Ordinary visits to the cinema of course provoke my tears, but not today's. The frankly inconsiderate, moronic behaviour of the phone users around me provoked me into doing something I'm not proud of, something terrible.

The woman in the row in front of us, when she wasn't talking with her children, surreptitiously turning on her phone, nearly-but-not hiding it with her hair and…

A teenager down the aisle was, I'm certain, recording large sections of the film, but the three selfies with flash were the last straw. So I got up, walked down the few a steps separating us, and told her to stop doing it and to turn the phone off.

The woman in front of us obviously saw it as a challenge so upped her game. Got up, stood in front of me asking her daughter…

We'd been lucky so far in our visits; I relish the chance to take the girls out, but I can see how, antisocial as it is, why subscription movies services and channels have flourished. Heck, my girls don't mind if I sit there in my underpants!

Well, ok, that last is a lie, sitting in my dressing gown is as bad as it gets.

Oh yes, the terrible thing.

I let my family down when, without retaining a sense of perspective, I swore at the teenager whilst ordering her about.

For what it's worth, I saw the majority of the film, and give it an easy 10/10 for the first 90 minutes before the distractions peaked. The soundtrack is amazing! and almost certainly one to buy. Baz's seal of approval.

Baz though? Baz does not, emphatically not, get the same courtesy.

Conversations often bring up what seem to be the weirdest things. And then I think for a bit.

I've posted recently of the information overload I've experienced since the middle of 2016; it's had a lot of positives and fair share of negatives, but I've learnt about, well, me.

Constipation is a term I first came across courtesy of @schmidt_fu on either 10Centuries.org or pnut.io and it got me thinking. I said I'd think about it, so did.

Constipation:

"irregular and infrequent or difficult evacuation of the bowels; can be a symptom of intestinal obstruction or diverticulitis" (Definition from iOS Terminology app.)

Humans have evolved to consume various edible items (and, for pleasure, some plainly inedible or noxious), to process them and convert into nutrients, and finally to expel the resultant waste. Ok, not just humans, pretty-much everything alive on the planet operates in a similar fashion. What differs between us at the top, and those below us on the food chain, is our insatiable desire to consume, process, and to, er… talk about stuff.

Yeah, a bit short of suitable metaphors here; 'constipation' isn't a bad pinnacle, right?

But there's only so far that balancing act between consumption and dissemination can take the average sane person. I gave up where someone with more confidence, more psychopathic tendencies would, has and will, advance further. I saw the effect on myself of the constant osmosis of facts and figures, and simply didn't like where it would take me.

That's not to say I removed myself entirely from the stimuli, that's impossible. Avoiding Brexit and Trump though, it's tantamount to acceptance, and I simply cannot roll over and submit to the propaganda machines rolling over pretty-much everything I've assumed would provide stability for me, my wife and, the reason large numbers of folks believe we're on this planet in the first place: my 2 lovely daughters.

Though we're not in the midst of an actual wartime, it'd be fair to say we live in times of unprecedented upheaval. And it's all stoppable in an instant if people simply come to their senses.

Chances of it happening? I think zero.

So, constipation, a recap:

"irregular and infrequent or difficult purging of the symptoms of stress brought on by an information overload; can be a symptom of the obstruction of regular thought processes or a response to stimuli outside an individual's sphere of influence".

My sphere of influence?

Around 1680mm diameter.

I've been copying my blog posts, first manually then more recently automatically, to Medium.com (a site for writers or anyone with a message.) The return on my investment has not been great, indeed the most views and feedback I've had has been from a one-line comment I posted in response to someone else's political post.

I say investment but it's no biggie; I'd written the posts anyway, it costs nothing to post at Medium, and I write to please myself anyway. But almost zero feedback troubled me.

Why? Well, everywhere else I post I've been careful to avoid statistics. Indeed I've never looked at any stats related to my Github.com Pages, and have no intention of doing. Simply put, I have a tendency to obsess over the irrelevant things when the simple things are key.

I'm thinking of terminating postings to Medium, and soon. A related and more positive issue, I still have a plan to release posts from previous incarnations of my blog, and that'd kill the structure, the flow, at Medium (I prefer consecutive posts, sorted by date. Obviously by date.)

The bonus: the meanderings of my less-recent mind will soon be available to reminisce over. It's not all bad.

I recently came across a retweet mentioning a news article about a Mossley (NW England) discordant neo post-punk band named Cabbage. The ironies within the article, well, I've already determined 2017 will be one led and thus eventually characterised by Schadenfreude. Now the band's genre isn't my usual cup of tea, but the introduction alone was definitely something helping to drag me out from the depths of my post-New-Year funk.

Here's why…

The publicity wasn't because of their music, at least not directly. No, it was their frank, gloriously frank, response to the British national tabloid newspaper* attempting to champion them as one of their sounds of 2017. To see what I suspect is merely the iceberg-tip of the band's response, here's a Manchester Evening News article – sanitised only by redacting the entirely-appropriate sweary language.

I asked the band on Twitter for their recommendation; which of their albums should I buy? The response was, in hindsight, entirely predictable.

@ahcabbage: @bazbt3 @antmeals anything by @TheBlindersBand

I simply ignored their response, hoping for something more, a 'Best Of'. Heh, Baz playing the long game‽

A few days later they released a compilation album, 'Young Dumb And Full Of…'! Yes, the ellipsis is a part of the album title; and though the dystopian days of 'Bollocks' aren't over yet, not for me at least, there's enough of an implication there to satisfy this listener.

Or maybe it's a shorter word, one that rhymes with, er… Yeah, I think I'll step away from that one!

I bought and listened to the album all the way through, turned up loud enough to enjoy it as I'm imagining the band intended (and then turned down a bit for this old man's ears.) I was struck first by how the passage of time hasn't dulled my inability to discern the actual lyrics of a song; but it's not a criticism, there's enough there to keep me interested.

The second thing that struck me relates to some of the melodies; I'm sure there's some Talking Heads (I'm a fan) and a bit of Kosheen too. Perhaps if I listen some more I'll find more, but is that perhaps missing the point? Naah, is it bollocks: Music is Music!

Suffice it to say that, whilst I'm drawn to the obvious parallels with the Sex Pistols (yes, I'm that old but wasn't a fan at the time) this isn't a rehash, doesn't seen like an homage. It's shiny and new. Ok not shiny, it's spiky stuff this.

I'm emphatically no music reviewer, but I do know what I like. 'Young Dumb And Full Of…' by Cabbage thus gains Baz's seal of approval, is rated 10/10 for the timely (and in some respects timeless) music and for dragging me out of my 1977-to-early-nineties musical comfort zone.

Ta Cabbage.

*Why yes, it is in fact the hated Sun misjudging our cultural history.

I know I shouldn't but I did; I watched the BBC politics Q&A programme 'Question Time'. Brexit was discussed of course, and one particular commenter stood out.

Now I know I shouldn't categorise an entire voting side by the actions of one woman, but it's a telling thing she said; I'm paraphrasing here:

"I was going to vote Remain but changed my mind and voted to Leave. The day before I went into the supermarket and the bananas were all straight."

Now I know she's referring to an EU regulation stating that the fruit must be straight, a certain minimum size, probably to ensure commonality of packaging and to cut the cost of imports and…

It's all bollocks when viewed from any perspective, and has been since the worldwide ridicule dumped on the EU after it temporarily appeared on the statute books, before being withdrawn in 2008. So how the heck can she claim all the bananas were straight during June 2016‽ I've never, ever, seen a straight banana, but I'm not going to pretend I'm the ultimate arbiter of truth here.

She should be more concerned about the ridiculous waste imposed by our supermarkets' insistence that they pay the farmers peanuts whilst mandating perfect produce to meet a requirement they say consumers demand but which, when challenged, they can provide zero evidence of.

Nothing at all to do with the hated European Union's oppressive regulation.

So, are we living back in the nineteen-fifties yet?