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Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid - Malcolm Lowry
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 9
This took far too long to read.
It's autobiographical, the author simply swaps out the lead character for himself, returning to Mexico after a long hiatus, with a new wife, afraid of confronting old people, situations, trying to put right a past that can't be put right or in any sort of order.
He's an alcoholic, forever struggling against the temptation of another drink, and - for a book containing relatively little action, it's a masterpiece of the interior life of the chaotic and suffering artist.
Now - a masterpiece is true, and his prose is magnificent, the directions his mind takes - unravelling memory, experience, sleep, the perpetually neurotic over analyzing of the minutiae of life, the failure to take both remedial and obvious steps, well, I get it. I get it too well. And so it's uncomfortable, we've a great deal in common, if only I possessed a teaspoon of his talent, and so it took forever to read and now, now, finally it's done.
Ghosts and Tornadoes
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 5
That I am at a hotel, resort, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. That someone I don't know has a child and she is off to some sort of bogus awards ceremony, there is another kid there as well...I don't know anyone here.
Someone brings me a diet coke, they must have shaken it because when I open it it fizzes and gets all over the carpet, more than was in the can, but I don't care...
I'm busy, making notes, I have a notepad but some of the pages have dark pictures & ink on them, my notes, they disappear into the ink, illegible, and then in places they are visible, writing into the darkness...
It doesn't matter. I'll make out what I was writing later.
I'm obsessed, I'm trying to remember a book I wanted to read, or maybe I had read a long time ago, a slim book, beautifully written, about two people. And I'm making notes of the title, I'd been unable to find it back then, but now, in the age of the internet, I should be able to find it, there would be no reason why I could not...only I can't remember the title and am trying to guess as to the plot, the events, and these notes are my attempts to recapture, remember it...I'm not having a lot of luck...
This resort in the middle of nowhere, mountains maybe, trees, it's getting dark outside.
It's time for the awards ceremony and I'm left with the child I don't know and so I concede, promise that we'll go as well, I'll be the good parent to this unknown waif, and we head outside to walk up to the building where it will be held.
South of us, great tornadoes are churning up the landscape, black funnels across a dark sky sweeping across the landscape...
Turning to watch I at first think it's a movie, then realize it's not, it's happening...
And turning back to the direction we're walking I see hundreds of tiny tornadoes, windstorms, whirlwinds making their way south through the rain, amongst us, beside the road, and as they get closer I see them briefly in color, they're the innumerable spirits of the dead, talking and walking, when they are close they faintly glimmer in color, I can see a Hawaiian Shirt, when the move away they again turn grey and disappear into the rain.
I'm filming this with my phone, incredulous...
Hastening up to the rest of the group to show them, ask breathlessly if they've seen what I have, the group now ignoring me, I turn and see to the side of the road an older kindly Mexican lady, she's sitting at a table, calling me over, only she can see me, and I understand but I'm not ready, I have to find that book...
(This dream woke me, disturbed me. It's exactly the dream I'd expect to have to prepare me for crossing over, and reminds me to get my affairs in order. The tornadoes, I'd spent the day watching F5 videos on YouTube - the storm warnings over Oklahoma, the Mexican Lady, perhaps from Malcolm Lowry's "Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid")
TinyMCE vs MacBook Air
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 6
Now, pleased to be throwing away the old laptop, having successfully moved my information, only to discover that for some reason the MacBook Air (Yosemite) will not for some reason allow me to format my blog posts. It completely strips the Tinymce code, that allows me to bold, highlight, embed content, etc.
No formatting options at all. Across all 3 browsers, tried in Safari, Chrome, Firefox.
So this is the 'Mac' advantage? I'm like, WTF is up with this, and searching about the internet can find no answers whatsoever, no even record of it being a problem.
And another quirk, this of the leading spaces - I find it hidden in the browser code, to lead any article with a couple of spaces - you can choose, 2, 4, 8 - but there's no option to lead with 0. Which is as well fucked up.
Sooo, back to square one, wasting my time fucking around with technical issues, when by this time, technology being where it is, this should not be a problem.
British Post Office Scandal
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 6
To summarize in brief:
The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved Post Office Limited pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for shortfalls in their accounts, which had in fact been caused by faults in Horizon, accounting software developed and maintained by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover Horizon shortfalls with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts and bankruptcies, took a heavy toll on the victims and their families, leading to stress, illness, family breakdown, and at least four suicides. In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
Takeaways: That the government/post office knew the software was flawed, and nevertheless made hundreds of it's employees scapegoats, with criminal convictions, lost wages, opportunities, credibility, and in worst cases lost lives.
This is peak Great Britain, only maybe remove the great. And - it's easy to see a miscarriage of justice happening overseas, but don't for a moment think it couldn't, wouldn't, or isn't happening as you read this here.
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