Hunting Sound

Instructional video demonstrating the proper installation and calibration of a feline audio limiter. Optimal attack and release times may vary depending on usage. 

Fuzzy logic based VST plugin currently under development.

Meeting in Dreams

Separated by over 3,600 miles (that’s over 5,800 km, in metric), two cats are dreaming the same dream. 

Snow covers the ground. Outside is all frozen silence.

But in the dream, the amps are nicely warmed up, the valves are glowing, and the guitars and pedals are all plugged in. They look at each other...like two cats.

One cat says, “meow?”

The other cat says, “meow.”

It is settled then. 

Dog's Breakfast?

I'm all ears.

Weekly Rat

Truth in advertising? That’ll be the day. 

No, I think they were grossly exaggerating the duration of the average between-rat interval. In reality, it is probably more like seven seconds than seven days. And the service definitely wouldn’t have been affable. I think not. A bit hard to be affable when all the towels smell like a wet dog — and, in case you weren’t convinced by the smell, are also realistically wet and hairy.

Fortunately, we are honest.

Monday Machines do not have a CD out yet. You have no idea what our music sounds like, or if, indeed, it is even music. But now — this is the exciting part — you can show off to others that your musical tastes are so discerning, so sophisticated, that you are a fan of a band so obscure that nobody has ever heard one of their recordings! 

How? Well, now, you know something else your friends don’t know: we’ve got a CafePress shop full of shirts and mugs and stuff. 

Link: Monday Machines: Accessories

Machine Safari

The JCB was eerily silent, its appendages lowered, seemingly unaware of my intrusion on its native woodland habitat. 

Vocabulary

sub•cul•ture noun

A collective term used to describe a sub-set of people who pretend to conform to a particular watered-down, over-simplified set of fashion or lifestyle stereotypes, which has been heavily promoted by the media establishment as defining the individuality of an exclusive, deviant, cultural group, in an effort to facilitate corporate exploitation through marketing of carefully branded consumer goods to the masses.

Revolt!

Today is the anniversary of my birth.

It was not long after my birth that I learned about music.

I was only half-way through the intro to the ABBA song when I realised it was hopeless. Suddenly I understood the cruel, bitterly unfair world into which I had been thrown, and I knew then and there that I must revolt.

I have been doing so ever since.

Most semi-intelligent life-forms would be content simply to “be revolted” for a few moments, after which the normal day-to-day activities of soap operas, bland food, and thimble collecting would resume unaltered, and in time the unsavoury incident would be expunged from their sketchy memory banks for good, edged out by countless other items of equivalent inanity and insignificance. 

Me? I am not so passive; not nearly so forgiving either.

I decided to become a maker of music. 

And a maker of stories...see, I can’t actually remember what it was in the headphones, but lucky for me, it’s far more likely that it was the Beatles than ABBA. 

Unfortunately for all of us though, even some years later, the Muzakbiznus still remains virtually infallible in its ability to find yet another automaton—or entire group of automatons—who are able and willing to wield a sugary chorus like an over-produced bludgeon, and to pound the brains of an entire generation to a gelatinous pulp. 

 

(Vomit. Rinse. Repeat.)

Need a zombie? Forget voodoo—use top 40 radio. It is much faster.

Fortunately, I was spared such horrors for the first few years of my life, but you can’t hide from that sort of thing indefinitely, so now...now I will turn my headphones up and drown it out with something dark and obscure.

Something of my own creation.

... evil laugh ...

More

I'm rather orthodox these days when it comes to  matters of porridge,  preferring bananas, honey and cinnamon above most other things, but I must admit that I dabbled and experimented quite a bit when I was younger .

At one time there was almost nothing that I wouldn't try once- here are some of the things that I have added to porridge in my grueling and somewhat quixotic quest for the Breakfast of Champions:

-Jalapeno peppers
 Not as good as it sounds. Works better served seperately as a dessert.

-  Tomato
 Inedible but visually interesting. Makes a great 'break-up' dish. 
 
- Peanut Butter
Avoid hydrogenated oils and you'll be OK.

-Hamburger
Traumatic. One of many reasons I rarely eat meat.
  
-Beer
Can't recall what it tasted like.

-Other oatmeal
Do not mix 'instant' oatmeal with traditional oats. There are some worlds that were never meant to intersect.

-Garlic
 Smells betters than it tastes.

-Cheddar cheese
Will congeal into a nearly-solid ,stringy spoon-defying mass as it cools. 

-Ground Glass
Was noticed by the intended victim before consumption.

 

Porridge: The Official Breakfast of Monday Machines

Porridge detractors, take heed:

According to Wikipedia, “Oat porridge has been found in the stomachs of 5,000 year old Neolithic bog bodies in Central Europe and Scandinavia.”

Anything with that sort of track record must have something going for it, and indeed, it has many virtues. Let’s see...it’s absurdly quick and easy to prepare, combines well with fruit and cinnamon, is all-natural, hot, filling, nutritious, and delicious. In other words, porridge is quite possibly a perfect food.

But, beware: if it comes in a serving-size laminated packet with microwave instructions, unpronounceable ingredients, and added sugar, it is not porridge, no—it is an evil, blasphemous, false porridge only. Resist temptation—and remember, he who eateth only from the goodness of the One True Porridge shall have everlasting gruel.