BY A LOT

 This is the last of the four posts that will begin with me confessing I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. This is the evening that it was finally confirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had indeed won the election, and Trump's legal team had indeed chosen not to concede graciously but instead announce that "lawsuits will be brought, starting on Monday", and that "networks don't get to decide an election, courts do" from a freestanding podium in a parking lot because they'd booked the wrong Four Seasons. 

 

 I have been waiting so long to be able to find this monstrous administration funny, and now... oh god... I just... and all of us... I know that when I decided to try blogging daily it was because I didn't want just to be reacting to stuff on twitter but... Oh God look at it! This, and the sudden revelation of the unpopulairty of populists. And everything. 

The other Four Seasons

Thank you. Thank you to those courageous enough to stay in line for eight hours in the face of unprecedented and state-mandated voter intimidation, thank you to everyone who made a plan for this, and thank you, thank you, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, beside Fantasy Island Adult Books, and opposite Delaware Valley Cemation Centre, for taking that call.

Fireworks or Waterworks? (The Renaissance Special Effects Book Round)

 This is the third of four posts beginning with the confession that I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. The London Dungeon Gang's fortnightly Friday quiz has been maintained into Second Lockdown, during which time Peter Davis of our number has wrotten, produced, and released an entire comic synth musical based on one of his old rounds (British History, 43AD-1066D). Peter also stars in it, as both Professor Thorny Buckshaft, and performance artist "The Angler". It is haunting and cracking and you can download it for free HERE. 

 For my round this week, I knew I wanted to do something with this beautifully illustrated seventeenth-century special effects/actual science handbook from 1634, I just wasn't sure what, and it probably shows. As The Mysteryes of Natvre and Art were split into four "tretises" – "Water Works", "Fyer Workes", "Drawing, Colouring, Painting etc." and "divers Experiments" – and as it was the first two of these which had the oddest illustrations,and we were all waiting for absolute conformation whether or not Biden really had won the US election, I decided to just focus on "Water Works" and "Fyer Works". So, which of those first two treatises do the following images come from? Waterworks or Fireworks? That's the quiz. The answers, which are probably more interesting than the questions, are, as ever, in the comments below...

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5.

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8.

 

9.

10.

Daylight For Beginners

 This is the second of four posts which will begin with me confessing that I'm posting them all on the evening of Saturday the seventh. Sometimes the light is just too good not to take a record of it. The clouds will gap to light the foreground brighter than the sky, and the trees, like pressed leaves, will do the opposite of hiding.

  I've just remembered Joel and Will – whom we met in the last post – made a horror film with my sister. I'd been pondering, on the the walk from which these pictures were taken, why I don't share my contemporaries' gut love of Folk Horror. I blame Brambley Hedge. I love the idea of living inside a tree. Even if that's a pipe dream I'm still on the side of trees, or at least would want to impress a tree if I ever met one. They may resemble monsters, or parts of the body, but no monster or part of the body that I fear. Eyeless and mouthless, they'll leave you alone.

 My Folk Horror blindness might also be symptomatic of a deep-seated prejudice I harboured as a child against films which looked like they might be taking place up the road. America is where fiction happened. Or the past. I grew out of this prejudice, and worked out how to romanticise my surroundings, but I didn't work it out by watching films.

 

This walk was on my birthday, the day before or of the election, depending on your time zone, and two days before the second Lockdown. Now that the days are shorter I'm planning on cutting down on the night walks. This is the furthest I've made it up the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal. Perivale. Storms had been predicted but never materialised. And this is factory where they make the smells you get in fairgrounds

The Old Friends In The Basement

 

  Can you see a white arrow in the centre? I think you can press that.

 

 The following four posts will all begin with me confessing that I'm posting them on the evening of Saturday the seventh. Now I've cleared the air, here is a video of Forbidden Planet that I took on Monday before the second lockdown. It's a bookmark more than a record: I was feeling something, and thought if I took a video of the place where I felt it, it might help me to remember it – as good a use for my new phone as any. I tried to describe this feeling later to Joel Morris and Will Maclean whom I happily bumped into at the queue for the cashier upstairs. Will had just had a book published. It was now in the shops. We had coffee, our shopping at our feet, and were happy. Men of our age had not been the majority in the shop however; it was full of girls now – not women, girls – doing what we'd done as boys: looking for worlds built on messages. The toys were upstairs on the ground floor but here in the basement were the warnings, the comics that let you know the future might be cruel and that coping might mean fighting in bright colours. It felt peaceful because comics make no noise, even when they're full of fighting. That's what I was feeling, and although I hadn't read any recently and I'm always in Forbidden Planet and was never into super-heroes, for a spot of time just before I took out my camera I felt like I was looking round an old school again, a school I had been allowed to choose for myself. The covers on the shelves facing outwards felt like allies, a feeling I don't get in bookshops. Covers of books without pictures have scenery on their cover, or handwriting, and rarely look at you with the faces of young people ready to fight your corner.

 

 

My first.

Simon Kane, A Celebration

 Who is this motley madcap harlequin with the differently coloured gloves? Why, it's the Happy Birthday Singer!

 And apparently my friends have asked him to get his shit together and have another stab at this. Well I must say, he's nailed it!

 He says I look so young! And wait, who's this? Is it -? It can't be... It is! It's Woosh!

 

 

 He's travelled miles specifically for me, from Mars no less! I take back everything I said about human destiny possibly not being a weird colonial model which pays no attention to distance, gravity or the absence of a compatible ecosystem. This is the best party ever!

 

 Honestly I have never felt more loved!

 Well since you're all here, let's take a look at the showreel which earnt me that love, and changed my life for ever: Hollywood. The Big Ticket. Winning an Oscar for Best TV Presenter and then binning it, bowling on my own at 2 o'clock in the morning, purchasing and consuming street food, not throwing myself off the roof of a hotel... The stuff dreams are mad on or of, I can't remember:

 Oh wait no, not that one. Sorry, I had to re-edit it, there were a few problems with the sound, and I didn't mention crucifictions in a surprising hat. This one, I meant:

 Thank you, everyone, for your birthday kindnesses. It's been a very good day. And if you ever need a Happy Birthday Singer, or Woosh, or some repulsive clubbers from the Nth dimension to wish a happy birthday to a differently named friend of yours I'm sure that's findable too.

Un-Slowed-Down Footage Of Those Faked Moon Landings

 In further deep fake news, a lot of people have put music on this footage but none have managed to make it funnier. When I recorded my growing doubts, here last year, about Humanity's Destiny in Outer Space, I hadn't even considered gravity. I mean... look at this! Living on an actual other planet? Every day? Doing this?

 Earth it is. 

 I heard recently on this Cosmic Shambles Q&A that one proposal to combat climate change was the reintroduction of cloned mammoths to the Arctic because they'd break up the permafrost or help create more or something. It was debunked though. Maybe I should stop eating hamburgers.

Brought to you by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and Peter Serafinowicz and Science...

  "Sassy Justice" might be the most futuristic thing I've seen. So it's terrifying. But it also reminds me how much I've missed the work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker and Peter Serafinowicz, and comedy which makes my jaw drop. So it's also nostalgic. It's so good. Enjoy reponsibly.