Good Friday Pussy Blog

Sweet Pea

1999 - 3/29/2013

What a strange week it has been.  Sweet Pea was his usual old self until a few days ago when I noticed he wasn't eating as much.  Then a day or two later it was obvious he wasn't eating anything.  On Wednesday Sheldon noticed he seemed weak and wobbled a bit when walking.

We agreed he probably needed to see the vet.  Sheldon made the call and brought the pet carrier out to the patio.  Sweet Pea was curled up at the fence in the back of the yard.  He seemed oddly nervous when I went to fetch him.  In fact he tried to get away from me but I carried him to the patio and poked him into the carrier.  He let out a very guttural protest -- a sound I would only hear him make when he had eaten something and was about to vomit, or when he had a live critter in his mouth.

I really didn't think for a moment that it would be the last time I'd see him.  But that's how it played out.  Sweet Pea fell to the same liver/kidney failure that claims so many other cats including at least two of our previous felines. 



Sweet Pea and his two siblings were brought to our back patio by their mother.  The mother lived across the street from us and I never knew her name.  I just referred to her as Big Thumbs.  She was a polydactyl with an extra toe on each of her front feet giving her the appearance of very large thumbs.

There was Sweet Pea, the short-haired black cat; Coal Pot (on bottom in photo) was black with longer hair, and then Sissy the tortoiseshell.  Sissy, named for the Sissy Hankshaw character in Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, also inherited the big thumbs.  Sissy was the only one of the three we kept inside the house.  Coal Pot disappeared after perhaps a year.

Sweet Pea has been a fixture in the back yard for so long I can hardly believe I won't be watching him strut across the yard as I sit at my desk working during the day.  On a positive note I won't be having to run out on a lizard rescue mission every few days this summer.  He had a nasty habit of catching lizards and bringing them to the patio in his mouth.  I'd have to grab his neck sometimes to get him to release them and often they wouldn't even have a puncture wound.  I won't miss those moments.  The lizards can finally live in peace.

I am convinced Sweet Pea, perhaps like all cats, was psychic.  He was very skittish around strangers.  A strange car pulling into the drive would raise all kinds of red flags with him in spite of the fence between the yard and the drive.  And yet, if he was sleeping, I could go out the front door of the house and walk around to the back, open the gate and walk on up to the patio where he was sleeping without him even flinching or raising his head.  Somehow he always knew it was me and not a stranger.



He would always respond in some way when I'd say his name.  Even when he was coiled up sleeping I could whisper his name and the white claws on his feet would extend along with a bit of paw curling.  He also enjoyed it when I would grab his snout and rub up his face, across his ears and all the way down his back to his tail.  One of my favorite things to do was to grab his face with my hand and shake his head vigorously while saying "Sweet Pea!  I'm going to pinch your head off!"  He actually enjoyed that.

Once in awhile we'd allow him to come in the house in the evening for a few minutes.  He'd walk around and check out everything and then was ready to go back out.  Two or three times I took him to the master bedroom where Sissy lives so he could visit with his sister.  Sissy is about ten times more skittish of just about everything.  She despises Tater Tot and Jessie Lee and prefers solitude and being left alone.  Allowing either of those cats in the bedroom would send her scurrying for a place to hide.  Strangely enough, even though she hadn't been with Sweet Pea since they were kittens, she had no problems with his presence.  I would even take Sweet Pea in there and place him on the bed with her and there would be no adverse reaction.

This is my fourth cat to cross over to whatever comes after.  Three of the four have timed it to happen around some memorable date.  Jezebel was the first and had to be put down on Memorial Day.  Samantha just expired in the house on some anonymous date that I don't specifically recall.  Tiger took care of his own expiration last year by doing it on or just before my birthday, and now Sweet Pea exits on Good Friday which made it impossible for me not to... umm...resurrect the Friday Pussy Blog.

So long, boy.  I know you loved me and the feeling was mutual.

2012 In My Rearview Mirror

I still like these even if Joe thinks they are passé.  However, my life is a bit more boring than Joe's.

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?

Probably coming to terms with the fact that I'm more Buddhist than I am anything else in terms of religions.  I've never been hellbent (pardon the expression) on religions and I seriously explored Judaism this year, but Buddhist is what I've always been, even when I didn't know it, or thought I had no religious slant.  But I'm not in your face about it.  It just is.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I've kind of given up for the most part.  It's too hard for me to adhere to one single day to make a resolution.  I need to ease into it.  I did get a picture hung today which has sort of been a resolution off and on for 20+ years. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not that I know of.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Lost a Facebook friend in April.  And I'm kind of glad we had never met because it's so much easier to deal with when you remove that personal dimension.

5. What places did you visit?

Like travel?  I didn't leave town unless you count Round Rock for an IKEA trip.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

I would like to have a job for the entire year.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

(a) Election Day because I never get what I want and this time I got a bonanza on so many different levels.

(b) The day after Election Day, while I was enjoying my blissful state, I got a job offer which I accepted.

8. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?

Probably getting about 25 books read while I was unemployed.  I got reconnected with Buddhism and Eastern philosophy which helped eradicate a lost of depression I routinely experience.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I didn't stop smoking.  I gave it the best run for the money ever, and for a few days I was down to 3 cigs a day.  Then 3-5.  This is the hardest thing to kick. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

None at all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Really happy I decided to get a Nikon D7000 camera.  That was a great gift to myself.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I have to quote Joe verbatim on this one:  Chief Justice John Roberts. I may never agree with another decision he makes in my entire life, but by casting the swing vote to uphold Obamacare he quite literally changed tens of millions of American lives for the better. Good on him.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The leader of the NRA whose name I shall not speak.  And pretty much anyone and everyone on the far right during the election year. 

14. Where did most of your money go?

Beverages.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I was really excited about reading books!  And when my stereo amplifier when on the fritz I had to hook up my mid-80s tube amp in the interim and was blown the hell away by how great vinyl records sounded.  And Elizabeth Warren beating Scott Brown.  And the marijuana vote in Colorado and Washington.  Buying a box set of every Blur LP.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?

This is always a tough one because music is pretty timeless for me.  And just because a song reminds me of 2012 doesn't necessarily mean I like the song.  But Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" caught my attention during the start of the year when I was being laid off AND feeling like shit.  So definitely that one.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) Happier or sadder?
Happier.  Definitely.
b) thinner or fatter?
About the same.  Thin with a beer gut that needs to go away.
c) richer or poorer?
Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

For some reason I can only think of things I wish I'd done less of.  Sorry!

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Oh fuck.  I didn't see this coming.  Just go back to #9.

20. How did you spend Christmas this year?

Lunch with my neighbors and their family.  It was lovely.  Then an evening at home.

21. Did you fall in love in 2012?

With more music.

22. How was work?

Considering I didn't work between 13th January and 8th November it was great!  But it's been even better now that I've started back again.  I'm getting my mojo back again.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Just whatever.  Home improvement shows and cooking shows.  (I am going to miss No Reservations.)

24. What did you do for your birthday in 2012?

Nothing much.  Read a book.  Probably went out for lunch.

25. What was the best book you read?

Mercy.  I can't begin to tell you.  I enjoyed the hell out of Alan Watts.  And a D.T. Suzuki book called "Zen and Japanese Culture."

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Blur and Gorillaz.  I totally fell in love with Gorillaz and then Damon Albarn and then started working my way back thru the Blur discography.  Got their box set on vinyl and have had a blast with it.  It takes me so many different directions and levels.  So many great influences that sometimes come through the music in abundance.  I've had whiplash on a number of occasions.

27. What did you want and get?

Lots of things.  If I want something I usually find a way to get it.  I guess the biggie was the camera.

28. What did you want and not get?

Toyed with the idea of a turntable upgrade and a newer model tube amp but that can wait.  There ain't nothing wrong with what I've got.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Didn't see one that was released this year.  Not one.

30. Did you make some new friends this year?

Surprisingly enough, yes.  Mika and Jen who are living next door to us, renting rooms from our neighbors.  We had lunch with them today!

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Being 27 again.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?

Cargo shorts with hiking boots.

33. What kept you sane?

Walking when it was warm.  Playing music when it wasn't,  and sometimes playing music when it was.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

I can't really disagree with Joe on this one either, so I quote: Guns. I could say the election or the bullshit around the fiscal cliff, but no, guns. With each gun massacre it seems the fuckhead gun apologists double down. People come out of the woodwork to explain how guns aren't the problem, that gun control can't work, that guns have nothing to do with gun massacres. FUCK guns.

Yeah, that's about it.  I was so depressed about Sandy Hook I damn nearly deleted by Facebook page, and I felt the need to unfriend a couple of people just so I wouldn't see their incessant pro-gun posts.

35. What political issue stirred you the least?

Again Joe nailed this one:  Benghazi. I wish a permanent case of herpes on each and every Republican liar who tried to turn this unfortunate event into a political scandal. They should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Disgusting people.

36. Best sports moment?

Seeing the Razorbacks fire their good coach because of some infidelity and then go on to have a horrendous losing season, getting beaten by some embarrassing teams.  There was a lesson to be learned here.


37. Who was the best new person you met?

I don't think I met any new people besides Mika and Jen.  See #30.  I don't get out much.


38. Burn any bridges?

I try not to.  Some bridges do need to be burned though.

39. Best new restaurant you went to?

Cafe Malta for Sheldon's birthday.  We just don't go to places like this often.  It wasn't fancy.  In fact it was rustic in a European way, and tucked inside a strip mall in south Austin.  But I was so taken with the place that I ordered an appetizer AND a dessert, AND coffee.  And it was divine.

40. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.

Easy.  Don't allow work to rule your life.  It's OK to do a good job and not allow it to consume you or extend into your personal life.  There's no reason to feel guilt for that.

Rejoice! We're All Gonna Die And Most Of Us Won't Be Young Or Pretty

For the past two years or so I've been undergoing some morbid grappling with mortality.  Often I am observing a family with children in a restaurant and I will begin to see the children maturing and becoming adults and eventually old and dying after their parents have long since passed on.  Some of this could be triggered by my own identification with the children.  I have vivid memories of my parents taking me to great restaurants -- particularly in New Orleans, and I wonder if anyone then was observing me with the same realization that someday I'd be a man in my fifties rather than a child of five.

Thirty years ago on December 30th my father ceased to be.  It is really difficult to imagine 30 years passing so quickly given that it simply ticked away moment by moment in a steady clip as time always does consistently and without fail.  I think of everything I have done and experienced in that time and it is mind-boggling to me.  It is truly a lifetime ago.  Sometimes I look at life as being comprised of several lifetimes.

There's the lifetime as a baby and a toddler.  I was here and alive but there's nothing much about it I remember.  There was no concern for anything nor was there a concept of time ticking away.  Then as memories started to gel into strings of events another lifetime began.  From about 4 or 5 I became more aware of my environment, learning the meaning of more words, learning how not to choke on hard candy, realizing how much I really disliked church, always looking forward to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and a tooth falling out so I would be visited by the tooth fairy.

I don't remember my first day of kindergarten nor would my developing mind have understood the point of it.   I don't recall any sense of anxiety about the new experience or being separated from my parents for a few hours a day.  It was an important first step in learning how to behave and in the development of social skills (and look how THAT turned out!) I suppose.  It was mostly just fun although I have absolutely no recollection of any other children there on a personal friendship level.  It's almost as if they were abstractions.  I was more fascinated by the mentally-challenged woman who was charged with placing out cookies for us to eat.  I remember my towel I would roll out on the floor when it was quiet time and we were to stretch out and shut the fuck up for a few minutes.  I think I enjoyed that part.  Early developmental chillaxing.

The lifetime of being schooled was definitely a kicker.  It is hard for me to fathom how 11 years from first grade to being a high school senior could seem to take so long to pass.  Initially I wasn't even looking ahead to high school graduation.  That might as well have been a century in the future.  Starting out it was just one year at a time.  Getting on the school bus in the morning, writing out ABCs and learning to count and whatever the hell else we did in first grade (for me it was drawing pictures of body parts), and then back on the school bus to come home.  Get up the next morning and repeat.

By the time I was in third or fourth grade the reality was starting to settle in that this was going to be one slow slog getting finished with it.  I can imagine having asked my mother when will I no longer have to go to school.  If she had said after the 12th grade I at least had learned to count the different between 4th and 12th and it seemed like one hell of a duration.  The older I got the longer it seemed.

Finally 9th grade rolled around and this was the home stretch:  four to go.  How in the hell four years could seem to pass so slowly is beyond my comprehension.  (Contrast this with the last four which seem to have flown by in an instant.)  High school was like a lifetime within a lifetime.  

Somewhere in that mix was a realization that I was on the verge of becoming an adult.  Thoughts of leaving home and starting a new life were forming.  Choices of college and fields of study were contemplated as well as career options.

Packing most of my treasured belongings into a car and heading off to college was probably another lifetime.  Four years to be devoted to advanced study seemed as eternal as those four years of high school.  But there was a big difference:  I was now in control of the situation.  I could take those four years and stretch them out to eight if I wanted.  And apparently I wanted.

Fields of study were embarked upon and discarded, swapped out for something else, and discarded again.  But hey, if you stay at it long enough you'll eventually get a degree in something just by default.

I was only 22 years old on December 30, 1982 when I received the phone call from a nurse at the hospital informing me that I needed to come to the hospital.  It never crossed my mind to ask why.  I knew.  This was probably the first major lesson in life I would learn.  When I walked into the hospital room there was this moment of intense clarity that only one other living person was in the room.  That was my mother.  The pile of flesh on the bed was nothing but a corpse.  There was no life in it.  And I will never forget that odd vibe in the room.  The man who had been my father was no more.  That lifeless body was not him.  I didn't know where he was but he wasn't there.

It is startling to me to reflect back on that day as if it happened a month ago and realize just how much time has passed.   I had only recently become the owner of a SONY Betamax video player/recorder.  In order to use it I had to go to a store and buy or rent media.  It would never have occurred to me to take a picture of it to share with friends because that would involve sending off the film to be developed, and then sending photos through the mail to whomever I wanted to see it.  Yeah.

I was very much aware that the future held great promise and that technology would unfold in marvelous ways.  There was already talk about these things called compact discs which would replace vinyl platters and turntables.  (And much, much later there would be talk of replacing compact discs with vinyl records and turntables, but I digress.)

The year 2000 was something I pondered a lot ever since I was a child.  It was thrilling to fantasize about that futuristic world even though I was always aware that I would turn 40 that year.  That fact was disturbing.  It meant I'd be old, and probably too old to enjoy the marvels of the time. 

There was a lot going on with me in the decade of the 80s.  Even at 22 I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, what career I would pursue, whether or not I'd ever find love, or how I was going to cope with this persistent homosexuality lurking in my core.  The following summer after my father died I packed my bags and moved to London.  I never gave a thought to my widowed mother or whether she might need me.  I was being called to my next lifetime.

Living alone on another continent with an ocean between me and my past was exactly what I needed.  I came to terms with being gay.  I scored a lot of music on vinyl and compact disc.  I bought my first truly high-fidelity music system at the age of 24 and little did I know I would still find myself thrilled with it at the age of 52.

In 1985 I was back in the US and decided to wrap up this college education thing.  I was still clueless about what I would do with my life but I at least wanted to put a degree in my pocket.  I didn't care what degree it was.  Finally, in the summer of 1987,  I took my last college course in British history and made one of the very few A grades I'd ever earned.  I was done.   In January of 1988 I was handed a diploma.  On with life, whatever that meant.

That was just a bit over six years after my father's body had been placed in the cold ground on December 31, 1982.  That seemed like a lifetime and the future was as blurry as ever.  For the first time in my life there were no guideposts for me, no benchmarks I could reach for, nor were there any job prospects; there was just me and the wide open future.  Little did I know that another lifetime was right around the corner in less than two years.

I moved to Denver for a year and then moved to San Diego in 1990 where, within a few short weeks of my arrival, I'd meet a man and fall in love.  Then I'd move to Los Angeles in search of some kind of job.  That's where I landed in advertising at the ripe old age of thirty.

This is the point where my concept of time took a bizarre turn.  I no longer seemed to have one.  I felt stable with a secure job and a comfortable relationship.  Had I suddenly "arrived?"

Promotions and pay raises came quickly and I was totally focused on my career.  There were some good upheavals along the way:  buying our first home together, getting a cat, and then within a year or so, selling the house, packing everything up and moving to Austin after buying another house. 

All that dread I had about being 40 in the year 2000 suddenly and abruptly became a reality.  It was one thing being 25 and feeling old because I was at the quarter-century mark, and it was quite another being 40.  It was horrendous for me.  And thrown into that mix was a job layoff which would become a decade of instability.  Job number 2 became job number 3, and then numbers 4, 5 and 6.  And then it was 2010...another decade.  And 50.  50.  If there's anything that can make you feel a fondness for 40 it's 50.

And then came job #7 which wasn't an event out of my control.  It was a choice I made.  I'm not sure whether getting laid off from #7 in January 2012 contributed to my current mentality or whether it's just another element in a big pot of steaming soup called life.  And I suppose that 10 months of unemployment in 2012 probably did me a world of good on one level.  It was the longest break in employment I'd ever had since entering advertising in 1997.  It gave me time to think about life.

If my father dying when I was 22 and my realization that life can leave in an instant was a watershed moment for me, then my studies of Eastern philosophy this year were another.  In all my years of life I had never once stopped to think seriously about the source of life.  Where do babies come from?  Not from a stork, of course.   Men and women have sex and if everything is in good working order, a baby happens.  A spark of life came from somewhere...God, the cosmos, maybe life is just a continuous strand and doesn't really spark or emerge suddenly.  But what I had never contemplated before is that it comes from the earth.  What you eat and drink -- and both of those are pulled from the earth in some capacity -- contribute to forming sperm and eggs, just as they are instrumental in growing your bones, muscles, skin, teeth, and hair.  Something that was once alive, maybe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, went into the formation of sperm and eggs which then formed another life, and all of it pulled from this earth.

And this earth was pulled and formed in a similar manner (and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it was considerably longer than 6,000 years ago) by whatever shit was out there drifting around the universe looking for a purpose.  Funny how that happens.

What I find so incredibly frustrating is how I have to stay focused on facts like these to keep from going totally insane about life and death and the crap in between.  I am bitterly angry (and somewhat confused) by how my life has evolved.   I'm not even sure I've been living between 1997 and now.  It just seems like a bunch of shit involving career obsession, what kind of cars to buy, or appliances, gadgets, phones, radios, TVs, pods, pads, computers, wireless mice, sofas, chairs, tables, plants, weather stations, backup drives, cameras, records, CDs, printers, batteries, books, curling stones, shiva lingams, and a fucking shitload of software.

I get frustrated sometimes just looking at people and how they have aged.  It almost seems like some cruel joke.  Sometimes I feel as if I have awakened from a long coma and I simultaneously marvel at the world and curse it. Sometimes it's not even a coma feeling.  I wake up from a nap and I'm not even sure who or where I am.  And then I hear Sheldon snoring in the other room and I'm not sure who he is either even though we have lived together for 20 years.  Is he the same person?  Am I?

 I see photos of people on Facebook -- people I went to school with, or people I've known since I was in my 20s, and I barely recognize them.  Everyone is getting older.  And the older we get the more crap will be thrown at us.  Older people you've known your entire life suddenly start dying off.  Then people your age start dying.  Even a few younger people start dying.  I don't have a clue how I got here or why this is happening.  And that bitter anger serves no purpose either.  I might as well bitch about the weather.  Same difference.

Sometimes I just want to give up.  Sometimes I want to try and recapture two decades which seem lost in a haze of work and devotion to career.  Of course, I can't recapture anything because it's gone.  What's left of it, or what's to come, depending on how you view it, is here.  This is it.  It should be beautiful and right now I harbor contempt for it.

Somewhere along the way I lost my awe of life.  I find myself increasingly disgusted by it.  I'm saddened that we can't stop all the senseless killing and take a break just long enough to come together and have a discussion about how magnificent our world could be if we could just work on our potential.

How, in a life so short, can people be so hung up on themselves, clinging to outdated beliefs, stockpiling weapons, being hell-bent against helping out anyone less fortunate, spending lavishly on shit they won't care about later, or eventually won't be alive to enjoy?

Most people act as if they have no clue how fleeting life is.  They are absorbed in power games and greed.  Are they really the ones in denial or is it just me who is fucked up?

For 2013 I need to figure some of this out and recapture the missing awe.  Because in the time it took me to get a college degree I'll be the same age my father was when he ceased aging.  I don't want to be bitter about it, and I sure as hell don't want to be looking back at 52 wishing I was here again.  That ain't happening.

I try really hard sometimes to be a good Buddhist and live in the moment and only in the moment.  I just can't sustain it for more than...a... moment.  It pisses me off knowing that I could lose track of time again and another 25 years will pass and I'll be 77, if I'm so lucky.

One of the things that grounds me is knowing that in 50 or 60 short years, everyone reading this will either be a dead and distant memory, or about to start banging on death's door.  The latter are the lucky ones who are 20 now and think they are immortal. 

Perhaps this is just a mid-life crisis.  I wouldn't know for sure because I've never had one.  If it is, why can't I be normal about it and just go buy a fucking Porsche?

OK, so who wants a cocktail?  Happy New Year!

The Return of Vacuum Tube Fidelity

Back in 1984 (!) I purchased this amp and preamp combo in a Tottenham Court Road audio shop in London. It was really a top-of-the-line deal back then and I absolutely could not afford to be buying stuff like this. (That's why I used the AMEX card!) I think the pair were around US$1,700 and I added a comparable pair of speakers which tacked on another $1,500. So it was a major purchase for me and one that I hoped would last a lifetime. (OK, being 24 years of age I really had no concept of what lifetime meant, but whatever.)

Sometime in the very early 1990s in Los Angeles, there was a rather nasty electrical storm at our apartment and I was not using a surge protector (ahhh, stupid youth!) and one of the units got a part burned out. Rather than having it repaired (which I assumed would cost a fortune) and knowing I didn't have the financial means at the time to replace it with equal quality, I opted to store it in the closet and buy something affordable which was an all-in-one SONY product for about $300. Since we were living in an apartment and I didn't feel I could blast music anyway, it didn't seem to matter.

Twelve years passed until I finally convinced myself to start building up a top-notch audio system again. I splurged on a new English-made integrated amplifier and turntable. The total cost for both was about the same as what I paid for the amp/preamp combo twenty years earlier. I had a hunch the quality wouldn't be quite the same given that fact. I also didn't feel like I could splurge on high-end speakers yet, so the only listening I did was with headphones.

Around 2006, a work colleague told me her husband had a friend who could probably repair my speakers and burned out amp. Even though I no longer needed them, he thought it would be very affordable to fix. I shipped two speakers, the amp and preamp out to California and waited a few months. The verdict was that the speakers could not be repaired but he was able to repair the other units. And it only cost around $300.

When the amp equipment arrived, I placed it back in storage. There's not even a headphone output and I still had no speakers! So the status quo carried on until around 2009 or 2010 when I FINALLY decided on a pair of high-end speakers. When they arrived I was eager to test my old 1984 vintage equipment. After getting everything set up there was no sound coming out. I thought that was odd considering the guy who repaired it told me it "sounds great." And why would he ship something back to me that really wasn't working. I convinced myself some part had jiggled loose during shipping, so I put it back in the closet. It didn't matter really. My "new" (by 2010 the amp was 7-years-old) amp sounded great after finally being wired up to speakers!

Awhile back I started hearing static in my system and sometimes one of the two channels of audio would drop out. Correcting it only requires a tap on the input selection knob on the amp but it is still rather annoying. Sometimes I have to do that 2 or 3 times each evening. I've been rather stressed because I will have to box this up and ship it somewhere to be fixed. Apparently it's a common problem as I learned from internet research. I could live for a couple of weeks with playing television audio through the tinny little speakers on the TV, but I wasn't sure I could live without music options.

This morning I decided to drag out the 1984 equipment, hook it up, and just be certain it really wasn't working. Guess what? It DOES work! Apparently when I tested it before I did something wrong. So I've spent the better part of this day hooking everything up to it and listening to various things on vinyl and CD. At one point you would have thought Elvis Costello's wife (that's Diana Krall and I am just assuming they are still married) was banging away on a piano in my living room while crooning about having her grape peeled.

Vacuum tubes, baby!!

Yeah! OK, if you want me to be brutally honest, I'm not sure there's a helluva lot of difference between this old stuff and the amp I bought in 2003. If I could do a real side-by-side comparison it's entirely possible I'd detect differences between the two such as that proverbial "warmer & richer" sound from the vacuum tube amp. But since I'd have to unplug and replug a device and unplug and replug speakers to compare, I am just not sure I'm all that bothered to know. They both sound incredible.

There are so many variables to consider.  Even proper speaker placement can make a big difference.  I repositioned my speakers slightly while testing out the old amp and that made quite an improvement in the sound!

Maybe after a couple of weeks with the old amp while the new one is being repaired I'll notice a step down once I get the repaired amp returned to me. I am just thankful I went ahead and got that old unit repaired so I won't have to be music-less for however long it takes to get the newer amp repaired.   It's going to be fun spending some quality time again with this old friend from 1984.

1984 amp and preamp.

Back view of preamp.

You may call me a geek now. And I'm sure some of you who have your music in the "cloud" and listen thru ear buds are wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

The Great Constitution of the United States of America

Some of this hasn't even taken effect. In fact it's steadily going the opposite direction. Read it. I'll be back with some thoughts.

Friday Pussy Blog: Tot Lovin'

Happy Friday & Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Tot gets some lovin'

Jessie Lee monopolizing my space

∅ None For Nought ∅

I am pleased to announce I will be hosting the first annual RadNil 2012 Conference in Austin, Texas over the weekend of 14-15 July, 2012 as a celebration of radical nothingness and an appreciation of all things zero.

Conference Objectives:

 (0) Providing a space within which to understand that while one may indeed be the loneliest number, we aim to do you one worse.

 (0a) That's about it.



I am committed to making RadNil 2012 as affordable as possible for no one. Therefore, ticket prices are set at zero and none are currently available, so don't whip out that credit card!

There will be zero panelists leading silent discussions of no consequence whatsoever. Food and beverages are deemed unnecessary and will not be provided. For an extensive PDF listing of all events* during this conference, click here.

Coincidentally, this conference does coincide with the RadFem 2012 conference in London. Some of you may be torn between one or the other. I would suggest if you are on the fence, please attend the RadFem 2012 conference because you'll be missing absolutely nothing here.  However, if you insist, and prefer to attend my RadNil 2012 conference by choice, or because you are among the ranks of those who are prohibited from attending RadFem 2012, please be advised that my conference also has attendance limitations and therefore you may have zero luck in either case.

Due to the nature of the conference, Jews will not be permitted to attend, nor will people of mixed races. Before I start getting complaints and protests for being anti-Semitic and racist (which I'm not), I would like to add that all cisgender people are excluded.  Gays, lesbians, queers, transgender males and females, protestants, Catholics, Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, Buddhists, Hindus, any and all followers of Islam, atheists and agnostics, and cyborg feminists are excluded as are musicians and other "artsy types." If you have dreadlocks, don't even think of attending.  If you are a poet with dreadlocks, you will be turned away before even parking your vehicle.   Annoying morning drive-time radio disc jockeys who are male will be castrated and then denied entrance, despite my non-violent ethos.  Children and babies are not allowed.  I also am prohibiting pets and that includes seeing eye dogs.  And that's OK because the vision-impaired are prohibited as well.

OK, I'll stop dragging this on and cut to the facts.  No one will be allowed to attend my conference. And it's not because I don't like you, or because I'm biased against you, or I don't understand you.  It would simply disrupt nothing and nothing is the whole point. 

Let me be very clear:  any attempts to divide this zero conference will be met with an absence of tolerance, and furthermore, empty wrath will be delivered upon you tenfold, if not twenty.

Don't feel slighted in any way whatsoever.  I am also #1 on the banned list from my own conference because I'd surely try to make something out of nothing.

Thank you for your support and solidarity.   Remember:  each atom in our bodies is 99.99999999% empty space.  So together we are a whole lot of zilch!

∅

*Please note the screening of the film "Less than Zero" has been cancelled due to concerns that perceived negative integers could have the potential of upstaging this event. In order to honor the integrity of the conference, there will be no replacement film. In lieu of the film, 98 minutes of silence will be observed in a floatation tank.