Some people never go crazy .......

... what truly horrible lives they must lead - Charles Bukowski

Fed up with reading the same old crap in our daily news I again found myself internet clicking....... 

I tripped clicked up over some music last week, and is often the way I find new music to like, even if the music is not new, just new to me...... but also to find music that takes you slightly out of your comfort zone, but not so far as to say...... nah can't be arsed.... but enough to know it is different but great different.

Essentially a lot of great songs are merely great poetry and some artists have a way of conveying feelings through words/song in a way that most of us can't..... the sort of sensation is when you read/hear written words and you go.... yes that's what I feel but I didn't have the way to express it...

There is a great line in the movie The History Boys..... delivered by the character Hector, played by the late but wonderful actor, Richard Griffiths....

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - 

a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - 

which you had thought special and particular to you. 

And now here it is, set down, by someone else, 

a person you have never met, someone who is even long dead. 

And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours .....

Music does that to me, Mitch Alboms writings do it too [albeit he is not dead], as does George Orwell...... George Orwell coming up for air, it is as if he wrote the book for me and me alone....... and yet it would be at least at least 24 years from the publication date until I was born... even then I was born 13 years after Orwell died.... how could he have possibly written that book for me  ? ..... but he did......

So there I was last week, and I tripped up over this 'new' music, and yet the artist concerned has been around for years...but bit of a troubled soul...and yet such an honest soul..... he doesn't sing with panache [or maybe he does].......

If he went on any of the X Factvoicenotalent shows, I doubt he would make it past the audition stage ..... and yet like, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, even though he may not sound the best, his music is sensational. It is amazing how many cover versions there are of his songs.... like Cohen and Dylan, many times the cover versions are way better than the original..... Jeff is proof positive of that....

But that does not stop the originals being brilliant in their own right..... the more I explored this guys music the more I then found one of his biggest fans is non other than my spokesman Mr Glen Hansard, who features heavily on this blog..... so I think it is no co-incidence that I find myself becoming a fan of my latest musical find..... to be fair some of his songs are tough to listen, but then again it is very rare to say that every single song of one particular artist is great, with a few exceptions of course.... Glen Hansard, Paul Buchanan, and a few more .... but even Bowie turned out some crap..... In any event whatever you might think about how he sings..... there are innumerable artists influenced by his talent that it is hard to ignore....

So this week is DJ week, with the original because it is great and a cover version because they too are great....

So I start the week 

of Daniel Johnston 

SoD's thus

There were numerous cover versions of this song but in the end I plumped for this one by Beck

What a fucking circus.....

A couple of posts back, I made a very flippant reference to the disappearance of flight MH370, but when you see the reaction to the news that Malaysian Airlines now officially declare the flight went down into the Indian Ocean ....... and to announce it to some families by text......

What a fucking PR fuckup on the fuckup front.....

There is now no room to joke, or even be flippant...... you just look and think with nothing but incredulity.......

What makes it worse, is seeing the out pouring of emotion of the families.... well else can they do ?

For so long they have been allowed to cling on to the belief that there is hope, and with a single text their hope is stolen for ever..... Of course if the plane crashed on that fateful day, then it crashed, and the families would have faced that grief then as opposed to now..... but there are ways and means to deliver news ...... I'm am just surprised they didn't announce it on twitter with a selfie !

I have no idea what happened to that plane, and despite my earlier irreverence, how could I possibly know.... and I sure as hell see little point in the endless speculation of whether it was pilot suicide or any other of the fanciful notions.... but for the best part of 3 weeks, there has been round after round of analysis trying to think where the plane went to...and even without the Australians finding anything credible......... completely out of the blue [so it would seem] the Malaysian Airlines/Authority {delete as appropriate} announced that it is official, the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean somewhere to the SW of Perth, Australia..... well that narrows it down then.

The only clue to this monumental decision, would it appear, be due to computer modelling of pings done at Inmarsat. I would not doubt for one minute the technical abilities of the staff at Inmarsat....but

looking at the scenes of those angry grieving families....... the ping of the text on their phones was a ping too many.

Now that the lid of Pandora's box is lifted, I suspect that the Malaysian Airlines PR team will be doing a spot of over time for a good while yet..... but for christ's sake I hope they leave their mobiles at home.....

Saying goodbye for the last time......

It is funny saying goodbye to someone you know you will probably never see again....

I don't mean someone you have just met or a casual acquaintance or even someone you have fallen out with..... quite the opposite in fact....

I am talking about someone who you have shared intimate discussions with, someone who has seen you with you pants down, they've even felt your balls, it goes even so far as to say you have given them some of your bodily fluids ....... it seemed so strange saying goodbye for the last time .......

Back in 2009, I was overseas on business, it was very sunny Saturday morning, and I was stressing because I was still in my work gear and I needed to get back to the hotel to check out and to get checked in for my flight home from Cairo........ then my phone started buzzing with texts.....

It seemed that my daughter had parked the car in one of our neighbours hedges.... nothing too serious I thought, but as I sent more text, the answers I was getting back suggested more.... seems my daughter [on a single track village road I would add] had rolled the car through 360 degrees and parked the car in the hedge at 45 degrees to the horizontal and 90 degrees to the roadway..... not even the Stig could have achieved that fine feat.... but thankfully my daughter got out with only her pride injured.... I was overseas and my wife was also away for the day..... and so it was my neighbours, minus part of their hedge who consoled my daughter..... Lois and Mike.

Wonderful neighbours to have, and Lois.... oh Lois was beautiful, she smiled so beautifully with her eyes...... So it was we became friends through my daughters mis-hap..... winding the clock forwards 18 months, and I heard Lois was not well...... I went to see her, and little did I realise just how unwell she was...... confined to her bed, only able to speak using a computer voice box [ala Stephen Hawkins], but despite her plight, oh my gosh her beautiful eyes smiled so wonderfully.....

A few weeks after seeing her, I was driving through the village in the middle of the night en-route to yet another overseas business jolly, and there was a light on at Lois and Mike's house...... When I got home from that trip, again driving through the middle of the night through the village, Lois and Mike's house was enveloped by the darkness...... Lois had died......

So there I was on Saturday morning last, walking the dogs, and I bumped into Mike on his way out.... How you doing Mike ?.... oh not too bad he said, I now have a dog who follows me everywhere.... Although I am just on my way to see our Doctor, he is retiring at the end of this month and he was so kind to Lois. I am just on my way to say goodbye to him..... How funny I said, my doctor is retiring too, when I have walked the dogs I am going to say goodbye to my doctor too.....

All routes lead back to Mitch Albom...... Lois died of ALS.... a disease that causes your body to kill it'self...... Mitch Albom wrote the wonderful book ....... Tuesday with Morrie ....... Morrie Scwhartz died of ALS ....... If you have never read it then ....Tuesday with Morrie, is a wonderful read.....

Of course, it could be said that it is no co-incidence living in the same village as Mike and Lois, in that we shared doctors.... but I was with this doctor long before I moved to the village where I now live...

And so there I was Saturday morning, standing in line, [a line that went round the block]..... waiting to say good bye...... when my turn came I shook my doctors hand and thanked him so much for all the care and kindness he exhibited to me..... despite the intimacy of our association [see above] I can tell you very little about my Doctor....

other than when I shook his hand and thanked him, 

it seemed odd that this was the last good bye ....... 

a very strange feeling, with a large degree of emptiness,
he isn't dying but as we exchanged smiles
it just seemed odd that we are never likely to meet again...

Of course it might not be the doctor who you are saying the last goodbye to
there are many people in our lives who offer the same level of impact....
Lois ? someone else ? anyone ?

Mitch Albom

“There are no random acts...
We are all connected...
You can no more separate one life from another 
than you can separate a breeze from the wind...

The man who fell to earth......

... the joke doing the rounds of the internet is they can read my text but they can't find a 300 tonne plane.....

But then I heard a news item on BBC radio today revealing yet another Snowden leak, it got me thinking.

The story can be read here. A notable quote is thus:

The US government has reportedly built a system that can record every phone call made over a month in an undisclosed foreign country.

The National Security Agency (NSA) programme was created in 2009, the Washington Post reported.

Fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked details of the system, promised more revelations.

Civil liberties groups called the report "chilling", but US officials would not comment.

An NSA cover slide used for an internal briefing on the system, known as Mystic, shows a cartoon wizard wielding a staff with a mobile phone at the top.

'Time machine'

Mystic is the only known US surveillance programme to capture every single call across a nation's telephone network, according to the Washington Post.

There are many conspiracy theories/theorists awash on the internet, but one follows the theme that Snowden and Assange are double bluffs......  That actually the US can't do half the shit it is being claimed they can do, but they want this shit out there to make everyone think they can do this shit, so they have stooges releasing this shit. It is documented that the theories of UFO's in the 1950's & 1960's were allowed to perpetuate in order to hide the development of secret aircraft by the US military.

So think about the joke again.... it is claimed that the USA can record every single phone call in a certain country over a month and yet they truely can't find this plane..... a plane who's engines talk electronically to the engine builders, telling the engine builders {inter alia} when the engine needs a service and it's arse wiping...... I have no idea as to the number of phone calls made in any one country in any one month, but to record every one of them ?

Now if the US can record all those phone calls, then who knows then maybe they can't find the plane because it is aliens that abducted the plane. Here is a very credible account of the possibility. I am more and more becoming convinced that aliens may well have taken the plane.*

It was Sherlock Holmes who said ......

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

Watching that documentary about aliens..... The man who fell to earth, they may well already be amongst us....

So to close out

with today's theory

here is a fantastic song

from that film,

From Roy

one of my all time favorites

grrrrr

and for any excuse to play David Bowie
an equally fantastic song

*{Theories postscript: Theories and jokes a side, I hope for the families of those on board, and perhaps most particularly for those on board, I hope the real reasons for it's disappearance be established. I had never been abroad until I was 16 years old and now 35 years later, I have lost count of how many plane rides I have made since then. I jump on a plane like we jump on a bus or train, but we always assume we will get off safe and well at the other end..... there but for the grace of god go I}

Walking through the door with Mr Benn....

..... for me, the politics of the 1970's seemed the most destructive.....  whether it was because they were my formative years I don't know, but what I do know, is no matter how destructive they may have seemed then, they had the most powerful of characters in politics....

I don't give a rats arse about whether the politics were right or wrong, what mattered is whether they believed in their words for the good of their ideals and not the good of their personality......

Will we remember with due respect the passing of Milliband, or Cameron or Blair...... ? I doubt it.

There is no doubt that the passing today of one of the most formidable political minds should be considered with due respect, no matter whether you agreed with his politics or not..... I never was a labour man myself

But I like this quote the best.... lifted from the BBC website....

In a recent interview for Radio 4's Today programme, presenter James Naughtie asked Mr Benn to summarise where he had been "most right" and "most wrong" in his career.

"I made every mistake in the book," Mr Benn replied. "But making mistakes is how you learn.

"I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn't believe in, to get on personally.

"You look back and, when you're in a critical mood, you see you made errors of judgement. But as long as you say what you believe and believe what you say - that's the test of authenticity."

Tony Benn - 1925-2014

(c) Guardian

It is not only great motor racing drivers like.....

...Michael Schumacher who can succumb to falling down.

After lodging my earlier post today, I saw this report about a young man called Michael Handley.

 {source: daily mail}

He was not famous, perhaps to his family maybe, but as a young man he had the world at his feet.

But now as a result of this accident he lost the chance to be a young man grown old.

There he was enjoying a high octane past time, fell over and yet never woke up. How many young men every day enjoy snow boarding and fall over....... but they do wake up.

The simple act of falling down and yet it has such devastating consequences. 

So it is not only great racing drivers that can instil a degree of sadness for a complete stranger, in truth we see these stories every day...... I think of Michael Molloy as I type......  

But today it's the reflection of the act of falling down and it's relationship with fragility of life.

Mic Christopher was another young man who fell down and never woke up. 32 years old, a musician from Ireland, fell over one night in Groningen, Netherlands and that was it.

After his death, some of his musician friends got together and compiled his music into a fantastic album.

It's not really a post for a SoD but I think it is worthy of recognition of the great music lost with Mic Christopher....... here is a couple of tracks from the album. To be honest I could have chosen any they are that good.

If you like these songs then I urge you to buy the album, it will not disappoint. The only disappointment you will have, is knowing that there is no more new music to come from him.

It is only co-incidence that today's post[s] have a Michael/Mic theme......... the sad truth is what ever your name, one day you can fall over and never wake up.

This may be your 

heyday

we are all
day dreamin...

Things are not looking promising for Michael....

...Schumacher

Firstly I am not a doctor and have no medical training [although I do know that it fooking urts when you hit your hand with a hammer, so that might count towards medical knowledge] .... but sans any formal medical knowledge, I have no way of knowing his prognosis....

Even if I did have a medical degree, without being one of his medical team there is no way I can know his prognosis....

I am not even known to him in any shape manner or form so again, in which case how could I possibly know his prognosis ...... but ...

For all of that there is a part of me that feels a small, [how small or big is not important] sense of sadness at his prognosis....

Back in December there was good reason to think that he was capable of making a full recovery..... but now I am not so sure....

Of course one might ask why I should feel this way for a complete stranger ? I am certain it is not celebrity awe.... and sure as hell not Lady Di syndrome, remember when she left this life ? ....

Since I was a young kid I have loved cars, 1 of my top ten of everything is a .............       246 Ferrari Dino..... named in honor for Enzo's lost son.... and boring though it may sound they were not originally badged as a Ferrari......... but with my love of cars as a young kid........ I then grew up to be a middleaged teenager...... and I woke up one morning and found I had some cash in the bank.... it was bit more than the pocket money I earned on my paper round as a teenager.........and as I loved cars, and loved Ferrari, I brought one.... I don't mean that as a boast.... ooooher look at me .....

As a kid growing up on a council estate with not a pot to piss in, an estate I hasten to add that makes the Chatsworth estate on Shameless look like Wisteria Lane, then the thought of being able to own and drive a car that normally only appears on a poster on bedroom walls, was certainly alien to me back then.....

I have always followed F1 from near and a far depending on my interest levels at any one year but the pinnacle was my boys weekend to Monza and getting my daughter into the Ferrari pitlane garage at Silverstone on a glorious hot summers day.

Whatever, your views about Michael Schumacher he was is a winner. For sure, many say he sought to win at all cost, for me ........ he sought to win knowing it would always be at a high cost.

I remember a great phrase a navy mate of mine told me years ago [always stuck with me].....

winners never quit ...... 

because quitters never win .....

That's what I saw in Schumacher, a winner ........ 

that's what I liked about Schumacher ...... 

maybe that's where the sadness lies ....... 

no matter how much a winner he is ...... 

this is one battle he may end up quitting....