the need to strike up a contract with the pirateship's pirate captain, abt equitable division of spoils and abt restitution

^^^the latter is what the "black spot" is in treasure island: the crew's right to vote out their captain

obviously trawlermen aren't pirates *or* dockers, so i'm not sure where i'm going with this

Heh trawlermen are at least half smugglers, whatever about pirates

another culture i know nothing about, let me generalise some more (i read moonfleet as a kid)

Sexton Ratsey? No it's just the way my trousers are hanging...

Hull trawlermen as I understand it where at the whims of their bosses - they were hired labour on boats owned by a small number of wealthy family companies, and the owners didn't go to sea iirc

but their contracts are renewed on a single-voyage basis? that will also cut into economic solidarity (and is closer to dockers) (at least, the ones in on the waterfront)

oh yeah, the reasons for non-solidarity are clear, tho I think many of them were unionized to some extent

*deletes long speculation abt vikings*

lately get more and more sick of the sound of my own voice even when it's only internal

prefer it when my brain plays instrumentals

Dream baby dream

True story, I couldn't open this thread in zing for like months.

I'm in the weirdest mood, like I actually feel good (if drunk, which is in itself bad, for me) but also --1

Haha I fell asleep before I could finish articulating what I meant, nm

yeah I didn't really know how to respond I was half asleep when I read it

I dunno I mean -1 seems fair enough to me

here are the young men the grapes on their shoulders

had a real urge to nail myself to something today, then spent a while thinking about what substances might kill me quietly and painlessly, then thought about going back to the pub, then made a sandwich and turned the central heating on, then chatted shit on the internet

of all of the little tricks and rituals to help survive being alive, possibly my #1 is don't listen to decades, ever

i wasn't! i just thought of the grapes thing.

i once told a woman i really loved that the reason i was chirpier than her was because i listened to reggae and not Lou Reed first thing in the morning but

there's definitely something to that. maybe i can rig finally by cece peniston to be my alarm

Best alarm song is Si Begg’s “River” feat. Jinadu from The Director’s Cut (2003)

i listened to decades : /

all I wanna do is cocoon myself in the house and meditate on sadness and pointlessness but I'm still not going down the Joy Div route :)

promised myself I was gonna stop posting, there's the first failure of the day

https://www.whsmith.co.uk/pws/client/images/catalogue/products/9781/47/3627345/xlarge/9781473627345_1.jpg

Armstrong and Osman, kings of looking like smug wankers while wearing shirts and jackets without ties.

If I could pull off that look, I'd be the CEO of a second tier tech company.

never stop posting iirc

http://memegenerator.net/img/images/5103481.jpg
"Always... Be... Cposting..."

Finally, they come along
The weight upon their shoulders, it just can't be wrong
If you'd only seen, the trauma and degeneration
I just can't describe it, oh no no

Finally it has happened to me, door slammed right in my face
My heart's lost forever

like at the end of a shower when you turn the hot off

good session with my counsellor yesterday, feel like I'm making real progress, so obviously I went on a fourteen hour bender, came home, passed out, slept all day, missed work. fucking fuck's fucking sake I fucking hate myself, worthless useless feckless cretin, some merciful god kill me and stop fucking everybody about

You are worthy

i'm sure you'll shrug those feelings off quickly if you haven't already but you're none of those things nv & you don't deserve to hear that shit, from yourself or anyone else.

i just don't understand why i keep failing in the same way. 30+ years of drunk. one of the stories i told my counsellor on Thursday was about how i turned up to my Oxford Uni interview with the remains of the bottle of cider i'd be drinking on the way down.

now i keep saying i'm not an alcoholic cos i'm not fucked up every day. i manage to go a week or more before caning it so hard i end up injured or put at risk or lost or off work. same kind of pattern for 30 odd years, sometimes more frequent, sometimes a little less. 6 months of sobriety maybe 3 or 4 times. endless debt and failed relationships. and tho i still feel like today - ok that's enough, no more, only an idiot would keep doing this, i know for sure that in another day or two i'll start to wheedle myself around - gotta go out for the end of term, gotta go and watch the football, gotta keep in touch with my friends, one or two won't hurt, just need a bit of control, i can do that. and round we go again.

i know the dramarama self-loathing doesn't help me. i don't know much that does help me. breathe deep, keep working on the counselling, keep trying i guess. and you can't dwell on the past or feel constrained by it but sometimes you leave enough wreckage in your wake and it makes the path forward very narrow.

might be important to not view your life as one unified item. some days go badly, some relationships fail - but sometimes it's good, some weeks you get on top of things, some seasons you storm the league. and what feels like constant regression to booze is just one of many modes you operate in. anyway, good luck with keeping the demons at bay, we're all rooting for you