Knuckledragger

Martin L. Kennedy, the main man behind the Australian space rock project All India Radio has a very nice kitty.

Sam Kieth, Creator of The Maxx and Sandman, Has Died, Aged 63.

This is my personal apocalypse. I don't drink booze, I don't smoke or vape. Weed makes me paranoid and miserable (edibles make me trip balls in addition to being paranoid and miserable.) I sure as fuck don't mess with any powder or pill drugs. While I am a believer and advocate of the use of natural psychedelics for purposes of therapy and personal growth, I'd never do them recreationally. Tapatio is my one drug. Long term listeners may recall when I told the tale of driving to a Walmart Black Citadel Super Center in W.Mass to buy them out of Tapatio. I've done that two other time, but not photographed it. I did the math once and I went through ten 32oz bottles in 2 1/2 years, or about four per year. I've had dozens of other brands of hot sauces. Many are weak, some are insanely spicy (extracts are just dumb), and most taste rather bad. Tapatio isn't the hottest of the widely available brands, but it's the best balance of heat and flavor. Vulture capital is the ruiner of all things good. I fully expect Tapatio to turn into something on par with Frank's Red Hot in the next six months. I posted in the hot sauce subreddit and already people are panic buying. I'm seriously considering buying a box of four one-gallon jugs and a pump (usually sold to the restaurant market.) This is a nightmare.

There's a persistent internet rumor that Benjamin Netanyahu died on March 9th (Biggie Smalls is not happy to share the date.) The theory is that Bibi was killed or injured in an Iranian air strike. Supposedly he's missed some key cabinet meetings. Also, there's a (in my jaded opinion, extremely flimsy) theory that one of Bibi's kids was observing Shiva ...by not posting on social media for seven days. The Israeli government has released three videos of Bibi since then, and all have been "debunked" on the internet as AI generated, enhanced, manipulated, etc. In the first video, Bibi appears to have six fingers on one hand for a moment. In the second, he's in a coffee shop. In that one he actually counts to five in Hebrew on each of his hands and takes a sip of some mocha latte whatever. There are a lot of theories about the coffee video: The cafe in question is not currently open because of the attacks on Tel Aviv. The original footage was shot in 2024 (some say 2020) for a different propaganda effort. The third video is him and the huckster himself Ambassador Mike Huckabee. It's clearly a scripted bit, where ol' Huck meets Bibi in a hallway, they have a stilted and awkward conversation about Israel's assassination list, shake hands and talk about the number of fingers they have. There are a number of weird digital artifacts in the video, but it all seems pretty real to me. An AI generated video wouldn't seem stiff and forced in the same way (it'd be unreal in a completely different one.) I did go on a bit of a deep drive, which even lead me to Xitter for a bit. Wading through the legion of Nazi posts, I found some pretty funny remixes. (There may not embed correctly.) https://fxtwitter.com/abdulhyefahad/status/2034006657722982435 https://fxtwitter.com/drvijaysrinivas/status/2033988906576974124 https://fxtwitter.com/JaiNDoC_RL/status/2034032032813040007

Nvidia released some DLSS5 teaser images and are getting absolutely roasted. The Akakichi no Eleven meme, which I still don't fully understand. My personal favorite, Gen XLSS5.

Martin Stutzer is doing a live broadcast. Neptune the kitty is having a nap.

Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell dies aged 64. Wizzo was Motorhead's longest serving guitarist. While nothing tops the band's classic power trio era, the Campbell years were often very fruitful. Especially with Mikkey Dee on drums.

"The speakers ARE the room treatment."

Lens-DB.com closing down. https://lens-db.com/blog/website-closure/ I rebuilt lens-db.com from its ashes: introducing The Lens DB. https://thelensdb.com/

"I think I found a market for these old SCSI cables."

Leonard Nimoy died 11 years ago. Seen here with his '63 Buick Riviera. Bill Hicks died 32 years ago (technically yesterday). During his short but intense career, Bill languished in relative obscurity in the states but saw much greater success in the UK and Canada. This routine, taken from his Relentless special in the UK, is and will always be his greatest rant. The above is a cut down version because some evil-annoying-idiot-fucks keep copyright striking Bill's work. This rant wasn't really part of the Relentless material, but more an off-the-cuff riff that he improvised on stage and later turned into a routine. In 2004 or so I shared it with a friend who worked in marketing (web development, specifically) and she left the industry shortly thereafter. She's been a RN for 20 years at this point and couldn't be happier with her career change. I'm not saying ~3 minutes of Bill ranting was the impetus, but I strongly suspect it helped. Also shout out to Fila Brazillia for including this bit in its entirety at the end of "6ft Wasp" from their 1995 album Maim That Tune. The Brits were ahead of the curve on a great many things in the 90s and that included an appreciation for Bill Hicks and his very specific brand of excoriating comedy.

RIP Éliane Radigue, serious electronic music pioneer. She influenced the people who influenced the people I still listen to.

The Vineyard has sustained pretty extensive damage from the storm. Apparently over a quarter million Massholes are still without power. EDG getting it the worst. I suspect this is primarily because of Chappaquiddick being more or less 100% down. There's a flagpole by the Old Sculpin Gallery. Seen here way back in 2009: It blow'd over the night before last: Apparently, those are the power lines for all of Chappy. That means the entire island is in the dark. I suspect most of the homes there that are occupied all year have generators. Chappy is "hard mode" for Vineyard life. Every aspect of living here is more expensive and difficult. Circuit Avenue, the busiest place on island during the summer, is completely dark except for one shop. I dunno what dark entity the proprietor bribed. That's the Corbin-Norton house in the background. I still haven't actually exited my house. I'm tasked with digging a path to the driveway and a few other things. I'm really fortunate to be one of the few with power. This is the exact inverse of my experience where I lived on the mainland for 20+ years.

Actor Robert Carradine Dies At Age 71. Best known for Revenge of the Nerds. He took his own life. Apparently he struggled with severe bipolar disorder for decades.

Those orange circles with squares in them represent over 1000 homes without power. So far [knock on wood] we're okay. Two friends of mine (85 and 89 years old) don't have power. Apparently their propane (heat) stove works to some degree without power, but in a very reduced capacity. I have the (dumb AF) color changing light bulb in an antique lamp. For some reason, it's super sensitive to voltage drops. It starts flickering way before anything else. I've nicknamed it "the canary" and kept it on all day. It's been steady for a few hours now, but I'm keeping an eye on it. I have not left my house today (I can't) but I did take a number of photos from various windows. I'll post them later. It's crazy. Things look like northern Scandinavia around here.

For the New Englanders:

RIP Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, fatally shot on porch of his rural SoCal home.

In, ahem, "honour" of Randy Andy getting cuffed, I resurrected a meme format from the early 2000s.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon, dies at 84. I met him in 1999 or so by being at the wrong place at the right time. I worked for Amherst College in the Media Center in the late 90s. It was a lousy job that paid terribly. I never saw $10 an hour, and my boss had to keep my hours under 20 a week or the college would be forced to give me benefits. That meant I'd have to take entire weeks off but also get called in last minute because I was needed. At that time, Jesse Jackon's star had ridden pretty high and he hadn't yet been rocked by any scandals. He was giving a talk at Amherst College. The largest auditorium space they had (outside of the goddamn gymnasium, which was an echoey nightmare) was Johnson Chapel. I was tasked with getting the sound running, but I wasn't allowed to wire up the speaker with a lavalier mic. Filthy peasants like me weren't supposed to get near the important people. Joke was on them, because Jesse wanted a conventional podium mic. Long and not super interesting story short, I was late getting to one of the locations. I arrived huffing and puffing. There was extra security on campus because Jesse Jackson was a big deal but the cops were still pretty chill (this was pre-9/11 and the age of paranoia). The town police had no idea who I was of course, the College ones knew me. I told one of them "I'm here to do sound, where are they?" He said "they're in the The Octagon, doing a press conference." I jogged over there and went in the front door. The press conference was in what had been the Octagon's library. One part of the downstairs was home to "The Afro-American Department" (the sign had not changed since the 70s) but it was too small even for a press conference. The library was upstair and the steps to are spiral (octagonal) and very creaky. I knew if I went up them, even slowly, I'd make such a racket everyone would be staring at me as I entered. So I stood there and waited. Next thing I knew there was a very tall black man, standing over me with his hand out. I hurriedly shook it and "uuh nice to meet you Mr. Jackson." The entire press gaggle and all the various dignitaries followed him down. Once the scrum had cleared, I went over to Johnson Chapel and found my boss and his (full time) assistant working. He gave me the look of death. I quickly told him the above story and he was sufficiently amused that he didn't admonish me for being late. There was a group from Poland that was video taping the talk. They had one guy who spoke English. He asked me for an audio tap from our sound board. I said "Yeah, not problem. It's mic output only however." He said "I had better get our sound engineer." The engineer spoke no English, but I pointed at the output that said "mic" and he nodded. The English speaking Pole said to my boss "the universal language of sound engineers."

Robert Duvall, Oscar-Winning Acting Legend, Dies at 95.

I've mentioned Martin Sturtzer on H-C many times over the years. He is a German ambient artist who lives in Wuppertal, Germany (home to the coolest tramway in the world.) He has an impressive synth collection and the single best behaved synth kitty I have seen in my life. He is not happy. Also, Spotify sucks balls.

Putting this here, because I live under the delusion that I will some day get through the "Check out this music (fuck VEVO)" thread. As I mentioned elsewhere, a DJ I knew for over 25 years died recently. Periodically, he'd send me a link to a remix he thought I might like. I used Faecesbook's "see friendship" and found a few of them yesterday. Maneater needs no introduction. It's a summation of early 80s synth pop to a T. It's infectious, over the top and will be stuck in your head for days. It's not an easy song to remix properly and do anything original. Certainly there are a legion of remixes out there, most significantly faster than the original's ~90 BPM. Flying White Dots went in the opposite direction, stripping out most of the original and making sparing use of sparse elements while dubbing the absolute fuck out of things. I have sneaked this remix into more than a couple downtempo sets over the years. On the other end of the energy spectrum, The Reflex Stems turn Lennon's diss track against McCartney (that is as much autobiographical as it is about Paul) into a nearly 10 minute epic. In spite of its length, there isn't too much wasted space here. The Reflex wisely left enough time before John's vocals come in to make it easy to work this remix into more conventional downtempo. For me, this is a great "late into the set" track. Both remixes exemplify Matt's ear for quality. I played both of them (unmixed) over my main sound system last night as a tribute.

*snip* This should not be public.