My drug of choice these days.
Ho hum. Just another morning in America.
Get up, make coffee and toast, watch E. Lawn Mulch blow something up and call it a success, start a new loaf of bread, tidy up the kitchen, police Miss Mia’s litter boxes, follow Herself to the Honda dealership to drop off the CR-V for its annual physical, write something.
It’s 4/20, but getting stoned is not on the agenda. E. Lawn may light ’em up on April 20, but not Your Humble Narrator. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Sheeeyit, I got higher than Starship back in 1973, man.
Tags: 4/20, E. Lawn Mulch, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, Starship
Mad Blog Media 
April 20, 2023 at 12:28 pm |
Defining failure as success seems to be common these days.
April 20, 2023 at 12:45 pm |
“And now here’s Ken with the weather!”
“100 percent chance of methane and shrapnel showers over South Texas. Back to you, Stewart!”
“Ol’ Elon sure likes killing birds, doesn’t he, Ken? Now here’s a word from our friends at Tesla. …”
April 20, 2023 at 12:37 pm |
Ah, the Nobilette! Sometimes we acquire things that are better than we deserve, no? I wonder what the investors will think of the Starship fireworks?
April 20, 2023 at 12:48 pm |
Some other friends and I were enjoying a bit of back and forth on this one. I sent ’em this with the observation, “As opposed to, say, Twitter, which is experiencing a deliberate scheduled disassembly.”
April 20, 2023 at 1:24 pm |
I’m thinking deserve was not the right word in my first comment. Need would be better. After a life time of work, a top shelf bike or guitar is not what we needed, but I think we deserved them. Every time time I look at and play my Taylor 522, I am so glad I bought it.
The investors are most likely not amused by that SpaceX tweet. But, I gotta love the description of a rapid unscheduled disassembly!
April 20, 2023 at 3:52 pm |
I’m a pretty cheap date. I haven’t bought anything special since I hung up the old press badge.
Actually, I’ve dialed back a lot of stuff since I no longer do the free-range-rumormonger thing. I don’t have a camera, because the iPhone works fine when I need to take a snap for the blog, and image transfer is a breeze. And I don’t shoot video, but if I wanted to, I still have a couple of oldish camcorders that would serve my low-rent purposes.
The drawing table is gathering dust, but that was always a cheap date anyway — Bristol board, 3H pencils, an eraser, and several sizes of Sakura Pigma Micron ink pens.
And audio? I have three good mics and a couple more decent ones; one workhorse digital recorder and a couple small ones for specific purposes; a suitable audio interface so I can use XLR mics; and a couple pair of serviceable headphones.
If there’s a weakness in my setup here (besides the operator) it’s probably the Macs. They’re all getting pretty long in the tooth, and one digital audio interface I’ve been casually interested in, the Focusrite Vocaster Two, hasn’t been tested with anything that’s got this much white hair in its ears.
But I don’t really need it — it’s just a minor itch I might like to scratch.
April 21, 2023 at 6:16 am |
That Vocaster Two is pretty slick. I noticed you can use dynamic or condenser mikes since it has 48v phantom power. Having the software mixer really lets you control the mix without another piece of hardware.
April 21, 2023 at 8:15 am |
It’s interesting that just as podcasting is supposedly going bust — as a way to make big-league money, anyway — all these outfits like Zoom, Focusrite, and Rode have been coming out with these studio-in-a-box setups that take a lot of the hassle out of audio recording and editing for the casual yappers like Your Humble Narrator.
My little Zoom PodTrak P4 will let me use phantom power where necessary, plug in the iPhone and automatically set up a mix-minus for recording phone interviews, and route all the audio to my DAW of choice while simultaneously recording to an internal SD card.
If I were interested in doing a group chat I could plug in four mics and four sets of headphones. The thing has mute buttons for all channels so I could gag my critics at will and pads for built-iin and custom sound effects.
Doing all this stuff in the Before-Time meant having quite a few bits of hardware and cables and more skills than I can recall from my college radio-production class circa 1976 or thereabouts.
April 20, 2023 at 4:15 pm |
Yep, same here. My guitar acquisition syndrome has gone into remission. Some might think I have multiple personalities since I own a Martin, a Taylor, and a Gibson. The carbon fiber Rainsongs are gone since the neck did not suit a chord strummer like me. Too thick and too flat a fretboard radius for me. I think I am set. I am Shure loving that SM-86 condenser mike.
April 21, 2023 at 5:13 am |
The rules here in Herbville are if something comes in the door that’s new to an already over supply of “stuff” then by god something has to leave out that same door. But it’s a tough battle when one resident says “oh but we might need that crank handle that belongs to something”.
April 21, 2023 at 8:19 am |
The urge to hoard is a tough one to overcome. Isaac Asimov used to keep about three IBM Selectrics on hand just in case two of them croaked while he had a regiment of words backing up in his head. I do likewise with Macs, mics, and (of course) bikes.
I am getting a little bit better about thinning the herd, though. Herself’s eBay sideline makes it pretty easy to clear out whatever gear I’m not actually using at any given time. I get a bit of my original investment back and someone else gets a useful tool at a bargain price. Win-win.