Strawbs 🕉️🏳️‍⚧️🎶🎛️

@strawbs.tv

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Art, chaos, vibes. 49yo trans femme Latina Protogen/Hyena DJ, musician, 420, psychonaut, PNW. Sunday Service Spinning Society Chaplain.PLURR! ONE Heart ONE Love ONE INFINITE BEAT twitch.tv/StrawberryProtato youtube.com/@strawberryprotato links.strawbs.tv

Our adopted stray is a subject of much chagrin for the established feline ruler.

A stupid meme I made from a clip from Better Off Dead to illustrate how I feel after coming back to work after a delightful week off doing house work and chilling.

Nubbins to mount grabby hands on a grabby arm.

It's a noodle dragoness! Huge fluffy red mane, black scales, face noodles, the works. She's standing in the "back yard" of The Church of The Infinite Beat in VRChat.

Strawberry Protato replay on Monday night (Tuesday morning technically) at midnight PST/3am EST/8am BST.

Audels "Practical Guide to Servicing Electronic Organs" book cover, with a certain hormany proof in the corner looking pleased with herself.

Poster for S4 today

Two packages of furry bait keto bread, sourdough on the left, seed bread on the right.

It's the back end of an onion on a cutting board. It has buttcheeks. No, not the cutting board, the onion. The /onion/ has buttcheeks.

Event poster for Transient. It says "Transient / Doors Opem March 19th 19:45 EDT / at / Cyber Rave / Featuring DJ's (sic) / 20:00 Chaos Wicker 21:30 Strawbs / 23:00 ManicLandIzzy 00:30 FeoDohn

There are images and logos of each of the DJs in the four corners.

This will be one of my rare public appearances this year that isn't S4 or Strawberry Jam (if I ever actually start that back up), so come check it out if you want some Strawberry Vibes.

Dora, our little explorer, in my husband's arms, looking fluffy and as charming as ever. You could just pick her up and hold her gently, like cheeseborger. She died peacefully, in her sleep, amongst her flock, which is all I could have asked for her end. She was, I think, my favorite of the flock, and she'll be sorely missed. Farewell, Dora. Chicken heaven won't hold you any better than fences could, and may you enjoy your afterlife exploring in the hereafter, as you did in life.

I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

It's a shrine that formulated itself of a household god gifted to me by a strange creature whom I should track down to say hello to. There's also a statue of the war god Ku, a tin of Oops, all eels, a brass top made by a deceased neighbor, a gas station butane torch, the brass hand of a clock, wooden matches, Baybel cheese wax, an old glass ashtray, and a strange thrift store wood statue (not Ku) and a weird incense holder that probably isn't an incense holder, and might actually be a tentacle.

Expectation (lots of dopamine)

Bali the Donskoy/Sphynx lookin cute with a Kirkland microfiber towel over her, sitting on a piano stool in front of a well-lit window. She can't delete later because she doesn't know the PIN for my phone. Also, cats don't know how to use phones. Or, at least, they choose not to. Too smart for their own good, IMO.

It's a picture that says "The Strawberry Jam...returns in march".

There is a screaming protogen on the bottom left. Sorry, she's just really excited.

It's a sticker of the math problem meme BUT IT'S ALSO A BIBLIOGRAPHY!!!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11430579/

https://americanbehavioralclinics.com/the-importance-of-staying-hydrated/

https://impact.deakin.edu.au/2022/03/water-really-can-provide-some-relief-from-anxiety-and-help-us-see-the-glass-half-full/

It's actually a coconut coir puck (compacted shredded coconut potting soil) all swole up!!

A fanciful coyote/hyena lady in a purple pashmina tied and pulled over her ears, wearing librarian-style glasses, with a vintage lamp and stained glass in the background, in a realistic style...... LAWWWWWWWL I don't know why I wrote that like an AI prompt, it's just Aoki looking old and needy. :P

Internet speed test of 2.5gbps waaaaow

The newest isekai, That Time I was Reincarnated as a Warm Orb But Actually a Naked Cat in a Blanket in the Rural Feudal Pacific Northwest.

(It's a Donskoy cat wrapped up like a ball in a soft blanket)

Event poster for the event! ALSO I HAD MY TIME WRONG IN A PREVIOUS POST I AM NOT CLOSING, I'M JUST AFTER OPENING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NOON PST/3pm EST/8pm GMT!!!

Kaleidosky poster

Event Poster for a collab event.

CHRISTMAS MEGA RAVE
TEMPLE of LIGHT
Tygron vs Airenwolf
Spitfire vs Shrooky
Saklly Lad vs Cacklecore
Noopalley vs Veroxyde B2B Sundra
Beamflare vs Jayceebeats B2B Mayflower
Strawberry Protato vs Loprov B2B Daratomic B2B Tsop

I'm not sure why these are "vs" since they're sequential, but hey, what do I know.

It's the Thanksgiving turkey.

No, actually it's a Sphynx/Donskoy cat named Bali, sleeping with her face mashed into her favorite soft binky.

My weird sphynx plushie child with really bad teeth and terrible sinus allergies, in the comfort of the den, just vibing to lofi. Iunnow.

An image of Strawberry in a lotus position with 4 holographic arms arrayed at her sides. Behind her is the symbol of the Infinite Beat atop a starry field that's been smeared with the "liquid" tool. There is a frame made of a hodgepodge of portal imagery made from spirals from Motion Array, but they were too busy so I repurposed them as texture layers for the frame, background accents, and an overlay of the Infinite Beat. The Infinite beat has a pseudo 3d effect I so with hard shading generated by shifted selection masks and hard contrasting hue, saturation, and brightness-shifted layers. The arms are repurposed elements for my NFC 2025 promo movie. I had to delete my tail because it was cluttering things, but it was extraneous, anyway, and detracted from the overall balance. I'm also an idiot and made the image at 2k, later up-scaled to 4k. Whoops. The holograms are two layers of arms with different angled chromatic aberration, heavy bloom, a blue point light top layer, noise, Gaussian blur auras, and a fine-zoomed "glitch". They are NOT transparent, rather I used a difference layer and a hard light layer with low opacity to give the illusion of transparency.

She's beautiful.

It's a weird plush with bad teeth and nipples, and it reminds me of my cat.

It's an awful black screen with pixelated, RGB-torn text and pixelated images.

Section 1
Header Image: A pixelated icon of a jar of strawberry jam/jelly with the bubble-words "JAM" on top
Header Text: No Strawberry Jam Today, I'm taking a "Me Day".
Header subscript: (which often ends in me being depressed because I didn't play, but here we are...)

Section 2
Body Image: Pixelated image of a strawberry jam jar
Body Text: Also it’s my and Vermin’s 7th wedding anniversary so we’re gonna be stoned, lazy, and fat, and I wanna to think about something other than stressing about my DJing-crisis-of-faith.

Section 3
Footer Image: A pixelated strawberry
Footer Text: See y'all next week.

A misprint of the bottom layers of a round base, printed in wood PLA that is too old and needs to be discarded but holy cow does it look like bologna.

Nutso Protogen gal done up in glowing graffiti, reclining in a chair in Jinx's lair, from Arcane.

A feral protogen gal done up in glowing graffiti, ready to pounce, crouched on Silco's desk from The Last Resort in the Arcane show.

A fuzzy sphynx cat.

Some sphynx cats are fuzzy. Bali is the peach fuzz kind. She's a little flabby meatball. She has the amazing ability to transform into a meat polyp, attaching her greasy, sallow flesh to whomever in the bed is warmest, sinking into that sumptuous warmth with all the certitude of a xenomorph spider hot-to-trot for the voluptuous verisimilitude of a comforting tracheal oviposition.

Luckily she is with teeth, rather than acid.

Seriously, though, this power outage sucks. I wanted to go to Stage Flight. I'm likely to miss a gig tonight. I may not be able to host S4 tomorrow. The FOMO is crushing. I get in VR so little these days, to have a weekend that I was going to dedicate to it pulled away by shitty weather just sucks with epic levels of suck-i-tude.

The usual billing for The Strawberry Jam. A blown up picture of my office carpet with graphics and words:

A 60s-style marquee that looks like I ripped it off from a sleazy motel says:

The Strawberry Jam #220 (the number is in big pixelated text)

On the left:
In VRChat and on Twitch
strawbs.tv
3p-6p PST
11p-2a BST

On the right is a layered stack of strawberry jam jars, flanked on each side by Strawbs and Strawbs, who are saying: "Chill Vibes Groove Forever" or possibly "Chill Groove Vibes Forever" or maybe they're separate. Not really sure, but since there are two Strawbs, it's already confusing.

I took Yukon's original poster and cut it up and made it look like a bad representation of a bad tube TV with iOS Pocket (Procreate for the iPhone). It's a VRChat photo of a Protogen, face down in some random pool world. It says:

Wednesday - BLTV Live
BLFC
Pool Stage
15 Oct

On the right is the full lineup:
8:30p - DJ Acronix
9:30p - Chris Uruz
10:30p - Strawberry Protato (there is an arrow pointing from this text to the floating Protogen)
11:30p - Wren

The text in the middle states:
Don't worry, the vibes are in and she's spinning her favorite music.
(In smaller words) And is totally not facedown in the pool
(In even smaller words) ...probably...

It's just a basic stupid graphic w/the usual:

The Strawberry Jam #118
In VRChat and on Twitch

strawbs.tv (which just forwards to twitch.tv/strawberryprotato)
3p-6p PST
11p-2a BST

And then a goofy recycled Telegram sticker and a corny "comic book growing" thing of my old Strawberry Jam bottle I photoshopped like 3 years ago.

Seriously, though, I'm just... Tired. All this shit, toxic co-dependencies and their closet skeletons, my own assumptions and expectations spun out of control, my ego getting more of a grip on me than I wanted... VR was feeling toxic, and I was happy to shear off that funk, but now it just feels... Empty.

My friends groups have all moved on, and I have no real core group anymore. I'm just "Strawbs from S4" and all anyone wants to talk about is S4 or their own sets they're working on. One dude come up to me the other day, complimented my music, said they loved it, then started talking about dubstep and their favorite producers and tracks, and I was like "That's great, but I don't know any of these; it's not really my vibe." Then they CONTINUED to talk about DEATH and DESTRUCTION and KILL 'EM ALL and DO YOU FEEL ME, and it's like "NO I DON'T, FRIENDO, I JUST SAID THAT'S NOT MY VIBE".

Feels like I'm spinning the same shit, the same way, for the same people, and we're all just breathing in recycled farts. Is it changing? Is it evolving? Probably? But I'm in a place right now where I can see it.

I missed Strawberry Jam for 2 weeks. That's never good for me. I always forget how much I NEED to play this, how much it heals & helps me. Even when I'm getting crushed by the world, by the evils, by a govt that doesn't care, and KNOWING that some of the people in my circles VOTED for these callous fleshbags operating in mockery of sentience, because they just DON'T UNDERSTAND the reality of the threats, even then, when I'm at my weakest, I need to do my Jam..

But so often, I just don't have the spoons....

Sorry for the Alt-text ramble.

A melted Buff Orpington named Cannonball. She's enjoying the warm air in the shade under a shrub. Behind her (out of focus) is Pickle the Bantam Brahma and Dora the Rhode Island Red. They are comfy.

My little brother Kittz is visiting, so The Strawberry Jam's gonna be offline for one more week, cause I wanna hang with the little (the word spazbucket is X'd out) DELIGHTFUL SCAMP while I can. See y'all next week!

A sphynx/donskoy cat next to a blue plush spider and a plush bee, on a vintage piano bench, in front of a window to the outdoors.

A lava field with all my various logos on fire. I am emotionally hurt, and I am not focused enough or feeling fit enough to play for 3 hours today. Sorry. No Strawberry Jam this week.

Promo picture. Background image is the art car "Elektra", a giant dragon with LED wings, and people clustered around her. Text is:

The Strawberry Jam #117
Post-Burn Chillout

An arrow points to the dragon, which is labelled "Elektra (so pretty)"
An arrow points to a pixelated blob in front of the dragon, which is labelled "Strawbs!"
To the left is the text "Photo by Ryken"
There is the usual graphic stating: "In VRChat and on Twitch"
The site redirect is on the left: "strawbs.tv"
The times are on the right: "3p-6p PST / 11p-2a BST"

There is an inserted graphic of a knocked-over strawberry jam bottle with Strawberry (protogen version) crawling exhaustedly out of it.

A bust of Strawberry, a dorky protogen lady, standing upright with her left handpaw over her visor in a typical display of a "FacePalm"

This hand-crafted alt text has been brought to you by the "CheebsCo Office of Alt Text Distribution and Disbursement" (OATDD), and is underwritten by a grant from the "CheebsCo Office of Disbursement and Distribution of Grants for the Distribution and Disbursement of Alt Text" (ODDGDDAT).

CheebsCo: "~/We Make Stuff/~"

Poster for the event. It is predominantly purple, with DJ glamour shots on the sides. The color is predominantly purple, with white text. That text says:

Transcendent Presents
TRANSIENT
Exploring A Different Venue Every Week
Doors Open August 21st 19:45 EDT
At
Heartbeat
Featuring DJ's
20:00 Synthakat
21:30 Strawbs
23:00 V[AI]RUS
00:30 Panda

A Donskoy (probably not a Sphynx) cat on a window bed behind gossamer black curtains, twisted up like a pretzel, twitching and snoring. So graceful. Like a long, baggy slab of pork belly, sunwarmed, content in its saggy pork-belly-ness, dreaming naked flabby cat dreams of endless, delightful food options that one can ignore and waste with decadent abandon, and piles upon piles of small plush toys and accompanying low couches under which to loose them. Blissful dreamscapes of other pink, flabby, hairless animals than one can swat, bite, and slap with the resounding, meaty "SPLAP" that only hairless cats can provide.

Wonderful.

Artsy shot of the pedalboard with low fstop. Trumpet is in the background. It's an "Olds Super" from 1952, and the horn Inuse for Burning Man. It has a "PiezoBarrel" mic soldered to my old gold-plated Bach 3C from high school. It's my "crappiest" horn, but it has good character, and if it falls over I don't have to file an insurance claim, like the good horn.

A promo image for Strawberry Jam No 114. It is plain white Sans text on a black background with blurred DJ logos in the background, and a floral pattern. The text says:

Strawberry Jam No 114
Monday, August 4th, 2025
In VRChat at The Church of the Infinite Beat and on Twitch at: https://strawbs.tv

3p-6p PST/6p-9p EST/11p-2a BST

I met Tugrik in 2008 through the guy I was dating, and we became fast friends. I delivered another friend of mine to Tugrik's machine shop to surprise a long-time friend of his, JayGryph (later EmoBurd, Chicken Noodle, and Verminiferous), whom I would later marry. Because of that meeting, I decided to go to Burning Man, which was a life-altering event. Later, through the years, I would hang out with Tugrik regularly. When I needed a new job in 2013, Tugrik put my resume in with his current company, and when they hired me, it began the best (from a job/professional standpoint) 12 years I've had in my 27 years in the IT/Tech industry, and included a sanity-saving moving to Oregon with work's blessing, a move Tugrik would later embark on himself.

There is so much around me that has his mark on it. And it took Tugrik in his deathbed, there, in the hospital, so small, so...diminished...to make me realize just how much of who I am today has his influence in it. In the end, we told him, Vermin and I. He passed on, knowing that, knowing how much he was valued and loved. I have no regrets.

Y'all know me. Like so many people, music is core to my identity. I celebrate through music. I mourn through music. It is the medium through which I best channel my emotions, be they joy, anger, grief, regret, sadness, or contentment.

Today I will spend 3 hours expressing these emotions, and there will probably be ugly crying involved.

I have no regrets.

The infamous deleted scene from "The Lion King", in which High Priest Rafiki hurls the Just-Born "Demon Of The Pride Lands and Destroyer of Dads" Baby Simba into an excited throng of animal thralls.

A Trophy of Excess, aka the X-Treme Gulp, my 52 oz refillable "mug" from 7-11, circa 1999.

A silly poster with a screaming Strawberry Protogen and a googly-eyed Kiteless Rexouium and the text: "STRAWBERRY JAM No 112 B2B (Back 2 BDay) KITELESS AND ALL JULY AMINALS' B-DAY MONDAY NIGHT SCHMORGASBARK...or something w/beats by Flay Valant Strawbs Senky" and the times, 3-5p PST for SJam 112 and 5p-9p PST for Kiteless July BDays party. IN VRCHAT and STILL on TWITCH at https://strawbs.tv

A Donskoy cat (like a sphynx, but not) laying on sun-warmed, wooden shelf in her catio. She clearly wishes to be drawn like one of your French girls, and the expression on her face: half-lidded eyes and beatific stoicism writ plain in mottled pink and grey wrinkles, with all the grace of an aged hot water bottle overfilled with heat-swollen gelatin, while the overbearing grace of sallow royalty exudes from her like a freshly soiled litter ox.

She is, indeed, a Queen.