inquiry

> my friend (the same one who made the Sgt Pepper tape for > me in 96) was once the KSHE95 “Listener of the Day” > for this reason or that that very same year. He was pretty > pumped and got a t-shirt, stickers, etc. But, we used to > dial-in via rotary phone at 2 AM to request music in the > early-90s and try to find the most obscure songs we could > to see if they would play them, and they always would! I > even still remember the phone # for KSHE (which I will > not post for privacy reasons).

I wanted to be a DJ pretty badly as a kid, to the point of obtaining a cheap AM (radio band) transmitter from Radio Shack, and figuring out how to direct feed stereo outputs into it. Grant it, its reach was maybe a couple houses away from ours, but the imagination Mister Rogers told us about made it seem way better than that.

Lotsa rain in these parts, the last 24 hours. Loving it.

Employee review, today. A pair of utterly independent bearers of conceptuality disease shall pretend to understand each other. They won't, but they'll become convinced they do by the power of re-petition making re-al.

That probably doesn't sound like it makes much sense to you.

EXACTLY....

I guess that's where I oscillate between this blogging activity seeming fun, and seeming like a complete waste of time. No one will ever understand what I do, the way I do, for their bout with conceptuality disease will have developed independent of mine, leading to gobs of different meanings, meaning nuances, and important concept interconnects. We could use the same words pronounced exactly the same, but meaning remains utterly personal.

In a way, it seems a miracle we're not in a perpetual state of war given that state of affairs' conduciveness to misunderstanding.

<later>

Review session with the boss went fairly well. It would seem they still like me.

> We can't even agree on proven facts like the Earth is > round, or Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building > (provoked by Trump and other leaders); both are proven on > multiple videos, photos, eye-witness accounts, etc. How > can we have any kind of rational discussion or come to > any sort of understanding when we can't even agree on the > basic fundamentals?

Because what one ego considers fundamentals, egos consider carefully concealed bias? Because people lie? And etc.

> Furthermore, how can we have any meaningful dialog when > we don't respect each other?

We can't. Period.

Egos – being isolated conceptuality islands rooted in the notion of an separate/individual “I” – never have and never will respect other egos. Egos maybe sorta kinda sometimes tolerate other egos when perceiving a personal benefit in doing do. But that's it. (And don't forget that tolerance is essentially a lie, a silent “fuck you” parading as a smile, if you will....)

> I just got back from the 'rents, and while I was over > there, I looked through their old CD's (they don't even > have a CD player anymore), and I discovered two(2) compact > discs that I would actually want to borrow, so I borrowed > them: The Beatles 67-70 (double-CD). I will give it a spin > (literally) after I finish my coffee (which I made as soon > as I walked in the door).

Oh, <any deity>, what a gem!

Back in olden times, yours truly managed to win both the “62-66” compilation and the “67-70” compilation on separate “Be caller number <whatever>!” calls... was even “live on the air” for one of them, I'm pretty sure my dad and sister hearing me in the car.

Anyway, they were huge wins for a Beatles fan that could scarcely afford a single album, let alone a pair of doubles.

I managed to also snag Steppenwolf's “Hour of the Wolf” in a third such win.

(In case you're rolling your eyes whilst screaming “CAKE WALK!” at the point, that was on a rotary-dial phone, so we're talking some pretty damned serious dialing skills, here.... ;–) )

> Penny Lane is a magical song (which I may have heard > once before)

I'm pretty sure they made an “official video” for that one too.

> Enjoy the Newport, my friend :)

Did, thank you!

Can't tell you how happy I am it's Thursday and not yet Friday.

And it's not that anything particularly odious is set to occur Friday. I mean, it'll be mostly fun when the grandchildren visit beginning Friday night for a couple days, which sounds like it'll include kayaking, which I've not done in ages. They're not even staying with us, but leveraging the rental for it not having paying guests scheduled. The dread is more that I almost always dread planned events due to how “Murphy” lurks – if not loves to pounce, and to beat well past the horse being dead.

So, okay, shit can happen in serendipitous contexts as well. But such contexts don't have the weight of expectations hanging over them, little to no points of comparison. How can something go “wrong” when what it would mean to be “right” isn't pre-defined/invoked?

<later>

Ugh. Slogging through some required “professional development” for work. Classic yadda yadda let's believe in and worship the latest rah rah verbiage/acronyms. Endless Dilbert. Oh, to be one of The Elect, i.e. one whose job is to talk, and only to talk. And everyone's amazed because they have to be, because the talker can either decide their financial fate, or people one wishes to impress are glassy-eyed mystified to the point of idolatry. “So and so is just SOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOD...”, and etc.

But in the final analysis, it's just words and more words, which anyone with at least half a brain understands don't mean shit until a work-to-meaning-mapping-context (i.e. an alleged individual mind) percolates 'em into... well, all this! And more! And beyond!

> when you master > the mind > and find your peace > inside > then everything becomes exquisite.

Gosh, the tingling coincidence of having read something so similar last night.

> Not referencing those who are victims of violence – > that is different. I am referring to many I see (online, > offline, communicate with IRL and correspond with > digitally) who always have a bone to pick about this or > that. People who are otherwise kind and cordial to your > face, who know how to be pleasant and kind – but give > those fxxx'ers an account on the Internet, and may all > Hell on Earth let loose for those who cross them.

I guess I fall into that category too often – not that I set out to do it.

How to explain?

I guess when I really think about it, it's that my “craw” slowly degenerates into the online thing never quite rising to what I imagine it could be. And I'm impatient as fuck.

But I should know better after all these decades to expect what I bring to “do it” for others to the point of volley.

> And this, this is the Golden Reason why I never use social > media (anymore). It's a hate fest that everyone thinks > they have to participate in.

I quit Facebook quite a while ago, basically a day or two after an exchange (I want to say it (then?) was in an “off the timeline” place in Facebook for longer form interaction), in which a guy from high school a couple years older than I (whom I was really happy to have met again) was relentless in mowing me down over a few political opinions – which, interestingly enough, eventually morphed more in the direction of his point(s) of view.

(I'm vaguely remembering the “timeline” shifting from being purely time-based to whatever was better for their advertising revenue playing a role in my disappointment as well.)

Being a sort of mathematical inverse of longform, Twitter never did anything me to begin with.

> I've been reading R.w.a while away, lots of neat stuff to > read, but I definitely didn't feel the same without adding > to it. And thanx for the read on the mini music rigs post, > was fun to write! :)

I've been down various audiophile paths for over 50 years. I've lost track of the number of times along the way I thought I'd hit upon a “final solution”.

But this world is a lot more about gadgetry entropy and/or obsolescence than solving my audio yearnings.

Oh, the combinations of discrete devices.. the digital solutions that never lasted, requiring endless re-conversions, re-getting files from one device to the next – complete with discovering inadequacies that kept screaming “how come no one else ever wants to do this the way I want to?”.

So now I've a few albums, but tons of CDs/DVDs, devices littered with <deity> knows what.

Many efforts to “put it all in one place”, to “archive” along the way... but, again, the entropy, little bits of slop amplified by forgetfulness.

The final solution became the guitar (and, to some degree, the keyboard). I hear mostly what I learn to play, the way I play it. Feels way less passive. And it was nice to see the cream (i.e. the songs I really like) collect and blossom into immediate joy so long as a guitar/keyboard were in reach.

> I know you're somewhere round about where I am

A little over 300 miles away to the north.

> did you experience the Tropical Depression the past several > days? We had power outages here, mini floods, downed limbs, > tornado-like weather, the whole bit. I like crazy weather, > though, so it fit me just fine.

Nothing super overly dramatic. Power might have gone out once, but we're lucky this new place came with a “Generac” (sp?), which kicks in so fast that most of the electronic clocks don't even miss a beat.

It's been on the cool side, but I'm loving that at this age (60). Had it been 80F instead of 70F, I'm not sure I'd have lived to type this had yesterday's exercise in trying to trim down the trunk of a tree (we had felled in spring) with a chain saw. I don't know how many times I walked away convinced I was on the verge of a heart attack attempting to force the blank into that rather dense – and still sappy wet – hunk 'o wood.

The goal was to make it possible to place a circular, metal firepit boundary around the trunk.

I succeeded, but not without serious pain bleeding well into today – never mind having to restore the chain probably six times for it coming off at key junctures – not a fun endeavor for someone that doesn't enjoy things becoming above-average messy, which I didn't realize in advance would be unavoidable for a chain that's perpetually oiled by the chainsaw, meaning taking it apart and putting it back together involved becoming covered in oily blogs of wood chips.

> Hope you're good :)

Um, yeah.. overall. I'm missing my wife at the moment. She's over at the rental, showing it off to friends. I just didn't have the energy after yesterday, a day of mentally-intense software work, and varieties of chores.

It's funny (in a “coincidentally” sense): the way you describe living seems essentially where I was at after a failed marriage, then another failed relationship, leading to living with my brother for a spell. My existence was mostly confined to a bedroom there, sans possessions that wouldn't fit in my Honda Civic. So I was rather in the minimalism zone, forever in the hunt for digital replacements for what seemed like arduous real-world componentry.

So “suprise, suprise, suprise” (you know what that's from?) that I'd find your ongoing life account so, well, “just right”. :–)

My brother and I had a great time together in that period, though. Oddly, he bought the house off my sister, so it was already familiar. And wouldn't you know the motherfuck was locate directly across the street from where my high school girlfriend and her husband (who just so happened to be a best high school friend..) lived.

I think I interacted them just precisely once due to it being shrouded in discomfort for everyone. I mean, I didn't care personally, because I tend to find humor (per my tastes) in the like, but I could tell it was weird for them to be there, especially with their kids present....

<reaches for the last Newport>

(that would be Jameson, btw)

Dang, no sooner did the above leave my fingertips than big raindrops began falling... super briefly, but enough with visual threat in the sky to have me scampering the stuff I brought outside to more well-covered territory. There's still vestiges of drop impacts on the screen.

Oh, wow, the word 'screen' brought back memories of that terminal multiplexer, before tmux hit my terminal joy scene. I'm picturing an old tower computer in my house in Upstate New York, the joy I had getting Linux running on it. Back in the 90's. I have to believe installing it easier these days.

But, then, I'd be crazy to fail to acknowledge the component of accomplishment in that joy.

It felt similar to earlier joy messing with electronica earlier in life. That's when I started believing in a world of possibility in computing – not so much what I could accomplish with software in some money-making way, but a hope software environments could be stimulating “fun to see what we can do with this” in what I imagined to be a less messy/arduous space.

Of course, I eventually learned of file/directory entropy, and how, just like in the “real world”, “out of sight” (e.g. “what file is/was that in????”) translated to a sort of annihilation of verbiage/code until finally found again (e.g. 'find', 'grep', or especially the twain combined).

And <deity> help you if you archived shit via a touch 'o the 'tar' and 'gzip'.

Well, that was the “stateside” aspect.

Another huge aspect was the socializing potential of the likes of USENET and IRC. It was easy to forget what people are really like whilst dreaming of making and regularly interacting with lots of new friends.

And that sort of happened.

<scampers off to escape more cloud piss>

> hiatus over (5 days in)

Welcome back. The “place” isn't nearly the same without ya.

> Overall, I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to > take the shot, and I feel much safer and happier knowing I > have an extra layer of protection against this disgusting > virus; but DAMN! I hate that the vaccine is giving me these > awful symptoms. Despite my awful symptoms, however, I would > STILL get it again if I needed to and I don't regret it.

Overall, I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to avoid the shot, and I feel much safer and happier knowing I have an extra layer of protection against reported – right here! – disgusting post-vaccine symptoms. I love that avoiding the vaccine avoids said symptoms. Despite it voiding my Cool Woke Kids™ card, I will continue to avoid them and I don't regret it.

<later>

> I feel a wee bit better today. I have a slight > runny/stuffed nose and a tiny cough, but other than that > I am pretty okay. The fatigue, sore throat, and hacking > cough are gone; and after 9 days of being “sick” I'm > very happy to have reached this point. I'm SO EXCITED to > get back to my Endeavor and normal activities, and I don't > regret getting the vaccine despite the hell I went through > this past week and a half!

Hey, that's great news!

> My history of mini music rigs

Fun read!

> I'm an author. I'm writing my third novel. I'm (god help > me) going to keep a running first draft on Write.as and > seek input from the Fediverse. If you're so inclined.

<rubs hands together quickly>

> There is also something comforting about the combination of > dusk, rain, whisky and a quiet house that helps some of my > background busy tension float away... and as it does, words > appear on the blog again for the first time in a few weeks.

Your writing is such that I wish you'd figuratively go full alcoholic. ;–)

> I do feel all possible sides must be addressed and > should be based on facts instead of assumptions as much > as possible

Now there's some serious humor.

> Got the feeling I am starting missing out more and more of > the logic of today’s world with events like this going > on day by day.

Seems way closer to self-centric madness than logic from this observation point.

Super fun night, after a brief disaster in which the main belt on the riding mower broke due to some stupidity on my behalf. But my wife happened to be at a store carrying such at the time, and the replacement instructions were fairly self-explanatory. So we're back to yardly groomed until further nature-reclamation notice.

Soooo still outside, nary a leaf quaking. And, what... lower 50F's? Heart.

Difficult discussion possibly headed our way after I awaken my wife and mention someone left both the garage door and the side house door to the garage unlocked overnight. Anyone could have walked in and had “their way”.

Oh, what a species....

Quite the weekend, complete with staging backyard scenes for the rental, the out to dinner with the couple professionals and a couple friends. Glorious!

<next morning>

I think the power went out a few times last night, making the backup generator seem well worth its weight in Bitcoin and/or whatev....

The Stratocaster with the looper is coming along quite nicely. Axis: bold as love, baby!

One of the fellows at last night's dinner out asked us at some point whether we thought COVID was real in light of our not getting vaccinated. And, you know, I want to believe it is. But so far I've only one relative that allegedly died of it, and even then those who reported that event were up to their ears in caveat a la it actually being something else allegedly stoked by da COVID.

So what am I supposed to believe having spend the last half a decade seeing people losing their shit in the midst of mass Fake-This-And/Or-That-Hallucination-Collectively-Murmured-Into-Reality-ishness™? I just plain don't believe most people anymore, especially those who claim to be The-Keepers-And/Or-Revealers-Of-Truth™ (aka “journalists”).

As always in religious contexts, must be nice to have such faith, despite things I've heard about The Vaccinated™ (looks a lot like The Woke™, no?) still being able to contract COVID, still able to pass it to others, etc., etc. (in other words, the world 'vaccine' constitutes misuse at best, pharmaceutical profiteering at the expense of others at worst...).

But one thing really cool about the situation is, like The Work™, The Vaccinated™ will shun you (FWIW, 'shun' is the old world religion term for what we now call 'cancel'...), meaning not having to listen so much to their clearly faith-rooted claims/“truth”. Sure, they'll probably be rounding me and others into concentration camps before the next U.S. presidential election, but hey... Woke's gotta do what Woke's gotta do!

> “come back”

Glorious!

> i am pretty sure i am just writing this stuff for myself, > because i dont know that anyone is actually reading these.

From time to time, primarily when it doesn't look too long. The dwindling attention span, you see.

> A man is the north pole. The magnetic north pole is > masculine because the magnetic field goes outwards from > it. The virile member, or the phallus, is the north pole. > > A woman is the south pole. The magnetic south pole > is feminine because the magnetic field goes inwards > towards the magnet. The uterus, or the vagina, is the > south pole. This behavior is similar to a virile member > inserted into the vagina.

Literally had a great time sharing those few sentences with my wife, a couple nights ago.... :–)

> The world needs people who can think.

Is there any other kind?

> Thinking is what separates us from animals.

Clearly for worse – indeed, they (the “animals”) and their habitat(s) have suffered it/us ever since.

> However, very few use this invaluable gift.

All mental is illness.

Don't believe it? Try its absence sometime.