Huge Discovery

I wish I knew why this blog is read

by almost as many people in France, as the U.S.

so that I could give them more of what they crave...

United States	545
France	496
Germany	62
Poland	40
China	30
Romania	18
Ukraine	17
Canada	16
Portugal	11
Australia	7

Blessed Silence

In poking around inside my Carrier heating and air conditioning unit, I discovered a lever, which I might not have seen before because from the angle it sits at, it doesn't look like a lever.

"Decibels" is an actual specification on the things!

It shuts the water flow through one of the hoses, which are labeled "in" and "out."
As I rotated it, the pitch of the sound changed and diminished and, finally stopped. A blessed silence filled the room. I could hear the silence.

It was kind of like the silence you become aware of when you are taking a shower and the water is hitting your head and ears full blast and then you shut it off; and suddenly, you can hear yourself breathing...

There was the faint sound of a trolley passing by coming from across the street, and then, as I sat on my couch, I heard the refrigerator kick on in the kitchen. "I can unplug the thing when I record music," I thought. Having all the meat in the freezer go rancid would be a fair trade-off should a recording project be going so well that I lose track of time..."
I am still going to try to get into the abandoned building that used to be a rectory, as I can imagine its top floor being almost professional studio quality silence.

I've seen old black and white photos of The Beatles in the Abbey Road Studios, and a lot of times there would just be a sound baffling board in between John and Paul, so that maybe a tiny bit of each other's vocals would bleed through their respective microphones.

This was most likely compensated for by the "immediacy" of being able to sync up with each other and feel each other breathing, etc.

The proof is in the pudding when you put on their albums.

So, I am kind of ecstatic over the fact that I can shut the valve off in the unit and the sound metering on the Audacity display even reflects the change in background noise.

It was impossible to take that noise out of the music without reducing the "h" sounds in my voice, and any breathing in between. Speaking of The Beatles, I wouldn't be able to do John Lennon's famous breath sounds in the song "Girl," off of Rubber Soul(?) using the noise reduction because it sounds too much like my heating and air conditioning unit.

There is a possibility that the units are daisy-chained so that the flow through mine continues through a pipe to the apartments upstairs, and that, by cutting it off I am stopping the flow through the whole building, but fuck them. My recordings are more important than the comfort of anyone else in Sacred Heart Apartments.

The guy directly above me is a small black guy who wears a shaved head and who originally had Harold, my cat.

He is the one that put Harold out in the parking lot, after taking in a roommate who was allergic to cats, or just didn't like them, or something.

He is kind of mentally ill (or is doing a good job of faking it in order to keep his housing "voucher") and was feeding Harold Vienna Sausages and other things that the cat still has an aversion to. He is always seen wearing headphones. I have thought about doing the same thing so that I could walk around without being skeezed.
If a skeezer has the audacity to tap me on the shoulder while I'm bobbing my head to "the music," then he is in line for a sarcastic response anyways.

Knife

I am in the market for a razor sharp knife which is designed to be a self-defense weapon.
I'm going to Google "knife fighting maneuvers," also.
It's a sign of the times.

I walk through New Orleans at 2 AM with a guitar and backpack on me, for crying out loud. The reason I haven't been jumped is probably because thugs assume I'm carrying something protective, otherwise I would never have the balls to just do that...

I might just slash someone across the throat who looks like the insolent piece of shit on the right.
"Close enough," right?