Earthquake

It's just one of those things when you live in California. You know an earthquake when you feel it, and we at CatSynth definitely felt it tonight. From Associated Press:

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 and struck shortly after 8 p.m., about 9 miles northeast of San Jose, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The earthquake was in full force here at CatSynth HQ, with the nasty side-to-side motion and our many glass items shaking quite intensely. But we're fine, no damage, and it sounds like there was little or no damage elsewhere. Luna was a little shaken, though.

Aquatic on Coast Community Radio in Astoria, Oregon

A nice follow-up to my recent visit to Astoria with Polly Moller and Company.

A track from my CD Aquatic may be played on Coast Community Radio in Astoria this morning (10am to noon, PDT). This a folk program, which should be interesting. It is hosted by Carol Newman, who was very supportive of our visit and also hosts the “Arts: Live and Local” program, where Polly and our host Paul Hoskin had a chance to discuss our music and our show.

Coast Community Radio streams live online, for those who may want to check out this program as well as their other locally produced programs.

UPDATE: My track Open and Shut Case appeared on the program, you can here a clip of it here. There was an interesting segue into Paul Hipp’s “I am the Decider”, a great parody of Bush, Cheney et al. based on the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus” (Koo-koo-ka-choo). I got a nice mention of the piece and the album, along with reminder of our Polly Moller and Company show and the AVA music series; and “Death and the Maiden” (PM&C) was played as well.

CatSynth pic: Mimì and SidStation

Time for another “CatSynth pic”, and so we turn to our friend Mimì from polynominal:

Here we see Mimì jealously guarding her SidStation from anyone who might dare to touch it (like me).

The SidStation is a full-function hardware synth based on the SID chip from the old Commodore 64/128 – people of my vintage are probably quite familiar with these systems. The SID was quite ahead of its time feature-wise, and now it is a great vintage concept.








Halloween Weekend Cat Blogging Round-up

Well, it's time for the big Halloween Weekend Cat Blogging Round-up. We're celebrating black cats this weekend (of course, we do that every weekend here at CatSynth). But we welcome all cats and cat-lovers for the Halloween festivities. Indeed, we open with a holiday graphic from our British-shorthair-tabby friends Kashim and Othello:

They also have a video this weekend. Check it out.

Across the Pacific (aka, the “other pond”) in Malaysia, we have a black kitten standing proudly among its ginger siblings at Of course, no celebration of black cats would be complete without a visit to the House of Mostly Black Cats. This portrait of Boni Maroni (left) is certainly appropriate for today, but we also think it would be great for their Peace Globe, which they are preparing for the next Peace Globes blog event on November 7. We'll be there, too!

We also have black-cat laser eyes at Sleeping Mommy, along with Sara Blue, who was recently found and rescued. Sounds like she is adjusting to her new home. Just watch out for those laser eyes.

Sadly, homeless kitties abound, and at Very SEDAP!!! they are doing their best to help some wary homeless kittens in their neighborhood. More spooky laser eyes give way to a family of kittens learning to trust humans.

With so many homeless kittens and rescues this weekend, we think this is a good time to pause and think about all the pets and homeless animals affected by the wildfires in southern California this week. As things appear to be calming down, we continue to hope for the best.

Boo wishes everyone a Happy Halloween with his own festive graphics at Manx Mnews. A mixture of traditional Halloween black-and-orange, cats, and modernist texture (can't resist a moment to dip into art-critic mode). Nicely done.

Meanwhile, Upsie and sher get into the holiday spirit by featuring Sydney the Spider. Fine dining, spider-style, brings new meaning to the title What Did You Eat?.

And for our Halloween celebration of black cats, Stasia cedes the spotlight to Petee at Zazen in the Moonlight. Sounds like the little guy has had a tough life, but it sounds like he has a nice loving home now.

A beautiful black cat can be a princess. But over at Life from a Cat's Perspective, Samantha wishes her mom wasn't quite so literal about it. Don't worry, Halloween will be over soon enough…

Izzy may be exonerated, but it seems like trouble abounds at Mind of Mog. Seems like an episode tailor-made for the Bad Kitty Cat Festival.

Meanwhile, our friend Kitikata-san is dealing with some unwelcome scents in the form of CJ (right) and another “scardee cat.” And she didn't get to partake in the smoked chicken. Hope she gets some Halloween treats as consolation…

Over at A Byootiful Life, we find one of our favorite “Luna look-a-likes” Puddy is trying to get out. Hopefully getting to hang out with all your WCB friends and celebrating black kitties is reason enough for Puddy to stay inside with us.

Meanwhile, the cats at Rosa's Yummy Yums are looking bored, in a tragically hip sort of way. Now we look this way. Now we look that way. What else is there to life?

No…really…what else is there?

More black cats this weekend! Big black Kamikazee is ready for the holidays. He wishes everyone a Happy Halloween at I Got Two Shoes.

The folks at Music and Cats invite you to guess “what part of the (black) cat is this?”

Over at cuisine guylaine, we are treated to un petit tour dans le jardin! and more.

We at CatSynth join our fellow weekend cat bloggers in offering our thoughts to Miss Peach, who is seriously ill, and her family.

WCB Apocrypha. Andrée of Meeyauw has begun Sunday lectionary readings from the LOLCat Bible. Daisy has a Sunday comic reminding us not to judge others by their skin (or lack thereof). Megan at the Bad Kitty Cats Journal reflects on kitty cats, children, and memories after a difficult year.

Other Weekend Cat Events. Friday Ark #162 is at the modulator. The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Live from a Cat's Perspective with Samantha and Tigger. And Carnival of the Cats is going to Missy Blue Eyes' and KC's on Sunday. (And we're hosting the Carnival right here at CatSynth next Sunday).

Weekend Cat Blogging #125: The Halloween Edition

Luna and I welcome everyone to Weekend Cat Blogging, Halloween Edition. We are happy to be hosting this event.

This is difficult time for cats, especially black cats. In North America (U.S. and Canada), some continue to view cats as “bad luck”, such as in this article, which fuels neglect and sometimes abuse which can spike around Halloween.

Many shelters continue to suspend adoptions of black cats around Halloween (sometimes for all of October). And while this is to protect them, it is unfortunate because black cats already have a harder time getting adopted.

So we at CatSynth want to celebrate black cats this weekend. Black is beautiful!

We invite all our feline friends to participate, but we want to especially welcome black cats. Households with multiple cats are encouraged to let their black siblings enjoy the spotlight this weekend.

To participate, regardless of fur color, please leave us a comment, or contact us. We will be posting the big round-up later this weekend.

And don't forget the other Weekend Cat Events ™. Friday Ark #162 is at the modulator. The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Live from a Cat's Perspective with Samantha and Tigger. And Carnival of the Cats is going to Missy Blue Eyes' and KC's on Sunday.

Seabright cats, a warm day, and remembering those in harms way

This was an amazingly warm and clear day here on the California coast.

The early part of the day was in the Seabright neighborhood of Santa Cruz, mostly reading and working, but also enjoying wandering the streets and the area by the beach. I got a glimpse of this cat in one of the apartment complexes near the beach.

This photo is actually from a previous encounter with the “Seabright Kitty”, he/she wasn't in the mood to be photographed today…

Someone else, on the other hand, was quite photogenic:

This is Bella, who resides with my friend and colleague Synthia Payne, whom readers may remember from the UCSC DANM exhibition and Ninjam performances.

Luna of course continues to enjoy her favorite indoor activites:

I actually did take Luna outside briefly yesterday on her harness, and all she wanted to do was head back to the door and go inside. I'm not going to argue.

Like I said, it was exceptionally warm today:

Great for us here in Santa Cruz, but it part of the same warm, dry weather in which the fires in Southern California continue to burn out of control. This years fires in San Diego and the areas in and around Los Angeles might be even worse than the devastiing fires in 2003, with so many people and animals evacuating (over half a million so far) and so many more in harms way.

We at CatSynth want to take a few minutes on this Tuesday to send out thoughts to all the humans, cats, and other animals threatened by this disaster, and hope they make it through safely.

Seattle

The last performing stop on the tour last week was Saturday in Seattle:

Not exactly the Space Needle, but still some impressive communications towers, and not too far from our venue, the 1412 Gallery:


Photo by Polly Moller

I played a solo set, which I think was the best one of the tour, musically. I look forward to hearing the recordings soon. And of course, we did our Polly Moller and Company show:


(Click to enlarge)

Polly has written a bit about our performance in Seattle, including how it was somewhat sparsely attended. This was in part due to the “Much Bigger Show” that occured in direct conflict to ours, and counted much of the experimental/improvised music community as audience or participants. We did get a chance to hang out together with them at Murphy's Irish Pub afterwards, where much drink, conversation and merriment was had by all…