On the Internet: The Bloggard, in his Traktor Topaz persona, now appearing on a computer near you. In fact, appearing here on this computer right in front of you!

For the Mobius Megatar company, a simple how-to video about modifying guitar straps to make two-handed touchstyle playing easier on a standard guitar.

For future reference, here’s the link. But if YouTube is online, then you should be able to see the video here —

Yow. That’s fun!

Mount Shasta: Winter just last week, and yesterday spring came hand in hand with summer, like old friends returning to the tavern after a long talk through the woods. Pals now, content, no feuds today. Across the street, George Brown’s apple trees in blossom. Lilacs obscure the front window. In our back yard, our apple tree awaits, but the pear tree is raucous.

My birthday today, so a special ‘Thank you!’ to my mama! Long gone from this planet, but maybe you’ll hear my gratitude through the walls of time.

I’m being transformed, is what it is.

It’s the old good-news, bad-news kind of thing.

The bad news is that my eye is not so keen, my tread not so soft, my balance less perfect, as in the far away spring of my days. Though I wander those fields with eyes wide open, seeing my friends in the budding of their lives, the world has turned beneath my feet.

Then, a world almost silent: no cellphone, no fax, no television, no computers, no ipod, no world wide web, no email, no instant messaging — we were still gawking at that revolutionary new jello instant pudding, and ‘messaging’ wasn’t even a word. We knew no japanese cars, no vegi-burgers, no dot.coms, no online trading, no shrink-wrap, no microwaves, no lo-fat milk, no aerobics class, no atkins diet, no tofu, no global warming, no gasoline shortage, no remote-control, no cds, no dvds, no birth-control pill, no jumbo jet, no cordless drill, no satellites, no video games, no synthesizers, no smoke detectors, no running shoes, no walkman, no electronic ignition, no GPS, no LED, no UPS, no MRI, no LSD, no LAN, no PCP, no MTV, no MP3, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no croissants, no Bob Dylan, no Jimi Hendrix, no raddicchio lettuce, no David Bowie, no Starbucks, no Latte, no Madonna, no Reggae music, no heavy metal, no Michael Jackson, no Prince, no Napster, no Britney Spears, no automatic-transmission, no Prozak, no big-box stores, no Amazon, no Google, no smiley-faces, and no blogs.

There. Doesn’t that sound quiet?

We children got our clothes at John’s Dry Goods store. We listened to the two radio stations in Wichita Falls. We rode in large American cars on farm-to-market dirt roads which got muddy when it rained. We wore tennis shoes, and Levi’s jeans. We went to school, where we carried a lunch in a sack or ate in the cafeteria. We saved up and bought records at Moore’s Hardware Store record dep’t. We rode bicycles. Was it quiet? You bet.

Then we got cars of our own, and drove into the future. And now, I see decades of that future by looking back. Isn’t that funny?

That was the bad news. Not so bad, I think.

The good news is: I have fun every day. Neat.

I am being transformed. I once had quite a magical life — especially during the San Francisco years in some of the Bloggard stories (Buddha next door, a tiny miracle on napa street, april’s mystery avocado, and others) — and over time, through the wear and tear of years, in a narrowing of vision and a forgetfulness, I had let myself become diminished.

Well, magic is back.

Way back then, I had some rubber stamps made, to stamp on letters — remember letters? We used to send them back and forth — and one of these stamps said, “The Beneficent Universe is Conspiring to Do You Good.” I thought that was funny.

I suppose that one of those letters I sent has come back, just recently. It’s as if I opened my front door, and in tumbled exactly what I needed, exactly what I was looking for, and didn’t even know I’d lost. Things just showed up, one thing after another, bing bing bing, as if triggered by some unheard cue from a stage manager in an unseen control booth.

There was a manifestation practice, and a targets system, and a meditation that makes you real mellow. As luck would have it, I was well prepared, for I’ve studied much of this before, but never seen it so simply. (I’d cobbled bits and pieces together from hermetic texts, and practices in magic and meditation, plus some organize-your-business materials.)

Just since December, I’ve paid off a huge debt, I’m buying a house, a fellow has offered to build me a larger shop, the Megatar company is back in production after a massive equipment upgrade, sales are up, I sold the voicemail business in February for the figure I named, I have new clothes, I’ve become much calmer, and …

Let me give you an example: I wanted to find a shop manager. The next day I got an unexpected phone call from a guy answering the wrong ad, and it’s as if he had trained for the job: a degree in furniture design, years in the shop, and worked in a banjo factory, with a family, living here in town, and he loves the work. Plus, he’s faster than me, and velocity has tripled in the shop.

I like it.

In fact, I’m plumb tickled, as we used to say. Though that was long ago.

Which brings us right around. Wouldn’t you say?