Robert Manners

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

2025-11-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

To encourage completion of the sequel, Lord Foxbridge Goes to Ground—on which I have been working on-and-off for almost eleven years now—and generate interest in the series, I republished the original Lord Foxbridge Butts In in its second revised edition for the fire-sale price of 99¢ on Kindle (free on Kindle Unlimited). Give it a go, if you haven't already.

Rock History for July 2nd

2025-07-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

On this day in...

2022
Harry Styles was at No.1 in the UK with his third studio album Harry's House. The album was highlighted as helping to bring a £4 billion boost to UK music export revenue and the highest level of vinyl sales since 1990. Besides the chart-topper 'As It Was', three other songs from the album reached the top 10 of the US Billboard Hot 100. This made Styles the first British solo artist to achieve this, and among all British acts, he joined The Beatles who achieved the feat in 1964.

2018
Alan Longmuir from Scottish pop band Bay City Rollers died aged 70 after contracting an illness while on holiday in Mexico. The Rollers had the 1975 UK No.1 single 'Bye Bye Baby', plus 11 other UK Top 20 singles and the 1976 US No.1 single 'Saturday Night'. This is not any of those but rather the first one I liked but hadn't heard before ("Summer Love Sensation" 1974)

2015
Buddy Holly's widow, Maria Elena Holly, announced that she had entrusted the publishing rights to her late husband's influential catalogue to the artist's performance rights group, BMG. The company was now authorised to administer royalties worldwide for nearly all of Buddy Holly's recordings. ("Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" 1963)

2008
The gravestone of former Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was stolen. Cheshire Police said his memorial stone was taken from where he is buried in Macclesfield Cemetery. Officers were appealing for anyone with information on its whereabouts, detectives said the stone, had the inscription ‘Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80’ and the words ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. ("Dead Souls" 1979)

2007
Lyricist Hy Zaret, who wrote the words for the song "Unchained Melody," died at his home in Westport, Connecticut, aged 99. The song (which does not feature the word "unchained"), has been recorded over 300 times. Zaret co-wrote the song with film composer Alex North for the 1955 prison film Unchained. The Righteous Brothers' 1965 version was produced by Phil Spector. Here's an unexpected (by me anyway) cover of the classic from U2 (1998).

1988
Michael Jackson became the first artist to have five number one singles from one album when ‘Dirty Diana’ went to the top of the US charts. The other four chart-toppers from the LP ‘Bad’ were the title track, ‘I Just Can't Stop Loving You’, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘Man in the Mirror’. Here's a nice metal cover from Leo Morricone (2023).

1988
Tracy Chapman started a three-week run at No.1 on the UK album chart with her self-titled debut LP. Helped by her performance at the 'Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Tribute Concert' at Wembley Stadium, also No.1 in the US. This is my favorite unreleased song from that album ("Mountains O'Things").

1983
Rod Stewart started a three-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Baby Jane', his sixth UK No.1 and his most successful single since 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy' in 1978.

1982
Nicky Headon of The Clash was remanded on bail, charged with stealing a bus stop worth £30 from London's Fulham Road. I really wanted to play "Police & Thieves," but it didn't slap as hard as this one that I hadn't heard before ("Janie Jones" 1977).

1980
Bob Weir and Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead were arrested on suspicion of starting a riot at the San Diego Sports Arena after they tried to interfere in a drugs bust. ("Sugar Magnolia" 1970)

1971
Queen appeared at Surrey College, England. This was the group's first gig with the line-up of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon. Here's something off their debut album they might've played that night. ("My Fairy King" 1973)

1969
Working on tracks for the Abbey Road album, Paul McCartney recorded ‘Her Majesty’. Then Paul, George, and Ringo record 15 takes of ‘Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight’. John Lennon was absent, in hospital in Golspie, Scotland, following a car accident the previous day.

1969
Bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell quit The Jimi Hendrix Experience after completing the three-day Denver Pop Festival. Hendrix and drummer Mitch Mitchell would later team with bassist Billy Cox to form the short-lived Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, who played at the Woodstock Festival. Here's one I haven't heard before from their last album together, 'Electric Ladyland' ("Crosstown Traffic).
On the same date in 1962, Jimi Hendrix was honourably discharged from the 101st Airborne Paratroopers, after breaking his ankle during his 26th and final parachute jump.

1969
Thunderclap Newman started a three week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with the Pete Townshend produced track 'Something In The Air.' Featured on the soundtrack for the movie, The Magic Christian. The band featured guitarist Jimmy McCulloch who went on to work with Wings.

1966
David Bowie and The Lower Third appeared at The Lion Hotel in Warrington, England, (they were paid £30 for the gig). Also appearing was The Powerhouse which featured Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood and Paul Jones. Here's a new-to-me one from their brief career together ("Can't Help Thinking About Me" released 1972).

1966
Frank Sinatra went to No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Strangers In The Night'. The song was taken from the film A Man Could Get Killed. Here's one of my favorite bands with a kind-of-slower-than-I-like cover. (CAKE, 2007)

1956
Elvis Presley recorded 'Hound Dog' at RCA Studios, New York. Take 31 being the version they released. This was the first time The Jordanaires worked with Presley. The single sold over 10 million copies globally, became his best-selling song and topped the pop chart for 11 weeks, a record that stood for 36 years. Here's the late Shonka Dureh playing Big Mama Thornton (from whom Elvis "borrowed" the song) in Baz Luhrman\s 2022 biopic Elvis.

************
Intermission Randomonium:
"Cosmic Egg" - Wolfmother, 2009
"Don't Fuck With Joe" - Blackwter Fever, 2013
|Nowhere Fast" - Larkin Poe, 2025

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Born on this day in...

1974
Rocky Gray, drummer with American rock band Evanescence who had the 2003 UK No.1 & US No.5 single ‘Bring Me To Life’, and the 2003 UK No.1 & US No.3 album Fallen. Also a member of Living Sacrifice and Soul Embraced. ("Going Under" 2003)

1966
Dave Parsons, bassist with English group Transvision Vamp who had the 1989 UK No.3 single 'Baby I Don't Care'. He later worked with Bush who had the 1997 UK No.7 single 'Swallowed'.

1964
Roy Boulter, drummer of Liverpool-based group The Farm who had the 1990 UK No.4 single 'All Together Now'.

1961
Annie Ruddock, vocals, Amazulu, (1986 UK No.5 single 'Too Good To Be Forgotten').

1957
Mike Anger from British new wave group The Blow Monkeys who had the 1986 hit 'Digging Your Scene' and the 1987 UK No.5 single 'It Doesn't Have To Be This Way'.

1954
Pete Briquette, bass, vocals, The Boomtown Rats, (1979 UK No.1 single 'I Don't Like Mondays', plus 10 other UK Top 40 singles). ("Rat Trap" 1978)

1952
Johnny Colla, guitar, sax, from Huey Lewis and the News who had the 1985 UK No.11 & US No.1 single 'The Power Of Love'. Their third, and best-selling, album was the 1983 Sports, and they contributed to the soundtrack of the 1985 feature film Back to the Future. Here's a fun tune I don't remember hearing before but has some banging guitar work ("Couple Days Off" 1991)

1952
American pianist Gene Taylor best known for his boogie-woogie style and worked with Big Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker, was briefly part of Canned Heat, toured with The Blasters, and later with The Fabulous Thunderbirds. He died on 20 February 2021 age 68 after being found dead at his home in his bed in Austin, Texas. The cause of death is believed to have been related to the house having been without heat in the dead of winter due to the state-wide power outages caused by the 2021 Texas power crisis. (Note: I noticed while playing this set that the song I chose to celebrate the pianist has almost no audible piano in it... this is what happens when we rush). "Scratch My Back" - The Fabulous Thunderbirds 1979

1950
Duncan Mackay, keyboards, with English group Cockney Rebel who scored the 1975 UK No.1 single 'Make Me Smile, Come Up And See Me'.

1949
American keyboardist Roy Bittan, "The Professor", with Bruce Springsteen E Street Band which he joined on August 23, 1974. He has also worked with David Bowie, Jackson Browne, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Meat Loaf, Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger. Here's the E Street Band unexpectedly sans Bruce Springsteen. ("Say Goodbye to Hollywood" - Ronnie Spector, 1987)

1945
Peter Cruickshank, bass, The Groundhogs, (1971 UK No.5 album 'Split'). ("Cherry Red" from that album)

1939
American singer Paul Williams, who with The Temptations had the 1971 US No.1 & UK No.8 single 'Just My Imagination' and the re-issued 'My Girl' which was a UK No.2 hit in 1992. He died on 17 August 1973 after shooting himself. Williams was found dead in an alley in a car having just left the new house of his then-girlfriend after an argument. ("Get Ready" 1966)

1937
Dee Palmer, the keyboard player for Jethro Tull between 1969 and 1980. She played on all the Tull classics (then credited as David Palmer) including 'Thick As A Brick' and 'Aqualung.' ("Bourée" 1969)

1936

Tom Springfield, from the British pop-folk vocal trio The Springfields who had the 1962 US No. 20 single 'Silver Threads And Golden Needles', and the 1963 UK No.5 single 'Island Of Dreams'. The Springfields included singer Dusty Springfield and her brother Tom Springfield. He died on 27 July 2022, at the age of 88. ("Dear Hearts and Gentle People" 1962)

__________________________

Honourable Mentions (events for which I did not choose music)

2005
The world's biggest music stars united in concerts around the world to put pressure on political leaders ahead of the G8 summit to tackle poverty in Africa. Concerts in 10 cities, including London, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome and Moscow played to hundreds of thousands of people. A TV audience of several hundred million watched the gigs. In London Pink Floyd, The Who, Madonna, U2, Coldplay, Sting, The Scissor Sisters, Keane, and Paul McCartney performed. Philadelphia saw, Destiny's Child, Jay-Z and Bon Jovi, Canada, Bryan Adams and Neil Young headlined, Bjork headlined in Tokyo and Green Day played in Berlin.

2001
Liverpool Airport at Speke was renamed John Lennon Airport. Yoko Ono was present to unveil a new logo that included the late Beatle's famous self-portrait and the words, 'Above Us Only Sky' taken from his Imagine album.

1955
Birthday of Jerry Hall, US model, actress. She married Rolling Stone Mick Jagger in 1990. Hall started dating musician Bryan Ferry in 1975, leaving him for Mick Jagger in 1977. Jagger and Hall held a marriage ceremony on November 21, 1990, in Bali, Indonesia but the putative marriage was later declared null. The couple have four children together.

1926
Lee Allen, saxophonist, who worked with Fats Domino, Little Richard and Shirley & Lee. Allen died on 18 October 1994.

1925
American country and rockabilly singer and songwriter Marvin Rainwater, who had the 1957 US No.18 single 'Gonna Find Me A Bluebird', and the 1958 UK No.1 single 'Whole Lotta Woman.' He was known for wearing Native American-themed outfits on stage and claimed to have quarter-blood Cherokee ancestry. Rainwater died on October 18, 1994.

Informtion provided by ThisDayInMusic.com, any inaccuracies and the credit for all the research belongs to them.

Pride Pandemonium

2025-06-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

For the end of Pride Month, I wanted to play a full list of LGBTQ rockers, and as I do when I have a specific theme I do a lot of research; and as always, when I do a lot of research, I want it recognized and immortalized. In this case, I found a Reddit thread that had a lot of information on it of LGBTQ rock musicians, to which I added what I alread knew, and then appended with what I found on Google and Spotify, and then inserted some remembered afterward. And here is all the notes on the artists I used in my playlist for your enlightenment and edutainment, in the order the songs appeared (in ascending order by key).

The B-52s - Frontman Fred Schneider and multi-instrumentlist Keith Strickland are both gay; bassist/vocalist Kate Pierson is bisexual; late drummer Ricky Wilson was also gay. Here's "Funplex" from the 2008 album of the same name.

Beth Ditto (Gossip) - identifies as bisexual, she was married to a woman at one time and is now married to a trans man. "I'm Alive" 2018 single.

Beach Bunny - I wasn't able to find biographical information on the band members so will take Spotify's word for it. "Vertigo" a 2024 single.

Laura Jane Grace (Against Me!) - a young transwoman currently putting out a lot of singles, including "All Fucked Out" from 2024.

Crawlers - same as Beach Bunny, no info on the members on this English rock band from Warrington, formed in 2018, so have to take Spotify's word. Here's 2022's "Fuck Me (I Didn't Know How to Say)" Lots of fucking in this set's titles :D

Sleater-Kinney - Lead singer Coren Tucker previously identified as a lesbian, but now identifies as bisexual; vocalist/guitarist Carrie Brownstein identified as bisexual but now prefers to use queer or dyke.

Liza Anne - is gay and identifies as nonbinary. Enjoy "Cheerleader" from 2023.

St. Vincent - Stage name of Anne Clark. "When asked during a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone whether she identified as gay or straight, Clark responded: 'I don't think about those words. I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity. I don't really identify as anything. I think you can fall in love with anybody. I don't have anything to hide but I'd rather the emphasis be on music.'" She currently identifies as queer and previously dated actresses Cara Delavigne and Kristen Stewart as well as musician Carrie Brownstein (above). "Big Time Nothing" from 2024's All Born Screaming,

Remi Wolf - the American singer and songwriter from Palo Alto, CA identifies as bisexual. "Cinderella" from Big Ideas (2024) slaps.

The Last Dinner Party - I didn't see any mention of sexulity or gender nonconformity in the Wikipedia pages for the band members, so I'm just guessing Spotify has better sources of information. Here's "Nothing Matters" from 2024's Prelude to Ecstasy.

Bikini Kill - Kathleen Hanna (also in Le Tigre, the Julie Ruin) - this punk/electronic rocker identifies as bisexual. "I Like Fucking" (and who doesn't?) from 1998.

Neon Trees - lead singer and keyboardist Tyler Glenn came out as gay in a 2014 Rolling Stone article. "Animal" from Habits (2010).

Halestorm - Lead Lizzie Hale is bisexual; covering bisexual Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" in 2011 is double your plesure double your fun :).

Pansy Division - all the members are gay and all their songs are on gay topics. "That's So Gay" from 2009's album of the same name is still timely despite the dated slang.

PVRIS - Frontwoman Lynn Gunn is gay. Here is "GODDESS" from the 2023 album EVERGREEN.

Hüsker Dü - the three members are gay; frontman Bob Mould has put out some great solo work since they split up. 1984's "Something I Learned Today" is on the album Zen Arcade.

R.E.M. - Michael Stipe identifies as queer, is in a long term relationship with a man (photographer Thomas Dozol) but has had relationships with women in the past (notably Natalie Merchant). I chose a song I didn't remember hearing before, "Bad News" from In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003
released 2003.

Ezra Furman - the brilliant musician/songwriter is bisexual, and uses she/her and they/them pronouns. She came out as a transgender woman in 2021. Prior to this, she identified as genderqueer. Here is "Restless Year" from 2015's Perpetual Motion.

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs - Lead Jayne County is the first (and for a long time only) transwoman on the punk rock scene. "Max's Kansas City" was released as an EP in 1975.

Courtney Barnett - the Australian singer/songwriter/guitarist has not publicly identified as lesbian but was in a rather public relationship with fellow musician Jen Cloher. I'd not heard of Jen Cloher before but will be looking into her to add to this list. "History Eraser" is on 2013's The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas.

Placebo - singer Brian Molko is bisexual and bilingual (French and English). Here's "Special K" from Black Market Music released in 2000.

Scissor Sisters - Generally considered more pop than rock, there's a lot of overlap in style. Members Jake Shears, Babydaddy, and Del Marius are all gay; former member Ana Matronic identifies as "a human being" but has had relationships with men and women. Here the band covers Franz Ferdiinand's 'Take Me Out" on their 2004 album Mary.

Marc Almond - though best known for the inescpably pop sound of Soft Cell, Almond has had an extensive solo career as well as leading bands Marc & the Mambas and Marc Almond & the Willing Sinners, which range through pop, rock, blues, lounge, showtunes, and all sorts of genre-defying gorgeousness. Here's one such from the Marc & the Mambas 1983 album Torment & Toreros, "A Million Manias" (one of my favorites).

Panic! At the Disco - frontman (and eventually only permanent member) Brendan Urie identified as pansexual in a 2018 interview though he'd previously defined himself as straight but sexually experienced with men. I picked "Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time" from 2016's Death of a Bacherlor because it samples another favorite song, "Rock Lobster."

Green Day - a Redditor I consulted claims all three members are bisexual, but Billie Joe Armstrong is the only one who says so on his Wikipedia page; nevertheless I would like to believe they all are and engaged in tour bus throupling in their youth. ;-) Here's "One Eyed Bastard" from the 2024 album Saviors,

Queen - I guess everybody knows Freddie Mercury was gay/bisexual. I went for a bouncy but obscure ditty I only recently ~~stole from Fieger~~ discovered, "Bring Back That LeRoy Brown" from Sheer Heart Attack (1974).

David Bowie - same as above. an early adopter of coming out as bisexual in the Glam Rock era. He later regretted coming out, not because it wasn't true but because it slowed his conquest of the US market. I considered adding the rock stars with whom he was reputed to be bisexual (notably Mick Jagger) but they never identified as such so I'l leave them out of it. I went for a song I hadn't heard in a very long time, ''Absolute Beginners" from the 1986 film of the same name.

Elton John - another "everybody knows," Sir Elton came out as bisexual in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone; in 1992, he told Rolling Stone that he was "quite comfortable about being gay." He's been with his husband David Furnish for 32 years. I reached back into the mists for "Hercules" from the 1972 album Honky Château (fun fact, Elton John's middle name is Hercules, taken by deed poll that same year).

Culture Club - Boy George was never one to hide his light under a bushel, and many years down the road he admitted to an affair with bandmate Jon Moss, making the latter at least bisexual-adjacent so I guess he counts too. "Church of the Poison Mind" is perhaps my favorite track off 1983's Colour By Numbers.

Jobriath - the first openly gay rocker to get a contract with a major record label, way back in the early 70s, a founding father of Glam Rock and one of the first famous losses of the AIDS Epidemic. Here's his defiant "I'm a Man" from his 1973 self-titled album.

T. Rex - singer Marc Bolan famously stated he was gay, then said bisexual, though all his many tumultuous public relationships were with women. He didn't live long enough to provide clarity. I chose the delicious "Dandy in the Underworld" from the 1977 album of the same name.

Melissa Etheridge - the whole world's favorite cool lesbian aunt, so warm and wholesome you just want to hug her. Her music leans well into soft-rock and country but has rock and blues roots, and I was thrilled to find this tight cover of "On Broadway" on the 2023 EP Melissa Etheridge On Broadway.

Tom Robinson - British singer, bassist, radio presenter, and long-time LGBT rights activist, best known for the hit 1978 protest song "Glad to Be Gay."

Tegan and Sara - Canadians, twins, lesbians...truly a dynamic duo. I grabbed their wonderful queer love song "Boyfriend" from 2016's Love You To Death.

Faith No More - keyboardist Roddy Bottum (not a pseudonym, I was delighted to learn) came out as gay in 1993 though he had a brief relationship with Courtney Love before that. I went for the obvious with their megahit "Epic" from 1989's The Real Thing, mostly because I was running out of time to explore other options.

Judas Priest - Rob Halford publicly revealed his homosexuality on MTV in 1998. He broke down in tears saying, "It's a wonderful moment when you walk out of the closet. Now I've done that and I've freed myself. It's a great feeling for me to finally let go and make this statement..." With his leather-daddy style and unapologetic attitude he became an unofficial LGBTQ ambassador to a not very gay-friendly corner of the music world. Not a huge Judas Priest fan, myself, I selected the well-known "Living After Midnight" from 1980's British Steel because it felt cheerful.

Forgotten but not for long (I remembered these while I was playing the set at Starfall):

Super Cassette - a great lesser-known indie band from my hometown of Oakland CA (who I didn't discover until I moved to Eureka) fronted by nonbinary Max Gerlock .

Fall Out Boy - Bassist Pete Wentz identified as bisexual early in his career but it's not mentioned on his Wiki page; however, I think he's hot so I'm holding him to his word.

Noah Finnce - one of my YouTube crushes, a young bisexual trans man who puts out emo/thrasher punk pop that's a lot of fun.

YUNGBLUD - I can't believe I forgot him, he's been all over my news feeds lately, defending himself as pansexual and not just queerbaiting the public for credibility. Also he's a certified hottie.

ROCK HISTORY TONIGHT

2025-03-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

I put too much work into this set to just let it waft out into the ethers unremarked by posterity, so though it's nothing to do with anything, brace yourself...

I love subbing for Dehrynn DJing at Starfall, especially when I have sufficient time to put together something good; he often builds his sets around birthdates and anniversaries of interesting happenings in the world of music, gleaned from This Day in Music; Kaj and Dov do that too, and sometimes Fieger (along with Days of the Year), though to a much lesser extent, so I think of this format as belonging to Dehrynn; but I feel like I'm allowed and encouraged to use Dehrynn's format for Dehrynn's set, and so I run with it fast and much too far.

One of my favorite things to do, which other DJs avoid by skipping them, is to find substitutes for genres and artists and songs that I don't like and wouldn't admit to knowing, much less play in public. Covers are the easiest way, and taps into another fun format, but sometimes I have to find a song kind of related to the event that's nothing to do with the artist in the event. I skipped a lot of them anyway, but that's because I had a lot to choose from.

Fortunately every time I've done one of these Rock History Tonight sets, it's on a day particularly rich in historic incident, so that today I was spoiled for choice and ended up having a lot of 'Honorable Mentions' that I couldn't squeeze into the set. Once I assembled all the songs going chronologically (as it appeared on the website), I sorted them by key like I usually do (it reduces tonal whiplash if two wildly different songs are in the same or adjacent key), and sorted the notes to match the new order.

2001: A toy figure of Eminem was facing a ban from UK shops: Woolworth's and Hamleys were refusing to stock the dolls, and psychologists warned parents they would be inadvertently giving their children approval for bad language. Here's a cover of his "Lose Yourself" from the Oscar-winning soundtrack to 8 Mile.

2002: Randy Castillo, drummer with the Ozzy Osbourne band, died of cancer aged 51. He worked with Osbourne during the 1980s and early 1990s, and also worked with Lita Ford and Mötley Crüe. Here's the title track from Ozzy's 1983 album Bark At the Moon featuring Randy on drums.

1980: The Police became the first Western pop group to play in Bombay, India in over a decade when they played a one-off gig in the city. Though I couldn't find a setlist, here's a tune they might've played, off their 1980 album Neyatta Mondatta.

1977: Hall and Oates started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with "Rich Girl", the duo's first US No.1. Hall and Oates have sold an estimated 40 million records, making them the third-bestselling music duo of all time. Here's a nice cover from Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, my go-to heroes for covers of popular songs I hate.

1976: British blues singer and musician Duster Bennett was killed in a car crash. After performing with Memphis Slim, Bennett was driving home in a Ford Transit van in Warwickshire, England when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel. The van collided with a truck. His first album Smiling Like I'm Happy saw him playing as a one-man band, playing a bass drum with his foot and blowing a harmonica on a rack while playing a 1952 Les Paul Goldtop guitar given to him in 1968 by Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac. Here's Duster's best-selling single.

2005: 46-year old Australian drummer Paul Hester took his own life in Melbourne. He had been a member of Crowded House, Split Enz, and Largest Living Things. After leaving Crowded House in 1994 Hester appeared on many TV and radio shows in Australia. Here are a pair of hits from Crowded House and Split Enz (I couldn't find anything from Largest Living Things online).

1957: BOTD - English music journalist Paul Morley who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983 and a co-founder of the record label ZTT Records, Morley was also a member of English avant-garde synth-pop group Art of Noise who had the 1988 UK No.5 single "Kiss" with Tom Jones. Here's their brilliant cover of the Peter Gunn theme.

1917: BOTD - American rhythm-and-blues, funk, soul and blues singer Rufus Thomas who had the 1963 US No.10 single with "Walking The Dog" and a 1970 UK No.18 & US No.28 single with "Do The Funky Chicken". Thomas died on December 15th 2001 of heart failure at the age of 84.

1996: The Woman in Me, the second studio album by Shania Twain, was at No.1 on the Country chart. It went on to become her biggest-selling recording at the time of its release, selling 4 million copies by the end of the year. "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?", a song about a woman confronting her lover about his frequent infidelity, was released at the first single from the album. Here's a 2023 cover from the delightful Wanda Jackson with Linda Gail Lewis and The Brains.

1962: BOTD - Richard Coles from British pop duo The Communards who had the 1986 UK No.1 single with a cover version of the Thelma Houston hit "Don't Leave Me This Way". Coles is now a Church of England priest and frequent TV panel guest.

2006: Readers of Total Guitar magazine voted the guitar solo by Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" as the greatest guitar solo of all time. The 1971 track was voted ahead of tracks by Van Halen, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, and the Eagles. On the 20th anniversary of the original release of the song, it was announced via US radio sources that the song had logged up an estimated 2,874,000 radio plays - back to back, that would run for 44 years solid. I couldn't bring myself to play "Stairway..." however, so here's a Led Zeppelin song I do like that still showcases Jimmy Page's genius.

1968: : BOTD - James Jonas Iha, guitarist with American alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins, who had the 1995 US No.1 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, whence comes this track.

2008: The Los Angeles Times apologized for claiming rap mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs was involved in a 1994 shooting of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur. The LA Times, which published the original story on its website, initially said its claims were based on FBI records, witness accounts and other unnamed sources. The apology followed a claim that the newspaper was conned by a prisoner who doctored the documents used. Here's a song about newspapers, since I couldn't find anything from Diddy or Tupac that I wanted to play.

1985: Radio stations in South Africa banned all of Stevie Wonder's records after he dedicated the Oscar he had won the night before at The Academy Awards to Nelson Mandela. The award-winning song was "I Just Called to Say I Love You," which makes my ears bleed and has no acceptable covers, so here's my favorite Stevie Wonder song instead.

2006: English singer-songwriter and guitarist Nikki Sudden died from a heart attack at the age of 49 after performing at the Knitting Factory in New York City. He co-founded the post-punk band Swell Maps with his brother, Epic Soundtrack. Sudden collaborated with, among others, the Waterboys, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Mick Taylor, Tom Ashton of the March Violets, and members of R.E.M. and Sonic Youth. Here's the most popular Swell Maps song (according to Spotify).

1964: The British invasion continued to make its way around the world with The Beatles taking the top six positions on the Australian pop chart. This is the A-side of the #1 single in the set.

1970: Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary pleaded guilty to 'taking immoral liberties' with a 14 year old girl in Washington D.C. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three months in jail. Just days earlier, the trio had won a Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children for their album, Peter, Paul and Mommy... here is inarguably the best and most important song on that album, and perhaps the entirety of Peter, Paul and Mary's discography. Kleenex is available on request.

1948: BOTD - Steven Tyler, multi-instrumentalist frontman and lead singer of Aerosmith, known as the "Demon of Screamin'." Aerosmith scored the 1989 UK No.13 single "Love In An Elevator", their 1989 album Pump spent 53 weeks on the US charts, and the 1993 US No.1 & UK No.2 album Get A Grip, as well as the 1998 US No.1 & UK No.4 single "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing". In 2011, Tyler made his debut appearance as a judge on American Idol. Here's my favorite Aerosmith tune from their early(ish) album Toys in the Attic.

1969: Marvin Gaye was at No.1 on the UK singles chart, with "I Heard It Through The Grapevine". The song was first recorded by The Miracles and had also been a million seller in 1967 for Gladys Knight and the Pips. But here's The Slits with their rather more punk-flavored cover.

1965: Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Bill Wyman all received electric shocks from a faulty microphone on stage during a Rolling Stones rehearsal in Odense, Denmark. Bill Wyman was knocked unconscious for several minutes. I couldn't find out which song they were playing at the time but this was part of the setlist for that tour and a favorite blues classic.

2004: Jan Berry of Jan & Dean died at the age of 62, after being in poor health since his 1966 car crash. They had the 1963 US No.1 & UK No.26 single "Surf City", (cowritten by Beach Boy Brian Wilson). At the height of their fame, Jan & Dean hosted and performed in The T.A.M.I. Show, a film that also featured The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. I liked this Ramones cover of "Surf City" better than Jan & Dean's, though, so...

1948: BOTD - English musician Richard Tandy, keyboardist with Electric Light Orchestra, who had the 1979 UK No.3 & US No.4 single "Don't Bring Me Down", plus 26 other Top 40 hits. He played the harpsichord on The Move's No.1 hit "Blackberry Way". Tandy died on 1 May 2024, at the age of 76. Don't bring me down, Brrrrrruce!

2020: English singer Neil Landon died age 78. He was a singer and songwriter with the band Fat Mattress, which he co-founded with guitarist/singer Noel Redding. He later joined The Flower Pot Men, who scored a hit in 1967 with "Let's Go To San Francisco" which reached No.4 in the UK Singles Chart. Here's one each from Fat Mattress and The Flower Pot Men.

1949: BOTD - Fran Sheehan, bassist for Boston (1977 UK No.22 single "More Than A Feeling", 1986 US No.1 single "Amanda"). Boston have sold more than 75 million records worldwide, including 31 million albums in the United States, of which 17 million were from their self-titled debut album and seven million were for their second album, Don't Look Back, making them one of the world's best-selling artists. This is not one of their most popular songs, but is the best I found in my brief listen to their Greatest Hits.

1983: Duran Duran went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with "Is There Something I Should Know", their first No.1 and their eighth single release. The group were on a US promotional trip when the single dropped, and they were greeted by 5,000 screaming fans at an in-store appearance in New York City.

2016: Billy Joel's iconic hit, "Piano Man", was selected by the US Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for its 'cultural, historic, or artistic significance.' Even though the record only made it to No.25 on the Hot 100 in 1974, it had become Joel's signature song, and was ranked at No.421 in the 2004 list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. I'm kind of ambivalent about the song, I both love it and hate it, but I couldn't find a good cover (except for a Wierd Al parody), so here it is with reservations stated.

1959: BOTD - British session drummer Chris Whitten who provided drums for the hit singles "What I Am" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, "World Shut your Mouth" by Julian Cope, and "The Whole of the Moon" by The Waterboys. Whitten has also worked with Paul McCartney, Dire Straits, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, The Pretenders, Swing Out Sister, ABC, and The The. Here's my favorite of the abovementioned.

2019: British musician Ranking Roger died age 56. In January 2019 it was announced that Roger had undergone surgery for two brain tumours, and was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. He was a vocalist in the 1980s two-tone band the Beat (known in North America as the English Beat) and later General Public. Here's one from each project.

2019: A school book Sir Paul McCartney used as a teenager sold for £46,800 – nearly 10 times its estimate. The exercise book which features a doodle of a man smoking and a teacher’s critical comments sold at an auction of Beatles memorabilia in Merseyside. McCartney had used the book at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he was taught English literature by Alan "Dusty" Durband. Here's Sir Paul with Eric Clapton and a beloved Beatles classic.

Honorable Mentions

1995: Rapper producer, and record executive Eazy-E (Eric Lynn Wright) died of AIDS in Los Angeles aged 31. Formed Ruthless Records, worked with Dr. Dre and Ice Cube.

1981: BOTD - Jay Sean, British producer and songwriter who had the 2009 US No.1 single 'Down' with Lil Wayne and the critically acclaimed debut album Me Against Myself.

1971: BOTD - John Hendy from English pop boy band East 17 who had the 1994 UK No.1 single 'Stay Another Day', plus 18 top-20 singles and four top-10 albums, and were one of the UK's most popular boy bands during the early to mid-1990s.

1968: BOTD - Kenny Chesney, US country singer, songwriter, (2002 US No.1 album ‘No Shoes, No Shirt’, 2005 US No.1 album 'Be As You Are'). Married Bridget Jones and Chicago actress Renee Zellweger in May 2005.

1967: BOTD - American record producer and songwriter Rob Fusari. A child prodigy, Fusari won numerous piano competitions at Radio City Music Hall at 8 years old. He has worked with Destiny's Child, Kelly Rowland, Will Smith, Whitney Houston and Lady Gaga.

1955: BOTD - Martin Price from English electronic music group 808 State who had the 1989 UK No.10 single 'Pacific State'. They took their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

1953: BOTD - Scottish musician William Lyall, keyboards with Pilot who had the 1975 UK No.1 single 'January'. He also worked with Sheena Easton and The Bay City Rollers. Lyall died in 1989.

1950: BOTD - Teddy Pendergrass, soul singer, (1978 US No.25 single 'Close The Door', 1994 UK No.35 single 'The More I Get The More I Want'). One time member of Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. Died on 13th Jan 2010 at the age of 59 following a difficult recovery from colon cancer surgery.

1949: BOTD - Vicki Lawrence, American actress, comedian, and pop singer. In 1973, Lawrence became a one-hit wonder songstress, landing on the US chart with the No. 1 'The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia'.

1944: BOTD - Diana Ross, American singer, The Supremes (1964 UK & US No.1 single 'Baby Love' plus over 20 other US & UK Top 40 hits). Solo (1980 US No.1 single 'Upside Down, 1986 UK No.1 single 'Chain Reaction'). During the 1960s The Supremes became Motown's most successful act, and is to this day the United States' most successful vocal group. As part of the Supremes, her success made it possible for future African-American R&B and soul acts to find mainstream success.

Yeesh!

2024-11-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

The events of last week knocked me for a bigger and wider loop than I was expecting. I was already braced for the election win, but not such overwhelming numbers, and have been going through all the emotions since then.

Mostly disbelief (I mean, EVERY swing state? Sure, Jan. But all his screaming about rigged elections has silenced anyone else talking about it...the wolf that cried "wolf") but interspersed with despair (that so many of my countrymen want a world without me and my kind in it) and rage (that they have the audacity to want that world) and fear (that they're going to get that world) in alternating waves.

I had to dissociate from the feelings just to function, do my hosting and DJing and postermaking, and try to encourage my friends who are going through it too; anything beyond base, though, creativity and self-care and working for the future, was set aside.

But I feel ready to reenter reality today, the feelings have boiled down to a manageable size. I finally got a shower last night and took my testosterone injection and put on my nice PJs and got a good night's sleep. Now I'm going to rejoin my NaNoWriMo with some writing while I prepare for tonight's hosting gig, and put some garbage in some bags, and generally behave as if the world is not ending next week. Nurture some hope and whip up some fight for the future.

Hope you all are doing OK, or better!

General Update

2024-11-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated this page and made any effort to chronicle the goings-on in my life. But I've experienced a lot of changes the last few months that I thought I'd let you know about.

The biggest piece is I've switched antidepressants: after almost ten years on venlafaxine (Effexor), I have migrated over to duloxetine (Cymbalta), which I hope will alleviate my fibromyalgia symptoms. My doctor didn't understand why I hadn't been put on Cymbalta ages ago, since that's the usual antidepressant for fibromyalgia sufferers; I vaguely remember some years ago discussing Cymbalta with my doctor, but can't remember why we didn't do it... it was either my insurance wouldn't pay for it and there wasn't a generic, or it had suicidal ideation side effects and they thought it unwise to add that since I already had suicidal ideation. But my current doctor saw there are plenty of generics about, and he thought my suicidal ideation seemed under control, so he put me on it. It took a while to wean off the Effexor, though, so I'm still not fully migrated;, but though I don't feel any lessening of the fibromyalgia yet, I also don't feel more depressed than I was before, so I'll just wait and see.

I've also started hormone replacement therapy for my chronic fatigue and am self-injecting testosterone into my thigh every two weeks...which is a lot less difficult than I feared, though it takes some finagling since I can't watch the needle going in, I have to set it in place and hold it still with my other hand, then look away while I push it in; I can watch depressing the syringe, but have to close my eyes again to pull the needle out. For some reason, it hurts more when I'm looking at it, and freaks me out on top of it. But the doing it sort of blind works really well and I have no qualms about it anymore. Oh, and the testosterone is making me feel so much better, it's totally worth it. I still get tired really quickly but I don't stay tired as long and feel more motivated to push against my tiredness.

Plus, I've started using a hemp CBD supplement that has damped down my anxiety and racing thoughts to a satisfying degree. I worried about using CBD or THC because of my addiction issues, so I talked to my doctor and he didn't know of any danger to one's sobriety; if I was concerned about getting high, stick to the CBD at first, since it doesn't have the euphoric effect that THC does. And I did a lot of reading about both types and the difference between cannabis and hemp, and finally decided to try Tommy Chong's Good Vibes hemp CBD drops. They're kind of expensive for daily use but I got a really good intro deal so dove in with both feet, and am really glad I did. And though they didn't do anything for the pain, as I'd hoped, they really improved my mood and sleep without any side effects or feeling loopy.

On the nonmedical side, I've been bingeing on RuPaul's Drag Race the last few months and have absorbed all fifteen years of regular and all-star seasons, five UK seasons, four Canada seasons, and the recently completed Global All Star season; I'm starting to work my way through the Down Under seasons now, and may or may not attempt the foreign-language versions. As a result of this immersion in Drag Race, I have reignited my passion for drag and am working on plans to get back into face, if only to put some content online.

I'm thinking a YouTube channel with me putting on makeup tutorial-style, first trying to recreate my makeup from ye olde days, then copying other tutorials to learn new techniques and develop a new makeup style of my own, and maybe even graduate into performances in drag, monologues or chatty vlogs or lipsynchs in the Quarantine style. I just have to learn to film and edit YouTube/TikTok videos, perhaps get some sound and video equipment beyond a ring-light and fuzzy mike, so it's not going to happen right away. Stay tuned for developments.

And most recently, I've started NaNoWriMo again and am keeping my daily writings in a blog you can follow if you like! I've had a hard time getting into the swing of it, as I've had every year for the last I don't know how many years, only squeezing out a hundred or so words at a time instead of the 1667 I intend, but crawling along at a painful pace is better than not trying at all, so painful crawl it is. Hopefully I'll build up some momentum and catch up with my word count, but even if I don't, it feels good to make myself write again.

So until next time, don't take any wooden igloos.

Let's Go the Movies!

2024-03-10T17:37:00.000-07:00

Introductions to each of the songs on the playlist, which is made up of three categories: 1) some favorite songs from movie musicals (very few, in the end, because showtunes in excess don't go over so well at Starfall), 2) some of my favorite musical moments in non-musical movies, and 3) songs used in so many films that they've become cliches (though still great songs).

Opening up with the newest song on this list, from Wonka and my beloved Timothée; he has such a lovely voice, not much range but a beautiful tone, and this central production number shows it off to great effect.
The Blues Brothers is one of the greatest musical movies of all time, and it was hard to choose which song to feature in this list; but I think this one is the most joyfully energetic and really invests you into the narrative.
"Low Rider" is frequently used to indicate a barrio setting or a character becoming inexplicably cool, and appears in seventeen films from Cheech & Chong Up In Smoke, Gone in 60 Seconds, Fridays, and A Knight's Tale.
"Bad to the Bone" is a reliable stand-by to indicate a character doing something naughty, or rebelling, or putting on a leather jacket. 28 film appearances include Terminator 2, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and The Parent Trap.
Aretha Franklin is an immediately recognizable performer with 333 IMDB soundtrack credits, and "Respect" appears in 29 feature films including Blues Brothers 2000, Mystic Pizza, and That Darn Cat.
"Tequila" by the Champs was a #1 R&B hit when it was released in 1958, but was largely forgotten until suddenly rocketed into popular culture by one of cinema's most memorable moments in 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.
"Mr. Blue Sky" is one of my all-time favorite songs, memorably scoring the opening credits of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, but also appearing in Megamind, Role Models, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
"Walking on Sunshine" is another of my personal favorites; this song gets trotted out any time a character is shown to be in an exceptionally good mood, and features in 22 films, from Look Who's Talking to American Psycho.
"Fame" from Fame is an energetic tune scoring a very energetic scene when the High School for the Performing Arts spills out into New York City traffic for an impromptu dance party, one of the more memorable scenes in cinema history. Fun piece of trivia: the song wasn't ready when the scene was filmed, so the students are filmed dancing to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff."
One of my all-time favorite films, 1994's Interview With the Vampire, ends with a Guns-n-Roses cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" recorded for the occasion, providing one of the most exciting end credit moments in film history.
Joan Jett is another popular soundtrack artist, and "Bad Reputation" one of the most reliable songs to show transformative montages and dirty fight scenes, with eight feature films to its credit, including Kick-Ass and Shrek, plus many more featuring covers.
"Immigrant Song" is a favorite of mine, and its appearance at the opening scene of Thor: Ragnarok was so epic that it rescued the rest of the movie from ennui. It also appeared in Shool of Rock, Soldier, and Shrek the Third.
Day-O! Da-a-a-yo! Daylight come and me wan' go home! We all remember the fantastic dinner party scene in Beetlejuice even if we didn't see the movie, and it remains one of my favorite go-to videos when I need a smile.
The Dickies had a UK #7 hit in 1979 with "Banana Splits (the Tra La La Song)" covered from the theme of the classic psychedelic children's show, but it came to greater prominence on the soundtrack of Hit Girl's incredible first fight scene in 2010's Kick-Ass, one of my favorite exciting moments in a movie theater.
"All Along the Watchtower" usually indicates we're in the Vietnam era, and/or getting stoned, and has appeared in 17 feature films including Watchmen and Forrest Gump.
"Gimme Shelter" - Martin Scorcese seems unable to make a movie without this song, and it's been used in fourteen films, more than half of which are his.
"Just take those old records off the shelf" and a still-innocent-and-adorable Tom Cruise slides into frame in his underwear and a pink shirt in this most memorable moment in film; I had a boner for three days solid from seeing Risky Business when I was fifteen.
This scene in The Color Purple always has me in floods of tears, but happy tears, and it's so glorious that I can forgive it being a gospel song. Táta Vega provides Shug Avery's voice, I think the choir soloist is the actress in the movie, Maria Howell, but I can't find a credit anywhere.
"Stayin' Alive" - Written for the movie Saturday Night Fever, it has appeared in 140 films and TV shows, usually when a character is strutting with confidence; since the original gives me a headache, here's a cover from Tropical Fuck Storm.
"Cinema Italiano" - this song isn't as good outside of its movie (Nine), in which it is incredibly cool and flashy and sexy and just one of my favorite moments in a movie musical, but it's still a good song and worth sharing.
The Hunger is one of my all-time favorite films despite being not very well-written or well-directed... extreme case of style over substance, the music and art direction are exquisite and the actors and sets a joy to the eye... but this song opens the film and is so damn sexy it sets the tone for the rest of the film. Famously the song did not appear on the distributed soundtrack recording, but was published separately as a promotional 7" with the theatrical release.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off pushed a whole host of otherwise-obscure music into the zeitgeist, such as Wayne Newton's "Danke Schoen" and Mello's "Oh, Yeah"... the Beatles' early hit "Twist and Shout" scores Ferris's lipsynch performance on a parade float that unbelievably but wonderfully inspires all of downtown Chicago to dance in the streets.
"Under Pressure" - this Queen/David Bowie teamup is one of the best songs in the world, and has eighteen film credits including Atomic Blonde, The Girl Next Door, and 40 Days & 40 Nights. Queen is a popular soundtrack staple with a total of 525 IMDB credits across film, television, video games, and even podcasts.
"Kung Fu Fighting" has 30 film credits and more than sixty for TV shows, shorts, and video games; it usually heralds a comic fight scene in which kung fu may or may not be used.
"A Town Called Malice" scores one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies, 2000's Billy Elliot; the song also appears in fifteen other films including Morbius and Spiderman: Far From Home.
"This Is Me" - I've still not seen The Greatest Showman and don't really care if I ever do, but this song thrills me right down to my marrow, the perfect outsider's anthem that aligns with my own queer experience.
AC/DC are a reliable sound to indicate something super cool and very metal is going down in the film; "Back in Black" is a popular choice, appearing in thirteen films ranging from Iron Man to The Muppets.
"London Calling" turns out almost any time an establishing shot of a London location rolls into view; this song has appeared in 13 films and over 200 documentaries and TV shows.
If a strait-laced character suddenly throws off the shackles of propriety and/or gets on a motorcycle, chances are "Born to Be Wild" will be heard. It's appeared in 41 films, starting with Easy Rider and most recently with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Rusted Root's one hit "Send Me On My Way" scores a favorite scene in Matilda, but also appears in twelve other films, such as Ice Age and Twister, usually to indicate hopeful traveling.
"Over the Rainbow" - Written for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, this song appears in dozens of films, usually to set a mood of wistful hope, but often just with the film playing in the background. Since the original is a little too saccharine for this setting, here's a nice punk cover.
David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory has provided more songs to film soundtracks than any other, though no one song sets records on its own. "Changes", "Life on Mars?", and "Queen Bitch" are the most popular tracks.
The most frequently used recording artist in film soundtracks is Bob Dylan, with his songs appearing in more than 200 films, not counting covers of Dylan songs which bumps the number up even higher. "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" is the most popular but "The Times They Are A-Changing" is arguably the most iconic.
Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In the Sky" is film's most frequently used single song, appearing in fifty-three films including Apollo 13, Remember the Titans, and This is the End; my favorite was the end-credits scene in The Wolves of Kromer.
Ending the evening with the best ending song in the list is Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"...with 24 films and hundreds of TV and shorts appearances, sung by himself or more frequently Jeff Buckley, which the late songsmith thought excessive and once asked for a break from his own track. “I think it’s a good song, but too many people sing it,” he told The Guardian in 2009, agreeing with a critic for The New York Times who asked for a moratorium on “Hallelujah” in movies.

And that's my Oscar Party Playlist, thanks for coming out to play!

I'm Still Here...

2023-12-27T23:51:00.000-08:00

Good times and bum times
I've seen 'em all and, my dear
I'm still here
Plush velvet sometimes
Sometimes just pretzels and beer
But I'm here
I've run the gamut
A to Z
Three cheers and dammit
C'est la vie
I got through all of last year
And I'm here
Lord knows, at least I've been there
And I'm here!
Look who's here!
I'm still here!

Picture Post: DAFUQ?

2023-04-27T16:07:00.008-07:00

I was moving some files around from my desktop to my cloud and came across this folder entitled "Facebook Files" and I have no idea where some of these things came from. I mean, there are pictures of FB friends and things that I've no doubt looked at or had ads thrown at me about, and some things I must have liked because they're weird and wonderful, but some are just inexplicable.

But let's close with something more attuned to the aesthetic, though still in the weird and wonderful wheelhouse. Until we meet again!

I Dreamed a Dream

2022-12-29T03:44:00.046-08:00

The weirdest dream last night...

I was at home in Oakland, Grandmother was still alive, and I think I was in my thirties... I was thin, and had dark brown hair, and felt good, so was somewhere between quitting drinking and getting fat. At any rate, in the dream I discovered that I am naturally incredibly good at baseball, or rather at hitting a baseball far and fast, and I needed to become a good runner to qualify to play baseball, I think for a business league team rather than a pro team, but still I wanted to pursue it. I went to a doctor at Kaiser to discuss what I needed to do to become a good runner, having never run anywhere for very long in my life, and she gave me eight different dietary supplements to take, one of which was a gel substance in clear capsules that hydrated your body so you didn't have to carry water with you. The doctor looked like the psychiatrist I had at Kaiser, but with bigger hair, like Carol Kane, or maybe Blyth Danner.

Anyway, I got home and argued with Grandmother some about I-don't-remember-what, took all my new pills, and went out to go running. And I decided to take our dog Maggie (a lhasa apso who died in 1997) with me, and she ran alongside me through a dream version of my old neighborhood, Crocker Highlands and Piedmont, and even via some space-and-time bending all the way down Tunnel Road past the Claremont to UC Berkeley before turning back. The running felt amazing, just floating along without any effort at all, which is unusual for my dreams, which are usually spent walking or swimming against resistance for incredible distances.

On my way back up College Avenue, I stopped off to work a shift at a cafe that I apparently worked at, though I'm pretty sure at the beginning of the dream I was working in a corporate-type office that had a baseball team. This happens in my dreams a lot, where I'm in a food counter service job that I don't remember how to do. Anyway, it was sort of an amalgamation of all the cafes I'd worked in before college, and it migrated from College and Ashby where Espresso Elmwood had been to Grand Avenue where the Coffee Mill was (or still is, I don't know). It was a full shift, too, longer than I was asleep for, and had all sorts of dramas and struggles and weirdness to do with patio seating, negotiating power plays between two assistant managers, and something to do with baked goods.

I took off home after my shift was over and a lot more weird things happened on the way, getting lost a couple of times, finding myself all the way in West Oakland, running on the freeway that looked a lot like the Cypress Superstructure that collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake, and navigating through a terribly complicated dream version of Downtown Oakland to get back home. But still running effortlessly and perhaps even joyfully. What I imagine running feels like to real athletes.

I realized as I was running over the hill on Mandana (which in waking life would have winded me to even drive over) that I'd lost Maggie somewhere along the way, since I hadn't had her on a leash. But I found her by the gas station at Mandana and Lakeshore in a sort of utility enclosure, basically a plywood box built at chest height around a utility pole, where she was hanging out with a small colony of feral cats. She was happily humping away at a disinterested black and white shorthair, the way she used to do to her littermate and dam and any other small dog she met...I never understood why she did that, some kind of instinctive dominance ploy, I guess.

I pulled her out of there and started jogging up the hill toward home, Maggie wriggling like crazy to get away from me... oh, and somewhere during the course of the dream, before I lost her even, she'd changed into an entirely different kind of dog, no longer a white and caramel lhasa apso but sort of a cross between a dachshund and an Australian shepherd, with the short legs and pointed nose of the former and the brindle coat of the latter, but she was nevertheless Maggie.

Anyway, she argued with me the whole way home, wanting to get back to the black-and-white cat she was convinced she'd gotten pregnant, wanting to be there to take care of the babies and be a good father. I had to point out that A) she's a dog, B) she's a female, and C) she was neutered as a puppy, so there was no way in hell she'd impregnated that cat. It did not seem odd in the dream that she talked, any more than that she'd changed shape and color... the sort of thing that makes my dreams really bizarre.

When I got into the house, Grandmother had the kitchen all in a whirl with dishes and Tupperware everywhere, rearranging the cabinets for some reason, and annoyed with me for being gone all day. I wanted to go back out running some more, though, so I looked for my water capsules, but Grandmother had moved them in her mad reorganization and didn't know where they'd gone, so I had to go through all the piles of bowls and utensils and containers, looking for them... and that's when I woke up.

Not the weirdest dream I've ever had, but it was stuck in my head so I had to write it down. Plus I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately, wondering about the phrase I always use when wishing people good-night—"happy dreams!"—and whether or not I've ever had a happy dream, myself, or only anxiety dreams of greater or lesser degree. It has been suggested that perhaps I don't remember the happy dreams because nothing awful or bizarre happens in them to haunt my waking hours, just as you'd never remember a movie or book in which only nice things happened. I kind of like that idea except that it leaves the question of why we talk of ideal situations as "a dream come true" or quests for success "pursuing your dreams" or glibly wishing people "sweet dreams" when they go to bed.

Anyway, I hope your dreams are perfectly lovely and not at all day-hauntingly weird.

Thoughts on Ageing

2022-12-27T11:20:00.004-08:00

Or is it aging? I'm never sure about that word. Spellcheck doesn't catch on it, so I guess both are OK? (editorial note: aging is preferred in the US while ageing is preferred in the UK, and either is acceptable in Canada)

Anyway here I am on the morning of my fifty-fifth birthday and thinking about age, about the expectations we have about specific ages, how few of us Gen-Xers seem to feel the age we are, and what it means to finally qualify for senior housing and to order off the Senior Menu at Denny's.

I'm honestly kind of excited about it. It feels like a milestone, though I'm not treating it as a milestone birthday in any way...I don't intend to leave the house, much less have a party or even go out to dinner. I'll be hosting in Second Life, though I was offered the night off to celebrate, but I find I like working more than just being there, plus people tip like crazy on your birthday (or rezday, your SL avatar's birthday). So that and clicking the Love icon on all the birthday wishes on Facebook will be my birthday party.

It feels like I'm entering the sacred halls of Old on this birthday, like I've finished the Middle Age portion of the race and can relax. Of course if I relax any further than I already have, I am in danger of melting altogether and being absorbed by the carpeting, but there is nevertheless a sense of arrival having reached 55, safely under the marquee of "Golden Years."

Mostly it feels like I am now the appropriate age to be the physical and emotional wreck that I already am, like I am now allowed to settle into this curmudgeonly heap of thinning gray hair and drooping flesh that I've been occupying these last ten or more years as a birthright citizen instead of an interloper. I feel like I'm properly old instead of prematurely old, I guess.

Of course this is all based on expectations developed in early childhood, our first understanding of how the world works by observing our parents and grandparents and how they lived. I'm now in the age range that my multifarious grandparents and step-grandparents were when I was about five or six, starting school and learning about family structure and social structure in my early reading and television viewing.

All my grandparents had certain things in common because of their generation, the so-called Greatest Generation who grew up in the Depression and were young adults in WWII. Well, to be specific, both my grandfathers were older than that, born in the first decade of the 20th century, but their experiences were not dissimilar to their fifteen-years-younger wives' except they were too old to be drafted by 1940.

And then my parents and stepparents and aunts and uncles and all their cohort were first-wave Boomers, and they all had certain things in common, having grown up in the same place at the same point in history, with the same cultural references and social structures and sets of expectations to either succeed or fail at. The Boomers had a lot more choices of mainstreams to enter than their Greatest Generation parents had, but they were the same choices that all their peers had, and for the most part they aimed at having adult lives similar to their parents' adult lives, with long-term jobs and owned homes—but with a nostalgia for their golden childhoods and adolescences that the previous generation did not have.

Then my generation, Generation X as we came to be known as people started studying American culture through a lens of generational subculture, based our expectations of what adult life would be like on what our parents' lives were like when we were little, though we doubled down on the nostalgia by never letting go of our childhood obsessions and pastimes. We nevertheless based our expectations on what was modeled for us early on.

What was different, I think, is that the world changed faster and faster as we grew up, and has continued to change at increasing speed as we age, and we really don't know where we are or where we should be. Our grandparents' lifestyle that our parents more often than not emulated is simply not available anymore, and we've got generations of children and grandchildren now that we simply don't know what to do with.

That's the real mind-fucker, that our grandchildren are now coming of age and forming Gen-Z. That we've passed where our parents were when we formed our expectations of life, and are now zooming through where our grandparents were, and our models have turned out to be completely irrelevant. But they're still our base for what we think we can and should do.

These are of course sweeping generalizations, as most discussions of Generation Whichever tend to be, requiring sub-generations like Generation Jones and Gen-Y to bridge the gaps between actual population surges whose experiences will be different from those born at the beginnings of the Generations. But I find as I observe and talk with my own born-in-the-late-sixties peers that there are generalizations one can make, and the main observation is that we can't, and shouldn't, base our expectations on previous generations. But those expectations were formed in childhood, and anything formed in childhood will continue to echo through one's whole life. You can change your expectations, subvert your expectations, but you can't escape your expectations.

So that's what I'm thinking about on my fifty-fifth birthday. I'm off to write some notices and making some posters for tonight's Starfall shows, and make a nearly-naked outfit so I can party in my birthday suit, and expect to have a lot of fun. So here's a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true; and now, 'til we meet again, adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehn!

House of Grief

2022-08-02T14:25:00.001-07:00

I was reminded of the Five Stages of Grief trope earlier today in a context that had nothing to do with grief; but since I was dealing with grief at the moment, processing what would have been Grandmother's 104th birthday today, the little background buzzword hit me like a clanging bell.

Of course I can't remember what the five stages of grief are, exactly... I know anger, depression, and acceptance, but is bargaining one of them? OK, a quick Google reveals that the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in that order...but that's not what I want to talk about right now... I want to talk about why I grieve for Grandmother's house as much as I grieve for Grandmother.

I have these dreams—not really a recurring dream because the circumstances and personnel change around with each outing, like different adaptations of the same play—where I am having to move out of Grandmother's house for some reason, seldom ever the reason for which I did move out, but the dream is always full of grief and I wake up from it sad for most of the ensuing day.

In most of the house dreams, Grandmother is still alive, and in a lot of them everybody in the family who's died in my lifetime is alive and involved in the moving out somehow... Grandpa, Aunt Terry, sometimes my father. The most common reason for moving out is that Grandmother is moving into a senior living facility, sometimes I'm going with her and sometimes I'm going to a separate apartment I already have, sometimes I'm moving someplace new. Weirdly, I'm usually a lot younger in these dreams, like in my early 30s. Or at least I look like I did then, thin and relatively attractive.

A common trope in these dreams is that the whole damned family is staying in the house, especially my cousin Kellie and her vast brood, and we're trying to put on a family event, either Christmas or Grandmother's birthday, at the same time as packing up to move out. This of course makes everything more difficult, trying to pack up and throw out stuff that we need to put on a tree or make a big dinner party, with children getting in the way and Grandmother wanting to look at everything as we're packing.

The thing that makes the dreams so memorable is that it's always me doing lots of work to get the house emptied out while everyone is hindering me; when in fact it was the other way around--I mean, I don't think I actively hindered progress, but I was unable to take part in the packing and sorting in any meaningful way. I just couldn't move. I wanted to help, to at least take care of my own stuff, but I just couldn't do it. My uncle did a lot of it for me, and my friend Abby volunteered as a paid packer who sorted the things to get rid of from the things to pack up, and Caroline helped in the last push getting the things I wanted to keep packed. But for the most part, I just lay in bed like a lump...I guess that was the denial stage?

In the last years of Grandmother's life, I decided that I wouldn't keep anything from Grandmother's house when the time came, I'd maybe keep my own stuff but otherwise would make a clean start. And with a few exceptions (I kept a lot of things I'd need in the kitchen, and a few small decoratives that suddenly felt too precious to abandon) that's what I did. I got rid of or left behind everything but my clothes and books and decoratives, and didn't keep anything personal of Grandmother's except for a couple of things that I'd given her as gifts that meant a lot to me.

When I finally did get packed up and moved out, taking a room in Old Town Eureka to inhabit until the estate was settled and I'd have the money to secure permanent housing, it was an exciting adventure. The room was so small that I decided to leave my heavy wood furniture behind as well, and got some dorm-room-type furniture, all white-enameled, with navy or cobalt blue soft furnishings like pillows and blankets and towels. Living on my own for the first time in my whole life was so novel that I didn't really miss anything, didn't just sit down and grieve. I mean, I wasn't exactly dancing and frolicking and strewing flowers around me, but I wasn't as sad as I expected I'd be.

Of course, I was going home about once a month to take care of various business, and talking to Caroline on the phone daily, and my uncle and my sister at least once a week, and didn't unpack much into my new room so it felt really temporary. Suspended emotional animation, I guess. But after I bought my new home and moved into it, had all the painting and roofing and window-fixing and carpeting and furnishing done, all those feelings that had been suspended over the previous months came crashing down on me all at once and I was a wreck.

One of the things that wrecked me was wishing I'd kept certain things from Grandmother's house... like when Caroline brought fresh asparagus from the Farmer's Market, I wished like hell I still had the asparagus pot, which nobody else in the family even remembers or knew that's what it was, which was part of a set Grandmother got as a prize for top selling Tupperware in the 70s. I would be looking for something on my phone (I photographed a lot of documents and licenses to have them handy) and saw pictures I'd taken for the estate sale we had after I moved to Eureka, and would just weep over all the things I missed, stupid things that I didn't really care about before but which were now invested with a painful nostalgia. I eventually moved those all into a folder on my desktop so I wouldn't keep stumbling across them.

So in the last almost-four years (Grandmother's 100th birthday was five weeks before her death), I have been grieving for Grandmother, which I was prepared to do in some ways as I'd been working on the inevitable eventuality with my therapist for years in advance of the event; but I wasn't prepared to grieve for the house. Almost four years later, I still cry when I see pictures of the house the same as I do pictures of Grandmother.

And I know that grief doesn't work on an external timeline, everyone processes it differently, and that it takes how long it takes and no more or less. But I guess I wish that I'd known to prepare for the grief of losing the house as assiduously as I prepared for the grief of losing Grandmother. When you live in a place for a long time, it takes on its own persona, it becomes a character in your life, and when several generations of a family live in the same house for a long time, it really becomes a family member. I knew that before, but I didn't really consider it at the time when mourning Grandmother was fresh and new, and didn't take it into account when I planned what to do with various things in the house that I miss now.

So that's me today. I see it's been seven months since I last posted, which is shameful, but not the first time I've gone so long without writing here. Hope to come back sooner next time, this has been exceptionally cathartic, writing all this out. Thanks for listening to me whine.

Faith No More

2022-01-17T21:32:00.045-08:00

A few weeks ago, Facebook gave me a "memory" from some time back, something I'd posted on that date in a different year... it does this every day, sometimes several times a day, and it often offers me a bewildering glimpse of a person I've forgotten I ever was. In this case it was a list meme (remember those?) called "Five Things You May Not Know About Me" or some such; in it I state that something people might not know about me is that I believe in ghosts. Looking at this list ten years or so later, I found that I didn't know that about me...not only had I forgotten I'd ever said such a thing, but I'd forgotten I ever believed in ghosts. Needless to say, I do not believe in ghosts now. And that got me to wondering: do I believe in anything? The notion of belief itself felt unfamiliar somehow.

In another Facebook-based instance, I was messaging with an old friend from AA whom I haven't seen or talked to in well over a decade; and as one does with old AA fellows, I said I was keeping sober and practicing the principles in all of my affairs despite not going to AA meetings or interacting with the program at all. But when I thought about it later, I can't say I was practicing all of the principles, since one of the principles is reaching out to the alcoholic still suffering, sharing the gift of sobriety with those who seek it. And though I didn't go into all that with the friend in Facebook Messenger, one of the other principles, the one I do consciously practice, is rigorous self-honesty; so I spent a lot of time dissecting the statement "I am practicing the principles still"... and realized that I had also let go of all the higher-power-centric steps, too. So, with God and the Fellowship both out of the equation, which principles was I still practicing?

That's a topic for another post, but for this post I asked myself why did I give up the God parts? When exactly did I stop praying? Why? I don't remember when, though I assume it was some time after I stopped going to meetings, as I would have noticed if I'd done it when I was going to meetings, as praying is part of the meeting; but the why came quickly: I'd stopped believing in God. There was no reason for it, no watershed moment where I saw it happen, I just stopped somewhere along the line. And I wondered, like I did with the ghosts, what do I believe in? What do I even just believe?

I couldn't think of anything. Not a single article of faith anywhere in my brain. It was just things I know and things I don't know, nothing in between but guesses and opinions. And of course a lot more of the latter than the former, things that I used to think I knew but turned out to be things I just believed, and had to be added to the things I don't know instead. And that's not even addressing the things I thought I knew and discovered that I'd misremembered, which is the topic of a whole other essay.

The very concept of belief feels foreign now, like how does one just believe anything? What does that even feel like? I don't remember. I remember believing things, but I don't remember what it feels like to believe, I don't remember how to believe. It's just gone.

I guess or opine that it's the depression that's done this, stopped my ability to connect to something that once gave me comfort and purpose like it stopped me connecting to lots of things that gave me comfort and purpose. But more, I have a feeling (perhaps this is a belief, but probably just a hypothesis) that it has to do with brain chemistry.

There was a study published some years ago that claimed to have discovered a subunit of the brain that was directly responsible for the concept of God... a part that was activated during neural-imaging scans when the subject was praying, or thinking about God or the lack of God, or engaging in any kind of "spiritual" activity. I'm probably not remembering that right, or at least not exactly, but I don't have the energy to do research on it right now, I'm just going to take it as the premise for my hypothesis.

Discussions of this discovery or study took two separate interpretations: some said that it showed that there was no God, there was just a knob in your head that makes you think there's a God (or any gods); others said that this knob made us capable of perceiving an existing God in the first place; but most agreed that a big part of our evolution into a successful species is our ability to engage in abstract thought, our ability to imagine things we cannot see, which might well have developed from this segment of our brains that perceives God, and our ability to rationalize and imagine, to construct philosophy and language and art is a direct result of that perception.

If that is so, if the ability to believe in God, or anything that can't be seen or touched or smelled or heard, is centered in a part of the brain, then it is also possible to disable that part of the brain with a lack of serotonin or excess of some other chemical. Whether belief is an illusion caused by the brain or another degree of perception, I can't say, but it's suggestive that my ability to believe has waned as my depression has progressed. It may be coincidental, though, so I can't say for sure. I should do some research on this if I'm interested enough, but I'm not sure I am... I mean, will knowing the answer help me get my faith back? Or give me a sense of natural inevitability for its loss? Do I even miss my faith?

I did, when Grandmother died. I wanted to take comfort in the knowledge that she wasn't really gone, that she still existed somewhere else, reunited with loved ones who'd gone before, retaining her memories and her personality without the pain and limitations of her decaying body. I used to believe that's what happened to people when they died. I think I believed it, anyway... I mean, I had a hypothesis that the neural networks that make up our memories and personalities survive the death of the brain that created them, and that the human will would hold those networks together without a body, in the ethers perhaps, floating around on the air, as light as radio waves, retaining organization and consciousness. That when these conscious networks floated around where they'd lived, they could be perceived as ghosts, and when they floated off into the atmosphere they went "into the light," mingling with lost loved ones somewhere up there, attracted to each other by the connections formed in life.

It was just an opinion, but was based on something I simply believed, that there is an afterlife, that the individual soul continues to exist after death. Now, though, I don't quite see how that could be possible, that a neural network can exist without the flesh and blood that created them through sensory input; and if they could, they certainly couldn't interact with the rest of the world without those organs, they couldn't take in new information at all, they could not be sapient and conscious... they'd be in a permanent dream state, reliving what was already in their minds when they died, without any kind of direction or mobility.

But, though it seems unlikely, I can't say for sure that's not what happens. I have no belief in the opposite possibility as truth, either. I just don't know. And that not-knowing is far more uncomfortable than believing one way or another. They say that atheists have no beliefs, but they do: they believe very firmly that there is no God. They have made up their minds as to what is true and can think about something else.

Much stickier wicket being caught in between, unable to believe that there is or isn't a God, or an afterlife, or a purpose to existence either in general or individually. You're caught in a perpetual shrug with an eternal question-mark floating over your head. And that's just unpleasant, is all.

Well, anyway, I don't think I've drawn a conclusion from having aired and organized these thoughts in blog form, but I've written something, and I'm going to take that as a win for the day. Celebrating little victories usually improves my mood, and that's enough of a takeaway.

New Year, Same Old Me

2022-01-01T13:08:00.001-08:00

I'm avoiding working on my finances for last year and budget for the coming year; the first part only takes plugging in the rest of December's transactions and copying the page formats into a new spreadsheet, but the second part is bound to be depressing. But it's necessary, and I'm already depressed, so why not just poke the bruise and get it over with? Because there are other things I can be doing to avoid it, so here we are.

As you can imagine, I'm not terribly excited about a new year... it's pretty arbitrary, when the year starts and what date is which, since they're not timed so that things start and finish on solstices and equinoxes and moon phases, which are the only non-arbitrary constants we have... weather and seasons are different in different parts of the world, and move in too complex of patterns (so complex that we haven't figured them out yet and it still looks like capricious divine behavior). Of course, it is pretty close, the Winter Solstice was just a couple weeks ago, so it's not too farfetched to start the calendar year here.

Years of experience have taught me that it's useless to try and start good habits at the new year, it simply never works out. And the last few years have indicated that it's useless to attempt new habits after a certain age. After reaching adulthood, new practices never become habitual: it's a permanent, ongoing, repeated effort to keep achieving the behavior. At least for me, I shouldn't state that like it's a universal truth. But it's like I've had to relearn how to walk, to allow for the extra weight and the decreased flexibility of the joints; I can't just walk as a background process like I did when I was young, I have to think about it and adapt to the new physics of walking, have to deliberately take each step, aware of every movement and cognizant of each destination. It's like that with everything, if I take my mind off what I'm doing for even a second I can become disoriented as my body falls into habits learned thirty years ago and I autopilot toward things and places that no longer exist.

Well, that doesn't mean I shouldn't learn new habits, especially new healthy habits, just that it's no longer a matter of "just do it" or making resolutions on an arbitrary date. When I learn what it is a matter of, when I discover how to get myself to do things that I don't want to do, I'll let you know. Until then, I'll just do what I can to get through the day. And work on my budget, which I'm going to go do now.

Happy New Year!

So, That Didn't Pan Out...

2021-12-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

I swear, that's going to be my epitaph, if I ever have a gravestone. Which I won't because that requires planning ahead and is pretty expensive, too. But either way, NaNoWriMo was a bust again this year. I only managed a week of autoflagellatory bouts of squeezing out a couple hundred words before I gave up. A new record, I think.

I'm worried that I will never write another book—no, I am worried that I can no longer write, that it's lost completely along with other pursuits and endeavors that once defined my selfhood, like drag and AA. That maybe this isn't a matter of learning a new process, of rediscovering my muse, of just buckling down and getting on with it, but instead a matter of accepting a new normal.

But balancing that worry is the idea that maybe I'm just not telling the right story. The last few NaNo attempts have been attempts at expanding my range beyond Lord Foxbridge, and perhaps that's the problem... I could be developing further episodes with him despite not having finished the sequel that's been sitting three-quarters done but mired in self-doubt and nit-picking. In fact I had an idea for how to start the third book and have been picking at that in my mind during my morning periods of laying awake before my bladder or my belly drives me out of bed.

There's also the idea that maybe NaNoWriMo is no longer a useful tool in my arsenal, that even though it was the structured frenzy of pressure-cooked wordcount that squeezed my first two novels out of me, it just doesn't work with my new brain chemistry. And my failures are more discouraging than the memory of past NaNo successes are inspiring. Maybe I won't try again next year, I'll give it a break. Of course, I know that when I take a break from things, I tend to not pick them back up again, ever. But not necessarily. We shall just have to see what happens.

Anyway, I'm going to go waste my creative energy building country cottages in The Sims 4, my most recent obsession with the purchase of the Cottage Living expansion pack. And of course futzing around in Blade & Soul, and collecting music for my occasional Second Life DJ gigs (but not working on my store with new clothes... I spent a lot of November putting together a collection of graphic sweaters for autumn but didn't finish the textures until Thanksgiving, at which point an autumn collection was completely irrelevant), and trolling the interwebz for pictures of beautiful boys, the only hobby to have survived undimmed in all these recent years.

Speaking of, here's one I discovered yesterday at Vanity Teen, Santiago Robledo who gives very distinct Tadzio vibes (to the extent he's made it part of his Instagram name):

That Old Attitude of Gratitude

2021-11-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

So a few nights ago, Grandmother came to me in a dream—I mean, I don't believe it was her ghost come to visit, or that she communicates with me from the afterlife via dreams, but rather that my unconscious brain needed to tell me something and knew I would listen if it came from Grandmother—anyway, unlike most of my dreams of Grandmother, I woke up from this one feeling hopeful instead of sad. In the dream she reminded me that gratitude is the antidote to resentment, and that all I had to do to be happier was to focus on those things in my life for which I am grateful, instead of those things in my life that I resent. It came as a revolutionary solution, though it's something I've known for years and used to practice in my everyday thinking.

I've been practicing this since, though it's not as easy as it used to be. I don't think it's because I have so markedly fewer things to be grateful for, though certainly I've lost a lot of things I used to count when I'd count my blessings; but my brain chemistry has devolved to a point where it's hard to be grateful. Like, when I woke up from that dream I just felt grateful without having to enumerate the things, but today I'm hunting through my consciousness to find some scrap of gratitude. I have just as many things to be grateful for as I had two days ago, with the exception of however many micrograms of serotonin required for the emotion.

Either way, I'm going to keep looking for good things instead of staring at the bad things, and hope that will have some effect on my day-to-day feelings. And hope that I can parlay that little bit of a lift into motivation to do other things I know will make me feel better, like getting some exercise and bathing before I get stinky and itchy. I don't know. We'll see.

Until then, I hope your day is full of things to be grateful for, and full of gratitude for those things.

NaNoWriMo 2021 - Day 1

2021-11-01T15:27:00.002-07:00

I'm starting National Novel-Writing Month today... my twelfth year in a row participating, and hoping for my third finished project. I'm resurrecting a previous year's project (or rather a project I've resurrected twice before without result), The Lord of the Wanderwood, a supernatural/fantasy/romance outing involving an ancient fae and the last scion of the noble family to which he's been attached for centuries. I don't think I'll post my daily output here, but I will keep you updated on my progress.

I actually did a little writing so far today, exactly 300 words in three paragraphs, which struck me as a good moment to stop and crow about it for a minute. And here it is!

The fae jolted awake to the smell of chocolate—such a delicious smell, rich and complex, both earthy and delicate, sweet and savory at once with a tantalizing thread of bitterness drifting through. So different from the usual scents of the forest, the dark acid rot of oak leaves and the deep green tang of moss, the metallic ichor of cold water over stone, the sharp punch of animal spoor and the dainty song of wildflowers; it was a scent that didn't, perhaps couldn't occur in nature.
Which woke the fae further to consciousness: how was there chocolate in his forest? Chocolate can only occur in conjunction with Man, like bread and liquor and chemicals. Concentrating his senses, the fae sought the source, and scented a man underneath the scent of chocolate. Not a very strong scent, the man must be very clean or very young, or both, with none of the luxuriant musk the fae associated with man. But the faint man-scent was there, fascinating and unexpected. It had been a very long time since any men had come this close to the fae in his deep—he would have said impenetrable—fortress of oak.

It wasn't impenetrable, of course, the fae remembered his forest being penetrated: the last time he woke from dreams, when soldiers and fallen from the sky buoyed by great clouds of dark silk, seeking to take his Stones, the ancient gateposts that anchored his brugh on the border between England and Faerie. He'd killed those soldiers, bidding the roots under the forest floor to entwine and entomb them in the rich earth, and taking flight to pursue the steel machine that had dropped the soldiers, interfering with its machinery so that it crashed into the Salisbury Plain in a foul explosion of stinking petroleum and hot metal.

I'm going to go back to writing, now, and hope I can squeeze out the recommended daily 1,667 words. À bientôt!

Non-Newtonian Fluid

2021-10-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

That's how I characterized my overall being, the combination of mood and energy level and physical condition... like a room-temperature flan, limp and flabby, gelatinous but not jiggly, not in much pain but not in much of anything else, either. Just blah. Flaccid.

I guess that's OK. The sadness has passed, though it still washes through every now and then, same as the fibromyalgia pain that pops up here and there without lingering. I just don't have the mental energy to do anything, I'm just dragging myself through the motions of my daily rounds, keeping up with my Second Life social and creative commitments just because it would take more energy to let go of them, to make excuses to not do them or arrange for someone else to do them, than to just buckle up and do them.

Fake it 'til you make it, right?

The Sun'll Come Out... Whenever...

2021-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a lot better, moodwise, though the fibromyalgia is a lot worse now than it was when I was way down in the deepest root-cellar under the sub-basement of the dumps. Weird. But I'd rather be in physical pain than emotional pain, it's easier to avoid by lying still.

The chief indicator of improved mood is a desire to do something about the morass I live in. I want to take a shower, I want to take on homemaking projects like putting up shelves and unpacking boxes, I want to start a writing project, I want to start a Second Life clothing project. I am brimming with desires.

Sadly I am not brimming with the energy to bring those desires to fruition. And what energy I do have is spent pushing against the inertia or resistance (I haven't figured out yet which it is, a passive or an active force, that keeps me from moving), but I hope that's on the way. The next stage in feeling better.

Still, it's nice to want things again. I didn't like not wanting anything. When the only argument against suicide is a sense of obligation to the people who depend on me, it makes you look at your life through a very distorting lens. When you want to know what happens next, when you want things to happen, you want to see things and do things, negating the disease's urgings toward self-destruction is a lot easier and even entertaining.

I think I shall go take that shower now... I've been putting it off since Sunday, and I feel very sticky and stinky. Or maybe I'll take another run at the Desolate Tomb in Blade & Soul, I've been farming it for the outfit parts to complete a collection, and I still need the goggles. Or I might go back to bed. We'll see.

Abysmal Albatross Abyss

2021-09-27T09:58:00.002-07:00

I feel terrible. That right-on-the-verge-of-crying sadness settled in my chest and nose, random aches and pains, a feeling of heaviness in all my limbs, a sense of every activity being a waste of time and every project a pretension of overestimated abilities, the question "why even bother?" ringing in my mind's ear and my mind's eye filled with forearms sliced open to let all the ick out with the blood on an endless loop. I don't feel like I'm going to cut myself, I don't feel out of control or desperate to escape the pain, but it's immensely unpleasant nonetheless, like having shitty music on a radio you can't turn off.

And I've felt terrible for a while now... pretty much since we got settled into this house in McKinleyville, starting with a sort of an end-of-an-adventure letdown where your journey ends at the furthest point instead of back at home. Then came the Pandemic, with increased isolation and a background fear, which pressure-cooked a lot of problems between Caroline and me, resulting in a lot of emotional upheaval and plain old rage. Then the diabetes diagnoses, which was kind of enlivening at first but ultimately depressing as the new diet took away the major coping mechanism of comfort eating; then some financial problems that not only depressed me further but exacerbated my problems with Caroline to crisis point. Once we got those two things resolved, though, we still had the Pandemic isolation and then a resurgence of grief over losing Grandmother and leaving my lifelong home, which has come to a head in the last few weeks as anniversaries of her last birthday, her stroke, her death, and her funeral have come along and poisoned all of August and September for me.

Making matters worse is that I just can't drum up the afflatus to give a shit, not enough fucks to give to do anything about any of it. I don't even want to stop hurting, which has always been my last go-to of desire. I don't know if I believe deep down that I deserve to feel like this, or if I don't have the mental energy to do the things I need to do in order to feel better, or what exactly I feel or believe... just that I'm tired of fighting.

This isn't unbearable, is all. Maybe unbearable-adjacent. Or fully bearable but I'd prefer to not have to bear it. But I feel like I should be doing something about it, and feel guilty for not doing anything about it, and I worry that if I don't do something about it, it'll get a lot worse... maybe that's the thing I need to change, though, the idea that I'm supposed to fix it. Maybe I just need to accept that this is my life and settle into it.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

FAUGH!

2021-09-25T20:00:00.001-07:00

That is all.

Just faugh.

Checking In With Myself

2021-09-23T08:29:00.001-07:00

So, that "write every day no matter what" hasn't worked out so well... I'm trying to decide if I should go back and edit the post where I stated my intention, or work out a new intention (like, every week or every other day or every day with a U in it), or just address it with the usual shrug of flaccid inertia. I'm guessing the latter is going to turn out to be the winner. It usually is.

I've been having to ask myself how I feel, lately... it seems I've been depressed for so long that I've gotten used to it and the overwhelming sorrow has become an old sweater that I forget I'm wearing. Or an old hair shirt is probably more appropriate. I don't feel anything in particular on the surface, so I have to launch an interior diagnostic, how do I actually feel? Is there a squeezy feeling in my chest like my heart is imploding slowly? Check. Am I going to start crying any second but probably won't actually cry because I seldom ever do, I just feel like I am? Check. Does my blood feel itchy and seem to want to get out of my veins and go walkabout? No, not today, so that's something.

Do I have anything I want to do today, anything I'm looking forward to, anything I'm even remotely excited about? Mmmm... no check. Do I have anything I need to do today? Yes, unusually, I do: I need to go to the bank, and I need to get a birthday card for Caroline and a "you're the best" card for my uncle and get the latter into the mail... that's nice to have things to do. Do I want to do any of those things? Mmm... maybe? Better stated, do I have an aversion to doing any of those things...do I sense any resistance to doing any of those things... do I have the energy to do any of those things? Mmm, not sure. We'll see how the day develops. The birthday card is time-sensitive so I'll probably be able to make myself do it, and get the other things done while I'm up because I have to capitalize on anything that forces me out of the house because I never know when I'll be able to do it again.

So, how am I today? I'll rate myself Low Neutral, not great but not terrible, just under baseline OK. I'll probably feel better after I run my errands, as getting out of the house on any pretext always makes me feel better. One would think that would be sufficient motivation to get out of the house, but either I don't want to feel better enough, or don't believe I deserve to feel better, or don't have the strength to push back against my disease wanting me to feel worse, so getting out of the house is this massive struggle, same as taking a shower or grooming myself in any way.

Maybe I should go back to bed for a little while, have another cup of coffee and read a nice escapist suspense/romance on my phone, before undertaking this grand adventure of Going Outside. Consider whether or not I can put it off until tomorrow... no, let's not think about that.

Well, we'll have to see what we see. Until next time, goodbye and good luck and don't take any wooden igloos.

O.o

2021-09-18T23:30:00.002-07:00

Another "I can't write" day. Oh well.

The Dom is Lost in Adaptation

2021-09-17T23:52:00.001-07:00

I've been watching videos today... well, aside from when I was playing Blade & Soul, and hosting in SL, and reading The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes, I've been watching Dominic Noble's channel of brilliant book reviews and even more brilliant Lost In Adaptation videos. I really enjoy his take on book-to-movie adaptations, which is practically a genre for me as I love to collect movies of books I've read, even when they're terrible... especially when I can parse out why they're terrible... and Dominic's analyses are right up my street. Oh, and he's cute, of course ;-)

Here are some I particularly enjoyed today (the first is the beginning of a series, I'll let you follow the links embedded in the video if you want to watch the whole set):

So that's what I was doing instead of writing. See yers termorrah!

NO! Just... no.

2021-09-16T20:36:00.010-07:00

I don't feel like it today. I played Blade & Soul mostly and just don't feel like writing. Even this much is too much. I'll try again tomorrow.