"Music for Nitrogen Narcosis" is a good place to pin down my wandering thoughts. It's at the intersection of two distinct things rolling around in my head right now: aNONradio and death. These two things have nothing to do with each other except for the show name "Music for Nitrogen Narcosis". ------- Part 0: What the heck am I talking about, "Nitrogen Narcosis"? ------- Okay let's start here. aNONradio, if you don't know, is the icecast streaming service of SDF. It's an internet "radio" station in which SDFers can "broadcast" streams: music, talk, whatever. Anyone can listen, not just SDFers. This is at (web) anonradio.net. I have a show on it called Chips 'n Dip, just started recently. I did my 2nd show yesterday. I've been learning more about how the system works. What I'm gaining a deeper understanding of right now is what the system does when there's no one streaming. It sort of does what my first job was back in my TV broadcasting days: "Master Control" (the name is more impressive than the job). Basically you have an array of sources which can be routed to the transmitter. These include VTRs (tape decks), cameras, incoming signal from a field reporter who bounces a microwave signal from their van off the transmitter and down to the studio, etc... These "sources" on aNONradio can be seen on http://anonradio.net:8010 In icecast nomenclature these sources are called "Mount Points". Any streamer can connect their computer to their assigned mount point at any time but you need "Master Control" to switch over to your mount point in order for it to "go out over the air" (stream). In icecast nomenclature "Master Control" is the server itself, not a person so it has assigned mount points that it switches to at assigned times. However, if no show is scheduled then it goes into filler-mode, the source for this (I think) is "/anonradio-ident". Although there's also "/repeater" which repeats shows ... sometimes ... for some reason. Exactly what gets repeated I'm not sure of but I think it has to do with how a streamer has uploaded files. Anyway I'm getting off topic. "Music for Nitrogen Narcosis" is one of the shows on the schedule. The DJ for this show (Overland) must have uploaded a lot of music which MC* can pick to fill otherwise dead air with because there is *A LOT* of music from "Music for Nitrogen Narcosis" that fills the time on aNONradio. * I'm going to refer to the bit of the icecast server that controlls what is actually going out over the stream as Master Control (MC) because of my broadcasting history it's how I think of it. A lot of this music (Nitrogen Narcosis) is ... well ... not very good. (Sorry Overland), at least it's not my cup o' tea. Sometimes it's not even really music, it's just noises. And it's often very quiet. ------- Part 1: Giving "MC" more to work with. ------- What I've started to do this morning is take some of the better songs from my show and upload them so that the server can grab those songs, hopefully displacing some of the "Music for Nitrogen Narcosis" tracks. I think anyone streaming music on aNONradio, ideally, *should* do this just so that the filler content is more varied. I think the reason most of this filler is Nitrogen Narcosis is because Overland probably actually went to the effort of uploading some songs for the general playlist. It's a bit more difficult for me since a lot of the music on my show is tracker music in the form of an .XM file, or .IT, or .S3M, or .MOD, you get the point. So I have to convert each to an mp3 first but if I just pick 2 or 3 from each show it's not too daunting a task and over time will build up a good collection of stuff. ------- Part 2: Death (with intention) ------- The second part is brought to my mind by Overland's show's name: "Music for Nitrogen Narcosis". I assume that means being made unconscious by breathing pure nitrogen. This is a good way to go out because ~80% of each breath we take in is nitrogen so our bodies do not react negatively by breathing it. It's perfectly safe and doesn't induce any sense of choking as say ... sticking a plastic bag over your head. The panic wouldn't set in until you've already lost consciousness. Of course I don't know any of this from exerpience. So the show name may refer to inducing unconsciouness, not necessarily death, if you can resume intake of oxygen at some point before breathing stops. But regardless of the intent of the show's name it has recalled my thoughts about dying because I try very hard to live with intention and I want to find a way to die with intention as well. I don't want to just be thrown around this world being told what to do by people who may or may not give a shit about me. I don't want my devices controlling my attention with alerts and push notifications. I don't want content "feeds" to decide what I see and hear. I don't want neighbors or their lawyers deciding when and if my wife and I should move away from the utter shit-show that is Cleveland. It's time to take control, do *our* thing, and everyone who doesn't like it can go get fucked. Then, there's dying. My dad didn't have a terrible death, he had a very agressive cancer which took him out relatively quickly but with enough time to say goodbye and he didn't die alone. He had hospice and wasn't in too much pain. My mother had a bad death, although it didn't drag on too long it must have been terrifying. I posted about this here: gopher://mutinybbs.com:/0/users/Divarin/pub/Phlog/20260417.txt What I am scared of is being in a position where living in untenable but I'm not able to kill myself. I don't want to be kept away from consciousness in some kind of nightmarish dream state by pain meds while holes in my bowels slowly poison my blood. I don't want to be alone in my hermit hole (if I get one of those some day) with a broken leg and unable to get help or some other debilitating condition which leaves me hanging to life in some sort of limbo-state, wanting to die but physically incapable of making that happen. So, what I want, is a dead-man-switch. I want some sort of device that will kill me unless I ... say once a week or so ... press a button or do something that disables whatever it is that the device would do to kill me. It needs to be something that is more difficult than a switch, I can see being in state where I'm capable of flipping a swtich or hitting a button and thus keeping myself alive out of fear of what lies beyond but other than that animal instict to survive am in a state very much wanting to be released. Maybe, lift a weight of 10 lbs, or ride a bike, or ... something that requires that I be healthy enough that life is worth continuing. The problem is that threshold is a moving target. As I get older, and slower, and less healthy, it's always some point off further down the road. The "I want to die now" threashold is approached asymtotically. Or maybe it's more like a mirage which is always the same distance away no matter how much you move toward it. So, deciding the threshold and getting this going now while I'm still relatively young is important. But taking this from a thought experiment to reality is nebulous. You can't exactly find "devices to kill me if I become too feeble" on Amazon. Well you might just based on the build quality and lack of attention to safety regulations (such as a simple space heater that might kill you if you aren't able to make it to a fire extinguisher in time). Also, how does it even work? Is it installed inside my body? Does it stop my heart or does it somehow filter out oxygen, causing nitrogen narcosis and ultimately nitrogen mortosis (that's not a word, AFAIK, but you get what I mean. I'm sure there's a similar word but what do I look like, an English major?!) This is one of those things I'll probably never get to, but one day will wish that I had. One thing I know for sure is I want to stay alive as long as my wife is with me, I don't want her to die alone. .