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29 May 2020 *there are mentions of sexual violence/violent sex in this post* Although the Covid-19 pandemic played a significant part in halting my progress on my research on Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable , in all honesty so too did reading William Burroughs's 'cut-up' novel The Soft Machine (1961). My brain already delicate from a healing psychiatric injury couldn't much hack it. To be fair, though, if anyone in their right mind can hack it, I suspect they're either lying to look smart, or broken in a different way. Perhaps you need to be on the same amount of heroin when reading it as Burroughs was on when writing it to get much of a story or any meaning out of it. As a side note, my copy of the book includes his essay 'A Treatment That Cancels Addiction' and it helped make his work a little more accessible for me, even if I still struggle to pinpoint details relevant to my studies . The Soft Machine is referenced in the Treasures g

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If you enjoy my posts, please consider supporting me via liberapay.com/peablair. Thank you!

22 May 2020 Back in what feels like the beforetimes in February, Netflix began a staggered release of Studio Ghibli films, which put me in the mood to revisit many of them as well as see the few I'd missed for the first time. As the Covid-19 crisis became more apparent and lockdown was (finally and suddenly) introduced in the UK, the desire in particular to find comfort in Sprited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) grew all the more. It's a film I've watched a few times before, and I enjoy the experience of seeing the works in both the original Japanese and English dubs. When Channel 4 ran a Studio Ghibli season, oh goodness, 10 to 15 or perhaps more years ago, only the dubbed versions were shown. But Netflix gives fantastic options for audio and subtitle combinations, and this time round it has to be the Japanese. In early April my anxiety concerning the pandemic was overwhelming, and getting it under control led to fatigue. One afternoon I had to admit defeat and lie i

15 May 2020 Last week Becca Harrison tweeted about re-watching the turn-of-the-millennium Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced , and some of its most quotable lines (concerning jaffa cakes in coat pockets) and imitable actions (mimed shoot out). Being an Ulsterperson, my fondness for the show often homes in on Tyres played by Belfast-born, Holywood-bred actor Michael Smiley (if you're a Ben Wheatley fan, you ought to recognise him). This train of thought, not for the first time, got me thinking about the significance of Tyres. When Spaced first aired in September 1999, Northern Ireland was a year-and-a-half into its fragile official peacetime following (and not quite yet distinct from) the prior thirty years of conflict. I was in my mid-teens and it was only when I reached my early and mid-twenties that I fully understood the characters in the show, especially the oddities of being a grown-up but feeling not as mature as your age suggested, of feeling the ageing process but still being

Paula Blair and Andrew Shail watch Saved! (dir. Brian Dannelly, 2004). Includes some swearing, mentions of abortion, rape and suicide, and discussing characters’ uses of ableist and homophobic language. commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703 https://www.patreon.com/avcultures

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8 May 2020 After we spoke the other week, my good friend Fran sent me this article about struggling to read in these new pandemic times and the value of reading aloud. I share Sam Parker's issue that when I go to read a novel lately, I pause two or three pages in unable to tell you what I've read. Even worse is anything vaguely intellectual; I haven't been writing up research because I don't find myself able to read much research. The stress of having a clue of the gravity of a pandemic situation is bad enough, but throw in an underlying anxiety disorder and it is a truly debilitating environment. In a broadly inquisitive way, I've been puzzling over human behaviours lately. Why are we doing what we're doing? Why do I have nagging feelings about my interactions with others and am unable to pinpoint what's bothering me? I imagine my unconscious brain is in overdrive at the perceived lack of control so is trying to set as much to rights as possible. But

1 May 2020 Tuesday 28 April 2020 would have seen the completion of my dad's 67th turn around the sun. He died on Sunday 3 October 1993. What with one thing and another in the current situation, I not only indulged in a fantasy of what we'd do to mark the event were he still alive, I pushed further to imagine a world in which SARS-CoV-2 hadn't come about, and further again to a science-based utopia in a parallel universe. Here are some half-baked thoughts on how those would be. ----- In a parallel universe, Gaia is home to modestly intelligent organisms whose general motto is: 'I don't know the answer to that question, but let's eliminate possibilities until we find out'. Earlier humans' inquiries about the world around them, like ours, began with ancient civilisations making up allegorical pantheons of dieties to explain workings bigger than themselves that they could not comprehend. But as time wore on and their capacity for language, knowledg