Okay, grab something heavy and lend me an ear.
No.
We will not be losing gravity for seven seconds within just over 30 minutes as of the time of this post.
I almost wish we were.
But we’re not.
Stop it. You’re making damned fools of yourself. It makes me sad.
The friend I met up with had converted the video of our first gig at an (im)famous bar , Fernandos. It had a reputation for basically letting anyone play at the bar on Sunday nights, so take that as you will. Two local goth bands, Shadowspawn (mine) and Saint Cry (the headliners).
The hicks at the bar hated us and made it known; both loudly and drunkenly.
I’ve decided against sharing any of the actual footage from the show. It would be cruel to show anything more than the above still.
(more…)
An old roommate, bandmate and friend came to town today. I’m still not sure what prompted him flying up here from Phoenix, Arizona, but he wanted to spend some time together before meeting up with some other former bandmates and friends at a local pub/open restaurant market.
We went out for breakfast and caught up after 20 or so years of not talking much at all. When someone ups and moves without telling you his plans, it can be hard to keep a friendship up. There was also a matter of religion, or so I think, as he had found his way and I was not interested in walking his way.
(more…)You are walking down a trail that you walk all of the time between this place and that place and you are quite fixated on minding your own business when a artery branches off from the trail that you could have sworn had not business being there, or that had failed to exist before (whichever came first).
So you stop and have a Little Chat with yourself.
“I don’t recall there being a Mysterious Trail leading away from this much Bigger Trail before in this particular spot, do you?” you ask the air.
“I am quite certain there was not a Mysterious Trail leading off from this one. I would have noticed if there had been,” you reply.
And, being the Observant Type of person that you are, you nod in agreement with yourself — surely you would have noticed a Mysterious Trail before now, had it existed.
Also being the Adventuresome Sort (oh do be an Adventuresome Sort for today — you might like it), you decide to see where the Mysterious Trail takes you.
The Mysterious Trail narrows and closes in on you until you are not quite sure if the Mysterious Trail still exists and you are just about ready to return to the Bigger Trail when you find yourself stepping into a Forest Clearing.
In the center of the Forest Clearing is an Ancient Well — or it looks rather Ancient anyway, though you admit you’ve put off getting new glasses for longer than recommended and it might just be the Ancient Glasses and not the Well having that Ancient effect.
“Well. That’s not at all what I would have expected,” you say to yourself.
Before you can reply, a Something sitting at the Well responds instead.
What is the Something at the potentially Ancient Well and what is their response that interrupts you from answering yourself?
Tell me in the comments.
The older I get, the less I feel I have something to say in a world that increasingly has a counterpoint, even when there is no need to counter anything. Why bother when it just opens the door for someone who feels they might need to school you on whatever you write or say?
Not that I’m opposed to hearing different takes on something. It it their need to be right that makes me scratch my head and want to throw both hands in their direction and say, “Oh! Bother!”.
Work. Play. Here. There. Family. Everyone needs to have an opinion and their opinion cannot be swayed. It is vital that it is not swayed. And, if you don’t try to sway theirs, you have people poking at you to get you to sway your opinion, even if you would rather not have an opinion at all some of the times.
Even this post is an opinion I’d rather not have.
So, perhaps, I’ll dig a hole under the oak tree and bury this post with a handful of other opinions I carry around inside, tied up in a burlap bag to give the tree some manure to break down into useful nutrients for growth and find a use for the more toxic of the thoughts I carry within.
This is not a review of the Echo and the Bunnymen concert from their last show on their 2026 US tour in Minneapolis. I enjoyed myself. They played enough of their old songs to satisfy me, although I would have liked a few deeper tracks from Ocean Rain. It is no secret at all that was my favorite of their albums and the last one that I enjoyed 100%. Crocodiles was excellent, as was Porcupine, but I merely liked those albums “a lot”, whereas Ocean Rain was a near spiritual experience for me the first time I listened.
The performance aside (old guys playing old music well enough to justify the cost of admission), it was the people watching that intrigued me while waiting for the lads to come onstage.
(more…)Thank you, whomever at WordPress rolled back the new Reader UI for browsers that debuted yesterday.
While I can see some of the benefits, I don’t think that UI was tested ahead of time. The fonts were far too small, the whitespace far too big and it made readability a bit of an eyestrain. And dropping (without warning) likes and comments to the bottom of the tab made me have to hunt too hard for those features. Again, far too much whitespace, forcing the user to hunt for the standard features we grew accustomed to using.
Other elements were welcome additions — if you could find them (read time is helpful, for instance). And it did not work on mobile browsers. At all. Panels overlapped, preventing any useability whatsoever.
But this fixation across all tech with UI that uses ever-decreasing font sizes and is otherwise either too spacious or to crowded… Eww.
So thank you WP team for rolling that back. There are good ideas in that, but it was poorly implemented. My eyes are much happier.
I’m being abandoned with the cats like I am every summer — this is but the first family trip of two planned events. I get to scoop cat litter while kids scoop up more stuff they don’t really need. But the same could be said for the new kittens, although I am being made to say they are everybody’s kittens.
Who gets to stay home with them while everyone vacays? Right. My kittens.
Anyway, on Sunday next week, I get to put on my little witchy-dress and dance out under a solstice moon (although, sadly, not a Strawberry Solstice Moon) all by my lonesome. Not skyclad. There’s been restraining orders issued against that.
If you had a day and evenings completely to yourself (and the resident clowder), what might you do if weather was not being cooperative for dancing in a little witchy-dress? Or the neighbors call the police on you? AGAIN!?!
Unwitchy-dress dancing is welcome too. Dancing can be omitted if the idea is that I watch some witchy romcom instead. Oh! We can have a streaming party!
Or, maybe — I should not wake up at 2.30 in the morning from nightmares and, if I do, go back to sleep even if my brain is “noping” that idea.
It’s getting punchy over here.
I’m not quite sure how one goes back to sleep after having a dream of an old classmate throat slash himself in the kitchen, prompting a mad dialing of emergency services you know will arrive too late to do anything for him.
It was a far more graphic and visceral experience than most of my dreams. And I admit, I can have some real doozies. Usually, the gore is suggested. This dream was “in full Technicolor” and detailed.
I’m half-expecting to read something about him in the local news, it was so vivid. The other part is “don’t be absurd, J would never do anything like that.”
Except, my brain reminds me, that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do if he wanted a ticket out of here.
As I said, I’m not sure how one goes back to sleep after a dream like that.