Actual Sign

Of course, much to my disappointment, they've changed it since I took this picture of it. The location is/was right on the outskirts of the town in which I make my home.

Found this in a drawer

Let me know if you can't read the sticker on the back, 'cause that's the reason I post this here.

Does this lawn need mowing?

If clicking the small image below doesn't let you see the big, hi-def image, please say so.

As Humane as is Deemed Sanitary

One of my mother's friends wanted to go to the "humane society" (an interesting name, I think, for a place that houses forgotten pets) to look at dogs after his own dog suddenly died last week. I tagged along with him and my mother, and, of course, I went to visit the cats while my mother and her friend went in the back to the dog section (which, I discovered later, has its own, um, "scent"; I suppose that would be inevitable....). They have a couple of sections where we can basically go in and freely mingle with the four or five cats that are in each of the two sections. While I was in one of the "cuddle rooms," I just sat for a moment and gazed at one particular cat who was on the window sill, staring out at the dreary, rainy-day plains with bare trees. I couldn't help but wonder what someone in his (I think it was a "he") position might have been thinking, stuck in a room like that, looking out at a grey sky and a sort of brown-and-yellow ground (Cats probably don't know from "brown" and "yellow," do they...?). Is this the best of all possible worlds? Is there something nice and worthwhile beyond these walls? It reminded me so much of me.....

.....But they were all nice cats there, although a few of them slept through my entire time there. I'm not the sort of person to disturb sleeping cats, although some younger people who patronize the Humane Society apparently are..... Anyway, one black cat cuddled up in my lap for a little while, and shortly thereafter, a much younger cat, about seven months old, I think, who sort of resembled Lily (picture link) but with more black, eagerly grabbed my fingers and gently teethed on them. She was quite adorable.

I could go on and on about cats.......

.....I'll just say that Lucy fails to have a problem with me smelling like other cats.

Linus — 1993 - 2008

Rest in peace, big boy.........

Loki the Mad Scientist

When I saw a certain item in the background, I thought "Yeah....I have to post this." (click to enlarge)

How I recorded my "It's PSYCH" song

Someone asked for this to be posted here, so here it is, copied and pasted from its original location on It's PSYCH (with a few minor edits):

Whew! Here we go......

First step: Jam a bit on the guitar. Eventually, I hear something that sounds like a song.



It often helps a bit if I play with the settings on this crazy little device:



It's capable of creating a great many different sounds. The "Vox Phaser" setting shown in the photograph is the one I used for the main backbone of this song.

The RP300 also has a few different drum beats built in. I use one of those in the recording. The "percussion" is the first thing I lay down in the song. It usually requires a lot of tedious editing. Yecch. It also sounds a tad 80s-ish, but it was nicely muted in the final song, I think. I'm not that big on mainstream 80s percussion. I'd get a drum kit, but (a) I don't know if I could hook one up to the computer...I doubt it, and (b) the people with whom I live would have none of it.

Next stop: the amplifier. Sometimes, I will hook up the guitar directly to the amp and bypass the RP300. That's how I got the slightly fuzzy "lead" guitar sound.



I hook the amp up to the computer via a standard-to-mini adapter from the amp's "headphone" output to the computer's Line-in jack.

For the love of whomever you revere, make sure the volume on the amp isn't too high; this is a powerful amp I have; you don't want to blow out the speakers on the computer! I put the volume level on the amp at just over one (max is ten).

Separately, I also have a depressingly cheap microphone plugged into the "mic in" jack on the computer. My voice isn't very strong; I'd like a higher quality mike, but, you know, Bush economy, man; you do what you can.



Lucy, I'm trying to talk to people here. I'll give you fresh water in a bit.


From this point, the magic basically takes place in Audacity, a completely free, cross-platform audio editor available at audacity.sourceforge.net .





Here is where I record everything (separately, of course) to the computer. It's also where I can change things from stereo to mono or vice-versa. I went with mono on this one. I also increase the bass, add echo effects to my voice (they seemed to fit the song), adjust volume levels as necessary, do various bits of cutting and pasting, and, of course, do insane amounts of overdubbing.


There are a great number of tricks you can pull off with this piece of software. I thought about putting in a backwards guitar somewhere, but I decided it didn't really sound right with the song. The straight fuzztone lead was enough. I did a few takes on the guitar solo before finally leaving it as it is. I'm not exactly Leo Kottke or Jimmy Page........


How I come up with the lyrics....well....I wish I knew. There are some things I just know I want to include in the lyrics, like the "White Bike" reference in the first verse, and the "Babelfish clouds" in the third verse. Outside of that...I just work at it until it sounds right. I will admit that writing lyrics helps me explore the language a little bit. The Reverse Dictionary sounds like a great idea...I frequently have a concept in mind and would like to know a word that fits it...but I've used it a few times, and I don't think it works very well. It is a "beta version," though...at least according to the front page.


****

That's all I got for now. Questions? Comments? Random ramblings? Coherent conversation? Something in between? Etc.

Peace............


All right, Lucy, I'm coming.