Incredible Fun!

Thursday, June 18

My Way of Losing My Mind is Quite Constructive

A lot has happened over the last 2 weeks.

I Wrote a (short) Book

In the spirit of taking a joke too far, I wrote a parody of the How To Produce, Perform and Write an Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show book. In the form of How to Write, Perform and Produce a Cancelled Edinburgh Fringe Show. I was lucky to have its original author, Ian Fox, on board. We worked hard on what is essentially a long daft chapter with swearing in it.

We Got Kittens

Bill and Ted.

We're still slightly guessing their genders. They came from a socially distanced trip to a corner of Birmingham where they were born to a mummy cat that really needs spaying. Her offspring will be looked after by our family and slightly spat at by our other cat.

My New Microphone Arrived

After a lot of tightening of the budgets at the start of lockdown, the arrival of an Amazon voucher led to the purchase of some audio kit. Especially useful given the amount of music stuff I've been doing. The new microphone was a great price, but a long time coming.

It's very nice.

I Created A Trio With Myself

To road test the microphone and to try out some new video editing software I wanted to use, I made Fugue for Tin Horns from Guys and Dolls:

The video software crashed, so I used my old software.

I Decided to Start A Virtual Choir With Children

Not content with a choir of mini-me's, I decided to create a virtual choir with the local school children. More on that when it happens. But it really needs better video editing software and my 2012 Mac just isn't up to the job.

I Decided to Buy a New Laptop

So much for tightening the belt during lockdown. After a lot of searching for laptop and computer options, my brain became numb to the worrying price of a new MacBook Pro... so I found a "bargain" one... and I'm now a proud MacBook daddy.

So My Office Got a Spruce Up

I didn't want the most expensive computer I've ever owned to be offended by a dirty desk, so I did a bit of a clear up - it smells fresh in here now. Good times. It's still too full, but the desk was always the biggest issue.

I Arrange Music, Apparently

I've learned how to use MuseScore and produced sheet music. I'm working on some musical arrangements... In fairness, I've been writing a few musical arrangements during lockdown, though they never amounted to much. The virtual choir project requires me to masquerade as musical director, film director and editor... and I'm going to do a lot of autotuning!

I imagine being able to sleep again sometime in August!

Tuesday, June 9

I'm A Cilla Black Fan On Bike

Strange, with my sore knee, that I should decide to go on a medium-sized bike ride this evening.

But I did. And it was great.

I didn't push myself too hard, had a lot of problem with accumulating flies, but on the whole came out of it feeling positive and refreshed. What's come over me.

Flies.

In other news we have kittens at home now.

The rest of this blog will be about kittens.

Sunday, June 7

It's Stupid, Yet Still I Do It

On the whole, it's probably not possible to change someone's opinion in an online discussion, be it on Facebook or Twitter, or anywhere. There are a lot of ways this this is pointless, and a lot of common traits to these discussions. I suppose it probably feels like this, whichever way you're arguing, whether you go into a right-leaning/leaver-leaning discussion with the opposite view, or vice versa. It's not quite that clear-cut, of course since Brexit is an intersectional problem. However, it's probably fair to say that a huge amount of Brexit support is also right-leaning, or anti-liberal left.

Here are a bunch of pointless things that I'll have thrown at me, regardless of any tone I take in a debate:

It's not racist because I (a white man, usually) don't think it is
You're virtue signalling - i.e. you're expressing something from your conscience and by doing that it's invalid because you're just showing off
You're just offended - i.e. you have a feeling, not any valid thought
What about my freedom? - from someone who is not, on the whole oppressed by anything
You're a snowflake - from someone who is overreacting to criticism
Well you're not funny - from anyone who is losing any argument, picking at anything subjective they can latch onto
"Your <X>" - any accusation of anything from someone too stupid to write "you're" - this winds me up the most, because it grates through my brain like nails down a blackboard, and you can't correct them because that only makes them act more stupid
Boiling the question down to a false dichotomy - clever trick, make the whole discussion pivot on a relatively uninteresting black or white question which totally misses the point - the problem with oversimplifications being that you can then argue the toss on the tip of a big fucking iceberg
"I want to join in this pile-on" - any insult, or participation from people who have nothing to contribute to the conversation, but identify with the subject matter

It's a real shame.

Fuck the lot of them.

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