Category Archives: Uncategorized

Apr 20 2019
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Lost in Translation (2003) is garbage.

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Saw this in the cinema when I was 16 and thought it was incredible, my generation’s bit of peak Bertolucci or something. It’s been a long hiatus but I caught it again the other day. My god, it’s fucking appalling, an arty-farty piece of silly, trivial gibberish, and unbelievably racist. The characters are one-note, self-obsessed twats, and the picture depicts the Japanese as a mass of hysterical idiots. About 20 minutes in I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It’s concocted anthropology à la Nanook of the North (1922). Never again. Sad!

 

 

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Apr 18 2019
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Edinburgh, Leith, Scotland, Tourism, Transport, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Newhaven Quay, Edinburgh.

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Snapped from Brewers Fayre. There’s something of the Americana about this chain of venues, with the free soft drink refills and Hooters-esque staff uniforms. I was in Dunfermline’s version of one of these ‘restaurants’ a decade ago and found the experience most distressing; come to think of it, this might have actually been a Frankie & Benny’s. No matter, they’re all interchangeable: tacky décor, borderline violent eaters, screaming kids running amok.

Newhaven itself is a curious mix of the old and new; flats are *always* being developed, little ships will always have their presence, and eateries such as Brewers Fayre will continue to splatter the waterfront.

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Apr 15 2019
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Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Shell Garage, Dalry Road. Memories.

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This used to be the home of the infamous Shell garage, a post-3:00 a.m. drunken haven. There was nothing quite like their chicken stuffing sandwiches, especially when one was off one’s proverbial tits on a Smörgåsbord of £1 voddy and cokes from Rush Bar in the Cowgate. And how I miss the mangled chat with the bloke behind the glass. He clearly wanted to die but I still bombarded him with my life thoughts. 2005-2013 was a good fucking time in my life.

Greenpeace protesters at Shell

Greenpeace protesters are protesting at Shell garages in Edinburgh as a result of Shell exploring in the Arctic 16 July 2012

Now it’s an empty space. Sad. The land that is; not my existence. These days I get free Wi-Fi at work. 24/7 Clockwork Winning.

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Apr 14 2019
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Uncategorized

Boris does yoga.

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A very odd cat. That’s his exercise done for today.

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Apr 13 2019
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Britain, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Modern living.

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Basking in the glory of an e-cig USB plug-in on the No. 16 bus.

Doing this grandiose act in Newhaven, I felt as if I had summited the bus experience, charging and vaping on the peasant wagon the apex of the commute.

#Rebelwithanecig.

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Apr 11 2019
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Architecture, Building, Construction, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized

Brande skyscraper.

Brande in Denmark has a meagre population of 7,000 and there is very little to distinguish it … until now.

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The Danish clothing company Bestseller, its headquarters in the town, aims to put Brande ‘on the map’ with its construction of a 320-metre skyscraper, newspapers mockingly referring to it as the Tower of Sauron, this an all-seeing ‘evil thing’ in the Lord of the Rings works that didn’t quite make sense. And that wasn’t the end of the nonsensical with those movies – one could have summoned an eagle and had the fucker drop the ring in that volcano.

Anyway, back to Denmark. The skyscraper will house offices, a hotel, and some shops. More shite, just what an unspoiled landscape needs ….

Further reading:

https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=2020721

https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2fworld%2f2019%2f04%2f01%2fdenmark-will-be-building-europes-tallest-skyscraper-town-could-this-be-new-trend%2f%3f&utm_term=.b83449138357

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/01/like-the-eye-of-sauron-western-europes-tallest-building-planned-for-tiny-danish-town-brande-bestseller

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tiny-danish-town-plans-build-western-europes-tallest-skyscraper-180971874/

 

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Apr 08 2019
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Architecture, Building, Construction, Edinburgh, Photography, Uncategorized

Hutchison House, Edinburgh.

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Grim as fuck, this one. It smacks of the ’60s – poverty and deprivation in the so-called swinging era. It’s the type of building a skag head would chuck himself off. Some things need demolished; this is one of them. Yuk.

 

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Apr 07 2019
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Edinburgh, Music, Photography, Scotland, Technology, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Writing anything is torture.

Writing is waterboarding of the mind, such is the rolling artillery barrage of stimuli out there. As a part-time aspiring Gonzo in the knock-off Hunter S. Thompson mould (I don’t do drugs for fear of dying before the real-life Matt Damon lands on Mars), I cannot construct a sentence if there is a Wi-Fi connection. Why pen anything when there is Wikipedia and a mammoth page dedicated to the Battle of Austerlitz (1805)?

One must be unplugged from The Matrix.

Here is my photographic … representation of even an attempt to write anything with a correctly placed comma. And all music must be Enya or Enigma or any other kind of chillout music, nothing too high-tempo.

Writers Block

This photo ripped an hour from my life, by the way.

It’s how I imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald carved his stuff when Zelda was out in Lalaland off her tits on cocktails galore.

 

 

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Apr 04 2019
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Architecture, Building, Canada, Construction, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized

Habitat 67.

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I squirm at this but can’t stop staring. 146 apartments in Montreal, a breathing Lego kit with its own ecosystem. Designed by Moshe Safdie, this was meant to revolutionise affordable housing but its legacy is the opposite – a unit can set you back up to $1 million.

I guess it looks better than most dilapidated high-rises but for fuck’s sake, your crib is a tourist attraction. Every time you look out the window an army of Jimmy Stewarts are outside looking in, a Rear Window (1954) role reversal. Disturbing. What if you’re caught with a prossie?

If this is a glimpse of the future, I don’t wish to stick around for it.

Further reading:

https://www.mtlblog.com/lifestyle/what-a-1000000-apartment-looks-like-in-montreals-habitat-67

http://www.towertrip.com/inside-the-most-beautiful-habitat-67-unit-that-just-hit-the-market/

 

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Apr 03 2019
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Architecture, Building, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

In a nutshell. Leith, Edinburgh.

Rambling around Leith today taking snaps. The port district is ugly but it has character. I would wager it has the highest concentration of junkies and creatives per square mile than anywhere else in Scotland. Everyone knows someone who’s on the smack, yet conversely their next-door neighbour will have aspirations of being this generation’s Bukowski.

The pubs also ‘suffer’ from deflation.

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