Sunday, 6:07am (May 11, 2008)
Got up really early and worked on space money, mixed some My Dirty Little Secret songs (soon to myspace, also look for a new CD, and gigs!). Today is LaunchPad Swarm day, but we're not sure if lelu will be joining the music-playing part or just coming for dinner. She's moving into a new house and that kind of thing tends to take priority! Frantic hopefully tomorrow. We've been playing very well lately and I need to get some new recordings released. Whip: crack!!

Mrs. R and I had a great time at the coast. Lots of pix on Flickr. It was our 21st anniversary yesterday, and my 48th birthday last Friday. Yow.

Oh, and I posted a new RadioNOT show yesterday.

Thursday, 10pm (May 8, 2008)

Thursday, 9:30am (May 8, 2008)
Ah, taking a couple days off to celebrate our wedding anniversary and my birthday, both happening soon! Going to the coast for a couple nights. Supposedly free wi-fi at the place where we're going, so I'm taking computering gear. Speaking of which, I just acquired for nearly nothing a Dell 8000 laptop, circa 2001, in nearly new condition. It's kinda surreal to be using an old laptop that feels brand new. Windows 2000, 128 meg memory, 10 gig hard drive! But it works fine, has built-in microphone and a stereo line INPUT (rare on modern notebooks--seems like an external audio interface or addon PCMCIA card is standard these days). I bought a 30 dollar wireless card and I'm in bizniss. Somebody asked me "you got ANOTHER computer, what are you going to do with it?" Well believe it or not, I keep my computers fairly busy, cyborg that I seem to be.

Tuesday, 6:53am (May 6, 2008)

Pirate Radio from Eugene, at The Wandering Goat last night. Awesome punk rock. I also liked The Martyr Index and the band Saxon and a singer named Sam (not SootheSayers Sam) were in... damn can't remember, but they were great, too.

Sunday, 1:35pm (May 4, 2008)
A nice relaxing Sunday, after a nice relaxing Saturday. Ahh. Here's Nigel relaxing about an hour ago in the Random back yard:

Mrs. Random bought a new Adirondak chair today for the way-back-yard area where we used to have a chair made out of branches that eventually fell apart. This one is super cool and should last a few years. I helped put it together, so I feel vaguely productive today. Here it is in its new home:

I spent a large part of Saturday working on my newly transformed RadioNOT. Check it out. I've installed a Local Shelf of Eugene/PDX and other regional bands. It's been really fun exploring the MySpaces of so many bands I've not been keeping up with lately. A LOT is going on. I'm especially happy to see so many young bands out there. Parents who rock are producing kids who rock, and of course parents who DON'T rock probably produce even MORE kids who rock, since rock and roll does still carry a whiff of rebellion in some strata.

One more note: Fierce Mary has appeared on MySpace!

Friday, 6:29am (May 2, 2008)
I just posted another radio show over at RadioNOT. Click on over to read the playlist and enjoy the sounds.

Thursday, 5:15am (May 1, 2008)
Happy May Day! Yesterday morning I was thinking about May'68. Forty years, ya know. Then I saw PH's blog mentioned it. I wonder what kinds of recognitions/etc the anniversary month of those amazing days will bring.

Tuesday, 10pm (April 29, 2008)
Two days in a row. New Mr. Random internet radio show at radionot.wordpress.com. Go there to listen (or listen below on the huge gray thing).

RadioNOT for 29 April 2008 (80 minutes):

Honey Vizer - Thistle
Velvet Trap - How I Want You
Ms. Led - Have It All
Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
The Underlings - Shake
The Decliners - Nothing Changes
The Epoxies - My New World
Mix from 4-13-04 Armadillo Radio Show (~15minutes)
Alpha Dahlia - Day In The Life (live)
American Relay - Curtain Call
Honey Vizer - Wish We Could Go To The Moon
KISS - Love Theme From KISS
Dan Jones & The Squids - What If The Whole Wide World
Mr. Bungle - Backstrokin’
Mr. Bungle - Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz
The Valiant Arms - Angeline
Swallows - Language Is Restless
Queen - Staying Power

Monday, noon (April 28, 2008)
I just posted a new RadioNOT show. My intention is to start making 80-minute shows on a regular basis (weekly or more often if possible), and post playlists and other information along with them. Listen to the show either on the RadioNOT blog or at this archive.org page. OR listen on the ugly embedded player at the end of this post. And now, to get you in the mood, here's today's show playlist:

RadioNOT, 28 April 2008, 80 minutes:

The Violent Femmes - I Danced
The B-52s - Deviant Ingredient
Yeltsin - Meditations
The Ovulators - Troubador From Another Time
Madonna - Give It 2 Me
Husker Du - It’s Not Funny Anymore
The Breeders - Walk It Off
Mudhoney - Judgement, Rage, Retribution and Thyme
The Cure - Meat Hook
Godspeed You Black Emperor - East Hastings
Rare Bird - Beautiful Scarlet
Toy Dolls - Telly Addict
Cock Sparrer - Chip On My Shoulder
Fastbacks - Swallow My Pride
Quincy - Can’t Live In A Dream
The Sounds - Rock n’ Roll
Negativland - Time Zones
The Ovulators - Movie

Sunday, 10:43am (April 27, 2008)

THE OVULATORS "Troubador From Another Time"

Saturday, 7:21am (April 26, 2008)
The Me-Internet connection has slowed down, at least in the blogging sector, obvi. We're helping friends move today. I love Toy Dolls. Sunglasses!

Monday, 3:35pm (April 21, 2008)
I listened to the new Madonna album AND the new Breeders album today. I dig 'em both.

Sunday, 10:16am (April 20, 2008)
Happy 420, stoners. Actually I haven't heard of ANY 420 parties this year. Is that a fading tradition or am I just safely out of the loop nowadays?

Mrs. R & I were planning to drive to Cottage Grove today and hang out with friends who were going to build fencing at their new place down there, getting it ready for moving their animals and everything else from their old place near King Estate. But since it SNOWED, they are cancelling the fence building and we are cancelling our visit to CG. Which means we get to spend a day at home puttering and hanging out with each other, which seems very lovely indeed.

Last night we hosted My Dirty Little Secret for a fabulous tapas dinner made by my most awesomest incredible wife. And I'm not gonna keep it a secret: it was a great time and I love my bandmates and I'm so happy that we could all get together at Chez Random for such a cool dinner party.

I mentioned the snow, but srsly... Snow in late April?? Mrs. Random already busted out the hammock last week. A first for us: snow-covered hammock.

Saturday, 9:06am (April 19, 2008)
I went to Wandering Goat last night for Alpha Dahlia's performance. Man! They have really taken it to another level. They have a magic blend of Detroit and Psychedelia. I've kind of gotten away from listening to bands that do the extended jams, but Alpha Dahlia makes a lovely art of long intertwining instrumental passages within many of their songs. Sassy, Mickey, Joe, Shaun... all of them have gotten better and they're all looking HOTTER. Go see Alpha Dahlia next time you get a chance. I wasn't gonna dance & get all sweaty at teh coffee shop, but was goaded into it by a certain party. Okay! We got up and danced, and it was a good time. Then I noticed it was just me dancing; well whatever. After the song, I look around and half the crowd had jetted, INCLUDING the party who got me dancing. Great! Sneak away while I'm dancing and don't say goodbye, sistahs! Waaaambulance please. Weird. Maybe it's me. Socializing out at venues has been not as much my thing lately. I love the bands and dancing, but I seem to be having difficulties with the socializing dimension. Is it just me? Or are things weird in general? I probably just need to lighten up AND toughen up and focus on what I need and what I DON'T need. I less and less need superficial relationships that feel tired and strained. I more and more need deeper relationships that feel mutually beneficial and exciting, and that feed into deep passions and life energies. There you go, dat's my Caturday morning blog entry, FWIW.

Monday, 8:45pm (April 14, 2008)
I spent a large percentage of teh past three days archiveing soundz to DVDs, something like 50 or 60 gigs at least I reckon. Now I have about 80 gigs free on the external HD and about 19 free on this laptop. Such luxiourousness! Spaceous, spatial, spread out memory for megabytes and megabytes as far as you can see. Well, not if you're storing hi-quality video. But I'm not. Pretty much audio and the little avi vids I get off my Canon Elph. What eats up space are the 8-track sessions from band practices. 3-5 gigs a pop for LP & MDLS. Don't you just love geek talk.

Sunday, 1:44am (April 13, 2008)
Back from Mac's at the Vet's Club, Ovulators 2 nice lengthy sets. I used three shirts, but at least I was prepared. Rode my bike over, delicious weather. The Ovulators were not as "tight" as I've seen them before, probably a year ago right after Hedwig was the peak of that, for what it's worth. But I fell in love with The Ovulators way before they were "tight"... that's not why I love their shows. I love their shows for their sheer rock energy and the magick vibes they put out in strong doses. Tonight was special, and it was so good to see so many old Ovs fans in attendance and dancing. The theme was Enchanted Forest, and they were so adorable. Tina was a silvery woodland Elf with elf-ears and cute leaf shoes and a dark green cape. Stardust was a dashing Unicorn in a white suit, white shoes blonde tail,... tres chic. Dori had a fabulous dragon costume, with a headpiece and tail...WOW.. where.. how ,what, where'd she get THAT? And Kayla rocked my world on the drums with a forest green shirt and jeans. Kayla's awesome.

I feel so good after that show. SIGH.

I did get some pix n vids, but the light was so... enchanting(ly low) that I am not sure how they turned out. But you'll be able to see them on flickr/etc soon. I'm not going to upload them now. I'm too inebrietaed. ted. You know what i mean.

Made a couple of semi-major space money deliveries right there under everybodies' noses. That was fun :)

Saturday, 8:23am (April 12, 2008)
Tina wants me to blog more on this blog. Okay! I know the Tumblr blog is a bit too much for some of y'all. But I really like it, and I'm going to keep tumbling. However, the feed widget I had up at the top of this blog was UGLY in my opinion. So that's gone. You'll have to visit the Tumblr to see it now. Fast blogging there, slow blogging here, and philosophical blogging at my Wordpress blog. Space Money blog link is now incorporated into the main blog list lower in the sidebar. Nonsense and secret blogs still exist, but I've removed the links here because I think I wanna transform those blogs into something else. Letting them lie fallow for now.

Friday, 2:25am (April 11, 2008)
I heard the word that YELTSIN IS OPENING AT LUCKEY'S TONIGHT.

* * *

3:05am--I'm up early, not up late. Real early. Got to bed at 9 and I think it was around 2 that Daphne cried from the living room, like she does a couple times a night, and if I hear her, I go pet her and sometimes carry her to bed while she purrs, and then she goes back to the living room within like 3 minutes. Anyway, that happened around 2, and so I got up because I didn't feel like trying to get back to sleep. Brain already pulsating too consciously. So I'm making space money and hanging out on the internet.

Obviously I hang out on the internet a LOT. A man with too many blogs perhaps. Different ways of expressing, different cyberperformance experiments. Some resonate, some not so much. I just thought of a word. Scatterfocus. Aw dang, already a band name, a d&d spell, etc. But I thought of it because I was just analyzing myself for a second. I'm kind of a scatterfocused being. My focuses are scattered. But my scatterings are focused.

Thursday, 8:09pm (April 10, 2008)
OVULATORS ON GIRLS ROOM TONIGHT
That’s right. Stardust and Tina Gnosis will be appearing on KWVA’s Girl’s Room radio show tonight between 10 and midnight. They’ll be plugging The Ovulators’ show at The Vet’s Club on Saturday night.

Wednesday, 5:34am (April 9, 2008)

Wednesday, 7:19pm (April 2, 2008)
Sorry bandmates, I've been nommed by the internet and haven't gotten any recordings mixed. Google stuff, rss feeds, tumblr. The tumblelog and its feed display above are evidence of higher frequency internet interaction than any of my regular "blogging" activities. Sort of like slow TV, fast blogging, a news feed with random non sequiturs. Also, assembling on Google Reader subscriptions to most of my sidebar on this blog, plus others, that's been interesting: I don't have to go to your blog anymore. If you have an rss feed, that is. If you don't then I have ChangeDetection.com send me an email when you've updated your blog, and then I visit. We non-rss blogs are a rarity. Tina's blog, Sleeve's blog and this Blog of Randomness are the only ones I can think of right now that I know of. Ooops, gotta go to secret band practice! Shhhh!

Sunday, 7:58am (March 30, 2008)
Tumblr is down. Well, it's a good thing I can blog here! We'll see about this tumblr thing. I'm pretty into it, but if tumblr.com can't keep their servers up reliably, eventually somebody else will do an even better job. What I (and a lot of other ppl) would like to see is WordPress and Blogger both incorporating tumblelog features into their systems. I'd like to be able to select some text on a website, press a "share with Wordpress" button on my toolbar, and have a pop up appear with that text already in a quote box and the website in the source box and the opportunity for me to add something, and a button to push to instantly have that appear on my WordPress (or Blogger) blog. Or the same example but with video, photo, link... this "bookmarklet" app doesn't need to be just a tumblelog feature. I totally want a hybrid tumblelog-blog. The quick'n'dirty posting style of a tumblelog plus nice archives, extra pages, and comment system of a blog. WAIT... tumblr is back up nau!

Saturday, 5:00pm (March 29, 2008)
Swirling design and function changes around here. Not sure exactly what's going to happen despite the plans outlined in previous post. Am still mainly blogging at my tumblelog. See above for link and widget. I got rid of left sidebar and moved right sidebar to the left side. Changed and shrank main font, limited width, and a couple other little things. I like it so far. Not sure about the portal vs. blog thing. Form will probably follow function or something like that. I do still ilke the idea of blogging certain types of things here. We'll see.

Thursday, 6:19pm (March 27, 2008)
Ok peeps. I don't know how much longer I'm going to want to blog HERE. Been thinking about this for awhile, and now that I see the kinds of things that are appearing for blogging, tumbling, microblogging, twittering etc, I'm about ready to turn this page into a Portal of Randomness, but it won't be my "blog." I'd like to have it contain my local links (blogs, bands, etc), announcements (my gigs, my bands gigs, etc), and rss feeds, headline tickers, or whatever, for my other sites. So there's the announcement. I don't think this will impact negatively on anybody really. If you come here mainly for sidebar links, then they'll still be here. You can visit my other websites, and probably even see content from them right here, or at least new headlines, if I can figure those bits out. Meanwhile...if you want to keep up with my new frantic style speed blogging exploits, you'll want to become a regular reader of mrrandom.tumblr.com.

Wednesday, 4:46pm (March 26, 2008)
I just started another blog-like net-entity, a tumblelog they call it, at mrrandom.tumblr.com. But darnit, tumblr.com's been down for a couple hours now, and I was all set to tumbl away on my new tumblelog. Maybe it'll come back soon.

6:01pm--I hate it when I sign up for something all excited, and then the service goes down. Searching around on google for "tumblr is down" or "looks like tumblr is down" I see some clusters around March 13, March 4, an official apology from the tumblr creator on Jan. 21, more talk in late November, last June, etc. So I don't know. It seems like a really cool thing, extremely easy posting of links and video and photos and audio, etc. Kind of harkens back to the old link log concept from the early days of the web. But better.

I find myself casting around for different web vehicles, identity vessels? Places to serve up, point to, pontificate from, and such. This here Blog of Randomness at www.efn.org/~fletk is my original "home page" and will likely stay that way. Home base, you know. But it certainly is not the ideal platform for publishing web content. It's a bit too labor intensive. And it's got a tilde in its url for crine outloud. But I feel ensconced and recognized here.

I'm all emotional and shaky off and on the past two days. Shite goin down @werk bigtime. tumblr was gonna be my big distraction today after bringing Daphne back from the vet (check up). But hey I've got dinner and My Dirty Little Secret band practice coming up this evening. No more complaints from this baby today!

10:36pm--MDLS had a very satisfying practice tonight, and we ate oysters and chocolate. Mmmmmm, perfect food for My Dirty Little Secret. Shhhh!

When I got back home, tumblr was back online. So hopefully they'll get more and more stable because I really like this service. Check out my tumblelog: mrrandom.tumblr.com. And if you make a tumblr yourself, let me know! This really looks fun. You don't even have to write, just post links to the cool shit you've been finding on youtube or wherever, you know? It's s'posed to be quick and dirty, but with a certain style, and above all no-muss-no-fuss.

Sunday, 8:58am (March 23, 2008)
Happy Easter, peeps. Happy 50th bday to dear friend P. I've been feeling a tad bit antisocial, at least in the late night hours. I'm totally fine and have fun with w/band practices and collaborative projects, but not partying at bars or parties. I have been busy with computer fun, making and uploading three new RadioNOT segments over the last 24 hours. It's really nice to do a "radio show" that's not tied to hours or regulations. Webcasting is limiting of course, because ppl can't listen realtime on their radios at work, in the car, et cet. But then again, lotsa ppl now have mp3 players and computers and can easily download podcasts like RadioNOT into their players and listen where/whenever. I do invite you to listen to RadioNOT. It's often mostly mix/collage stuff, but I've been doing some all-song shows lately too. I will now break my usual policy of never associating text directly with RadioNOT segments (I like to simulate the "don't know what's coming next" of real radio). Here is the playlist of the current (extra-long song-only) segment of Mr. Random's RadioNOT:
Elastica - Stutter
Art Brut - Direct Hit
Courtney Love - Hello
Monks - Complication
Nels Cline Singers - Tempted
Asakawa Maki - Black Good Luck
DJ Shadow - Hindsight
OOIOO - ATS
Talking Heads - Found A Job
Minutemen - You Need The Glory
Frank Zappa - Excentrifugal Forz
Fursaxa - Rattling The Calabash
The Ohio Express - Yes Sir

[ADDED LATER...] I just love how unsexy archive.org is, especially their embedded players. But it's not about the look, it's about the sound. You can play the current 54-minute RadioNOT show right here with this big ugly player (or go to the RadioNOT blog for a more stylish visual experience):

Wednesday, 5:06am (March 19, 2008)
I love the different ways music pervades the life around me, especially among my friends who play in bands, and really especially in bands I'm in. I don't think I've done a good job of explaining here (if that's really possible) the music I am personally involved in making. I'm sure most of you are aware of LaunchPad and know what we sound like and that we are a triple-multi-instrumentalist improvisational band.

And you may also know that I'm almost completely an improvisational musician. I CAN read music to a certain extent, and I have played from sheet music (school bands, playing trumpet and baritone horn) and taken music lessons a certain points in my life. I taught myself a few chords on guitar when I was in high school, so I could play most of the Bob Dylan song book and a bunch of other folkie stuff, etc. I learned recorder, too, and used to play old Bach stuff from sheet music... fun!

During the last 20 years I've realized that my musical passions are most satisfyingly consummated in music that's composed in real time. FRANTIC (tHE bOY & Mr. Random) has been playing for the better part of a decade. Playing with Lane blasted the bolts out of any musical preconceptions I had up to that point. It's evolved into a beautiful aggressive "bass vs. bass" sound with tHE bOY using crazy FX and Mr. Random playing dry and thumpy, but both of us completely FRANTIC.

LaunchPad grew out of my love affair with The Ovulators, if I trace it all the way back. I met both my bandmates in the happy giddy flock of spirits who appeared at almost every early Ovulators show. In fact, my favorite band of all time High On Peeps contained those two entities along with an Ovulator, all three manifesting as aliens who had crash landed in New Jersey and sported wicked acquired local accents and suffered vicious Peeps habits. Well, this is all from my own glam-bedazzled memory, so I might have botched key details here. Giving away too much perhaps. Forgive me, High On Peeps. You live on in my brain cells--and in two precious recordings.

My Dirty Little Secret formed from previously initiated affiliations within the local music and natural foods community. MDLS is an improvisational Rock Band. Drums, Bass, Guitars, Keyboards. 4 Players. It's a Secret, yo? I always wonder if I'm going to get messed with or messed up if I reveal too much. It's a fucking paradox because how can we market ourselves if we're a secret band??? But you can connect the dots on myspace: dot dot dot dot. There's rumored to be a subset of MDLS members called Alien Flaws, but further information is unavailable at this time. And don't quote me but another rumor involves a duo called Fierce Mary.

NEWS FLASH: Mickey Fuchs (of Alpha Dahlia) & I have started a band, and you know it's real cuz we have a MySpace with songs, or perhaps we should call them 'routines'? We are ANTI KOOL VULTURES. Mickey's on drums, I'm on bass guitar, and we perhaps unwisely place microphones near our oral orifices. There's been discussion on what kind of sound we should be aiming for, but I have a feeling it will continue to involve a combination of intertwining drum & bass action and inane+insane vocals. I have semi-jokingly called us a stupidcore band. DJ lelulaserlight played an AKV track on the radio yesterday. From inception to MySpace to airplay in 5 days. My head is spinning.

Tuesday, 6:40pm (March 18, 2008)

RIP ACC

Monday, 5:22pm (March 17, 2008)

in our backyard a few days ago

Sunday, 10:00am (March 16, 2008)
Wasn't particularly planning on being a party animal this weekend, but it's sort of happening to me anyway. Orbital Dave convinced me that Eleven Eyes at Sam Bond's, along with "neo-soul groove" band Excellent Gentlemen from pdx, would be a good choice for evening entertainment on Friday. He was correct. Both bands totally busted it out. And yrs trly got rly rly swty dancing to the hot beats. Yesterday was Sistah Kem's birthday, and I helped celebrate with her dancing to the Audio Schizophrenic's sizzling set at Snafu, again getting completely soaked by my own perspiration (ewwww!). I believe I have probably expelled most of my toxins over the last couple nights. Today is another kind of party: LaunchPad Swarm here at Chez Random combined with a bday party for Soeur. Mrs. R has been hard at work on birthday swarm kitchen goodies since way before I awoke.

In otha news. It's been super cool to be assisting my friend Stardust in making her big move to her new house. Vicarious excitement becomes contageous and turns into real live excitement pretty fast. Highlight Friday was moving her big heavy Buddha from the old back yard to her new one across town. He's in a great spot and can be seen from three windows in the back.

Thursday, 5:28am (March 13, 2008)

LaunchPad on Valentine's Day, filmed by Sistah Kem (7 min, 15 sec)

Saturday, 5:16am (March 8, 2008)
International Women's Day is today. Today is also my 18th anniversary of getting hired at Oasis Fine Foods. I'm still working in the same building, and the manager that hired me for Oasis is now the owner of Capella Market. It's another anniversary: three years since Sheldon Glassberg died. He was going to be our wine manager but he died a week before we opened the store. We do a big wine sale every year near this time in honor of Sheldon and also to celebrate the anniversary of the store opening. March 8 is kind of a significant day in my life.

One other thing I'd like to blog is this youtube that lelulaserlight showed me yesterday while we were having our usual Friday Conspiracy LaunchPad Work Session. (lelu mixed a cool LP song that we recorded last October, I painted space money and provided lelu with realtime multitrack software support.)

I love this vid. Especially the second half where she explains things in "standard" language. Wow. It's called IN MY LANGUAGE:

The maker of the video posted these comments on its YouTube page: The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.

Wednesday, 6:27pm (March 5, 2008)
Gary Gygax died yesterday. He was a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. I played D&D pretty intensely for a year or two back in '80-'81 in the Walla Walla area just before I moved to Eugene. My first Dungeon Master was a guy named Butch, who had a pretty cool little campaign and some great players. I was very taken by the whole role playing game thing and got obsessed, like I usually do with whatever I'm interested in. I spent many afternoons with these guys... I think there might have been a girl, but she didn't play very often. I had a fighter-thief named Thomas Abraham Swift. He eventually became moderately wealthy and successful, with an estate and some heavy duty henchmen. But at some point I stopped being interested in Butch's campaign because I was hanging out more and more with a fellow player at Butch's place named Pete. He was starting a campaign called Chaldea and at some point invited me to port over to his world. I did, and the second phase of my D&D career began. Pete was a fellow student at Walla Walla College and had a highly detailed world and excellent DMing skills. I did participate in a couple of adventures with other players at Pete's house but soon I wanted my character Swift to gain some real traction in Chaldea, and Pete was willing to oblige my attempt. After that most of my D&D playing was conducted via phone calls with Pete. Chaldea was in a period of re-civilizing after some geological catastrophe of some sort, ice age? massive earthquake? I can't remember, but it was pretty primitive with no shipping industry to connect the towns, so I had Swift start a shipbuilding company and then a newspaper chain aka information network. Then I had him investigate magical ways of communicating over distance and eventually over a few years formed massive secret & public communications networks in Chaldea. Obviously Swift became very rich over the course of a decade or two game time. It was pretty fun, because Pete had me specify what kinds of ships I wanted built and I had to deal with a budget and getting loans and making friends in the financial community of the town I/Swift was in (Kordova? I think that was it, I still have newspapers somewhere that Pete produced and xeroxed). Basically Pete was very detailed yet very entertaining in his DMing style. And he was always thinking of ways to involve interesting non-player characters in his DMing. I don't know how Pete stacked up against other DMs because he was the last one I had before I moved to Eugene and lost interest in D&D, but I remember those gaming sessions as being super fun and stimulating. I am very grateful to have had that experience. Eventually Thomas Abraham Swift went into seclusion and set his sights on being a demi-god or something ridiculous... basically I turned the character over to Pete when I moved away. I have no idea whatever became of him. Pete moved to the Seattle area and became involved with the gaming publishing industry. He helped found a company called Wizards of the Coast which published a game called Magic: The Gathering. And yesterday I found that Pete has a Wikipedia page, which mentions Chaldea and his days in Walla Walla. Anyway, in a round about way, that's my tribute to Gary Gygax, a man who was responsible for so much amazing fun and adventure right here in our all-to-often dull and boring world. I think he's just as important as Timothy Leary. Gygax definitely helped pioneer another kind of consiousness altering experience.

Wednesday, 6:18am (March 5, 2008)
Space money painting is on a brief hiatus (very brief, I'm sure). LaunchPad helped me harvest about 200 newly dried space monies on Sunday to refill the Random coffers after I handed out nearly all my interdimensional currency at the Museum last Friday. But I sort of painted myself out last week, and now I'm waiting for inspiration/necessity to strike again in the space money making domain.

Random art-philosophical proposition: Space money automatically decenters its own art-objecthood and demands engagement and relationship. I.e. "Yes I'm pretty and you can treat me like precious paintings, but I'd really rather be handled and circulated!"

Saturday, 7:01am (March 1, 2008)
Happy March! Leap then March. Haha. The Space Money Distribution Event yesterday was really fun. A couple of waves of people showed up to take part and partake. Kellsj was awesome and snapped photos with my camera. They are up on the Random Flickr now. lelulaserlight brought her guitar and some musical noisemakers to add some sounds to the party. Tina & Ed brought baby Louie, yay! Shoshana was really cool and talked to R-G reporter Serena Markstrom about space money theories. Thanks also to Mrs. Random, Christa, Yvonne, Jonathan, Stardust, Sassy, Mickey, Blake, Julie, Frog, Bethany, various random strangers passing by, and of course Shawn for letting us to use the space under the Museum's awnings for the Distribution. (It was raining, and space money is NOT waterproof.) Serena had her video camera out and running while she chatted with me and others about space money, and she said she's going to post some footage on the Register-Guard website!


Photos by Kellsj.

Friday, 7:56am (February 29, 2008)
Happy Leap Day. Check the Register-Guard Ticket Files blog: R-G entertainment writer Serena Markstrom posted a super-cool entry about space money and the event today!


Photo by lelulaserlight.

Thursday, 9:38am (February 28, 2008)

LEAP DAY SPACE MONEY DISTRIBUTION EVENT

spacemoney.wordpress.com