Blue Saturday

I've decided as long as Rona is running rampant I'm not drinking, so no doubt this will be the longest stretch of sobriety in my life. In fact, I haven't had a drink since the middle of the month anyway. If I'm not in a pub I don't drink anyway - only occasionally.

interesting (very) long read on recent chinese social conditions (inc.its post-socialist health structures) as these interact with internal and also global markets, and role of all this in recent and not-so-recent pandemics:
http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/

(this is a weird thread to out it on but at a minimum it's a good counterpoint to the conspiracy theories upthread, also weirdly: if you know a better thread for it, by all means post it there also)

― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

The outbreak thread is the best place (I put all pieces I am going through on there) as is Chiang (kept meaning to read this for the last month)

Link the playlist please wins?

^ cosine

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX4pbGJDhTXK3?si=-2nED5eqSBeInAwnnF3Evg

It is literally Spotify’s own playlist, I’m sure there are better ones put together by users but I am lazy

Fuck me I want ice cream

I ordered pizza but resisted the urge to publicly harangue the person who brought it in order to show how #relatable I am

Second weekend in isolation... feeding the ducks. pic.twitter.com/uxdoLTCLSv

— Radcliffe Observatory Ducks (@OxQuackademics) March 28, 2020

I've been holding off my Aldi frozen pizza since Tuesday in favour of more perishable stuff but I think tonight's the night

on my stroll with the dog today i ended up walking down a steep hill behind a guy in his tartan pyjamas and a coat over the top, nothing on his feet but flip-flops, pissed out of his head and on his way back from the offy with a bag full off bottles that were clanking about round his knees. he was swerving all over the place and he kept catching the front of his flip-flops on the pavement, but just about saving himself each time as he stumbled forwards. And in my mind I was screaming, please don't fall, please don't fall, cos i know he was going to hurt himself and i would rush in to help him and that would be awkward as i'm sure that neither of us would want to end up with a dose of the old miley cyrus as a result of the encounter. And needless to say he ended up crashing straight into a row of overflowing wheelie bins like it the opening sequence of starsky and hutch and there was a crash of bottles but somehow he regained he feet and staggered onwards and i got out of there after asking if he was okay and just getting a roar of laughter by way of reply

beautiful

One of the most annoying things about WFH is that when you connect you the VPN they disable Spotify, even the web version. But I'll listen to that at evening/weekends.

I don't much drink - I'm literally the "oh yes an average of a pint a week" guy that doctors never believe, but I've been hitting the late night video games pretty hard - I forgot that the clocks were going back, so suddenly it was 2, and what was I doing with my life? And this morning I remembered the clocks and suddenly everything's fine, nothing to investigate further.

I've been listening to a lot of doomy droney stuff because a writer I follow loves that sort of thing and throws up a bandcamp link every day and I find some of it good to work to. Bandcamp put up a feature on one of his favourite labels - it's definitely not for everyone, particularly In This Current Climate.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/label-profile/cryo-chamber-dark-ambient-guide

love that NickB post (also glad you didn't get the Miley off a tumbledown drunk)

it was hard to get up this morning, with the change of clocks, and the feeling of "so what, I'll just be sitting in this room all day anyway, won't even get round to reading a book or doing anything useful/creative", and also I may have trudged to bed in slight disgrace after my trenchant opinions were deemed to be terrible and bringing everyone down *shrug*

thanks AF, the blurb sounds interesting, later I'll see if I like the music as much (I also have friends who are into "dark ambient", which is very adjacent to genres I like, and yet a lot of it leaves me cold - well, that might be what it's supposed to do, I guess, but I usually don't quite share their enthusiasm)

^^ love that. Would you mind sharing who the writer is? Sounds right up my street.

I've been finding solace in classical, drone, ambient and black metal, too these days. But then that's where I found solace way before all this happened :)

xp to Andrew

Its a comics book writer called Warren Ellis: https://warrenellis.ltd/ who has definitely been "I'd like to welcome everyone to my hermitage, no not literally"

Thank you, and this is one for the 'shockingly old' thread: I've always though Warren Ellis the musician and Warren Ellis the comic book writer were one and the same o_O

really wish i could go prop the bar in a quiet daytime pub right now

maybe i'll just walk round to the Harry Pursey and scratch on the door and whine

Last night I dreamt that my old local was having secret free lock-ins to use up stock.

must be someone somewhere currently tunneling in to their local, great escape style

uh fantastic mr fox style, pls

boggis, bunce and shebeen

now we're getting somewhere

the Thursday before lockdown i was laughing with the woman who lives above one of my locals and we agreed there were worse places to be locked in

this could all have been arranged so the socially neediest could be hunkered down together

One pub I passed yesterday, instead of the usual cutesy “we love you, stay strong, see you on the other side” notice had one that just said “CLOSED
NO MONEY OR STOCK INSIDE”

understandable in the circs

i'll get my apology in early, i'm gonna be a drunky git today and there will be rambling bollocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVlEtQQcX58&feature=share

i'm done with the non-essential tasks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVlEtQQcX58

today i am mostly listening to Iron Maiden, Bonnie Prince Billy and Country

oh and whichever wonderful ilxor made the wonderful 1950 compilation, that's in the mix

Just had the Pixies on, didn't enjoy that much tbh. Planxty now.

gone down a MOP alley but music thank god people thank god stay strong everybody

everything today needs to bang

Planxty, much more the ticket.

nah def, they will fit right in to my original playlist, it's just expanding

also, MELT LINES, DON'T DO IT

also it is time for Accept

I could really do with sitting in a pub beer garden right now.

Have to make do with walking up the top of the road and back and trying to get a bit of work done. At least I don't have to work tomorrow. My hours have been cut to 4 days a week so I've gone for Wednesdays off so I never have to work more than 2 days in a row.

sounds like a relief. just been to the little Tesco for some more rum and basic food, there's a gentle pleasant calm outside round here tbh, people saying hiya at a distance then rolling their eyes just a little bit. comical how the seeds of a better world are scattered in this crappy one, sad to guess it'll pass when "normality" resumes.

i finally sent my resignation email today, which is the task accomplished that's allowed me to self-justified boozing it up for the rest of the day.

oh and i bought a lottery ticket, apparently the pubs are still open in Sweden

FB chat with my kids are so real right now thank you based virus

also getting shithot at Freecell

ow my head

Whose bright idea was it to put that ghoul Whitty on the adverts? I've got chairs with more presence.

looks-wise he is memorably unlike the ppl you usually see in adverts -- viz he resembles the mekon's ghost -- so maybe that was the thinking. but then there's also voice-wise…

‘this is a public service announcement that baw-heided weirdos still have a place in british public life’

speaking of which, is toby young dead yet

Not for want of me nailing a voodoo doll.