The Illusion of Equivalence (Weasel Words)

 

The Illusion of Equivalence Practiced by Politicians, the Media, Business & Advertising... speaking with forked tongues. 

None in the mainstream media dare mention climate-change at all during recent extreme weather events, the power of the fossil fuel industry at work, world wide.

A Heavy Guitar & Synthesizer Punk (not polished performances, DIY aesthetic ) Philosophical Nursery Rhythm at 145BPM.  With a nod to Frank Zappa and how easily we confuse activity with substance. 

Lyrics: 

Beauty ≠ Love
Silence ≠ Peace
Belief doesn't make it real

Love ≠ Freedom

They may not say
What you think they did

The words are important

Movement ≠ Progress
Progress ≠ Growth
Certainty ≠ Proof
Reason ≠ Meaning

Freedom ≠ Choice
Choice ≠ Power
Justice ≠ Law
Law ≠ Order

The words are important
They may not say
What you think it did

Information ≠ Truth
Knowledge ≠ Wisdom
Truth ≠ Beauty
Wisdom ≠ Truth

Put it on Bandcamp earlier in the week and to our Instagram to no fan fare what so ever.  That is about the extent of our promoting a new release.

Other Things

I like how the last 10 songs I have done sound. Okay with much of the vocals too. Doing a new song in about 3 days means I haven't really spent a lot of time on them, but I don't have any audience so I just do as I please.  

All in G flat (F sharp) with similar riffs and melodic stuff. But that is okay. Ervin Berlin wrote 1500 songs just using the black notes on the piano. 

Written the lyrics for the next one too, Bad Bosses.  Had a few, but second worse boss I had for 2 years at a financial software developer. He took the cost of living pay increase for the year of a team of 12, and gave it to himself instead, and bragged about it. He had the Marketing department promoting himself rather than the companies products, and I don't get how they didn't see that. 

All involved in Sabotage of Potential of staff and Credit Hoarding.  All companies, as looked back on decades later, paid the price though for being so stupid. 

Pain been a big thing with wife and SHINGLES again this week. Hasn't been a good time.  Not going to go into details though. 

Last weeks YouTube short, MONSTERS OF PAIN only had 10 views! Was that because of school holidays here or just algorithm related things I wonder?

I have been doing all the cooking and cleanup single handily for the last 4 weeks or so now.  Something I needed to do, and haven't minded it at all. 

I still haven't baked anything despite keenly following BRITSH BAKE OFF. Just so easy to buy a fancy cake or patisserie here, something very rarely do anyway.

Our JBL RUN2 headphones finally had one earpiece fail during a train trip this week (of a few visiting hospitals) , and I immediately ordered the current JBL RUN3 model when I got home. Couldn't not have music while out and about.  The sound isolation they provide is really good, BUT the Italian songs they had in Saizeriya on Tuesday were so loud they couldn't keep it out! 

I like being able to pull out the earbuds, and have them hang from the top of my ears using the IEM cable over ear way to wear them. That is great, but having to plug them into my phone in my trouser pocket, the cable gets in the way with my train travel card and such.  So have ordered a Lavodio Bluetooth Wireless Audio Receiver, and see if that is more convenient for me, despite being another thing having a rechargeable battery.

The thing iPhone users without a headphone jack could use. 

The clip holding it to your shirt was broken at the hinge before I even opened the shrink warped box. The size of the plastic hinge components is about 1/3 the size of an old Sony Noise Cancelling Earbuds unit I have, so it is just a mechanically bad Chinese design. The strong spring in the clip broke its own plastic hinge component. 

Getting a replacement wouldn't fix that, So I hot rodded an attachment with a clip from SERIA and a bent paperclip.  

This receiver with the JBL RUN3 is good in the trips I have done with it so far.  

Been watching the new THE GHOST IN THE SHELL series. It looks great, and like the manga.

But it is just the same stories I already know, which is kind of a disappointment. Better than ARISE though. That was just dull for me.

YouTube algorithms are garbage now. Doesn't show you much of what you subscribed to, and more likely something related to what you liked on Facebook or searched on Amazon for.  

I am so aware now of the pricing associated with BRANDS and the age groups targeted for different things.  Still getting shown videos of how great the SSL2 MkII audio interface is, justified having around low noise preamps BUT mostly the brand name.  So many useless unboxing videos just repeating the marketing material 😒.

The Internet now has more BOTS on it than PEOPLE, officially.  That is what the access stats for our own website showed from a few years ago.  No shock there at all, and that isn't a good thing. With AI just stealing everything, I don't put my artwork on their anymore. I do put up music, but that is okay, as BOTS are the only ones to listen to it besides me. 😃

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Monsters Of Pain: SHINGLES

 

The childhood "Chicken Pox" virus you had as a kid, lays dormant, and can/will strike painfully
as a run down elderly person. Shingles always seemed a strange harmless name for it to me.

I had Shingles 10 years ago, wife has it now and 3+ weeks into the pain. She didn't start the within the 72 hours treatment  window as she thought the internet told her she had some thing related to a shoulder issue she has.  So PAIN has been a big thing for me in the last weeks, even though not my own pain this time.

I had KIDNEY STONES about 10 years ago too, and that is incredibly painful, but after an ambulance ride to ER and getting Morphine everything is right with the world in short order.  Other drug opens up the water works and it flushed it out easily.  Went home next morning. But that was in Sydney, and don't know about what happens in Kyoto here these days. 

But the real pain I had to endure was after an extensive Hemorrhoidectomy 9 years ago. The first 4 weeks were agony, but I wasn't approaching normal again till after 10 months. Back to normal was after 12 months. The Surgeon had said pain should last no more than 2 weeks, so I was in no way prepared. But the reason I came down with Shingles was because I lost a liter of blood one week and almost passed out once. That was the driver for getting my issue fixed. 

People with some kinds of terminal cancer, have constant extreme pain. Read some don't think giving them Morphine is "right", but have to say that ignores how terrible extreme pain is and giving them Morphine IS the right thing to do to make their end more pleasant.   

Guitars using the NEURAL DSP MODELLER vst for AWSEOME METAL tones. Even if the song isn't METAL.

The animation is reusing something I did from first learning MOHO V12 animation bones on single images, but effective enough for a SHORT and the popcorn brained. 

Lyrics:

Monsters of pain,
A weight on your soul,
Sandcastles crumble
As you lose control.

Pain is a monster,
It tears at your skin.
But standing united,
We're going to win

The tides are rising,
The shore disappears,
Drowning the secrets
And fueling your fears.

Again, not a traditional song [Verse/Chorus repeat] structure, but [Verse/Musical bit repeat]. Why would I want to do what every one else is doing?  The music industry/ record industry is irrelevant to me. 

Worked out to record DI guitar for Neural DSP Modeler, I need zero latency monitoring of a distorted guitar tone. So my signal chain is guitar to Mackie 402VLZ4 and the output of that goes into the Rubix22 inputs. The TAPE OUT of the mixer then goes into a LINE6 distortion pedal and into my ORANGE micro amp, to a 10" cabinet have under the desk.   REAPER is set to AUTO on the GUITAR TRACKS so it doesn't output the recorded signal during recording. 

So I play back the backing through my monitors, while I play the guitar and listen to my ORANGE guitar amp. ZERO latency. 

Other Things

YouTube has been showing me many guitar related channels again. Phil McKnight is one that has had some really interesting stuff to me over recent years.

Like he made 2 of the same guitars, but put a True Temperament neck on one and spent 6 months playing them to work out if it really was better.  His first problem was it took 6 months to get a True Temperament neck after he ordered it for $1,000, and that really shocked him, being an American.  His journey was interesting as he knew others didn't like the better tuning as it made guitar "sound like a piano".  But over his 6 months of using both guitars, for the first 3 months he preferred the sound of the traditional frets, but in the end found the True Temperament was "better".   It is subtle though.  

Made me realize True Temperament definitely isn't a must have for me.  

He also has a lot of videos about "are expensive guitars worth it or not?".  The thing with over $1,000 guitars is that they don't play better and the attraction is other things like the beauty or recapturing something from your youth (if you were really into guitars then). 

In this one from a couple of months ago he discovered GUITAR Marketing for young people is all about expensive custom shop and boutique guitars. All FOMO based.  For old guys, the opposite!

I have seen the same thing here, where Osaka Sound Messe is all about expensive boutique guitars, and that this is some how normal. NOT spending $4000 means your not even in the game. The kind of X advert for guitars: 

Japan is kind of a different case, where keeping up appearances is important. Really Important. iPhone market share is 60%+ in Japan and 20%+ rest of the world, as it really is expensive, and THE thing to have. The clothes people wear, accessories and your company title changes how people relate to you.  

There is a TAMAHOMES housing area not far from here, where all the "reasonably affordable" smallish homes are all variations on the same 8 or so components. I think Australia should have something like that. But some of the places still have EXPENSIVE cars like BMW and MERCEDES BENZ parked out front, which to my non-Japanese way of thinking is just really wrong money priorities. 

In another of Phil's videos where he talks about expensive guitars he says there are many that just don't care about expensive (over $800~$1000) guitars and I am one of them. 😊

Another thing I have come to realize over the last few years is that I aren't a guitar guy,  and only care about the recorded sound of a finished piece of music I do in my studio. Synthesizers are even cooler, and the studio/DAW, and having my own RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP is what I am about.  Don't care about bespoke guitars and the culture around that.  

I was involved with developments of the Fairlight Instruments CMI series II & III in the 1980s, but I never had or used one, and really don't care about the new CPU System on a card Freshwater Instruments has done. Lots of CMI fans do though.  To me a CMI is so limited compared to what anyone can do with the REAPER DAW and simple gear now.  But I think the fans are Synth People/ Collectors the same way the Bespoke Guitar buyers are. It isn't about them using whatever to make music, even if they do that sometimes. 

Came across Kenny Gray Comedy+Music and love it. He has videos on Instagram, but I just love his GARY NUMAN-ISH INDOORBOY

 

I wish I had written that song.

Was expecting to go to THE GHOST IN THE SHELL exhibit in Hyogo this week, but it is extreme hot here 

and info from the site says it is expected to be extremely crowded and you need a ticket with a time to enter.  That is not any fun, and with my wife in the condition she is have put off going. I may get there before it closes August 30th, but maybe not.  

Much on display is in the MAKING OF books I have had for decades, and it was the original manga work of Masamune Shirow I saw last year that was the real must see to me

X has always had a massive problem with bots/ farms.  I get so tired of the engagement farming and even good guys can post way to much.  Keeping up isn't worth the trouble, but luckily I don't have notifications on for any social media, don't use the Apps at all, so it can silently all go past without bothering me. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

I'm Not A Rockstar: Cancer takes another...

 

A bit faster at 145BPM than recent tracks. 

Guitar, synths, techno drums and the synth noises/ sweeps are a KORG MONOTRON

Something of a reaction to being a care-er in recent weeks, and for many, the fashion and look aspect of being a musician are so important, and aren't anymore when I am a grandfather in my late 60s. 

The Sennheiser e945, in a small desk stand with mesh pop filter has simplified my singing setup/tear down in our tiny studio and I seem to be able to hear myself better now.  Putting vocals on something is so much easier now.  Coming up with Lyrics isn't something I spend any time doing.

Much of Marty Friedman's book Dreaming Japanese I read last year seems to be fussing about his hair, being short and fashion. He was a rockstar. My own hair was so important to me in the last years of High School, but not in the 50 years since.

Lyrics:

I'm not a rock star, 
no fancy shoes 
no fashion sense
No fancy hair
An ordinary guy, 

I'm not a rock star, 
a  family man, 
a steady guy.
no fancy shirts
no make up
Just An ordinary guy, 

I'm not a rock star.
no flashing lights,
no big guitar,
a quiet life
just an ordinary guy,

I'm not a rock star.
no stadiums,
no screaming crowds,
no limousines
Just a quiet life,

On Bandcamp.

I put it on Bandcamp  and posted to X and Bluesky about it a week before releasing the Music+Comic. But my followers have zero interest in any music I put there.  It is just my own vanity publishing project.  Okay with that as I have already had my own 15 minutes of fame in another field over 20 years ago.

Will I do another new song this week? Don't know. I seem to be out of inspiration, or maybe the domestic things occupying my time make it unnecessary .  

Other Things

The kitchen in our now 7 year old new house in Japan used to be my wife's domain. Took me years to be able to make anything there, but I have been preparing meals the last week+.  Caring for others makes you feel good, and being able to look after myself when I need to is back at the level it was when I lived in Australia.

Australian political cartoonist Pat Oliphant, who made it in the USA, has passed away, aged 90 this week. There is a  glorious film on him I need to track down. The Trailer:

2 cartoons he came out of retirement to do:

Oliphant  favoring neither liberals nor conservatives.  'We Are in a Forest Fire of Ignorance'

8 years ago during down sizing I ended up throwing away about half of my once cherished Cinfex collection. Issues 74 to 119. I kept 85 the 2001 issue

But the once great magazine of cinema special effects had lost anything of interest to me way before then. They went out of business during COVID. I wasn't the only one that cancelled their subscription.

Once the industry changed to hiring a bunch of disposable CG animators and their workstations, there was little of interest to me in an article saying "we used XXX software" and "YYY wrote a cool shader to do ZZZ".

I changed too. Narrowing my interests to what I can actually be involved with in some way, or be useful to me in my own creative adventures in retirement.

Facebook is a very different thing now compared to when I first joined. At first it showed you stuff people you knew posted, even if it was an outside link. Now it rarely shows anything people you know post, and for me it is all about the groups I am in.  Only 3 or 4 I know post anything at all now.

I don't post actual personal stuff there any more. Just my MUSIC+COMICS.  It is the place people I know DM me. 

The English Musician Composer, Hans Zimmer, Peter Gabriel collaborator, once Fairlight Instruments CMI III demonstrator/support person Rodger Bolten has passed away, I learnt 2026/7/17.  Just a couple of years younger than myself. I never met him in person, as I left Fairlight Instruments the time he joined. He had been posting about his hospital visits and treatments the last 2 years or so, and stopping the treatment for his cancer a few months ago.  He had it rough recently, collapsing in his apartment and the fire brigade rescuing him. Waking to huge weeping swellings on both knees, a side effect of a chemotherapy drug administered 2 years ago and now banned. A long list of rather terrible things, but he always appreciated the hospital and staff treating him.

He was the first person ever some 2 years ago to video call me out of the blue.  We talked about old CMI III things, such as the System Floppy Disk I made for the first system to get to the UK.  RIP

 

Enshit-tification by Cory Doctorow, interestingly explains what UBER and TIK-TOK did, but not that  YouTube is doing the same thing. Manipulating the metrics to exploit creators and users.

My blog and song of a couple of weeks ago, BAIT AND SWITCH SUPPREME was all about that too. I dislike intensely that a smart phone is now required to even allow many online accounts for 2FA, and a phone has a built in end of life with non replaceable battery and software made obsolete for pure profit motives.  We are all just cattle to the tech industry.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Who Are You & What Do You Want?

 

Who Are You when the titles and status are no longer in play?

An important life question to know the answer of.  Some men have a big problem retiring and not having their position anymore.  There is a common story that "many" Japanese Men follow there wives around like wet leaves stuck to their wives shoes after they retired. Don't be that old man!

Also what Mr.Morden asked all the ambassadors in Babylon 5. 

Another of my amateur Heavy Metal/ Techno/ Pop/ Nursery Rhythm/ MUSIC+COMICS . It isn't a generic verse/chorus structure but rather 8 bar alternating musical bit and verse with 2 longer musical bits.

They don't have a repeating chorus either.  Just what I am doing at the moment and no set in stone rule I have set my self.

Jut straight ahead 4/4. I have tried to get into Prog Metal, but the stop start nature of it isn't what I need.  May be amazing technique, but that isn't attractive to me. 

I seen advice to record the vocals 10 times and comp together the best bits to make the perfect take. I don't go to that much trouble. 2 or 3 takes and just keep the best one for each verse. I will listen to the completed track a 1,000 times and may decide, like this time,  some words could be better, then record those verses again, 2 or 3 takes. I am the only one to play a track more than once so it really doesn't matter in my case. I am not some guy trying to go PRO and make a career out of music.

The rhythm guitar is this 8 string going through the DONNER 10 Band EQ (to cut lowest 2 bands)  into the POD EXPRESS BLACK Anvil+CAB. 

The melodic guitar is my Ibanez RG350. The drums and synths are very Dubstep/ Techno and I like that. The bass sequence is almost just a pedal tone, but it does drive it along.

Simple hummable riffs and melodies are all I am after.  This one kind of reminds me of the vocal sound of THE EAGLES (rather than Tull's Ian Anderson of a previous one), even if I am not a fan of them, but due to the tone and register of my voice and the multitracking. 

The track Who Are You? is on Bandcamp.

The Demon is a Copic marker on paper sketch I did a few years ago. One of 2 demons in an old Japanese illustration I have in a book somewhere. 

In MOHO V12 pro I assigned BONES to it and manipulate those to warp the illustration a bit to make it move a little.  

Lyrics:

Who are you,
and what do you want? 
The truth will set you free.

When titles and status 
are no longer in play.
Who do you see
at the end of the day?
 
Sift  through the pieces 
 find what lacks.
Tear the shadows 
Bring light back.

So drop all the armor 
and step from the dark,
See the version of you 
that you really are.

あなたは誰なのか 
 そして何を望んでいるのか？ 
真実はあなたを自由にする。

肩書きや地位が 
もはや意味をなさなくなったとき。
一日の終わりに、
あなたは誰を見ているのか？
 
断片を一つひとつ
見極め、欠けているものを見つけ出せ。
影を引き裂き、
光を取り戻せ。

だから、すべての鎧を脱ぎ捨て、
闇から踏み出せ。
そして、
本当の自分を見よ。

EDIT: 2026/07/22 Next day has had around 600 views (then it is just turned off on the SHORT feed, completely artificial numbers), but most only watch the first 9 seconds, which is even before when the drums come in!  The POPCORN BRAINED. 

The FB stats same deal. Turn tap on/ turn tap off after a fixed number.

 Enshittification and dumbing down run unabated. 

Other Things

Second time to replace closed back KRK KNS8400 headphones rotting earpads. An earpad and headrest set from Amazon.  Much prefer open headphones BUT recording vocals need closed back, and these isolate really well.

The realities of getting older with a sick spouse were our lot for the last weeks. Nothing serious, but trying. Luckily I didn't have to go anywhere at all. Preparing meals and the clean up after.  I had 帯状疱疹 too about 10 years ago. 

Met up with youngest son for morning after putting it off due to heavy rainy season rain for the last 2 weeks.  He gave me this late FATHERDAYS gift.

An AKIRA + EVANGELION mashup piece. Very cool.

And the rainy season is now officially over so the humidity and temperature skyrocket.

Kyoto Live House GATTACA July 17 - Anima Tempo JAPAN TOUR 2026

7月14日(火) 京都 GATTACA  

開場 17:30 / 開演 18:00

前売 ¥3,400 / 当日 ¥3,900 / 学割 ¥2,400 (+1Drink)

Anima Tempo is a Mexican Prog Metal Band I hadn't heard of. 5 bands in one night sounds like it finishes late.  Has Rikugo in the line up at a place I haven't been to before, but isn't far from here. But can I go? 

Would like to see them again. They supported Freak Kitchen last year, and the first time I saw them.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Psychedelusion AI

 

Psychedelic Delusion:  the scientific and philosophical debate surrounding whether profound, life-altering insights from some drugs are genuinely revelatory, or merely delusions from temporarily brain disfunction.

Psychedelusion: A similar thing applied to AI. Life-altering insights and mystical experiences from AI THAT ARE completely delusional!

Psychedelusion a term I made up yesterday. 😃

Lyrics below are just supposed to be Psychedelic.  Vague and just all out of your mind words of a experience rather than dig into the meaning of the title. It is more fun that way, and what I need at the moment. 

Lyrics: 

Ooohh the right thing 
Melts right through the floor 
Spinning like a neon sign 
On a locked up door 

 

The colors start to breathe 
The walls begin to bend 
We’re walking backwards to the start 
To find the heavy end

The static turns to sound 
The shadows learn to speak 
We’re climbing down the mountain top 
To find the lowest peak

This just came out of playing with the Mackie 402VLZ4 Roland Rubix22 Reaper DAW set up re-installed during the week. Allows ZERO LATENCY input monitoring. 64 sample buffer gives 3.4ms latency. Will use this for awhile. They used to say a change is as good as a holiday.

Expected the bright colorful animation will make it more popular than the pencil Greek philosophers of last week music+comic.

See so many on social media and YouTube, "all about music". About the gear, or fashion, or some other non sound aspect, but actually making and releasing music itself isn't what they seem to do very often... cool solos though...  

Other Things

Lots of rain during the week. The Rainy Season hasn't let up much.

The year is half over and that speed just gets faster and faster as you age. 

Killswitch Engage, melodic metalcore, is new to me and have been listening to some 6 tracks with great riffs on repeat the last few days.  The guitarist uses a fixed bridge, rather simple down tuned 6 string guitar.  180BPM and lots of pick slides in his technique. Too fast for old me. His current Caparison TAT Special FX "Metal Machine" Guitar is at that 400,000yen price of the boutique/ collector stuff in Japan.  

Been thinking about a 10 band EQ pedal for the 8 string for awhile, as my BOSS EQ-7 doesn't  have the required low bands, and testing with a 10 band EQ vst before Neural Dsp Modeler shows that tightens up the low end sound a lot.

Looked at that MXR pedal, but this Donner seems more appropriate for my low end home studio use to go in front of the POD EXPRESS BLACK.  Those sliders would be so fragile for stage use, but that isn't how I use it.   

All I really need are the 31.25 and 62.5 Hz bands and in a previous life I would have made something myself, probably just a variable High Pass Filter, but I aren't that person anymore, and just couldn't be bothered.  

In 1938 psychologist B.F. Skinner, using the "Skinner box" to dispense food to rats and pigeons when a button pressed discovered "Variable Ratio Reinforcement Schedule" is extremely addictive. SM is now built around it  for both users and creatives. The whole reason a posts or video will generate completely different view numbers. We are all rats in a Skinner Box to YouTube, X, Facebook etc. Constant Bait & Switch, as the Algorithms Spin

Just because you understand what is happening doesn't mean you can control yourself on Social Media 

Powerful stuff. 

Dopamine is produced when you are expecting something feel-good.   Not on the actual receiving of the feel-good thing. So dopamine sky rockets on looking on your feed expecting to find something good.  When you don't, you try 10 minutes later, again... 

A related piece from him is related to this in that the powerful and wealthy loose empathy. This now is a scientific fact. And they are the ones controlling the country. Maybe the reason America and the UK have become dystopias. Despite NASA and other super cool really attractive American things. It isn't just the current administrations but a wealth imbalance system.  

See yesterday actor/body builder that was in Mad Max 2 died yesterday at 76 after a long painful illness. See a lot of things like that and comments from the other retired.  One of the early 60s retired in America is in a group of retirees where they share what is going on mentally and physically.  The GO/ SLOW GO/ NO GO years came from him. He mentioned a few in their late 60s died recently. They don't just die of one thing though. There is a cascade of health issues in the last year(s). I think about that  and see it in people I know.  

You just don't know how long anyone has.

Another thing that comes up amongst the retired introverts is they don't want to deal with others. Being alone with your own thoughts and interests is the best.  I very much feel that way too. The ones that suffer from loneliness are the extroverts, not everyone.  This seems common knowledge now.

Who are you? is a question I answered years ago even before retiring.

Joe mentions it in his latest video here too.  Many men, apparently, are lost after they leave their "position of title and authority" where ever they worked. They don't know who they are without that. And the reality is that is never who they were, but what a job they had was.  

The only 2 things I will comment on in his 12 here are WORK STRESS and WHO YOU ARE.  

Loosing the stress was such a huge thing for me when I retired. Life changing to not be responsible for solving big problems not of my own creating.  So much happier without that,

Musical Cartoonist is what I think of myself now, despite being involved with high tech electronics & software/firmware design and development for much of my career.  It doesn't have the status, but no one cares about you, other than your wife and kids, after you retire anyway. You are just one of those old guys...

Updated my EP- The Songs to have 8 songs and a 12 page PDF booklet now. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN