Ornoth

I agreed to play this meme, so now I have to post.

The idea is this: Ask me, and I’ll pick three of your listed interests and three of your userpics and ask you to talk about them. Express your interest in a comment on this entry.

Here are the ones greatsword asked me to talk about:

Interests: bentmen, hand_drumming, vipassana.
Images: Righteous, sunglasses, puggle

Bentmen:

Back in the early 90s, shortly after my wife and I separated, I started hanging out with friends in Boston’s music scene. There were so many great local bands back then, and we managed to make friends with a few players, including an absolutely amazing guitarist named Eddie Nowik. Usually he played with a band called Crisis of Faith at the Plough & Stars, but he also played occasionally with a band called the Bentmen.

The Bentmen are hard to explain. They play rock with disturbing, eerie overtones. There’s some MP3s on www.bentmen.com and they’re also on iTunes. But the spectacle is the live show. The stage is decorated in the most bizarre fashion, and the band members come out in the most disturbing, scary outfits they can devise. They spray the audience with shaving cream and tempura paint (sic). They hook beanbag chairs up to leafblowers and spray the audience with feathers and little foam pellets. They toss out ice cream sandwiches, severed Barbie doll heads, and anything else they can procure. The venue gets utterly trashed, left knee-deep in refuse.

But beyond all that is the music; they’re all gifted, prominent musicians. They play very rarely, but when they do, it’s chaos, and quite a spectacle. You can see a few pictures I took at their most recent show (last October) here.

Hand Drumming:

About the same time as I started getting into the music scene, I developed a passion for drums. I bought a drum set and spent a lot of time playing around, despite knowing that I have an absolutely horrid sense of rhythm. I later replaced that with an electronic kit, which I still have. And the music store gave me a credit when I bought the e-drums, so I spent that on a set of bongos, although I’d already gotten into hand drumming by then.

I’m not sure when I picked up hand drumming or how. I guess I must have gone to a Cambridge Drum & Dance and liked what I saw, because I picked up a Remo “klong yaw”, which is sort of like a djembe, only taller. You can see it here. I also took a hand drumming course with Inna. Now I’ve also got Inna’s djembe at home, and some miscellaneous stuff, including a rain stick, claves, Boomwhackers, a bottled water jug, a didgeridoo, a cheap goatskin drum a friend brought back from South Africa, and probably some other stuff I don’t have readily in memory. But I’m still just a wannabe in every way…

Vipassana:

Vipassana generally refers to “insight meditation”, a sort of non-sectarian form of meditation derived from Theravada Buddhism, which itself is based around the Tipitaka, aka the Pali canon, the oldest, seminal Buddhist texts. The other Buddhist schools all include other texts which were developed later. Theravada itself seems pretty inocuous, without a lot of the saints and mythological and ceremonial stuff and hierarchy that you get in other sects. But Vipassana is even one level removed from that, which is why “insight meditation” is more generally accepted in the west, where people are all skitchy about anything smacking of religion.

	Righteous: This shot was taken during the 2002 Dargon Summit in Scotland. We were taking a group guided tour of Sterling Castle, which was awesome, and here was this pulpit kinda place in the Great Hall. So while the tour guide was talking, I stood atop the pulpit while my buddy took the picture from below. The shot of someone (especially the editor) on a soapbox, pontificating, is a Summit standard, and I thought that’d be a good icon for when I’m feeling opinionated.
	Sunglasses: This shot was taken at the 2003 Dargon Summit in Austin, Texas. The shot was taken by my Assistant Editor as I was piloting our rented party boat near Mansfield Dam on Lake Travis, while we looked for a swimming spot. That was the largest Summit gathering of all, and the inception of DargonZine’s immense “Black Idol” story arc, the biggest collaborative story we’ve ever written. I use this photo mostly when I wanna be like Joe Cool…
	Puggle: That’s the Puggle! My kittykat! Puggle came to me along with two other cats and a four year-old when ailsaek moved in. When she moved out, I expressed the desire to keep the Puggle, and he and I lived together for a dozen years in great happiness and joy. He was a very important companion for me until his death of congestive heart failure on Christmas Eve 2005. The photo is cropped from this photo, whose caption is: So what if it’s a formal sitting? My foot itches! I used to use this one when I talked about the Puggle or cats in general.

Okay, so who wants in?

I know it’s tedious to read about everyone’s end-of-year natterings, so I’ll keep mine brief.

Having just gone through a very difficult period, I’m naturally inclined to write 2005 off as just a series of very painful events. However, when I went to make a list of the good and the bad, I discovered a very surprising and substantial imbalance toward the good. This year in particular this list seems to really help keep things in perspective.

So here’s my lists:

So that’s the scoop. As you can see, the positives far outweigh the negatives, even if there were a couple really, really terrible things that happened this year.

Every so often you have to do the Friday Five. Or two, since there’s two of them going now…

thefridayfive:

What is the oldest object in the room with you?

Probably an early Waltham 8-day deck watch / marine chronometer, in its original gimabelled mahogany case. It was probably manufactured around 1920, and came to me via my father, who was in the jewellery business back about 45 years ago. It’s probably work around three grand.
 

What is the newest?

A CD-ROM backup of DargonZine’s Web site that I cut this afternoon in preparation to move the site to a new ISP.
 

What is your favorite object in the room with you?

Hands down: the Puggle.
 

What is the most valuable object?

In terms of dollars? Probably that chronometer.
 

What is the ugliest object?

An early art project of mine which shows a scientist standing next to a large telescope that reveals a pair of woman’s lips.

fridayfiver

What's your favorite radio station?

Hmmm. I haven’t listened to radio in a long time. I used to listen to Indiana Pacers games on WIBC, until the NBA shut them down. Recently, my employer gave us Sirius Satellite Radios as a gift, and I’m still exploring the available channels. I most frequently listen to the classical “Symphony Hall” channel, and certain NBA games, but you might catch me listening to a reggae, 60s, 70s, 80s, or techno channel. Back in the day, I used to listen to Emerson’s WERS, BC’s WZBC, and Brown’s WBRU (not WBUR).
 

How would you describe the format?

Huh? Hard drives have formats; radio stations either play music, talk, or commercials.
 

Do you think satellite radio will become commonplace, like subscribing to cable TV?

Interesting question, since I’ve just been given one! It certainly could, if it doesn’t suffer from the same inanity that cable television has become. But as I see it, the real problem is that unlike cable television, on satellite radio the same company that bills you is the same one that produces the content, which is highly monopolistic. I’d rather have the delivery company be independent of the content producers.
 

Have you thought about buying a satellite radio subscription?

No. I got one, even though I really wasn’t interested in it. Despite that, so far it’s been tolerable.
 

When is the last time you said goodbye?

Leaving work.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Fifteen years ago, in northern Maine, a little kittycat was born. A certain little girl saw him and gave him the name “Pug”, which was later modified to “The Puggle”. He’s been my roommate now for eleven years.

Now, there have always been synonyms for “puggle”. Everyone knows that a baby echidna is called a puggle. And certain Brit quarrymen use a tool they call a puggle.

But this is too much. People who, having way too much time on their hands, make a habit of cross-breeding dogs have gone One Step Beyond. They caused beagles to have extramarital relations with pugs, and have dubbed the resulting offspring “puggles”, as you can see at the breed’s official homepage, puggle.org. They have apparently become all the rage in the doggy world. Me and my roommate… we find it repugnant.

As you and I know, there can be only one Puggle. The self-cleaning Eviscerator who also cleans bike chains, camps out in bass drums, and flosses before and after meals. An avowed misogynist who has earned the seasonal nickname Puggle Claws, whose only known weakness is strength-sapping sunbeams. He’s the One True Pug, who likes to “reach out, touch face”, and remember: it’s not sex unless Puggle is watching.

“You call that a Puggle? Naw, mate… That’s a Puggle!”

Typically, I haven’t kept any plants in the house. Part of the reason for that is the wide discrepancy of opinion about what house plants are and are not dangerous for cats. Another part is that the Puggle has always demonstrated great relish in destroying any living thing I bring into his environment. I used to buy cut flowers for my entryway at the Arlington T station, but gave that up when saving money became a priority.

Last spring I visited a friend from south Texas and we got to talking about my interest in potentially growing my own hot chile peppers. She said that certain varieties grew in the wild in great profusion where she lived, and she later mailed me a bag full of loose seeds and pods from two different species—chile pequins and chiltepins—which I planted in several different batches at the end of May.

Now, chiles are presumably difficult to grow from seed, with a very long germination period, and they demand a long growing season and a very warm environment. I managed to get one chiletepin plant to grow, and it flowered prodigiously, but none of the flowers ever germinated, so I didn’t get any fruit from that one, sadly.

On the other hand, I got more than a dozen chile pequin plants, which I trimmed down to a manageable number. Eventually I think at least three of them flowered, and at least one of them germinated and produced two small batches of fruits: maybe 4-6 pods each.

Now, chile pequins are tiny—about the size of a pencil eraser—but they’re also among the hottest peppers around. My friend also shipped me a huge jar of them; her husband is Mexican, and he puts them in everything! I’ve been adding about a dozen or so each time I open a large jar of spaghetti sauce, with good results. My own peppers also went into those batches, as well.

The only real problem I had was this: they attract little fruit flies like crazy, and it’s been a periodic battle to keep them down.

Of course, now I get to learn whether the plants are going to survive the winter and rejuvenate in the spring. Because I’m trying to keep my electric/heating bills down, I let my apartment get very cold sometimes, and there isn’t much sunlight here in the winter, so they’ve been dropping leaves like crazy. But we’ll see if they can make it through the next couple months. I’m curious to see if they’ll revive. I’m also thinking of planting another round of seeds this spring, but at the same time I question whether it’s worth all the work for just a couple tiny peppers…

Name five things in your refrigerator.

1. A one liter clear plastic bottle with ½ cup of Gatorade remaining
2. A six pack of McEwan’s Scotch Ale
3. A 1½ quart jar of Vlasic Bread & Butter Chips pickles
4. A 9 oz. bottle of Taj Gourmet Tamarind Chutney
5. A 15 oz. can of Farmer’s Market Pumpkin

 

Name five things in your freezer.

1. A pint of Edy’s Whole Fruit Blueberry Sorbet
2. Three quarts of my family’s homemade spaghetti sauce
3. Five 10 oz. packets of Green Giant Niblets Corn & Butter
4. Four pounds of Green Giant Sweet Peas
5. Four 21 oz. Stouffer’s Lasagna with Meat Sauce

 

Name five things under your kitchen sink.

1. A steel kitchen sink strainer/stopper with a pewter armadillo pull/top
2. An Oral-B toothbrush
3. A clear glass kerosene hurricane lantern
4. A 2.5 gallon jug of All Free Clear laundry detergent
5. My cat, as soon as the door is opened

 

Name five things around your computer.

1. A Benchmade Emerson Spec War Model CQC7 tanto blade combat knife
2. A credit card sized matrix of single- and multi-deck blackjack strategies
3. Pocket references for emacs, Kedit, Cascading Style Sheets, Perl 5, Javascript, and the Adobe Type Library
4. Several hundred old-style computer punch cards
5. A fortune cookie paper which reads “You are never bitter, deceptive or petty”.

 

Name five things in your medicine cabinet.

1. A 6 oz. plastic Disney’s Aladdin cup bearing two images of Princess Jasmine
2. A ½ ounce bottle of Wet ’n’ Wild Clear Nail Protector
3. A box of Johnson & Johnson Adaptic Non-Adhering Dressings, 7 remaining of 12
4. A bottle of 800 Berkley & Jensen Ibuprofen Caplets, expiration date 12/2002
5. A brandy-new Braun 6520 electric shaver

Sorry I’m late… It was PMC weekend…

What time do you wake up on weekday mornings?

Whenever it happens. I’m normally a morning person anyways, so most people would consider it early. However, the Puggle is even more of a morning person than me, and he’s been getting me up very early. Since he’s gotten me into that habit, now I find it impossible to sleep in late. So now I get up anywhere from 5am to (if I’m really lucky) 8am.
 

Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late?

What’s a weekend? Every day’s a weekend when you don’t have to work! But no, I don’t sleep in. I can’t sleep when the sun is up.
 

Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning?

Typically, pet the cat a little while waiting for him to get off my chest, then get up, go to the bathroom, and urinate. Bring my water glass and cell phone into the kitchen. Feed the cat. Get a glass of OJ and vitamins. Log in, check mail, forward spam to uce@ftc.gov. Read the following online: Boston Globe, Cat of the Day, Get Fuzzy, Boston.com, Cyclingnews.com, My Yahoo!, NWS Boston zone forecast, and my LJ friends page.
 

How long does it take to get ready for your day?

I’m Ornoth. I am always ready for my day.
 

When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast?

My kitchen. Sometimes a breakfast out can be good, but I don’t do it very often. Around here, probably Bickford’s would do. They’re pretty traditional New England big breakfast kinda stuff.