Observations and Musings

 Lots of things cross my mind from time to time...

* I often puzzle over spam (the junk mail not the meat-based item), it is a strange, slightly disconnected, almost dreamlike state of the internet, especially for those that still use email. It's like it's become the subconscious of the dark side of humanity mixed with those weird anxiety dreams you have where you're stuck in a house full of rooms. Most of it makes absolutely no sense, some of it is so persistent in its constant hammering you sometimes feel like wishing there was a way to stop this shit from even coming to your spam box - which has got to be a euphemism of some nature.

The treat very occasionally thrown up in your spam folder sometimes makes spam worthwhile, a necessary evil, something that will still be churned out by computers long after the last cockroaches have left for Uranus. Once in a blue moon, there's a diamond twinkling in the acres of muck; something that literally has you going 'WTF?' About three weeks ago, I noticed there was far too much spam in my email in one of my slightly 1990s ish computer OCD things, so I opened it up to empty it and something leapt out at me.

Now, my email is essentially Sender/tiny bit of message/date and some other bollocks wot my gmail account forces me to live with. This WTF email said: Royal Canadian Mounted Police ...your application has been accept... Apparently my application to the RCMPs had been accepted and had ended up in my spam folder. Who would have thought it, eh? 

Today, I received my fourth email from the RCMP, this time offering me a $10 voucher if I respond to their previous emails. A $10 dollar voucher! 

Why? I mean, how does any of that make any sense to anyone? Maybe a scam JOIN the RCMP email, but to suggest someone has applied on-line and completely forgotten about it, or now suspects they might be going mad so would be a perfect candidate for the RCMP... Just WHY?

I fly out to Vancouver tomorrow.

* Forced application changes are another fact of life now. It's the internet equivalent of changing the shelves in the supermarket. Yes, it might piss you off but you might also see something you've neglected to notice before and spend money. 

The problem with free things like social media platforms, you have to accept their changes - that's life. It's shit. I rebel against it all the time. I use as many 'revert [this site] to how it was because those cunts changed it' extensions as possible and will continue to do so until I'm crushed under the wheels of 'progression' and my PC is a relic of the past.

The thing is it's a form of revenge. These youngsters designing social media platforms or redesigning them are getting their revenge on the predominantly older people who use computers rather than phones and tablets. It's a massive fuck you and frankly who can blame them?

* We watched a HBO series called Raised by Wolves - not the British thing from a few years ago, but a decidedly odd science fiction 10-part series co-created by Ridley Scott, of Alien fame. As briefly as I can, it is about: the destruction of earth, a massive ship containing survivors going to Keplar 22b, which is massive and pretty inhospitable and a bit weird. There was a war on Earth between the religious Mithrac and the atheists; near the end, an atheist scientist sends two reprogrammed androids to Keplar 22b with 12 human embryos which the female droid would rear to birth and beyond. They can travel at the speed of light because they aren't human and reach it 10 years before the first arc.

Two atheists steal the identities of two high ranking Mithraic soldiers and get on the religious arc and then spend 12 years in suspended while the ship does its journey. Barely anything happens in the following years, apart from the fact the children slowly die off, one by one, either by radiation poisoning or by some disease, leaving just one. The 'mother' android is also a reprogrammed Necromancer, an android built to wipe out humans, specifically atheists, by some extremely powerful force, so when the Mithrac arrive and the planet starts going apeshit, she's on hand to sort things out.

It has a weird tone already, but then it just goes full blown bonkers and continues to get weirder without explanation until one of the androids does something quite unbelievable and the series ends... until next time. The only fair assessment I can give it is: compulsive rubbish and instead of becoming clearer, it just gets murkier - ghosts, giant snakedroids, alien AI, stone structures, mystic nonsense, indigenous creatures who just turn up after years of silence, big holes and flying exterminator droids with special eyes. There is a huge amount going on and I've kind of got a theory that I understand why some things are happening, but not some of the other bizarre madness, but I'm going to have to watch series two on my own because the wife thought it was a load of shit.

* Is it me or is the current crisis going to be the death of television and films as we know it? With Cineworld shutting its doors until after Christmas and the industry facing a massive problem - where can we show our blockbusters, missus? - and TV, especially live TV, looking all a bit kind of 'awkward phone call' ish I wonder if we'll ever get a return to a time we all vividly remember?

In many respects, despite some great attempts by what will soon be seen as 'cottage industry men', the arts, as we know it is kind of on hiatus, return unknown. 

This year's Wigtown Book Festival has been and gone - on line - and I'm sure it was well patronised, but I wonder if anything will be much different when they have to start - properly - planning for next year? The sad thing is I don't think there would be many in the town now who'd miss it, but many of those that would could not be as accommodating - in all ways - if it didn't.

Even writing now is either COVID-based or it has to form some kind of backdrop or explanation and Dystopian fiction writers are probably having all kinds of problems now they're actually living in one of the ideas they dismissed as 'not being exciting enough'. Even this blog isn't exempt; at the moment it's bigger than Jesus.

*  Internet advertising is something I like to inwardly rage about. Despite having every pop-up, ad and scam blocker available some things just have ads and you can't escape them. Do you know what having to suffer advertising does? It makes me hate the advertisers and never want to buy or use their product EVER. I appreciate that the internet has to pay people in some way and many possibly make some kind of a living from twats who click on adverts or download dodgy games, but if the other side of the coin is the alienation factor maybe they should explore new ways of advertising that doesn't feel so intrusive.

* As I write this I learn that I've just been given a 24 hour ban on Facebook for breaching their community standards. I got banned for suggesting that possibly the only way to stop right wing newspapers inciting hate and violence would be to burn them down. I mean, I totally get they don't want some old bloke on a thread read by three people to possibly propagate hate, but they'll let any Tom, Dick and Harry post any old shit up if it comes from one of those papers that incites hatred and violence. That is the kind of world we live in, folks.

* I heard a rumour. It was probably bollocks but if five people believe it, it'll be a fact by the morning. 

* And that's about it. Back in the day, I'd scribble notes down and extrapolate from them, but most of my notes now either have lists of names - for the picture rounds I do for my mate Phil's on-line quiz - and other lists none of which are related to whatever I end up writing. I'm thinking - probably wrongly - that blogs might make a comeback when people get fed up of watching re-runs of River Monsters - a programme I've always wanted to be more than just a fishing show. Writing is an old art and something that doesn't need to be performed, as such. It could make a comeback. It could.