Where Silas Was Born in Rhode Island

This was the production studio where Silas was born in 2006 and there is a Mac Pro on each end of the desk, one running Windows temporarily for Second Life and the other with two monitors for video production.  The laptop was used for anything else.

The music kit is on the rack to the left and the instruments were behind all this.

The house is on Scarborough Road in Pawtucket, a city within Providence, Rhode Island.

(Ed: you were named after a street?)

The other choice was porno movies and I could have been Silas St Cyr (shrug).


The house was repo-ed when I got sick and, after ten years at Citizens Bank, I was doubled up on a cheap futon and could only eat chicken broth.  What did I ever care about a gall bladder and this was the discovery of how bad it gets when one breaks.  No-one did anything except my sisters who came up to help and got me to the hospital for emergency surgery.  Citizens Bank didn't care; I'm not money and I'm worth nothing.

Citizens Bank and Liberty Mutual stabbed me square in the back and they probably didn't believe me either but it's now eight years later and I'm barely standing.  Crying wolf, my dyin' ass.  I knew it then and I know it now.

Almost everything went.  House, retirement ... almost everything.  The only part retained was a chunk of the music kit and the absolute contempt for the cowardly bastards who did not support me and instead only made excuses for themselves.  My life went down the toilet because of some self-important clerk at Liberty Mutual and that's so completely Vonnegut or Gilliam.

There is no anger toward them; they aren't worthy of my contempt.


Attorneys, several, I contacted after that advised me it was pointless to sue because their legal fine print would boil me alive, what you need to do is file for Social Security.  Welcome to America.

This sort of thing happens constantly and the death panels aren't in Washington but in the insurance companies where they show no more remorse for what they do than those who bomb the Middle East for amusing sport and profit.


This is not a case against Americans as individually many are reasonably cool but put them together and you get the most aggressive military power on the planet with less morality than the average desert scorpion.  They made a hero out of American Sniper who killed people from a mile away and was always home in time for cocktail hour.  You may remember another sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the U.S. Marines trained him too.

The U.S. Army trained me to be a reasonably good shooter and I'm so immeasurably fucking grateful for an egregiously-useless 'skill.'

Note: I have never wanted a weapon and have never owned one.  The only time I was ever attacked on the street was by a bunch of punks on Calhoun Street who jumped me and beat the shit out of me. A gun would have been SO helpful since the obvious answer is to shoot and kill fifteen or twenty people.

(Ed:  the weapon would keep them at bay!)

Bullshit.  One goes high and the other goes low to make me go down.  They take the gun and then I'm dead by my own weapon.  They would likely get off on self-defense for that since I was the one originally pointing the gun.


I continue to work on "My Heart Will Go On" but that's not for America, far and away the most soulless, God-forsaken wasteland on the planet.  Cat already has it since I can send files via Skype.  The one she got was only the first work-up which has a problem with the arrangement a little bit after the modulation toward the end of the song.

The problem comes because verse / chorus repeats are not correct.  That can be fixed by further review.  This is not an analog recording but rather 90% MIDI so there is excellent potential for fixing this via cut & paste.

(Ed:  you seriously call that music?)

If you look back, I don't believe I did call it music; it simply amuses me to do it and I can.  Only wimps buy their tracks.  If you want to be convincing, play the parts for the track yourself or record real friends with whom you play.  I didn't play the music on "Officer, My Girlfriend Let the Cat eat Me Bacon" but I did 'compose' it and a boatload of people have watched that one.



Whirli Placebo was talking of a 'concert' he heard in Second Life in which the first song was in perfect tune throughout but the guitar was out-of-tune for the next one.

(Ed:  so what?)

The songs were pre-recorded.  The musician was only a disk jockey, admittedly for his or her own music, and some unknown number of venue owners don't know or can't tell the difference.  Relatively few of the venue owners have any real musical management background and most of them are glorified clerks who do nothing more than tracking recording dates for gigs.  Why should they do more because the venue owners are the stars and the musicians are only the method to get that way.  That phenomenon is all over Second Life.


Cat has a made new world and has always had the knack for finding the most progressive acts in Second Life.  She has gone out into a whole new world and she made all of it herself.  What do you know, sometimes she gets attacked for it.  It's dangerous on the edge but she accepts that because it's the only way to participate in that kind of music and nobody but nobody wants to hear "My Heart Will Go On" (larfs).  However, if you do it as a reggae song, for example, that may intrigue her because she will want to know if you can turn that sentimental piece of crap into something compelling.

There is no chance I will do the song live and performing is questionable anyway but, any time I step up, it's real or there's no point in coming to the show.  That's true for every musician who plays there and she has found some great ones.

(Ed:  too bad you're not one of them!)

Yah, tragic isn't it (sob).

(Ed:  there are MIDI musicians in the Circus on a regular basis!)

Yah, but there's a difference, Dagwood; all of it's original and it's not just from a MIDI chart anyway.

Note:  see Ableton Push / Live for more on that.