Month: June 2024

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How We Got Here
or Entry Points and Exit Wounds

This is going to pull together a number of threads, so forgive me if it takes a while to make any kind of definitive statement.

In my last post I mentioned the concept of magician’s ego, the fact that when presenting what appears to be a strange or coincidental occurrence, the natural urge is to fabricate some narrative in which there is zero doubt that the magician is the root cause, even if the power of the effect is in the appearance that the magician does nothing.

But there’s a lot more to it than that.

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or Entry Points and Exit Wounds”

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F.E.G.
or If Tricks Could Kill

Back in October 2023 I posted a two part intro to what would have been my next post, a video about a trick I had been working on. However upon performing this trick in a magic competition it did not have the impact I had hoped for, a fact that was mostly down to my volunteer selection.

He didn’t get into it, so it didn’t land. I have since performed it again in a different competition and while it went much better, I’m now of the opinion that this kind of magic is kind of wasted on an audience of magicians.

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or If Tricks Could Kill”

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Blow Back
or A Funny Story About Tachycardia

I have a heart condition. I mentioned it ages ago. This week I went in to hospital to have an operation to make it not as bad. Not fix it, that would be a much bigger operation, but make it not as bad.

However, before having this procedure I had to spend 5 days off the drugs that prevent me from heading sudden unexpected tachycardias.

Guess what happened?

So when I was in tachycardia, the paramedic said he wanted to try me with a special technique for stopping it. Apparently if you sit up and blow into a syringe as hard as you can for as long as you can and then immediately fall back into lying down, it can stop tachycardia.

He tried it with a small syringe and it filled up without a problem, having no effect, at which point he said “When we get in the ambulance I’ll give you the big syringe, no one can blow that all the way.”

Readers, I filled the syringe.

“Jesus,” he said, “You must have amazing lungs. No one has ever done that. This isn’t going to work.”

In my stupor of low oxygen saturation well I could say was, “I make balloon animals.”

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Crystal Balls-Up
or I swear I am not psychic

This is a brief addition to say that it is a huge coincidence that on the same day I name-checked Vanishing Inc as the magic shop which would probably outlast others in a crumbling economy, it had a fire take out their warehouse and HQ. Even greater coincidence is that that same post mentioned another magic shop burning down shortly after I visited it.

I swear I am neither psychic, clairvoyant or an arsonist.

I may just be cursed.

Vanishing Inc is still trading and even declared a fire sale on downloads to raise money for rebuilding. Like I said before – use ’em or lose ’em.

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Ledger Domain
or Dan and Dave don’t know how copyright works

Sometimes I read something and wonder if I’m having a brain heammorrage.

It’s like the words in their particular order make so little sense that either I have forgotten how to read or the author of the words is insane, and I am surprisingly not egotistical enough to assume the latter every single time.

Thats the sense I had today when I was told that Dan and Dave, one of many famous sibling groupings known colloquially as the Buck Brothers, were putting all their work in the public domain, a statement backed by a post on their Instagram.

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or Dan and Dave don’t know how copyright works”

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Vanishing Vanishing Inc
or Use it or Lose it

Fay Presto is a scuba diver.

This may come as a surprise to many readers (should they exist) as it’s common knowledge that Fay Presto is a magician, but whereas most magicians work some shitty 9 to 5 to earn the money to buy magic tricks which they perform on the weekends, Fay Presto performs magic around the world to earn money for her scuba diving trips.

She told me once about the odd economics of scuba gear, that almost every piece of scuba equipment from tanks to masks to wetsuits is far cheaper on the internet, but no experienced scuba diver would ever buy things that way. Not because the online products are lower quality or difficult to judge sizes and compatibility or anything like that, but because the one thing you can’t do online is fill up your air tanks.

On a suba diving holiday everyone’s airtanks get re-filled a few times a day, and the only place to do that is at a physical scuba gear suppliers.

However, here’s the rub: there is no money in filling air tanks. If people don’t buy their scuba gear from the physical scuba store where thry dive, the scuba store goes bust, no one can fill up their air tanks, and scuba just kinda… Ends.

Continue reading “Vanishing Vanishing Inc
or Use it or Lose it”