What's in my bag?

 I've been working on my "hospital bag" for quite some time now. The current bag started as a minimal container for my phone, headphones and vape going to routine physical therapy mostly. It has worn in and had an amazing woven piece sewn onto the flap. The strap gained a vintage, broken guitar strap sewn on with "X"es of 2 different strings. I put binder pouches on for pockets, but 1 of the zippers broke and I can't find the rest of them. The bag itself is of fine hemp twine, but an inner pocket of sisal or jute twine was made and installed. It sucks. Under-seat bicycle pouches got attached to the sides. This brings us to a total of 8 pockets and not only did I not count the broken 1, but there are not enough.

I reinforce my store-bought sketchbooks with cardboard and decorate the front. This one has an annoying "seems like not a coil, but it is a coil" binding that gets stuck on the weave/knit of my bag. I had intended to make a tape cover for this, but forgot. The game emulator is an Anbernic 351 V and I modded a Handy Boy Gameboy attachment to fit. It was a long and difficult process that will pay like a motherfucker when I get my single room. I made an easel-like tripod for my phone from that same kind of wire, old medical finance cards and duct tape. One piece of advanced technology to bring is a small square of cloth to clean my glasses, phone and video game. The beard trimming scissors also turn out to do a great job cutting fingernails.

Basic summary of bag contents: phone, headphones, sketchbook, art supplies, video game. Various other odds and ends and a little bit more brick a brack accessories for said equipment: charger, cables, pencils, etc. Ain't it too fucking bad I'm not dissecting this thing for photos at a hallway bed?

What else but hospital chronicles?

 Back in again. I was ordered to go at wound care because there is a small hole in my heel that leads to a larger cavity within. The pain up my whole leg had an effect on my decision.

The item I really wish to discuss here is admissions and intake. The patient goes to the hospital seeking help and relief. There is no effort made to reassure the patient in any way. No pain drugs, no explanation of what will happen, not even any flaunting of titles and tenure. The only reassurance I've gotten here is seeing a woman who put a red dangling toy on the handle section of her red electric wheelchair. I told her how well it "pulls the whole deal together", makes it more cohesive. Hospital staff want to tear off the bandages, substitute a hospital robe for 2 shirts and put me in off-putting postures, locations and positions. They want to expose and provoke any existing problems. The long wait time does play into this equation. I left around 3:30 and got to a hallway bed around 10:30.

These are part of a series I'm collecting/creating. Curved hospital mirrors. I really like how they distort the reflection. Anything different really draws my attention, but repetition does a similar thing. The recent repetition which has caused problems is digestive issues and the bathroom. I would need to go, get down there and very little would come out, but immense pressure would still be building. I would be there so long that I would give up and go upstairs, only to turn around in minutes.

What did work with intake admissions this time is someone put a good IV at a decent location on my left arm and the middle eastern doctor got through my info so smoothly it amazed me when I realized how much of my current events got communicated. Just like the expert who was dealing with my pelvic ortho. That man sat there with me and current x-rays of my body parts and explained all about what was going on. I was freaking out over the hospital message service and instead of making more problems for me (like anyone else would do), he decided to stop some problems and prevent some. If only the medical system were arab instead of the scam phone calling system...

Video beefs again

 I recently watched 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) to find another example of cruel treatment possibly leading to destructive behavior. Pepe sells the vial or the monster to the scientist, who locks it in a cage outdoors, half-ass covers it with a tarp and walks away. The thing is growing so fast that if you don't treat it kindly and help it right away, the chance is lost.

I don't know if I've been over this a trillion times, but How Its Made would have been better as How It Works. It's just manufacturing machines and basic assemblies. When the electric razor was produced, nothing of the mechanism was shown. I wanted to know how it makes the blade move and see the inside parts when that happens.

Also learned the song, "Something" by Elvis Presley. It was exactly the challenge level I needed. Different timing, 3 kinds of 7th chords, writing my own E6 to save time and put it in the right place, 2 similar basslines and a fill. Awesome! I did write to E guitar though, so that was sandbagging a little.

Watching No Reservations (tv series), a chef said that if someone closed his restaurant, he would just make a new one. Years ago, I was in a band and there was a dispute over whether to give our demo recording to someone for publicity. Band members argued that the song would be stolen and I asked if they could write another song. They said no!

Evaluation of a situation

 There are many who claim to know everyone's problems, origin of and solution to. Nobody could truthfully claim anything like this. I only propose an idea about how to look at things and determine what's going on and why. I only propose that we take all elements, forces and effects into account. No individual issue, item or subject is the sole cause of any situation. If someone is "acting out", there are subjects withiin them and outside, around them contributing to the situation. Something has angered them and something has pushed them so far as to have that level of activity that available on their menu of what to do. If a mechanical part breaks, the part may have been installed wrong by someone in the previously mentioned type of situation as well as manufactured wrong for a host of other reasons or damaged in shipping, usage, accident, abuse... There are so many factors at play in anything.

A factor not considered in film reviewing is why so many are centered around and driven by conflict. Video media like TV shows and internet postings too. I got more "ultra hippieized" by some recent trauma and realized this while watching a long line of conflict. What else could happen? Exploration and explanation are good and included in things like travel and food shows. I defaulted to Anthony Bourdain's video catalog when I had my video conflict revelation. This caused a drive for documentary style movies and TV (most movies are REALLY negative) and music videos and concert footage. Another source of negativity is the BBC. On their nature shows like planet earth 2 and life of plants, conflict and disgust dominate. I've watched stuff in which the anteater is glossed over as quickly as possible so the rest of the duration could be used to show the ants. Underwater? Get out the macro and look for the most insect-like crustaceons. BBC just has to show animals fighting, eating one another in slow motion repeated multiple times, or the grossest shit around.

Some of the concerts are blowing me away. These musicians really fucking throw down the gauntlet as far as setting a bar in technique, writing and performance. Black metal guitarists are showing rhythmic variety untold with right hand picking. A power metal band, Sonata Arctica live in Finland, almost makes me cry with music that goes straight to the me inside me. Hindustani classical sarod and sitar players are turning out to be bonkers good sometimes (or some folks) and totally incoherent or annoying with others. I wrote some about music evaluation last post. This language of music is all I really understand. English speech in America is pretty fucked up if you listen and think.

Old JRPGs and Hindustani classical music

 I like the older, lo-fi, retro, vintage jrpgs for a few reasons. The 1st is less status effects. I've had my folks blinded, silenced, confused, turned to stone, etc. for decades in Final Fantasies. To go without for even a few minutes is great. Simplicity of game mechanics makes any of these games playable by me, as soon as I figure out the yes and no buttons. Being able to play it for a little while without crushing defeat helps. I like blocky, old graphics sometimes and newer, slicker graphics at others, for diffrent reasons. The old graphics are expressive, cartoonish, creative  and charming. New graphics are great for more action. I don't want action. That brings the next point: the old jrpg grinding zone-out. Time is forgotten and running each battle more in my favor takes over. This currently leads to falling asleep, but with more rest it works.

Another odd thing I like is Hindustani classical music. Lots of concerts were available on archive and I was just looking for interesting or watchable concert videos. I've heard enough so I can tell what the musicians are doing most of the time. I'm recognizing repeating patterns and matching up the strings and percussion understandably in my head. I've heard enough music to listen for things like using multiple parts in a song, variety of technique and within said technique, note choice and phrasing. Some of the Hindustani sitar and sarod players are real shred-masters at their instrument. Westrn European note frequency and rhythmic variety are absolutely left in India's dust. Some of the metal guitarists I've heard might be able to hold a candle to this by sheer riff generation. I'm thinking of Jon Nordstrand of Dissection. Storm of the Light's Bane, Feathers Fell, Where Dead Angels Lie, The Somberlain... His rhythm guitar alone provides enough riff generating variety. Abbath Doom Occulta of Immortal is king of right hand picking though. The one thing I prefer in western European system is recognizable, repeating parts that come back. These Hindustani folks are just on a long solo and most of it improvised (told in 1 of the videos by a sitarist). If they had a hook chorus to come back to, we would really be cooking.