iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 08/10/2026

I have a confession to make: I’ve never listened to this album before. Wait, wait! Hear me out.

The cover of The Smashing Pumpkins 1995 double-album opus MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS, featuring a woman in a dress emerging from a star amidst a background of planets

David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 04/08/2026

Watched IN A VIOLENT NATURE a couple of nights ago. @davidgreenwriter.bsky.social if you haven’t seen it, this thing is incredibly Friday The 13th-coded. Brutally violent, stupidly funny and the scenery and diegetic sound are honestly beautiful. Loved it.

Movie poster for IN A VIOLENT NATURE, showing a masked killer wielding a hook.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 21/07/2026

This is probably the most niche joke I’ve ever made. Major props to you if you get it.

A black t-shirt design for the band Deerhoof featuring the midnight dinner scene from the film Goodfellas, in which Joe Pesci asks to borrow a carving knife to cut a deer’s hoof out of his car grille

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 12/07/2026

@octothorpecast.bsky.social We live just off Great Western Road in Glasgow so we are absolutely not short of wanky coffee places near us - which reminded me of this Modern Toss cartoon:

A yellow greeting card and blue envelope. On the card is a drawing of 2 men on a high street, with several coffee shops around them. One man is saying to the other, ‘Excuse me, is there anywhere round here I can’t get a coffee?’

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 26/02/2026

Also watched Shinya Tsukamoto’s 1989 film TETSUO: THE IRON MAN last night, again for the first time since I was 19 and trying to be edgy. Bonkers. Bizarre. Brilliant. The very thinnest concept of a plot, so little dialogue you almost don’t even need subtitles, and jaw-dropping special effects.

Movie poster for TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989) - a man’s face, blue-tinged, faces left, surrounded by metal cogs

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 26/02/2026

Watched Neil Marshall’s excellent 2005 cave-horror movie THE DESCENT last night for the first time in probably 20 years. Forgot just how effective it is - the scares scare, the practical effects are brilliant (broken shin bone moment anyone?) and it’s claustrophobic as all hell.

Movie poster for THE DESCENT (2005). A black background has a thin, blue, misty-looking line leads down to a woman’s face, looking to camera.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 19/01/2026

TW: spiders. I watched POSSUM last night for the first time. What a movie. Can’t stop thinking about it. At once absolutely terrifying and horribly sad. Actually screamed at one point. It’s outstanding.

Image of the poster for POSSUM: it shows a spider crawling out of a doctor’s type bag on a bed.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 23/12/2025

My essay THE ROOM YOU MUST NOT ENTER got actually published in a real live book entitled DARKEST MARGINS and now I am having a small meltdown thank you bye

The book DARKEST MARGINS rests on a wooden table, along with swatches of fabric worn on-screen by Lady Gaga in AHS: HOTEL.

The front page of my essay THE ROOM YOU MUST NOT ENTER, examining queer representation in AHS: HOTEL and DAHMER

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 30/10/2025

Hope everyone has a great time at World FantasyCon! Sadly we won’t be there but please enjoy this picture I took of the sky in Glasgow this morning:

Sunrise feat. an orange/dark blue sky, against which are silhouetted two church spires

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 19/10/2025

Currently reading, among other things, THE GONE-AWAY WORLD by @nickharkaway.com - a book which I described to a friend as being like if China Miéville and Dylan Thomas wrote a book together set in a post-apocalyptic North of England. It’s big, it’s staggeringly smart, and it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Cover of THE GONE-AWAY WORLD by Nick Harkaway, featuring white text (The Gone-Away World) above a red paint splatter in more or less a straight line bisecting the cover, beneath which the author’s name is written, again in white. The background is black.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 02/09/2025

If anyone here is already thinking about #Shocktober - here’s my current list. Enjoy! 🍁🎃👻

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 14/08/2025

Went to see WEAPONS last night. Amy Madigan is an unhinged revelation. Julia Garner is sublime. Benedict Wong is perfect. Josh Brolin plays the grieving father role with a rare kind of conviction. The whole thing is a sort of insane delight. Not perfect, but close.

Against a dark blue-grey nighttime background, several silhouetted children run away from camera, their arms outstretched at their sides. Beneath the children, the word WEAPONS is in bright red capital letters.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 31/07/2025

The Phobia Files - SPIDERS is live! Alive, and skittering across your eyeballs… davidbamford.me/2025/07/31/S...

A dark red background, on which black text reads SPIDERS.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 16/07/2025

TRIGGER WARNING FOR ATTACHED PHOTO - SPIDER Ready for more from #ThePhobiaFiles? Something is coming… 31.07 What are you afraid of?

Black and white still from the video game LIMBO. A small child stands, facing to the right of the screen, on a platform over some water and a slight drop. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, a HUGE spider is crawling towards him from behind.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 02/07/2025

You too can consider the wet smack of flesh hitting concrete from a starting point hundreds (thousands?) of feet up by reading HEIGHTS, the first instalment of my new horror blog #ThePhobiaFiles at the link in my bio. What are you afraid of?

On a red background, black type reads ‘The Phobia Files’

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 01/07/2025

#ThePhobiaFiles launched yesterday and the first instalment has already had some great feedback. Check it out at davidbamford.me - new writing coming on the last day of every month!

On a red background, the word HEIGHTS. is written in black type.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 29/06/2025

Hey @tammylc.bsky.social - got a set of four of these for Christmas, had the first one (Gordon’s pink gin) last night and tbh it was pretty gross. Don’t suppose you do a ‘What We’re Rage-Drinking This Week’ segment on the podcast do you? (Obviously joking about this but it was still gross)

Three tiny bottles of pink gin/gin liqueur from (l-r) Whitley Neill, Greenalls and Edinburgh Gin.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 05/06/2025

Want a sneak peek at the first entry in #ThePhobiaFiles? Comment below with your greatest fear! 🏙️🏙️🏙️

On a red background, black text reads #ThePhobiaFiles coming 2025, what are you afraid of?

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 04/06/2025

An influx of new followers - hello! A great time to remind everyone that the first instalment of #ThePhobiaFiles - my horror blog about fears and phobias - will be landing before the end of June.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 12/05/2025

Doing a few at once: Teens insufficiently killed a guy Maybe don’t watch the video Shoulda stuck to the map Whatever, I’ve got another foot Inaccurately remembered Friday The 13th

Green background with skeleton beneath with raised arms. Caption reads ‘Describe a horror movie in 5 words or less and let’s see who can guess what it is’.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 03/05/2025

‘I thought to enter the room, I could have slipped through the door, I felt the burden of murder, it shook the earth to the core. Felt like the world was collapsing - then we heard him speak: “Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?”’

The Sound of Music's Sister Maria regales the Von Trapp children with an acoustic guitar rendition of La Dispute’s King Park on an Austrian mountaintop

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 23/04/2025

Really in the mood for some big, sprawling epic fantasy so have picked THE GRACE OF KINGS by Ken Liu. Perfect (I hope) for losing myself in on a long haul flight.

Cover of THE GRACE OF KINGS by Ken Liu, showing a metal armour helmet with a dandelion on top of it against a black background

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 28/03/2025

You: Powers restored! *haircut selfie* Me: Powers restored!

Cover of the new Deafheaven album LONELY PEOPLE WITH POWER, featuring a lady leaning in the window of a red car, in which a child sits.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 21/03/2025

‘iya. What’s happening this weekend? Lego building, emails to send, holiday planning. Oh and this is my face. In case you forgot. Have a good one!

A man with a beard (me) in a green t-shirt looking at the camera. I have a visible tattoo on my right arm. My shirt is kind of crumpled and the walls of the room are painted green. There is a painting on the wall of a man fishing surrounded by greenery.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 20/03/2025

Alt text contains spoilers for the movie AUDITION, but given it came out 26 years ago, if you were gonna watch it you’d probably have done so by now.

Image of the villain from the movie AUDITION, a Japanese women called Asami. She has long black hair and is wearing a black and white shirt and long black gloves and holds a length of piano wire. The title of the movie FOOTLOOSE is emblazoned over the image.

SPOILERS FOR AUDITION BELOW

In Audition, the climax of the movie comes when Asami cuts a man’s foot off with piano wire.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 18/03/2025

Started HIGH-RISE INVASION last night. If you want a show which is essentially THE RAID meets BATTLE ROYALE you’ve come to the right place.

3 people on top of a skyscraper, on the left a man in a mask smokes a cigarette while holding a machine gun, in the middle a man holds a sledgehammer across his own shoulders and on the right a young girl stands looking at the masked man.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 16/03/2025

Next up is THE QUEEN by Nick Cutter. This man’s work is reliably disgusting, body horror-focused and breakneck paced. If you’ve slept on him so far, wake up. Start with THE TROOP. #booksky #nickcutter #thequeen #horror

Cover of THE QUEEN by Nick Cutter, showing a woman’s face with a wasp on her cheek.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 04/03/2025

I want to make The Phobia Files as fun, engaging, relatable and, ultimately, scary as possible. Please bear with me - something is coming. You can’t see it, not yet. But you can hear its raspy breaths, the soft click-drag of its lurching footsteps. You can sense it gaining on you. Can’t you?

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 28/02/2025

So grateful to have been able to see TOUCHÉ AMORÉ, pretty much my favourite band, for the nth time last night. Jeremy Bolm’s writing is so beautiful and vulnerable and wonderful. Genuinely one of my heroes.

Jeremy Bolm of the LA post-hardcore band Touché Amoré. Jeremy has a shaved head and is holding a microphone in his right hand and is singing into it, he wears a black t-shirt and black trousers. Both his arms are tattooed.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 22/02/2025

As is my wont, I’m on a deep dive into Kendrick Lamar’s back catalogue and I’ve finally reached DAMN., his 2017 album. I listened to this a few years back without really knowing who he was or having heard anything else by him, and didn’t get it. Now, taken in context, I appreciate it so much.

The cover of Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 album, DAMN. Kendrick is a Black man with his head bowed slightly, looking into the camera. He has cornrowed hair and is wearing a white t-shirt. He is standing in front of a red brick wall. The album title, DAMN., is in big red capital letters above his head.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 09/02/2025

The 3rd woman to ever win Best Rap Album at the Grammys, and only lost out on Song of the Year to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ - and 5 years ago she got fired from her day job and had no industry experience or contacts. Doechii is 26. Proof positive that you can do ANYTHING you want. #motivation

Cover for Doechii’s 2024 album ALLIGATOR BITES NEVER HEAL. Doechii, a Black woman, is sitting in a wooden u-shaped chair on the right hand side of the picture, wearing a white blouse and green tartan-print skirt, white and beige knee-length socks and black shoes. Her braided hair falls over her left shoulder. She has earrings in, and is looking straight to camera. The chair she sits in is on a patterned Persian-style rug, which is on a wooden floor. She is holding an albino alligator, which is side-on to camera, facing to her right. The wall behind her is dark, forest green in colour.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 31/01/2025

‘Habeas Corpus- the right to your own body. How you choose to decorate it, who you wanna love with it and what you wanna put inside it ain’t nobody else’s fuckin’ business.’ Gig 2 of 2025 was HAYSEED DIXIE - a welcome antidote to the state of the world right now.

Hayseed Dixie. 4 men (l-r) in a vest with a guitar, a vest with a banjo, a brightly coloured shirt and hat with a guitar, and one in dungarees with his back turned holding a ukelele

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 29/01/2025

Gig #1 of 2025:  CATTLE DECAPITATION at SWG3. Vegan death-grind songs about the evils of the meat industry. Revolting lyrics. Disgusting imagery. Absolutely incredible.

Cattle Decapitation, a death-grind band from the USA

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 27/01/2025

‘Muscular’. Dude looks like he’d snap in a light breeze but ok. Surprised he got out of his couch long enough to wanna debate real Catholic teaching, like I know it says wearing mixed fabrics is a sin but I’m pretty sure fucking them is too so maybe take a seat my guy (but not on a couch).

JD Vance attempting coolness by posing outside wearing sunglasses in the dark on a flimsy-legged chair against a background of timber logs while holding a big machine gun (possibly an AR-15, I don’t know guns sorry). Needless to say, from the above description his attempt at coolness has already failed miserably. Caption reads ‘The Catholic Vance will give liberal bishops a challenge they aren’t used to: a young, appealing, intelligent, articulate and muscular counterpoint to the effeminate (but fading) ecclesiastical zeitgeist of the 60s. He likely has a far better grasp of *real* Catholic social teaching.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 25/01/2025

Current listen: END - ‘Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face’ Members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Counterparts, Blacklisted and others. Brilliant metallic/melodic hardcore.

Artwork for the END album ‘Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face’ - a haunted, skeletal human figure in yellows and browns beset on all sides by splinters and shards aimed at their face

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 25/01/2025

On this #caturday have a pic of George, a stray cat we didn’t own who nonetheless walked into our house and demanded treats and pets when we lived in Manchester. This went on for a few years. I miss him.

Pic of George, a handsome black and white cat sitting on top of a shed in a garden

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 22/01/2025

‘Too much grease is bad for you. I read it in a fitness magazine someone left on the bus.’ THE GREASY STRANGLER. Imagine if The League of Gentlemen and Rik Mayall wrote a serial killer movie. This is the most batshit insane film I’ve seen in years. You’ll never eat grapefruit again.

A gold framed painting of Big Ronnie and Big Brayden, lead characters in THE GREASY STRANGLER, the title of which is spray painted in pink across the picture. Ronnie has white hair and wears a grey and black striped shirt, Brayden wears a mustard yellow roll neck sweater.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 21/01/2025

‘I’d hate to be so old I have to live in a retirement home. I’d hate that. Being old.’ REPLACE. If I described a movie as being like THE SUBSTANCE meets ORPHAN BLACK, you might assume it was good. You would be wrong. Script: bad. Acting: not great. Coherence: No. Gimme that 95 minutes back please.

A young woman looks at the viewer while peeling dead skin from her face. The picture is blue and purple-hued. The movie title REPLACE is in white below the woman’s neckline.

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 20/01/2025

No cheating, your last saved celebrity pic is your therapist. Welp, guess I’m screwed.

Black and white image of David Lynch against a grey background

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David ‘Obligatory Seasonal Name Change’ Bamford 🎃 @davidbamford.me · 20/01/2025

‘I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Do you?’ THANKSGIVING. A film paying homage to classic teen slasher movies (one scene is carved straight out of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER) and having a bloody brilliant time in so doing. Gross, funny and slick. Get it watched.

A masked pilgrim in a traditional pilgrim costume carrying an axe.

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