About R.C. Black

Black humor insights into: music, travel, Reno the OTHER city in Nevada, physics, pianists and penises, Twelve Step sobriety as an atheist, being bi-polar in a world with one pole, death, food, surveys, Burning Man, being single over 50, Stephen Hawking’s lame ass and Oh Long Johnson.

Literature and Music are my lovers and muse. Ragtime piano is my forte but am a classically trained pianist. Can’t write without music and can’t play music without creating something new with it each time.

Members of the Burning Man Marching Band

After a gig with the Burning Man Marching Band. Myself, David Silverman (of  Tubatron fame) and John Birdsong (of the Pair-O-Dice New Orleans Jazz Band)

In the other world I design websites and graphics, play keyboards, piano and flute, plan for Burning Man, write, and agitate the hell out of others. Last viable source of employment was as an Executive Producer for Warner Brothers.

Front Cover from Traverse Magazine. October 2003. Taken in my retail store Cabin Fever.

Yogee Talking Board

The ‘Yogee’ talking board. circa 1940, glow in the dark = radioactive.

Owned and ran two successful peculiar and fun retail stores for 10 years.  Addicting, amusing and creative diversions. Perfect for a puzzle enjoying neurotic mental kinda gal.
Speaking of addictions (and who isn’t) I also house one of the largest and diverse Ouija and talking board collections in the country. A colorful, weird, wonderful American art form dating prior to the 1890’s. No, I don’t believe in ghosts, Satan, or spirits. Unless they’re decanted.

Have worked as an adviser to the Tim Burton Studios, Penn and Teller’s ‘Bullshit’, several other films, along with magazine, radio, television and newspaper interviews.

Want more Ouija? Check out the Museum of Talking BoardsAm currently (and s-l-o-w-l-y) re-writing my former Ouija site. Stay tuned.

Love to ski. Downhill. Fast. Really fast. It’s dangerous.
Helps not having health insurance.
Traveled Europe, the Soviet Union, the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada, the United States and Detroit. Lived everywhere from LA to NYC. Currently reside in Reno, Nevada.

Member of Mensa but don’t attend meetings. In the words of Groucho Marx  ‘I’d like to join a club  and beat you over the head with it.’
Consider myself an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual. The ordinary bores me. People must be interested and interesting to pique an interest, and I revel in being a misanthrope.  Spend a lot of life as a happy hermitress. This all fuels a desire to learn. About everything and anything.

I will continue to Write, Play the Piano, Attend Burning Man, and Debunk String Theory until the cure is discovered for suicidal ideation and NASCAR.

yeah that's me

Yeah that’s me. 

 Clean up pretty well and haven’t
been kicked out of a holiday dinner in years.

R. C. Black

 

78 thoughts on “About R.C. Black

  1. Consider myself an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual. The ordinary bores me, most people are uneducated idiots and I revel in being a misanthrope.

    My God, I feel right at home! I look forward to following 🙂

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    • Thanks Pandora!
      Been a bit slow in writing this month -getting ready for Burning Man (where being crazy is encouraged and if you want to be left the fuck alone it’s all good too). Will try to keep up. But certainly not on current events you’ll see on the ‘news’

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  2. Rachael, re the heist vid, thank you sweetheart, i really appreciate it…especially from a fellow musician. also had no idea how very talented, accomplished, and etc you are…it was very easy to ascertain that you possess a keen wit and are highly intelligent. so mensa comes as no surprise. i don’t hardly read these ” about” things…which i prolly should – mea culpa. so i bow deeply to you. and it only makes your appreciation of my shit all that more meaningful to me. continue…

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  3. re above: good, and you deserve it….anyway, since you posted that symphony of science/quantum physics vid (MARVELOUS) did u ever check out an early blog piece i wrote called “Matter of Life and Death”…it might be somewhat enjoyable to you – or not. continue…

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    • enjoyed your Matter of Lif e and death -great title for the piece -grin-. Left a rambling comment there. Many thanks for making me think. It’s one of my favorite things, although many times the tools are lacking

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    • Thanks Brian! I WILL get to posting a list of my recent nominations/awards and comply with each. This month. I promise.

      Did already receive and post the Versatile Blogger. Better check my own archives to make sure I passed it along and made the requisite nominations!

      Many thanks. A nomination from you is most flattering. Dig your blog.

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  4. Rachael,

    So I returned for a journey into your About Me and the travel was worth the while.
    I found myself nodding at the ‘agitating the hell out of idiots’, ‘misanthrope’ and Groucho Marx views. Marx also said something to the effect that ‘he wouldn’t want to be part of a club that would have him as a member.’

    Glad to discovered your blog….and a versatile personality!

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  5. What an interesting life you lead!! I like to think I’d have done the same if I weren’t so damned shy. Anyway, I’ll be back when I have more time to explore. Thanks for coming by my place.

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    • Thanks Chris, pleased to meetcha as well! Get your tush out to Burning Man and find Spanky’s Wine Bar -trust me you’ll get directions from 30,000 out of 40,000 people there -grin-. Ask for Piano Wench and I’ll appear as a dust-covered apparition holding aloft the finest in bad wine to fill your empty cup 🙂 Witty banter and floggings by request!

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  6. I have just been reading these fine annotations and the replies are even more wicked than the observations are, indeed the Dungeon Mistress within My Gothic Realm is often likened to a Dark and Ghoulishly Wicked Creature and the ‘Floggings by Request’ are always met with a hasty retreat from the Resident Zombies as her darkly charms are just too scrumptiously put into practice with a Zest of Evilness.

    “How do you mean what the hell am I talking about?” Well to find that out you will just have to enter my Space and take the tour but do watch out where you bend over whilst edging past the tombstones, especially in the midst of those crestfallen Skeletons, as they often pinch things you know? 🙂 lol

    Have an excellent rest of Friday and a
    Ghoul, I mean a Cool weekend my friend…

    Androgoth

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  7. Ouija boards, really? Sheez, three of my friends and I decided to try it years ago thinking it wasn’t real. Oh boy!!! When the dish started moving we thought it was everyone mucking around. I knew it was real when everybody took they hands off the dish except me and it went friggin berserk. Got some spirit called Bud who didn’t want to go. Did we all sleep with one eye open that night, I mean week, I mean month 🙄

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    • Heh. Used to have an extensive website on talking boards. Ouija is actually the most common so most people refer to them all as Ouija.
      I don’t ‘believe’ in Ouija boards anymore than I ‘believe’ in rocks heh. It’s due to an autonomic response in all people. Any ‘messages’ received are coming from the subconscious of the user(s).
      Don’t believe in ghosts, talking to the dead, or anything else occult attributed to them. I laughed my way to the bank by selling more boards than anyone else in the world, due to the selection, and shipped them as far as Ukraine, Argentina, Ireland, and The United Arab Emirates.
      I DID have a hilarious page dedicated solely to the best emails and letters I received from total lunatics and morons. Of course my answers were all carefully crafted pieces of sarcasm.
      Just got a new domain and am working on re-building the site.
      Fucking HTML5 and javascript lol

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      • Don’t get me wrong Loon. As a teenager a friend and I were playing and the hallway ceiling fell in. Ummm, turned out there was a leak from shoddy contractors,
        Also, while High Priestess of a long standing coven in SoCal (do NOT laugh..anymore than I do) three of us were playing and hit the lottery numbers for that day, Halloween…666. No one played it because it was so silly that we couldn’t take it seriously.
        Coincidence?????
        Uhhhh yeah.
        Wait until you see the page I’m putting back up. Not to mention a whole new batch of idiocy -mostly from teens.
        Oh, and you are not the only person with weird experiences using a;0 talking board… just look for a non-supernatural explanation as well though

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    • Oh you are clearly fabulous! Thank you so much for checking in here. The fact that you identify with my eccentricity is an A+++++ would deal with you again, Off to find your blog!
      Be Well

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  8. I am just calling by to have another ogle, I
    mean another look at your about page 🙂 😉
    Well I am just trying to visualise you with
    that wooden butt slapper in your hand 🙂 lol

    Have a very nice, wicked, wild
    and wonderful evening Miss. R 😉

    Androgoth XXx

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  9. The Flash in the Pan stories…

    You know I never thought about this when I wrote it for Red’s M3
    and i most certainly apologise for not warning you of it, sometimes
    my writing causes upset, unintensional of course but nonetheless
    it is a fact and I need to reflect on your thoughts and think before
    adding such stories, in hindsight I should not have added this and
    I can remove the script, don’t worry you have not said anything out
    of turn, it is the right thing to do…

    When your daughter is feeling better than the now, do by all means
    let her look at my Space and I will make certain that there are no more
    of these scripts, you are right about 9/11 that was so horrific that it
    gave us all those feelings…

    Give me two minutes and I will remove this posting, and no don’t even
    think about worrying about it because I am absolutely fine about it 🙂 🙂

    Sleep well this evening Miss. R and I hope that you and your daughter
    are feeling alright again sooner than later, we all want that my great friend 🙂

    Androgoth XXx

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      • Censoring is one thing Miss. R
        this is completely different, and
        I wanted to remove the script 🙂

        You and your daughter have a
        good day today and I hope that
        it is a lot warmer where you are
        as here it is bloody freezing 😦

        Andro XXx

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        • xxx
          but I meant what I said Andro. Just because something happens to another you know (or care about or read) does not mean you should cease your writings.
          I am only one voice, Not the masses.
          You are a thoughtful man

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  10. just checking you out Rachael 🙂 Oh and I think that it is
    the weekend next so how about a glass of freshly squeezed
    orange juice? 🙂 You will enjoy that while I am pouring myself
    out a large one, yes okay you can help me if you want to 🙂

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  11. Are you okay Miss. R? I have not seen
    you around WP for a while so I hope that
    you are not in loads of back pain again,
    if so I will have to send you a few slaves
    as a good rub down often helps 😉 🙂 xxxx

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    • You know how I adore slaves. Am presently in the market for one to do my bidding at Burning Man this year. A complex adulation of my deity status, the fabulous bosom, those side-splitting jokes (he’ll also have me in stitches -rim shot-) and naturally he’ll worship at my feet. Maybe my feet alone as well, seeing we’re known as a BDSM (and fetish) Wine Bar.
      Had a beau once who did have a foot fetish. Oh, the delightful pedicures. Those were the days… quite a boring obsession in this day and age eh?
      Sadly I have been in some severe pain the past weeks. Not the type that suits me. You know, The Types that bind. did I mention side-splitting? Yeah I did.
      What I’d give for a massage. My ex-boyfriend refused to massage me. I rubbed him down (no comments, you!) whenever he looked stressed.
      Perhaps that is a prime reason to finally let go of his sway upon me.
      My little black heart is ice, and cracks so easily.

      Mercifully I have lovely, and glorious friends such as yourself to keep me smiling, and on my toes!

      Now remember: A slave and NOT one of your terrible skelatons. I do hope they do not become crossed in the mail
      xxx

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    • Hi Deb,
      holy shit I’m behind on comments lmao. Valentine’s Day was the usual depressing melange of me, my cat and I.
      Next year: The King and I!
      Hope you’re well, happy and smiling my friend 🙂 xo

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  12. rach_benefit_cut

    Yes well I like that picture a lot and it is sooooo you,
    well as I imagine you to be all the time Miss. R 🙂 🙂 😉

    Hey I hope that your Monday is a wickedly enjoyable one
    with lots of creature comforts, slaves and anything else that
    you can think of come to that 🙂 lol Yes we know that your
    preferences will be as naughty as they are wicked but we don’t
    mind, just as long as you are enjoying yourself 🙂

    Andro xxxx

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  13. Wait! We’re both puzzle junkies too?! What are the chances that two 50something year old broads, with issues (let’s leave it at that), suicide ideation, and a knack for hanging around circus tents, would also love puzzles… and find each other on a blog? Sounds like you’re much smarter than me though… still… perhaps there’s hope for me. 😉 Very clever intro… mine needs revamping; I feel insignificant now. Except for the puzzle part. I’m damned good at that.

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    • Lisermarie: You are now my favorite interesting blog reader!
      Oooh I just adore meeting new people. Just wait until I share the naked bar dance stories.
      In the name of safety, and all that’s holy, no pictures will be included.
      So nice to meet you, and I can’t thank you enough for stopping by.
      ~R

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  14. Your name came up on my ouija board this morning, so I figured I needed to stop in. Ok, fine. I don’t own a ouija board. Would you believe a dying cow struck by a car whispered “yoyodyne…?” No? Then how about I’m glad you stopped by my blog so that I could discover yours? Truth be told, I’m truly looking forward to following your stuff 😉

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    • Ned, you know those nutty Ouija Boards. Been working on re-building my Ouija site. IAdam Sendak created a very cool header for me. Sadly most of my old code isn’t gonna cut it now. Been out of the design biz too long. Not that WP allows one to do much… without a usurus fee of course. The old damnedgames site and Cabin Fever retail store site used to be the Pride ‘O The Net. Well, to me it was, and who’s it all about?
      Crazy and truly insane people sent letters and email on a daily basis for years. What’s not funny about belonging on the funny farm?
      Speaking of farms, are you being charged with accessory after the fact on that whole Cow Murder thing? I’d hate to think your individual twist on writing would be reduced to the newspaper’s crime beat. As an insider.
      Whoa. The anxiety post potential on that one boggles the mind. With that I’ll cease any bad jokes that may fly outta that.

      Just started reading your stuff and I’m loving it. You have a new fan.

      Idiots and Idioms,
      ~R

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