What Really Happens in Iraq

The most interesting aspect of the current chaos in Iraq isn't the conflict between the Sunni and Shi'a Muslims but rather what is emerging with the Kurds.  As always, the White House is dealing with it poorly as right now the Iraqis choose their own destiny and it appears that there will be three ethnic states divided along the lines of what happened in Yugoslavia.  (RT: ​Real ‘Battle of Iraq’ is only beginning)

That the Sunni and the Shi'a Muslims will create their own states has been obvious but what hasn't been so clear has been the emergence of the Kurds and with strong support from Israel which was one of the first countries to do business with them for oil.

One thing we know is that the last time anyone united a bunch of Sunni Muslims, he wrote a book and became a god.  The Sunnis in Saudi Arabia (i.e. the ones united by Muhammad) are reputed to be supporting the Sunnis in ISIS so maybe the Muhammad in ISIS is only a sub-god.  If he does write a book or, better yet, find one in the desert, we assume it will create the Islamic equivalent of Mormonism.


RT has been a good source for this as the situation in Ukraine made it apparent how much the US news services lie.  They made all manner of charges against Putin but none of them were substantiated and none of them bore validation.  The charges Putin made were real and verifiable (e.g. the people burned in the Trade Unions Building, etc).  The model used for Ukraine was identical to that used to justify invading Iraq and not surprisingly as the same people did it.  That it was a different administration is irrelevant, they're all just tools.

Therefore I will continue to rely on Russia Today as an important source and an accurate source of news.  I'm told all the time by conservatives that it's propaganda but that only shows how afraid they are of truth.

Silas Stones Cat's Art MusikCircus

Going into the show at Cat's Art MusikCircus, my deal was that I must not even decide which chord / which key will start until the show is actually running.  This isn't a game with myself but rather a determined effort to try as much as possible to make everything in the set something that comes from right now.  The back tracks stopped working again and all I thought was so what.  They're good for spectacular stuff with lots of arrangement but they're boring as hell to use.

Now I watch out for the OGM factor (i.e. Old Guy Music) and that's stupid as it sucks or it doesn't but still I'm thinking sometimes, damn, that's some shit some old guy would play.  I really don't know as I have not been an old guy before so it's a new way to be neurotic about something.


The GR-20 guitar synth did not make an appearance but the new plan is to get to Guitar Center on Saturday.   The sounds it makes are incredibly beautiful so it's worth a few words on it ... but ... it's so beautiful that you can end up with something like what you will hear from paint artists sometimes:  oh, you just like the colors.  You're thinking, well, it's a painting.  There's nothing else there.  Then the artist leaps to his feet, slashes the painting and shrieks, "I need artists but they send me proles," and then he storms off to either find some coffee or commit suicide.

It's not an artsy fartsy consideration and it's a significant part of why Voodoo or lefty chooses deliberately to play with very little effect.  They work very hard to preserve the native purity of the sound of the guitar.  I suspect they would readily agree that you can make the sound of an instrument so beautiful that one really does become preoccupied with the colors rather than the story.  For my own taste, that's what I want as I have embellished the sound of the guitar in all manner of ways.  The trick is to do that while retaining what I consider to be the pure sound of the guitar.  This is very dry but a tremendous amount of thought goes into this by just about everyone who ever played.

Much of what I play is the reverse of the thinking that there is any story.  My thinking is not nihilist as I believe the story writes itself as it goes along but a very big part of my thinking is that nothing is preordained and this is what drives the importance of music that comes from now.  It not only shouldn't be pre-recorded, it mustn't.  There has to be compromise as you need to bring some kind of riffs in your head or you'll have nothing to play.  There's no possibility beyond Twelve Tones of Mad then.

There were only a few things tonight in which anything was pre-recorded.  One of them was "There's Something about Marigolds" and it's such a simple thing (e.g. D-C-G) but it can be beautiful.  My songs often have silly names but they're not trivial to me as people overlook marigolds because they smell and this in the same way as someone may overlook a mutt be cause you just have to take home a dog with a pedigree.  That's a big deal to me as it happens all the time yet there's nothing in this world that will love you like a mutt.  Pedigrees just bite you!  Plus their health is not as good, they're dispositions almost never are, and they cost a fortune.  Who wouldn't want that.

Disclaimer:  what you do with your own music is your own trip.  Whether you use back tracks or play a kazoo, I don't care.  It's good or it sucks.  I don't like commercial tracks as someone says she 'jams' ... with someone she never even met.  wtf?  As to anything else, let's hear it.  I was listening to a Turkish pop rock band from the sixties earlier.  I really am interested.


There was a first in putting an entire show on the Ride the Dragon podcast as I had never seriously considered doing that before.  So it happened ... and within twenty-four hours I had done it again in sending the entire audio stream for the RacerX Gullwing party to him.  Most unusual.  That seems the way of things but there are two problems:  I will run out of space on the server and / or I will get busted for using too much bandwidth.  I don't yet know whether people have been listening to it and will need to check before deciding anything on uploads from this show.

The set felt pretty good.  There's a generic volume problem in which it suddenly gets louder in a set and I've danced with this for some while.  There's no way I'm going to use headphones and it's an endless dance trying to get room audio to work.  Nevertheless, it was feeling good.  Cat said it sounded good and later on so did Yevette.  Those are credible reviews so I'm pleased with the show.

Moog Theremini - A Huge Leap Forward (video)

The theremin is an extremely strange instrument and the upgrade by Moog doesn't make it less strange but it does add a whole lot of interesting features.  The demo will tell it better than words can.




The unit sells for $299 US and that's pretty impressive when a home-made old style theremin would cost at least $100 US on eBay.  The value in the Moog Theremini is that it's professionally-made, it has a large array of sounds it can make, it has a great many connection ports (e.g. MIDI), and multiple other features all of which are impossible on an old style theremin.

Getting a Faith Buzz on Reefer

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Cheech and Chong showed everyone about getting high.  There will be clouds and clouds of smoke and people will eat Pop Tarts a lot.  There is no question of the Great God Mescalito's presence at such times.

There isn't much smoke from a vape ... but that's ok as I don't particularly like Pop Tarts.

There may be the temptation to return to the sin of incinerating the reefer so you can actually see the smoke and confirm the Presence.  This is not necessary and is an unseemly offense against the leaf as you need only trust your Faith.

There is not much smoke but there are lots of IRMs (Invisible Reefer Molecules) in the air from a vape and these will fry the bejeebers right out of your frontal lobes ... but ... you must have Faith.  You must persist.  You must trust in the Great God Mescalito that the IRMs are really there.

One cannot touch IRMs.  One cannot see IRMs.  One cannot hear IRMs.  But place your Faith in the Great God Mescalito and his vape and your stone monkey will forget all about eating bananas.


Remember, just as the Great God Mescalito wanted it, the Silver Surfer vape is Made Entirely in America.  Reefer is grown by, sold by, and consumed by proud Americans.  We are proud of what we do for the economy of this great land.  We are proud of contributing to the tax base supporting schools, hungry little kids with big eyes, and ducks and bunnies.  This is what made America great:  reefer.


Also remember, the Great God Mescalito says don't think about vaping and driving.  You don't need fookin' Taco Bell that bad.

The First Time I Attempted Suicide

This is not a suicide threat as a suicide at this stage of life isn't a statement but rather a joke.

The Y2K problem was great fun for late-night talk show people but the reality is that the problem was immense, particularly on IBM mainframes where some of the code had been written decades earlier and no-one could even find the source.  There is incredibly-elaborate software to manage application programs now but there are many that were written before that software existed.

This is the realm of Things That Can Never Change.  We hear all the time of such Things, that this or that cannot possibly change.

The date on a mainframe is stored in a four-byte field using the packed decimal format.  Prior to 2000, the date could always be discovered by using only the rightmost three bytes and the year was always in the second byte from the left ... until the year 2000 when that byte rolled down to zero and all programs that performed arithmetic using date fields exploded.

Over the years, programmers had started using shortcuts to refer to the date.  The year is always in that one byte so all I need to fetch is that and I'm all set.  Others would fetch only three bytes, etc.  While these techniques had some marginal benefit in reducing coding, they had the long-term effect of creating, excuse the pun, time bombs.  As soon as the fourth byte comes into use for the year, all of those programs break.  If those programs are running in a bank then you have a Bona Fide Situation.

Y2K was an event that was predictable from the advent of the Gregorian Calendar and yet it turned into a full-tilt international panic with people working overtime, week-ends, and doing all manner of ludicrous tests to ensure everything still worked on The Following Day.

After over twenty years of mind-crushing computer exercises and massive hours to learn systems programming, this was the acme: helping a bunch of lame-ass applications programmers make sure their stinky programs work and to do the same with a bunch of lame-ass systems programmers because they are even more sneaky about how they write code.  I know because I did it too.

That was more absurdity than I could handle.  If this is the peak of a career then that career meant absolutely nothing.  Fuck it.  The game is over.  I took a combination of pills that would lower blood pressure and lower respiration as I figured that would be sufficient to terminate the program without it being inordinately unpleasant.  And so I faded off to sleep.

But.

That wasn't enough to get it done and I was incredibly sick from it.  This was the morning of the conversion and when I went in that evening I could hardly walk and I just stumbled into the machine room.  Maybe they thought I was stoned or something but no-one said anything.

I should have made the break at that point as computers and I were obviously through with each other.  But my boss offered me the chance to lead the z/OS installation and that's the Big Time in systems programming.  I don't think he knew I had never done it before and I was attracted to not knowing how to do it as this made it a Suitable Challenge for a knight who is bored with palace intrigue.

What I didn't know then and you may not know now is how little you really need of what you've got. There's all this stuff around you but if you really get objective about it, likely you'll find most of it is stuff you just keep in case it might be interesting someday.  In my world now, there is almost nothing I have that I don't use every day.


The point is not my own personal melodrama in reaction to it but rather the Thing That Can't Change.  In fact it did change and with relatively-little fuss.  That there was little fuss is what systems programming means: the best job is when no-one knows you have done it.  There was a tremendous amount of work in it and I don't take any pride in that as in my view it was just changing the tires on a car.  That it was incredibly difficult to change them is the absurdity as the net result was zero.  The new tires aren't really better than the old ones, they just aren't flat.


Social welfare systems Can't Possibly Change.  United States foreign policy Can't Possibly Change.  America's national commitment to the manufacture of military hardware Can't Possibly Change.  The list is endless ... and all of it is rubbish.

Of course there is blue sky thinking as without that thinking the blue sky will never come.  The example of Y2K shows something so egregiously trivial and yet it is perfect for the moment as a great many things are stalled because They Can't Possibly Change.  Through the efforts of thousands of people working in concert around the world, Y2K did change ... and was nothing more than a joke on talk shows.  That it became a joke like that was the success of it.  That it happened at all shows Things Can Change.

The consequence of handling Things That Can't Change is not individually in terms of what it did to me but rather in the longer view of it strangling America.  If it's really true these things cannot change then humans are no more than machines serving some twisted economic model and have no more purpose than the wheels in a clock.  You see now a country with almost no view to the future.  Conservatism is meant to restrain Liberalism, it is not meant to stop it.


The problem at the bottom was programmers failing to dream big enough.  They failed to believe their programs would still be running after 1999.  Dream big, it just might happen.

The Sad Tale of the GR-20 Guitar Synth

About a week ago the RC-50 looper wouldn't power up and this looked like the Final Disaster.  Failing of any expensive component means the music is over as it cannot be replaced.  Fortunately it turned out to be the power brick and people rant about power bricks but it's a whole lot cheaper to replace an external power supply than to replace the whole device when the power supply fails.

I don't have the money for another power brick but there are lots of them here.  They accumulate as you go along and, after a while, you stop checking the specs on them, the only thing that matters is whether the plug fits.  Sure enough, I had one that fit and the RC-50 was working again.

Unfortunately, that was the power brick for the GR-20 guitar synthesizer.  I have about half a dozen other power bricks but the plugs don't fit.

The problem is that the GR-20 has not been working reliably and I have suspected the cord that goes to it from the guitar as I have had problems with those before.  That cord costs $80 US to replace.  So, if I'm to have even a shot at getting the GR-20 going, I need to spend $30-$40 for a power brick for it and then $80 for a cord.  Ordinarily, gambling $110-$120 on a $700 device (i.e. replacement cost of the synth) could possibly be worth it but now it's too big a risk.

But.

Guitar Center owes me over $300 from a couple of years ago.  I saw a notice about a month ago but it's extremely difficult to get over there.  What could be exceptionally cool is if I can find out if the GR-20 works over there without buying anything.  The device is just fantastically beautiful when it works.  Imagine a clean native electric sound with a synthesizer string sweep behind it.  The sound grows and evolves as you listen.  And that's just one combination.

Miles Davis said all synthesizers are programmed white but I think really what he says is that only wind instruments can sing the blues, that a saxophone is so wonderfully expressive that nothing else can sing with such purity.  To the larger point he may well be right but, as to synthesizers, well ... that was a long time ago.

Your Dog is an Asshole

The Republican Party has various things in its platform and only one of them pertains to social programs yet it has been a relentless message in comments that welfare mamas are the problem and governmental handouts are not the solution.  The same holds true whether talking about individuals, cities, or whole countries.  When this aspect of the platform comes back over and over to the almost total neglect of any other aspect of the platform, this isn't about politics but rather an agenda with only one thing on it:  blood-sucking leech parasites destroyed America and most other countries.

The problem is not warped military priorities, chaotic foreign policy, corrupt banking, and the total absence of any hint of morality by the corporations in one of the countries most-stridently proclaiming itself Christian.  Nah, those aren't problems, welfare queens are problems.

For well over a year, beloved Patricia has been ragging me to get a job and stop being a lazy ingrate.  In a remarkable feat of insightfulness, she deduced that, after thirty+ years of working double shifts to learn computers and music, my problem is laziness.  In fact, it's only illness that gives her lazy ass the chance of keeping up.

That's being a dick.  Moreover, it's being an egregiously-obtuse dick.


I've been asked why any of those who have been on that campaign do it and I don't know.  One thing I do know is that it has nothing to do with politics.

RacerX Gullwing Ten Year Rezday Party (video)

RacerX 10th RezDay2 from RacerX on Vimeo.


It's me playing and it was a great honor to play for the Rabbit

The War Explained - Black Adder (video)

blackadder-the-war-explained from Niels Hilbrink on Vimeo.

Of course it's a load of bollocks.

Cops in Tanks - We Serve, Protect, or Crush into Strawberry Paste

Cops in Lawrence, IN, have just received a 24-ton MRAP combat vehicle.  This type of vehicle they say will be very helpful in case of terrorists, bombings, or mass shootings.  (IndyStar:  Lawrence police acquire 48,000-pound monster vehicle)

Tip:  there has never been a bombing, mass shooting or terrorist attack in Lawrence, IN.  Only 46,001 people are living there.

The cops also said the vehicle will be good for dealing with floods as it can get through four feet of water.

Tip:  there has never been anything close to a four-foot flood in Lawrence, IN, since the melt off from the last Ice Age.

The example in Lawrence is not isolated and is repeated in multiple departments across that state and the rest of the country.  Every Andy Griffith cop from here to Mayberry wants one.  (IndyStar:  Police officer safety or surplus zeal: Military equipment spurs debate)

Cops in cities probably have no use for these vehicles as they're too big for city streets and it would be like trying to take a bus to a NASCAR race.  They're a big hit out in the land of monster trucks and potato guns, tho.  There are small towns in Iowa that got one and the cops say it's necessary militarization to deal with the growing violence in America ... but the only militarization these cops would know would be for corn fields to make them stand in straight rows.

There's no way an MRAP can serve anything unless it's the slowest pizza run in human history.  It's very unlikely to protect anyone ... except more cops.  What it can do is crush Farmer Jones into strawberry paste.  Let freedom ring.

It's a Most Unusual Situation

My record is fairly consistent and Republicans hate me because I would actually like to see the country enjoy some forward progress plus I don't particularly like killing people.  Democrats hate me because I think Hillary Clinton isn't worth her weight in fish heads and the next time she flaps her mouth about money, someone ought to stuff a wad of her greenbacks in it.

Even better is when Chelsea Clinton talks:  "I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level and I couldn’t.”  (NY Post: Chelsea Clinton’s wealth can’t buy her class)

Chelsea Clinton has had a job for about two years at NBC making $600,000 per year and she's done almost nothing.

Here's a little something for Republicans as well.  Love the F-35 program, well, except for the one that caught fire on the runway this morning.  For a trillion and a half dollars, I would have expected fireproofing (shrug).

Christians hate me because I don't accept their dogma.  My beliefs are not, for the most part, inconsistent with theirs, so it's not clear why there should be a problem.  Muslims are free to hate me as well as I regard Muhammed as child-molesting pervert.  I don't believe he was really nailing his nine-year-old wife but how old did she have to be before he started.  I've heard people blow it off with 'that was the way of the times' but I don't buy that for a millisecond.  You don't fuck children.


The Love It or Leave It crowd hates me as well but that's not clear either.  My purpose is to protest the way corruption destroys the country and it seems to me hatred for the country is being complacent about doing anything to remedy the corruption.


The gunners hate me because I'll ban all their hand guns.  Gun control people hate me as well because I think they're wimps when they only try to regulate assault weapons which don't mean all that much.


The liberals who have evolved past being Democrats hate me because I wanted to shoot Mitch McConnell in the kneecaps.  I do see that might have been a little bit extreme (shrug).


Hipsters hate me because I don't want to wear a Fedora or get my penis pierced.


This isn't self-pity but rather amusement as the disconnection is to the point now in which there is lots of contact with Cat and Yevette and all the witchy stuff they do.  I do love my brother ... even if he's been kind of a dick lately.  Cadillac Man and Laughing Gecko are floating around out there somewhere and the Mystery Lady even made a brief appearance.  There is connection to people at the MusikCircus but it's not as tight as I don't know whether they prefer ketchup or mayonnaise on french fries.  Beyond that I don't feel much connection with anything.  It's like being Major Tom but it doesn't matter so long as the instruments work.


Which leads me to think it's time for the "Vaping with Jesus" video show.  I would need some striped spandex for my aerobics look.  With the Mad Hatter hat and some sunglasses, it could be quite fashionable.  Scarf?  Gloves?  The mind reels.  Numubu could be ok as you can collect tips and get (cough) big bucks and no whammies.  I may be old but I can still find ways to embarrass my family.

It could be funny to find out if Reverend Silas T Sasquatch can handle some real-time stand-up.  My biggest concern is getting busted as it wouldn't be the first time some cop decided to be a prick about a stoner video.  Calling it the Magic Jesus Weed may not be sufficient to reduce official attention.  Oh noooo, the kids will see it ... but here's a tip on that, Betty Crocker: the kids are the ones who grow it.

And it is a Jesus Weed.  Until your whizkid scientists can add up their DNA with their Adenosines, Thymines, and Saltines or whatever and show me a functioning marijuana plant then I'm saying Jesus did it.

Maybe this doesn't take the situation seriously enough but I don't see how seriously I'm supposed to take it and, wtf, people are pissed off anyway.

Bo and Lefty Have their Own World Cup at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Regardless of whether you like soccer, if you play a gig during a European time zone then you're in the World Cup.  Why?  Well, because every European, including his mother, his dog, and his horse, is watching the World Cup.  The shows last night were competing against the match between Germany and Algeria.

Cat and I have a mutual friend who was born in Algeria but now lives in Germany.  He said he was pulling for Germany but he would get on the first flight to Algeria if they won as there was no way he was going to miss the party.  He doesn't go back to Algeria much as his family keeps trying to marry him off.  He tells them he is happily married to a nice German girl but they just say yes, yes, we know this but we find you good Algerian girl too.

Well ...

I tried and tried but hardly anyone showed up for Bo's set and I'm not going to report on it anyway as Bo is evolving and becoming.  This isn't like finding yourself when you go off to Colorado and spend the rest of your life making bongs.  Finding yourself in music is a very different thing and Cat's Art MusikCircus is an excellent place to do it as I doubt there's another Second Life venue more supportive of experimentation.  Sometimes Bo's music just now is fascinating and sometimes it's wtf but I know for sure that when he gets a Bo Groove going then you'll want to be there to hear it.


lefty Unplugged did a set after Untolerable Bohemian and it was the same situation.  It looked like I hadn't done anything but actually I was sending gig notices all over as in hey y'all, got a great show here.  It's a great show, come on over.  You there, come on inside.  You'll love it.  But no luck.  At the start of lefty's set Germany and Algeria were at half time and the match was tied.  There was absolutely zero chance of getting anyone in Europe away from a television set.


There was a song in lefty's set last night that got my attention particularly and he described it up-front as more poetry than songwriting.  For a song, most poems will be rhyming couplets that typically use the same fairly simple metre (i.e. rhythm / beat / phrasing).  For "Cry Loud," lefty was using a much more advanced structure and it was brilliant.  He had set a relatively simple chord pattern going with the guitar and the rhythm of the words danced into it and away from it in a highly exciting way.

Freeform verse can be anything from lazy to brilliant and, as with anything else, it depends on what you do with it.  There is metre to everything but you can make it so sophisticated that no-one understands it anymore (i.e. the jazz phenomenon) or make it so ludicrous that no-one needs to understand it.  "Cry Loud" shows a great feeling for metre and that's why it's so captivating.  This is one fascinating piece of work and I hope to hear it again.

One can only hope to hear again one piece or another by lefty as he has recorded some CDs ... but he doesn't sell them.  If you want to hear a song by lefty Unplugged then, darlin', you will need to come to the show.


Prosody is the study of metre and it wouldn't do any songwriter any harm to review it further.  The Metre WIKI is dry reading but gives plenty of information and starting points to pursue it further.