A real Meddle or is it Medley now?

 Times and Places etc

I see a lot of Dog lovers on the internet,

(I don't me the four legged kind)

I mean among Pink Floyd fans.

I keep telling myself I MUST be missing something 

and I keep trying and trying but to no avail.

For a million reason I suppose one being my old French Proverb

Les gouts et les couleurs ne sont pas a discuter

colloquially tranlated as "to each his own"

One big reason would be time frame

1967 -1970  five albums that I mostly missed

1967 Piper at the Gates of Dawn

1968 A Saucerful of Secrets

1969 More

1969 Ummagumma

1970 Atom Heart Mother

Still in school for most of that time between 11 and 14 years old

I vaguely remember the cool kids in my school 

(of which I wasn't part of) 

playing Ummagumma  somewhere.

now by 1970 I was out of school making "some" money 

and Meddle might have been the first album I ever bought even though I think this memory might be forged: 

K-Tel 24 Dynamic Hits at $1.99 just doesn't sound so glamorous! LOL

But I vividly remember though by the time I had my 2nd job and moved on to my own apartment, bought my Electrohome Apollo 860 record player on a Household Finance
"arm and a leg" interest rate
on the 6 months $199 loan. 

My 2nd job was also my introduction to drugs: my first job being working 6 months with my dad at $20 a week. New job paid $1.65 an hour.

So back to my short time in apartment I vividly remember Seamus howling all night long as I was in different states of consciousness. 
IIRC it would have been mescaline back then by the cap still at this time.

Funny thing with old record players is that if you had the arm up but no record following the record player would assume you were playing a 45 RPM and start somewhere in the middle of an LP.

So NO "One of These Days"
but lots of Seamus all night long.

Would be curious to know where exactly the needle fell back then? Anyone?

So I have a tender spot for Meddle as my first love kind of.

Then my short years left moved on quickly again in different states of consciousness from acid to crystal meth from Led Zep to Deep Purple stopping here and there for Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper forgetting many I am sure.

Came August the 12th 1976 I was "retired" and even more "retired on October 12th 1976 where I ended up in a cult for many years that did not listen to all this devil music.

So I totally missed Animals in its time.

Comfortably Numb is 1000 times better than Dogs.

Echoes beats the shit out of Dogs.

Hell! Marooned is better than Dogs.

Shine on You Crazy Diamonds is 999 times better than Dogs.

Seamus is prolly the best dogs of them all :)

The whole DSOTM leaves Dogs in a trail of dust.

WYWH also

MY Great Four are very different than most I guess

I am not a huge fan at all of the Wall 'cept for the greatest anthem to Smack and Numbness ever: Comfortably Numb arguably also the very best guitar solo ever written.

In no particular order my Great Four are

Meddle (first love oblige plus it is great)

DSOTM

WYWH

Division Bell (and I got to DB very late)

Some of the other stuff I may have never listened to I confess.

I gave a fair go to Animals and still trying to get the cult mania.

There is it seems to me a cultic approach to Animals.

Artsy fartsy fans who looked down on the hoi polloi who don't "get" them.  It seems to me that some sheep have canine delusions. Or is it the Stockholm Syndrome now?

Anyway here is my tiny little worthless opinion among many others.

There are a gazillion factors in each of our lives that make us like one thing and dislike or not care for another.

Styx vs Jordan

 

Many religions associate a river with death.

Personally I find the Styx much more appealing than the Jordan if one is to choose his own mythology.  

Even Valhalla sounds better with all its mead! :)

This man made idea of heaven is quite absurd once one starts to think a little.

Sit on a cloud and worship a megalomaniac petty narcissistic god if not totally psychotic with all his temper tantrums.

No sex no booze no food from what I gather?
Let me guess no drugs and rock and roll either I bet? 

no eat and drink and be merry and enjoy the woman of your youth etc

It is not like we can be great intellectuals either what the fuck would we do with great intellects on our cloud with a harp?

So much ink has been wasted on the subject or so many ones and zeros as I call it now since all this typing if I am not mistaken if you get down the the bottom line is nothing short of a binary system passing by a hexadecimal translation somewhere if I remember anything about my informatic classes.

But bottom line here 99.9% of it is nothing short of vain speculations and well keno phonia empty sounds.  The fibrillating of an active mind that does not have the intelligence to comprehend anything at all, The fears and imaginations of cavemen basically passed on to our so-called modern times.

Nature basically says to 99.9999999 % of the species (some would say creation): 

Once you're dead, you're dead.
That's it.

Some sensitive and soft mind might wanna create a dog heaven but no one ever created a bee heaven or a rat heaven or an ant even or any of the other countless species out there. 

Come to think of it would a fish heaven include water or not?

But we special apes utterly filled with hubris said: Oh No Not Us! 

( I wonder when and where that one came into our stories: hubris) 

We are SPECIAL! 

Some said WE ARE CHOSEN. 

And others said only us know how to drink tea properly and we will force the whole world to do so even though we don't even grow FUCKING tea.

Others wanted rubber and didn't mind cutting a few thousands hands to get it
and to this day still
King Leopold and Queen Victoria
are considered some of
the greatest humans that ever lived.

And also there was a great great need in the world to shove this Good News, this gospel down the throat of pagans and other uncouth even if we had to kill them to do so.

So I am not sure what we got here, nothing that has not been said but I feel like a minor Douglas Adams here, a minor intellectual as I said many times before; a poet, a philosopher, a FAILURE.

A prophet of no profit.

So here you  go you create your own heaven if you wish whatever makes your boat float.

As for me my boat is sinking and like the German coast guard in the funny ad
we will never know what I'm sinking about.

The Social Dilemma

 The Social Dilemma

OK I have said many times before  that we are FUBAR
as a species but now I have changed my mind 

We are

really

really

really

really

really

I mean

Really

REALLY

REALLY

REALLY

FUBAR

and I stand with Senator Jon Tester

 Anyway if you do only one thing in your life I mean  watch this on NETFLIX
but the ironic funny point is that

it won't change fuck all 

Talk about confirmation bias now LOL

I did mention the word irretrievable
in a previous recent post

Have we lost something irretrievable?

 I know the old adage that the previous generation was so much better but  as I getting older in this day and age I can't help feeling that we took a wrong turn somewhere.

I am not trying to be a Luddite and one of the thing I do appreciate is instant music at the touch of a finger: a portable 152g  jukebox .

But as I was sitting out the other day trying to meditate and think of nothing my mind was spinning 1000 miles a minute of all the things
I could Google RIGHT NOW. 

I almost found myself wanting a notepad and a pen and for what purpose to look up something and forget it right away (there is another song here somewhere)
Oh yeah Ani DiFranco of course 

In a coffee shop in a city
Which is every coffee shop in every city
On a day which is every day
I picked up a magazine
Which is every magazine

Read a story, and then forgot it right away
They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time
And it's hard to say if they're happy
But they don't seem much to mind

Same with social media and news.
Outrage here,
outrage there , 
outrage forgotten moving on
to other selected outrage
and I say selected because
the REAL outrages are HIDDEN from us daily.

But all this instant everything feels like an overdose of Huxley's SOMA.

I don't think
our simian Dunbar's brain
can COPE with INSTANT.

By having everything instantaneously 
we ACTUALLY LOSE the INSTANT.  

We're not there. 

We are in the next instant,
the next moment,
the next click, 

the next FIX.

I always wanted a Wikipedia or a Google instead of a cumbersome expansive Britannica but somehow the feeling is anticlimactic.

As much as Antoine Roquentin's life of slow boring research felt nauseous in Jean-Paul Sartre's work of the same name: La Nausée, this instant research business is not any better.

Gone are the days of the polymaths:
people with vast knowledge of many subjects after years of arduous studies.

We have OMNIMATHS now:

A bunch of Fucking Know-It-All.

It sure messes up so-called democracy for one thing among many other things. It messes up reality and real science too.

I won't be around long enough to see how it will all go but I'd be curious to know how fucked the world will be in 50 years?
100? 500?
1000 if we last that long.

I certainly do not expect the world to
NOT be fucked up:
extrapolation and entropy being what they are.

Anyway just more muddled thoughts to add to the confusion and the endless data we are fed daily.

Ciao for now.

Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

 

There was a time where I dreamt I would have a reading spell again 

or maybe an exercise spell. 

I called them spells, manias, winds , spirits, whatyoumaycallit.

Where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Now I would just settle for a nice gaming spell again 

or at best enough brains left to progress in chess maybe.

Not sure what is all about, never did really.

AS I keep saying I am a SAIL BOAT and I don't know how to navigate.

I go where the WIND takes me 

and if the wind doesn't blow I am fucking stuck in the middle of the ocean going nowhere.

Don't even know where these words are coming from.

Usually a rise in blogs is a sign or mini mania but I think this one is out of depression: ongoing depression for weeks now. 
Blame Covid ,
Blame Medazepam,
Blame something
but it is what it is for the moment.

Waiting for the wind to blow again until someone finds a better solution.

Everybody Knows

 I might sound like a conspiracy nutter but Cointelpro or the powers that be, or big money, or what the fuck is programming us to be like TEFAL:
NOTHING STICKS! 

Totally outraged about one thing today
 and another thing tomorrow
and utterly ineffective to change whatsoever permanently.

Apparently angry people click more
and more clicks equals more money.

Be outraged, click, click, click and then move on.

It reminds me of a line in Rwanda Hotel

Paul Rusesabagina: I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.

Jack: Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?

Paul Rusesabagina: How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?

Jack: I think if people see this footage they'll say, "oh my God that's horrible," and then go on eating their dinners.[pause] Jack: What the hell do I know?

Nothing is really happening in Hong Kong to change the course of events

Nothing is happening in Syria to change the course of events.

Nothing is happening in Israel to change the course of events.

Vietnam was for nothing.

Afghanistan was for nothing.

Nothing is happening in hundreds of countries where human rights are non-existent.

The state of the workers and of women is still medieval for millions if not billions
even in so called first world countries.

Wars still exist and hatred and racism;
Health care is poor in so many places.
Education is tragically neglected.
Quite the contrary in fact myths and delusions and ignorance prevails for billions.

Still Trillions are spent on blood pouring armaments.

Brave New World indeed that they have created.

News are just a lie and a paid selective distraction to keep us busy the equivalent of Rome's Du Pain et des Jeux. Not mentioning the other trillions spent on entertainment and professional sports to keep the hooligans busy. That Rwanda statement was back in 1995 and 9/11 seems to have been the breaking point for any possible revolution.

I can blame the Medazepam for this blog LOL

Mind you these have always been my thoughts
as long as I am allowed or programmed to have thoughts :P

The Box has been fixed.

or as Leonard Cohen said:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Lost in Translation

When I was in high school Year 9 or 10? (1969? 1970?) I spent most of my time in orientation doing multitudes of test a few of them being in interests and aptitudes.  

The gist of it was brain yes manual no.

Mind you back then I hardly spoke a word of English and though I was decent in French and STILL can spell better than most of today's 'kids" I don't recall language coming on the chart, more like science and maths.
But if I was to do it all over again I wonder how high translation work would show?

I did some translation work way back then in the mid eighties and I was quite satisfied of what I considered very hard work. It was an industrial catalogues of automotive radiators and the technical and mechanical terms alone were quite a challenge.

I was in Toronto back then on my first office job ever and I remember calling the Office de la langue française in Quebec quite often and they were extremely helpful.

Way back then there was go Google or Google Translation and no Bing Translation either. All I had wat the Robert's French-English dictionary IIRC.

Anyway back to today I find joy in trying to find an exact word for translation.  All the fancy nuances are fascinating. AI is also fascinating as it is such a harsh subject. 

Today I was working on the word TAPAGEUR which I heard in Lakmé's Flower duet and it reminded me also of a poem by Emile Nelligan we were made to memorise back in primary school.

LAKME(gaiement)Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleursJettent déjà leur ombreSur le ruisseau sacré qui coule, calme et sombre,Eveillé par le chant des oiseaux tapageurs!

translated here as

LAKME(Cheerful)Come, Mallika, the vines in bloomAlready cast their shadowOn the sacred stream flowing, calm and dark,Awakened by the song of the boisterous birds!un vacarme un tapage as in tapping your feet

Bing translates tapageur as noisy which is just too bland Bruilliant is noisy from Bruit/Noise
Google is a little better and might be my first choice even if I do like boisterous. It translate tapageur as rowdy.

I somehow associate tapageurs to children maybe because of Nelligan

Par les hivers anciens, quand nous portions la robe,Tout petits, frais, rosés, tapageurs et joufflus,Avec nos grands albums, hélas ! Que l’on n’a plus,

If you want the meaning of "Lost in Translation" now just one word will do it:

POETRY

Now if I think of children I wonder if rowdy or boisterous fits better?
I am having a penchant for rowdy.

Back in my old days of Bible studies and trying to get to the bottom of Greek and Hebrew there was two schools in bible translations:

1. Literally
2. Literary

or as I put it

1. Straight to it
2, Fancy pantsy artsy

As you can tell I have a penchant (here is that French word again) for
Literary / Straight to it style even though it is not always pretty.


I could go on on the subject forever but let me terminate this with one of my favourite case. Colloquial language is always the hardest.

the common sailor expression

I don't give a flying fuck :)

way back then Bing and Google were just HILARIOUS about it 
translating it as
Je ne donne pas une baise volante
but the AI has improved a lot well at least for Bing
(Bing is getting frightingly close to the singularity here and 
Cyberdyne Systems and Skynet are just around the corner)
Bing: Je n’en ai rien à foutre bang on the money 

I wonder how they would translate this in French Canadian now?

My interpretation could be
Je m'en contrecalisse! :P

Google is better on this one but they messed up a slightly different version last week
je m'en fous

So watch out people the Terminator is at your door and translator's job will be a thing of the past soon.

 il fut un temps ou google et bing traduisait ceci parNe pas donner une baise volante, 　Il semble que le logiciel évolueGoogle: Je ne donnerai pas un putain de putain de vol demainBing: Ne s’en foutrea pas demain.Traduit en quebecois par moi:I don't give a flying fuckJ'm'en calisse tu moé?

That was written on the 13th of June 5 days ago and it since that since then Google has corrected its trajectory. Talk about AI. Toodoodoodoo.

P.S. Google still has work to do though :)
do i look like i give a fuck DILLIGAF becomes

Ai-je l'air de donner une baise

Bing is worst:

dois-je ressembler à je donne une baise

Ok I would have lasted til retirement age at 65 as a translator then :)