Photo by T. of Gorby practicing guitar at Red House, 1971.
When you realize that the so-called “simple” Guitar Practice of 5 Minutes a Day, which eventually turns into maybe a half-hour or more per session, sometimes four or five guitar sessions a day when you get into it, can produce miracle internal results, it’s an amazing discovery.
Just five minutes a day practicing the guitar, seems like nothing.
At some point, the guitar practice seems to go better, then worse, then better and better, up and down for a number of months, maybe years, before you relax into it.
That means stop trying to control it, to make it into something that resembles your mental picture of what guitar practice ought to look and and sound like.
That picture of you playing guitar is totally wrong. As I said, at some point, you’ll let go of that picture of yourself and let the real thing just be there. Continue reading →
The giant print flipper allows pieces up to 30″x40″ to be shown.
There’s this big chunk of mountain that comes crashing down to the river some 540 million years ago. It gets broken up into smaller pieces and then eventually is ground down to a bunch of smaller stones that get buried in the gravel bars of the rushing river.
As they roll downstream, they contact other similar rocks in the river and, just like it happens in a lapidary “tumbler” device, the stones grind and polish one another.
The process can be sped up in a lapidary workshop, merely by adding some grinding abrasive compound — it’s a simple cutting powder that you’d put into the water in the rock-tumbler.
The rocks in the tumbler go ’round and ’round, grinding against each other, sometimes for months, but it’s a LOT faster than the river method.
If you were to produce the ringstones and brooch stones that I offer in my rock shop, and you had to glue a dop stick to the back of the stone and hit it with a diamond cutting wheel, and then shape it, form it and polish it, that would be the work of several days.
All I have to to is hop into the car and drive 55 miles away to a landscaping yard where they have enormous bags and heaps of rocks, and select the ones I want, get them weighed and priced out, pay the invoice, load the rocks into the trunk and drive back home, another hour’s drive.
In all, I spend about an hour to an hour and a half choosing the rocks that I want to get. We’re pretty friendly with the landcape arts people, and they help us quite a lot to get loaded — in the freighting sense of the word — and they often have suggestions about rocks that they’ve just gotten in. Continue reading →
Jewel & Gorby setting up gallery for rock painting & auctions.
Yes, Zen Rock Painting is here, and it’s incredible! You will have the best craft experience of your life, absolutely guaranteed or double your money back — the class is free, the materials are free and the table space is free. It costs us about a dollar to give away one painted rock, and the result is well worth it.
What happens when someone is confronted with “Paint a Rock”?
It varies, depending on the internal and external dialogues and conditions. In short, the very prospect of the simple act of painting a rock is seen as an enormous ego-threat.
“What if my painted rock is ugly?” they worry. All the worst aspects of internalizing and projection come out at this moment.
If there’s a conflict between a couple or between adult and child, it will come out now. This is the time when all neuroses get trotted out to block the possible fun experience.
They are unworthy, and they know it — they’ve been taught all their lives that not only are they not artists, but that art is crap, and that all artists are degenerate drains on society.
Very few folks know what the letters “f-f-f-f-f” in Judge Kavanaugh’s Calendar actually meant, back in the day of college dorms and panty raids. I will reluctantly remind those who have forgotten this foul male heritage, and you can look it up, if you doubt me:
Disgusting as it might be, that’s what it means, and there isn’t a single one of those lying, sniveling cowardly RepubliKlan Senator who doesn’t FULLY REMEMBER what it means.
They are very aware of the meaning — they can’t escape that glaring fact of high school and college bragging rights — the world of a young man experiencing the pangs of puberty is filled with fantasies and bullshit, and every male kid in Amerika has heard someone say something similar to that — maybe only four f’s instead of five, as Kavanaugh’s clan seemed to prefer.
“F-F-F-F-F” can’t mean anything else. That’s what it has meant for at least 60 years local time, and every high school BOY knows it. For anyone unfamiliar with the cynical phrase that dates back to the fifties, it can be quite a shocker.
Sanctimonious bastards that they are, the Washington Senators (no relation to the heroic members of the baseball team of the same name) gave the smug and smirking Judge Kavanaugh a “pass”, knowing full-well what that calendar entry “f-f-f-f-f” really meant.
There are other high school yearbook and calendar notations that are equally brutal and nasty, but that’s the way Rich White Men get their way — they bully, brag, lie, cheat and steal, and invent reasons why they can do it and get away with it, like the bragging that we heard on the “Access Hollywood” video.
Shocking? Not anymore, it isn’t. Not anymore. They are the most criminal bastards who ever hit the Beltway, but they’re not quite finished with us, yet. They have even more up their sleeves, and they intend to press their bets once they win another election. Continue reading →
I’m back from the front, ready for more blogging, after a month’s vacation from blogging and writing in general, although I have written a few new Protest Songs, to insure that when they do eventually come for me, I’ll have a protest song ready for them.
Besides the development of Hot Popcorn Spices for our popcorn machine vending business, I’ve been extremely busy developing a new Practice, that of “Rockology” and “Stone Magic”, and I’ve got a bunch of goodies just for you, all under the auspices of “Brane-Power” at brane-power.com, where you’ll find all my Tools for Transformation.
Tonight, I’ll be working on the teaching methodology that goes along with the Practice, beginning with Mandala Magic Stones, the easiest to produce and the exercise providing the best beginning moves for the novice rock artist.
In the meanwhile, I’m also preparing for the big Studio Tour event that happens two weekends in a row, in the middle of this month of October, as is.
Featured in that particular annual art event will be Tom X., Kelly Rivera and E.J. Gold. That’s the total lineup, and that’s what we’ll exhibit — Kelly and I will host the event at ej gallery, and Tommy will be there for autographs & pictures, accessible through our FREE SuperBeacon setup and, yes, he really is available for contact, but he’s already busy with art projects and commissions at your Next Stop.
In fact, we’re all due there, in the not too distant future, and as Tom Lehrer says, “We Will All Go Together When We Go…” but in the meantime, Let’s Make a Buck!!! Continue reading →
Alien nude from my unpublished book, “Alien Portraits”
Often I’ll come up with an art series that has been inspired by Diablo 2, and the “Alien Portraits” portfolio is one of those ideas that never reached the public, but is sitting there, ready and waiting, for a publishing opportunity.
Sometimes it takes a while to get out there with a good idea. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on teleporting tonight.
It’s not that I forgot how to teleport or something — I’m trying to come up with a set of TRAINING DRILLS that will work here, and I think I have a few ideas that you’ll find very easy to implement, very effective to use and have a definite spillover effect in your daily life, which is all to the good.
See, the idea behind the TELE is the SWAY.
The idea is generally to use a series of gaming drills that help you find your “TELE-LEGS” — that’s professional “teleport talk” for achieving that gaming sway and swerve that makes you stand out as an excellent player.
But you want to develop your skills without pain and without injury, so you work within a situation where things are such that you don’t get swatted like a fly while trying to learn the aforementioned skills.
And what skills are they?
They are primarily skills of relaxing and moving without involvement in conflict, and that means skirting great mounds of howling enraged mobs of vicious unregistered and unlisted creatures ravenously biting at you from every direction.
Avoiding the Christmas Rush, you TELE in and TELE out.
Speaking of Christmas, we can use the BARDO SAFARI operations as a way of putting the “X” back in “Xmas”.
It’s all about the SWAY, and that comes with PRACTICE, and there isn’t any other way to get it — there is no mental substitute for PRACTICE.
Best way to get some practice in the TELE would be to find a gaming space that matches the general conditions of what it will be like in the area to which you think you might be teleporting, and duplicate that space, but do it in a quiet zone, no enemies about.
The very first thing you want to do is to TELE — teleport — where NOTHING can possibly happen to you, there are no enemies alive, and where there are no surprises. Continue reading →
My Level 47 Druid hasn’t died once, and has killed Baal twice.
If my TSCC Security Clearance hasn’t already long-expired, as I expect it has, since 1968 — the last time I used it — as a former member of the Intelligence Community, PFC Clerk-Typist Trainee 006″ with the AIS/ASA, following which I served with the “Arlington Witches Remote Viewers Group” under the title “Div44”, I hereby Self-Revoke any shred or vestige of my own Security Clearance, whatever it may be, and like I said, it’s probably already long gone, especially after my “sheep-dipping” in 1964 to allow me to operate as “Control” for Billy Byars and Billy Byars Jr., both close friends of President Johnson.
Please note that my MOS — Military Occupational Specialty — was only one digit away from James Bond’s “007” designation. My sanction was slightly more limited than was the notorious but completely invented novel-character, the British Secret Agent “James Bond” who was licensed to kill, I was also licensed, but only to seriously offend.
Hence, my standup career after the Army.
Hey, anyone with good taste and values will want to leave the Untied Snakes of Arnica real soon, especially if it turns into a military dictatorship, which is now very possible, so much so that even those in denial can see clearly what lies up ahead, if Congress fails to do its job, to limit the power of the President, so the President can never become a King — that was the whole point of the Constitution & Bill of Rights.
Trump is Power-Mad, and he’s in fact angling himself to be in position to fire people by taking away their security clearances, which means they can’t work at their jobs.
He’s also just on the verge of declaring a military emergency, so he can direct his troops to shoot down innocent civilians, because that’s what Strong Rulers do!
With a Power-Hungry would-be dictator in control of your life at the moment, It’s totally understandable that you’d want to escape, but what if your financial status says “no”? What can you do with little money and little hope?
If you’ve got medical issues, it’s even less likely that you’ll grab up a Bugout Pack and escape into the high country, and if you’re just barely stable and unable to withstand a change in environment, you’re just plain out of luck.
So maybe you CAN’T load up the car and drive off into the sunset, but never fear — you CAN escape into sanity by learning how to dive headfirst into a fabulous BETA-BRAIN WAVE BLOCKER called “Diablo 2”, and STAY THERE forever, or for at least a couple of hours.
Wow, can you imagine getting two SOLID hours of PAIN RELIEF from Trumpian howling, raging and torment, without ONCE thinking about TRUMP???
How you you spell “Relief”??? Not T-R-U-M-P, that’s for sure, and about R-E-S-P-E-C-T he knows nothing. Get outta town! Take yourself off the planet! Get away for the whole week, never mind the weekend!
Played in the ordinary way, DIABLO 2 is just a game, just a very ordinary videogame of the vintage variety, a definite legacy game that belongs properly in the 80s and 90s, but when activated with Objective Gameplay, it comes alive and becomes a transformational experience as well as an escape from the insanity that is Amerika today. Continue reading →
That’s the start of a pop ballad called “Are you miserable tonight?”, a country song with a twist of blues.
I’m writing songs again, mostly now about paranoia and knocks at the door and fascists smashing down all the socio-political gains we’ve made over the past 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement got some wind in its sail.
Now it’s time for activists to once again take to the streets and to the voting booths, although they will be turned away from the polls if past Republican history is anything to go by, and it is.
So we’ll be watching this all on the news. Too bad none of this wonderful 21st century history manages to survive the Second Holocaust, and even if it did, nothing got past the Third Holocaust, nothing. Continue reading →
Meditation can be achieved in a variety of interesting ways.
Diablo 2 is not the only way to set up a Beta-Brain Block. Just in arm’s reach, you’ll find a variety of other “weapons” in the War Against Sleep, notably meditation, but there’s a catch — which meditation are we talking about?
Just like aliens, there’s not just one single breed, no single source of origin, panspermia — the idea that ALL life originated in one single spot and spread throughout the galaxy.
Sure, it could happen in some galaxies, but not all, but forget about galaxies for the moment — let’s talk about YOU.
Meditation has many faces, many forms, but let’s just take a glance at one of them for the moment — Relaxation Meditation, meditation that you do in order to rest and relax without going napping.
In general, we don’t associate snoring with meditation.
I am a very outspoken critic of Trump, yet he cannot silence me. I have taken steps to prevent it, and the more he tries to silence me, the louder my voice will become.
There’s no better way to publicize a book than to have it be a White House Hate Object.
This is a very different world from the one in which you were born, the ones in which you traveled through a variety of experiences, all leading to HERE and NOW.
In this very different world, a would-be world dictator is attempting to overthrow our government.
It’s still legal at the time of this writing to criticize Trump, but that won’t be the case if he gets his way in court and on the political battlefield — the Senate.
The HOUSE is just a bunch of poor Democratic idealists, and they don’t count for anything, unless impeachment is in the offing.
There used to be a time when both parties were united on one issue — limit the power of the President.
That’s not what’s happening now. They’re defending Trump. He’s attacking US, and they’re defending HIM.
Republicans are not Republicans anymore. They’re stacking the deck with Jerrymandering so that YOUR vote doesn’t count, CAN’T count, because of the “RED” loaded district in which you voted.
Trump has sold us out to the Russians. Putin promised him that he could still stay in power after the takeover and dismissal of Congress forever.
This all happens, unless YOU motivate yourself to VOTE the bastards out of office, and then get busy helping EVERYONE defend the Constitution.
But while we’re waiting for the inevitable end of all dictators, how can you defend yourself and your family and home from Trump? Continue reading →
