19may25

The watering inspector is displeased.

Newsletter went out yesterday. I woke up late today, as I had a sleep deficit. I have an extremely busy 13 days ahead – there’s a hard deadline on May 31 —

And as I typed that, my phone blew up with: UK and EU reach new deal on food, fishing, defence and passport checks. That may actually change some things.

OPERATIONS: I wrote myself a bloody checklist last night, which is a terrible thing for past me to do to future me. And I’m not happy with how the newsletter looked yesterday
STATUS: And on Wednesday I have to down tools to take delivery of the last new plants of the season. So I’ve put the field watch on and switched down some apps.

Do you know, some people check this category post just to see if I’m up and functioning?

READING: JEAN-LUC GODARD, CINEMA HISTORIAN, Michael Witt

LISTENING: Right now, UNCLASSIFIED, but I need to get to Bandcamp later
LAST WATCHED: A WORKING MAN, on Prime Video, because I will never not watch a Jason Statham movie and David Ayer always shoots a pretty film. Also, we love a Jason Flemyng bit in anything. He was Quatermass once, you know. (Which makes him, I think, Quatermass 7?)

THINKING ABOUT: this old bit from the Situationist Manifesto of 1960, which resurfaces from time to time:

At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a producer-consumer of total culture creation, which will help the rapid dissolution of the linear criteria of novelty. Everyone will be a Situationist, so to speak, with a multidimensional inflation of tendencies, experiences, or radically different ‘schools’ – not successively, but simultaneously.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Now: DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. Forthcoming 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, The LIGHTS OUT Anthology.