Category Archives: EPHEMERA

Living with an Eighteen Year Old…Cat

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About a year ago our cat Auguste (Twizby) was diagnosed with the first signs of kidney failure. This level was too high, the other too low. He had already been eating a prescription dry food for kidney health, but recently he stopped eating it almost entirely. We had him checked out again and switched him to the wet version of the same type of food and he was super into it. Soon we found out his too high/too low levels were even more so, and the vet prescribed him a few medications (Naruquin for phosphorus levels and Renacare for potassium levels).

Context: A few years ago our older cat Minty went though a similar situation, but his escalated very quickly, resulting in a check-in with the vet that he didn’t return from. So this was very much on our minds with Auguste.

Fortunately the medications worked/are working, and hopefully will continue to work. Auguste is still with us, still excited to eat his horrible smelling wad of prescription food gloop, is still keeping on eye on the neighborhood, and is still waking everyone up at 4am with his pacing and faux-mournful meowing. Fantastic.

Go to (Milk) Bread

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Made Japanese Milk Bread from the Milk Street cookbook over the weekend. It’s my second time and both have turned out great. I’m the kind of sicko that sometimes thinks I could happily survive on nothing but buttered bread and water, so being able to make my own, even a couple simple varieties, is a nice skill to have. Milk bread (slightly crunch crust, very soft but stable interior) is a bit more complicated but none of the stages are themselves all that esoteric, though if you’re a slowpoke like me it will eat up an entire day. It makes enough to freeze for later and it comes back to life rather well, so bonus. Also, dog approved.

Latham Eat Raspberries

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Planted nine raspberry canes over the weekend. Days later and I’m still a broken man.

Growing up, my grandmother had a swath of raspberry bushes that produced more berries than we could eat. That seems impossible now (I can eat a lot of them) but I think it’s true. Raspberries are my favorite food, hands down. Recently I had bought a pack of them at the grocery store to use in a dessert or something and ended up eating almost all of them while standing over the kitchen sink. In this economy? I figured it was time to make my own.

So, fingers crossed we should see some next year.

(Note: Latham is a University of Minnesota variety originally released in 1920 and “was the most widely planted raspberry in the United States during the 1930s and ’40s.“)

Dog for scale.
a can of royal raspberry sour ale in the wheelbarrow
Liquid inspiration.

ACQUIRED: Squarepusher – KAMMERKONZERT (Limited Edition)

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The new one from Squarepusher, KAMMERKONZERT, just arrived. I’ve been listening to the download from Bleep since it released a couple weeks ago. This time around we hear Tom Jenkinson (the pusher himself) inhabit an entire jazz orchestra sprinkled with his trademark bass guitar gymnastics, electronic jabs and throbs, frantic drums (both real and programmed) and a full compliment of string, horns, and woodwinds played at a thousand notes per second down to softer, thoughtful, languid interludes. In other words, it’s a Squarepusher record all right. But die-hard fans of his drill & bass style might be disappointed in this much more organic, flowing, modern classical form (see also: ULTRAVISITOR), echoed in the album art that features multiple exposure black and white photos of what seem to be traditional acoustic instruments on a dark and mysterious stage. All very Blue Note Records-esque and it’s obvious that Jenkinson wants this to be considered a recording of a sweaty, intense live performance despite it all coming from just one guy. At times it can come off as a bit of an impenetrable whirlwind, but its mastery of the form is undeniable.

NOTE: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a hidden track on a vinyl record. It’s on Side 1 where after the third track there is a silent locked groove (meaning it will just keep spinning but not moving the needle forward.) But there is a fourth track beyond that that can only be heard by picking up the needle and placing it on the track manually. (You can see the gap in tracks in the photo below.) This hidden track is a short piece a la SOLO ELECTRIC BASS 1.

PHOTO: This is What You Want

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Working on a custom paint job for the Cross Bone Gundam Maoh and realizing it’s a bit like the (literally) crazy robot in Hardware, one of my favorite movies. Really. If you like industrial music even a little, you need to see it. It’s kind of beautiful (and kind of bad, but still). I covered “The Order of Death”, the PiL song used in the end credits. It’s in the Endless Compendium.

ACQUIRED: Earth Tongue – DUNGEON VISION

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Got the new album DUNGEON VISION from the New Zealand fuzz rock duo Earth Tongue. Artwork is fantastic (I passed on the super deluxe version) and perfectly reflects the music’s mystical and arcane feel. The amount of power these two infuse into their often dirge-y yet playful classic metal songs is impressive. Their videos are also all spot on and worth checking out.

PHOTO: What’s He Building In There

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grainy low-light photo of a very small plastic skull and separate jaw clamped to a DIY cardboard block

My wife and I have fallen back into the grip of Gundam/Gunpla building. We more-or-less straight built a few of them decades ago, and this time around we’re learning more about painting and detailed finishes. I have to admit that I don’t enjoy painting nearly as much as building them, but it’s been an interesting new process to learn about at least.

Unsurprisingly I’m drawn to the more esoteric models, like the one pictured here, the XM-X9999 Crossbone Gundam Maoh. Obviously it’s all about the giant shrieking laser skull for me (although at 1/144 scale it’s laughably small.) I have big plans for a completely different paint job, and if it works you’ll see it here first.

I promise this (probably) won’t turn into a gunpla blog. But I do have…a few more waiting in the wings.

ACQUIRED: Drone Not Drones 2026 T-Shirt

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Recently received the new 2026 DRONE NOT DRONES t-shirt. According to their site: “ALL PROFITS [GO] TO MINNEAPOLIS legal/rent/resources MUTUAL AID orgs in response to the DHS armed occupation of our city.” That city being Minneapolis and surrounding area. Abolish ICE.

I’ve played at the 28-hour drone festival a couple times over the years. It’s an extraordinary occurrence featuring dozens of participants taking turns playing a small part of one unbroken performance across two days. Recordings of my own sets from 2014 and 2017 are available in THE ENDLESS COMPENDIUM.