[book of autumn thirst]

this must be ours

it was scirocco time ₁
early summer of ninety six ₂
(an atypical year that would prove ₃
splendid for the wineries of asian childkings, ₄
harsh for first world arms dealers) ₅
and sub-sahara scents wafted ₆
through every kitchen ₇
of every christian, moslem, and heathen. ₈
iron teeth were cat fed, ₉
the massai boy ate lion that autumn. ₁₀
the embassy girl said he’d pay ₁₁
for what his wander veldt kill bought then. ₁₂
skinny girls were put on the fat bed ₁₃
of clitorectomy and ectopic pregnancy ₁₄
with their tar paper ankles held bracelet skin firmly; ₁₅
as still as could be, considering. ₁₆
the samburu girl ₁₇
drinks cows’ blood with milk ₁₈
and svelte cookies made of ₁₉
palm oil, rice and ginger. ₂₀
and is she made of words? ₂₁
because she sleeps on mats. ₂₂

everything we do is fight. ₂₃

it was a beast with many broken spears in it; ₂₄
the tips rusting in hard flesh, ₂₅
the shafts broken like dry toothpicks, ₂₆
stems of feathers left ₂₇
in copper twinings, ₂₈
blood gutters carrying pus to the ground. ₂₉
and the thing is huge, ₃₀
waits for rain to roll in the mud. ₃₁

everything we do is a fight. ₃₂

it was a shoddy rewrite of the viral epilogue, ₃₃
everyone got it. ₃₄
it was a spectacular view ₃₅
based on a book by a jew ₃₆
to whom egypt became home enough ₃₇
and prison enough. ₃₈
he felt like this: ₃₉
it wasn’t rainy, ₄₀
it wasn’t sunny, ₄₁
it wasn’t a warm place ₄₂
and a matzah filled tummy– ₄₃
it was the insomnia of sore exhaustion ₄₄
three hours before waking. ₄₅

everything we do is the fight. ₄₆

it was as efficient a weapon ₄₇
as has yet been conceived, ₄₈
we all watched you hunt yourself ₄₉
and we watched you wound yourself ₅₀
in the thigh in the tall grasses ₅₁
and we all saw you walking fearlessly in ₅₂
and we saw you say, “ow,” (firm toned) ₅₃
but not move or swear or kick or cry, ₅₄
but only enjoy how far away ₅₅
all the pain was from you ₅₆
and we were spiteful, ₅₇
gnashing and biting pantheist trolls, ₅₈
because in our myths we are essentially lucky children, ₅₉
misogynists, and rather ordinary madmen. ₆₀
0.34 30.6.95

There once was a boy who was extremely naughty. He never did the things he was supposed to. He was instructed by his peers to make his communications brief and useful, not Byzantine and vexing. He was instructed by his elders to use bullet points, yet he continued to write complete sentences which illuminated, rather than oversimplified important issues. He was told to be in his chair so that he might be helpful to the townspeople. Instead he bought a dive knife and ran away to a far off land to wear a wet suit and chase whale sharks.

In that far off land he had dim memories of strange beasts... Unix, DeskAvailability, CGI, PhoneShifts, EmailReviews, and something his gut told him was to be feared -- Customers. He happily forgot these dark visions amidst fresh fish and Vietnamese whiskey with his feet in white sands and blue water.

One day he was wading in the surf with a gig trying to get a nice little tang or goatfish for lunch. He saw something shiny crowning in a swell far from shore. He stared but it disappeared. Not knowing why, he threw the gig down on the beach, grabbed his fins and pulled them on along with his mask and snorkel. He splashed into the surf and cut a path in the direction the flash had caught his attention.

A hundred yards from shore he realized there was a large sand shark that was circling below him. He remained still, hoping the lack of splashing would let the animal's attention shift elsewhere. It continued to circle. The boy had left his dive knife on the beach with his gig. He kept himself pointed toward the shark so it could not surprise him.

The shark made a quick turn. The boy had to take a couple of fast strokes to keep above it. It bumped him with its nose. The boy hit the shark on the gills. The shark didn't like that at all and swam away quickly.

All the quick swimming and excitement had distracted the boy so that he didn't notice he was in a rip tide and being taken quickly away from shore. He was frightened but forced himself to stay calm. He pulled the mask down around his neck so he could swim freestyle more comfortably and cut a strong stroke not against the tide, but perpendicular to it. He knew it would be impossible to fight it directly.

After his leg and shoulder muscles were burning and he could barely continue because he was breathing so hard he realized he was free of the tide. He turned his course more directly to the island though he would land far from the beach he had started from. As he took a couple of strong kicks to get himself over the swells he saw the thing in the water again. It flashed green. It wasn't far. He knew it was foolish but he swam out after it anyway.

He found it shortly. It was a green glass globe wrapped in netting with some kind of paper inside it. It was somehow important, he was sure. He secured it to his trunks with some of the netting.

He was now so tired he could barely swim but it was swim or drown. He put the snorkel and mask back on so that he wouldn't take such smothering effort.

After another 15 minutes he was nearly back to shore. He saw he was passing over some rocks. The water was dark and silty from the rough tide. Shafts of light stabbed down like tarnished silver. He thought of the shark again. He passed over an immense brain coral. It was at 12 meters across. He forgot to be scared at that point while he watched the amazing undersea terrain glide beneath him.

When he passed the coral he saw glimmers rising toward him like a stack of shiny pipes. He knew they were barracuda. Several of them were huge and they were all swimming closer.

The boy swam faster, not caring if it excited the fish. Large barracuda can be dangerous and he had nothing to fight them with. He was in shallows already. The sandy bottom was dappled with sunlight filtered through the waves.

The barracuda were closer and one of the large ones lunged at him. He saw it coming and twisted so it didn't connect. He beat his fins back at it, trying to splash air into the water. He couldn't see much while doing that. He felt something impact his thigh. He knew, though it didn't feel like anything, that he'd been bitten by it, or the other.

He was so close to shore, he made a break for it. His blood was only likely to excite the fish or bring even worse ones in to see what was happening. He made it to the shore in just a few strokes but had no strength to stand.

He dragged himself higher on the beach as the surf washed up gently under him. He barely had the strength to crawl. He rolled under the shade of a tall rock and fell asleep in moments. The glass ball dragged up behind him on the sand.

When he woke, he saw the pit in his thigh the barracuda had made. He'd bled some and the sand was brown under his leg, but he'd stopped bleeding right after he'd fallen asleep. He thought only of the prize that almost cost him his life. The glass gall and its message.

There was a huge cork in the top of the ball. He could remove it, so ended up forcing it into the ball so he could access the paper within. He pulled it gently out. The paper had a company letterhead with a beautiful swash. It had monospaced printing in a style the boy knew to be native to the techno-valleys of the Western coast. His hands began to tremble. He read the words slowly, English had become strange to him in those two weeks on Thailand beaches.

The words read:

Do you want to make a custom vacation message? Remember to make it short and sweet. Our suggestion is:
I will be out of the office until <date>

Then he knew he had wronged his fellow cs-representatives again. He had gone on vacation until the 22nd of June and left a vacation message that was horrifying difficult to unravel.

He knew then what he had to do. He had to leave Thailand immediately to fly back to Seattle and revise his message before someone unfamiliar with "Alt d" was hurt with his disregard for the no-email iniative.

miss you,
ashley
--

ps: anyone who violates my personal code of what is acceptable email while i'm gone will be punished. that is to say, if i come back with a bunch of useless mail from you that shouldn't'a been sent, there's something called "the annoymeter delux" in your immediate future.

Explained

For anyone who doesn’t already know: on *nix systems you can leave a .vacation (or .vacation.msg) file which is sent as an auto-reply while you are, did you guess? on vacation. That is the dot-vacation file I left when I took two weeks off from Amazon.com to go to Thailand.

If only I could have found one being eaten by something I could have manufactured a more amusing title.

There were also blue, green, and gray ones about. They all seemed the same size. I don’t know if they are all the same species. I know there is some sexual dimorphism… hmmmm, I wonder if that is the right word when it’s just coloration; probably not (correct me in the comments if you know).

They are Zygoptera; note the double stacked muscle groups and wing connections. Not to be confused with my other favorite, the Zygodactyls.

I waited around and checked back a few hours later but they didn’t hatch on my watch. It’s an apple leaf.

[book of autumn thirst]

you know the ivy woven underpasses

you know the ivy woven underpasses? ₁
you know what it did to us? ₂
what was done was done ₃
in vain. ₄
where we danced we danced ₅
in rain, ₆
in the steps of the museum ₇
we watched an iron man’s hammer fall and rise ₈
and laughed about ₉
rust and afrika and ₁₀
eshu elegba was there ₁₁
throwing bones, sounding so young, ₁₂
whispering to me his wherewithal of ₁₃
unwelcome things– ₁₄
not laws but things he knew about you ₁₅
because eshu knows a little about every little thing. ₁₆
and i’ve lost another friend to the belief that i could love ₁₇
and i’ve lost another lover to the faith that i knew god. ₁₈
but the ivy tell me i’ve been right; ₁₉
on the mornings when there is sunlight leaves ₂₀
dead girls at the foot of my bed. ₂₁
21.25 21.6.95

At Meadowbrook. Pretty big girl. Don’t know the species but I suspect it’s a linyphiidae though they are supposed to be small generally(?). The web was big enough and strong enough to have a shiny, large, slug mucous track across it.

burble (we’ve just met)

make them work for their tears, ₁
make them cold stone their drunk, ₂
make them upscrew their shears, ₃
you’re my mermaid, you punk. ₄

do you feel safe near me? ₅

used to be used to being used ₆
for amusement, shopping lists, ₇
dead friends, muses, seagulls, ₈
sweet peas, tortoises and beagles. ₉

do you feel safe near me? ₁₀

she said she’s on the letterbox diet ₁₁
and i’d just have to try it ₁₂
because so much is lost in the telling. ₁₃
she’s only thinking of you, you know, ₁₄
watering the orchid, ₁₅
that flower swelling. ₁₆

do you feel safe near me? ₁₇

the phone call was like the hardest ball ₁₈
and someday i promise i’ll laugh ₁₉
at the thing that lay wagging its black tail ₂₀
with a broken back by the side of the road ₂₁
but this bitch accused me of ₂₂
not caring. what should i have said, ₂₃
“thanks for sharing,” like it mattered ₂₄
or i really hadn’t cared? ₂₅
but the dying dog motif ₂₆
came whisper out of the sheath ₂₇
and i could only stare– ₂₈
i’m telling you, man, ₂₉
i don’t want to hurt anyone anymore ₃₀
but i just stared. ₃₁
0.53 15.9.94

I looked around at dozens of schematics while I was reading up on parts and voltage forwarding and capacitance and all that jazz. Since the Octavia might be a mire of not being able to find out what’s wrong, if something goes wrong, a simpler effect was in order to prove I can read a schematic and solder a 1/4" jack properly. I kept thinking, there simply has to be a way to get a decent, basic distortion without 15 parts and 35 wires.

I finally found the “Electra Distortion” at Justin Philpott’s very nice schematic archive. This is his new site. His custom schematics are copyrighted so I can’t print anything but you can find it on his site(s). This is what it looks like built on my Radio Shack project kit. I used the same silicon diode instead of the recommended parts (I think one is supposed to be germanium) and it sounded good anyway. It was simple to put together. Got it right the first try so at least I can read a schematic now. (In the picture the negative ground wires are not connected and you can ignore the little momentary switch stuck in the board.)

While putting it together I found what I’d actually wanted—the most basic distortion possible—at the very excellent GM Arts. Which I’m going to try next b/c I have several versions of the IC operational amplifier (op amp) and I can easily play with it, adding things and changing out values.

What I learned so far that you probably need to know too:

• Only a super-genius or a complete moron would try to experiment with electronics without a breadboard (like the one on my Radio Shack kit).
• Alex Borstein has freckles and looks great without make-up even under the crappy lights of the Lake City Way Starbucks.

…Um, how did that slip in?

Conclusion

It’s a nice effect with good internal harmonics but too ’60s fuzz for me and quite weak on sustain; you won’t get any good false harmonics with it. I never liked the Big Muff or any of the similar pedals. It does, however, play nicely with others. It’s a bit muddy in the mid range but manages to stand out against drums and bass. Here is a sound sample of the effect. It’s played with a Gothic Les Paul and an American Jackson Soloist. Sorry, it’s not in a real arrangement.

I might play around with the parts before disassembling it but this isn’t one worth, to me, putting onto a board with a switch, battery clip, LED, enclosure, et cetera.

Update: Played around and read some more. Pulling either diode raises the volume and makes the distortion more harsh and noisy. The Radio Shack NPN seems to get a slightly smoother sound (and less clipping on the board when everything was set right below, so probably less gain) than the 2N3904 from NightFire (the “smother sound” is subjective). Lowering the capacitors (maybe just the one on the input) should improve the treble and make it less muddy overall. Plus, the 47k resistor can probably go a little lower to melow the distortion and make it more overdrivey. The 1N4001 diodes (paired) do indeed sound a little better than the 1N4148 diodes I tried at first; might try to dig up my germanium as the schematic shows to see if that makes a difference. Don’t even know if it’s a 1N34A or if that will matter.

I might actually build a box with this after all. I need to make sure I can do it before I wreck a bunch of complex soldering on a fancier effect.

[book of autumn thirst]

and island tracks to

stack the dogs, ₁
and sack the rags ₂
i’m going to seattle. ₃
i don’t think i can settle here with this collection of oil stroked chattel, ₄
i don’t believe that you feel more deeply than me, ₅
i know i’m not in denial but how am i supposed to argue the point ₆
when accusations are so much in style? ₇

pack the bags, ₈
fold the flags ₉
i’m going to costa rica. ₁₀
i don’t think i can make it to july now, ₁₁
i don’t believe that when you were a child you knew how to fly ₁₂
and i don’t particularly believe it would be tragic ₁₃
even if you did and forgot how. ₁₄
9.6.95

When I ordered my kits from NightFire I did not know what SMT stood for. Now I do. It’s surface-mount technology. Some of the parts are barely bigger than a sesamé seed. I wondered why they advertised loupes all over their site. I arrogantly assumed it was because old folks were doing electronics and with my fantastic eyes I’d have no need of such cripple-ware (oh, Jody, it’s just colorful speech, man!). Instead I discovered I was lucky to have a good powered pocket magnifying glass in my dresser because even with it I can barely make out any of the writing on these things.

Ah, yes. Live and learn.

Wasted money, I thought. But they are great parts is the thing. Much better gain and signal to noise ratio than the bigger parts I got. Why I ordered them. So I must try to use them. I have no copper boards or etching chemicals though and I’m not that interested in trying right now anyway. So, the solder. Here’s the first stab.

Can you even see it? Here’s a close-up picture after all three wires were attached. I need to have it on wires so it can be used in prototyping on the breadboard. The trick is–

• Get the wire hot, not the SMT (an MMBT5089 transistor in this case). I used a 15 watt solder iron.
• Put a little solder to the wire; keep it hot with the solder iron against it.
• Move the SMT contact point into the solder and simultaneously remove the iron.
• Hold it very still and blow… hmmmm, I’ve heard this advice before. No! given it. Yeah, given it, that’s the ticket.

The wires above are for the breadboard. If doing this for a real circuit, high guage stranded copper wire—or just soldering directly to the board—would be the right choice.

For perspective here it is with the other wires and a guitar pick. There is a pink circle around it to help you see where it is.

The gain and voltage requirements were different from the 2N3904 and NPN friends I was playing with so I had to swap out caps and resistors for awhile till I got something nice, but it is nice. I now have two different custom modifications of the Electra Distortion circuit and I think both are improvements over the original.

I picked up some more parts and will definitely do this one in an enclosure. Still have to manage to do a DPDT switch and add in a LED before I can do a complete effect properly.

Might all be a week or two away. It’s exiting to consider how small the effects board can be with the SMT parts. Could put 5 different effects into a regular pedal enclosure. It would only be limited by the space needed for pots.

Here is a new schematic of my own for the effect. This is probably not the one I’ll build because it’s not the transistor I like better, but the drive/distortion on this is adjustable and much smoother—to me—than on the original. I didn’t prototype it with the volume pot so 100k might not be the best value; also the drive control should probably be a 2k fixed resistor in parallel with a 500k pot (those values are not quite right) wired backwards to get something close to 2k–50k adjustable resistance in there.

I’d never seen this species before. Seen several of them in the last couple days now that I noticed. Very timid. Most jumping spiders I’ve found are easy to handle. These guys just want off your hand immediately. Notice the whiskers.

[book of autumn thirst]

the last mansion my family owns

a dry snail’s trail gone flat, gone stale, ₁
matte on the brick i landed hard on. ₂
as the corpuscles flood rich ₃
in my embarrassment center ₄
the autumn shot the sky ₅
and by the time it was winter ₆
i was still lying in the courtyard ₇
of the last mansion i’ll live in ₈
with flat mucous from my cheek ₉
to the second story window ₁₀
my unflinching eyes account all i’m given. ₁₁
15.7.95

Young Nymph: Let’s say we run down there and eat one of them aphids.

Older Nymph: No. Let’s walk down and eat them all.

wakeless sleep at first #3

caramel knowledge ₁
beat a path ₂
to your brown sugar, ₃
put your ass on the burner ₄
under a mouse grey moon ₅
and morocco’s on the phone ₆
telling me the chinese ₇
deb from austin is underage ₈
and i hosted her coming out ball way too soon. ₉
23.4.95

wicker girl

i’d like to make you the scapegoat ₁
for every bitch who ever burned me; ₂
i’m going to wrap you in wicker girl ₃
and they’ll all burn in effigy. ₄
24.06.06

Still don’t know the species for sure. All the photographic matches I make seem to be European animals.

I looked for this for a couple of years before breaking down and learning French. Well, that is to say, before breaking down and asking a French friend of mine to transcribe it for me.

I was gratified to find the lyrics weren't stupid because I really like the song.

Youpi (original lyrics)

Youpi
Comme c’est bon,
Quand petit à petit
Tu sors de ma tête.

Youpi, Yeah…

Comme c’est gai,
Quand même à petit pas
Je m’éloigne de toi.

Youpi, Yeah…

Comme c’est joyeux,
On ne se verra plus
Jamais

Youpi, Yeah…

Comme c’est joli,
Tes yeux qui pleurent
De jalousie.

Youpi, Yeah…

Youpi (English translation)

Yippee
How good it is,
When little by little
You get out of my head

Yippee, Yeah…
How joyful
When, even in tiny steps
I get away from you

Yippee, yeah…

How joyful it is
We won’t see each other
Ever again

Yippee, yeah…

How pretty it is
Your eyes crying
From jealousy

Yippee, yeah…

Wish I’d finished this or that I’d at least designed them all. I might have been able to execute all 72+ to my satisfaction over time. It took the Lady Frieda Harris many years to finish old Alex Crow’s deck after all.

what minor fear you can spark, ₁
a catalyst of dim not of dark; ₂
a joy rider of bones remains parked ₃
on your fathers’ graves, your redneck ark. ₄
26 May 2005

Horsefly. The light through her looks of blood so I’m reasonably certain it’s a female. Blood suckers in the insect world tend to be female. Not any built-in viciousness, just that a blood meal is ideal for those on the fast track to gravid.

Never seen one in an urban environment before. She was on a log in Thornton creek. Maybe the biggest horsefly I’ve ever seen. Certainly glad she was already full.

The thing I remember the most about them when getting bit every 10 minutes on the south fork of the Snake in Idaho—maybe the most beautiful water I’ve seen or tasted—was that no matter how hard you hit one, you cannot kill it. They just bounce right off, maybe stunned at best. Amazingly tough animals. To kill one the best plan is slap it against your skin and just rub it like crazy till it comes apart. Good way to get an infection though so maybe that’s not the best advice.

Unlike most blood feeders who have puncturing mouth parts, their bite is actually a shearing. And that explains why it hurts so damn much.

I had a contract at The Cobalt Group down the street from them last year. Downtown and some of the industrial district in Seattle are really quite lovely. We almost ended up living down there—well, staying that is—b/c we liked it so well.

The Starbucks building used to be the Sears and Roebuck western distribution center. It was built in 1913 and is one of the better looking buildings in Sodo. As you can see, it’s difficult to take a bad picture of it.

I don’t think I’ll be building this but I put together a part-sized schematic just for fun. I think it’s right but since I only protyped about 50% of it I can’t swear it. You could get this into a square inch if you knew what you were doing. Then again, I’m sure there are ICs that could hold all of it and more in less space.

The photo is blown out a little. I wish the S700 FinePix had some contrast settings to it. There are some contrast filters out there for it but they seem to be hard to get. It also doesn’t handle solid colors—like sky—well, tending to pixelate. I do love it otherwise.

The big black and white hornets in particular seem to like the snowberry flowers. They refuse to hold still though or I’d have one here by now.

[book of autumn thirst]

recover from the damage

the very scalpel that took me apart ₁
is the self same blade i took to heart, ₂
made my grail and read in brail ₃
until it was memorized and fully absorbed. ₄
now shall i be your hemorrhage? ₅
your dirty white double edged fucker ₆
mothering and ministering your sickness ₇
with bleach and de-dogearring ₈
the volumes on hearing ₉
and counting every drop ₁₀
before oxidizing platelets make them clot ₁₁
saying like majik: ₁₂
every drop is a thought ₁₃
and every thought is a thing ₁₄
and every thing is a piece ₁₅
of silverware at the table of the king ₁₆
who understood the four of swords ₁₇
and the efficacy of human cutting boards ₁₈
because the blood of god, this soul of grape, ₁₉
is nothing but a concept humans ape ₂₀
so look to the trees in the selvas ₂₁
of the old world where shit throwing monkeys ₂₂
expose it isn’t damage or disease we suffer from, ₂₃
we’re as sound of mind and body ₂₄
as murdering chimpanzees, ₂₅
there’s no health to recover ₂₆
because we came down with these. ₂₇
20.26 2.7.95

There are at least eight beavers at Meadowbrook and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen nine. They move around so quickly underwater it’s difficult to tell how many you’ve really seen.

This picture was the most interesting view of them. They were just hanging out as a family; grooming and eating together. I missed some good pictures of six of them together because the dusk light was no good.

A minor diversion on the road to actually finishing a decent recording of anything new. The song itself is really nice but the recording isn’t done and won’t be any time soon. This is the breakdown after the main verses before the last chorus. I’ve always really liked this kind of thing. This was done before digital—before I went digital anyway—so it involved riding the faders and the VCRs.

That mother spider is doing very well for herself. There are three egg balls now.

That was in the yard yesterday on the rhododendrons. Looked much brighter in person. The red was less orangey, more a visually buzzing opposite of the green. I’m surprised I never noticed how colorful these guys are before. They are very small.

As usual, the best to be found under the gray plague of Seattle sunlight pales before those found in brighter climes like this fellow courtesy Bruce Marlin.

I guess there is only one angle allowed for photographing leafhoppers. I tried a head-on but he didn’t like the idea and took off.