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razziecat · 5 years

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ffviihalloween OCT 28 🥀 Gothic tales of the macabre and morbid, telltale hearts and family curses

Hello, friends, and welcome to Story Corner! Please enjoy this story in three parts.

Wedding Hell Blues

The SOLDIER squad formed up at the doors to the chapel, each man in full uniform, a sword on his hip or at his back. Spectators clustered behind them, and everyone’s eyes were on the closed doors. Hojo found himself in the front row of the crowd, next to a slim, familiar man in a dark suit and a neatly-trimmed, dark bronze beard. Well, this was awkward. He’d known it was inevitable. They were related now, after a fashion. “Director,” he said, voice carefully neutral. “Lovely day for a wedding.”

“Hojo,” came the equally-dry reply. Veld nodded to the woman at Hojo’s side. “Lucrecia.” “Wasn’t it a beautiful ceremony?” Lucrecia dabbed at her eyes with a lace-trimmed hankie. “Veld, you look very handsome today.” She glanced at her husband, shaking her head. “Not everyone balks at wearing a suit.” Hojo scowled and glanced at his watch. “So, Veld, how did you get your daughter to agree to let you give her away?” “I didn’t,” said Veld. “We argued it to a draw, and when the shouting was over she agreed to be ‘escorted’ down the aisle, provided the whole of AVALANCHE took part in the procession.”

Well, that explained the twenty-odd members of the entourage, and a more ill-matched group of attendants Hojo had never seen. He’d kept his mouth shut, though. The groom’s family was handily outnumbered, and besides that, every member of the wedding party was openly carrying. There came a rustle of movement at the chapel doors, and the SOLDIER CO barked, “Detail! PRE-SENT! ARMS!” As one, every man lifted his blade high into the air, forming a gleaming arch of steel. The doors opened, and the newly-married couple stepped out into the sunshine, resplendent in silver and black. Pride lifted Hojo’s head and shoulders, pulling him out of his habitual slouch. Even without armor, Sephiroth was magnificent. Garbed in a black suit subtly designed to mimic the cut of his uniform, his hair a silver waterfall down his back, he glittered like the morning star. Even his eyes shone, blue as a highland lake. No trace of any other color showed through; the lenses, painstakingly ground and polished by hand, were undetectable. Hojo sighed in satisfaction. A brilliant smile graced Sephiroth’s face, almost too bright to look upon. Lucrecia squeezed Hojo’s arm. “Oh, he looks so happy!” Hojo grunted assent. Beside her new husband, Elfe was a drab little mouse, but it wouldn’t do to say so in her father’s hearing. At least she’d opted for a dress, although it was a soft silver-gray, knee-length with a split skirt, rather than some fluffy white confection. Leave it to the rebel to flout tradition wherever possible! As the couple moved down the path beneath the arch of swords, Elfe strode forward as though marching into battle. Sephiroth would have to work to keep up with her, rather than she with him. Modern values. What had happened to the old days? By chance, his eyes met Veld’s, and a spark of rueful concurrence passed between them. Veld shrugged, and the moment was gone.“Don’t be so gloomy!” Lucrecia tugged at Hojo. “Come on, the reception is starting!” “Drinks,” Veld murmured, turning away. Well, things were looking up! Hojo allowed his wife to tow him toward the refreshments. A few hours later, he wandered down the stone steps of the mansion, following them deep into the basement rooms that no one ever visited. With the key he kept always in his pocket, he let himself into the room farthest from the door. He flicked on the old battery-powered lantern, pulled up a chair, and sat, propping his feet up on top of the dusty coffin. He might be imagining the low growl like a roll of distant thunder, or the cold rattling of the heavy chains that bound the casket. He raised his glass in a mocking toast. “Hell of a party going on upstairs, Valentine.” He sipped champagne. “Too bad you’re indisposed.”

Beware of Turks Bearing Gifts

Sephiroth and Elfe’s daughter received her name on the wings of a storm.

Family and friends gathered in her honor at her grandmother’s house. Veld arrived at the party as forked lightning split the sky, thunder rattling the windows. Lucrecia’s arms tightened around the baby. “Oh, I hope that’s not an omen!” “It’s a promise,” Elfe said. “She’s going to kick ass and take names.” She smoothed the baby’s pale gossamer hair. “Aren’t you, Ingrid?” “Pretty name.” Veld placed his gift on the table piled high with name-day offerings. Oh gods, he was a grandfather now, and wouldn’t that take some getting used to? Elfe accepted a brief embrace, and that was progress; time was when she’d as soon slug him as hug him. “It means hero’s daughter.” She glanced over her shoulder at her husband, surrounded by AVALANCHE, and deep in a discussion of last night’s kendo competition. “Good choice, then.” Veld smiled a greeting at Lucrecia. A quick scan of the room picked out familiar faces, but one was missing. “Where’s Hojo?”

“Working, of course!” Lucrecia rolled her eyes. “He promised to be back in time for the baby’s name-day, but it looks like the storm front’s keeping him in Nibelheim.” “He’ll be sorry he missed it, I’m sure.” Veld let Lucrecia place the baby in his arms, awkward at first, relaxing as he remembered the art of holding an infant. Dark eyes in a heart-shaped face regarded him with wary curiosity. “You’ve got an unusual pedigree, child.” Soldiers and scientists, rebels and Turks. What a mélange! Gods grant that he never failed her the way he’d failed her mother.

Later, Veld took a glass of chilled white wine, while Elfe extracted Sephiroth from his clique and sat him by her side for the presentation of the gifts. Twenty-some years ago, it had been Veld, his wife, and baby Elfe--Felicia, then. If only her mother had lived to take part now! Veld shut that thought away, along with other regrets. The dead were dead; they didn’t return. Ingrid lay in her cradle, happily gumming a stuffed Moogle toy, while ribbons and wrapping paper were scattered, and presents admired. The first one proved to be a hand-made chocobo-down quilt in bright primary shades. Elfe spread it across her lap. “Cloud, this is marvelous! I didn’t know you could do needle-work.” “Winters are long in Nibelheim,” Cloud said, grinning. “You have to do something creative to combat cabin fever.” Tifa’s gift was a companion to Cloud’s: An herbal pillow, small enough to be safely kept in a baby’s crib. Elfe held it to her nose. “It smells lovely! What’s in it?” “Chamomile and hops,” Tifa said. “To help her sleep.”

Yuffie’s gift turned out to be materia, surprising no one: A Mastered Heal, because, as Yuffie said, “Hey, you never know what kids might get into!” Next, a slim gold chain bearing three gold beads, from Barret and Marlene. “Three for luck, to start her off,” said Barret. “One new one each year, until she’s twenty-one.” Last was Veld’s gift. Elfe smiled. “Oh, books! Fairy tales.” Her eyes misted as she paged through the three small volumes. Good memories? That smile was all the thanks Veld needed. Once upon a time… He rose to refresh his drink, just as thunder crashed and rolled overhead. Rain hit hard, dimming the late afternoon light. The scent of ozone and wet earth prickled his nose. “Looks like Ingrid’s paternal grandfather isn’t going to make it,” Veld remarked. “He sends his regrets.” Veld reacted to the smoky voice and tall, shadowed figure before recognition hit him. He blocked the path to the cradle, stopping the intruder clad in black leather and ragged crimson, and only then did his brain catch up. Veld’s prosthetic hand shook, fingers spread flat against the man’s chest. “Gods of Gaia. Is it…Valentine?”

The apparition inclined his head. Wild black hair, ice-white skin, blood-red eyes in an impossibly young face, elegant bones honed sharp by something dark and predatory. “Veld.” Sephiroth had risen, a welcome presence at Veld’s back. AVALANCHE moved, taking up defensive positions to left and right. Veld trusted that someone had by now slipped Ingrid out of her cradle and into safety. “Who is this?” said Sephiroth. “My old partner. Thirty years gone.” Veld took in every line of Valentine’s body, wraith-thin and garbed in clothing both antique and viscerally disturbing. Gold covered his left arm from elbow to fingertips, ending in draconic talons. “Where the hell have you been?” The fine lips twisted. “Hell, indeed.”

“Where is my husband?” Lucrecia’s voice, raw iron with a razor edge. “Why are you here?” Valentine’s fiery glance barely acknowledged her. “He’s…indisposed. I’ve brought a gift for my…for the baby.” He moved, so swift that Veld’s eyes couldn’t follow, stepping around Veld, one long arm outstretched. A small white object lay on his gloved palm. He offered it to Elfe, who stood beside Sephiroth. She didn’t hesitate. “It’s a rattle.” She held it up for all to see, shaking it gently. The soft clink and clatter sounded to Veld like the chuckling of crows. He took the rattle, examining it. Hand-carved, smoothed and polished, the whole of it hard and cool to the touch. But not true white. More like old ivory, or…bone-colored. Chilled, he looked up, meeting Valentine’s eyes. “What is this?” “It’s an oath fulfilled.” Valentine’s mouth curled into a shape that wasn‘t a smile. “It means ‘never again.’” “Vincent--” “Later.” One lean finger touched Veld’s lips. “Perhaps.” He turned away, his midnight hair hanging thick and tangled, except for one long, plaited tail pinned to the red band encircling his head. Wind at the door tossed the black braid, stormlight catching in silver threads.

Sephiroth shut and locked the door. The silence and shock that gripped the room broke, but Veld shook off the questions. “Lucrecia.” He took her arm. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

Head, Hands, Heart

Veld approached Shinra Manor from the south, avoiding the main road up the mountain. A stand of black oak trees marked the estate boundary, conveniently screening him from sight. He slipped through the formal gardens at the rear of the house, and on to the old library in the east wing.

Vincent would be watching the front door. Veld preferred to scope things out before that inevitable confrontation.

Third window from the left: Faulty latch. He eased it open, drew aside the heavy dark drapes. Stared at the back of a bookcase, blocking his way in.

He could push it to one side, but if it fell, the noise would alert Vincent and anyone else on the premises. Assuming any of the staff remained. He wouldn‘t bet on it. So, on to the kitchen garden.

Once magnificent with fruit trees and herbs, the garden had diminished to one small cold frame beside a mound of recently-turned earth. The pantry door, almost invisible in the lee of the wall, yielded to Veld’s lock-pick. He risked a small light. A broken chair and a pile of scrap wood made a minor obstacle. He pushed past them, paused to get his bearings.

Silence and shadows. An antique iron stove brooded in one corner, cold. The massive oak table centering the room held only a single, broad-bladed knife, stained dark.

“Dirty tools left lying?” Veld murmured. “I taught you better than that, Valentine.”

Vincent was neither stupid nor careless. The knife pointed toward the door across the room, opened on a narrow stairway. It led, Veld recalled, to the basement.

Too obvious. He explored the ground floor first, floorboards creaking softly as he walked. A sigh at the very edge of hearing stirred the heavy air; the back of his neck prickled. He refused to turn and look.

Dust whitened the old-fashioned furniture in the sitting room and the formal dining room. Little of the house was in use. Only the office showed signs of recent occupation: Leather briefcase on the desk, cloth jacket draped over the back of the chair. An open notebook, its leaves filled with an esoteric shorthand in a bold black scrawl.

He took the bait, deciphering page after page of a private journal dated over thirty years ago. Part of his mind admired the brutal efficiency and sheer creativity of the experiments described, even as cold sweat crawled down his spine.

The subject of the experiments was identified only by an initial, but it was enough. This was more than a piece of the puzzle; it was the key to the mystery. He’d been led to this point from the moment he’d arrived at the house.

He turned back to the hall. In a corner, light glinted. He bent for a closer look.

Eyeglasses, wire frame twisted askew.

Nerves taut, he returned to the kitchen, to find the basement door now shut. A length of heavy steel chain hung from the knob, broken links trailing on the floor. He gathered it up, stuffing it into his pocket, and opened the door. Cold air wafted up the dimly-lit stairs, tasting of iron and copper, and the sharp, oily bite of mako. He went down the stairs, since that was what Vincent wanted.

Shinra Manor boasted several sub-levels. The first one held the labs, specimen cages, and mako tubes. He checked the cages first: Empty. Should he be relieved, or worried? Moving on, he found the mako tubes bubbling quietly, glowing softly in the dark. That left the labs, at the darkest end of the hall.

He flipped the light switch in the first one. Gods of Gaia! He backed out, suppressing the urge to vomit. Now he knew the source of the raw-meat stench. Was there any use in looking further?

In point of fact, there was. He had a promise to keep, no body, and no rogue Turk. Veld Dragoon did not leave a job unfinished. The thought of checking the rest of the labs made his stomach churn. He was too old for this shit.

In the second lab, no gore, still no bodies, nothing but long-idle equipment hung with shaggy cobwebs. He moved on, and that was when he noted the rusty-brown footprints–long, narrow, tapering to pointed tips–leading down the hall to the lab farthest from the stairs.

“Goddamn lunatic games,” he muttered, following.

Once more, he hit a switch, unsurprised at what the light revealed: Vincent Valentine, all black leather and ragged cloak, tangled hair framing ember-red eyes in a face untouched by time. He leaned against a steel worktable, arms crossed, gold talons tapping.

“I don’t play games, Veld.”

“Then what do you call all of this?”

“I call it justice,” Vincent hissed. “Payback.” He moved with unnatural speed, pinning Veld to the wall. “You let me disappear. You and everyone I knew went on with your lives, and forgot about me. Thirty years, Veld!” The grip of his gold-clad fingers tightened around Veld’s throat, just short of pain. Veld could still breathe, still speak.

“We thought you were dead.”

“I was.” Vincent’s fingers tightened a fraction more. “I am.” Abruptly, before Veld’s air ran out, he let go and backed away. “And yet I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. I don’t even blame Lucrecia…much.” His eyes flamed, and he snarled, canine teeth catching the light. “Hojo. It was all Hojo!”

The lines of his body blurred, going dark, gaining height and bulk. His face flickered, one moment a beast’s muzzle filled with dripping fangs, the next a parody of grinning madness, all teeth and staring eyes. Adrenaline sparked a burst of energy to the materia in Veld’s metal arm, but before he could release it, Vincent melted back into his own human shape.

“I was more merciful than he,” Vincent said. “I let him run. Let him try to escape. I gave him the night, the dark of the moon and her shadows to hide in. The last thing he heard was the howling of wolves.” He smiled, eyes half-hooded. “I am what he made me, and that’s what destroyed him in the end. As a scientist, I’m sure he appreciated the irony.”

“You could,” said Veld, against his better judgment, “be charged with murder.”

“Go ahead. If you think you can hold me. If you think anyone cares.”

“What am I supposed to tell his wife?”

“Oh, I’ve already sent her a message,” said Vincent, at the worktable again. “And not only her. There’s another with a right to know. In fact, it should be–”

Veld’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, seeing two messages flashing.

Vincent smirked. “Timing is everything.”

Veld listened to both messages, one delivered with cold, military precision, and the other shaking with horror. He listened twice to make sure he understood. When Veld looked up, Vincent had shifted so that he no longer blocked what stood on the table.

“Did you know that mako makes an excellent preservative?” Vincent turned the wide glass jar, watching the contents spin lazily in the green liquid.

Veld swallowed bile. “Why…?”

“I suffered hell’s own torture under these hands. It’s only fair.”

“And…the ‘message’ you sent to his son?”

“Hojo was only his father in the intellectual sense! It’s an average-sized brain, by the way.”

“And Lucrecia?”

“She chose his heart over mine.” Vincent smiled, a deeply disturbing sight. “Now it’s hers in fact as well as metaphor.”

Veld closed his eyes. “Gods damn you, Valentine.”

“Yes,” said Vincent. “I believe they have.”

And so concludes our morbid little tale. Sleep well! ;)

#ffviihalloween #Vincent Valentine #Veld #Hojo #Lucrecia #Sephiroth #Elfe

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cyberleaf69 · 5 years

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TWO OLD STAGEHANDS REMINISCING

I bought a new device this morning(Black Friday), disrupting my savings to the tune of $278.19; this was NOT a doorbuster bargain, but was their least expensive 'laptop.' This purchase has relieved me of the burden of Google Chrome & brought back Cortana("Hey!"); also I have the use of my WiFi, and can stay in touch with the Amell family(up in those woods). When I ventured out this AM, it was about fifty degrees out; I got a biscut-breakfast at Hardee's, before negotiating my holiday purchase; after bringing my prize back to the room, I sped off to get 4 packs of cig's and some(6 for $1) donut sticks. Hurricane Michael has managed to permanently close down my Harvey's, so it's Family Dollar, Dollar General & Dollar Tree for now; this has increased expenses significantly, while reducing overall quality & variety. I'm sure to think of something else to write about, but for now, I'm sending this along.

Outstanding! Glad to hear from you. I had another episode with another blocked artery. I'm up to three stents now. This happened right after Michael blew through, so I'd been wondering how you were doing. This news is tonic for me.

sorry; I was checking out alternative forms of identification; not sure if this is tonic(because I'm tone-deaf), but I'll dash off something for a three-stenter; keep this up and you'll be setting off metal detectors at airports and courthouses; when you say 'episode' you should elaborate, even if you have to make the shit up; making shit up has become quite presidential lately RE:Hurricane Michael - about 7 PM, my power went out; luckily, between 5 & 6 PM next afternoon, it was restored I opened my drapes for lighting, and sat facing the window until around 12:30 AM, when the worst of it had passed that bitch was loud, and at one point, while still approaching from SW, one sheet of steel roofing blew off our U-shaped building; a shower of sparks as it blew across the parking lot got my full attention did you purchase a copy of "Whose Boat Is This Boat?" it took 30 min's to get this far... updates and such[speaks to the age of the model I was sold @STAPLES] cheese grits on the breakfast menu, but first I'll be needing a shower

Of course we didn't catch the full fury of the storm, but we got plenty of rain and wind, I have several washed out sections of driveway I need to attend to, it's a rough ride down into the valley here. In regards to my ongoing heart troubles, in 2011 I had a blockage of the left anterior descending artery, that was causing great pressure in my chest, felt like an elephant was sitting on me, no heart attack with that event, but the docs implanted my first stent. The heart attack this past April was brought on by blockage of the right coronary artery, I aggravated my heart by over-exerting myself digging my dogs grave. That event was marked by rapid heartbeat, dizziness, sweating, confusion, and pressure radiating out from the left side of my chest. That blockage was remedied by stent number two. The latest episode at the end of October was preceded by a week or so of pressure and mild discomfort in my chest that was remedied by taking a dose of nitro-glycerin. I awoke with that pressure, took a dose, didn't get any relief, I alerted Debbie, took another dose, but by then I was having difficulty breathing and having strong chest pain, Deb called 911 and gave me a third dose of nitro, at that time I was hyperventilating uncontrollably, sweating profusely, and the pain was very intense...I was sure I was about to die. The EMTs arrived, got me in the ambulance, took my blood pressure, and an EKG, drew some blood, analyzed that with the fancy computer analyzer and came back with "Everything looks fine, you don't appear to be having a heart attack." I got to the hospital, had a quiet morning and afternoon, save for the drawing of blood and the checking of blood pressure. Later that night though, I had six more non-heart-attacks. I won't go into all the drama wrapped around that due to my vitals all showing good normal indications. Anyway, I got my third stent early that next morning, after being catheterized and they found another blockage in the right coronary artery that was downstream of the second stent. Phillip, during those six non-heart-attacks I was truly sure I was going to meet the creator. I had told Debbie all those things you tell someone when you think you're dying. But apparently I've either got unfinished business or I'm just getting some extra time here on earth due to my exceedingly good looks, wit, and charm. ;)

good looks, wit & charm aside, since you have unloaded onto DEB all those last minute appurtenances, you should think about what must be/should be said about your time together since recovering from those six downstream pain events[& consider the high dose of TNT necessary for that most recent download]

We're getting ready for our Thanksgiving tomorrow. Lots of cleaning and such. I'll be in and out all day. Got yard-work to do now that the rain has passed. I have a fire going to save electricity, and the added benefit of warm glowing light is helpful. I've got to go buy a used bass guitar in a little while. I'm snagging parts off of it to make a cigar box bass guitar for Patti (Tuck) Tuckwiler's brother's Christmas gift. I'd already had my oatmeal & blueberries along with a patty of turkey sausage and a slice of toast. I let this guy named Possum hunt on our property, he gave me a slab of backstrap as thanks for hunting privileges. I'm thinking about having a backstrap on a yeast roll for lunch.

shower complete backstrap a la antlered-buck, I'm assuming had some online interaction w/TUCK[doubt she will remember] will your son attend tomorrow's feed? you sound pretty busy, so I'll catch up w/U later

oversized notebook w/no disk player[complicating printer connection]

trak-pad offset too far to left of center[due to hard drive's location to the right of it]; I keep right-clicking when I want to left-click I'm running down my battery for the first time today[not sure whether these rechargeables benefit from 'training'] still 'customizing' my task bar/I can use my 'task view' to 'see' what's down there[and access w/a click] tomorrow will be a 'shopping day' as I'm out of grits limerick is kinda fun most forms are the kind of challenge a writer loves I once wrote a Petrarchian sonnet[back in high school]; it was a love-poem to my girlfriend; in order to fit her 2-syllable name into it, without breaking with meter requirements, I wrote it as G_____[just one syllable]; this came in handy later; I was able to recycle my metric sentiments for future girlfriends. https://www.booksie.com/sent-messages https://en.wikichip.org/w/index.php?title=User:Phillip_DeNise&action=submit

My youngest son works for a company that resolves gift/cash card issues. They're well moneyed, they pay their employees very well, and they feed them like royalty. The company had bought a Thanksgiving feast for 9 people. They spent $1700 on that meal, that was catered by Olive Garden. There was so much food left that all the employees got to take home...like...doggy bags for elephants. My son brought some of that bounty to share with us for our thanksgiving dinner. We also had plenty of food leftover, so much that we sent all the family members home with food for days, and we still have much left in the fridge. I'm having some fettucine alfredo, and yeast rolls for my late lunch. I'd been busy cleaning and straightening from the dinner. Also I'd bought a $50 bass to sacrifice for parts I need to build that cigar-box bass I'd mentioned that I'd disassembled before taking lunch. I'm trying to stay busy and keep moving. Whatever amount of life I have left, I want to use as much as I can, as wisely as I can. After I wrap up this message, I'm going to chop some wood and get a fire started for this evening. It's supposed to be in the low 30s tonight. Cheers! I hope that laptop ain't making you crazy.

fettucine alfredo is one of my all-time-favorites; 1st time I had it, my sis made it at home; she did it so well that I was forever hooked; add smoked chicken breast & sliced, fresh button mushrooms, and... well, Italian ambrosia; plain f.a. is the perfect side for veal marsala do you have to smoke all those cigars for authenticity? ...probably a good way to end up w/John Prine's voice check came yesterday; I'll go to Liquor Locker at 11[as it is usually sans-customers then; less chance of a robbery], to get my wad of ca$h then $625 to motel-boss, $60 + any cash from last mo. goes into savings hidey-hole, leaving about 3 Benjamins for necessities

All the cash that I have to my name is tied up in two guitars and a guitar amplifier. Got them all up on eBay, and Craig's list, hoping some aspiring young rock star has a need...soon. I'm living off the fat of thanksgiving today. Got that fire going, saving on heating bills, and trying to figure out how to get the most cash I can for the HHR. I've got about 1.75 years to go until I can take SS early retirement. I honestly don't know how I'll make it that long, barring a minor miracle or a random act of kindness, but somehow we've manged thus far, I have faith and hope for better days to come. As far as cigar box guitars go, we find the boxes online or at tobacco shops in the area. I haven't had a cigar or cigarette since April when I had the heart attack. I do find myself "wanting" quite often but have taken up gnawing a straw, gum, or a toothpick. The good news is that it's saving me between $10 - $20 a week that I don't have anyway. Yay. Anyhow, I'm going back out to work on the cigar box bass. Peace to you Phillip.

get some sax-reeds for your oral gratification-smoking abatement strategy; a cigar box will make an excellent homemade resonator for a sax-like sample to feed into your reactionary music what changes when you claim your partial & have significantly improved your survival-horizon in the interim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8buJ2-oD02E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqoTDM7tio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-XU8jm02o where do the best stories come from? editors are famous for taking out the stuff that isn't needed; old men have a similar process occurring among the aging neurons in their noggins; this is giving them a new voice; problem is:if they show their wizened faces, nobody will listen to them; time to employ a mask... a truly vital issue that cannot be ignored Calories are units used to measure heat. Mammals maintain their body temperature by chemically converting starches and sugars back into H2O & CO2. When we burn hydrocarbon fuels, the heat production and the waste products are the same. Plants do just the opposite; they use the H2O & CO2 to store the heat energy in their starches and sugars. Down in Brunswick, there is a company called Hercules; when you pass by their manufacturing plant, you will see tree stumps piled high; they use the waste from lumbering operations to convert the cellulose into gunpowder. The lowly peanut vine, hosts on its root systems, colonies of bacteria[also plants] that 'fix' the nitrogen from the atmosphere, so that it is soluble[thus available to the vines for uptake through those roots]. Rotating to a planting of peanuts can quickly restore the depleted nutrients resulting from cotton or corn plantings. The lint caught up in the air circulating in a cotton mill can cause an explosion if rapidly oxidized. Corn silos can be dangerous concentrations of these plant-stored nitrates as well. As a child, I was the agent providing the fixed nitrogen, when I 'strowed sodie' about the roots in a plot of sweet corn. These crystals of explosive nitrates are chemically produced from nitrogen in the atmosphere. 'Scrubbing' the atmosphere of dangerous concentrations of CO2 can be done in a similar process. If the energy needed to trap the carbon can be 'captured' from sunlight, then the corn plants and explosive fertilizers can be dispensed with. If animal life forms are so much more intelligent than plants, then they should consider taking over all the terraforming functions that they mindlessly perform in their own self-interest. Terraforming distant Mars seems to depend heavily upon creating a breathable atmosphere there; what are our scientists doing about terraforming the Earth, where a kingdom of plant life forms could be better harnessed to accomplish our desired balance of CO2, O2 & N2? Climate change, probably in a warming phase, is increasing our atmospheric H2O; this will eventually reverse the warming trend. In the interim, it seems logical that there are locales on the planet which will benefit from the current trend; these are the places we should be colonizing. Diverting the hordes of humanity, that are fleeing the effects of climate change, into these mostly unsettled areas, not only solves the immigration problems of industrialized nations, but represents a tremendous business opportunity for expanding their struggling economies. These new colonies offer to the 'survivalists' among us, destinations where there is less government and enormous freedom to develop their ideas into social organizations that will promote their own desired political and economic change. No matter where they chose to go, they will still need shoes... need clean drinking water... shelters constructed from available materials[rammed earth domes are remarkably resilient] will immediately be needed; and what will they eat? Business solutions exist for almost every difficulty that such a growing society must soon encounter; why continue looking to charitable organizations and over-burdened governments for the answers?

Everyone now has the capability of being able to hide behind a digital mask on them damn interwebs. Here we have the vastness of mankind's accumulation of knowledge, and people choose to watch cat videos on facebook. There's really not much hope for people in my best estimation, masks or not. I understand why there needs to be a revolution of the mind, heart, and soul. I understand that I'm not the only one that sees this, and I'm glad I'm not alone. One of the problems we face today is the blessing/curse of the internet. People aren't using it so much as a learning tool, but rather as a distraction from all the folly of the times. That said, I'm going off to work on a box.

time actually flies when we are having so much fun; my cheese grits are already at stage one[awaiting the time when I shove the green plastic bowl into the nuke-o-wave, while those frags of kernal-corn soak/soften in cold water], I'm fully dressed & the bed is made; the TV is on & I'm halfway through my first cup of joe and my first cigarette[which I have stubbed out and noticed that the first half was the most generous one]; a great noise is being raised outside my place[some sort of gas-powered welding machine], so staying in bed would not have been a workable alternative; it's rainy out, which is a meteorological condition that could remain in place for three days; I saw that coming, so I visited my nearest Family Dollar yesterday, when it was seventy-two degrees and sunny GATOR used to be right here "gator takes a ride" is my visual offering for today; not sure why the hands call him gator, but getting sent up to the loading bridge is probably a status indicator; I spent a lot of load-in's & load-out's watching and listening from high above the groundlings; I was also rewarded with a department head's position on a national tour for having filed an NLRB charge; that got me to thinking IATSE Local 41 is still on display in cyberspace; do you ever go there? That is where I snatched this image for my ACER. I snuck in using a private browser & made off with my prize. "behindthemain" reminds me of something my Dad used to say; "Once you back your ass up to the teaser, you'll never be able to go back." The age of Rock 'n' Roll was the greatest AGE because they wrote songs about US! How cool is that? What is totally uncool is my mail.com, which has just refused to send this draft until I remove my stolen image; so just imagine a close-up of a stuffed gator-doll perched on an arbor loaded with counterweight which was originally posted by some dude called @behindthemain

Time, at least for me, has become compressed. Three days, maybe a week will go by in the blink of an eye, and there's really not much I can do to slow the procession. The best thing I've found that I can do is create, fabricate, manufacture, and repair. Just trying to stay, to keep from spending too much time in my head. Now there's a dark place. I wouldn't send anyone to spend any time there. One problem is that of psychic transmission on my part. Bad enough I should have to spend time there in my mind, but I was also gifted with the ability to broadcast my thoughts, so, certain lucky "receivers" get to share the "Matt experience". I generally know who's getting that broadcast because they either don't know me but they're able to complete my sentences, or I'll be thinking of or about a person that I know, and they will call me on the phone. If the case is the former, those people tend to try to stay away from me. I'm thinking they can't handle the stream. If you're in the latter group, we're connected. Probably always have been. Determining which thoughts are your own, and those that come beaming in seemingly out of nowhere is the catch to all that. Thoughts??? P.S. I don't consider myself a receiver, but maybe I just can't sort my thoughts from the thoughts of others... Herman Hill passed away a few days ago. He was a receiver of my thoughts. I bet it was confusing for him to be in proximity of me.

intelligence originating from without, as you should already realize, is sorta my thing if I have connected with your interior spaces in the past, I must assume that it did not seem so dark to me I would remember being put off in such a manner

Deb & I have been buying, selling, and trading electric guitars, and amps. Unofficially we are Pocataligo Guitar Exchange. I also do minor repairs to electric guitars & basses. We've flipped 4 Squire Bullet Strats, an ESP - LTD EXP200 Explorer copy, and a DeArmond M65C Les Paul Studio copy, as well as a Peavey Mark III Citation bass amp head, and a Peavey Citation Mark IV guitar amp head. The fun thing about this is that we get to try all kinds of gear that we wouldn't ordinarily get to play with. :)

now you will be needing a PGE logo; some consideration should be given to the silk screening process, when you select a design; the reason for this being cheaper T-shirts and complete PGE control over their manufacture & distribution; just sayin'

1st things first - incorporate as an.LLC. Get a bi'ness license. Then we'll get around to tee shirts and what have you. This will also be the outlet for any cigar box creations.

LLC's are pure crap; there are many ways to protect your #1 asset[your residence] from liabilities you may not see coming, while operating this[any] business at your residence; you can pledge the equity in a residential property as collateral for a small business loan, while your LLC could not; of course your CFO[DEB] would need to chime in on such risky decisions[but risk is what living is all about; security a delusion] got up early[9:03] as per usual on Sunday, in order to catch Jane Pauley on CBS; NOT! there is a tornadic fear monger down in Tallahassee pre-empting the network broadcast to tell me that I need to get in my safe place; all last night there were alerts interrupting my TV-viewing; this 'storm' is indeed unusual for December, with lightning & thunder[started hearing rumbles about 8 PM while watching "Rampage"]; there have been accumulations down here between 2 & 3 inches, but no real cause for flash flood warnings[every 5 to 7 minutes]; added to that sort of aggravation, I'm now an expert in the minutiae of George Herbert Walker's 94-year-long public life[best part is watching secret service guys puking up their guts while an 85-year-old maniac races his speedboat around Kennebunkport's rocky shoals]; if TRUMP died suddenly, we'd really be consigned to TV-hell; so, those warnings expire and they start six minutes of backlogged commercials; sheesh!

Cocoa Beach secret stagehand local?

Titusville; Dad had a friend down there; entire membership of this four-digit film unit was featured on the cover of IA Bulletin

One of the reasons we ditched Atlanta and moved out here was the abundance of nature out here. Ample wildlife, some wild berries and muscadines to be had in good years, plenty of breathing space, no bumping elbows with neighbors. Deb took this picture about 10 minutes ago...

when I go hunting for muscadines, I take along a paper sack; I collect a few in my sack & leave them on that 'shelf' below the rear-window of the jalopy; now the car is infused with the most wonderful odor[perhaps for weeks to come]

It's beautiful, mild and partly cloudy today. I may get out and try to find a good sized deer to take down for our winter meat needs. Possum put up a deer stand that's fully enclosed, about 10 feet above ground that I may go sit in to see what comes by. Rick Scheuerman had a great idea - there's a hangout in Athens named Nucci's Space. It was originally a place where one could rent musical rehearsal space by the month, that also has a coffee shop. I think, as I recall the story, that Nucci had committed suicide, but someone kept Nucci's Space up and running. So one of the things they do there is have auctions of art and musical instruments to provide support for depressed/suicidal people. Rick suggested that I take some of these old beat relical guitars that I have in abundance just sitting around, make them into pieces of art, and either donate or perhaps take a small percentage of the sale of these items. What sayeth thee old friend?

I like the auction angle[not so much the 'cause' enumerated]; also, auctioning off unwanted guitar-bodies converted into 'art' would not provide the benefit I imagine; I think you should cobble together an instrument, using all your acquired skills, that is meant from its conception to be auctioned off @Nucci's Space; the bidders would be local musicians/collectors that you'd be pleased to meet[& that may commission lucrative projects going forward]; no charge for this wonderful idea

the Athens music scene has developed a somewhat muted presence online; it was in emergence-stage, when I was dating my 1st wife & made the drive frequently in my VW-van, fitted w/8-track stereo system sorry I did not mention my amazement at DEB's photo of tomorrow's lunch; I'll use that image for cover art soon, and look forward to gator's comment on it once I have the TITLE, I'll know what to write about in the contents; these images can entice many more clicks, and that is what I'm exploring @Booksie.com my 'editor' sucks, but I'm also exploring better ways to make use of its features; learning as I go keeps me busy at this keyboard not much real interaction with other readers/writers has occurred; there is a moderator calling himself Booksie Guy; BG is probably not a BOT, but I have not really gotten to him yet I tried to get a new persona at Retirement Online, but have not heard back from its Appleton, WI moderator/witch checked out 'online banks' without any success; ALLY requires govt.-issued ID to open an account if you had been able to open my home-video, you could have seen me vibrating; my tremors are pretty bad, and when my paycheck arrives, I usually sign the damn thing first thing in the morning, before I have my coffee; this seems to make the scrawl more legible my typing ability is affected, and this over-sized keyboard is a help with my target acquisition difficulties https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVlSVkzbJDA check out the antiquated studio equipment featured here

Gary Jules, Michael Andrews

All around me are familiar faces Worn out places, worn out faces Bright and early for their daily races Going nowhere, going nowhere Their tears are filling up their glasses No expression, no expression Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow No tomorrow, no tomorrow And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take When people run in circles it's a very very Mad world, mad world Children waiting for the day, they feel good Happy birthday, happy birthday Made to feel the way that every child should Sit and listen, sit and listen Went to school and I was very nervous No one knew me, no one knew me Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson Look right through me, look right through me And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take When people run in circles it's a very very Mad world, mad world Enlarge your world Mad world

The cover art is from a photo taken in 1968. The building featured was a new one, and I graduated from Bass High School on its stage. Most of the boys were headed for college... or Vietnam. I chose the former, and believe that it has made all the difference. When roads diverge in a yellow wood, noticing their width and worn condition is just one approach to the decision-making quandry. I was taught to choose door number three. 1968 was a good time for such choices, and many of my contemporaries made just such a definitive choice. If you possess the technology to view/listen to DVD's, might I suggest the enhanced edition of WOODSTOCK; the movie. You'll see what many of those, that chose door number three, looked like. My graduating class was small by most standards; we chose to sing a song from "Man of La Mancha." But we 'walked' in a less-prescribed manner. I drove off in a Renault Dauphine with a slow-moving-vehicle sign attached to the rear. Though I might like to be eighteen again, at the time, I was not looking back. I did return to this building many times though; I worked there on many occasions. Sometimes I worked on that stage; sometimes I worked in the exhibit hall at the other end of the complex. The construction of this facility, by the municipality, was considered to be an important urban renewal project. That is how 'buttermilk bottom' disappeared from Forest Avenue. Another blight vanished when Fulton County Stadium went up. In 1951, the city received the All-America City Award, due to its rapid growth and high standard of living in the southern U.S. Annexation was the central strategy for growth. In 1952, Atlanta annexed Buckhead, as well as vast areas of what are now northwest, southwest and south Atlanta, adding 82 square miles (210 km2) And tripling its area. By doing so, 100,000 new affluent white residents were added, preserving white political power as well as expanding the city's property tax base And enlarging the traditional leadership upper-middle-class white class. That class now had to room to expand inside the city limits. Federal court decisions in 1962-63 ended the county-unit system thus greatly reducing rural Georgia control over the state legislature, enabling Atlanta, and other cities, to gain proportional political power. The Federal courts opened the Democratic Party primary to black voters, who surged in numbers and became increasingly well organized through the Atlanta Negro Voters League. Rush week was soon upon me, and I attended two of the parties; choices! ALPHA TAU OMEGA was where one of my acquaintances at work had become a paddle-wielding brother, so I checked out their presentation. As a sort of back-up plan, I also checked out the men of ALPHA EPSILON PI; they checked me out as well; I was rejected on religious grounds. Time for door number three. I carried a full load for four consecutive quarters at my new school, before that other door presented itself. From Fall Quarter of 1969 until Fall Quarter of 1970, I was out of school, but stuck to my solemn vow to return in one year[against all the odds]. It had been too cloudy and overcast to see the eclipse of the sun that year; there was a lot going on that I did not see very clearly. When I returned to school, I changed my major from 'undecided' to ANTHROPOLOGY; a Greek professor guided my acquisition of this love for studying men; he was Greek Orthodox, and would have been rejected by those men at AY-EE-PIE as well; he took his 101 class to the Church he attended, and we followed the liturgy in Greek[and wrote a paper on the experience]. The mosaic in the dome was impressive. I never adhered to my degree 'program,' and so I never graduated from GSU; a classmate from Bass had gotten his degree in just four years[Class of '72]; I ran into Ross at SEARS, where he was selling tires; I went back to that stage, where the Class of '68 had sung about walking on through the wind.

Everyone knows that without a valid photo ID, you cannot purchase a box of breakfast cereal. The folks across the wall will need a better system, and the increasing use of bio-metrics[by connected data terminals] is a giant leap for the AI kind. UPC's can be scanned to track products as they change locations. RFID's are often laminated into photo ID's, so an employer can track his/her minions, and control their access to sensitive areas within their workplace. In the US, your SSN connects you to an exhaustive data base that 'knows' how hard you work, how much compensation you receive and where your 'assets' are currently being stored. What can be 'learned' about an individual, and how quickly this new data can be accumulated, attached to the appropriate individual files and how quickly those updated files can then be assessed is what AI exists for. Current business models[like at FaceBook & GoogleChrome] will each gradually lose its earning potential[a process being accelerated by the public sentiment in favor of government regulation of all their data collection and sharing practices], as the flow of data becomes more centralized and access to those files and data streams more restricted. The global expansion of connected Android devices is shifting the product consumption patterns in growing/struggling economies towards some ill-perceived goal, that becomes more and more achievable with each passing minute. Both of the big 'data players' in the streams of ones and zeroes now being catalogued here in the US, have made agreements to share it with our government. If we assume that there are adults in the room, where the analysis of this growing horde is being coordinated, then we can also assume that some of those individuals will be targeted to administer this collection and analysis process, once that 'responsibility' is transferred to a more 'independent' entity, resembling the Federal Reserve in its organization. At that point, the elected representatives in government will be reduced to an ordinary subset of identified individuals, to be monitored and manipulated by an increasingly automated system. If the drones can find you, you could be quickly eliminated. What will determine your value to that global system? Your consumption patterns is the obvious answer; BUY WISELY! I'm off to get an HBO fix; at eight they are replaying a missed episode of "My Intelligent Friend" just for my benefit; this series is filmed in Italian & broadcast with English subtitles; this makes it difficult to enjoy the imagery, because I'm busy reading so I'll know WTF is going on.

AI may be the thing that brings us into full globalization, perhaps the issue that preachers in my past have warned us about. Our baptist preacher out in Mableton used to hand out Watchtower pamphlets that had articles regarding the evils of globalization. Hmm ... to be overseen by the great computer in the sky (cloud networking).

I've been keeping my cloud-connection turned off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixby_(virtual_assistant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Taylor https://www.pcworld.com/article/2099943/microsofts-cortana-digital-assistant-guards-user-privacy-with-notebook.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invoke_(smart_speaker) https://www.ask.com/youtube?q=cortana&v=DxrJWSi_IWo https://www.windowscentral.com/why-splitting-cortana-and-search-windows-10-makes-sense https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-moves-key-technologies-including-cortana-from-research-to-product-groups/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/inside-the-architecture-of-googles-knowledge-graph-and-microsofts-satori/

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ASMR like those furries, these 'artists' are being accused of deviance; what say you? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=furry+fandom

To be sure, I'm not understanding the nature of adult cos-play.

cable TV is definitely turning my brain to mush, but some furries have serious behavioral issues that can be mitigated by their cos-play; ASMR is the new player on the block, and their 'offerings' have been 'taken down' on multiple forums as somehow inappropriate; I find this lack of freedom[of expression] to be indicative of rapid 'political' corrosion of the medium; that button labelled REPORT would be less attractive, if your reporting history came up with your profile info; STFU would be door # 3 Gibi explains it quite well: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6acMV3m35znLcf0JGNn7Q

I'll start back driving for Uber or Lyft later today, after having taken some time off due to those pesky heart issues. I didn't feel confident driving people around knowing that I was possibly still at risk for another "coronary event". The cardiologist has cleared me to return to normal activities. I didn't start driving for these ride-sharing companies to impress anyone, hell there sure as shit ain't nothing glamorous about carting poor people around all day. What it does give me is nearly instant income that I can access almost immediately after giving someone a ride. Pair that with there ain't a boss riding my ass. I can drive whenever I want to, I set my own hours. And lastly it gives me something to do beside sit here and piss and moan about things over which I have no control. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg0BNTebcbY

there are two types of people in the world; when your 'ride' climbs into your vehicle, do you re-adjust the rear-view mirror to center onto the face of the speaker; door #3 is insisting that he/she rides up front; keep on smiling RYAN wrote: I make projects of my experiences working UBER. Last video of this nature got a lot of attention- though, I deleted it to be (slightly) more professional. So here is another few weeks worth of footage. These videos have been for nothing but fun, and I'm glad others have appreciated them. It's awesome to have an audience watch something that I've created and I want to see if this little project can go somewhere. Those in my videos consented to being in my project, blurred identity or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVOJ5ZfzjF8

my TV took a shit... and now SANTANA is blaring; this album, the one with all those damn faces, was given to me by a chick that thought my DONOVAN eight-tracks were just not going to get me there; of course she was right... and so there were drums in the house; another tape cart that was played in that house was WHO'S NEXT; I thought it was pretty good travelin' music, along with a Beatles-thing called RUBBER SOUL; gettin' high & gettin' out on the road was a pretty good way to pass the time on my gap-year; when I decided on ANTHROPOLOGY, it was mostly because it legitimized the study of sex, drugs & rock'n'roll... so I studied... HARD! playing this complete album seems to have slowed down the clock; that's an unusual effect; I'm shopping for a King Crimson video [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no8L51U_KlM ]; not any WHO'S NEXT videos that do anything; guess I'll just let it play for awhile I get my TV going, and dammit... the water goes off; they're out there digging up the street; probably gonna be off the rest of the day brewed my coffee w/ice cubes; just try and outsmart an old white guy... go right ahead wrote a new ICU last night; about 40 peeks at it, w/no comments, so... vanished new text has less film-script niceties... less humor... no dialog...

He had to admit... he couldn't see a thing. A good bluff sometimes can win the pot. He spoke into the darkness, "I see you!" He hoped it had sounded convincing. Not a sound. Why had he come out here without his trusty flashlight? Only gonna be gone for a minute. Tell it to the wind. He turned with a confidence he wasn't actually feeling. In a slightly lowered voice, he spoke to himself as he walked away from where he thought the creature must be. "I'll be right back,... so don't you dare move." Not a sound. He tried to imagine his 'creature' when it was not cloaked in utter blackness. The imagined lighting his mind put into those trees just beyond the clearing where his friend had parked his truck was of no use; he could see the trees right enough, but the image he needed simply would not materialize there. Not knowing what was there with him... not knowing how far his friend needed to go in the truck to fetch water... not knowing how fast he could make it to the imagined safety of the old cabin... not knowing was making him sweat. And that creature could smell the fear... smell the open containers with food in them... smell where the truck had been parked, and the odor on that other one... that was far away now. His thoughts were on the amaretto hidden in his sleeping bag; then his hand was on it. He poured into the tin cup... the one he knew he'd left on the table; cup in hand, he closed and latched the rustic door. It was pitch black in the cabin too. He drank deeply. Forty proof means about twenty percent alcohol; better than a beer... smelling better too. Now there was scratching and clawing at the corner of the door. "I'd pour you one too, but I gotta find that flashlight,... first. Then maybe I can find another cup." He mock-toasted his little friend, and drank deeply once again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UNMTthguCQ

confession:the only GARCIA I like has cherries & chunks of chocolate in it

I've been rummaging around in those dusty old memory-bins, trying to remember when I switched from eight-track tape-carts over to vinyl LP's; first came WQXI, and then FM-stations became a thing; we were at 481 Clifton Rd., by the time I bought a stereo system[I would have been a senior in high school at the time... 1968]; 8-trak player/amplifier w/2 speakers that weighed nearly nothing; in the next room, my sister[13 months younger] was spinning LP's of Firesign Theater, Mothers of Invention & Jimi Hendrix Experience to annoy me; I moved out of there JAN 1970, & took that same stereo system to my Briarcliff apartment; during those tape-cart-years, I was driving an old VW 'bus[w/windows all-round]' that was repainted blue & gray; I had a tape player[under-dash] professionally installed; two ceiling-mounted speakers and a six-volt to twelve-volt converter mounted on the pan beside my engine; you could hear muted spark-field-noise when your tracks played[like a subtle audio-tachometer]; this 'dustbin' is kinda like a public library filled with stories packed onto shelves that nobody ever disturbs; these stories have sacrificed chronological accuracy for other, more aesthetic consistencies; at this point in my recollection process, I believe that "Tea For The Tillerman" was a tape I had bought, and that "John Barleycorn Must Die" was purchased on vinyl; both these were released in 1970; one night, in that first apartment, I popped in a tape that I distinctly disliked, and slept all night while wearing bulky headphones, and while the tracks endlessly looped; Blood Sweat & Tears... NYC's antidote to Chicago; I cannot remember when I bought a better home-system & a turntable, but I recall listening to Ten Years After, Grand Funk Railroad & Bloodrock; "The Survival of Saint Joan" was also an LP that I bought[released 1971 by a Tucker, GA garage band]. In 1972[Fall/Winter], I drove around the US in my '71 VWCampmobile[bought new], with nothing more than a German-built radio; the best I could do, was find a pirate station, broadcasting at major mega-wattage, from a tall tower located on Canadian soil.

over there, I'm friedlich I'm new there, having joined on Black Friday tonight, I ran across your e-mail address, in a COMMENT you had left most folks do not do that, and maybe you are different from most folks[that, at least, is my hope] I sometimes publish my e-mail address, trying to encourage a more image-friendly medium of exchange my privacy concerns are next to none, and anxiety over firewall-type protection against virus/worm/spam/whatever is negligeable the site reminds me of a multi-player game moreso than a community of writers of course, I'm still figuring out how to use the site for my own purposes I'm an older guy, living in southwest Georgia a retired stagehand; been writing since I quit working in 2005 not a boozer[or any other vice that costs money] caffeine & nicotine are my thing[like most writers... ALLEGEDLY] my stories run the gamut, and there is a lot of it that could be described as non-fiction fiction is preferred, when stinging truths are being revealed a cloak of plausible deniability my favorite author is Neal Stephenson hands down but I read a lot of books, and admire some of the fascinating women who have chosen to write Barbara Kingsolver springs to mind - http://www.kingsolver.com/books/ send me something you are working on

Ready for rain. My youngest half-sister, Sandra, (who's roughly 16 years older than me) married this guy back in...66 - 67. Perry Carlton Buie, aka Buddy. I have no idea how or where they met. They had gotten a house over near Columbia Avenue, behind Belvedere Plaza. Sandra had two daughters in tow from a previous marriages, Belinda, and Johnnie. Belinda is two years my senior, Johnnie is 4 years younger. My mother and I would visit them pretty often, and they were all lots of fun to visit. Buddy was a budding song writer/producer that had been working with southern recording legend Bill Lowery. Bill at that time owned Mastersound Studio, and had a publishing company called Low-Sal. Buddy's first hit was a song called "I Take it Back" recorded by Sandy Posey'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-zoLSF_-3c

And that was the launch of a very successful career for him. I won't bury you under all the details of all the artists that he has written for. He passed away a few years ago.

When he was really starting to bring in the money he was working with members of Roy Orbison's stable-band, The Candymen. They had some nominal success, but The Candymen begat The Classics IV, which did very well and had a handful of top 10 AM radio hits. The Classics IV begat The Atlanta Rhythm Section. ARS did great in the album oriented rock (AOR) format. But as always success has a price. Sister Sandra was jealous and didn't trust Buddy, he was always around southern rock celebrities, and their hot ass girlfriends. Not a good combo, so that marriage flopped.

The real point of it all though, was to say that I had some early life exposure to the music industry and I knew back then that I wanted to be somehow in the business of working in and around music. A car radio installer. A stagehand cum audio assistant. A song writer and a casual player of guitar, bass, and synthesizers, and now a maker of fine cuban cigar box instruments. (laugh at the last one).

When Buddy would have the guys from The Classics IV come by for rehearsals, me and little Johnnie would hang out in the hallway listening intently to what they were playing. What I saw about Buddy that was so appealing to me was that he kinda just did what the fuck he wanted, when he wanted to, and had very few people to answer to.

I liked that aspect of R&R...

you told me about BUDDY once before, and now I get the CANDYMEN connection to that pineywoods thing you sent; did you visit Blue Devil-country often enough to learn your way around? ...any Belvedere Plaza experiences that would make a story or song lyric? Those places were within cycling range of my Little Five Points-hood; my gang would even go fishing in a creek out there. Kids today ain't about shit; so much character-building movement across a sprawling urban environment; we weren't afraid, and we weren't over-supervised I'm writing about my Sunday morning, which is the only day of the week, when I make the effort to rise from my bed as early as 9 AM. I'm retired now, which carries with it the unquestionable benefit of 'sleeping in.' I make this conscious effort, because I cannot bear to miss the SUNDAY MORNING broadcast.

An interesting ARTICLE, aimed at baby boomers who read such 'posted material,' requires that I first do a bit of research. This morning's research has yielded the e-mail address directing this COMM to some unknown reader. What if this lucky recipient became known to all those that rise early on Sunday morning, like I have done? Such a story, to actually make the cut, would need to have some visual appeal... something for the camera to 'see' that is not just another talking head. If it becomes about the many suggestions that are not considered by the show's producers, I'm imagining an over-the-shoulder shot of an INBOX displayed on a PC's monitor; boring... right? Following the next suggestion that has some potential, through a chain of CBS News employees, into a roomful of writers and producers having the kind of discussion that ends with a proposal that will get funded, while turning the negative into a positive, still lacks the kind of imagery that will excite a camera crew. With the show's long history, many of the best ideas will have probably been done before, but a story about the technology that has changed the whole process probably has not been considered. Retired persons have an attachment to the kind of resistance to change that would permeate such a story. They also have a strong dislike for seeing a computer screen depicted as a character in a film or TV broadcast. And reading those texts that pop-up on the screen, because there is a SmartPhone in the scene, is particularly annoying. A surprising amount of the liesure time that retirement affords my boomer colleagues is devoted to online communication, by the many individuals who have made the necessary adjustments to modern technologies. These intrepid 'explorers' deserve a part in the story, but the visual appeal considerations must still be artfully applied. Some 70 million retired individuals make up a significant slice of an imagined pie-chart, that represent specific demographic segments to be considered as 'topical' by story creators up there. Please don't show us the pie chart... boring! Show us the bewildered old guy, searching for a qualified salesperson at Best Buy, to guide his purchase of an affordable laptop. Engaging that much younger demographic, now driving story selection in those board rooms, is a key consideration, if I'm to get my story selected for production. So, lets have a look at that young salesperson, that gets to help the customer make this purchase of electronic gadgetry. Are we talking tatoo's, facial piercings and a blue tooth-device protruding from the ear canal? Do we focus on his/her need to pay off the loan that sent them to some university, that forgot to teach them about being over-qualified for that sales position they would end up in? The scene ends in two ways; the kid sells the customer more gaming capability than he'll need for Skype, his gmail account and finding his grandchildren's FaceBook pages; or,... and this outcome is far more unlikely... the grandfather bests the salesperson, walks out of Best Buy with the low-end device he can afford[and was surprisingly in stock] and encounters no insurmountable difficulty, when he turns the contraption on at his comfortable breakfast-table, later that day, after a frustrating 45-minute ride on a metro bus, and a 20-minute hike, from the nearest bus stop, carrying his purchase with tired old arms, and painful arthritic hands. The interaction between the two alien cultures, that needs to occur for a purchase to be transacted, holds out the best hope I have for this story to get made. There are casting considerations, of course; two actors with current shows on CBS works best, so who could we actually get? They should both maintain residences in the same city, and those probable 'locations' to be used during production should be near a cooperating Best Buy retail store. My Dad was a technician that was employed by CBS News, back in the film-days, when a 3-man crew was required to document a story. He would go out with Laurens Pierce when cities in the South were burning; a dangerous job at the time, for a man armed with a Sun Gun. I got lucky enough, just once, to get one of these call-outs from our local affiliate; the three of us lugged equipment up to a crowded office-space at CDC Headquarters; a story was breaking about syphylitic men going untreated, during a clinical study over in Alabama; the prepared statement that we recorded there, was hardly worth all the labor involved[much less the expense incurred due to union wages that were paid]. This 'story' has already been published; here is a LINK to the page: https://www.booksie.com/577188-sunday-morning Please spare no expense with your REPLY to my e-mail. I'd like to add it to the story.

When I consider bits and pieces of the article, not viewed as a whole - "lacks the kind of imagery that will excite a camera crew." that statement kinda stuck out. Who gives a fuck what motivates a camera crew? I'd think, and wtf do I know, that the union pay scale would in and of itself be motivational. Having put that out there, it was just the first thing that came to mind. For my edification, in this story, what is your objective? How easy or how difficult the purchase was to make? Beat the kid at the sales game? Having made the purchase, the seemingly sad and somewhat difficult trip home? Perhaps an object lesson about our aging boomer population? All of the above? I see angles. Perspectives. I see an opportunity to make Best (fucking) Buys a proletariat hero, which is just bullshit. I see an opportunity to attempt to make plain to the children of boomers how difficult life can be. I see an op to make the whiz kid at BestBuy look like a jerk. What made the bus ride so frustrating?

Q#1:crew excited by producer's idea will spend more time and produce more fascinating video; imagine being CBS's go-to guy for interviews Q#2:dual objective:sell someone @CBS to do such a story & use e-mail text as content for Booksie.com[fixing to go silver sometime today] Q#3:under 'all of the above' I was trying to imagine what a crew could do to illustrate 'the story' with video that might be doable; my first trip to STAPLES to buy[for ca$h] my new laptop left me leaving for Office Depot with 'urge to kill' etched on my wizened face; next to finding out that the model displayed, at a sales price I can afford, is no longer in stock, my 2nd greatest peeve would be that sales pitch to purchase the more expensive laptop, conveniently on display right next to the one they don't even have, pointing out all that upgraded capability, like he was trained to say to his customer, because he don't know HDMI from HTML; the portrayal of transportation difficulties experienced routinely by retirees, goes to the value to the customer of the salesperson getting everything right on his first try Q#4:at the very end where you highlight the frustration, it would be up to the crew here to depict in their visual medium, the sorts of riders one might encounter, on a ride that zig-zags through all the housing projects, picking up more annoying riders, or perhaps letting the worst of them get off, stopping too abruptly, engaging in stupid arguments over the payment of the fare that delay any forward progress, and arriving at the desired destination 45-minutes later, when a crow could fly that distance in about three minutes its been pretty quiet up that way,... so a shout-out found a new 'place;' it's called bookrix throwin' life a spitter; got up about 7:30 when I do this, I end up snoozin' during my news broadcasts latest short story kind of a poke at LGBTQ's Y-knot try something new? might bring some of these trolls out of the woods kinda stole these paragraphs, for... ??

The life of a writer is pretty solitary, both by design and necessity. While you may find yourself in the neighborhood coffee shop a few days a week just for a change of pace, being a writer can be lonely and quiet.

Well-meaning as they are, your friends and family don’t understand the nuance between conflict and crisis. Try as they might, they can’t relate to the complexity of creating a consistent voice.

It’s no wonder that writing and alcohol are familiar companions. But it’s not happy hour yet. Here’s the good news: you’re not alone. In fact, right this moment, writers just like you are actively participating in writing communities all over the web. It’s time that you meet.

don't care for the alcohol bit, but it might fly did the coffee shop bit; kinda cool, but I'm persona non gratis at the downtown one cain't afford that shit no more nohow; cain't even get it together for Burger King Dollar Tree had some tasty canned goods; a $1 can of red beans & rice went down smooth[& spicy] lady behind me in line says that it's $.89 @Wal-Mart the pie-filling I bought would be $2 @Harvey's trade-off looks like Mueller's plannin' a warm reception for those freshmen/women Congressfolk Macron's reception heating up across the pond[the two M's havin' a populist crisis too; Europe's toast] it all started @NAPSTER; not Putin's doin' like some think battery in this Windows lapbook is for shit still fightin' off the FANG crowd; my spam folder still empty, but saw a browser-history thing pop-up w/firefox this AM tried out my MS-internet explorer as plan-B, but BING keeps interferin' & there are other annoying features I use WordPad, so I don't activate my introductory Office suite if I shut down instead of sleep, I have to close the cloud thing that slips in firefox wants to be set as default[another bothersome keystroke] there was an MS e-mail account that can't be used without a phone for activation code figuring out workarounds is my puzzle-thing; won't even register for ACER is there some LINUX browser code? wouldn't want snoopy here to know I was looking into that friedlich is being shamed for trolling already gonna try for a haircut today; it's gettin' too long[sides & back] clipping backside tricky w/tools I got w/trimmer[blind barber w/shaky hands] then there's the mess to clean up there's always the pony-tail option I also have one of those wave-caps, if I go native looking at the side of this new LG, there are yellow[video], white[L or MONO] & red[R] inputs and an S-VIDEO thingy w/tiny pins no HDMI I should find something like the back-up drive you suggested that can 'go there' have not heard back from CBS; no surprise they found a dead body on the corner; not watching my local news broadcasts means checking online for further details maybe they were digging his grave when the water went off my rides to the store, often two trips, indicate a decline in my physical strength that is mildly disturbing after 935-days of incarceration, I had soon gained back some musculature three trips to my storage unit, bearing incredible loads, took a lot more physical prowess than I now command I reminded myself that 2013-2015, I used to hoof it to the store[about 1 mi.], and backpack/carry back my supplies cycling is a luxury I'd hate to suddenly lose this motel-living is also a luxury[said the once-homeless man] I gathered all my manuscripts into one pile[for disposal?] took out any 'identifying documents' for safekeeping also have one three-page ms in an envelope I'll send that way one day tried giving away some of this ladies' apparel, but I think I offended my neighbor-lady with the gesture she liked the costume jewelry that was swag/booty found on the floor of my plan-B hidey-hole across from BK running out of ideas here "lady on"

I can relate to having lost some of that muscle. After I had the shoulder replacement I was laid up for about 8 weeks. Couldn't use the left shoulder at all, and was in a sling/pillow assembly that kept the arm in a state of comfortable non-use. That was pretty much the beginning of the end for my muscle tone. I'm striving to maintain the strength I have. I never thought I'd be this diminished. I sometimes have trouble lifting a full gallon of liquids such as water or milk with the left arm. Pair that with nerve damage that's caused a loss of sensation in my hands...argh...it's frustrating, considering that there was once a time when I could lift a chain motor with 75' of chain with just the left arm. That day has come and gone. I'd love to go pull that shrimp net with you again. Some of the most fun I've had was down at St. Andrew's sound, especially during a mullet run, where the dolphins were snagging mullet that were jumping the nets. What a great show of nature. I'm off for my half-mile round trip hike to the mailbox & back, then back to work on this bass guitar wine-box project for Tuck's brother. I'm almost finished with that, I just have to install the neck, the volume & tone controls, solder all the connections, install the machine heads, and seal the box. Ciao4now. Seizure later agit8r.

Seizure later agit8r ain't bad; mine was Ricky's tagline my intro to chain motors resulted from the now infamous "A call is a call" policy instituted by Local 41 bakNtheDAY; I was offered the chance to say no or yes to the worst thing on offer, before being skipped until my name rotated all the way back around; there was great benefit, on occasion, to getting first crack at something nobody else wanted to fuck with; this 'strict' policy was also a great way for a crook to skip quickly over a lot of referrals, before starting to fill a film crew, with a long list of assholes that turned down anything not film related, in order to maintain their position in this 'privileged' part of the rotating list; a full-time stagehand, with no friends in office[never wanted any], had to say yes every time[endless 4-hour calls] in order to eat; my rigging days started when OMNI Coliseum was new; we routinely had a 5-man crew[one groud rigger]; most points were not directly below any steel accessible from the catwalks in the pods; this, of course, meant guaging the lengths of two cables, Y-ed together with a down-length, to hit the bullseye; this was not only years before riggers became spider-men, that could rig points from beams running between pods, but also years before roadcrews trooped enough cable to deal with arena-shit like the fukkin OMNI; the building had enough cable for their everyday rigging needs, but... it was all 1/2" shit; add the weight of 30 to 50 feet of 1/2" cable, to about 90' of chain, and you get two men pulling against two other men in another pod, that they cannot see or hear; a good ground rigger was key, and you didn't want no sound puke up there pullin' on that heavy shit beside you; no pussies need apply! - a manly physique was the result, when most of the[by now hundreds of them] guys on the old rotating list found out what was required to say yes to a rigging call, and the list just spun right back to the last 5 guys that took a call at the OMNI; I got seriously beefed-up, before this bullshit came to an end[& before those spider-men showed up, and they started paying a premium wage to get them] I couldn't find any rigger-pics, but this attachment shows the connector tubing; access to the catwalks was from the roof; to access the steel at the apex of a pod, you had to walk up the outside of the pod, using a rope left dangling for the purpose; if brave enough, you could save a lot of time and effort, walking the very broad tube to the next apex position; one problem, however... there was a crotch-height + 3" lightning rod half way across; not so bad far the tall cowboys

I got lucky having Reagan, Milo, Hokey, and Big Bob to show me the ropes as it were. The Fox and Civic Center were generally easy rigs with most points onstage being single-point because of the way the grids were laid out. The Classic Center grid is a different story though. with 7 main beams spanning upstage to downstage, and no beams spanning left to right, practically every point was a compound bridle. At least in The Classic Center you can see & hear the up-riggers. Also nice is that The Classic Center had installed expanded steel grates between the beams so you can stow cables and gear up there. I miss being a rigger. I miss being healthy enough to rig.

I think 'stinger' should read stringer here; a 'stinger' is a 10' grounded extension cord[I had to ask the Best Boy]; bridle, basket & chain-motor are okay; when I took my ground rigger's training in Vegas, there was only one correct way to lay out pieces and parts for baskets... one way to engage the shackles with 'economic' motions of hands, feet & back... one way to tie a completed bridle out on the floor so the high men could inspect the work before lifting; the up-rigger 'makes' the basket[shouldn't have to undo a shackle or untie a bowline knot, to secure the hardware properly]; at the fukkin OMNI, the poor ground rigger frequently had to hold the 1.5 ton motor overhead, long enough for his four guys to secure both baskets, because it's 110' to the apex & the chain was all paid out; at least, if held above the headbone, the dropped shackle ain't a killshot

know of wire-rope, and witnessed a splicing operation @OMNI one day; the splice was as long as the arena[cleared for the process] Kermit[Spradlin] tryed over and over to teach me to splice hemp; that turn-back on the end, that was what the old guys did[pretty quickly] when they cut a rope[often for a snub to tie off a line set], instead of all that gooey electrical tape, was about all I could ever handle; the other end of a snub[about 6'] had a short loop spliced into it[about 14" splice enough for securing the 'safety' to the pinrail] I still think that stinger is just wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

O Peaceful One, That’s what the word ‘friedlich’ means in my first language. And yes, I remember Linda Goodman and her books. The first one was very good, but by the time the second one appeared Linda had ‘caught’ spirituality and went way, way, way over the top with it. She invented a new numerology that did not make any sense at all, if I remember right and I can’t recall whether I read that second book to the end. It was a very poor affair and just cashing in on the success of the first one. God bless and have a good day, With love – Aquarius

2nd book disapointed the girls as well; they weren't half bad predicting love matches, nasty break-ups & etc. they would get your birthday in their crew-roster, and find the one for you my best match was the lighting designer, but he had too many other boyfriends[ballerino's everywhere] I'm PISCES, & the match w/wife #1 not so good[CAPRICORN]; next tour was a GEMINI that earned herself a full-length fur coat she was way too smart to become #2 my mentor was Aquarian man; smartest man I've ever known horoscopes are like fortune cookies; a dream-job if you are a writer[used to love the 'fortune' in BAZOOKA bubble gum] write the stuff correctly, and anyone will agree that his/her sign just got pegged; those coin-op dispensers don't have 12 hoppers Mary Alice Kemery a.k.a. Linda Goodman, of course, would not/could not agree but,... who wouldn't rather have 12 good forecasts in each daily paper instead of[in my case] one fishy one the shepherd that first saw a maiden bringing water in the heavens over his thirsty head, should get more credit, than some ancient astrologer, wearing ermine, & bearing myrrh this mentor had a way about him[buckle-up,... I'm talking about you now]; every person in his presence, big or small, credentialed or insignificant, would instantly be made to feel of prime importance; the sun shone upon you; this is bearing water, dear meanwhile, your defenses utterly destroyed, he'd be in your head... deep in your head, figuring things out... for YOU... for HIM... for someone else, that he may not have even met yet... well, that all depends on how the 'long game' plays out he could artfully manipulate anyone, make them feel good about it, and even if things turned out pretty badly 4U you loved him all the more... hating only his enemies[that had attacked you, because he was invincible] he would take you to 'special' places, impart sacred knowledge only meant 4U, find things you thought forever lost all the things a magus commands he was quite the yenta as well[but would probably end up 'with' your perfect girl] he moved in some pretty powerful circles, and it was as easy as 'teaching' kindergarten children his favorite recording was a live one w/Neil Diamond enduring an actual Hot August Night this was, of course, him, singing his siren-song to every young girl in a 100-mile radius are you blushing yet DON'T I love you! Everything about you! I'm not, however, fixing to drink your blood.

when I ran away from home[1st & last time], I was driving my sweetie[Diane was a year older w/fiery red hair] in a red Renault 10 w/push-button transmission For 1963 (initially only in France), Renault offered an automatic transmission of unique design, developed and produced by Jaeger.[7] It was first shown at the September 1962 Paris Motor Show.[8] Although it was described as a form of automatic transmission at the time, in retrospect it was more realistically a form of automatic clutch, inspired by the German Saxomat device which appeared as an option on several mainstream German cars in the 1950s and 60s. The clutch in the system was replaced by a powder ferromagnetic coupler, developed from a Smiths design.[8] The transmission itself was a three-speed mechanical unit similar to that of the Dauphine, but from the beginning with synchromesh on all gears in this version. The system used a dash-mounted push button control panel where the driver could select forward or reverse and a governor that sensed vehicle speed and throttle position. A "relay case" containing electromagnetic switches received signals from the governor and push buttons and then controlled a coupler, a decelerator to close the throttle during gear changes, and a solenoid to select operation of the reverse-first or second-third shift rail, using a reversible electric motor to engage the gears. The system was thus entirely electro-mechanical, without hydraulics, pneumatics or electronics. Benefits included comparable fuel economy to the manual transmission version, and easy adaptability to the car. Drawbacks included performance loss (with only three available gears) and a somewhat jerky operation during gear changes. The transmission was also used in the Dauphine and the Caravelle. https://otto-models.com/en/ - build your own Renault at 1/18 scale

This ability to do some figuring, is greatly enhanced, because of the rudimentary training I received, on how to use those FRACTIONS. Most classrooms today allow the use of calculators, even during exams. Some students, much younger than I, have trained themselves in the use of their digital assistant, through trial-and-error regimens, that work well for ONLINE GAMES. Learning long division is a thing of the past, but having learned that method greatly improves one's ability to calculate something in one's head. ESTIMATING the answer can greatly simplify these mental processes, while providing acceptable numerical results. You may not have a CALCULATOR handy, when you suddenly need the kind of guidance, that a numerical calculation could quickly provide. 'Scientific Calculators' are reasonably priced, and include many more FUNCTIONS, than their stripped-down companions on the shelf have. My favorite one of these added functions, at the touch of a button, causes a randomly generated three-digit number to be displayed. How utterly useful! Another pre-loaded data point, that makes these calculators much more useful, would be a FORMULA remembered from some geometry class, or a physics lab you endured in college. With a formula, and an understanding of the relationships between numerator and denominator of two separate fractions, you can do a lot of useful shit. This verity is the reason they sell calculators at Home Depot & Loew's. They also sell the kind of tools needed, to remove the electronic device from its bubble-packaging. A formula I like is the one for calculating the length of a circle, which uses both its diameter and pi[the Greek symbol that roughly equals 3.14]. This FORMULA is useful for calculating the speed at which our planet circles about the sun, if you remember how far away that star is. Using such a large quantity in a calculation, means that your answer will sometimes be represented in 'scientific notation.' This is to save space on the tiny read-out screen, and should not create insurmountable problems for the operator. Similar calculations, using the same formula, will tell you how many tulip bulbs will be needed, of each color that you have chosen, for several varigated, concentric circles, planted hastily in the FALL, when the bulbs are widely available, and much cheaper to purchase. Figuring out how many eggs you should boil, so you can mix up a three-day supply of fluffy egg salad, is a different kind of problem, but it also has a trial-and-error solution. Believe it or not, it was this trial-and-error process that enabled Apollo astronauts to land their LEM on the moon.

three 'wise' men, bearing gifts followed a star[which some say 'moved' in the night sky in a noticeably unusual fashion] was there any disagreement among these three about what had been observed? three's are pretty important, as you know are there psychological implications buried in this belief in the 'power of 3?'

I was in ANTHROPOLOGY, and freely admit shortcomings relating to psychology cocaine use & Red Book symbolism did fall within my purview study & research into astrology, sorcery & freemasonry have me leaning towards early roots involving healers

this said, I'm quoting the 20th century's most prominent spiritual master:

Black Magic has always one definite characteristic. It is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear.

this scrap of text was saved, because I was anticipating your e-mail response, so prepared myself I choose to 'act'/think about YOU, instead of wonder why I'm doing it I did take a senior-level course with a new textbook:"Culture & Personality" what did a gal, with an astrologer's webpage, study in preparation? reading stories gently molds the 'story of SELF' that determines our ability to ACT any 'story' requiring these 'edits' simply cannot be accepted as FACT[two rhyming stanzas... should I go for THREE?]my story is so long, that the attention span required does not yet exist language is the real key to a greater understanding in most every FIELD useful language always ends with a tryst negotiating a willingness in the other to YIELD[4 stanzas] this 'sentiment' is purely Darwinian the truth is, since civilization was birthed by, and gave birth to an alphabetic written form of the spoken language there are far too many individuals, fully integrated into society, that can choose to be motivated by artificial drives that do not contribute to successful reproduction like writing stories about it blame it on the moon

Think that would be handy for calculating sidereal time, vs solar time?

you mock me; how tall is your obelisk?

I'm not mocking you brother, I was just having a chuckle. We're victims of our own mechanisms. The calculator made us weaker and less knowing. This is also happening with computers and smart phones. We aren't pushing our minds to be all they can be. I haven't stored anyone's phone number in years. The argument is that you can use your mind for other, more important things ...like watching cat videos on the screen...

yeah,... those damn cat-videos; I meant your reference to sidereal time, and something I had written about shadows moving about on the floor of my two-man cell

FaceBook, Apple, Netflix & Google are the 4 FANG stocks, which are characterized by their unreasonable P/E-ratios. When I boot-up my device, the first set of keystrokes that I execute, get me disconnected from 'the cloud.' Then, I can click on several options, colorfully displayed, when my FireFox portal screen is displayed. [though this browser is pinned to my task bar, I keep on declining to set it as my default browser;2 more keystrokes] These options are 'ranked' & Google & Amazon are ahead of the Mail.com option that is convenient for me. I have never even visited the Amazon site, but a lot of their junk came already loaded on my new device. There is another one included in my top six, waiting to whisk me away to a MicroSoft APP-store. I wonder what their current P/E-ratio is? There is a YouTube link, but I do visit that Google territory frequently. Apple sold-out to Microsoft, before Microsoft sold-out to Google, and that was before FaceBook & Google sold-out to HSA. In 2011, law enforcement technicians took physical possession of my Notebook device in order to duplicate its drive. Nowadays, such nonsense is no longer necessary. LE's problem now is sorting all those automatically sorted files that keep piling up on their servers. They do not have enough agents to do the necessary sorting & opening of so many suspect files needed to keep up. Instead of a new SpaceForce, Uncle Sam should be preparing for CyberWar, like the Russians & Chinese have. Losing the CyberSpace Race ain't gonna be good, and they have already received several 'Sputnik-embarrassments.' Android OS, in combination with a successful G5-buildout, represents additional frontiers to be protected. During WWII, piles of printed propaganda, were dropped by aircraft overflying urban areas in Axis-territory. The US CyberSpace is being overflown by simiar distributors of toxic materials, and we are powerless to respond. This, as our own propaganda grows increasingly less toxic. Ill-advised trade wars further weaken our position globally, as well as incentivizing new agreements & partnerships. Recent downward pressure on both stock & bond markets simultaneously, is being characterized as a rare occurrence. What happened on those historical occasions? A declining US Dollar would have just such an effect on financial markets. Where assets are denominated in weak currencies, one can expect tandem movements of all asset classes. The global currencies headed in the opposite direction should not be invested in such assets. Large trade imbalances where those debts can be paid off with ever-cheaper Dollars, are also undesirable. So, when India seeks to export significantly less product, what happens to prices in the US? And what becomes of the bluff, that our media has labeled a trade war?

We've been being profiled with steadily increasing depth as data storage became abundant and inexpensive either locally or remotely. A terabyte of retail hard drive storage is about $50, cheaper if you choose to cloud-store your data. My first HDD was 10MB and cost around the same amount. Between AI driven flagging mechanisms, faster and more abundant storage, and our own willingness to share personal information on therm inter-webs, anyone with a smart phone, tablet, or other computing device most likely has a profile. I feel sure that since 1991, there's been enough information gathered about me to provide LE a solid psych profile. I bought my first PC to begin determining the myriad of ways that we're being surveiled. We're screwed, dude.

I'd prefer, at least, the courtesy of a reach-around; wonder if Snowden is still in Moscow?

I think it is laughable, and very French, that yellow vests only clog Parisian boulevards on weekends, as they have to work. Picket lines at the GWCC, and @warehouse where my dear old Dad was a captain, were like that. I remember when all of Poland went out on strike, and "Solidarnosc!" entered the conversation. I spent four long years in a non-union apprenticeship, suggested by an old redneck @BAT. At one point, there was a 'hearing' and I was to be booted from the program. I invited this old bureaucrat to sit in on it, as a concerned observer. Problem solved. Repercussions loomed however. After a series of job interviews 'they' referred me to[where the member-contractor had already agreed not to hire me], I went to IBEW to seek their help. The union organizers sent me to a job site, they were targeting[in order to get at union members working there], where I was quickly hired at journeyman wage. I'd give those 'slugs' a dose of vitriol, as I was going in about 7:45 AM. Then I'd pocket the sign-in sheets, when I got upstairs[40th floor], and secreet them to the organizers. When that job ended, I returned to the Fox stage, a wiser man.

1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta at The Omni & GWCC. Just miles & miles of cables running between those two facilities. Seemed rather weak. The bridge/turnaround between The Omni & GWCC. FBI labor racketeering agent Brian Hitt on the scene with with his team of covert cam-ops and the audio squad with their shotgun mics. It's all well documented in the FBI & GBI archives, but you can't find dick about it on the internet. It's as though only one low-rent food workers union was the only union to apply any (laughable) pressure on the DNC in 1988. I will say this, whoever came up with the idea to oil the up-ramp to the bridge/turnaround from Int'l Blvd to the Omni was a fuckin' genius.

there were live feeds from convention hall to CNN secured to the bottom of that bridge; another fuckin' genius made some air-gaps interrupt the video; some kinda stones, huh?

From what I hear, there were several instances of air-gapping the cable runs. ;) Must have been just a series of unfortunate accidents.

probably slipped on that slippery slope, with a sharp cutting-tool inhand; unfortunate indeed

RUNNING for a Congressional Office builds up a momentum; a physical movement towards certain achievements, related to specific ISSUES, that should never be interrupted, by a 2-, 4- or 6-year rest period. Learning how to draft enduring legislation, need not involve years slaving away in some accredited law school. YOU can acquire the necessary skills in a fairly brief span of study-time. You must begin, by reading as many 'representative samples' as you can obtain. You could limit the documents to be thoroughly parsed, to the kinds dealing specifically with the ISSUE you have chosen to focus your efforts on. Your problem, initially, will be expanding your vocabulary enough to be clearly understood, once you enter the writing phase that will follow. Certain traditional 'forms' should be employed during this second phase. Phase three begins, when you furnish copies of your document to qualified confidants, for their opinions regarding certain changes that should be made, forecasting prospects for successful passage of such legislation or suggestions about how courts might reinterpret aspects of any resulting LAW's. For this, you need e-mail addresses for serving Congressmen, judges currently on the appropriate bench and affected business entities that can refer your inquiry to a battery of litigators. Replies to your inquiries will almost certainly indicate certain adjustments to your output that would be advisable. Phase four involves giving credit for the introduction of your BILL, to some ranking member of Congress, that has publicly attached himself to your ISSUE, in order to get himself elected. Previously unaddressed ISSUEs are somewhat problematical in this regard, but can be advanced by celebrities, clergymen and struggling local politicians that are 1)not camera shy, & 2)looking for a powerful issue to which they might attach themselves. More e-mail addresses will most likely be required. My ISSUE was pension administration, and it was very unpopular. I did considerable research, to be sure that I had my facts straight. I collected a plethora of e-mail addresses. I wrote a speech, and practiced before a mirror while timing myself, until I could, basically, read forcefully, everything that I had written, in less than 15 minutes. The facts I was pointing out, never made opinions change very much, but did garner me a lot of attention that had not existed before. I became "Chicken Little," delivered my speech years before my time and eventually, was proved right, when the sky indeed fell. About 700 participants, in my defined benefit pan, were adversely affected.

An ACT OF CONGRESS is not always the creation of a LAW. Often, these 'acts' invite some Administrative Agency to enact new LAW's, or otherwise ENFORCE certain specified REGULATIONS. Such LEGISLATION, must be carefully & unambiguously worded. Most of our 20th century Congressmen, though many of them were indeed trained litigators, were either unable to write the legislation they 'introduced,' or indisposed in some way to do so. Sometimes large staffs of competent individuals get the job of creating a BILL, while often obliged to adhere to instructions given them, to keep in mind, always, that whatever is introduced, cannot be awfully objectionable to the majority political party, in either end of the domed Capitol building. Another source for these craftily-worded proposals is the legal staff, maintained by some powerful business or political entity, whose well-paid lobbyist will deliver the carefully prepared 'suggestion,' at a steak dinner, over an expensive bottle of wine. In the 21st century, 'diversity' among the freshmen/women arriving in Congress every two years, often means that even more of the BILL's that we hear about will have been outsourced. In fact, the ability to read/comprehend proposed legislation, is also in rapid decline, and so the advice from adequately trained staff members grows in its influence, and its importance to the constituency. When you complain that some desirable change in your current situation would require an Act of Congress, you have unconsciously ceded your own ability to be effective, to myriad third parties with agendas that are often going to prove quite toxic. STOP WHINING! First, remove the most glaring ambiguities from that internal expression of your most fervent desires. Get help if that is what you need. Then, ACT... like Congress. Or maybe that should read, "like Congress should be capable of doing, willing to do & adequately prepared to do."

my sign-in/homepage @mail.com was the fist thing that I saw this AM, after a full boot-up[& ditching that cloud] went into that little gear-box yesterday, and while I was changing a few things, I asked a few questions & paid those Firefox folks a visit too there's even some research on MS & that sell-out to Google[fukkin Chrome-enablers] oops! there's an APP Explorer update notification[@taskbar]; WTF did that shit come from[I don't do APP!] there's some flamin' MS news thingy keeps me apprised whenever there are 'significant developments' RE:the Mueller investigations not too annoying, and that's how I found out about the 'big' earthquake the other day[4.7 in TN/GA] have you been reading about Jesse & Fred? I also wrote/posted something about the reveered Booksie Guy[founder/moderator] this prompted the evil Dr. Acula to kick me out of his publishing 'house' of 1000 horrors[had to move 4 'books' to QWERTY QUORUM] house-cleaning a sure sign that 1)I'm hitting a nerve, & 2)there's NAZI's @Booksie.com that deserve a little more attention trying to be subtle, & really do try to suppress MY trolling tendencies I'm up pretty early this AM, & lookin' forward to a SPAM-sammy for breakfast egg salad came out great, & there's still 8 eggs in the fridge 4more eggs are relatively cheap, so gettin' out my portable kitchen worth all the trouble & upset my theater-sound in disarray[but still available in a pinch] Miss Universe was a Filipina; I thought NEPAL had the best eye candy[in the top 20]; Miss Ecuador[eliminated earlier still] was HOT! Eagles squeaked past Rams last night; lot of spoilers in the mix this season[go Chiefs] Mariota's on Saturday[?]; some screwy holiday scheduling BS I wonder how my Thunder will fare, when B-ball takes over the only sports event awareness I had while in Vegas, was brother-in-law's phone call during Masters taunting PV about Tiger in AZ, it was Churchhill Downs here, the natives get restless[& loud] during March Madness and NBA playoffs I'm the lone holdout for the fukkin World Series that's all I have on sports

There's so much movie and TV work going on that the wonder girl is frazzled and looked about shot-out. Tuck sez they work 12 - 14 hour days 5 or 6 days a week. She programs lighting systems for the industry. Naturally we didn't just talk "banjo". Mostly she just explained all the different stuff she has going on.

TUCK needs WYSIWYG; design the lighting from home

Whaaaaaaaaaat? Gay musicians...un-fucking-heard of!!! Those shoes are just screaming "what a 'mo."

in high school, I wore the world's first pair of bright orange saddle oxfords; what was that screaming?

You wore 'em, you tell me. ;)

my Grandfather was a painter[both of houses & portraits], and on one of his visits when I was a child, he had returned from a job with a bit of dark brown in a can; I'm in the backyard with Joe, watching him organize all the shit piled in the trunk of his old beater; he sees that there is enough of the viscous remnant, and begins stirring with a broad pig-bristle brush; then, with a brushfull of shiny brown possibility, he throws his foot up onto his rear bumper, and applies a generous coating to his paint-speckled brogans[sock & all]; I guess it made an impression; Mods & Rockers were changing fashions and orange saddle oxfords seemed apropos to getting with it; they were my most comfortable pair[I had five pairs of saddle oxfords; a different look for each day in the school-week], and were badly scuffed from wear; I FIXED THEM! I was already queer-bait, so flamboyant footwear only added the faintest shout to already broadcast "come hither's"

if Mexico were to fund & build a wall on their northern border, they could design & control any gates thought necessary Canada could come to this same brilliant conclusion, but have a much longer border to their south USofA would quickly become a 'backwater' & learn some diplomacy Abe[not Lincoln] has decided to add a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier to their somewhat modest self-defense force's naval arsenal I can't wait to see it sailing proudly upon the China Sea those Russians, allowed to continue their occupation of Japanese territory in the 1965 treaty, better look out Abe could pull a 'Thatcher' on their ass[still claiming self-defense] Modi will not let this important development go unobserved Aussies could use any help coming from both these Asian-Pacific naval assets all that ocean water makes a poor border-wall Philippines & Indonesia could be taking sides soon, and they represent major populations that produce surplus foods on DEC 21, Antarctica will be at the peak of their summer thaw, and we should start seeing some scary video from down that way South America is fast becoming a bigger wild card than Africa Panama will need two[very short] border-walls; they could get whatever they need from Home Depot Online I'm fixing to adjourn long enough to grate some boiled eggs & craft myself a sandwich I had Special K for breakfast[at 1:08 PM]

not so long ago, Japan had the most avid/affluent collectors of vintage guitars like the market for fresh tuna, they kinda became spoilers[unless you are a seller]

Japan was, at one time, made the best guitars you could buy outside of the US. Nowadays, with computer assisted design, and CNC milling machines almost any putz with a few thousand dollars to spare can be in the business of making precision, high quality guitars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4bbUaqwTlk

Japan also distills the world's highest quality Scotch. whassup w/dat?

So, you pair that CNC mill (with which one can also mill metal parts) with a computer, and a 3D printer, and I'm sure that ones ability to fabricate virtually anything becomes reality. Whoa. Hold on there, buckaroo. What about Mr. Retailer and his market-locked semi-monopoly selling copyrighted and patented products? DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT...

NAMM was a wonderland, where competing instrument manufacturers got a very expensive opportunity for exposure. Some very well-attended guest artist performances at GWCC come to mind. Who plays your instrument is really the price-driver, and the actually-played instrument catapulted into the price-paid stratosphere! That auction you mentioned, could become a venue for one of these recognizable artists from the Athens music-scene. Have him or her[maybe them] play all your inventory, right before the bidding begins. Let the artist auction off the companion signatures, for the cause. Am I getting through here?

if Siskel & Ebert were arguing about some new film that was just out, their heated discussion might drift onto PRODUCTION VALUES(only EBERT would be likely to do that); if he argued for a THUMBS UP, based on excellent production value(making a film is like telling a story; some tell the same story better), he will say nthat the film's producers used amazing cinematography(spent lots more $$$) to express several themes/ideas, where most would not have(or would not have to), & that added P.V. made the film infinitely better, more entertaining & the extra-mile techniques became like another character in the story. YOUR TASK:when you have decided upon a particular 'song' to work-up for improving the ESSENCE ACT, do a YouTube search for videos & collect all that you may find(especially the less-professional and/or amateurish looking/sounding ones that somehow got posted); next, watch them all(probably several times each) & select the best few from the batch; discuss w/band-members WHY you thought those were the best ones; you may tend toward the better sound quality or the best of the musicians; you might find that you wanted to choose one of them, not for the music, but something they did that was captured in the video, or there were close-ups of fingering that you appreciated or just that the film featured separate performers at the right change-ups. My 1st TV-production had two cameras & a switcher; it was a softball game, sponsored by 96-ROCK & Alex Cooley, played by DJ's vs. band-members from KANSAS, when they came into town for a Concert(Cooley Promoted); it drew a large & raucous crowd of KANSAS-fans to Piedmont Park one sunny afternoon, helped promote both the Concert & the radio station(while having video-production equipment/personnel at the game helped boost all the excitement); one camera was fixed on a tri-pod behind the plate(to capture pitches & swings) & the other was just past 1st-base, and could pan to follow a hit and catch the play in-field or out-(w/close-up on 1st-base action); there was just one microphone, so I put it on a tall stand w/heavy, steady base, and placed where I got an adequate feed for both Alex's play-by-play calls on the P.A., and good coverage of the crowd-reactions(and even some overheard conversations in the bleachers); it took 3 of us, cameraman on 1st to do the panning if there was a hit/play, another guy on the switcher at my truck to change from behind-the-plate coverage, to the panning view of the field, whenever he heard that sound an aluminum bat makes clobbering a softball; then, of course, I was there directing(or perhaps repositioning the mike or just speaking a fake-part as faux-fan), and could have made the spectacle even greater, if I had carried a large megaphone around & shouted-out camera/switcher cues. Things went smoothly with 3-crew, and even though cameras weren't sync-ed & each switch rolled the image, the tape we produced gave the feeling of being there with crowd/Alex/KANSAS; my BetaMax was so amazing, that when I loaned my only copy to Alex, he never returned it(but word got around about my Channel 41 Productions, because this big promoter showed it to everyone that stopped by his office om business)!!! The Production Values of the song-videos you collect and watch depends on so many different things, that it would behoove ESSENCE to thoroughly exploit as many of them as practical in their future bookings; your SHOW can be good enough to disguise any musical- or talent-shortcomings, while growing a better- or well-organized local fan-base, that by bringing more folks to your bookings will equal higher- and better-paying gigs as you mature as a group, or change-out various artists as needed.

https://www.facebook.com/oldstagehands/photos/a.1375675492750537/1375675312750555/?type=3&theater

Following a performer around with what amounts to a big flashlight sounds easy, and probably looks easy too, if you watch while it's being done. Well, it ain't; and your lack of ability is most immediately apparent to the other operators who can make those first outings tough on you if they wish. That's when those relationships first begin to pay back dividends. The lighting director will be less aware of your foibles because the angle from which he is observing is a bad one; the audience even less able to see anything of what is going on. Your buddies can cover for your short-comings, and try to talk you through the rough spots. You'd better be able to take a ration of good-natured ribbing about it too! Watching an experienced operator while the show is going on is one of the best ways to get a heads-up on many of the subtleties that can take years to acquire. If you show the proper respect to his situation, you can ask questions and get helpful answers during the show. This exchange is doubly instructive because you observe the mysterious operations while in direct correspondence to actions occurring on the stage. Sometimes the cuing is coming through a biscuit(a small portable speaker) and you see that much more clearly how his responses co-ordinate with what is taking place. The respect part is something that you must learn about too, in order to understand; when to ask your questions so that they are not bothersome, distracting or downright disastrous; being aware that the presence of the headset sometimes means others are hearing everything or aware of your presence in the booth. Few apprentice operators ever spend that much time doing this; many experienced operators are glad they don't!

Phillip DeNise: ever change the hot carbons? 3rd paragraph from PREFACE to "Work For It, Baby!":Writers are frequently counseled to write about what they know. This writer knows spotlights better than anything else he was exposed to while in his secret world. What I know about them, if taken alone, would provide the content for an exhaustive technical manual. If we begin to consider how I learned what I know, a process then becomes the subject of the manual. Describing that process is most naturally facilitated by making constant reference to actual experiences that I had while learning to operate this specific piece of equipment.

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yousaidminkey · 7 years

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Old Tour Stories

The Always A Bridesmaid Tour (June 7th - June 22nd 2006)

The Pictures

The Mission: Take up to 15 people (10 to start... 5 people would not be joining us until June 15th) to the North Country Fair in Driftpile, Alberta... then go and attend/play/best man at John Guliak and Christine Ferguson's wedding in Edmonton. Between the 15 people, we could create at least 6 full bands... Carolyn Mark and Her New Best Friends, Hank & Lily, Amy Honey, Clay George, Hearse and The Dave Lang Band

The Cast: Vehicle #1 "Gwyneth Paltrow" (a 1980 Dodge Ram Van) - transportation for Tolan McNeil, Hoff, The Goose and Clay George. Vehicle # 2 "Freedom" (1990 Dodge Caravan) - transportation for Hank Pine, Lily Fawn and Emma Crow Vehicle #3 "The Hong Kong Lady" (1992 Toyota Camry) - Transportation for Amy Honey, Carolyn Mark and Andrew

June 7 Vancouver - Osoyoos 10-4 Good Buddy, We've Got Walkie-Talkies Things look good. It's a sunny day. Most of the Victoria contingent (everybody but me and Amy) arrived in Vancouver early. We've bought some walkie-talkies for communication reasons (only Tolan has a cell phone)... and The Goose's Dad reaffixed the front license plate to the Hong Kong Lady. In fact, everything went smoothly until it was time to leave. Tolan and crew are going to be late... the free van he got for the tour has some paperwork issues that were not apparent until the last moment. He has to spend the afternoon running all over Victoria getting shit signed. Consequently, although the first two vehicles hit the road by 2:00, Gwyneth won't even be getting on the ferry to Vancouver until 5:00. Anyway, the big plan is to stay in touch via the walkie-talkies (we have radio check times and nasty handles... Carolyn is "Bouncy C-Word", fr'instance, and Hank is "Fuckyou Killjoy"), and hook up for some camping in Osoyoos. We hit the road and try our radio check... nothing. In fact, except in one case, for the whole trip, the walkie-talkies would do nothing except eat batteries. The drive was mostly uneventful; the only excitement was that near Princeton, we were stopped by some police at a roadblock who were looking for an escaped murderer. Also, around this time it started to rain. Every day of the tour (except for one) it would end up raining, everything from scotch mist to full on thunder and lightning storms. Upon arrival in Osoyoos (approximately 8:00) we scoped out the camping spots in town. It looked like trouble... all the camp grounds were full of the elderly, golf shirt, sandals and socks crowd and/or the younger, screaming kids, golf shirt, sandals and socks crowd. It didn't look as though they would take kindly to 10 rowdy drunks disturbing their vacation... and we were sure as hell not going to want listen to their whining (nor deal with the inevitable cops). Hell, those are the people you get out of town to get away from. After checking out all the available possibilities (which, by the way, came across like suburban neighbourhoods where you can actually see and hear your neighbours), we (Amy, Carolyn and I) decided to tee up a hotel room instead. Up to this point we had had no contact with the other two vehicles. Phoning Tolan, we found that his new van had overheated in Chilliwack, and they had not yet managed to leave the Lower Mainland. Their ETA in Osoyoos is around 2:00 AM. Radio check for the Hank and Lilymobile turned up nothing until suddenly we started getting very garbled messages. Apparently they were also in town, looking for us. We pulled into the parking lot of a likely hotel called The Spanish Fiesta (or Spastic Fiasco), and suddenly Hank and Lily came in crystal clear... they were parked about 50 ft. away. Things worked out pretty good, and it seemed as though we had the hotel to ourselves, so we retired to the beach for wine and beer and smoking. Later in the evening Carolyn broke my car key off in the door of the car. No worries, as we had a spare. Always have a failsafe, that's what I say.

June 8 Osoyoos - Nelson Plastic Gardening Clogs R Us (Well... Them, Actually) In the morning we found that Gwyneth had managed to make it all the way to Osoyoos, and her crew had slept in the van in the hotel parking lot. We all made some informal wagers at that point as to which if any of the tour vehicles would make it all the way home without a major breakdown. They all had issues... Gwyneth's were readily apparent by that point, but Freedom was also desperately in need of a new fan belt, and was gouting out huge clouds of exhaust whenever it was started. The Hong Kong Lady, we had recently heard from our mechanic, could happily use two or three grand worth of mechanical repairs. But what's life without adventure? That's the question we decided to ask ourselves instead of dealing with our shit. Upon arrival in Nelson, we immediately sought out the thrift stores (for Amy and Carolyn), and the excellent coffee store (Cafe Oso), for me. There was something very odd about Nelson, a fashion thing, that cut across all sectors of society... men and women... geezers and whelps... squareheads and fleabags... the brightly coloured plastic gardening clog. Perhaps the ugliest piece of footwear outside of putting plastic bags on your feet when it rains. Even pretty girls can't rock them. In Nelson they are everywhere. I wanted to ask some of the people who look like (clogs aside) they should have a clue; what the Hell was going on, but in the end I figured that I really didn't want to know the answer. Since I'm mentioning fashion... let me talk for a moment about The Goose's white derby hat. It was one of his prized possessions, and an essential part of his on stage garb... part of his shock and awe... and it really tied his whole look together. Looking somewhat like an egg, The Goose usually treated as if he were a mother hen (or a Mother Goose, heh). This morning he had broken with tradition and let Lily Fawn play with it. Once we got to Nelson, Goose (and Lily) had the sickening realization that it was still in Osoyoos. Fortunately Lily, being so small and cute, was about the only person on the tour who could get away with losing it. Soon enough, we hooked up with our "friend in town", Laoh, a Victoria expatriate, who was going to be able to put some of us up for the evening. Laoh had only been living in Nelson for 6 months, but already seemed to know everyone there. I knew Nelson was a smaller town, but even still, knowing everyone there would be a bit of work. Laoh is just one of those guys who can do that. Hell, I had never met him before, and after ten minutes, we were yakkin' along like old buds. The show, at the Royal, was a ton of fun. A lot of people showed up, and regardless of their age, they seemed to like their Rock... or to be a bit more accurate, their Cowpunk. Amy had one of her best shows of the whole tour. Tolan was on fire on guitar... and Hank and Lily were really fucking amazing. Hank and Lily added a really interesting element to all the shows. Carolyn Mark and Clay George could most certainly be described as Country (of various speeds), and Amy can be anything from Country to Metal, but with a definite populist edge that opens a lot of doors. Hank and Lily are much more of a travelling freak show, with costumes, personas, smoke machines and quasi-nightmarish songs about things that lurk in the dark; yet everywhere they went, they didn't seem to weird anyone out, even in the most taxidermy encrusted small town farmer bars. In fact, they often got the loudest applause, and the most audience participation. Just goes to show you that no matter where you go, people just like a good show. I don't remember much of the rest of the evening, but I ended up losing my glasses at Laoh's house. No worries, as I still had my contact lenses. Always have a failsafe, that's what I say.

June 9 Nelson - Slocan Valley This Bug Spray Doesn't Work For Shit Tried to get a new key cut for the car, but found that my replacement key had apparently been made by "someone who was drunk or stupid, or both" and copies made from it were nonfunctional. I hate not having a failsafe. Today we would be heading up to an isolated Eco Lodge in the Slocan valley, run by "hippies", but "not the annoying kind, you know". There would be a BBQ and the bands would play in the living room / concert hall. Laoh knew the best butcher in Nelson, and he set me up with some specially marinated Buffalo steaks. Things were looking good. After a long drive up a dirt road we found the Lodge, and in the beautiful sun it looked like the best place in the world. Outside of the guy who operated the place and an eccentric mystic lady from Buckinghamshire, a nice lady from Quebec and a sinewy traveling cyclist from who knows where, the place was deserted. I asked Carolyn who the bands would be playing to. She said it was a really weird thing... every time she had played there before, the parking lot would be empty, but people would "just come out of the woods". At the end of the evening, they would return to the woods. We had some time on our hands before the show, though, so we amused ourselves by playing badminton, flying kites and in Hank's case, going swimming. On our way to the river we ran into a very pale Hank returning from his swim. Apparently there were leeches in the water and he ended up with one on his scrotum. We decided not to go swimming. Around this time we figured we were running seriously low on beer, and Tolan and I volunteered to take the Hong Kong Lady into town to get more. We cranked the CCR and drove like the Dukes of Hazard. We came very, very close to hitting a deer, and the gravel road did some serious damage to the muffler. For the rest of the trip, at city speeds, the Hong Kong Lady would sound like she was gargling Drano. We made it back just in time for dinner, and The Goose showed another one of his many talents by BBQ-ing the Buffalo steak to perfection. It was one of the best meals I had ever had, but only the second best one of the trip. It was around this time that we all collectively realized that the bug spray that we had been using was of little to no use. Mosquitoes were eating us alive. Hoff, Hank, Lily and Carolyn were all particular favourites of the little monsters, and after a short while, they all appeared to have contracted chicken pox. Just as Carolyn had said, after dinner, people started "coming out of the woods". Even more to my surprise, I actually recognized a couple of them. They were two brothers who used to play in a Vancouver band, The Way Out. They were attending some Eco-camp "over there" (with that statement they waved vaguely in the direction of the woods). Soon enough there was around 50 people there, and the show commenced. The Lodge had a decent stage and a good sound system, and the show was great. All the people there were very attentive, and Clay George especially seemed to have a good show. The right music for the right people in the right place. He even sold a few CD's. Here is as probably as good a place as any to mention... Clay was actually the only person on the tour who had his shit together enough to bring any CD's with him.

June 10 Slocan Valley - Nanton R.I.P. Lolita We all left the Lodge at different times, but somehow we all managed to arrive at the retro thrift store in Creston at nearly the same time. Unfortunately there had been a tragedy. Hoff had received a phone call from her roommate informing her that here Chihuahua, Lolita, had passed away. She had been ailing a bit, but it still came as a nasty surprise. The Goose said it well (at least from my point of view) when he stated that "Lolita was the only little dog that didn't annoy the shit out of me". Apparently, Lolita's remains were then kept in the freezer for Hoff to deal with when she got home. Seriously. It was a pretty long drive today, and probably the most dangerous one, as we had to go through the Crow's Nest Pass, and near dusk, around the town of Elkville, suddenly there were elk all over the place... including the road. We had to drive very slowly, but we still got a number of scares. Dark brown does not show up too well against a gray and black background. The cool moment of the drive was passing the Frank Slide, which buried the town of Frank, Alberta in 1903. 103 years later and it's still pretty impressive. As the drive continued we began to become concerned that our host, Ali, was going to be inconvenienced. We had initially informed here that we would be arriving around 7:00, but it appeared that we wouldn't be getting there until midnight. Ali lived on a farm half way between Nanton, Alberta and Vulcan, Alberta. A place that could quite easily qualify as "the middle of nowhere". The driving instructions we had included the final missive... "pull up the driveway, and don't run over the puppy". Upon our late night arrival, we were immediately greeted by the puppy, a three-month-old blue heeler / border collie mix named Cash (after Johnny, of course) owned by Ali's neighbour, Wayne. He was kind of bitey... but cute. Wayne and Ali, we found in Ali's kitchen, very drunk (they've been drinking in expectation of our imminent arrival since 5:00), and surrounded by the mostly eaten appetizers Ali had prepared for us hours ago. After making our apologies for the late arrival, we thought it polite to get as drunk as our hosts as quickly as possible. Once again we are eaten alive by bugs, but Amy seems to have come up with a repellent that actually seems to work, Ungava. Once I started using this, I hardly got any bites.

June 11 Nanton The Big Gun Fight Today we were faced by a tough decision. In one direction lay the town of Vulcan, who were celebrating "Spock Days", an annual event honouring all things Star Trek. Vulcan really riffs off its vague association to the show. It even has a statue of the starship Enterprise downtown, as well as a Star Trek themed science centre. Some years, for Spock Days, they even get someone from the show (one time it was Councilor Troi) to come and preside over the festivities. In the other direction lay the town of Nanton, where the bands would be playing that evening, which featured an excellent vintage store (Buffalo Gals) that was also about to close, so everything in it was for sale at discounts ranging from 80 - 100%. Needless to say, the ladies of the expedition had no interest in going to Vulcan. I always like to suck up to the ladies, so I volunteered to drive them to Nanton, while the rest of the gang went to Spock Days. From their later report it sounded like an anticlimactic visit to Spock Days. All the cool stuff had happened yesterday, so all they got to see were the pancake breakfast and a home run hitting contest. Now, I like shopping as much as the next guy... well, probably slightly more than the next guy... which means that I have a tolerance for it that lasts somewhere between 15 minutes to an hour (depending upon the store). Buffalo Gals turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, though. There was a lot of really cool men's Western gear, as well as an interesting selection of generally cool knickknacks. The prize find in my books was an antique, 1940's Hungarian made, crack action pellet gun. Amy was unimpressed... very unimpressed and showed visible relief when I was told that the gun was not for sale today, because it might be included in a bulk sale to a theatre company. But I could put in an offer and pick it up the next day it the theatre people didn't want it. I was crestfallen, but Dreanne, the lovely lady who ran the place, seeing my distress, asked me if I liked "things that go bang". Upon my sullen affirmation, she handed me over a big box of vintage Hand's fireworks from the 1970's... which included the Burning Schoolhouse. Free. It was about the best thing ever. Between all the thrifting we had all been doing, plus all of our regular luggage and the musical equipment we were carrying, space in all three vehicles had become very, very cramped. Our car was so full, that in order to fit Carolyn in, we pretty much had to grease her up and take a running start. The show at The Auditorium that evening was great. The bar was really old school with taxidermy all over the place, and one of the local farmers, Lance, joined the bands on stage with his pedal steel guitar. Lance apparently plays in a lot of bands, but only when they travel through town. He's an amazing player, in fact of the best I've ever seen, and the coolest thing was when he played with Hank and Lily. Despite the fact that he had never seen or heard them before... and despite the fact that they play a kind of music that is, in my opinion, not a type that I would immediately associate with pedal steel... Lance fucking smoked! I don't think I've heard a pedal steel played like that before, and I stood in awe.

June 12 Nanton The Best Steak in the World It was a day off. We were all feeling kind of bad at what we had done to Ali's house. When we arrived, everything was as neat as a pin. Minimalist. Spartan even. Now ten people worth of stuff had been dumped all over her living room and ten people worth of empties had clogged up her kitchen. It seemed good we would be leaving tomorrow, as we had definitely imposed ourselves sufficiently upon Ali's hospitality. Fortunately, she was gracious enough to take it all in stride. After some grocery shopping in Vulcan (which, as a town, kinda sucks actually... I way prefer Nanton), we came back to Ali's. We played with the puppy, did some Hula Hooping, and prepared for a big BBQ. Someone, who shall remain nameless to avoid Amy's wrath, took a trip into Nanton, and much to my surprise/elation, came back with the pellet gun for me. Lance, and his wife and daughter came out to the festivities, and brought with them some steaks from Lance's sister's farm. These were the best steaks I have ever had in my life. Hands down. It was akin to smoking the cigars cigar makers smoke, or drinking the whisky the distillery owner drinks. It was just that good.

June 13 Nanton - Calgary Grid, My Ass Ali joined us for the trip to Calgary... probably she just couldn't stand the mess we had made of her house. Calgary, I used to like... but she has become such a boomtown that on this visit it was hard to see the things that had initially attracted me to it. It was like seeing an old girlfriend who used to be all wholesome and winsome and girl-next-door suddenly all dressed up like a creepy real estate agent wearing too much makeup. Not having any personal connections in Calgary, Amy and I had decided that we would get a hotel tonight. It was not to be. We searched all over town, but were told (often smugly) that there was not a room to be had. A big oil and gas expo was happening in town ("the biggest one in North America"), and at one place we were told that the nearest available hotel room was in Red Deer. Maybe. Fortunately, Carolyn's friend Diane (who was also going to be playing bass for some of the bands that night) proved amenable to taking on a few more guests. Despite the fact that Calgary was all supposed to be laid out on a grid with everything being easy to find, it took us a real long time to find her place. Consequently, half of us ended up arriving kind of late for the show. The bar that the bands would play at was a new one, The Palomino, and it seemed pretty decent. The main floor was a Western styled Bar bar, and downstairs was another bar, where the live music happened. Calgary has some strange smoking laws. You are able to smoke inside a bar, but you cannot smoke on the patio. It was very reminiscent of the good ol' / bad ol' days of rampant smoke everywhere. Even as a smoker myself, I found it somewhat overwhelming. Calgary fans have historically enjoyed a good rockin' show, and Amy managed to wow them with her tribute to Black Sabbath song, Sabbath! Hank and Lily, as always, impressed, and Carolyn played the fastest paced set I had ever seen her perform. Lance even showed up to play some speed pedal steel guitar. After the show, it was raining again, but a local good ol' rockabilly boy offered to give us all a ride home in his gigantic pickup truck. He managed to transport thirteen of us, although about six people had to ride in the rain in the back. They seemed to enjoy it.

June 14 Calgary - Edmonton Goilers! We headed to Edmonton where we picked up another five people (who together comprised two more bands). Dave Lang (Regina) and Garth Johnson (Toronto) who are the main components of The Dave Lang Band, and J. McLaughlin and Grayson Walker who form the excellent Victoria band, Hearse. Dave's lovely partner Laura and another of our Vancouver Island friends, Sylvia, also came along for the ride. There was mayhem in the air when we arrived in town. It was game 5 of the NHL playoffs, and the Oilers were on the brink of elimination. When we drove down Whyte Avenue, there were so many cops it looked like martial law. The show was to be at one of the all time great live venues, The Black Dog. The only drawbacks were that a) the Black Dog was on Whyte Avenue, and therefore would be super packed with people... b) they would be showing the game on televisions there, and the show would not be able to go on until the game was over... and if it went into overtime, it could conceivably last for hours... c) if the Oilers lost, the crowd might get ugly. Fortunately, although the game did actually go into overtime, it ended fairly quickly, and the Oilers won. Whyte Avenue exploded into revelry. I decided to take a walk along the street to see just what was up. I don't know exactly what had happened after other games (apparently some broken window, bonfires in the street and other assorted drunken hooliganry), but the cops were taking no chances. They seemed to be everywhere, herding people along the sidewalk, pushing people off the actual street, and giving everyone the hairy eyeball. In my short walk, I saw them arrest one guy who wanted to debate whether on not he was allowed walk in the street (he's wasn't) and I had about a million people shout "Goilers!!!" in my face. I saw lots of people driving around honking their horns and yelling... often, if they had a pickup truck, they had a giant tinfoil Stanley Cup in the back. I was also required to give out lots of high fives, which I did until I came across the guy who gave me such an enthusiastic high five that he nearly took my arm off. After that I walked down the alley instead. The Black Dog was packed to the point of insanity which made for some difficulty in moving around and, more importantly, buying beers, but the place is blessed with some of the greatest bar staff this side of the Railway Club. By the time I was lining up to buy my second beer of the evening, the bartender already recognized me, and would have my beer of preference open and ready for me by the time I got to the front of the line. Which was a good thing, especially because the place was so damn noisy that even screaming at the top of my lungs, it was hard for anyone to hear me. Once again, it was a really good show... jam-packed, elated, drunk Edmontonians really know how to have a good time. And as an added bonus, we ran into Jerf, one time drummer for Red Cat Records label stalwarts, The Doers. For those who know him, and miss him, he asked me to tell you all that he's doing great, playing in a band called Field and Stream, and has no intention of moving back to Vancouver.

June 15 Edmonton - Driftpile Attack of the 6 Ft. Kimonoman The goal on this day was to drive 4 hours North of Edmonton to attend/play the North Country Fair. It's held just outside the township of Driftpile, Alberta, (near Lesser Slave Lake) and was a 3-day Solstice celebration. We were warned that there would be rain and hippies. We were arriving a day early so that the bands could play a special show for the volunteers. Needless to say, these events are usually chaos during the actual event... to arrive a day early ensured that things were really upside-down-town. Hell, they were still constructing a road to where people could park. The Hong Kong Lady took even more undercarriage abuse as a result, but we took solace in what was to become the tour mantra (at least as far as the vehicles were concern), "ahh fuck it, it'll be fine." Amy, Dave, Laura, Garth and I pitched our tents in the performers' campground, "Shady Hollow". It's always tempting when camping to start drinking before you set up your tent, but Amy and I had discipline (and, as I said, we had been seriously warned about rain), so we quickly cobbled together something that looked like it would probably "do", and then set out to find where the others had camped. Tolan had taken Gwyneth to the farthest end of the campground, far away from other campers, but close to the stage were tonight's show was to take place. His camping posse included Hoff, Carolyn, Clay, Sylvia, and Goose, and they had opened up Gwyneth's side door, and strung up a tarp that extended out from there to cover a seating area and a (against Fair rules) fire pit. The beers were cracked, and Black Sabbath was cranked. With one of my last lucid thoughts of the day, I started second guessing the rainworthiness of our camp ground, but when I went back to check it out, I found that Garth and Dave (who love doing shit like this), had taken down our crappy tarp set up, and instead constructed a sturdy tarp-opolis that covered all three of our tents. We then all sojourned back to Gwyneth to continue drinking and camping and awaiting someone to come by and tell us when the show was to go on. Here is an important fact that escaped all of us. Driftpile is pretty fucking far North (compared to, say, Vancouver), and around the Solstice the sun does not set until well after midnight. Consequently we drank and smoked and hung around in the assurance that, somehow, it was perpetually around 9:00. This illusion was somewhat dispelled by a shaggy, intense, old hippie guy in a kimono who appeared at our campsite. Apparently he was the stage manager of the stage that the bands were supposed to be playing at. He was upset that it was well after midnight and no one had played yet. We informed him that no one had told us anything, and anyway, we had no idea where half of our musicians had wandered off to. This didn't mollify him in the least, and he proceeded to inform us that some "professional musicians" were impatiently waiting for us to get going... apparently they were a "smoking blues band from the city". We said, that since we didn't know where everybody was, "the smoking blues band" might was well take the stage whenever they wanted. Then we returned to drinking. I won't go into the gruesome details, but after hearing some garbled comments from the stage about "professionalism" and "courtesy" and "smoking blues"; we were treated to some of the most pedestrian, wanky, bullshit blues you could ever imagine being subjected to. If you have seen the movie Ghost World, conjure up image of the band Blues Hammer. Blues Hammer would have been preferable to the craptacular display that was M64. Fortunately Gwyneth's sound-system could mostly drown them out. Eventually it actually got dark, but I have no idea what time the bands finally took the stage (late, late, late, that's for sure)... it was by far the drunkest show of the entire tour, kind of a trainwreck in places, but no one seemed to mind and the bands didn't stop playing until it was light again.

June 16 Driftpile Shore Is Muddy While we were sleeping, it rained. Hard. Dave and Garth's tarp-opolis worked wonders, and we all stayed dry. Amy and I were woken to the sound of Garth shouting that we should all get out of bed, and that we were lazy bastards, and the kitchen was cooking up breakfast and there were "big bowls of bacon", but we'd have to hurry because breakfast was nearly over. We dragged our sorry asses over to the performer's kitchen area were there was a big spread laid out, but there were no (and there never was to be) any "big bowls of bacon". The rain (which continued off and on all day) turned everything to mud. I was okay, as I had thought to bring a straw cowboy hat, at big military trench coat (which Amy hated, but easily held six beers in it's pockets) and gum boots. Some of the other were not so fortunate. Clay for instance started drinking before he set up his tent, consequently he had not set up a tarp to protect his tent... he also neglected to bring a sleeping bag (he had to use his dirty laundry as a blanket)... and he left his regular shoes and his gumboots outside his tent, so they filled up with water. He cut a miserable hungover figure when he finally emerged for the day. Hank Pine had been more forward thinking with his camping arrangements, but his major malfunction was that he had neglected to use enough bug spray. Whenever it wasn't raining, there were tons of giant mosquitoes and no see 'ums. At one point he lifted up his shirt to show a ring around his torso about thee inches wide that was composed of around 50 bug bites of various sorts. The visible parts of his body were almost as badly off. Today was the official start of the festival, and as the day continued, tons of people started arriving. Considering the weather, it was quite impressive. Unfortunately, when it came time for Carolyn to take to the main stage and kick off the Fair, it was discovered that 1) the soundboard had gotten soaked overnight 2) it was also missing a major component that it needed to be functional. Soooo... while they dried out the board, someone had to be contacted in Edmonton to drive up the missing part. Things finally got started 4 hours late. Once it began, it was a great evening of music, and we were even treated to the reunion of Carolyn Mark and Her Roommates (Carolyn, Tolan and Garth). Carolyn and Hoff especially deserve kudos for rocking the "long evening dress with six inches of mud around the hem" look all evening.

June 17 Driftpile - Edmonton The Shabbiest Wedding Guests Evar We really tried to get going early. I just wanted to say that for the record. Hank, Lily and Clay were staying at the Fair, but the rest of us had to attend the wedding of John Guliak and Christine Ferguson. I had to get to Edmonton especially early (3:00) because I was the best man. With this in mind, we did our best to hit the road by 10:00 (counting on a four-hour drive and then an hour to clean up and make ourselves presentable). Didn't happen. We got going around 11:30, and even though I matted it, we didn't actually arrive in Edmonton until 3:00. When we arrived, we were a mess. It's amazing how quickly one can degenerate from (vaguely) civilized to a smelly, dirty, bearded caveman... covered head to toe in mud. Amy was not much better. After what amounted to a quick hosing down, we tore off the wedding, which took place in the Guliak/Ferguson backyard. I will state for the record here, and for all time, I was a terrible, terrible best man. John, if you ever read this... I'm terribly sorry. When I arrived at the lovely family event, I was wearing a badly wrinkled suit... a mud and blood stained shirt... muddy, scuffed combat boots... I had a patch of beard the size of a toonie on my chin that I had missed when I shaved... and I had bumped my head on the trunk of my car, and there was blood trickling down my face. On top of this I was hungover, burned out, stupid and had a hacking cough from all the cigarettes and campfire I had inhaled at the Fair. Amy was not quite the freakshow I was, but later in the evening she finally realized that one of her shoes was a significantly different colour than the other. The reception featured a table full of Edmontonians glued to the Oilers Stanley Cup game on a portable TV. They did a pretty good job of not yelling and swearing too loud while the speeches were going on. The Oilers won, and once again Edmonton exploded. Even though we were well away from Whyte Avenue on this occasion, you could still hear all the horn honking and general brouhaha. The reception also featured the long awaited reunion of The Fixin's, a band that John had been in with Carolyn, Dave and Garth back in the olden days. At the end of the evening, I got chewed out by Christine's mother for not having had the courtesy to introduce myself. She was right to do so, most best men can do better than that.

June 18 Edmonton - Edson At Least It's Not Raining I was very pleased to find out, when I woke up, that I was now sick. Yesterday's cough was not entirely attributable to smoking my face off; it was actually a precursor to a foul illness. At least we are on our way home now, and although it will be a long drive, we were all promised a couple of evenings in a luxury ski chalet near Kamloops with a hot tub. Our plans, as you might have guessed, were of the pipe variety. About two hours out of Edmonton, in the middle of nowhere, we blew a tire. No biggie... we pulled over, and I set about getting out the spare tire (which was a real spare tire and not one of those stupid tiny ones). Unfortunately, at this point Amy and Carolyn noticed that there was a lot of steam coming out from under our hood. A quick inspection revealed that simultaneously to blowing our tire, our radiator had developed a large crack. We (well, the ladies, actually) were soon able to flag down a guy with a cell phone and we were able to get BCAA to send out a tow truck. Don, the tow truck driver informed us that we would need to go to Edson, the nearest town. He also informed us that as "basic BCAA" members the first 5 kilometers of towing was free. It was approximately 80 kilometers to Edson. Although expensive, Don's company on the tow was pretty cool. He was widower who just drove a tow truck all day long, and when he wasn't driving the truck he tried to "drink Canada dry". He told us stories about hunting foxes in Virginia ("the poor hounds would come back from the hunt just covered in ticks"). He also told us how, when he was younger and was doing some farming in Alberta, he killed two (or perhaps three) birds with one stone by running a big water hose into the gopher holes on his land and thereby irrigated his field at the same time as he drowned the gophers. Those that didn't drown were easy to shoot. We got into Edson (Home of the Giant Squirrel), dropped off the car at a repair shop (which was closed for the day) and left a note telling them what we required. We found a hotel, The Odyssey (We Sell Sleep), and fortunately got the last room, although we were informed that no rooms would be available tomorrow (big oil patch convention, or something). With nothing else to do, we bought booze and watched TV. As we lounged around, we did our best to look on the bright side of things. In this case, the bright side was that, for the first time on the entire tour, it didn't rain a drop all day long. Still, there is the nagging suspicion we should be in a hot tub. Gwyneth's crew is.

June 19 Edson - Hinton Gimme A One Way Ticket To Hinton We got the call first thing in the morning. The repair shop wouldn't be able to fix our car for a couple of days. Apparently they needed to order a new radiator from Edmonton. It would also cost around $600. Considering we wouldn't be able to get a hotel room in Edson tonight... combined with the fact that we sure as hell didn't want to stay in Edson for two more days, we decided to call all the places in town. A bunch of brain dead yokels basically told us the same thing... 2 days, lotsa $$$, and really they had better things to do. Carolyn, on a whim, started checking a bit more afield. In Hinton, the next town down the road, there was a guy who specialized in radiators. He figured that if we could get the radiator out of our car, and bring it to him... he could fix it, and for significantly less money. When we told him that getting the radiator out of the car was beyond our abilities at the moment, he said that, in our case, he could probably take the radiator out himself. All we'd have to do is get the car to Hinton. Once again, BCAA was called. I tried signing up for a Premium Membership, which would have entitled us to 100 kilometers of towing, but they're smart, upgrades don't apply to preexisting conditions. So it was a 100 kilometer tow (first 5 free) and the tow truck driver wouldn't take all three of us. Carolyn and Amy went with him, and I hung around town until I could catch a Greyhound bus to Hinton. I've been a lot of places in my life, but they don't get much worse than the Greyhound bus station in Edson, Alberta. When I finally got to Hinton, I found a note stuck to the door of the Greyhound bus station there informing me that Larry (the radiator guy) would not be able to repair our radiator (stupid plastic radiators), but he would be able to replace it... he could have it done before noon tomorrow... and it would be about half as expensive as any other quote we had gotten. The note also said that Amy and Carolyn were holed up with some beer and wine at a hotel not too far away. We spent the evening drinking and watching the Oilers lose the Stanley Cup on TV. We should be in a hot tub... Hank and Lily are in the promised hot tub tonight.

June 20 Hinton - Sun Peaks Finally, The Hot Tub Larry was a man of his word, and at 11:00 AM; the Hong Kong Lady was once again ready to hit the road. After a couple of days of enforced inertia, it was really good to get back on the road again. We were going to take the Yellowhead to the ski chalet, because at this point we were damned if we weren't going to get at least one night of sitting in a hot tub. The Yellowhead is a great drive. The mountains were beautiful, and we saw lots of wildlife, including two bears (one a Grizzly) and an escaped bull that was just walkin' down the highway (he also had the largest balls any of us had ever seen on a living creature). We arrived at the chalet, for which we can thank Bob, the local golf pro, who has connections everywhere. For instance, he helped scare us up a show tomorrow that Carolyn and Amy could snake their way onto. Luther Wright and his buddies, The Shiftless Rounders, were to be playing the opening show for the volunteers at the Salmon River Roots and Blues Festival (ever wonder whatever happened to Ten Years After?... they're playing at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival). Then we hot tubbed, and it was good.

June 21 Sun Peaks - Salmon Arm The Best Connected Golf Pro In The Valley Another good drive through the Shuswap, and when we arrived in Salmon Arm, we found that Bob (who is amazing) has teed us up rooms at the best hotel in Salmon Arm (don't laugh, it was fucking amazing). Our room overlooked a bird sanctuary; we looked right down on an Osprey's nest. Pretty damn cool. Amy, Carolyn and I were getting kind of worn out, and we made a beginner's mistake... we forgot to eat, but we didn't forget to drink. Still, it was a fun evening, and it was cool seeing The Shiftless Rounders for the first time. Good ol' hobo bluegrass.

June 22 Salmon Arm - Vancouver Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die It has been a long and tiring couple of weeks. Personally, I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed. It was a pretty subdued drive back to town. We managed to drop Carolyn off at the Ferry Terminal in time for the last sailing, and then headed home to die.

#Old Tour Stories #2006 #Driftpile #Alberta #nostalgia #vans #Carolyn Mark #Amy Honey #Clay George #Hank & Lily #Dave Lang

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