I’ve been aware of George Carlin for many years. And even occasionally watched little bits of his stand-up routines online. But I’d never really bothered to ‘check him out’. And, truth be told, that largely remains the case even now.
That said, I just watched about a half-hour’s worth of him ‘roasting’, as I think they call it these days, religion. When I say religion, really I mean – or rather George Carlin usually means – Christianity, that being the big one in his neighbourhood. And mine too, as it happens.
30 minutes, or thereabouts, is my biggest single dose of Carlin so far. And it was fun. He did allude to other religions a few times, such as when discussing the bewildering array of religious headgear, and rules surrounding it. Or the ‘every country’s army believes it has God on its side’ thing.
It’s kind of weird that we can and do live in a world that holds all this mental or psychological dissonance. Weird, and simultaneously totally predictable. One of life’s enduring paradoxes, perhaps?
On the one hand it seems very obvious to me that the irrational thinking promoted by religion, be it the ‘personal revelation’ or the ‘socially coercive’ kinds, or any other, has been – and perhaps still is? – very useful for the surviving and even thriving of both individuals and groups (often to the detriment of other individuals or groups) at times in our evolution.
And perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to shake? And that brings me to the ‘on the other hand’ aspect; it all seems so obviously foolish and ridiculous. I’m with Carlin, every step of the way, on this (and probably other things, see below).
Funny and wise. Great combo’.
Some folk I know are like, why are you so bothered about all this? Well, because I was brought up in it. Or in certain bits of it. And because it’s still such a big force in the world around me.
Anyway, God rest his sceptical Soul! I think I’ll try and watch the documentary picture at the top of this post.
Today I decided I’d try once again to sort out our washing machine. I’ve tried several times before, without succeeding. According to the rather scant Hotpoint support, on YouTube, 90% of issues are due to the filter getting blocked.
I’ve attended to this filter several times. It’s occasionally had a little crap in it. And I really mean a very little. But mostly it’s been pretty clean and empty, i.e. free of any serious obstructions. Never enough to have caused the blockage and drainage issues we’ve faced.
Eugh! The area under the machine was horrid.
The most recent and worst of these was when it stopped draining altogether. Meaning that we had to empty the drum using a measuring jug. A faintly unpleasant smell gradually but inexorably turned to a truly rank odour!
Intuition and common sense suggested that as the filter was pretty clean and totally not blocked, then logically the blockage must, surely, be in the drainage hose?
So I took the hose off – much easier said than done! – and stuck a trombone cleaner down it. Alas, the ‘bone unblocker isn’t as long as the hose, so I had to attack it from both ends.
Tipped her on her side, to access the hose.
After this, I rigged the pipe so it was on a constant downwards gradient, and started running hot water through it. After about five or six flushes, the stinking opaque effluence had turned, if not into wine, at least into clear clean water!
After re-assembling the washer, and clipping the hose back in place, I ran a cleaning cycle with some soda crystals added to the drum. It was then that another recurrent fault reared it’s ugly head: the machine never reaches the end of any programme.
Not sure why, exactly, but whatever program we run, the machine always ‘hangs’ on one minute remaining… forever!
Hoses and a tub, outside, in case of overflow!
To finish any program off, requires turning the entire machine off, and restarting it set to a rinse ‘n’ spin (which in turn won’t actually finish!). Bit of a palaver. And a lot of a pain!
But not having to bail out stinking dirty water is a tremendous improvement! Compared to which having to fudge finishing wash and rinse cycles is but a minor issue.
I’m not a slick blogger or YouTuber, and very rarely if ever document these things thoroughly, let alone well! But the few pics here do give an idea of just how dull a job this is.
The black clip in the centre releases the hose.
That said, and despite the as yet unresolved ‘won’t finish’ fault, improving the situation does come with a certain pay off.
It’d be great if we could fix the ‘one minute remaining’ issue. And we do also need a new front door seal, as well. But, little by little, we’re getting somewhere.
Today is apparently an official heatwave. And, dang-nab it, it sho’ is hot!
Today’s office, #1.
Having just recently got my beloved car back on the road, after a cam-belt failure (which I repaired myself!), just being able to drive to work – last week I taught the same day’s workload using public transport and a taxi to get around – is bliss.
And, I’m realising that my life really isn’t too bad at all. There are things that need tweaking. Most obviously a greater income, and a concomitant lessening of expenditure!
But by and large my actual work is both a doddle, and usually really quite pleasant. The kids I teach are all quite charming. And whilst the range of ability is wide, and weighted towards the lower/lesser end (today is a two primary schools day), they’re all both pleasant and enthusiastic.
Spark-plugs reminder photo.Working in dazzling sunshine.Note that banjo bolt (rear of VVT) leaketh not!Later in’t day, torch now required.Happy grease monkey; engine starts!
And lo, it came to pass, that ye olde engine was fix-ed! Hence the happy mien, and Churchillian two finger salute above. The image below is just a reminder of an earlier – and at this point gratifyingly absent – OBD fault diagnosis.
Adopts Inspector Clouseau voice ‘Yes, I know that, you fool!’
But at this point I still have a major coolant leak.
Oh dear, the humourless idiot machines are winning!
It’s kind of shocking when one learns that films like Idiocracy turn out not to be mere satire, but Über-Nostrodamian prophecies, or even just simple documentaries.
As Iain Overton says, in his book, The Price Of Freedom, and others do elsewhere (for example Sam Harris, in The End of Faith), the responses to perceived threats are sometimes more damaging – usually by dint of curtailing the freedoms of the more docile many in order to supposedly more fully control the errant few – than the threats that supposedly prompt them into existence.
So I can’t make a particular joke, quoting Count Arthur Strong, in a FB group dedicated to him, because a human will do the bidding of a robot that doesn’t understand or can’t differentiate between my innocent humour – and let’s not forget it’s a quote, so it’s not even me saying the allegedly egregious thing – and a genuine incitement to violence.
This is of course utterly ridiculous. Those intent on acting out violence will both do so, and find ways to express themselves, regardless of what anybody else does. And such folk are, thankfully, are a very small minority.
Meanwhile, a much larger and more benign majority have their freedoms curtailed, in a very real way, and to no real benefit. The idea that maybe one day we’ll be the slaves of robots is grotesquely outdoated. We already are!
And, in a tip of the reality had to the apparently ludicrous fantasies of The Matrix series of films – whose overall adolescence of aesthetics rather undercuts the more sinister and prescient ideas about what constitutes reality, and our relationships with technology – we, the soft machines, are already becoming the willing collaborators and enforcers of this joyless, soulless, brainless automaton culture.
My reply to the citing of ‘evidence’ re a former ‘offender’.
It doesn’t bode well for the future of the species!
Little did I expect it to be a flippant and lighthearted response to a Count Arthur themed post, in a Count Arthur based group, that would bring this home so forcefully!
Adopting the CA voice, ‘Well, I mean… is it any wonder we tire of this ceaseless handholding? And you robots, you have to meet us at least halfway. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up!’
It’s late, getting dark… testing the ECU with OBD.
Yesterday Teresa and I packed our picnic basket and headed out for a lovely lunch at Anglesey Abbey.
Sadly, between Fordham and Burwell, on the B1102 Ness Road, an orange engine diagnostic light came on, followed – in seconds – by the engine conking out.
We were relatively lucky inasmuch as a lay-by appeared on our left exactly as this happened. Our forward momentum was enough to get us in and parked, off the main road, and safe.
Several other people were parked in the lay-by. I asked the nearest if he wouldn’t mind helping us try and jump-start our car off his battery. Fortunately I carry jump-leads 90% of the time (due to previous experiences!). He obliged.
But sadly that didn’t work. I thought I ought to try, as I’d had an engine failure about six to eight weeks ago, where I’d just run out of petrol and the battery had also died.
But this time there was still petrol, and the battery appeared to be ok. And the jump-lead start failed. So… time to call the AA!
Got this via Amazon Vine, some time ago.Not the swankiest of its kind. But useful.
The AA engineer got to us quicker than I’d ever experienced before (20-30 minutes?). And very quickly diagnosed a failed cam-belt. I asked how he could be so sure, without seeing it; the cam-belt is enclosed, at the front of the engine, behind two other external belts (and all sorts of other gubbins) .
He said it’s the sound. There’s no tell-tale compression, apparently. If there were compression you’d have that wheezy but rhythmic ‘turning over but not catching’ sound.
My AA membership didn’t include getting us and our dead car home. So I called a company to see if they – Manchetts – could ‘recover’ us. Yes, for approx £250-ish!
What about the AA? They could do it, for about £180-ish. So I went with the AA, naturally! Chatting with the AA engineer on the way home, about our options, he seemed to feel that it was highly likely the cam-belt going had killed the engine, bending rods, or some such.
However, when I got home, and started researching this issue, it got very confusing. My mum and her husband Malcolm had, on learning what’s happened (we were supposed to go and see them on Sunday, but that’s not happening now!), also looked into it.
They came up with some more encouraging info (thanks!), suggesting that Mazda engines are built in such a way that a cam-belt failure isn’t necessarily fatal. Oh, how I hope this proves to be the case for us!
P1345 code… que pasa?
We simply don’t have the funds for a new car, or even a repair to the current motor. And I really love this car. So I’d prefer to keep her going, if at all possible.
I started watching YouTube videos on cam-belt changes. And I’ve found a good few. One, by MX5parts.co.uk is pretty good. But an even better one is by TheCarPassionChannel. (Watch it here.)
Both videos show the cam-belt being replaced by one guy, working at home, using basic tools. So there’s a bit of hope it’s a job I may be able to do myself.
TheCarPassionChannel’s video is the better of these two, because he moves the camera(s) around much more, such that you get a far better and clearer view of everything he’s doing.
Annoyingly everything’s shut – at least everything I’ve tried, car parts and service/garage wise – for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. So I can’t get quotes on repairs, or pricing for parts, etc.
Anyway, numerous plans have been scuppered. A trip to the seaside today. A Curtis Mayfield tribute gig in London tonight. A visit to mum’s at the weekend. Hey-ho!
Pressing the VIN button didn’t do anything.
So, what to do!? I’m kind of hoping I can install a new timing belt myself. As per the videos I’ve been watching. But it’s not a simple job, by any means. And how am I going to get about to my teaching?
Some time later the same day…
I just remembered Amazon Vine sent me an OBD unit some while back. Ages ago actually! And until now I haven’t used it. With what feels horribly like it might be a terminal fault, I thought the time had come to track it down and use it.
After a bit of stressed searching, I did locate it, and give it a go. It was getting late and pretty dark – about 10pm – by the time I went out to check the car. So I had to do it by torchlight.
Finding the ECU/OBD interface point was the first challenge. You have to plug the OBD in first, then turn the ignition on. I read the manual, which is in mangled Engrish, and far from excellent.
The DTC button is what you press to get the codes. I was hoping for a fully explanatory readout. But all I got was ‘P1345 Manufacturer Control’. This means you have to look the fault code up on ye internet.
And so it is, that now, 11pm, the day after the engine conked out, I’m still not really too much the wiser about what’s gone wrong or what to do. The info I got googling MX5 P1345 is rather diverse and varied!
I hope somewhere that can help me might be open on Saturday. Otherwise it’ll be Monday by the time I can talk to anybody. And it might very well start cutting into my teaching/earnings.
Yesterday I bought this handsome set from a Facebook seller locally. We were on our way to Anglesey Abbey, for a lunchtime picnic. That didn’t work out, for reasons I’ll cover in another separate post.
But en route we stopped over at an address in Chatteris, and I bought this delightful set of Mr Men books for a tenner. A tenner!!!
Each individual book is £2.50. Fifty at that price translates to £125 in total. I fully expected that the boxed set would – obviously, surely? – be somewhat cheaper. After all, you want to make the bulk buy attractive, don’t you?
The entire series.What? No bulk buy discount!?
So I was surprised to see that this set has, printed on the reverse of the hard-case, the full £125 asking price! This makes the tenner I paid even sweeter. And the condition of the set is immaculate. Brand new in all but name.
We don’t have kids. But these will not only potentially come in handy as and when kiddies are visiting us. But, truth be told, we adore them ourselves. They’re so sweetly innocent and charming. And most of them are a part of our own childhoods.
After the trauma of yesterday’s vehicular disaster (see this other post), reading a few of these today was a massively uplifting experience. The inner child lives on lustily in both Teresa and myself!
The (Mr) Man Who Wasn’t There!
I read Mr Nobody to myself. I find the theme here quite attractive. Almost Zen!? It’s not really intended that way. As Mr Nobody’s ‘nothingness’ – beautifully and so simply conveyed by his being see-through – is a bad thing, to be corrected.
I then read two to Teresa, putting on voices like a parent to a child. And it was wonderful. Not having children of our own, being, simple and childlike ourselves can be a real balm. A release from the unceasing cares of adulthood!
First I read Mr Rude, a later title (as was Mr Nobody), which I hadn’t had or read as a child, as it’s far more recent. Mr Happy forces himself on Mr Rude, as a house-guest, eventually helping Mr Rude find his better self. Lovely!
Delightful!
Teresa wanted me to read Mr Uppity. This is one I did encounter first many, many moons ago. Roger Hargreaves’ delightfully playful works occasionally use what Tolkien called ‘fairey’. And here we find Mr Uppity visiting the Goblin Kingdom, and thereby learning to be politer and nicer.
Utterly charming, and conveying simple homely morality, wonderfully illustrated in such a beguilingly naive and simple manner. Just lovely!
I told myself that, at least in part, I was getting these as illustration work type reference material. And so it is. But in truth I just love these books. And I’m very happy to own this set. Both as possible inspiration for my own work, and as little gems in their own right.
It’s horrid, being a total wuckfit. I just made a trip, locally, only to get home and panic about losing my iPhone. Teresa called it, I searched the car. No dice. So I drove back to where I’d been earlier. Still no luck. The guy there called my number.
My iPhone wasn’t at his, where I thought it might have been. Lucky for me he called my phone again, as I frantically searched my car for a third time, on his driveway. And so it was I found the confounded thing. Thanks to the vibrate feature rattling the plastic of the dashboard.
Or do I feel more Cletus?
Turned out it was in one of the two or three places I normally put it, in my car, all along. Only it had slid deeper and out of sight. This elusiveness was compounded by the fact that it isn’t ringing audibly, regardless of which position I set it to, on the silent/loud toggle switch.
So the £10 I’d bartered off the item I bought has, literally, gone up in smoke. And time and anxiety have been expended entirely pointlessly. ‘They let you out on your own!?’ quipped my Fenny Facebook seller, quite justifiably.
Hmmm!? Laid up, unwell, at home. Ironically due, I think – thinking and knowing are two different things; a theme for this post? – to our 13th wedding anniversary meal, at the above pictured pub, on Monday.
Teresa’s birthday was last week, and the day after was ‘friday the 13th’. She always remarks on being grateful not to be born on the 13th. And I usually reply that it’s only a number.
So next I’m looking for a ‘lucky 13’ image for another blog post. Poss’ even the one that mentions going out for the meal? Anyway, here I am, thursday, having had to come home early yesterday, just over half way through my teaching, due to the diarrhoea I’ve had ever since said anniversary meal on monday.
Next comes the dystopian experience of trying to see a doctor locally. Even just trying to contact the doctor is so thoroughly depressing – the amount of time and effort required, to only eventually be fobbed of with a totally inadequate response – it’s truly appalling.
When I reflect on this train of events, I’m not at all inclined towards superstition. But for some reason I think that puts me in a minority. And not a happy one either. I can’t recall who said it. But someone said the most common element in the universe is not x (carbon, or whatever element from the periodic-table it may be), but stupidity. I’m inclined to agree.
This connects to another long term theme of interest to me. The ‘human condition’. Or, for that matter, the ‘animal condition’, or – why not go the whole hog? – life. What’s it all about, Alfie?
Mr Natural, way ahead of the game scooter-craze wise.
Robert Crumb’s Mr Natural is apt here: ‘Mr Natural! What does it all mean?’ ‘Don’t mean sheeit!’ Or, coming at it all rather differently, this one:
What’s the point of the pursuit of truth or greater awareness if the truth is unpleasant and greater awareness just leaves one depressed? This is obviously why the human mind/brain favours encouraging or reassuring (or in some other way utilitarian) nonsense.
But, to get back to Nr Natural, and his frequent partner, Flakey Foont, for a moment… there’s also this’n:
Oh how I love R Crumb!
I’m 50 now. And without kids. For most of humanity’s brief existence on this planet I’d be unlikely to have lived so long. And what have I done? If I was anything like Crumb, I might be far more candid than I’m going to be. But unlike Crumb I haven’t turned confessionals into a form of self-therapy livelihood. So I’ll keep schtum!
But, just as with my life writ large, this post lacks focus. To try and tether it to earth and bring it back; I was motivated to post it very largely due to the dissatisfactions of certain aspects of modern life. And in particular the gulf between the whole ‘promise of fulfilment’ that the cyber-domain so powerfully exerts, and the reality of social isolation and disappointment that it all too often actually delivers.
But try as I might, I cannae help but digress (although I do feel my wanderings are all connected!)… As I move through life I see that some folk appear much better integrated into things than others. But that still leaves a great many less so. And appearances can be deceptive. One might be even worse off if compelled to appear to fit in happily if it’s just a front.
Such lines of thought are totally normal for me. And possibly just habitual. Maybe they’re even/also not useful or productive? But I seem unwilling or unable to wean myself off of them. For better or worse such thinking seems to have become my nature.
And then I think about folk I know, eg, some friends and/or some family, who appear to go at life differently. I’m thinking now of the religious believer folk. To me their belief seems like a form of madness or mental illness. It seems to totally fly in the face of easily and daily observed reality.
But I can see, sort of, why they might behave as they do. It might be – I believe it’s clearly the case – that humanity has evolved such that in order to function we need to be capable of believing utter nonsense. That in fact we might function – possibly both individually and collectively – better, or even at our best, only by labouring under delusions that bear no real scrutiny.
I have to confess I find such thoughts rather scary and depressing. But then again I also find quite a lot of life scary and depressing.
And, rather strangely, given my stance on religion in general and Christianity in particular, it makes the Biblical myth around the tree of knowledge, in which awareness/consciousness is a curse on humanity, a very apt and powerful if disturbing insight.
But then again, having said all this, maybe, as Shakespeare (and many other writers) was occasionally wont to do, I can attribute all this dark foreboding to impaired digestion? It’s certainly true, in my experience, that physical ill health is a breeding ground for the toxic germs that also feed into mental ill health.
All this rambling discursive cogitating seems to me to eternally run circles around the plethora of thoughts that teem, inchoate (I love that word!), on one’s mind!
Another prompt for this post was the state of public healthcare in the UK these days. I’ve already alluded to this above. And a similar thread, but possibly even worse, could be spun regarding dental health, as well. But that’s another story for another post.
Rather serendipitously, whilst typing this, during a quick Facebook fix, I saw a post from a fellow drummer, on a drummer’s FB Group. That post concerned the ‘black dog’. And I wanted to chip in with my ha’porth. But I decided not to. ‘Cause, although I’m a lot better (I think?) than I once was, I felt the overall current state and my ‘outcome’ might not be helpful to the OP.
Is one of the reasons I’m happier these days due to my having more or less abandoned my musical dreams? If one is continually barking up the wrong tree, at what point does one concede this and adjust, rather than battering one’s fragile ego against a hard unrelenting reality?
And – uh-oh, getting ‘deep’ – what is reality? The great thinkers and the more subtle philosophies all converge around ideas of our perception of reality as an illusion. And yet, deep down, we all know, intuitively, that, to use the parlance of the street, ‘this shit is real’.
And so my post comes full circle. From wildly discursive digressions back to my bowels! And I can’t escape the reality that right now my digestive system is screwed. And I can also see how it’s been affecting me psychologically. As well as being washed out and queasy, I’m pissed off and angry!”
Today a cinema fairly local to me is showing Casablanca.
Billed as an 80th anniversary screening, it’s a one-off. I really want to go see it on the big screen. I’ve only ever seen it at home, on TV or DVD, so on a relatively tiny screen.
Truth be told, it’s Woody Allen’s wonderful 1972 Play It Again, Sam, that is, I believe, the chief reason I love Bogey and Casablanca. And, exactly like me, Allen’s movie is 50 this year! So Casablanca and Play It Again, Sam both celebrate significant anniversaries this year.
Allen’s Walter Mitty like Bogey daydream visitations are priceless.
Pity the local cinema isn’t doing the two as a double-bill. They’re missing a trick there. How I’d love to see that! I wonder if anyone anywhere is putting on such a bill? I’d be there, like a shot! (Adopts a faux-Bogey accent) So… would that be a two fingers of bourbon type shot, or a slug from a 45!?
Indeed, such is my yearning to see Casablanca on the big screen, I’m going to try and shift my Monday drum lessons around a bit and make it happen. Wish me luck!
Allen and Keaton do the ‘airport scene’.
This post isn’t the place for reviews or synopses of these great movies. That said, a few notes or observations seem fair game. For one thing, it’s fascinating how this, one of the best and most quintessentially Woody Allen-esque of all Allen’s movies wasn’t directed by Allen himself. Strange but true!
Also, it may very well be that it was Allen’s original stage play, from whence this movie derives, and of course the film itself, that have helped propagate the ‘false memory’ that the title of Woody’s works is actually a direct quote from Casablanca itself. It isn’t.
Vintage Hollywood!
Both are terrific films. I do hope I do manage to see Casablanca later today. We shall see, I guess…
