shedshrine build 3.0 - furniture, cats, gear, enlightenment, and yer mom, man

[shedshrine]

We've got one of those spring loaded twist to tighten ledge to ceiling poles in the kids' bath that came with a trio of little racks affixed for shampoo and soap and such. Those are pretty damn ingenious.

As for the sound room, I can see having one next to the desk with a twist on or flip type re-positionable arm clamp attached for a mic or an ipad/music stand type thing for sure. Thanks for the idea!

[vvv]

[shedshrine]

Vlayman,.If you want us to go off on another tangent I can’t help you here brother. I’ve checked, 77 characters is the max for a thread title on Tape Op.

[shedshrine]

truth be told Mr Vlayman,

I couldn't figure out what exactly you were trying to say with that.
Was it just to be silly with a non-sequitur, or suggesting a floor to ceiling bong to seque from the bathtub twist pole idea, or "this convo is getting too straight" or .... what's the deal ming?

Speaking of tangents, since we're all here.
A few years back I referenced a UFO experience I had while posting here in the big Frank Black Francis Thompson thread.

Another thing I identify with with Frank is the whole UFO thing. In one of those attached interviews he talks about seeing a UFO when he was a kid.
He and his brother playing in the mud saw a cylindrical shaped object in broad daylight.
They watched it slowly move down the street then went back to playing in the mud. I think the interviewer asked it as "the first time you saw a UFO?.
I don?t know about other sitings, I'll try and find that out.

In my case it was In the late '90s visiting home one summer from Japan.
I went out for a walk around 2:30 in the morning as it was too hot to sleep and I was jetlagged.
I eventually came to the next neighborhood's elementary school and lay out in the middle of its playing field.
The sky that night was clear and moonless and still. I saw a couple stars go out of and come back into view.
It was then I noticed a triangular shape was slowly moving silently across the sky high overhead.
Soon it stopped and six or seven faint lights began to pulse-glow in a circle. This went on for maybe 20 seconds or so,
then it slowly started moving forward again for about another 20 seconds before stopping then shooting up at a sharp angle into the sky.
It turned into a white ball of light as the speed shot up, a couple zig zags and it was gone. Wow.
I often wonder what was going on during that glowing lights time frame as it was directly overhead.

Well, now for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.


That siting occurred during the summer of 1997, (which happens to be the same year as the Phoenix Lights.)

That took place visiting my mother's home in Northern California. Fourteen years later, around 2011 I had moved back from Japan permanently and was living 20 miles north of there with my wife and daughter.

One Friday around 5:20 in the morning, sensing a presence I woke to find three opaque spheres in a cluster over our bedroom door. We don't have a street behind us, just another house so it couldn't have been headlights, and as i focused I could definitely tell they were not reflections on the wall, they were in a tight formation and definitely inside the room. My wife was sleeping in the next room with our daughter at the time, so it was just me in the room. I started to get a little freaked and my impression was that these orbs sensed that and abruptly disappeared.

I didn't tell anyone about it. I was still trying to figure out what the hell it might have been. I did flash on my experience years earlier. How could they have located me unless they knew where to find me. It occurred to me that they may have somehow tagged me, and that it could very well have been done during that stretch of time when the ship was overhead and the ring of lights started pulsing and rotating. Anyway, this visit had been weird and unsettling but undeniably exhilarating all the same.

But the next night, at the same time in the morning, I awoke again to find I was being visited. But this time it was a sphere right in front of me, just off to the left, about two feet away. It was not one of the orbs I'd seen in the cluster previously. Those had been an orangey-red and opaque, about the size of a beach ball. This was a smaller, silver orb, about the size of a small bowling ball and smooth like brushed chrome. It was solid, but as I watched it it began to fade into and out of view. Then it appeared to have etchings all over it. Suddenly the top and bottom halves started rotating in opposite directions. Then the left and right halves rotated in opposite directions. Then it disappeared, It occurred to me later that it had beem showing me what it could do, I was getting a demonstration. I bet it could do much more in purpose.

Again, I did not tell anyone about the experience. This was getting freaky. I knew I had been awake and lucid, this was really happening. The next night, I'm still sleeping okay, but I'm wondering what may be next.

5:20 the next morning I awake to find a disc shaped swirl of stars that slowly come to a stop and reveal a face. It looks human, the head is a little larger than ours, hairless, and he's (he seemed male) wearing a high collared robe type thing I think. Yeah, I know , sounds wack, very star trek and all but there we are. We have an awkward brief conversation. I just couldn't come up with anthing to say or ask, kind of in shock. He was very friendly, seemed to understand my confusion and said something, yes in English, like "well, that's enough for now".

I am not sleeping well the following night. What the hell is going to happen next? And sure enough, 5:20 I wake to find a loose cluster of lights at the apex of the ceiling. They looked like fiber optic cable ends with the bright sharp light, but without the cables. They were in some sort of formation, maybe a ship outline or a star formation or a galaxy or I don't know, but it was slowly rotating.

By this time I am starting to feel pretty rough. I am not sleeping well and really need to talk to someone about what has been happening. Out of it at work, I'm wondering if a locating device is monitoring my thoughts and starting to really worry about where this is going.

I had been commuting with the mother of my daughters best friend during this time. She was a very open minded woman who I could trust, and with who I had already discussed the ship siting experience at some point. Anyway she sees I'm acting kind of distant and stressed and I level with her and tell her everything. She believes me and in fact asks me to try and talk to them, I mean right there in the car. I close my eyes and try to "hear" any answer to my questions, but I'm in bad shape at this point, and can't tell if I'm getting any response. This is too wierd,

Finally, that night I think-talk to the being(s) and tell them, y'know, thanks for the visit, I feel very fortunate, I mean the sheer odds, but I can't do this anymore, I'm just not able to go about my life thinking that there is some entity monitoring me, my thoughts or whatever, no matter how benevolent and friendly their intentions.

Next morning there was no visit, but a little later, at work, I 'saw' in my mind's eye a bright flash. Elvis had left the building.

I started looking for stories and youtube videos of similar experiences, but nothing was coming up that seemed to match my particular scenario. I found a site where you could tell your stories and added mine. I got some replies of thanks for sharing your story, and several of "you're just looking for attention" "you are out of your mind" type replies. "if this really happened, why didn't you take pictures?" As if an image would prove anything. Their next post would be "that is so fake, you just got that off the internet".

My final post was about how I have no control over whether they or anyone else believes me or not. I could only post there in hopes that it resonated with someone else's experience.

In recent years it seems that these kind of phenomena are being given more credibility than ever. We are not the only game in town in this universe. To believe so is close minded in my opinion, and in my experience.
___________
Back on topic: Received my double layer curtain rods mentioned in the prior post for the soundroom. Hoping to install those in the coming weeks, but first working on finding some thick curtains and figuring out what kind of layering I can implement for maximum sound control.

[Scodiddly]

Not sure if this connects to your UFO experiences, but I did feel kind of compelled to start making things like this when I discovered the laser CNC thing at one of the local libraries.

Fills in a difficult corner space nicely.

Corner tall light box 2022.jpg (86.04 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

[vvv]

I just meant that , and I continue to, I feel like I'm high when I'm reading some of this thread.

Always, of course, a good thing.

[Scodiddly]

In regards to the UFO sharing, I really can't say I don't believe you.

Something I've accumulated over my life is that different people perceive things in different ways. As somebody who is a little on the autism spectrum I've become used to noticing that I see things differently than most people. And those of us who are in the arts are often here because we see things differently.

[shedshrine]

Cool corner tower light box there Scott. Got a little Deco vibe to it!

Yeah, I know, it's a weird story. But I am fine with people being not all in on it. It's so completely off-the-map foreign to anything we might encounter in our day to day lives. And I understand what you're saying, maybe creative people are more prone to to 'see' what others don't, which could be read as: it's not really there and your 'amazing' imagination is running amuck, in this case aided and abetted by jet-lag and a walk on a hot night. And eleven years later it was probably just a weather balloon or swamp gas in our house. I've made my peace with the whole credibility aspect of it.
In any case, thanks for reading.

VVV, this thread has become quite a catch all. If it makes you feel high, I suppose that's not a bad thing at all. A little good news in the world right about now sounds right on the money.

[Scodiddly]

And I understand what you're saying, maybe creative people are more prone to to 'see' what others don't, which could be read as: it's not really there and your 'amazing' imagination is running amuck, in this case aided and abetted by jet-lag and a walk on a hot night.

I dunno. Maybe you were seeing something that other people ignore because it wouldn't make sense in their perception.

[shedshrine]

Hmmm.. I mean It was high up there, but big, silent and moving in such a controlled manner.. and that turning to a ball of streaking light upon exit, well that was hard to miss, however perceived. It was not from around here was my perception.

I don't know how familiar you are with Star Trek, but as I recall they had some kind of prime directive to not interfere with any civilizations they visited. Showing off their hardware is cool and all, but I can't help but wish that any advanced civilization that came across us might deign to share a little insight, convey a little knowledge our way on how to do things better.

There's an interview online somewhere with a general talking about how a ufo flew over field of nuke silos and knocked each one out of commission, as if saying, hey guys, these aren't a good idea. Of course humanity already knows this, and we can tell ourselves they are just for deterrence til the cows come home, while at the same time knowing how dicey and ripe for an eventual 'boo-boo' the whole scenario is. But this visitor felt the need to drive that point home.

Okay visitor, So how about helping these silly humans out if that isn't too much to ask? But you know, If 'they' gave every country on earth plans to make clean renewable cheap energy, we would try to figure out how to weaponize it. Pipe-dream, granted, but serious guidance to get to a civilization 2.0. would be the ultimate gift.

Or maybe that's just naive, maybe even these visitors have wars in their home star systems, and things aren't perfect for them either so hey, best of luck, work with what you've got, life is a gift of chance for everybody.

[Scodiddly]

Perhaps we're being documented as a cautionary tale for other civilizations.

I dunno. Me personally, all the messes we get into are because we as civilizations seem really good at ignoring the obvious and going with what grooves society pushes us into. Controlling reality goes from a bully thing ("hey, you kicked dirt on my shoes") to one country invading another over a stated purpose that is untethered from reality.

When it comes to seeing things "as they are", on average we really suck.

But then that's maybe the next thing evolution will have to weed out of humans.

[Scodiddly]

But as far as perception goes, you spent a lot of time in Japan, which is a very old place in a lot of ways. I visited back in 1999, staying with a friend and mostly just wandering around instead doing tourist things. One day I hiked up Mount Hiei, following a back trail somebody had told me about. That was a really interesting hike - at different points it felt like I was in completely different times, seeing things that looked ancient and then turning a corner to see a freshly laid asphalt road. Right before I got into the temple area I was climbing up a little valley full of tiny graves and shrines, then I somehow on a back road behind the temples. A dog with a bell on its collar started following me then, and I got the strong feeling that it wasn't just a dog.

I never did get to the tourist areas of that fabled mountain. At some point I got tired and headed back down, followed by that dog for rather a long distance.

[shedshrine]

Dog with Bell:
"Hmm.. this guy looks like a foodie. I bet he's got some good grub in that knapsack. Oh cool, he's heading down the long trail, surely he'll stop for lunch.

Two and a half hours later:
"Man, he's got stamina. Just short breaks for water, not even some trail mix, or one of those funky mystery protein bar thingies, let alone a nice bento box"

Still further:
"Ah, he's just going to hoof it all the way to the base of the mountain on water. And I was giving him my best mysterious zen dog-god look whenever he looked back too."

Dog with Bell finally turns around and heads back to the temple. The usual monk provided kibble and stream water will have to suffice on this day.

[Scodiddly]

"Man, he's got stamina. Just short breaks for water, not even some trail mix, or one of those funky mystery protein bar thingies, let alone a nice bento box"

As it happened, I'd had a very nice lunch at a noodle shop down at the bottom in historic Sakamoto.

[shedshrine]

Well, it finally got to us. Five folks in our 12 person office out with covid.

So far so good self-wise, I tell myself possibly partially because I walk from the train station, I walk around the nearby lagoon twice daily on breaks, and walk back to the rapid transit train station daily getting great sun, great amounts of vital Vitamin D which supposedly helps your immunity against Covid. Couldn’t hurt anyway.

Regardless and Whatever, my girls, wife and daughter, are leaving or Japan soon, and I will take off the same amount of vacation to work on music (and painting the living room and visiting some friends). Three weeks to be exact. (yeah, a lot of accumulated vacay time)

I will miss out on all that awesome Japanese cuisine, which to be honest is the main reason I’d be going. The electronics scene in Akihabara, the minidisc scene and Japanese manufacturing of the 80’s 90’s is gone. My wife needs to spend time with family, and my daughter is half Japanese and wants/needs to understand an important part of her roots.

I have not played much guitar etc. at all of late. And I have not even been compiling ideas on portable recorders. What the hell?
So I will in effect be commencing a cold open come that three week period. Per the Vai/Bozzio interview (posted in Listening to Music), the part about getting out of your own way, I am going to go dada on creation. Whatever comes out, don’t fight it, go with it and make it work.

But for recording, I’m going with/for ease of capture and the hopefully resulting abillty to stay in the oh so fragile zone. To that end, searching for a desktop sized rig of simplicity personified I will be going with an Isotope Spire, a Tech21 YYZ for bass along with a Eden WT330/xlt4x10, for guitars it will be between a Boogie studio pre a Boogie Express 5:25 a Yamaha THR30II, and a Strymon Iridium.

For effects: combinations of JHS Ratpack, Strymon BlueSky and Volante. Red Witch chorus/vib, Fuzzgod II, MoonPhaser. MoogerFooger RIngMod, EHX HOG, Empress Vintage Modified Delay. Malekko Chicklet Spring reverb.

Rack gear: Distressor, Deltalabs Effectron 1024, Lexicon MPX1 and LXP-15.

Drums.. hmm. I really covet those drum apps like BFD and the like. And I do have a Roland Vdrum kit. But I will probably just get something going with my drum machines (Boss DR-015,Alesis SR16, Maestro Rythym King, Garageband loops and maybe track the vdrums outs through some distressor/effectron or whatever after the fact.

I’ll be going for capturing ideas and moments, not perfection or even ‘conventional’ arrangements. Explorative Fun is the operative destination here. Which reminds me, the kid's funky student violin is up in the loft..hmm. And some hacking about on the stack of mini casios/yamahas, a Roland xp80, Korg M1, and our in need of a tuning Baldwin upright in the livingroom.

Got a couple guys who are up for jamming during this time as well. Collab rules because you don’t have to build the structure all by yourself, and it's definitely more fun. Duh!