Phil Bruns rages against the machine in Lou Shaw’s MacBird, Player’s Ring, 1968.
Sure, you can rage against The Machine. Lotta good it’ll do ya. You can’t change human nature, and you can’t change the world. Happily, you don’t have to, not as long as you’re wearing a Quantum Witch Ammy.
What, exactly, does the Quantum Witch do?
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Angelic Guides are on their way down with Native American Flutes by Odell Borg. Hear them this very morning on the ICW. If you don’t know how to get there, find out.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
I was determined to get to the concert venue to see the installation, and maybe run into Wynton Marsalis and Ted Nash, and by golly, to everyone’s surprise including my own, I actually made it into town in late afternoon — about 3:30 — and sure enough, ran into many old friends at the jazz venue, many musicians, photographers, artists and more, all there to see the show. I knew I wouldn’t be able to remain, but stayed awhile, long enough to meet with Ted Nash, Julie Baker and a few other old friends (“old friends” never sounds right — they’re young friends from long ago…dang if that don’t sound no better). The band arrived late, after my energy ran out at about 6:30, a very long time in town for my tired old frame. So, I’ll meet you in the ICW in a few minutes from now, where you’ll see a wonderful collection of very famous art — I’m making a video catalog of the art collections that are up for sale for an art-dealer friend…actually two friends, with quite different interests; one specializes in Old Masters — not the cigars, the painters — and the other in Modern & Contemporary. You’ll be seeing a lot of museum-grade original works by everyone from Renoir to Rauschenberg.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Here’s one of my “Proof of Concept” JazzArt® trading cards. The idea is that we could offer them to various jazz foundations as fund-raisers and neighborhood jazz awareness programs, etc. to create interest and support for local jazz artists and venues. I’m hoping to have some ready for tonight’s Wynton Marsalis & Ted Nash concert in Grass Valley, featuring JazzArt from myself and our “Grass Valley Graphics Group” artists. I’ll be working the whole night through to get these done in time for printing (they also need back-printing, of course), insertion into top-loaders, presentation pages and all that sort of thing you do when making a product. We’re producing just a few artist’s proof copies to get the idea across, then we’ll arrange for photo rights, etc. with the photographers, artists, and of course, musicians. I had an idea that recordings of these concerts, especially videos, could be used as fund-raiser promotional premiums (would the correct Latin here be “premiae”???).
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Pictured above, you’ll note my personal favorite CQR amulet, the Quantum Witch. There’s a lot to it, and it’s a bitch to make — squeezing the electrolytic capacitor into the crystals is just about impossible, and the double-inductance wire-wound coil is outrageously tough to produce, but there it is, ceramic nc foil & all. Most amazing thing about this particular ammy is that it’s quite useful, although all the ammies WILL work in this function, for IDR research.
“What, exactly, is IDR Research?”, you ask. IDR=Inter-Dimensional Radio. “Never heard of it,” you respond, quite rightly, because those working in this area really don’t want you to know about it. As a matter of fact, they’ll tell you that you’re crazy to think that such a thing is going on, right under the noses of the Popular Masses, meaning us.
The Big Guys in Washington and Moscow actually WANT you to think that UFOs are piloted by interstellar greenies with teensy antennae waving about their big bald heads.
Photo sent to me by Pete a number of years back in time…I think in the 60s.
My latest book, Downtown Community School, Camp Woodland & Woodstock has arrived at last. The proof edition was gray and lumpy, dim and dismal. After a year of intense work by Barbara (In-World Avatar is Grishy Resident) and Pete Seeger (he very kindly did the corrections and didn’t want to be paid for it, as was his wont) the book is now Ready For Prime Time, and is for sale, along with Pete’s corrections of my dismally uninformed recollections. His corrections, note to me, drawing and signature were added to indicate where I’d gone factually wrong. Our last communication was, as usual, about music, unions and intellectual freedoms.
I was just a kid at the time pictured in the book, and wasn’t aware of the actual events, especially related to Woody Guthrie. We visited him in the hospital and I saw him in a wheelchair, but he was unable to speak or relate to anyone at that moment… I’ll happily inscribe & sign the book if you ask, and I’ll do more than one for you. I want this book OUT THERE — it’s an important bit of historical knowledge on how to set up a real Place of Learning, thanks to Pete Seeger, Norman Studer, Grant Edwards, Grant Rogers, Bob & Louise deCormier, Ronnie Gilbert, and many more education pioneers and other unsung heroes of True Education, not the pap and workplace entrainment they’re passing off as education these days. Pete had a chance to see the finished book before he passed. I am so appreciative of the co-publisher who made this financially impractical and almost unsellable book possible in spite of the dismal money prospects for its publication and distribution…although, who knows??? Could catch on with a new public, I suppose. READ IT, don’t just thumb through the pictures.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
In-between bouts of GODD® level programming, I’ve been creating a rather large & complex line of trading cards. Complex, because they range from fine art to sci-fi and there’s even some girlie shots in there somewhere — I decided to share some of my vintage pinups from 1790-1910, most of which are albumen prints, magic lantern glass slides, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and more. I also plan to put together a collection of sci-fi, fantasy & horror folks with souvenir relics included in the extra-thick collector cards. Something I’m developing tonight for presentation tomorrow morning at the ICW is a line of non-triplex trading cards. They’ll be a LOT cheaper to produce, wholesale and retail out at very low customer cost, anywhere from $2.95 to $9.95 depending on scarcity, demand and marketing strategies.
What this means to you is that they are just a few pennies more than a color business card, so PROMOTIONAL, RETAIL MERCHANTS, ART DEALERS and WEDDING PLANNERS alert!!! Front side is typically in color, backside typically is black & white although for a bit of extra cost, it could be two-sided color. The new card is THINNER than the swatch and relic cards, much thinner, so it can be mounted in the standard top-loader, of which I currently have 2,000 on hand.
Trading cards such as these can be used for simple branding, marketing expansion, giveaways, tuck-ins (you put one in every order you ship out) and more. One great use for these is to familiarize yourself to your neighborhood.
Another great use for the less expensive non-enclosure cards is as gifts for weddings, birthday parties, souvenirs of various family events, giveaway promotionals for parking lot or signing parties. They can be used as a sales incentive, placed at register, even handed out at special events, talks, lectures, etc.
They can be loaded with almost any type of image; the catch is, you have to own the publishing rights to anything you put out there. I own the images I’m using, so no royalties or ownership issues are going to pop up.
About the title of this article — the story is short & simple: back in 1964, as an art student, I got a few commissions for signs and such, around Hollywood. One such commission was for a fish store on Melrose Boulevard around LaBrea, as I recall. The guy wanted to know how much I’d charge for a sign that read “Fresh Fish Sold Here Today!!!”
I told him I charged by the word.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he exclaimed. “I don’t really need the word ‘fresh’ in the sign, because what else could it be? And I don’t need the word ‘sold’, because obviously I’m not in business to go broke giving things away. The word ‘here’ is also redundant. Where else would it be? And ‘today’ doesn’t need to be in there either. When else? That leaves the word ‘fish’, and that’s obvious from a block away.”
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Okay, this is what I’ve been sweating out for the past few weeks — Dick’s engine now supports passengers on rafts and box-boats. Single driver only on the fancy speedboats and such. If there’s room to stand, you can carry passengers in multiplayer mode. Here’s the lineup, as soon as they can be tested:
1. Love Boat — A dreamy passage into the Timeless Tunnel of Love. There’s a nifty conference room 3/4 of the way through the tunnel, or 1/4 of the way through, if you go the other way.
2. Sea Raft — Wide open seas, dotted with islands, some big and some small, with mountains, hills, valleys and more. Lake houses abound.
3. Venice — See Venice and die, right? No, that’s Paris. Well, there’s got to be something about Venice that’s worthwhile, or they wouldn’t have moved it to Las Vegas, would they have???
4. Canal Zone — Right out of a James Bond movie, this canal zone is just like the original Team Fortress Level that Claude & I built back in the day when Quake, Doom, Wolftenstein and Duke Nukem were the only games on the market. You’re a SMOGOPS operative and you get a wicked special ops boat to run about in.
5. Boatride — Exactly what it sounds like. It’s a great little stress-buster that you will enjoy for hours and hours at a time, or just chill out for a few minutes on the pleasant waterways…
6. River World I — Not for amateur riverboat pilots, this full-sized riverboat can carry up to 100 passengers. You can disembark, explore, chat, gather, circle-dance or picnic, then reboard the riverboat and continue on your way. The entire journey lasts anywhere from 1/2 hour to several hours with stops along the way.
7. River Rafting — A long journey, designed for super-chilling; in fact, as a stress-buster, I find it actually quite therapeutic. It gets you slowed down and observant, with a sense of peace, safeness and relaxation. A very powerful counter to life-drama and acting-outness.
8. Shire Raft — A fun variant on the river rafting event. You’ll note that the bridges in the Shire are made of mossy wood & stone. You will find some interesting and wonderful Shire Vistas as you travel around.
9. Rebirth — This is WarfTown® as she was meant to be experienced. You start out in the water, coming out of a Bardo Blackout. The first thing you see is the array of docks at the southeastern tip of WarfTown®.
I’m also working a bit at a time on MAYA and TESLA III — they’re going to be really hard to get through, so I’m planning to make an Easy challenge level as well, but that’s a few months away from completion, with thousands of hours already in them. It goes slowly when you put in a lot of detail and adding particle effects and such just adds more hours onto the job.
Don’t expect these to all hit at once. Grishy still has to bundle them up one at a time, and each one must be thoroughly tested before we post it for download on payloads — nobody wants to have to download a bug-fix to run an orb, so we make sure it’s PLAYER-TESTED before release, not just game-designer tested with no lag on a $45,000 game machine, as the Big Guys do. It’s no wonder their stuff is laggy and painfully punishing.
If you still haven’t tried one of my work-orbs, you owe it to yourself to download one and try it. I guarantee that, like thousands of happy users, you’ll like it and want to use the orbs again and again.
Adding to that mix a bit of SuperBeacon work or ZoneBox Inductions will help you get a better hold on your work, and give you boundless energy, like you haven’t had since you were a kid. Why? Spirit Energy is superior to, and above, the organic body. It comes from within, and makes you glow and feel good not just to yourself, but to others. That inner glow is Shakti. That is, in a nutshell, my so-called Big Secret, and if you’re able to use it, you’re completely welcome to it.
Well, now it’s time to off-load all those orbs onto Grishy’s thumb-drive, and let her get to the bundling & testing part. I tried to get into Sl again earlier, managed to stay in for a couple minutes, then blipped back out again, and it’s not even Tuesday (their rollover day). If you’re looking for me on D2 and/or TF2, it hasn’t been happening because of my wonky net connection, which goes in and out intermittently and unpredictably.
Anyhow, I’ll keep trying, and Claude’s trying to figure out how to beat the problem. I’ll be working for the remainder of the night on trading cards. Don’t forget that we have very little time to prepare for the upcoming Ishtar Workshop, which I’m conducting in a manner that will be very supportive to the Canadian Ashram Project as well as to the Prosperity Virtual Ashram, which is our International Community Contact Point.
I have ordered the Native American Spirit Flutes from Odell, as I’ve been planning for several years now; Oz is due back from Israel today, and hopefully by tomorrow we’ll be recording some Spirit Flute Virtual Sound Environments for you, as well as making backing tracks for my orbs with them.
They’re tuned to the didges — I got help from Odell on which thingies go with what, and we’ll soon see how close we came to guessing right on the possible tunings.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
This GODD® Engine Chat Room is based on Norton Street. The size-relationships are right on the money. All the objects have powerful similarity to the original items at Norton Street, plus many of the items are models made directly from the original Norton Street Relics. The round table serves as a gateway, powered by several local SuperBeacons, which are matrix-tuned to an actual SuperBeacon Generator. Chatrooms abound; there’s one in the living room, two in the kitchen (one is in the alcove), another chat area in the Master Bedroom and yet another downstairs in the Conference Room. This will be ready for download after it has been tested, so within a week for sure. This and the other 3 chat room orbs were finally completed this morning.
This Orb is also ready for prime-time; it’s an exact duplicate of Cosmo Street, and you can ask anyone who’s been there. It is uncanny and mysterious, and has the same feel as the original space. You can sit here with about 30 birds for discussions. Private small discussion area downstairs in Vic’s Student Bookstore. Naturally, the orb is loaded with CQRs, SuperBeacon, Matrix, the works.
Just to make sure I had enough to do, I finished this one as well. It’s a very exact duplicate of the space, and has a dance studio behind the compleat enchanter booth, and a theater downstairs, just like the original, where the 60s music greats came in to jam with Gemini owner Gary, an awesome amateur guitarist. Again, there are loads of CQR items and SuperBeacon, Matrix, Atlantean Crystals & More!!!
Yeah, I know; I’m a glutton for punishment. I decided to complete the fourth in the chatroom series before dashing off to breakfast — and that’d be Red House, Crestline. It’s a whalloping job, but it got done. You have several gathering areas, and a large discussion group area in the living room. You’ll note once again that there are all the CQR items loaded in and activated.
All four of these orbs will be ready in the next few days. Your help is needed!!! Download them and get into the orbs with other folks and test the chat functions and internet speeds. I think you’ll be delighted and surprised to see how transparent the medium can be when a good engine is employed.
Okay, so now I’m back to work on the ten boating orbs once again. They’re coming along well, but Dick and I are still hitting a few brick walls in the matter of updating and netplayer issues. Most of the problems are solved, but there’s much more to do yet, and I’m on the job as we speak. Hopefully, we’ll have the bugs worked out by this afternoon, but that’s what I said yesterday…and the day before…and the day before…and the…
Don’t forget that every successful venture rests on a huge heap of failures.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby