The Second Life Radio Station

There are multiple radio stations associated with Second Life but they're not live.  Also arithmetic makes it unlikely that you will ever be heard.  Take four hundred performers, each with a five-minute song recorded, and it will take two-thousand minutes or almost a day and a half to listen once to each one.

Another approach is to broadcast continuously from a live venue in Second Life.  The objective of the exercise is to advertise the stream on the open Internet so people can hear and feel Second Life music without needing to learn how to login or navigate.  My hope from such an experiment is that it would serve as a 'taste test' and some will walk away but others will get curious.  The curious ones we want.

This experiment will not solve the problem of getting heard on the radio as only one thing ever did that:  play a lot of gigs.

So in doing performances every so often at this venue the musicians get some exposure and show Second Life in a good way to the world outside SL.  This shouldn't be regarded as an open mike set as it's not going to serve SL very well if you do that.  Open mike sets are fine but they're not representative of SL music, they're just part of it.  You all may disagree and that's fine too.  My intention is to pitch the concept and the reason.  Whether anyone uses it or what they do with it is on you.

Recording Does Make a Difference ... Maybe

There was some guitar playing just now that felt pretty swell and that's a fish-that-got-away story as I didn't record it.  I did record one previously and wasn't satisfied with it and there was another medium-sized one.

There is a difference in the freedom after you push the record button as immediately there are expectations beyond your own, even if one of them is just that of the tape recorder capturing it.  When I'm playing and, I suppose, for most people, any input is another wheel turning with the rest of the clockwork that's making the current piece happen.  It may not necessarily be a good wheel, tho.

You will never hear finer music than when a musician plays for himself.  This is precisely because there are no expectations beyond his own and they are higher than yours because you know what he's done but he's thinking what he could do.  If it's being recorded then it becomes a combination of his expectations and yours and that's the extra wheel that may in turn factor into the complexity or some other aspect of the way the music is being played.

Something I've considered is what I shall do with times when I do play for the hell of it as my thinking to record it has been to start the audio stream which opens it to the Internet.  What I get out of that is everything from that moment is recorded high-fidelity (i.e. not just an MP3).  The reason for doing it this way is that it's very unobtrusive and it's as easy as it will get to ignore it.

It satisfies a purpose to open the stream but it's vaguely wasteful not to tell anyone about it.  There is no chance of releasing the URL of Cat's stream as that's for the MusikCircus and any use of it from RL means the listener is not coming to Second Life and thus it's a cost with little or no benefit.  There is potentially the benefit that it would encourage people to come to Second Life if they knew the kind of music they can expect, tho.

The reason for mentioning this at all is that I'm considering getting my own stream specifically so I can open it on the Internet.  However, I have some reluctance for just as I wrote above.  I will talk with Cat about this as it's worthy of some consideration that 'advertising' outside of Second Life has value, particularly given there's so much of an impression that everything in there is karaoke and / or wash-out folkies.

No, I am not saying the folkies in SL are wash-outs.  I am saying they are perceived that way externally.  The PR is exceptionally poor regarding SL music.

lefty Unplugged Brings Magic to Cat's Art MusikCircus

Magic works even if you don't believe in it but lefty believes it very much and he brings a great deal of his own.  In fact, Cat and I were dressed appropriately for a lefty Unplugged show but *poof* lefty came, some magic happened, and there we were:

There are various ways I've tried to describe lefty Unplugged's work and here's a different one.  There's a reference to Diana Dors in another article and she was a great British tragedy although she had a reputation something like the female equivalent of Errol Flynn (i.e. orgiastic sex parties, etc).  However, it wasn't so much the wild living that undid her but rather she was ripped-off by opportunistic males and this is what brings it up as a possible candidate for something lefty would write.  She was considerably more than boobs as she achieved a number of 'youngest ever' academic accomplishments.

lefty doesn't glorify anything.  He's not on a mission to tell you liberals are good, drugs are good, or save the whales.  His is to tell you a story and you can make of it what you will.  It's the choice of the story that is the telling and that's why I think the story of Diana Dors could possibly be intriguing.  It seems there was no Joe DiMaggio in her life and Simon & Garfunkel sang of him a long time ago but it's a fair reference as the way he loved Marilyn is something that's worthy of legend.

Diana Dors

Any questions?

Praise the Lord and Pass the Soccer Ball

There are few things more important than music.  In fact, there's only one thing more important than music.

And it's not sex.  If you have Cowboy Houdini the Guitar Wizard blazing his red-hot solo in front of you, I don't care if you have bombshells so large they would make Diana Dors pale, that guitarist is not going to stop.

(We'll be doing some extra-credit rounds periodically but you suck if you use Google.  So, who was Diana Dors.)

Yes, there is one thing more important than music ... and Maestro Michi agreed so he will not be giving a concert tonight.

(Ed:  why not?)

Why not?  You seriously ask me why not?

Tonight is Deutschland vs Brasil in the World Cup!  All business or any activity of any kind in the world is going to stop.  There is only one more game after this to find the champion so this one is huge.  The Latins will play the Euros so this is right up there with Godzilla versus the Smog Monster.  Big game.  Very big game.

There are some problems as Neymar, Brasil's strongest striker (i.e. the guy who kicks the goals) was taken out in a foul that nearly broke his back.  Cat believes and I agree that the player who did it should be charged with assault and sent to prison.  Something similar happened when a Bengals quarterback was tackled by one of the Steelers and it destroyed his knees and his career.  That there is no criminal penalty for these kinds of malicious fouls is a significant problem in modern sports.

There are also problems on the German team as there has been flu in at least four of them but it's not clear how much this may degrade the team's performance.  It's not surprising that there are injuries this late in the championship so a big part of the game today will be seeing how each team handles them.

The game will start at about 11:00 or 12:00 US Central Time and that is prime time in the evening for Germany.  It will be carried on ESPN and standard channels.  I imagine I will find it in some way a bit less legal than that, tho.

May the best team win.

"Contact" (movie) - Updated

There's a substantial interest in movies that play with the fabric of reality and all of them do that to some extent but a small number of them will shake it like a handkerchief blowing in a hurricane.  "eXistenZ" is fascinating in that way and so is "Contact."  There's really not so much to say about that as every sighted person in the western hemisphere has already seen it.

Finding other creatures in the Universe is, presumably, the opposite extreme from when reality was the idea that Earth was the center of everything.  As we learn more, we discover Earth is just a grain of sand in a dust storm.  These types of fluid realities fascinate me as you can find any number of things about which a great many people are absolutely certain ... and they're shocked beyond belief to discover the world isn't really flat.  It's not that they're stupid, they just didn't know.

There hasn't just been an expansion of knowledge but also an expansion of consciousness, whether you want it or not.  It's conceivable that a large part of the anomie of today is due to an expanded awareness that we really are insignificant in the face of an unimaginably gigantic Universe.  What people don't see so much is they are also magnificent as none of it exists without them.  It's the converse of Schrödinger's cat as, from its standpoint, the Universe may have self-destructed or it may not.  There is no way of knowing without opening the cat's box so, from that view, the Universe exists and does not exist at the same time.

This is, to some extent, just first year philosophy trickery but the expansion of knowledge is 'real' as is the possibility of a diminution of one's position in the Universe as a result of it.  The consequences of these radically-changed realities are not, in my view, fully understood as is also not understood the fluidity of reality now.  When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse ... but as we grow we accept various things as solid even when we know they are not and we reject everything else.  There won't come another glimpse because we won't permit it.  One example is the stock market which is the modern adult fantasyland ... but it makes money so it must be real.  But even money isn't real as you never see cash anymore.

Another example is paying forty grand for a suburban utility vehicle just so you can say it isn't a station wagon.  Anyone looking it can plainly see the only things distinguishing it from a station wagon are that it doesn't have wood panels or Hugh Beaumont driving it.

(Five points extra credit if you can figure that one out without Google.)

Although "The Matrix" is good for bending reality, I doubt I'm up for a six-hour marathon although there are some others that are interesting to me.  More to come.

Excerpt from "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb.

So It's Decided

The Way of Saint James is out.  To spend all my life trying to play something that doesn't suck and then chuck it to eat pine nuts just to scratch some more time ... no point in even continuing with the thought.

Stirling Moss wrote in "All But My Life" that he had given racing all but his life.  For music I say, fuck it, give it all.  One of the beauties of music is that you can.  Athletes can only be beautiful for a short time and they do look magnificent but that's not something you can still do and be credible when you're old.  You can make music practically until they pry the instrument from your fingers and what a privilege.

I haven't looked at comments or much of anything.  I couldn't handle it.  This situation is something I need to sort for myself as the playtime crazy part is done and onward with the real thing.

The two biggest Warning Lights flashing just now are not to get too preoccupied with myself and to set myself afire if I start getting nostalgic.

It seems more than ever the answer is to shut up and play.


My ol' Dad never asked if I was healthy or sick, how the job was going, etc.  He would only ask if I had been playing.  If yes then all is good.  I ask him things.  He never says anything but I know what he would say.

Yep, shut up and play.  That's yer answer.

"eXistenZ" (movie - sci-fi)

"eXistenZ" (1999) is a film by some Hungarian directors and it twists reality all around by confounding altogether the boundaries for a virtual reality game.  It's also the only hot sci-fi flick I ever saw as Jennifer Jason Leigh does an exceptional job as the star programmer and her talents go well beyond programming.  Jude Law is cool as her unwilling apprentice.  And then it gets twisted.  Be warned of a full plot review in the WIKI (eXistenZ).

Going into it I was expecting from sci-fi about gaming something like "Tron" in which there are lots of colors and flash bang but it doesn't mean very much.  This one goes way past that as it focuses on the boundaries of real and imagined realities.  That they managed to make it quite sexy is novel but that doesn't diminish the strength of the content.

There's been substantial research lately into the physical activity within the brain when it's under the influence of psychedelics, particularly psilocybin (i.e. magic mushrooms).  During the course of the drug, scientists observed which areas of the brain were active and this was giving them awareness of an opening between dream activity and consciousness.  (I don't have a link to the article at present but it was an interesting bit.)

Reality is a fluid thing and we aren't even sure of simple things.  We agree something looks red but we have no idea if we see the same red.  We have seen things before that were described as red.  This one looks like that so it must be red.  But it isn't red.  The guy is color blind and it appears as grey.  He knows it is red because it's about the same temperature as other things that were described as red.  Even a simple reality like that is not constant in appearance even though the constancy is agreed and taken for granted.

Ownership is a nebulous aspect of reality.  It seems so rock solid but there is one thing for sure:  either it won't last or you won't.  No-one really keeps anything but we like the feeling that we do.

Those kinds of things can play first year philosophy all night long but the most interesting aspect of the boundaries of reality is with regard to the dream state.  Psychedelics open it and then primal perceptions become a part of the agreed, albeit shaky, traditional reality ... and they change things quite a bit.  Of course trees can sing, you were just never patient enough to listen.  Perhaps you dismiss that as trivial but that dismissal is part of a larger close-mindedness to something that needs more understanding rather than less.

The movie pursues these types of things in a smooth and elegant way.  I rate it high enough to recommend it to Cat (that's the highest rating as she is highly-discerning when it comes to cinema).

Finding Mushrooms on the Way of Saint James

Many people travel the Way of Saint James and the mix is between those on a religious pilgrimage, some just hike, some wear aluminum hats, etc. (WIKI:  Way of Saint James)

This is the route and it comes from the same WIKI article:

In case you ask which one is the actual Way of Saint James, the answer is all of them.  The Way of Saint James isn't a path but rather a destination.  You can read the Wiki to discover what constitutes an 'official' pilgrimage as there are various distinctions.  That's important if you like collecting papers with stamps on them but it's possible the papers could save you from being burned at the stake or hung as a witch in some towns in Massachusetts.


If you check out what Saint James did, it's really not much.  He preached around Spain and then for some reason he went to Jerusalem where they chopped of his head (about 44 AD).  There is a very strong tradition that he was buried in Compostela and people have been making pilgrimages there ever since.


Maybe it would cool to start in Roma because, as with Ithaka, it doesn't matter if you ever get there.  This has nothing to do with Christianity for me but rather it's to observe what happens along a path of spiritual power.  I've felt it in various places in my life but it's not common.  It may not even be real on this one but there must be something to it as there is no particular reason to do it yet people have continued doing it for well over a thousand years.  There doesn't appear to be much of an idea in anyone as to what Saint James did except that he was also an Apostle.  I guess an Apostle outranks a Saint but I don't know why.

The thinking is to chuck everything except some clothes and live in monkish purity while wandering along this path.  Starting in Roma it goes through some of the most beautiful country in the world and I know this as I've seen a good part of it only that time it was on a scooter.

There are major problems with doing this:

- There would be no ability to communicate with Cat
- There is no ability to share the story
- The problem isn't solved but rather deferred
- The music stops
- etc


The point of the Way of Saint James isn't to go off to live on nuts and hope for a miracle cure but rather to make best use of what time is in front of me.  We have already seen that I like pilgrimages even if the last one ended in a bit of a disaster.  It was still cool along the way and that's the point of it.  I don't care if I ever get to Compostela, it isn't even important and it's better if I don't.

Leaving the music out probably crushes this thinking but it hasn't yet.  I have not decided and there isn't a reason for anything hasty.  There is no possible chance of carrying the gear.  I would be down before I got to the Roma city limits.  Besides, I would have to sell the guitar to get over there.

I will talk with Cat as she is insane and she gets what is happening.  It's the kind of insanity that lets her see multiple things at once and I need that.  So does everyone else but for this stage of the game I have my own problem to solve.  The reading is quite twisted as the medical flip-flop flipped me right the hell out.  You have cancer, dear.  Oh, wait.  We can't go in there because of the emphysema.  Go off somewhere and wait.

And wait?

The most healthful thing I can do is as I have described ... but ... it is at the expense of what I have worked so hard to do.  One last adventure is very compelling but it costs the music.  That very likely is too high a price to pay but I'm still thinking about it.

Girls with Guns Turn Me Right On

Two females, both mildly-attractive ... and both total fucking lunatics.

For yer Yankee female, we see her receding as quickly as possible toward being a dumpy matron.  She uses no imagination with her hair.  She looks very plain and wears uninspired clothes.  She's gaining weight.  To all appearance, she doesn't take much care of herself.  She is embarrassed by her breasts and tries to hide them with the Bible but she thinks the assault weapon makes her look hot.  The Bible is in case it doesn't.  The picture is filled with immeasurable sadness.

For yer Muslim female, this is what happens when Hobby Lobby gets their way.  Don't fuck with these women.  They will shoot you.

The resistance from Hobby Lobby is strong as you always have to be careful with people who wear Bibles in public but do not wear pants.

Praise Jesus for black shoes with black socks.  Maybe he thought, wtf, they match the Bible.

What Happens to Drug Reporting After Eating Too Much Kangaroo

This is a report from Australia on its extraordinary drug use.  Here's the headline and after reviewing that I will rip it apart:  Australia comes top of global list for recreational drug use in United Nation’s 2014 World Drug Report

That must means that those wacky Australians must use more recreational dope than anywhere else in the world, right.  It says right there that Australia tops the global list.  What else could it mean.

In fact the title doesn't even agree with the content of the article.  The only, repeat, ONLY type of drug in which Australia came out on top was the use of Ecstasy (XTC).  The author states that fact twice although we don't know if that error came as a result of the author's drug abuse.  The author also states that consumption of XTC is going down so what crisis exists in that arena is not clear.

So, the premise is crap, the title is crap, and the content is rubbish ...

Our collective craving for a hit is only set to heighten, with the number of drug users continuing to rise steadily.

We have a 'collective craving' and, holy shit, that has got to be bad.  And it's only 'set to heighten' so it's going to get worse.  Quick review:  this is the same reporter who just said that XTC consumption is going down.

Then he said:  Jesus told me this.  Seriously.  I asked Jesus about it and he told me.  'The number of drug users is continuing to rise steadily.'

Now we don't think the author is referring to the rampaging abuse of prescription pain pills which far exceeds any use of recreational drugs because we know the government won't let Jesus say anything about those.  I can't criticize the reporter too much as the U.S. government won't let Jesus talk about pain pills either, he's only allowed to talk about reefer and crack, etc.  It's not that Jesus doesn't want to do it as he really hates pain pills but you know how governments are.  Do you recall Jesus hanging with any governments.  Neither do I.

I also sympathize to some extent with the reporter as review, if you will, the level of insult to a reporter to be assigned a boring story like this when every reporter on the planet wants that all-expenses-paid trip to Brasil to cover the World Cup.  No wonder the author is pissed and is writing stupid crap.

Abuse of Death and Dying - Updated

Kübler-Ross did fairly well in talking of death and dying ... but then she went crazy and started talking in tongues.  We would tell her, Betty (her friends called her Betty while everyone else called her Elizabeth), you have to stop eating so much mescaline.  Then she would scream out to piss off, the CIA is coming to steal her cupcakes.  OK, Betty.

(Spiderbait is the band's name and this will make more sense when you realize they are from Australia, home to more types of poisonous spiders and deadlier ones than perhaps anywhere else in the world.)


While most religions consider suicide to be sinful, their advice is not germane and is less useful than the advice not to keep food in the fridge more than three days (Leviticus 19:7).

We have the courageous Medal of Honor winner who saved his platoon from certain death and then went on to pull twenty-eight orphans out of a burning church only to get shot in the head by the last enemy soldier at the end of it.  I'm guessing we can agree if there is a Heaven then this guy went there.

He did not go through weeks or months of agony at the hands of some mindless disease that has no more purpose than to destroy him.  No-one is allowed to end that suffering in a hospital because it would be some kind of sin before God.  You must earn the right for him to receive you apparently.

Fuck that.

This is the same kind of perverted Catholic crap that brought you the Inquisition.  Those twisted monkeys thought they were doing a favor for those they tortured as if they could administer enough pain and agony then these sinners may yet be received into Heaven.  It's the same kind of vicious and selfish thinking that forces a position on the Right Way to Die when we see obviously from our Medal of Honor winner that any 'right way' doesn't mean one damn thing.  There are no angels playing Pink Floyd on trumpets and carrying Heaven's Welcome Package and, most of all, there is no damn light that has any importance whatsoever.  This is such ridiculous cartoon crap that I don't know why anyone would believe it.  How you die is irrelevant unless it's while you rob little girls of their Girl Scout cookies.

The point is not whether there exists a Heaven but rather whether you have to pass some Boy Scout test to get there and, naturally, that test will be administered by the same Inquisitors who liked stretching people, setting them afire, etc.  Doctors always say, oh yes, yes, we have medication for the pain.  Yes, and they also have medication to make it stop altogether but they aren't allowed to use it.  Why?

(I'm assuming informed consent for anything in any discussion on this matter)

Kübler-Ross gave us the chick view of croakage with her Five Steps of Dying and I guess that sort of thing is amusing for Facebook but that's only because it's 95% chick-owned and has more concentrated narcissism than Liberace ever dreamed.  The man view of death is that you are alive or you are not alive.  Two steps.  Much simpler.

If you want to shrink this then put it in the Acceptance Phase but also keep in mind there was some fairly decent guitar playing today and I was thinking, hmmm, sure is a drag that you didn't hit record. You can't stop and do it again as jams don't work that way.  There's only one first time.  So, if Acceptance mandates a lot of guitar playing then, hey, I'm on the job.  I don't often get that feeling of, damn, I wish I had hit record so that's a very good sign.


I have cut off most contact with anyone as I don't feel any kind of understanding of what happens except from Cat and Yevette.  I have no intention of explaining myself, listing symptoms, or anything of that nature.  I am sick to fucking death of being on the defensive and I will not permit anything that is likely to set it off.  How you find your peace is your own business.  I know mine is in love and music.  In my view, the world would be one hell of a lot better off if everyone found it that way.

Lotho was seeing some kind of mind contest.  I don't know why.  It's a matter of awareness and there is no way to be aware of what real poverty is like without living it.  Any idea of tax and spend liberals lining up at the door to help is rubbish.  There is nothing.

I admire Lotho because he's the only one who didn't hoot my ol' Dad when he got like this.  Mind had nothing to do with it.  Heart is what it's about.

The First and Last Annual Crazy Ass Suicide Jam

Emphysema is incurable.  I am not willing to die from it.  There is only one other choice.

Fundamental Rule:  when there are no good options, pick the one that is the best act of defiance.

Suicide is a logical choice in the face of something much worse.  There's nothing to discuss on this as I made up my mind on this a long time ago.

In this context, suicide is art.  The state and the church say it is illegal.  I say fuck them.  It is neither their business nor their right.  It is not their decision to make whether I will spend some period at the end of my life in a wheelchair with oxygen tanks.  That is not going to fucking happen.

God is not going to burn me for doing this.  God does not give a fuck.  Let's review:  God wiggles his godly finger and this whole incredible Universe explodes out of nothing.  After he's done that he kicks back for a minute and thinks, hmmm, now what shall I do.  Then it comes to him.  I'll take a look at the people on Earth to see if anyone is masturbating.

So God is not going to burn me but the state might.  If they were to get wind of it then it's conceivable they would try to stop it or some lunatics would show up in cloaks and start chanting.

There cannot be any assistance from anyone as the result would be that person would be charged as an accessory to murder.  Seriously.  America is so gutless on this matter that it will stop at nothing to prevent it.  America is not the only one as choice is still relatively rare.  It's the hypocrisy that frosts me as anyone who has worked in a nursing home can tell you about snuffing old people.  Apparently an enema is dangerous to geriatric patients with some conditions.  Do it anyway and they're snuffed.  It all looks perfectly innocent.  This kind of thing happens all the time but the country fails to deal with it except with draconian measures to prevent it.

This is not something immediate and that's why I consider it now so it's rational and there is no hysteria.  You know what comes with emphysema and I tell you flat that I won't do it.  Breathing is very bad now and it will get worse at some unpredictable rate.  Somewhere between now and being in a wheelchair is the exit point.  I won't put an estimate on that at this time but it's not immediate.

Where it gets insane as I'm thinking of doing this publicly in The First and Last Annual Crazy Ass Suicide Jam.  Attention is lots of fun, sure, but there's more to it than that as it gives me the chance through the best medium I know to show everyone I am at peace with what is happening.  It also makes a very strong statement about freedom of choice and I think a very good statement.  The "Woman in the Snow" went down with her finger in the air so I owe her that.


The other alternative is to chuck everything right now and I do mean everything except some clothes and go off to the Way of Saint James.  I emphasize it is not for religious intent but rather a path of peace.  I will write further on that as I must think about it some more.  There are huge considerations in doing it as ultimately it only defers the inevitable.  I am not willing to end up in a situation in which I need a caretaker.  This idea needs more thought.