The last two posts on the #EUreferendum weren’t really what I wanted to write about. But the things that are really exciting me right now needed to be put off a bit because they don’t happen for another month or so. And I didn’t really want to bang on about them for a full two months.
Finally, though, I can get some release. With respect to one of these events, at least.
[More banging on in the Apoplexy Tiny Letter, here.] Continue reading The Hofstadter-Moebius Loop
It was quite a filmic weekend.
On Friday night, Beth and I went to a packed Filmhouse 2 to see The Hateful Eight. Definitely in my top three Tarantino movies.
Although it’s reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs in its bunch-of-desperados-trapped-in-a-room central conceit, a number of Leone-esque shots of a mythic American landscape pepper the movie.
On Saturday, we stayed in and (finally) watched There Will Be Blood. Like The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in the West (both scored by Ennio Morricone), it’s got a great score that carries long, dialogue-free stretches of film. In this case, the score is by Johnny Greenwood (or Radiohead and collaborations with the terrifying Krzysztof Penderecki).
Watching these two movies in quick succession got me to thinking…
[For more thoughts, sign up for the Apoplexy Newsletter here.] Continue reading The State of Origins, Pt. 1
Anyone who’s ever subscribed to the Apoplexy Newsletter, read this blog, or met me, will be unsurprised to read that The Fabulous Beth and I went to see Billy Bragg play Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall last week. And those sorts of people will probably also find it predictable that Billy brought along a quirky support act, made an obscure and humorous reference to Craig Gannon in his stage banter, and was playing in the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s (sic) decision to open a new campaign of war.
I was particularly taken by Duke Special – for it is he – because he has ridiculous/awesome hair, had covered half of the merch table with an eclectic range of different types of art, and he sang a song called Last Night I Nearly Died. (That’s enough rule of three – Ed.)
Hey! Last night about three years ago, I nearly died!
But that wasn’t all that went on last week…
Continue reading The Band of Möbius
Interested in Nerd Bait? Before digging into this week’s post, find out how The Wee Mermannie got the girl – deleted scenes from our Book Festival Gig are part of the bonus materials included in the first issue of the fabulous FREAK Circus!
The beautiful paperback artefact is here. The electronic version that includes the unexpurgated prose version of The Tail of The Wee Mermannie is here.
Right. Now. Back to the blog.
The people each of us individually are at 10, 30, 40, “share the same name and some of the same memories, but we are quite different as a person.”
During the intervening week, I wrote a short story about a man who may – or may not – have lived a succession of quite different lives. Yet there are common themes in those lives. For example, in each case, the character’s father disappears from the scene in his early years.
It wasn’t until I was reading a passage in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel All the King’s Men last night that I realised that my fiction had been taking a sideways look at Eagleman’s theme…. Continue reading To a Tee
Nerd Bait’s Wurdz Boi writes:
Nerd Bait’s appointed-against-his-will marketing svengali and master of low-light photography @chrisdonia suggested that the band get hip to the kids and put Greatest Hits, Vol.6 – featuring stroke-themed mini-musical The Treacherous Brain – up on Bandcamp.
So just like Radiohead, we posted our album with a “name your price” option starting at £0.00. You get high-quality downloads in MP3, FLAC, and more, as well as unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app. We get to be rich. Like Radiohead. Rich, I tells ya!
Well, we get to share our stuff with you in a convenient and free fashion, and we’re very happy about that.
We hope you’ll take advantage of us it.
This post is being simulposted at nerdbaitband.com. If you’ve not been there before – and even if you have – I’d ask you to read it there. There’s stacks of stuff to explore that isn’t here at apoplectic.me.
As intimated last week, the Festival really is over. So this week, rather than sitting shiva in Edinburgh, Beth and I are paying a quick visit to the U.S. This means that for the first time in some time I’m blogging at 35,000 feet, while I continue to reminisce about all fun I had during August.
Hi, everyone. The Prof is back to pull back the curtain on genius once again. Here he is on the soundtrack for Illicit Ink‘s Apollo 21 at the Edinburgh International Science Festival – but being too modest to mention his star turn as Ground Control….