The Diamond Island

I heard tell that without gospel there would be no rock and roll. I believe it’s true.

At some point, all great bands do an album of covers and jamming experiments. It’s inevitable; you need to return to your influences and work out their place in your musical development.

The acoustic elf-metal band CRIME and the Forces of Evil released an album of their turn at this kind of exploration and I’m warmly surprised. Usually this sort of thing is just not interesting to me at all, yet here I am energized by the exposure.

Total respect to them for having a lighthearted romp through their roots because this is important work. It’s an affirmation and a blessing to work through what has gone before and make it your own. The expressions of music belong to all of us, but if they aren’t renewed they fade from our spirit.

I loved their previous album, so I was expecting this to be a waypoint—a kind of rest stop to catch their breath and power up for the next round of discovery. Covers of standard issue favorites ho-hum, whatever. Boy was I completely wrong!

First off, these musicians have clearly improved since last time. How is that even possible when the last album was so good? There’s confidence in this collection, and that means this time they just sit back and have a riot of fun. Humor, camaraderie, loving life—the songs are well established but CRIME makes these songs pay.

They’ve been playing live long enough now that they are getting some serious chops. Some of the songs are live and sound fantastic. They bring in guest stars, another sign of leveling up, and while “Red is the Rose” is my least favorite song I still must say Leannan Sidhe sounds every bit as good as a mainstream act like Loreena McKinnitt.

When I hear “Old Black Rum” I find myself drawn in by the sheer fun of it all. It might be the best song about drinking I’ve heard yet. The elf spirit kindles a human passion for hanging out with your friends and singing along, or if you drink alone the recursive pleasure of roaming the hallways of your inner self in warm joy.

The first song, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree” is the highlight and easily the strongest song—such great lines and pirate attitude—but don’t overlook “Hove in Long Beach”. A great beat and good fun music to feed the soul. Howl it!

“Paddy Murphy” rules. Best rhymes ever, with such a playfulness I can’t imagine a better funeral romp. Then there’s “I’m A Rover,” which is so singable it gets stuck in your head for days. “Columbia” is objectively the weakest song, but it is still wistful, beautiful and real.

The last official track, “Dalek Boy” is an outtake of sorts, with the musicians all speaking in mechanical voices as they try to cooperate long enough to do a rendition of “Danny Boy.” The absurdity of the track distinctly establishes this album as belonging to the irreverent humor that the group is developing a persona around.

There’s an element of public disobedience inherent in the songs, of being a lowdown outsider who is unapproved of by the rulers. In a way this is just what a gathering of super-villains actually is: ordinary people with extraordinary viewpoints hearing the call to gather into an assembly and defy authority that serves only a few superheroes and their estates. Hanging out in the pub singing songs might be the most dangerous place on earth for the League of Justice for the Fortunate Few.

This is how a band builds a catalog of items worth owning. Holy cow, can that be true? Keep your eyes on these folks.

5 out of 5 Stars of the Magi.

I had a vision while I was wide awake. I was rising out of darkness, out of the water, and away from a relief-image of Cthulhu in the wet sand under the water. The shape of Cthulhu had been carved out of the currents, so I knew this was a naturally formed image and I was leaving it to look up at the sky. I was then bathed in white light and rising, flying to the sound of the wind and the shore.

There was a sensation in my mind telling me that I had survived the darkness and lowest levels of existence. Now was the time to rise out of the depths and behold the light, to experience the illumination of escape from my innermost prison of unredeemed functions.

I had never even thought about it before. Yet here it was, happening to me spontaneously.

Then I realized that the rise of Cthulhu is really the rise of the individual soul from the depths of primordial forces into a new experience of life. The idea of cultists summoning doomsday is a short circuit of the truth, the infantile desire to have all things destroyed so one might not have to live in a world of responsibility and suffering.

It is a judgment day in that your personal world has been transformed so radically that you can no longer live the ordinary life you once lived in the way you once did. This is the rising of the inexplicable city of your life out of the depths and the freeing of your basic core from the superimposed constraints of your unconscious psyche.

Cthulhu dreams so that we might awaken and no longer imprison him with our mindless worship of childish things beyond their usefulness. Only when one rises out of the waters onto the shores of new life does Cthulhu indeed wake. A human being who stands up out of the deep and reaches the light transforms the world.

Is that why the killer bees started swarming awake something fierce? They knew this was coming to pass and they were ready to party!

I’ve mentioned the illustrious Pizza of Doom before. However, I don’t think I’ve actually ever posted any pictures of the magnificence that is summoning your own personal pizza to serve you good tasting satisfaction. Well, worry no more my illustrious 1d6 non-bot readers!

I have yet to try the recipe since moving out to the Pacific Northwest wildlands, where bigfoots roam and beers beg you to drink them. How will the water and climate affect the dough rise and ultimate consistency? The cooking, if you allow for an oven variance, how long will it take and how will the crust turn out? Questions galore that refuse to be put off any longer!

I must practice my kung fu in a new way and in anew time zone cooridnate, solar systems are go and wooo!

Luckily, I am able to assemble the ingredients in an appealing manner. Pepperoni and cheese are whatever you can scare up, but because there is the Tillamook cheese manufacturing power in this area, i am able to score a grated cheese combo attack of mozarella, provolone, and parmesan all in three! Yowza. Feel the power.

Oh, and bonus. The package has enough to cover the pizza. Those other cheese conglomerates, always short you cheese such that you can never quite cover the mega-mutha. May they roast in profits hell. You see, these little details matter! One must always have access to the proper goodies. Every small ingredient, physical or mental, affects the space time continuum of crafting.

Came out well too. I like it when the ingredients sink nicely and the rim forms a good crispy final bite to a slice. Sauce was iffy since I had to go with the tomatoes I could and the pre-cooking of the sauce is a random variable I have not compensated for in the phase variance. But still tasty. I ate it. K ate it. Our tummies thank us.

But wait, there’s more! We also went picking triple crown sweet blackberries and brought some back for pancake toppings, general snacking, and cobbler. Alas, I could not translate my cobbler recipe so I had to crib from the internet. More work is to be done, yes I need to meditate on my cooking powers. But the topping was cooked well, and the blackberry sauce was delicious.

This thing will not last the week, I tell you. Iron rations for dungeon adventures in the Cascade range!  Eeegah, prepare for doom.

A while ago I decided to explore my own Tomb of Horrors, thanks to some helpful exposure osmosis insights from my trusty Chimera friend Shanna Mann. After some meandering about with various ingredients I am starting to build a formula of exploration.

I was going to put out an ad for a psychological being to handle the specifics, but this dude came knocking at my door as soon as the commitment formed in my brain. After some dialogue of a sort using mysterious hand signals and lip reading apparatus I believe we have come to an accord.

We’ve leased some imaginary property from a psychic patron in a settlement suitable for our needs. I had no idea such a town was located near the Diamond Island! Hidden treasures everywhere you look, if you see with the eyes of joy.

Of course, the inhabitants are going to be mighty surprised to see all this sudden activity in their accustomed unconscious existence. What can I say, I am shining a candle in my own individual way and this is where it has led me. There may be benefits as well as difficulty.

I have decided to explore, through the exploits of my new found friend, the role of horror host. He will be doing this in his own particular way, according to his own individual stance. I will, of course, be responsible for his actions as his conscious manager.

To this effect I have created a secret door to our mutual venture. The password will be most easily obtained by those with the secret decoder wheel, which is part of my Sooper Fun Pak currently only available on my Facebook fan page. by request.

So stay tuned for more tidbits, and if you are one of the fortunate folks to have a password wheel at your disposal (or have a small microchip brain for ciphers) you may be entertained!

The other day UFO Girl delivered a pizza to my brainpan, compliments of the Naughty Louse. Wait, who? Might that be another name for my Bad Ronald?

I know he’s been out there in the world, breathing the fresh air and squinting at the sunlight. By owning up to my own problems and breaking free, I got him outside to a new dimension of life.

I guess he has UFO Girl’s pizza delivery number, and maybe even a coupon. Come to think of it, a redeemable coupon or token for UFO Girl delivery must be a highly unusual contrivance.

In any case, this information extravaganza inside my brainstem calls up all the necessary ingredients for moving along to the next step in the building of the karavos, this UFO I am participating in.

In order to fly a UFO it may be necessary to adopt a control panel or command module of some kind. Consciousness works by directing disparate and in-conflict parts unified by a tendency towards out-of-chaos-into-dance using the twin beasts of the chariot to carry us home.

Here, out of the past, from a child’s hand in a different sector of space and time, an adult calls forth the preserved image of a kind of desired control panel interface. Touch, and the universe responds with your intent. This, the Dark Goddess has shown me.

Drawing upon the active imagination of movement from one form to another, one might advance the shy and hesitant emergence of a beautiful treasure from the unconscious, adapt it with the ability to breathe air and switch modes of existence.

I use the small and slightly more mature tools of thought at my disposal to render another version of the control panel. Connected to the previous version, yet also individual. An eye opens, an eye blinks, and a moment passes. In the gutter of that moment is revealed another image.

For you see, in order for this to be a navigation tool to fly with, from which other panels might spring from, you need to know what reality you are in. One must take a reading, so to speak, of where one is in psychic existence in order to know your non-existence parameters.

Remember, nothing is where it calls from!

I mean…err…comes from. You will explore more fully the abyss seeking where the unknown is likely to be. And again, a map arises out of the wondrous imagination of a child’s natural witnessing of what is all around and within. This is the baseline from which springs the core of a UFO’s wanderings at play.

This is a dangerous proposition to consider. To generate a star chart of this comprehensive a manner requires a spirit of adventure, but it also requires a readiness to be changed by what you encounter. As Doctor Who would say, “Travel broadens the mind”, yet behind that one must also realize that to embark on a venture seeking new ideas is to be exposed to risk if those ideas are to be fresh.

The spoor and tracks of the supernal super-predator mean business, yo.

Since this is a newly emergent ancient UFO, the display panel from the adult perspective is blank for now. Anything and everything might emerge upon this nothingness. The fool’s zero begins our journey with a bronx cheer.

All that remains now is to materialize a starting point with which to begin our journey of the UFO. In this case, the input of another person is useful in suggesting that which we might ourselves be blind to, or lack the courage to tackle ourselves. A true companion is a great assistance in regarding those things we might lack the resources to reckon with fully.

Home is a good place to decide upon as a reference point. Departure, return is a cycle that matches the lifeforce of the universe. Breathe in, breathe out. Eye open, blink. Time and space appears in the vast indescribable eternity that runs with us wherever we are or aren’t.

A form, an interface, an occupant, a journey. All pieces are now complete.

The pizza has been delivered.

I want to thank Birdman for taking over hosting duties for a while. As it turns out, I’ve been consciously occupied with outside events of personal importance that have allowed for very little in the way of inward journeys. So, thank you Birdman, you have been a true friend in keeping this haven for me while I was away.

What happened?

K and I moved to the Pacific Northwest. This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time.

I quit my job, we donated or recycled a bunch of our belongings, and declined to renew our lease. We packed up Gamera with some luggage and a pair of cat carriers (one medium and one small), and then anything that didn’t fit in Gamera went inside a huge POD.

Loading the POD and emptying out ten years of stuff from a three story townhouse was a supreme ordeal. You need mad Tetris skills and nerves of steel from having studied several episodes of the TV show “Hoarders.” It took 38 hours, 27 of which was straight-on-till-morning, without sleep.

After making sure the PODzilla transport arrived (they had tried to call us to confirm, but our phone was already disconnected), we loaded the three cats Michael, Frankie, and Blink into their carriers. K and I made sure they had plenty of water, litter, food, and comfy blankees to sleep or throw up on.

With star charts in the crevices of the seats and jammed to the gills with food, bedding, clothes and computers we left Reston Virginia behind and embarked on our galactic voyage across the country. We still hadn’t had any sleep, but we were determined to reach our first stop in Toledo, Ohio.

Sometimes a heroic effort is necessary to break free of the octopus of the past.

We got stuck in traffic. The DC Foundry has a strong gravity well that can be formidable—in this case we spent an hour going 2 miles before we managed to escape. The temperature was brutally hot, but the AC held and the cats managed not to freak out until we were actually out of the jam.

Blink needed some calming medicine and the others a little petting. This was an adventure they had never encountered before! Then we were off again.

I don’t know where I got the strength and the will to go on, but I drove through the night until we reached our goal.  Despite the hotel directions being incomprehensible we found the place.

The hotel staff allowed us to check in late and stay in past check out (bless their hearts) so we could get a few hours extra sleep. 44 hours is a long time to go without sleep, let alone move like a beast and then drive ten hours.

The cats rolled with it.

Then, every day the same: Get up, pack the stuff and then load the cats, check out, get breakfast, gas up, drive to the next stop. Des Moines (Iowa), Cheyenne (Wyoming), Ogden (Utah), Boise (Idaho), and then Portland (Oregon). Six days of travel and full of danger and hilarity.

I didn’t know if I could drive for such long periods of time. That was always something my father did, and did with great skill and stamina. So in a way I have made my contribution to the Drive Yourself Crazy Club of which Ferguses are said to be members.

There is something of a meditation in having to be alert and discerning for endless hours of monotony. The body adapts to the external demands that the mind serves to navigate.

If there is one insight I come away from, having been 2800 miles of distance through the United States, it is that the country is a huge resource extraction wealth grab for the rich.

Corn fields in Nebraska as far as the eye can see, making corn syrup. Beef fields in Wyoming making ground beef for the franchise wars. Refineries processing coal for energy. All connected by roads and truckstops, with a slight nod to tourism (if you can afford it). All fenced in and owned or dominated by big business, with no signs of civilization or individuality anywhere.

When the cheap oil runs out and the diesel begins to strangle the truck lines all of this will die, blow away, leaving ghost towns and blighted landscapes full of nitrates.

It’s already happening—I could hardly believe how much construction was going on with the roads. A third of the roads I drove were in a state of repair, traffic redirected to a single lane for 25 miles at a time, again and again. And the roads that were new were composites—where is the asphalt? The quality of the roads is going to cheap materials as it breaks down faster, talk about surreal.

We passed a lot of wind farms, and that’s great, but you aren’t going to be running trucks or building roads or making fertilizer out of wind power. To see this country propped up like a house of cards with all wealth going to rich institutions with no thought of what comes after is to witness the triumph of mindless evil over decent human life.

As K and I drove through this desolation of self-destruction we encountered the elements. A thundering torrential rainstorm in Iowa that would become a roaring hurricane a few days later sweeping the east coast in a fury, destroying phone and power for millions.

The smoke clouds from the south as we drove through Wyoming were the beginnings of the massive brush fires that would destroy countless homes in Colorado, of a size to stagger the imagination in its scope. We drove through areas where the fire had burned everything to one side of the highway and then gone out when it met the road.

Some fires still blazed in their enclosed firetraps. I thought we were passing through a strip mine, when I realized the black earth was cinders covering the landscape of boulders that remained after everything else had perished. This is the future—nature crushing us back into the savage garden from whence we sprang.

Just remember, global warming is only a liberal hoax!

The vision is a horrific one, and beyond my small power to affect—yet I still ask what it is for and I will to will Thy will in my transformation. I shall remember this and express my own personal potion when the time is right, for do I not also contain a small spark of fire inside me, a thunder being holding a candle alight?

Then we reached our destination. It was as if we had stepped through the protective mists of Lothlorien, where some small craft, healing, and knowledge is preserved.

We stayed at a Buddhist retreat run by one of my oldest and dearest of friends, allowing the cats to stretch their legs and us to remember a little of what it means to be human beings. Eat, drink, walk, recover—our journey done and the real work of building a new home begins.

Our apartment is small, but perfectly placed for us to begin again. Everywhere are trees, ferns, lichens, mosses, and birds. There are secret and hidden places for me to discover new ideas and form new substance in the world.

As I attended college here, I went to the reunion to witness and regard the connections to the past that still shape my life today. There are ceremonies of the soul that cannot be shared, but of which there is great sensation and emotion pouring out into one’s life.

My old life is gone, destroyed by a thunder-fire storm of psychic change. I am nothingness, out of which may come the dawn.

As the horror host transformation does its thing, all sorts of interesting sources of civilization are cropping up and showing us what they got. The Vortexx is certainly a formula worth studying, as they have managed to get quite a few things mixed into the creativity cauldron nicely.

There’s the Internet interface of a movie-based show under control of the hosts brought together by fate to make interesting stuff. Promos, old commercials, monster movies and horror host performances—this is where you start.

Then there’s the chat on the side. You can just lurk if you don’t want to get to know anybody. Everyone’s got the right to be a ghost if they wanna stay secret. Or you can jump in and become acquainted with all the weirdos and creatures out there gathered around a scary campfire for a good time.

Hey, it’s a party and it’s random. Enter at your own risk, just like a real life haunted house experience.

What really makes or breaks the experience though is the non-host contingent and the crowd they attract. You totally need a tight cast of characters or the shows won’t amount to much as they are unveiled.

You’ve got far-out characters like the Crimson Executioner, a deranged torturer dispensing all manner of innuendos and witty quips while pushing jars of his royal jelly. Part charlatan, part Addams Family wicked joy, and part deviant with a passion for entertainment and a mind of courteous surprises—this apparition with a perfect body is far out, man!

There’s DoktorSick, a fiendish high tech experimenter with an electronic eye for captivating clips and disturbing juxtapositions. Yet behind that fevered mask of skeletal cyborg mayhem pulses a brain capable of creative insights with sophisticated impact.

You’ll find Jason “Egg” Brown, a soft-spoken lunatic curator of the forgotten and dusty circuits of the Internet, pushing arcane dials and adjusting human spines to keep the show live as a wire.

Then there’s Sluggo, arguably the crown jewel and mascot of the Vortexx crew, an inter-dimensional pink slug with eyestalks inspiring a tidy ship and dispensing random blessings of outrageous character. Sluggo welcomes everyone and declares the spirit of friendship to all comers.

The line up is always changing. Hey this is vaudeville folks; blink and you miss the rotating walls and trap doors swallowing up people behind you. That’s kind of the theme: the Vortexx as a locale that is both a central gathering point and an unstable dimensional hodgepodge.

The weekly alternating schedule looks like this:

• Monday you’ll find yourself entertained by the inestimable Dr. Sigmund Zoid and his bag of Alternative Realities.
• Tuesday brings you the momentous Mr. Mephisto from Lenny’s Inferno or the fathomless green Freakshow from the Bordello of Horror.
• Wednesday has the insightful yet skeletal Nigel Honeybone from the Schlocky Horror Picture Show or a disturbing chuckle or three courtesy of The Host from Screaming Horror Theater.
• Thursday summons forth the indescribably bizarre Justy Ghost from Shocking Theater.
• Friday blasts off with Demented Drive In Theater and the crack horror crew of Floyd Cadaverous, Nurse Evilynn, Kenny Wickman and Grandpa Larry—or Fright Night Theater hosted by the gotta-see-him-to-believe-him Pumpkin Man.
• Saturday winds up the week with the Late Dr. Lady Show, hosted by the brilliant David Lady and his steadfast band of Laura Lady, Ilean, and Wolfie.

Random spin-the-bottle bonus appearances include the Ghoul Kids and their Undead Show, Riggor Mortiss and Nyte Angel from Riggor Mortiss Presents, Scarewolf doing some Saturday Fright Special, and freaky shorts courtesy of Shocko the Clown.

I’m pretty sure the non-host units keep a few special surprises stashed away, and they are always generating new ammunition to load your brain cells with. For example, the inventive Rizzle MaNizzle the Clown once prank called Crimson Executioner and turned it into a short on the show! Unscripted improv right before your very eyes.

So you hop on over to the website, fiddle with the chat interface to get your nick and text color set, and watch movies that epitomize the greatest attempts at self-civilization since Aristotle, all with a bunch of strangers who slowly begin to take shape as not just horrific creatures of all kinds but also family of the heart.

You better watch out or you might have some fun!

In a previous post, I discovered instructions from UFO Girl contained within my past self-explorations.  Decoding the instructions has required I “sit on it” for a while and let the recognition sink in fully. Now there is a growing thought in my brain that I’m ready to examine what’s available for consideration.

A being transport of pure sound, conveying mobility through space and time, enabling us to experience new ways of playing. The time has come for me to hypnotize myself into understanding the plans and going about the ceremony of putting together what has been uncovered.

I imagine a number of qualities such a vehicle of the mind might require for it to be a useful conveyance for me.

• Imminence, or a sense of the ability to move one location or state of mind to another.
• Intuition, that ability to understand and reason by mysterious and irrational means.
• Integrity, which is to say both completeness and honesty as a way to “hold it together”.
• Consonance, or the ability to maintain harmony and accord.
• Epistle, that is, messages and transcripts across gaps of perception.
• Precursor, or the ability to project one’s intentions and ideas through crossings in affect.
• Organism, which simply means the awareness and maintenance of life consciousness.
• Psyence, because one always needs a new word and which represents healthy models of system.
• Constellation, that process by which disparate parts and wholes organically relate.

There was this article in a science fiction magazine I read a while back. I still have the magazine somewhere in one of my transport boxes.  The article was about this guy building his own cylon robot out of available materials.

At the time I took it literally and seriously. Could you really make a cybernetic brain using sauerkraut as a baseline ingredient? If only I could save the shef boi-ahr-dee cans and use them to build my cyclon’s armored covering!

However, there is an important lesson here in building anything out of ideas and into substance. The stimulation of the imagination and the working out in one’s own psychic make-up how such models might work is an important step.

Is the plan we have built a put-on? Might it not also be a signpost, saying “look here, in this box for the diagram of your dream.”  Sauerkraut and tin cans indeed!

Watching the glowing light in my brain, I find myself getting wide-awake-sleepy, tick-tock.

I ran into a whirlwind chimera the other day.  I invited her to sit down for a spot of refreshment and we got to talking about some of the systems of doom we were working on.

She’s the sort of adventurer who works with Chaos magic and prefers to storm the walls of challenges with a sharp sword and a little surprise cleverness.  You know, the random encounter table does come up with some interesting unique beings when you roll double-ohs.

We swap stories and techniques, and then I get to thinking that since she might be on to something with this direct, full on warrior vitality, maybe I could stand to learn a thing or two about taking action.

Sure, sure, I’ve read all about it and have a good grounding in the theoretical principles.  I’ve taken a few tumbles in the school of sword swinging through active and immediate striking against obstacles to certain kinds of experience.

But you know, the fact is I go with the flow a lot of time, and find all those people out there taking action non-stop a little confusing.  How can they waste so much energy moving decisively?  Then again, I understand I must do the same to them–how can anybody waste so much time doing nothing?

So as of now, I’m taking action on something that’s been rising to a boil in my brain. That’s going to be my technique for practicing a larger field of experiencing another side of me that’s been coming to the forefront of consciousness lately.

In Dungeons and Dragons, the Tomb of Horrors was an adventure module known for the sheer number and interconnectedness of its many traps, tricks and puzzles. The module was sheer death and destruction for any adventuring party that attempted to reach the central tomb, where a monstrously powerful spirit dwelled among a pile of treasure.

Well, it’s another name for the super death trap maze a part of me built in my psyche to hold some of my treasure.

So how will I go about evading or disarming the traps, defeating the tricks, and solving the puzzles–especially since I am woefully poor at such things?  I shall draw them out of me and transform them into items of art for my own amusement!

And as I do so I shall glean small insights into, and experience of, the nature of an important aspect of me.

Stay tuned, wayfarers!

You see them at the portals of shopping establishments. Mechanisms containing candy or cheap prizes which dispense them for the price of inserting small change.

Children are especially susceptible to these small change bandits, with their cranking knobs and randomly released surprises.  The displays promise cool little toys or a delicious flavor experience if only you will take the plunge!

Usually what you get is predetermined—only different kinds of rubber balls or a figure from a collection—or the prize is lame.  You wanted the cheap metal skull ring and got a plastic pink smiley face instead.  The gum is good for about five seconds and then turns to sticky, tasteless wall sealant.  Sometimes, the machine doesn’t give you anything at all.

What a rip off!

Teaches a valuable lesson, however, doesn’t it? Beware of getting ripped off! All is not as it seems.

Yet we return again and again, hoping this time will be different.  Sometimes you get a halfway decent prize or experience, and then your parents are tired of waiting for you or don’t have any more change.

Oh yeah, this was like a religious observance for me. And there are many permutations of the gumball machine experience let me tell you!

One time at a Hardee’s hamburger joint, I discovered the back door so to speak.  The gumball machine only worked with tokens that you had to obtain by ordering something.

This particular gumball machine was enclosed in a kind of decoration, with the front flush to an opening where you accessed the machine.  I found that my arm was thin and wiry enough to reach up and down between the gap.

This enabled me to grab handfuls of prizes at a time!  I managed to fill my pockets before an employee noticed the crowd of kids watching me in awe and chased me out. Those prizes were some of the best I ever got too.

Then there are times when you come across a machine and everything you get is cool.  Neat stuff on a roll, and you run out of change.  When you come back the next day, however, the machine is gone!  Rip off!  But you still got some good loot, so it’s not a total rip off.

One time in Japan, in a remote mountain village I came across a gumball machine with small metal medieval weapons. Alas, I only had enough change to get three of these super cool items! Then I had to go and I couldn’t come back, due to my traveling schedule.  That’s how it goes!

In a sense, the gumball machine is a manifestation of the monstrance, that container that holds the sacred host.  It’s not unlike a dragon guarding treasure, or a form of the ordeal you face when you go on an adventure.

You pay your fare and take your chances. What is released is what you need—a tiny companion, a tool of play, a moment of sweetness—these are no small thing when one adventures in the depths of the soul! The worthless, useless thing turns out to be the most important of all.

These mechanisms may have been invented to separate children from their parent’s money in exchange for some “magic beans”, but even the charlatan may find themselves peddling rather more serious wares when destiny takes an intervening hand.

Everywhere you go, machines of meditation, teaching lessons as surely as any Kung Fu master to those who will listen. The time may come when we see how advanced these pieces of technology really are.