We’re at the fag-end of August, almost six years after the moment that set off the series of events that would change Mrs Stroke Bloke’s and my life forever. But no doubt we’ll get to that in due course.
For now, the Edinburgh Festival has just finished and the smell of sulphur from the massive closing fireworks display that rattled our windows last night is fading.
[Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter, where the devil always has the best tunes.] Continue reading Where Are We NOW?
Clearly, I was spoiled for news stories to cover last week. Even this week, and more specifically today, a lot of things I’m interested in have been cropping up.
Trump‘s been in the news a bunch, but I’m not going to spend any time on the details of that. I mean, who’s got the bandwidth to constantly maintain the rage?
No, the most interesting thing I learned about Trump this week keyed into my interest in the amount of time we spent at work.
[Waste your time at work with the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Judge Dread
I haven’t been able to get to much on the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, for reasons. After seeing Tariq Ali discuss Lenin, I managed to miss Stuart Cosgrove returning to the subject of Detroit ’67, and 404 Ink marking their epochal Nasty Women with Nadine Aisha Jassat, Joelle Owusu & Laura Waddell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnGPgCVJUsI
And I missed Limmy, too. 😭
[For more ands and buts, and more deep cuts, check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading King Ubu
Tonight, the Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe will be over for another year. Once again, the shows I went to see for The Edinburgh Reporter were never less than interesting, and the second half of the month was no less thought-provoking.
In addition to the stuff I mentioned last week, Daniel Kitson at the Traverse was great, and AL Kennedy at the Book Festival was a masterclass on how to take an audience with you when reading off the page.
Blog hero Paul Morley on Bowie didn’t translate well to the inherently conservative milieu of Charlotte Square, but perhaps the most gripping night of August was… Continue reading A Northern Soul
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.
J. Alfred Prufrock may have measured out his life in coffee spoons, but here in Edinburgh we use a different unit.
Incredibly, we’re already over a week into the 2015 Festival. This year Beth and I are centring our participation mostly around the book festival.
[For more of Ricky’s thoughts on this year’s Festival,
you can subscribe to the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.] Continue reading Gerontocracy