Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

Just thought I’d do a quick post reminding myself that despite all the bad stuff in the world (and many bad things which I haven’t mentioned on my blog have happened to me and my friends in recent weeks, so if I’ve seemed grumpier or less talkative in comments, there have been reasons), there’s still stuff to be happy about:

There are good people who support every major (and most minor) political party. I’ve had supportive tweets today from friends who are Tories and Scot Nats and a retweet from someone I’m pretty sure is a Green. I have many good friends in Labour and know some very good people in the Pirate Party. Just because at the moment the particular type of arsehole who bothers publicly attacking me is a Labour-supporting type, doesn’t mean all Labour supporters are abusive arseholes. Human decency crossing party lines is a good thing.

In less than two weeks I will be seeing the Beach Boys live, twice, in two different cities. I will also be seeing Michael Nesmith, Ray Davies and Squeeze this year, and have seen Van Dyke Parks and Neil Innes. That these people are still alive and making music, and that I get to see them, is a good thing.

Woody Guthrie would have been a hundred years old today. Woody Guthrie is a good thing.

We live in a world where pretty much every track Duke Ellington recorded before 1960 is available to stream, at a single click, on Spotify. Duke Ellington is a good thing.

I have Charles Stross’ new Laundry book. Charles Stross is a good thing.

In general, we live in a world where access to great cultural works of the past is so inexpensive that I currently own twenty-eight hours of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons on DVD, along with many documentaries, commentary tracks and so on, and the price of this came to less than one pound per hour of cartoons. Cheap access to great art is a good thing.

(The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons may not be *high* art, but they’re often *great* low art. I can also access Glenn Gould playing Bach at a click of a mouse button, and have an ereader stuffed with free copies of everything from John Bunyan to G. K. Chesterton to James Joyce. These are all good things too.)

And when I’m not under attack from trolls, this blog’s comment section generally has some of the nicest, most decent, most thoughtful commenters you’ll find on the internet, and even though I’m not great at replying, I’m grateful to all of you. Good people are good things.

(I also have a wife, but she doesn’t like it when I say things she thinks are over-complimentary about her, so about her I’ll say no more.)

The friendship of good people, and the beauty of great art, will have lasting effects long after the trolls are forgotten.