As someone who has been employed as a janitor I’m always struck by how the handwringing over the sanctity of gendered toilets never seems to consider the men who clean women’s loos and women who clean men’s loos. I suspect because cleaners are not considered real people.
I built a hedgehog cafe in our garden for the hedgehogs and not for the cats or foxes.
Hedgehog trailcam for the start of April
Unfurl is “a new publication by #autistic writers on their special interests and hyperfixations.” I know nothing more but was gently amused that their word-count limit will be 3,000 words. For autistics writing about their hyperfixations. Under 3,000 words. Good luck!
I’m still processing the news of my old comrade Nick Booth’s untimely death this week. He knew a disconcerting number of people and if his name came up I’d joke we’d fought together on the Birmingham front of the social media wars. Our side lost, of course, and our lives took us in different directions, but when our paths inevitably crossed it was always a joy. He had the best smile and gave the best hugs.
I have two photos of Nick from that heady time. The first is of him listening to someone else talk, taken in a pub in early 2009.
The second from 2008 when Jon Bounds and I discovered he was ignorant of Goatse, the shock site you should never google, and decided that if he was going to be taken seriously in this game he had to be blooded. He was game so Jon showed him and I caught the reaction.
I have surprisingly few other photos of him, probably because whenever we were together we were talking, talking, endlessly talking.
He was a good friend.
16 Fried Eggs of varying levels of perfection. Next grid at 25.
(A fried egg on toast is my minimum viable hot meal with chronic fatigue, so I’m photographing them.)
Hedgehog Trailcam is back, because hedgehogs are back in our garden! One so far. Gonna do compilations each month.
Carole Cadwalladr went back into the TED lair and delivered a barnstormer. Real canary in the coal mine stuff, except the canary survived. Well worth 20 minutes of your time.
Elle Cordova knocking it out of the park again.
Say what you like about the British Conservative Party but when their lunatic members put someone in charge who proceeded to tank the economy they got fucking shot of her pretty sharpish.
Star Wars original cut to be screened this summer in London
This original 1977 35mm British release print is preserved at the BFI National Archive, in its world class preservation conditions.
Is it wrong that I would really really love to see this? (No, of course it’s not wrong.)
Today’s mindfulness photos.
I have a new pill to take for a middle-aged man condition (enlarged prostrate) and the colour scheme is intriguing. Never seen one quite so 70s before.
Was looking for ways to visually record my chronic fatigue and frying an egg for lunch is the one hot meal I can consistently manage at the moment, so I’m photographing them. Nine so far, which is a grid. Next grid at 16. #cfs
I had this notion to take the index of a non-fiction book, grab the Wikipedia pages for each entry and compile them into a companion book. The idea being browsing it would cover the same ground but in a radically different way. I can’t tell if this is genius or utterly stupid.
Every quarter I get, and devour, a copy of Rabbiting On from the excellent Rabbit Welfare Association, and I’m always struck how it’s like those low-grade “womens” magazines with a happy smiley lady on the cover surrounded by the darkest of headlines. Aw, cute bunny! Oh, intestinal worms…
Partial solar eclipse, 29 March 2025, 11:53am, Birmingham UK.
Every few years I listen to The Stone Roses' I Am The Resurrection and am gobsmacked by how good it really shouldn’t be. The raw ingredients are baggy indie disco nonsense but something (chutzpah?) drags it to immortal genius. I also love the fadeout, implying it could, no, should go on forever.
It’s nearly 10 years since Kenneth Goldsmith wrote It’s a Mistake to Mistake Content for Content, his essay on Vilém Flusser which so radically informed my thinking about [gesticulates wildly] that I’d probably consider it the most consequential thing I’ve read.
I was reminded of it when reading the excellent AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality, the conclusions of which I think Goldsmith explains through Flusser wonderfully well.
UbuWeb is archiving avant-garde artifacts again.
In a moment when our collective memory is being systematically eradicated, archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance… Together we can prevent the annihilation of the memory of the world.
Darryl Cunningham’s books were a question on University Challenge this week. 1990s zine Pete did not see that coming. Next week I’m expecting: “Luke Walsh’s 1992 work Weird Astral Detective Fiction features the Silver Ghost, the Green Ghost and which other colour ghost?”
We’ll see how it pans out, but Liz Kendall was quite specific about the changes to PIP and it would appear I will no longer be eligible for my disability benefit from 2026. I have post-viral chronic fatigue, barely leave the house and a trip to the supermarket sees me bedridden for 36 hours.
The CF specialist at Birmingham hospital reckons I’ll be like this for 5 years and any recovery is predicated on minimal exertion, even if I feel capable. I cannot “work” even if I want to (and I do).
I won’t be drinking this abomination a visitor left in our tea cupboard but I am grateful for the Fall earworm.
🎶 They were rooibos oranj. Brrrp ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.
Woke up on the sofa, saw this, thought “that’ll make a good photo”.
I appear to be watching Oscar nominated movies this last week or so.
A Real Pain ★★★★★ Just gorgeous. I saw myself in both the cousins and wanted to give them a big hug.
Anora ★★★★☆ Felt a bit uncomfortable watching it but in hindsight that was the point. Nicely ambiguous, and I need to see his back catalogue now.
The Substance ★★★★☆ A wild fucking ride. Am amazed this got nominated for anything. Will be thinking about it for a while.
Conclave ★★★☆☆ Entertaining nonsense with a stacked cast but pretty lightweight and unmemorable.
