Black Octopus Journal

Made With Bones!

Mercury

Here is a shot of Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury in the skies of Whittier , California I took tonight on a whim with my iPhone .

Debt

Ah, Debt !

Community, The Hobby Killer

Community . The word itself just gives me unwanted anxiety.

Web Server

Book of Thoth

The LAM Statement

Fender 6G15

DeArmond M-75T

Terminal Puss

Nerd ALERT !

Large Hadron Collider

My little joke about the L arge H adron C ollider in my last post made me think about ... well, the L arge H adron C ollider at CERN !

April Fools' Day

I hate April Fools ' Day, especially online. I usually avoid the internet that day, or at least the sites I frequent. The whole thing just makes me cringe . I really hate the pranks and the fake stories that inevitably flood my feed . Maybe it’s that split second when I almost fall for it, and the irritation that follows when I realize, two paragraphs in, I’ve wasted time on something that was…

Cleve Backster

Coming off the Radionics train and after rewatching the Duncan Laurie segment from Disinfo TV, I was reminded of Cleve Baxter's plant communication experiments, which fascinated me as a kid and still fascinate me today as a connoisseur of sound .

Radionics

I remember stumbling upon Radionics in the late 80 s early 90 s. I was fascinated at the time by the devices and the mixture of Electronics , Medicine, Metaphysics and art which today kind of reminds me of the artwork on Death by Audio effects pedals .

The Liquor Store

The Fool's Journey

Christabell

Sometimes a performance doesn’t need explanation, just a focused, uninterrupted listen. That’s exactly how this rendition of “Sycamore Trees” from Twin Peaks feels, performed here by Chrystabell .

Rosaleen Norton

Webcams

Remember when webcams became all the rage back in the early ’ 90 s? I started thinking about that because it turns out I am actually running something with very similar functionality to how they were used back then, which I’ll get back to later.

Ouija

Loch Ness Monster

Do you remember how, in the ’ 70 s and early ’ 80 s, the Loch Ness monster was everywhere? People were reporting sightings , books were being written, sonar teams were conducting searches, news reports and TV specials were airing, and even Spock was talking about it on In Search Of .

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13 th!

I Want to Believe

For some reason I got the itch to buy a sticker of the “ I Want to Believe ” poster that Mulder had hanging in his office on The X-Files . When I started looking around, I noticed every version of the sticker was slightly different, which had me pretty confused.

Noise

My mind gets distracted easily. I can be working on something and hear a conversation across the room, or something on a podcast I have running in the background or even an excellent part of a song and slowly my attention will drift over to that noise instead of the noise in front of me that I need to focus on. This makes listening to podcasts and music while I work a bit difficult at times.

Mars in Opposition

Mars is my favorite planet, and I have been excitedly waiting for its opposition for years. Unfortunately, you have to wait about two years to see Mars at its brightest. During opposition , it is directly opposite the Sun, fully illuminated , and visible all night. But once it drifts toward conjunction on the far side of the Sun, it disappears from our night sky, lost in the Sun’s glare , only to…

Feets

These are my feets !

Madame Leota

Messier Marathon

I began this journey on March 17 th, 2023 with the Orion Nebula (M42) and concluded it on December 9 th, 2023 with M89.

Saturn in Opposition

Another great shot taken during opposition , with some excellent seeing that night. The Cassini Division is especially clear in this image, cutting a sharp dark line through Saturn’s rings . You can also see the planet’s shadow falling across the rings behind the disk. 🪐

Jupiter in Opposition

This is one of the nicer shots I’ve managed to capture of Jupiter . It helped that the planet was in opposition that night, which made for especially good viewing conditions .

The Great Black Cat Casting Call

I stumbled across this LIFE Black Cats at an Audition">photo essay while I was poking around the internet after reading about the strange wartime story of people supposedly trying to hex Hitler . One link led to another, and I ended up on this great little piece showing a 1961 casting call for a film version of The Black Cat . Over 150 black cats showed up with their hopeful owners, all trying to…

Typefaces of the Occult

I stumbled across this post on John Coulthart's Feuilleton : Typeface of the Occult Revival and loved it. It’s all about the weird , decorative typefaces that popped up during the occult revival of the ’ 60 s and ’ 70 s.

The Hitler Hexing Party

I had read about this story before and was drawn in by how strange it was, so when I found a copy of Life magazine’s February 10, 1941 issue, I bought it mostly for the photos.

The Mission Thus Far

I have bookmarks . Way too many bookmarks . Most of them get filed away and then immediately forgotten .