One of the more surprising results of the recent investigation into Big Borisâs lockdown conduct was
the unearthing of a playlist used to motivate employees during their completely ordinary work
events. Highlights include:
Miley Cyrus - Regular Work Event in the U.S.A.,
Vengaboys - We Like to Engage in Normal Work Proceedings,
Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Become Civil Servants,
Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Productive in the Office,
Avicii - Waiting For The Results Of The Independent Investigation And Report Conducted By Sue
Gray,
Walk the Moon - Dance then Shut Up, and, of course,
Shaggy - It Wasnât Me
This list of songs, no doubt, absolves the government of any kind of wrongdoing.
Just a month or so after Arwen, another storm has decided to come over here and mess things up â
this time Storm Malik (no relation to Rami or
Terrence). Ripped-up power poles, blustering winds, uprooted trees⌠but this mog seems fine with it.
Spurred on by a brief shower thought, iâve tried my hand at making
a playlist âfor the bad daysâ: songs (mostly rock) with big, soaring crescendos that feel like an out-of-body experience. Your
âBitter Sweet Symphoniesâ, your âHoppĂpollasâ, your ââHeroesâ-esâ â the songs that make you have
faith in humanity, and make you not want to jump out of a thirtieth-storey window so badly.
Iâve been asking around for suggestions on the usual (Discord) channels, and have got some cracking
songs in return â so, do any of you want to try your hands at it? Iâd love to hear your ideas. :-)
Hereâs the current set of songs on the playlist, to give you an idea of the general âvibesâ â
exceptional examples are highlighted in bold.
The 1975, âI Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)â
Bleachers, âRollercoasterâ
Arcade Fire, âMy Body Is a Cageâ (thx, Pike)
David Bowie, ââHeroesââ
Kate Bush, âCloudbustingâ
Coldplay, âViva La Vidaâ
Daft Punk, âGiorgio by Moroderâ
Elbow, âOne Day Like Thisâ
Sam Fender, âThe Dying Lightâ
Fun; âSome Nightsâ
Keane, âSomewhere Only We Knowâ
LCD Soundsystem, âDance Yrself Cleanâ
The Naked and Famous, âHigherâ
Oasis, âDonât Look Back in Angerâ
Oasis, âChampagne Supernovaâ
Radiohead, âAll I Needâ
Radiohead, âVideotapeâ (live at Bonnaroo)
Porter Robinson, âUnfoldâ
Sigur RĂłs, âHoppĂpollaâ
Snow Patrol, âChasing Carsâ
Suede, âLife is Goldenâ (thx, Pike)
Tame Impala, âLet It Happenâ
The Verve, âBitter Sweet Symphonyâ
The War on Drugs, âI Donât Live Here Anymoreâ
I saw an awful transphobic sticker on my daily constitutional the other day. I shanât bother
repeating the exact contents, because the sad sack who made it really doesnât need more exposure,
but it was just the usual âbiological wombyn wonât wheesht!!!â crap. Yi kna the type.
At first it got me down, as it probably would any sane person. But then i thought â Whoever made
that sticker, their bigoted views are now so unpopular, so marginalised, that theyâve had to resort
to plastering stickers everywhere: the last resort of covid-conspiracy cranks, climate ostriches,
football hooligans, and a number of others whose views are utterly unacceptable in polite company.
We might not be there yet as far as the law is concerned â lord knows people still have to jump
through an ungodly number of hoops just to change a letter on their passport â but socially, itâs a
good sign that the Inexorable March of Progress⢠is continuing as planned.
Itâs a meta one, this; you can safely ignore this post if youâre just here for the trudges through
increasingly-obscure north-eastern locations and hauls of links to websites which arenât this one.
That being said, sidenotesi are now back and functioning again! My apologies
for the delay.
Your regularly scheduled programming will be resuming soon, with a walk down a stream which turns
into an unexpected microcosm of local history. Iâm sure all the Americans in my audience are
thrilled.
New year, new me, new site name, new links. You know the drill; hereâs the
internetâs finest content, scavenged, foraged, and brought to you by yours truly.
2021 has come and gone, and i dare say it was a fucking relief compared to the previous
year. Yes, it was still
a bitshitinparts, but overall, vaccination
rates are up, restrictions are down,
that awful man is no longer president of
the United States, and povertyâs probably down again i donât know i haven't checked. Here are some
of the things that made me happy last year (in no particular order).
Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SZEDBFPpgw
Iâm not usually the EDM type â too much meaningless soulless wub-wub for
my taste â but Porter Robinsonâs Nurture brings some much-needed heart to
the genre. So much of it resonated with me and helped me get through some tough times, be it âGet
Your Wishâsâ finding a reason to keep moving forward,
âMirrorâsâ teardown of anxious thoughts,
or âMusicianâsâ struggles with creativity.
Cheers, Mr Robinson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAifgn2Cvo8
Iâm a Geordie boygirl born and raised, so i was predisposed to enjoy the new
Sam Fender record, Seventeen Going Underâ thereâs a reason heâs already done two sold-out arena shows in Newcastle, after all. This album
was the perfect companion to my walks throughout the region (more on those later); representing the
north-east in all its many facets, from deprivation and government neglect to a proud history and
modern culture.
âAyeâ is like a supercharged, upgraded
version of the frankly embarrassing âWhite Privilegeâ from his last album â think that âDaniel vs
the cooler Danielâ meme;
âSpit of Youâ brings me back to memories
of my family in the Netherlands, and makes me wish iâd appreciated them more; Not to mention the
final track, âThe Dying Lightâ, which
shows Mr Fender at his most Springsteen, tugging at heartstrings with a soaring anti-suicide
power-ballad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xjD7KbxgGQ
Wolf Aliceâs third record, Blue Weekend, shows them at their anthemic, genre-fluid best. It opens with âThe Beachâ, which soars to highs
so high youâd think theyâd never top them â but the quality is so consistent throughout that itâs
hard for me to pick out just a few.
âHow Can I Make It OK?â is an enchanting
throwback about feeling unable to care for a loved one; towards the back of the album, the thrashing
âPlay the Greatest Hitsâ and emotional
âThe Last Man on Earthâ feel completely at
home together, despite only having a single track between them.
Some honourable mentions go to
Chvrches, Silk Sonic, and Will Wood, all of whom have produced some bloody brilliant music in the past year.
Film and television
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqS1hviOsI4
It might not have been the best film of the year â or even the best superhero film of the
year, for that matter â but my pick for my favourite film this year can hardly go to
anything other than James Gunnâs The Suicide Squad, simply by the merit of being the first film i saw in cinemas since
Ăe Before Times. Itâs raucous, gorey fun which i wouldnât have experienced any other way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRrhXjH1M70
Independent of viewing-place â and you know this is true because i watched it on my computer â iâd
say the best film of the past year would have to be Censor, a stylish indie horror from first-time director Prano Bailey-Bond. Set in the shadow of the
âvideo nastyâ panic, this moody mystery takes its time â but itâs worth every second.
Shawn Levyâs Free Guy was unapologetically shlocky, but i had fun with it,
even if i did roll my eyes when that scene at the end happened (yi kna the one). I enjoyed
Pig, with Nicolas Cage â check out
the restaurant scene.
Dune
was the most gorgeous thing iâve ever had the privilege of seeing on the big screen.
The French Dispatch
is Wes Anderson at his Andersonianest, and youâll either love it or hate it â one thing we can all
agree on, though, is that Jeffrey Wright should be the voice of every audiobook. Capping off the
year was Spider-Man: No Way Home; of which, despite me having never seen any of his films, Andrew Garfield was absolutely the best
part.Îą
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urrhPYLP-eI
I didnât watch much TV this year, but what i did watch i rather enjoyed.
Inside â9 was the absolute highlight; a distressingly bingeable
horror-comedy-drama-thing anthology series with big names and bigger twists. So hard to
pick, but my favourite episodes, if you want to start somewhere, are
âThe Riddle of the Sphinxâ,
âThe Devil of Christmasâ,
âA Quiet Night Inâ,
and the delightfully meta
live special.
Darkis a brilliant German time-travel twisty-mystery with a ridiculously talented casting department
and (thank the heavens) an actually satisfying conclusion that keeps you going all along the ride.
Go in blind â youâll regret it if you donât!
I finally got around to watching Chernobyl, too, and it was just as good as everyone said it was. More effective horror than anything James
Wanâs ever made, thatâs for sure!
The âreal worldâ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD0ELfiZyNk
On the last day of 2020, i wrote up some predictions for 2021 â and one of them was that live sports
and concerts would remain off limits until at least 2022. How happy i was to be proven wrong when i
got dragged to an
Elbow gig
one September night. Guy Garvey, methinks, is one of the unsung heroes of Brit-pop/rock â so many
artists have taken after Elbow, but they have a comparatively diminutive presence in the popular
conscience compared to your Blurs, Oases, and Radioheads.
In more physical terms, this was the year i started (long December nights have gotten in the way of
finishing it) my project to
walk the Blyth and Tyne railway before it reopens, which has given me a fascinating look at the current fabric of this urbanised corner of
Northumberland. I havenât much more to say on that except that itâs been so, so lovely being able
once more to get out and about more often â and
ticking something off my bucket list too!
Well, thatâs your lot. Iâve had a nice enough 2021 â i hope yours has been too.
Iâve mentioned a number of Christmas traditions i keep up here in the past, and thought you all
might have wanted some updates.
I, alas, lost the Pogues Game on the very first
day â i was putting on âDriving Home for Christmasâ and failed to notice that The Algorithm had
queued the song of my nightmares up for me next. (I proceeded to lose again on the night
before Christmas, this time at the hands of Bradley Walsh.)
Youâll be pleased to hear that
our annual exchange of Christmas gifts on Minecraft
went all according to plan this year. Someone built me a little shrine to do as i pleased with,
which was quite nice of them.
Not pictured: the already-burnt Gävle goat.
Finally, iâve added the annual haul of records to the database for your
perusal⌠but mostly for my own reference. :-)
Well, here we are again. 2021 is almost over, and it was better than 2020, thank⌠well, you should
probably thank every God just
to cover your bases and make sure it doesnât happen again. (And the biologists, too. They have a
vial of smallpox and they know how to use it!)
So. What do i think might happen in 2022? Well, hereâs my list of predictions, in no particular
order. Some of these iâm absolutely sure of; some of these are just a wild guess. Iâll come back at
the end of the year and give each one a grade, from âayeâ to âkindaâ to ânahâ.
đŚ The pandemic đ
There will be no mask or distancing mandate in England by the autumn equinox.
The âplan Bâ measures will likely be relaxed at some point in March â perhaps earlier if Tory
backbenchers get too fed up.
The booster jab rollout will proceed unremarkably, as we all silently accept
that weâre just going to have to treat covid like the âflu now.
Australia will continue being paranoid, but New Zealand will slowly start
reducing restrictions.
đŚ The United Kingdom đŚ
Queen Elizabeth will die. I say this every year, but i genuinely do think this
will be the year â itâs not uncommon for widows to pass shortly after their spouses, and sheâs
been attending notably fewer public events recently. Some related predictions:
Her death will be after the Platinum Jubilee celebrations,
simply by virtue of them being relatively early on in the year. Nevertheless, itâll put
something of a damper on the national mood.
Somebody famous will get sacked as a result of ill-advised commentary,
probably from the BBC.
Boris Johnson will muddle along as prime minister despite intra-party
discontent.
A terrorist attack of some kind will occur in Northern Ireland. Tensions have
been rising for some time, and, though nobody wants it to happen, one canât escape the feeling
that it will.
In the local elections:
The Lib Dems will make gains,
Labour will also make gains, but not as much, and
the Reform Party and Ukip will backslide.
A refugee from Hong Kong will get elected to a local council. Just a
feeling.
Someone who is neither male nor female will get elected to a relatively major
position
and the press will have a paddy over it.
đŚ The United States đ˝
The Democrats get absolutely pummelled in the midterms, as Bidenâs popularity
flags and roadblocks in the Senate prevent much from passing.
Donald Trump will have a major figure excommunicated from the Republican party,
likely a potential 2024 candidate. Ron DeSantis? Mitch McConnell? Himself? Who knows!
Kyle Rittenhouse will run for Congress. This will somehow be the
least stupid thing to happen in the United States in 2022.
Several people will die at the hands of a or many âQAnonâ adherents. Mass
bleach-drinking? Someone shoots up that pizza place again? Weâll have to wait and see.
đ The rest of the world đ
Xi Jinping will shit himself. Okay, not literally, but many world
leaders will likely make efforts to distance themselves from the Chinese government.
A multinational company will close its offices in Hong Kong due to
concerns about civil liberties.
Emmanuel Macron will be reĂŤlected as president of France.
The
Notre Dame redesign plans
will be quietly replaced with something more in keeping with the buildingâs historic layout.
Gay marriage will be legalised in another Asian or African country. Weâre
coming for you, Uganda! (It wonât be Uganda.)
đą Technology (sorry) đ˝
The âmetaverseâ will neither be a gigantic flop nor as big as its proponents
hope. Some people will quietly adopt virtual office spaces, teenagers will get VR headsets for
their birthday, and furries will continue being furries, but there will be no great revolution.
The NFT bubble will burst. Sorry, i mean, uh⌠the token that represents your
claim of ownership to a jpeg of the NFT bubble will burst?
Someone will announce a mid-range or âbudgetâ folding phone, opening the
floodgates to more widespread adoption. Probably Xiaomi.
đŹ Entertainment đż
Avatar 2 will bomb and possibly kill James Cameronâs career. Really:
who on earth is actually excited by the idea of an Avatar sequel? Anyone?
Literally anyone?
The yearâs blockbusters will largely be fine. Nothing great, nothing
terrible. Wow, another Marvel sequel? Iâd have never guessed!
That one where the moon crashes into the Earth
might be good dumb fun.
Someone will drop the album of the decade. You hear those rumours about
Kendrick Lamar?
As the solstice arrives, the week winds down, and the days begin once more to lengthen, itâs
time for our final submission for this yearâs Lords of Misrule. This one comes from an artist
known only as Newt S.For the last time this year, Io Saturnalia!
My sincerest thanks for everyone for participating this year. I wasnât expecting a single
submission, let alone five of the bloody things.
Todayâs submission, a plea to pick up litter while on your morning (or evening) constitutional,
comes from one Quinn Casey. Io
Saturnalia!
1. Forces you to walk slower
I normally walk at an incredibly brisk pace. I have found a zen to slowing down to A) pick up the
garbage and B) turn around slowly and admire the clean patch.
2. A pass to roam in âless-than-publicâ land
Iâm not talking about hopping a fence into someoneâs farmland. There are areas in the US that are
legally private property, but in practice are wild, unused spaces.
For a rule-follower like myself itâs a âyou know it when you see itâ. Some real life examples of
property I regularly trespass on and cleanup:
A paved sidewalk that ends onto an HOA stormdrain, with well trodden dirt paths throughout.
Government / Utility company land
Land beside train tracks, under bridges, and on maintenance roads
Picking up trash adds a layer of innocence to your case when pleading ignorance of your trespassing.
Even if you are never confronted, it may help immerse you and ease your law-abiding mind.
3. Repeated hikes are prettier than the last
Paths you roam frequently will be cleaned faster than they accumulate garbage, and there comes a
point where the space looks natural, untouched by human kind. In my opinion, having those
wild spaces close to where we live is essential to mental health.
4. An excuse to go for longer hikes
Iâm stubbornly attached to the (unhealthy) notion that a productive day is a successful day.
5. A problem local enough to solve
Where does this trash go when you bring it all back to the bin? Does this encourage more
consumption/litter, since the waste isnât immediately obvious anymore? Is litter even a substantial
environmental problem, or is it just aesthetic?
I donât pretend to know the answer to these. These are problems for a society, a larger than life
culture. For too many years this was the excuse I used to not care at all. To not take any action
whatsoever.
Whatâs the point of helping at all?
Well now Iâve found one. (5, if youâve been keeping count) reasons to take action in a localized,
meaningful way.
Small but constant effort by everyone is just as impactful as a one off million dollar idea. For
true change we need to alter our behavior for the long term.
When i was a bairn, my mam would take me to this great big bookstore in Amsterdam, just a hop and a
skip away from the cityâs central plaza. Itâs held a special place in my mind ever since. What burns
brightest in my memory, though, isnât a book or an item of decor or an especially kind employee, but
a machine. On the top floor, around the corner from the gift shop, sat the shopâs on-demand printing
service.
Twenty-four hours a day, new pages would roll through its glass walls, printing and printing and
printing until a book was fully-formed. I donât remember what was in these books, or what they
looked like â i was seven, give me a break â but iâll be damned if i donât remember that
smell. Freshly-stamped ink, that petrichor of paper, that which one can still catch a whiff
of in just-delivered magazines on oneâs front porch.
All things must pass eventually, of course. Ink dries, paper cools, and before you know it, your
beautiful book smells like nothing at all. Yet in between the tiny strands of ground-up wood that
make it up, something else, something just as fragrant, is happening â and to understand the power
of that, we must head across the North Sea.
Iâve blogged about Barter Books before: the Mecca of second-hand books, housed in a comically
oversized railway station in Alnwick (built that way to the Duke of Northumberlandâs specification).
It is, in no uncertain terms, one of the coziest places on earth, despite its immense size. Daylight
streams through the windows, and when none are to be found, artificial lights decorate the air with
a firey golden glow. The most important factor in its gezelligheid (to borrow a term) has
long eluded me, but i think i may have finally figured it out.
As books grow musty and yellow with age (a common condition second-hand), they, as any fule kno,
gain a certain odour, similar to and yet entirely different from ânew book smellâ. Crack open the
spine, and an earthy, wooden aroma wafts into the nose, with a slight hint of vanilla and an inkling
of all the people whoâve leafed through it before. When enough of these old books are in the same
place, the air becomes less like that of a building, and more like that of a forest â a way
of being outdoors without being outdoors.
Welcome back to our first annual Lords of Misrule! Todayâs poem comes to us from one
Noa S.Enjoy.
do you do you do you ever ever ever wonder whether maybe maybe something
else is hiding hiding in this world
sometimes nighttime i see things scary barely anything but something nothing physical hiding hiding in
this world
would i could i if there were love these things like i loved her maybe she
is touching me hiding trying to watch me maybe she is missing me now
she loves me finally
IĹ Saturnalia! As you may remember, at the start of the month i
announced that to celebrate the holiday season, you could submit anything you wanted to my
website and iâd put it up. Iâm pleased to say several people took up my offer, and iâll be
putting them up daily starting today. Our somber first submission comes from a reader by the
nom de plume of
RĂŚl H. Bishop. Enjoy.
I think I mightâve finally accepted the fact that Iâm gonna die some day.
A story has no purpose if it doesnât have an end.
We will all die some day and never again be able to feel the sun shine on our faces, shielding us
with warmth.
But itâs that very fact that lets us enjoy the sun for his bountiful rays.
Be here, now.
For even the sun will burn out one day and never shine again.
