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Seattle:- 1. Seatown — neither a town nor on the sea.
- 2. Jet City — hereafter minus jets.
- 3. The Emerald City, take 2 — somewhere between rain drenched poppy fields, androids, and electric sheep.
- 4. Eight months of winter rain and unemployment dying to teach your sorry Midwestern ass that Seasonal Affective Disorder is all that stands between you and meeting Kurt Cobain in person.
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Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"
John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."
-- Kissing Hank's AssInfo
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the AGT bullshit is finished…
well, we were on america’s got talent last night… for about 10 seconds. they showed a montage of the entire group performing, the entire group getting put out, a closeup of myron, and sharon osbourne saying it’s “silly” with howard stern saying “she’s married to ozzy osbourne and she thinks it’s silly”…
and that was it.
hardly worth it for all of the hassles we had to go through with the fire marshall, and everything else… but we did get a three-day trip to san francisco, for us and twelve boxes of gear that had to be shipped by land because it was flammable, that had all expenses except food, paid…
and now we can truthfully claim that we’ve been on a nationally televised reality show…
so i guess it evens out somewhere.
supposedly there’s a DVD of it somewhere. i’ll probably cut out the “important” part and post it, when i figure out whether it even exists or not.
Tagged bbwpmore AGT bullsh!t
according to our “spies” on the east coast, we’re actually not going to be on America’s Got Talent today, and they also inform us that the san francisco auditions are listed as being tomorrow (i.e. tuesday).
now i can attest to the fact that we are dealing with a very avaricious and kniving bunch of theives at NBC, and they have already demonstrated their ability to play fast and loose with the truth, when necessary, to accomplish whatever nefarious ends they have in mind, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that there’s a different schedule for east coast and west coast, or something like that, but, at this point, i don’t know and the only advice i can offer is to watch more tee-vee…
bleh. 
AGT alert!
we just found out (so, sorry for the short notice, it couldn’t be helped) that we ARE going to be on the America’s Got Talent “Rejects” edition, TOMORROW.
anybody know how to digitally “tape” a television show? if you do, send me email. the sooner, the better. 
also…
Snake Suspenderz at The Can Can in Seattle, WA on 120617… i would say “get yer tickets now” but they’re not actually on sale yet… get yer tickets soon would probably be more accurate.
on the other hand…
unlike the players’ shock and awe earlier in the year, the moisture festival check arrived today, and while it is truly impressive, there isn’t anywhere near as much of it as there was for the players — and what i did get paid was for 16 “shares”, four for snake suspenderz and the rest for the fremont phil… and, if i recall correctly, it’s very close to, if not exactly the same as the amount that i was paid for 14 shares last year… grumble, mutter… although, even despite all my grumbling and muttering, i’m still going to contribute $100 to their “star” program, for the 10th anniversary moisture festival, next year.
now it’s time to focus my attention on creating a new Ganesha The Car…
woo… 8/
Obama Comes Out for Same-Sex Marriage – when he comes out in favour of legalising pot, i’ll be interested…
☹
Maurice Sendak – the Seattle Opera went from their “normal” sets to the sets designed by Maurice Sendak for The Nutcracker in 1983. ezra was in the production starting in about 1988, and actually got to meet him…
Tagged dead peoplei think i’m healthy again…
this morning, i got up and took ganesha the car to the place where it’s going to get its brakes fixed. i took my bike, and rode most of the way home. along the way, i was a terrorist and took pictures of the massive sculpture at the north end of the runways… seriously, i was expecting some jack-booted thugs at any moment, despite the fact that i was well outside their "security theater", simply because of the fact that i was taking pictures of the runway.
but the important part is that, while there was some coughing, it was directly related to my inhalation of burning cannabis, and wasn’t because it was happening randomly. now, i have to admit that i didn’t ride all the way home, i did ride the distance between burien and the south-east end of tukwilla, international boulevard – about 5 miles – where i got on an "A route" bus, which i rode to the federal way transit center, and from there, i rode home – another 6 miles or so. it was close enough – i actually rode past the station on my way to 170th, where i got on the bus – that i seriously considered the option of taking the train into downtown seattle, where i would probably have ridden out to mercer island and gotten a ride home from my sweetie, but then i realised that i had a dog that needed to be let out waiting at home, and monday is the day moe goes to classes after her work, and doesn’t get home until later, so i decided on a more direct route home.
but the important part is that i was able to do it without feeling more than ordinarily exhausted, and without coughing. it’s a good sign.
cursed, blessed moisture festival, anyway…
fumdiddle
i went to olympia last night, to play with The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra, which i have determined, is a majority of my karass. i have only become more convinced of this as time goes on: i have played with about 90% of these people, in one form or another (but, specifically, not as “The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra”) for the past 35 years or so. i have played with them in bellingham, lummi island, port townsend, mount vernon, and seattle, in groups like the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band, The Fremont Philharmonic, Snake Suspenderz, The Skagit County Community Band, The Stairway Jam and a number of other groups. and, as a karass is “a group of people who do God’s will without ever discovering what they are doing”, i think use of the word “karass” is a most excellent and absolutely appropriate use of the word to describe this group of people, and their relationship to me. last night’s show also featured The Mud Bay Jugglers, Joey Pippia, The Scuff and Al Show, Citizens Band, The Tallhouse Arts Consortium, The Juggling Jollies, Justincredible, Della Moustachella, and (special guests) the ORIGINAL(!!!) Flying Karamazov Brothers, Dmitry, Smerdyakov and Fyodor… and i also saw my very good friends from bellingham, Karl Meyer and Stephan Freeman, the son of Kenyth Freeman.
as i have said before, if i had the opportunity to move my entire life (including my workshop), wholesale, to bellingham, without having to worry about what i was leaving behind, or where to put things when i got there, i would be there in a second.
(and, if any of my band-mates happen to be reading this, i definitely would make the trip to seattle (or wherever) to maintain my current membership in whatever band they may be worried about. i live in the middle of bum-fuck, nowhere, currently, and it doesn’t affect my ability to drive into seattle to busk, or do paying gigs, or even rehearse, so i don’t know why you imagine that if i lived in bellingham, it would be any different.)
i found a reliable, honest mechanic that will fix my brakes for A LOT less than the $800 than i was quoted a few days ago: $300 to $500 qualifies as “a lot less” doesn’t it? and i suppose it really doesn’t matter that the guy who actually is going to fix my car is the father-in-law of my wife’s boss, does it? it seems a bit like nepotism, but the difference in price is enough to make me tend to ignore such things…
i still have a cough, but it has been going away, gradually. i actually went the entire night without coughing last night. i still feel exausted at night, and i’m sleeping more than usual, but that’s at least partially because of the fact that i was at a show until around midnight last night.
Tagged bellingham, ganesha the car, health, karasshee
on the left, i’m playing a B-flat tenor horn, manufactured by John Distin and stamped with the J.W.Pepper logo, from around 1900, in the middle, i’m playing a nominally Elkhorn E-flat tuba that i have no idea when it was made, and on the right, i’m playing a Conn C tuba, made within the past 25 years.
if we had a longer couch, i could probably get in a double-B-flat sousaphone, as well…
↑ ⅕
get it? up… date…
well, i thought it was amusing…
i am feeling a good deal better, although i am still not back to 100% health, yet. i still have a lingering cough that comes up at random times, particularly whenever i lie down, but i’m a lot better than i was a week ago.
the brakes in my car have to be replaced, to the tune of $800. moe claims that this car is “nickle-and-dime-ing” me, but the previous car (of which she approved) had already cost me almost $3000 by this point in our relationship, including $1500 for a replacement transmission, and this car has only cost me $450, plus the proposed brake work, and it appears, in spite of the fact that i’ve had to replace the timing belt, and now i have to get all four brakes and wheel bearings replaced, that this is going to continue to be a functional car for a lot longer than the previous one was. and, because of the fact that it’s a honda and not a ford (or whatever the previous car was, i don’t remember), i can actually take it to jack to have the repair work done for (hopefully) cheaper than edgewood tire quoted me. i’m also going to try to enlist the aid of the friend who worked on my brakes the day i had my brain injury (although, again, hopefully, i won’t have another brain injury), which has the definite possibility of saving me a good deal of money.
i got a reply from the incense people regarding the meaning of the word “pieces” and, as i suspected, it was entirely due to the fact that they were translating from hindi to english. if it weren’t for the fact that i have to think about providing at least part of the money for my car, i would already have sent the guy $100 for incense. as soon as i actually get paid for the postcards i made last month, i will probably do that anyway.
we had a recording session with a real, live, professional recording technician, last night, which went outstandingly well, and we’ve got another session with him tomorrow night, which, if it goes half as well as last night’s session did, will make a real, live CD of the fremont philharmonic a lot closer to being actual reality than it has ever been before. also, friday is a New Old Time Chautaqua benefit show in olympia, for which i have been recruited as a sousaphone player. it should be fun, if nothing else.
today is may day. everybody go home and don’t work. also, friday is Bongwater Day, for those of you who are interested.
Tagged ganesha the vehicle, health, incense, may day, philharmonicmore incense squee
i got email, the other day, from a person who claims to be a representative of Dakpa Tamdin incense manufacturers in india. i have, in the past, carried a number of different dakpa tamdin fragrances, the most recent of which has been the “kelsang dikibhatso” cedar-sandalwood fragrance pictured to the right. unfortunately, it’s one of those incenses that nobody in the US carries in bulk, and is obscure enough that nobody wants to carry it, similar to aparajita. i wrote back to them with a request for more information, and received my reply today.
this is a good thing, because it means that they are actually at the address they gave me (unlike the guy who claimed to represent aparajita, but suddenly stopped replying to his email address after i sent him $500 for incense and he didn’t send the entire order)… however, because of the difficulties between english and hindi, i am not sure exactly what they claim to be able to send me, and how much it will cost:
Thribton Kuensel : 30-32 sticks – 80grams? :? Rs. 130/-
Shingkham Kuenkhyap I (maroon) : 30-32 sticks – 80grams : Rs. 90/-
Shingkham Kuenkhyap II (yellow) : 30-32 sticks – 80grams? : Rs. 60/-
Ribo Sangtsoe (red) : 30-32 sticks – 80grams? :? Rs. 30/-
Meenling Surpoe (black) : 30-32 sticks – 80grams : Rs. 20/-
Sambara? (red) : 30-32 sticks – 80grams : Rs. 15/-
Thribton Kuensel : 30-32 sticks – 80grams : Rs. 15/-
at the moment, 130 rupees is approximately $2.50, and 15 rupees is approximately 25¢, which sounds pretty good, until you get to shipping it from india:
Regarding shipping & packing, Normally, we use to pack in special made ply wood box, which consist of 200 pieces (?each bundle = 100 pieces). Then shipment goes upto Delhi, further cargo agent will handle it.
this sounds suspiciously like the arrangement that i got into with the दस्यु that claimed to represent aparajita, not to mention the fact that it’s not very clear whether his use of the word “pieces” refers to the same thing, which it appears not to in this case.
now i have to tread carefully, decide how much money i can risk sending to the other side of the planet with no assurances that i will ever see ANY return from it, and figure out how to ask this person to define the word “pieces” in their email to me, without offending them.
Tagged incensewhat else happened on january 17th?
on January 17th, 1964, my great grand-uncle, Ulysses Grant Hammond died.
on January 17th, 1967, my great grandfather, Thomas Willis Hammond died.
on January 17th, 1970, my brother, Matthew Thomas Hammond was born.
the things you find out with G.R.A.M.P.S. and some help from a shirt-tail relative that you just met last month…
January 17 at wikipedia.
Tagged genealogywump
i’m feeling marginally better than i was yesterday, and yesterday i was feeling marginally better than i was the day before that, and so forth, for about a week… which, i suppose, means that i’m getting better, slowly… it’s gotten so i don’t actively feel sick, most of the time, but i still have bouts of coughing that are really annoying because of their unpredictability, and i still get exhausted really easily, which sometimes is accompanied by a bout of coughing, which exhausts me even more.
the dignified-looking people to the right are my great grandparents, Thomas W. and Minnie L. Hammond. i don’t know when the picture was taken exactly, but my guess is that it was some time between minnie’s marriage, in 1906 (she was 16 when she got married) and her death in 1946… and judging by how old she looks, i would guess about 1915 to 1925-ish. but, because of the fact that they were relatives of mine, i can pretty much assure anyone who doesn’t know, that they were very likely not anywhere near as dignified as they look. my general impression is that most of my relatives from that era are all but hillbillies from central missouri (pronounced “missourah”). after minnie died, tom hammond got married to another teenager (when he was almost 70), named Melmalee Clapper, and had another child before he died… so i guess i’m carrying on a family tradition by being married to a woman who is 17 years younger than me, as well as carrying on the family tradition of being the oldest child of a family who wants to have nothing to do with me. 
fortunately i’ve got a perfectly wonderful surrogate-family, which has taken over the family duties in a way that my family-of-origin never could.
i won’t have to go in for jury duty on monday, because, according to the jury-duty-check-in-phone-line that i was supposed to call friday evening, “there are no trials scheduled for the month of april”… which, considering that i received the message around april 10th or so, i would have thought that they knew that already, but apparently they don’t. oh well, i guess i don’t get to go in and inform all of the other potential jurors about the right of jury nullification, and disqualify us all from the jury pool… 
i’ve got a really weird anomaly with my blog: i use a plugin called “Jetpack” that connects my blog to wordpress.org, and gives me stuff like stats for the site, and the ability to short-link to my blog, and stuff like that. there is a number "➊" in a black circle, next to the jetpack link, which, under normal circumstances, means that there is an update to be applied, but i can’t find it anywhere, and there are no other indications that updates are even required, which there usually are if there’s an update that is really supposed to be applied. i can put up with a random "➊" character, but anything outside of what’s normally supposed to happen makes me extremely suspicious.
Tagged genealogy, health, meta, miscellaneousurgh!
it has now been three weeks since i developed this lingering cough, which doesn’t bother me very much, except at night, when i wake up abruptly coughing and choking and stay awake for 10 to 15 minutes, until things calm down again… 
meanwhile, i have gone to two gigs, and had four rehearsals which i have survived (barely), and fixed a trombone, and it doesn’t seem to be getting significantly better… and when i went to see the doctor, all they did was prescribe codeine for my cough (which helps for about an hour or so, and then wears off and doesn’t do anything for the next 5 hours, until i can take another dose), and various other things to treat the symptoms i was having, which went away on their own, within a couple of days of my getting the prescriptions filled, without my having to actually, you know, medicate myself with anything AT ALL.
(and people wonder about why i’m so suspicious of doctors in general.)
meanwhile, i’ve been sleeping around 4 to 6 hours more than normal, and feeling totally exhausted most of the time.
i’ve got to start working on my art car, which doesn’t have any art painted on it yet, and really should before the end of next month. i’ve got a recording session coming up with the fremont philharmonic, and, on the same day, i am scheduled to appear for jury duty in pacific/algona, which i anticipate they will reject me for, once they discover that i am in favour of jury nullification. it’s actually too bad that i don’t have a similar excuse to the one the last time i was selected for jury duty, which was that i was in the hospital recovering from an intracerebral arteriovenous malformation rupture… apparently they decided that i have had enough time to recover from that…
urgh
hoo boy…
okay, i haven’t been posting for a while, because i’ve been as sick as i’ve ever been, apart from when i had my injury, and i’m only just now feeling marginally better. it has truly been one of the most awful things i have had to deal with in a very, very long time. i am, truly FUCKING TIRED of being sick.
and the thing that makes it so much worse is that, last saturday (the 14th), i was feeling somewhat better than i had been, so i decided to take a shower… but i passed out in the shower and ended up in the emergency room with an IV in my hand, because they couldn’t find the veins in my arms.
at this point (touch wood) i am feeling marginally better than i did yesterday, and yesterday i was feeling marginally better than i did the day before, but i’ve still got a LONG way to go before i’m anywhere close to “back to normal.”
now i’ve got to go lie down again, so that i don’t fall over. hopefully that will go away soon, as well.
Tagged healthmoisture festival green room
featuring john cornicello (foreground) and clayton murray (background).
aaaaaand, that’s a wrap!
the 9th annual moisture festival is history, and i’m currently wallowing in post-moisture festival exhaustion and depression, but i can’t let that keep me from doing stuff, because there is a lot to be doing…
moe came home yesterday and discovered that the thermostat had gone crazy and it was 91° in the house, which, combined with yesterday’s 60° temperature made it pretty damn toasty in the house, and no matter what she tried, the furnace simply would not shut off… so she killed the electricity, and opened all the windows, which meant that when i got home at 12:30, moe was asleep, having thrown off all the covers, and all the windows were open… which was really confusing, considering the weather the past few days… anyway, this morning i got up and researched getting our thermostat/furnace fixed/replaced.
not only that, but i’ve got a computer to rebuild for my older, brain-injured client, which involves going over to his house and digging through the guts of his old computer to get part numbers, and specs so that when the computer i build for him actually gets to him, it will be compatible with what he’s already got… apparently just replacing the power supply wasn’t good enough. the power supply works, but the computer still doesn’t boot, and the guy who built the old computer says that the mother board is fried. he recommended getting an entirely new computer (starting at around $700) but i figure i can probably get a new mother board for around $250, build the computer around that, and save my (already low- and limited-income) client around $400.
and, i’ve got to go meet with the surly, moody son of the guy who got killed in the auburn top food and drugs last year, because he wants me to design a logo for his car-repair business… which would be fine, except that he wants to get this logo made into a rug, and he wants details about which i know absolutely nothing, so it’s going to be really interesting designing a logo that will both be to his liking, and be able to be made into a carpet… but the fact that i’m going to be doing work for him is good, because it means that i will be able to hit him up for some repairs on my car: the brakes are in need of new shoes, and there’s still this annoying loose-belt sound when i first start up the car in the mornings…
and snake suspenderz is gearing up again: we’ve got a gig at the can can on the 22nd, and, probably, we’re going to be busking at either the ballard or the fremont sunday market on the 15th, plus we’ve got a couple of rehearsals before then…
AND i’ve got a new tuba to figure out, because it is not the same as my old tuba… i imagine that a lot of learning it will be simply playing it and figuring out what the new fingerings feel like, but along with everything else, it’s going to be a major chore…
spoons… i don’t have them…
TUBA!!!!!!!!!!!
on the right, my, nominally, Elkhorn three-valve, E-flat tuba, which i have been playing regularly (as in, ‘almost daily’) for 12 years.
on the left, the new-to-me Conn four-valve, C tuba which is my payment for the ugly sousaphone project.
i also got a vincent bach mouthpiece, a hard case, and a soft case. the fact that it is a C tuba is a little bit of a frustration for me, because i thought it was going to be a B-flat tuba, for which i know the “concert-pitch” fingerings… it’s also going to be really confusing being a transposing instrument that is not in E-flat, unless i either get transposed music or… learn the C tuba fingerings…
the thing is, it wouldn’t be SO frustrating for me if it weren’t for the fact that i both knew the C tuba fingerings, and could transpose, on-the-fly, in my head… PRIOR to my brain injury. that’s one of those bits of information which i am convinced still lives in my brain somewhere, and i just haven’t figured out how to connect to it again.
but i got a real tuba! i’m a real tuba player now! 
oh… crap.
i had to refund someone’s money the other day. they had ordered one box of incense, but, because of the fact that they ordered it from bizarre-istan, paypal neglected to figure shipping correctly, and as a result, they had only paid $1.50 for something that would cost me $35 to mail to them. i wrote and told them of my dilemma and said that if i didn’t hear anything from them, i would refund their money. i didn’t hear anything from them, so i refunded their money.
there would be nothing unusual about this transaction, except for the fact that it is exactly this type of transaction that is referred to in a previous interaction that i had with paypal, which wasn’t so cordial…
just what i needed… another reason to wish that i could afford to cancel my paypal account…
this might be alarming if we hadn’t already seen this law passed once…
Arizona bill could criminalize Internet trolling
but a similar law, on a national level, has actually been in effect since early 2006, which makes me strongly suspicious that this is some republican’s way of drumming up support prior to an election… either that, or they’re planning some really horrendous laws behind the scenes, and they wanted to pass a pointless law that would raise peoples’ ire to the point where they will ignore the really horrendous stuff…
one way or the other, i’m really glad i don’t live in arizona these days…
the END of the ugly sousaphone project!!!
The END of the ugly sousaphone project!
i’m FINALLY done with the ugly sousaphone! it’s not any less ugly — in fact, it’s significantly more ugly in a lot of ways — but the important part is that it is, now, one contiguous piece of tubing from one end to the other, and it will play and sound more-or-less like a sousaphone is supposed to sound.
i have to thank craig from allied supply, who built the new lead pipe, and david cole, a repair technician at kenelly keys who provided advice, encouragement and a few spare parts that i didn’t have… but that’s why i prefaced this entire project with the comment that i probably couldn’t do it all myself.
tomorrow, i deliver it to an anxious thaddeus, and he will pay me with hokum’s B-flat tuba! i can hardly wait!
2012 Moisture Festival
with the giant squirrel head from Johnny Jetpack Propulsion Laboratories
World IPv6 Day is coming up…
June 6th, 2012 is World IPv6 Day, where most major providers and web sites are going to turn off IPv4 in a test to see how well IPv6 is going to work… and there are no more IPv4 addresses, so it is hoped that it will go better than expected…
i passed the test, but don’t have my own IPv6 address, yet, because qwest (which is now known as centurylink) SUCKS!!!
Tagged geek links, qwest sucks