" ... The priests they stood on both sides, the priests they stood behind,
Another fight in Jesus name, the blind against the blind"

Can we wipe the past from our thoughts?

" ... And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real ... "

Saga Norén makes more sense to me than a lot of the other characters ... 'nuff said!

It is true of so many things

Not enough can be troublesome ... too much just seems pointless ... Goldilocks trumps them both!

So ... the old calendar is lying on the shelf waiting to get thrown out ... the new one has taken it's place ... and the today appears much the same as yesterday ... so why all the fuss

Why fireworks at any feeble excuse now?  I can't imagine why anyone wants to subject themselves to unexpected loud bangs.

Humbug isn't just for Christmas!

It's an intriguing conundrum why someone you hardly know can stay in your head so easily.

I woke up to a phone that won't switch on and a frozen solid birdbath ... seems like the start of my winter of discontent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJSqcvAQ8l8

Was there ever a time when life was simple and could be understood, at least after some fashion ... or are humans just too damn good at wrapping confusion around everything now

"That a wasted youth is better by far

Than a wise and productive old age"

Discuss

So why is it so difficult to reason with loft insulation????

So why, oh why, do I still watch film adaptations of books I have enjoyed ... is it just to reinforce my expectation that life will be a series of disappointments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMX1JfqKuc&feature=em-hot-vrecs

"All this time I was finding myself
And I didn't know I was lost"

So I wonder how much longer it takes ... and what will I think of what I do find.

Perfection may be unobtainable, but one should strive for it nevertheless ... so how can you tell when that becomes merely tinkering

When there's only one thing you are really good at ... I wonder what you do as it steadily ceases to have any purpose

I wonder sometimes just how high a level of detachment can be reached

People talk about right and wrong as if they are some sort of absolutes ... very strange ... but then they are probably the same people who think fair and unfair actually exist as concepts

The problem with doing all the preparation and cooking oneself is that it doesn't give one the time to have a pleasant preprandial glass of wine whilst working ... why is the sous chef missing just when one needs them!

Just a pointless thought that occurred to me while watching a film this evening ... if you could have the best fuck ever, one so mind-blowing you'd never get anywhere near it again ... would you?  Would you have one shot at it knowing you'd spend the rest of your life trying to recreate the impossible?  Would the memory of one time be enough to carry you through a life time of mediocre, or would you give that one a miss so you'd not spend the rest of your life in complete frustration?

Gloating seems so very unsatisfactory!

... and sometimes curling up and going to sleep is the best and most sensible option!

How many boxes can one person tick!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pi-day-dr-eugenia-cheng-university-of-sheffield-explains-pi-135752989.html

One of my less interesting regrets is never having pursued learning to play a musical instrument, playing a recorder at school and being able to strum on a guitar through a few tunes, learned by heart as reading music was (is?) something of a blank, hardly counts!

I do find myself wondering (again??) why, given where I know my tastes lie, does Agnetha seem to have a pull whilst others of her ilk do nothing.  But then if life were that simple ....

I wonder how I manage to ...

on YouTube ...

go from a mini-Abba-fest and end up at Eric Bogle's 'Green Fields of France' and 'Waltzing Matilda', via Harvey Andrew's 'Soldier' ...

but then not all of Abba is so cute, pink and fluffy as I suspect many people think it is ...

and why do some songs first heard before people I know were even born still have such a resonance ... do I ever escape them ... do I want to

It strikes me as a little od that some days, when I'm cooking, I find myself 'YouTubing' (yes, I know .. verbification is disgusting) ABBA ... it can't just be because Agnetha reminds me of someone ... and then how do I know the words of so many of their songs as when they were about I don't recall paying them much heed at all ... strange how songs can sneak in without one noticing

No, it doesn't worry me, I am long past the stage of worrying about why I want to listen to something ... but it does still intrigue me

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-12-25/

A chunk of nice rich fruit cake, some blue cheese and a glass of port ... you'd almost think it was Christmas!

Born and raised in one country for knocking on 20 years ... living in another for 40-odd ... yet feeling a stronger affinity for a third.

So what is nationality?

So now I find myself wondering just how much I should berate myself for being a hypocrite ... what does enjoying listening to and singing along with familiar Christmas carols say about someone who, if asked, would class themselves as at best agnostic if not atheist ... but then I suppose there is often some comfort to be found in the familiar, whatever it may be.

Once more the usual suspects are starting to go on about adjusting the clocks to "give us more daylight" ... well unless they have found some way to repeal the laws of physics then they aren't giving us anything ... the hours of daylight we receive are dependent on only the time of the year and the latitude we happen to find ourselves in.  Those hours are also reasonably centred around the local noon (the proper noon of course, not some 'adjusted' version) ... so to make the most of the daylight hours then simply centre your waking (and so working et al) hours around noon ... it seems so simple to me but then since when has a simple solution been accepted when people can get to enjoy the sound of their own voice bleating on about some much more complicated and less effective way of doing things.

And what's wrong with ploughing one's own furrow!

Blame is an interesting concept ... I accept I may have(by many people's opinion) a slightly warped view of various things ... but ... it seems to me that often trying to allot blame is little more than a means to try to absolve oneself of any personal responsibility ... whilst there are aspects of my life I do not find especually acceptable I do not think I have ever tried to say they are due to anyone but myself.

Second law of thermodynamics: Just always get worse :-D

Leibniz

"There is no secret ingredient"

"We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse."

It is a little odd, though not quite unsettling, when you see "old men" talking about their experiences (in WWII as it happens) and then afterwards you realise that some of them are only 20 or 30 years older.

I remember when somebody 20 years older seemed ancient, now they seem far too close :-D

Stumbled across this today ...

"For you to insult me, I must first value your opinion." ...

interesting food for thought

" ... And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep. ... "

Not really sure what occasion this lyric is bets suited for, but it does too often fit my mood.

And no, I'm not offering any prizes for knowing where it comes from, other than offering my condolences if you too do recognise it :-D

It's June ... it's not even 4 in the afternoon ... why is it dark enough to need to switch the lights on ... have I been transported to Australia and not noticed

Well ... it came ... I dragged myself out of my lethargy to wander down to the end of the road to see it ... it went ... and unsurprisingly I still feel no more enthused about something that's happening hundreds of miles away

And don't even think of getting me started about all that bs about how far it's come from and the talk as if it was the same thing all the time ... even with a smattering of chemistry you'd know it was all just a pack of marketing rubbish aka lies!

Sometimes having one's prejudices confirmed isn't a very edifying experience  ...  I have always thought that street parties seemed much over rated and over-hyped  ...  now I know I was right all along!  Just have to hope it takes at least another 60 years before the next one rears it's unavoidable head ... or else I'll just have to settle for being known as the local old grump

"Free" is an interesting concept ... the familiar BOGOF actually gives nothing for free despite the meaning of the acronym ... you simply end up buying two of something for the price you would have spent to buy one another time, neither is free as I'm sure you'd find out should to try to just take the free one by itself without paying ... so how many other things that people think are free are merely circumstances where the price paid is just being hidden or disguised

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  Albert Einstein.

It is oddly interesting ... while you are in the middle of something you can't really tell just how much effort you are putting in to it ... it's only some while after it ends that you feel how much it has taken out of you.

Yes, another gym inspired trite-ism yet one that does seem to me to have echoes of other times.

Coding let's you spend a while beating up on something yet still allows the option of just deciding it is all a mistake and starting again from scratch, whilst still knowing all that has been learnt in the process ... and with no recriminations ... oh that it was so easy to rewind and redo life in a similar way

"... But all I’ve ever learned from love ... Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you ..."

I do find myself wondering far too often now if there is a point in any of this ... is it all just some great cosmic laugh at our expense ... but then we are far too insignificant for that to be the case ... we're born, we put up with all sorts of crap, we die ... why bother?  Another day, another pointless random entry!!

It is strange, when one day you realise that there doesn't seem to be anything in life that you are still striving for ... not that you have everything, far from it as something still seems missing in some vacuous sense, yet you have no idea what it might be.

When you can't even name what you are missing then how do you ever make a start to try to find it.

Sometimes ... even when you don't want to .. you still see the truth ... whatever that might be

Pondering sobriety vs. drunkenness .... how much is left in the bottle, therefore how much has been consumed ... sometimes circumstances provide illumination

More random TV inspired ramblings ... Perhaps I've been blessed with a lack of empathy ... but why is it that when something happens to a person (or even a nation) that they then consider it actually matters to everyone else ... there is a vast different between 'personal' and 'important' yet how often do those two get squeezed together ... do people have to think that they do somehow matter

If somebody should try to tell me dreams somehow insulate one in some sense then I might give that some thought ... but ... dreams about insulation, that is just getting too weird ... and not even weird in any interesting sense

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

Sometimes I shouldn't let music in, even so early in the evening.

What is the difference between an Entomologist and an Etymologist? ... An Etymologist could tell you.

Somehow without really noticing I've become a Radio 4 listener ... what a stereotype to be lumbered with!

I wonder which would be worst ... wanting something too much or not wanting it enough ... discuss :-D

Slime moulds .. they appear to be such interesting "creatures" .. although I expect I have missed that proverbial boat, it does sound an interesting project to try to mimic them on a computer .. whilst I don't bemoan my computing life, it is still slightly odd how many more interesting projects I come across now than ever seemed to exist in the mists of time!

C'est la vie :-D

To continue to aim for what you can't achieve, or to lower your sights to that which is attainable ... strange how 30 minutes on the cross-trainer at the gym can become an analogy for life

When, and why, did "typeface" become "font" ... no, I agree ... not the most pressing question facing the planet ... but ... interesting to me for some odd reason

It does intrigue me, how some songs seem to manage to create a resonance of some sort.  One weans oneself off an album, yet then for some reason a indeterminate time later one hears it again, still knows all the words to all the tracks ... and even though life has moved on since then ... the tracks still seem to "say" something that does strike a chord.

So why does one remember them when one first hearing they didn't have much to say?

Is there such a thing as "thinking too much"!

wet & windy ... so what should the 3rd w be? 

The joys of domestic plumbing!  Why do people do such slipshod work at times?  Or am I just too much of a perfectionist in somethings?

Though I'm sure it is not so ... some days I do wonder ... perhaps "Ignorance is bliss"!

"They talk of my drinking but never my thirst"

So true of any "addiction" ... yet some addictions don't need cured, just fed from time to time.

Sometimes ... an evening of live Blues is needed ... does help ... for a while :-)

So why is it that doing what many would consider "The Right Thing" (though doing it for all the worst reasons) just feels so wrong and continues to gnaw inside.

Ever wish you could go back a few hours (days, weeks,... ) and have another run at something!

Futility personified!!

Are some people just programmed to do the wrong thing

"the best would be to learn to expect nothing .... 

but what do u do with your hopes and wishes ?"

Odd!  Hearing again familiar little nonsense song brings on a feeling of melancholy ... perhaps I've just been wired up wrongly!

"You're never too old to dream"

And so it begins .... the bird-bath was frozen this morning !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I-7nraIrrY

Coincidence ... synchronicity ... simply noticing ... who knows ... perhaps the ennui just puts one in the mood for "Bridge over troubled waters"  :-D

It still surprises me ... somebody starts signing a song and I know all the words ... despite that fact that  haven't heard it for 20-odd (30-odd  !!  Aargh!) years

Compromise -- everyone loses ??

Interesting that I can find monochrome such an appealing format for photography yet so uninteresting, even boring, for life.