Record Reconstructor

  This week: Tracy Chapman, The Vessels, Julien Baker, and classical music I'm pretty sure I'd be a terrible revolutionary freedom fighter.  I'm old, out of shape, with a pretty healthy set of anxieties without living with the constant paranoia being a tool against state oppression requires, but as I spend some of Star Wars Day catching up with Andor's ongoing portrayal of both the cost of fighting oppression, and the imperative need to do so, and I contrast that against local election results here in the UK which sees a resurgent rise of the far right apparatus across the country, I think about where the line is before that kind of action is necessary here.  People tell me it won't come to that; I have my doubts. There, that's my tenuous link to Star Wars on this May the 4th established, and my chance to vent a little of my anxieties on the internet because Catherine doesn't like it when I talk 'doom and gloom' around her, so we can move swiftly awa...

Dashboard! I'm fortunate in that I don't have a physically taxing job.  I don't break rocks for a living, I don't have to spend time on my feet, I'm not practising medicine or fighting fires, I don't have to interact with the public much and I don't have to try and wrangle unruly classrooms of children like Catherine does.  I can generally do my job sat in a relatively comfortable chair while listening to music.  But sometimes, my friends, my job can be a real pain.  This is in part because I have a job with a reasonable level of responsibility, there are people who care about what I do and it affects them in a material way;  me making bad choices in my job could, butterfly-effect style, lead to people losing their own jobs, or the company itself being in jeopardy.  Also, I like to be right, like to convince people I am right, like to feel like I am contributing.  But when its end-of-financial-year time in my job, everyone loses their minds, and I feel...