What the Effing F*CK?

[ ]Well, this is a new one on me. I talk about shit that sounds crazy to most people and I get that. I'm honest and frank and I hold back nothing in this blog. Still occasionally things happen to me that are so crazy that I just don't mention them, but one of the main reasons I started a blog in the first place was to record strange happenings, and this takes the cake big-time. I've said a million times that's it's fairly hard to shock me these days but this did. I mean it flipped me the fuck out. [ ]I was on YouTube and I saw where one of my buds was going live so I popped in. Only about 15 people showed up so it was a nice cozy chat. A couple of familiar names popped in and then a girl I'm crazy about popped in and we said hello. A minute or two later I entered a comment. It was fairly specific. I had to do something for a minute and when I got back I scrolled back up in the chat to see if I'd missed anything, and I saw what I thought was my comment, but the channel name was "Look Around." I thought it was really odd that someone would repeat my exact comment. [ ]I didn't recognize that name but I don't know everyone on his channel, and new people come in occasionally. I'm a moderator on his channel, so when my name comes up in the chat it's in blue, with a wrench next to it. Look Around was a mod too. I thought that was a bit odd because I'm familiar with most of the mods on his channel but again I figured it was someone new. But then I kept scrolling all the way back to the start of the chat and my comment was nowhere to be found, or so I thought. [ ]I was thinking WTF and I happened to look at the bottom of the chat, where you enter comments. Instead of my normal channel name, BlickumBlickum, it said "Look Around." My mouth fell open. I hit refresh and it went back to BlickumBlickum, but a second later, right in front of my eyes it changed back to Look Around. I was dumbfounded. I was about to grab a screenshot but then it changed back and stayed that way for the rest of the stream. Just then two girls popped in. They're more than just YouTube friends; I've known them for several years and we've spoken on the phone many times and even sent each other stuff in the mail. It was interesting that they popped in right after the high weirdness but I was really glad to see them. [ ]I didn't say anything to them at first because I was tripping on what had just happened, and wondering if my channel name was going to change again. I scrolled back in the chat again and where my comments were it said Blickum again. I just stared at the screen for a few minutes, trying to come up with an explanation for what just happened, although I knew there wasn't one. People's channel names don't just spontaneously change. You can change your own channel name all day long but you have to go into your dashboard to do it and you can't do it from a chat. If it were a YT glitch they'd have sorted it out years ago. If channel names just changed on their own it'd be chaos. [ ]Let's just say for argument that it was a million-to-one glitch. I can't rule that out, but here's the kicker...back in 2019 a guy from Bavaria commented on one of my videos and asked about the name. I told him it was just a made-up word that was meant to emulate the sound of a boring drum solo, but he told me that it actually did have a meaning. He said that in German, "Blickum" means "To look around." How's about that? If it's nothing but a coincidence then that bumps it up to trillion-to-one odds. [ ]After I was able to screw my head back on I was able to come up with three possibilities, and one of them will sound batshit-crazy to most people. It could just be a glitch although that's highly unlikely. I've never heard of it happening and no one I talked to had either. I could've been hacked, but that seems very unlikely too. If someone were to hack me they could do a lot more damage than just to change my channel name, and why bother? I've never heard of YT being hacked in any way, and why me? Why "Look Around?" [ ]I thought it was so cool when the guy from Bavaria told me what my name meant. I'm always looking around. I look at trees, I look at the sky and I look for answers. I'm a seeker. It's perfect, especially considering I thought it was just a made-up name that had no meaning in any language. To see my channel name change before my eyes to what my name actually means in another language...would that flip you out or is it just me? Color me bamboozled. The only other possibility I can see is that it's the "ghost in the machine." AI. Artificial Intelligence. [ ]It's my personal belief that the veil is about to be lifted, just as it says in the Good Book, and the spirit world, if it indeed exists and I believe it does, is going to begin to intrude into the physical realm, and people will see things that they can't explain, or most people anyway. My beliefs could be 100% wrong, and actually I hope they are, but they don't come from superstition or tinfoil-hat websites or whatever else; they come from RESEARCH, period. Someone or something could be fucking with me, and really that makes more sense than the other two explanations. Have you ever heard of someone's channel name changing? If so I'd love to know. First and foremost I ALWAYS try to debunk things like this, and most of the time I can, but if I can't I have to look outside the box for an explanation. Remember when thinking outside the box was cool? It wasn't that long ago. [ ]Taking things further, the Devil is in the details, and some think in AI too. Some say that certain entities use electricity, and water, as conduits. Animals use rivers to travel from one place to another, as do humans, so if "spirits" do exist then it makes perfect sense. They also say that even though spirits are all around us all the time, only in another dimension, for them to be able to physically interact with our world they have to tap into a source of energy. If you've ever seen one of those ghost shows you've probably seen where fresh batteries will be instantly drained, and that's a real thing. [ ]Seeing it happen in a few ghost shows might not mean much but it's a real phenomenon and it's been well-documented thousands of times. It's happened to me many times and it makes no damn sense. Although I use rechargable batteries I've never had enough for all the stuff I've had going at times and I've had to buy disposable batteries. I've had a box of 36 batteries and I'll use four of them, and a few days later every other battery in the box is dead. They were all brand-new with at least five years on the expiration date. I'd have whole packs go dead before I even opened them. It got to where I'd test them in the store and still they'd be dead a week or two later. I'll just say there was some weirdness that went on sometimes late at night when I'd be playing my drums, and there's no way to explain it. Maybe something needed some juice. [ ]Maybe I got a message. Or maybe it was nothing at all except one fuck of a coincidence, although I've never heard of it happening in all of YouTube. It was pretty damn obscure and definitely not widely known by anyone much, except AI. AI keeps track of everything, as we all know by now. If it actually WAS a message and I'm not just tripping, then yeah, it blew my mind, but it didn't scare me. In fact it's an honor, and it's thrilling. Some people would know what I mean. If it's just a coincidence it's still enough of one to give me butterflies. It's too specific. Holy Moley. Have a nice day.

Comment of the Day

"Crazy to think that 99.99% of the world's bands are monumentally inferior to Gentle Giant." - Tyler Leon

Verse of the Day (Matthew 13:16)

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

Quote of the Day

"If you don't have privacy, you don't have freedom. It's as simple as that." - Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen

Quote of the Day

"People on psychedelics may believe they are capable of flight. That misconception is usually clarified upon making contact with the ground." - Dr. Todd Grande

The Only Shirt That's Ever Made Me Cry

I never thought a t-shirt could make me cry. I was wrong. RIP Keith and Greg. Viva Carl Palmer.

Jukebox in My Head (selection F-69) "Puppet Man" by the Fifth Dimension

I lI listened to this song, and many more by the Fifth Dimension when I was just a little nipper. It blew me away then and it still does. I could never express my grattitude to my folks for turning me on to music, even before I was born. I know I'd never have been able to get into music as deeply as I do without their influence, and music is probably the greatest gift I ever got. But on to Puppet Man. This song is a motherfucker. I just listened to it three times and it was glorious...some serious mood-elevation. My oh my. [ ]The Fifth Dimension was a "Vocal Group." As a genre, the Vocal Group no longer exists, except maybe in Vegas or on cruises for old-timers, billed as "Doo-Wop Until You Drop" or something like that. Occasionally various members would play instruments, like the Beach Boys or the Jackson 5, but mostly they all just sang. There generally was a main guy but everyone was featured. Three-part harmony is beautiful and it's usually all you need, if even that, but when you get five people who could all be bandleaders in their own right and are monster singers, the results can be spectacular, and nobody did it better than the 5th D. [ ]This is my favorite Fifth Dimension song but for several years it pushed my buttons and kept me awake nights. Marilyn McCoo. Enuff said. I had the biggest crush on her even though I did realize that I was maybe a bit too young, plus I wasn't famous. Man she was smokin' hot and actually she still is, for someone older than I am. I grew up in the deep-ass South during segregation and worse, but I didn't grow up with a racial thing. Any traces I may have had melted away with my heart when I first saw Marilyn McCoo. I wanted to wait until I was a little older, so the age thing wouldn't matter so much, and marry her. I'd stay up past my bedtime with my little transistor radio under the covers, hoping this song would come on, just to hear her sing. [ ]The years that this tune bothered me were the "boner in class" years. I guess third grade was the peak but it lasted for several years, and this song came out right in the middle of the spontaneous-boner period. Sometimes it'd be hard to control that rascal, and for some reason it seemed to be the worst in class. It was mostly due to having hot teachers, but sometimes out of nowhere you'd sprout a boner in class, and you'd pray that you didn't get called-on to go to the board until the swellin' went down. In fact that was what led me to believe that God was real, because I never once got called to the board if I was sporting wood. I'm kidding but it's true. I remember some poor bastard would get called up to the board when he was owning a boner. He'd have his hands in his pockets and would walk up to the front of the class hunched-over. Even the girls would laugh. I'm glad I didn't suffer that trauma. Anyway I don't specifically remember Marilyn giving me a boner but I wouldn't be surprised. She did get me all hot and bothered, for a kid anyway. [ ]But why did this song give me a boner? Was it just because Marilyn was so fine? No, it was the lyrics. She's telling her "puppet man" (lucky son-of-a-bitch) that she'll do anything he wants. With killer lines like "I'm a puppet just for you" or "I'll be a crackerjack 'til the crack of dawn" or "Raise a finger I'll perform" or "Wind me up and let me go," who could blame me if I popped a boner? Heck it still gives me one today. But it was the hook of the song, the classic line "If you wanna see me do my thang...pull my strang" that did the trick. On that one little part she put a Southern drawl on it and it was just perfect. Oh, Marilyn McCoooooooooooooo...I got a boner for yooooooooooou. [ ]The song is groovy and funky and happy and bouncy and "up." It starts out with a cool, Ringo-esque drum fill and then the band comes in and within seconds you're bopping your head. Seriously, you will be. Try it and see. They hired the finest session musicians of the day, and you could listen to just the instrumental tracks if you wanted to; they were always dead-on and smoking, but it wouldn't have been the Fifth Dimension. The vocals took it to another level, and beyond. The bridge or pre-chorus or whatever is a singalong masterpiece. On the chorus they just sing "puppet man" again and again, but with the most incredible harmonies. That's a sign of a great band when they can sing just two words in the whole chorus and really make it count. [ ]As great as the rest of the song is it's the last minute or so of the tune that does it for me. It's like the clouds part and the Sun comes out and all the angels are singing. There'a a part where the whole band does a syncopated lick with the vocals. They're only singing one word, "man," but they stretch it to multi-syllables and it's just breathtaking. They're all singing "Puppet man...Puppet man-an-an-an-an-an-an-an-an-an...PUPPET MAN." To this day it's one of my favorite pieces of recorded music. When I was listening to that part I was waving my arms, conducting the entire Universe. Really, I was. [ ]That's my take on a great song from a great band. They had so many hits. If you have any interest in hearing some spectacular music and vocals, I highly urge you to get one or more of their albums, preferably on CD, but whatever medium you prefer, just anything but YouTube. I just checked and you can get most of their CDs, brand-new, for less than $10 shipped. You'll thank me later. Boy howdy that McCoo was a humdinger. They also had a song called "Last Night I Didn't Get to Sleep at All." Funny...the same thing happened to me, from thinking about Marilyn, and the next day I'd be tired in class, but still able to cop a boner at the drop of a hat. It was Marilyn's fault. She shouldn't have been so hot. "Puppet Man" (sorry, you'll have to copy/paste): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lohkN5f3Yo0