Senses working overtime #253

1 David Copperfield

It's taken me a couple of weeks but I've finished David Copperfield and feel a little bereft. Charles Dickens' favourite is a great novel. I'm missing reading it and living with the characters already.

2 Something is more interesting than this - Seth Godin

And now, that’s always true.

Whatever you’re doing.

No matter who you’re with.

Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.

And it’s in your pocket.

All the time. As long as the battery lasts.

There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.

Until infinity.

Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.

3 Small kindnesses 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

4 The Batman

Love this cover for issue 8 of THE BATMAN'S GRAVE
5 Max von Sydow

Star of my favourite movie of all time - Pelle The Conqueror. You absolutely, and utterly believe in him in that role (and others). Rest in peace.

Overtime: McCoy Tyner

Sadly another great artist, McCoy Tyner has also passed away recently.

Overtime: Oh dear, oh dear

Great piece by Frank Rich on the disaster that is Trump and his response to Covid-19. Poor America - my heart goes out to you all (R and D alike).

Senses working overtime #244

1 Trees

Here's a link to all the amazing Trees covers by Jason Howard. You're welcome!

2 The end of 'someone'

These people endorse my blog
(and none of them exist)

Thoughtful post by Seth Godin. You should read it!

3 Warren's back!

Great to have the newsletter from Warren Ellis popping back into my inbox. As well as the Trees link above, the Batman image comes from that source and it's rather wonderful!

4 Apollo astonaunts took great photos, as well

Earth is a long way away!

More here

5 Pocket's best articles of 2019

Overtime: 2019 - a further look back before we hare off into 2020!

Senses working overtime #239

1 Another amazing Batman image 

2 December movies

Not long now before the new Star Wars movie (almost there, almost there) but it's not all about SW. Here are some others to watch for.

3 Poetry corner

Before Us

will we travel
to the city where
so much happened
before us     where once
you asked me    and I

couldn't    will we go
to a place   where the past
is new    tell me
this winter morning

where that past is hiding

Anne Michaels (2017)

4 The trick that made animation realistic



5 Black Widow

Looking forward to this one as well. Black Widow is one of my favourite Avengers.

Overtime: 21 best films of 2019
In keeping with the movie bias of this edition - here are the best movies of 2019 according to Vox.

Senses working overtime #235

1 Holy homework

Only one way to start this week's jewels! This visual feast for the eyes is stunning.

2 Code breakers

Excellent piece from Maria Popova's blog about American women employed as code breakers during WW2.

3 A year from now... (from Seth)

Will today’s emergency even be remembered? Will that thing you’re particularly anxious about have been hardly worth the time you put into it?

Better question: What could you do today that would matter a year from now?

4 Star Wars: Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse

Gets a great review for the novel from Star Wars in the Classroom. Check it out here. Great name btw: Roanhorse!

5 David Mitchell

I'm a fan, thanks to the Observer and Would I lie To You? Nice article here!

Overtime: The return of Poetry Corner

I've been away from poetry many months and now I must rake leaves with nothing blowing between your house and mine Lorine Niedecker (1956)

Senses working overtime #226

1 Brexit: The Soap Opera

I'm sick of thinking, "This can't get any worse". And then it does. Here's the latest from the BBC.

2 Depressing news: Rock is dying (apparently. cf Overtime below)

Photo by Jay Wennington on Unsplash

RIP rock music?

3 New movies

Vox reckon these new movies are worth waiting for...hmmm.

4 Warren Ellis

Latest sign off: Lock all the damn doors, shut out anyone who doesn't deserve your time and lives to make your life harder, and take five minutes of free air to be who you are and to be in the world and at peace. You're doing better than you think. Hold on tight. 

5 Speaking of Warren 

Coming soon...

Overtime: King Crimson

The latest Mojo to reach my newsagents had a free covermount CD featuring King Crimson. I love the early Crimson stuff. As long as they keep their music in circulation, rock will never be dead.

Senses working overtime #127

1 Calm...breathe, calm...breathe (part 2)

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

My favourite Unsplash photo from the week.

2 Batman villains

Entertaining look at the female villains in Batman (zap, kapow)

3 Tim and Colin

Excellent piece about two American christians who also happen to be big time NFL Quarterbacks - Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick. 

Oh Yeah! BTW. The NFL is back baby!!

4 Radio Zimmer Head




Steller Vox look at how Hans Zimmer and Radiohead worked on a song for Blue Planet II.

5 Heavens to Betsy

Brilliant satire from The Borowitz Report:

In a ringing endorsement from the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos said on Thursday that she did the math on Donald Trump’s tax plan and that she estimates it will save the United States roughly eleventy krillion dollars.

“I took out a pencil and paper and figured it out the old-fashioned way,” DeVos told reporters. “I wound up going through a lot of paper, because eleventy krillion has ten hundredteen zeroes.”

DeVos stressed that the eleventy-krillion figure was actually a conservative estimate. “The exact number was between eleventy and ninety-quelve, but I rounded down to eleventy,” she said.

The Education Secretary said that the national debt, which currently stands at more than twenty trillion dollars, would be greatly reduced by the eleventy-krillion-dollar windfall.

“If you subtract eleventy krillion from twenty trillion, you get a number so small it has no name,” she explained.

Overtime: Cassini

The last pictures from Saturn. Beyond the beyond.

Senses working overtime #14

1 Calvin and Hobbes
I love it when writers find deeper meaning from popular culture icons along the Tao of Pooh lines. This piece is quite cool and I love the Thai master story of the broken goblet.

2 Batman
This is a fun picture. I was pretty good at picking who was behind each mask.

3 Success feels better but doesn't necessarily make you better

I really enjoyed this excerpt. I'm a sucker for movie war stories by writers. I've been spoiled by William Goldman's great books on the subject. This piece by screenwriter Susannah Grant hits the mark.

4 Soundspel
This is cool - a way of rationalising and reforming spelling: try this soundspel version of Keats' Ode to a nightingale or, rather, "Oed to a Nietingael" -

Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paensMi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk,Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draensWun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:'Tis not thru envy of thi hapy lot,But beeing too hapy in thien hapynes,That thow, liet-wingèd Dryad of the trees,In sum meloedius plotOf beechen green, and shadoes numberlessSingest of sumer in fuul-throeted eez.

5 and overtime: Three Cool Cats
Just finished Mark Lewisohn's first volume of The Beatle's history - Tune In. 

To celebrate - The Beatles did a great (to my ears) version of this song by The Coasters - here are both versions. You be the judge (Beatles is better right - George does a great vocal). 

The Beatles version was part of their failed audition tape for Decca. John's pisstake (hey man, save one chick for me) is way cool.

Anyway...