mfr

the wurst festival went as planned and was pretty much the same as it was last year, except for the fact that i wasn’t recovering so immenently from a brain injury this year. i actually got a chance to look around a little, although there wasn’t much. basically it’s a church/school/neighborhood party that’s gone a little overboard: they had a bunch of inflatable “rides”, a dunk-tank, a few food booths, a few more sales booths and that’s it… although they did have a really nice mixing board, which i assume they had last year as well, i just didn’t notice.

the tacoma gig was excellent if you were the audience, but it was so-so from a performer’s point of view. we started performing at 5:00 and finished at 10:00, after a “parade” (in which the rich, starched-collar patrons of the two museums involved wandered from one museum to the other while the band – especially the tuba player who has an upright tuba, no strap, and a brain-injured right hand that doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to – struggled to keep up), and a two hour “break” in which we had to frantically get set up and ready for the show while the rich patrons had dinner. my book ended up in the back of alan’s truck during the parade, and then alan disappeared, so i didn’t get my book back until just before we started, but it all worked out. the show was only a half an hour, but we included all of the best parts from august’s show, and macque added a new twist to pyrochaotica without telling anybody: two pyro-fountains at the end, which were loud enough that they drowned out the band for a couple minutes. the effect was sensational though – a fountain of crackling sparks going about 75 feet in the air, along with the standard compliment of other pyro stuff, with the backdrop of puget sound and the glass museum. there will probably be pictures eventually. it’s kind of odd, though, because one of the organisations that was putting the whole thing on was the philanthropy northwest society, but apparently they didn’t think to provide the “hired help” with important things like food, and passes to get in to the dressing room. we had a dressing room, but we had about 30 performers and only four passes, so there was as much searching for someone with a pass to get in as there was just about anything else, and i went home hungry. it’s presumably a good thing though, because now we can put the show on our “resume” and people will know that we can interact with highbrow society without getting under their skin, which will mean more performances in the future.

late night cabaret, too

also announcing the fremont philharmonic performing at the Late Night Cabaret, friday, 1st october, at 10:00 pm down on airport way just north of boeing field… i think the address is 2110 airport way, but i’m not sure.

this is the continuation of performances that took a break in june. now they’re back again, and if they’re going to be anything like what they were like in june, they should be loads of morbid, grisly fun with a side of pie and shack jack frost to boot. don’t miss it!

ife

hoo boy, the shit really has hit the fan with katharyn this time… and this time i didn’t have anything to do with it, and haven’t for several years now, so there’s no way she can possibly blame it on me, in spite of the fact that i have no doubt she’d want to if she had the opportunity.

i talked with ezra yesterday, and with what he said and from talking to darol, i learned that darol bailed her out of a house-sharing fiasco back in december, and then she moved into the mad house in may. she apparently lived a fairly normal madhouse existence for about 4 months, and then went off the deep end. she locked herself in her room and spent four days there, pounding on the floor and being abusive to the many requests that she had to be quiet. when she did come out she freaked out and ran out of the house and into the neighbor’s house (who she didn’t know) and ended up seeking sanctuary at the synagogue, which kicked her out. then she came back, drew stars of david in red felt pen on people’s doors, met darol screaming about aliens, and ended up in a bush a few houses down the street raving about how she wanted to talk to the intergalactic police, because the local police were going to put injection cuffs on her.

apparently she’s been confined against her will at the western state hospital in stillicum for the past three or four months, with no telling when she’s going to get out, if at all. darol has decided that he doesn’t want her living in the mad house any more, and who can blame him… but it’s interesting that the only person who darol has ever decided that about, is someone with whom i used to be associated. darol also wants to put katharyn’s stuff somewhere so that he can rent out the room, but it’s not going to be with me… even if i was willing to take katharyn’s stuff, i imagine that she’d be even more irrational about me than she was when we were dealing with each other.’

i sure must have missed a whole bunch of stuff while i was in the hospital, because i hadn’t heard any of this. in a way, i’m kinda glad i had my injury instead, because if i hadn’t, i’m sure that katharyn would have come up with some way for me to be involved in her little debacle…

in other news, apparently kolette and ben have broken up after 15 years together, because ben went out and got married to someone else, so kolette is back in b’ham, living at the madhouse again after 13 year absence, and shacking up with darol… which is probably really good for both of them.

rat

i might have known… they’re looking for someone with more PC experience. apparently mac protools isn’t good enough for ’em, they want windows experience… but you know, nobody uses windows for sound engineering.

they said that there are some other positions that they would consider me for, but they’re not open until october.

feh!

erk

i don’t know whether i should do this or not, but i’m already doing it, so it’s a foregone conclusion…

i have a job interview tomorrow morning at micro$oft. they apparently need a sound engineer(!) in their codec testing team(!!). they were reluctantly going to offer the job to someone else, but then my resume(s) came along and they decided to change their mind and interview me instead. apparently the manager, who is a 2nd level manager, with the option of offering me a blue badge position if the cards fall just right, thought i was a very strong candidate for the position.

it’s microsoft, but what the hell… i don’t have to like it, or use it at home, but if they’re going to pay me to be a sound engineer and network maintenance geek, who am i to complain?

i wouldn’t normally mention this to anyone, because i’ve had horribly bad luck with jobs i’ve told other people about before i’ve actually gotten the job, but this is different, because it’s a sound-oriented job at microsoft, rather than a computer or print-shop job somewhere else. we’ll just have to see what happens.

another new icon. hopefully it works out okay…

prt

the clowns were excellent. there was some performing, but by people who were much more prepared than i. i was the only member of the band to show up, but there were various kinds of fire-dancers, poi-spinners, hula-hoops and fire-breathers (and, fortunately, no fire department, although the police made a brief appearance, it was well after everything incriminating had been cleaned up and put away), and they were all much more prepared to perform than i would have been. now i’ve just got to remember to put their email addresses somewhere where i’ll be able to find them. i met a clown of indian descent (who was actually born in cincinatti), whose name is gotham, and his actual indian cousin, named akshay, who happenes to be living in renton for a month while he is a consultant at boeing… so maybe i’ll take him out to pabla’s in downtown seattle or something. he was complaining that he hasn’t got the chance to see any of the city during his stay. i also met greg, who is “the black clown”… he said people ask him which one he is in the show, and his response is “i’m the black one”… that way there’s no question. he’s leaving the show at the end of this, his fourth year, but he says he’s not sure what he’s going to do afterwards. i met a bunch of other clowns as well, people from hungary and japan, but they didn’t speak any english, so i didn’t get the chance to communicate with them much.

the talk at the vedanta society this morning was about divine mother sarada devi as an example of the global ideal. the speaker was swami swaahaananda, the head of the vedanta society of southern california, and the translator of (among other things) my copy of chaandogyaopanisad. a few things he said made an impression: the way to be happy in life is to find no fault with others. for a family, sometimes individual interests must be sacrificed; for a village, sometimes a family’s interests must be sacrificed; for a nation, sometimes a village’s interests must be sacrificed, and so with the world, sometimes even an individual nation’s interests must be sacrificed.

ump

i’ve discovered the reason why i didn’t die last summer…

D.R., from the cirque, sent out an invitation last night. it seems that he and a bunch of random cirque people have been invited to go and hang out with the clowns from Barnum & Bailey tonight, and i’m going along with him. this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, as well as a great way to get to know some new people, and i would have hated to die, knowing that this kind of thing was going to happen.

i’m still resting my right hand on the keyboard for long enough that i’m typing lines of llllllllll or multiple spaces between words and stuff like that, which is irritating…

but i’m going to hang out with professional clowns! WHEEE HAH!!!

Public Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice

The Church of Tina Chopp is pleased to announce yet another

PUBLIC RITUAL VEGETABLE SACRIFICE

yes, it’s happening again, and this time i’m preparing for it early, since
last year was such a disaster (in more ways than you think).

the date is

SUNDAY, the 17th of OCTOBER, 2004 at 1:00 pm

please bring the following:

0. AN OPEN MIND!!!
if you don’t approve of bizarre rituals involving vegetable sacrifice and
snake worship, do something else that day. if you show up and cause problems,
we’re not responsible for what happens.

(the following are suggested, not required)

1. YOUR OWN VEGETABLE TO SACRIFICE!
we will be supplying at least one pumpkin, but it’s always more fun when other
people are involved.

(yes, there is no 2nd thing to bring to the sacrifice… we know that)

3. THE TIME AND ABILITY TO CLIMB APPROXIMATELY 1/2 MILE UP A STEEP TRAIL IN
THE CASCADES
the site is located at eXit-38 off I-90, east of fall city. for more details,
see the web site:

http://www.ebeneezer.net/ritual/vegetable/public.html

RSVPs are nice, but not necessary, however if you RSVP and then don’t show up,
you’ll be banished to safeway for the rest of eternity. we know who you are.

we hope to see you there!

puw

qwest screwed up again… it’s not like i wasn’t expecting it, but it’s been closing in on three weeks that they’ve been screwing up, and i still don’t have a cell phone despite the fact that i’ve been paying for one all this time. i’d complain to the WUTC, but they apparently offer no regulation for wireless services, so it’s a matter of waiting until qwest decides to get their shit together, whenever that’s going to be.

roy and irene came by yesterday. we were sort of expecting them, but they said they were going to call before coming over, and they didn’t, so i was sitting behind the computer/synthesizer/keyboard and smoking a bong toke when they arrived, and i had to put things away in a hurry. they’re going on a cruise of the inside passage for roy’s retirement from gerber, and i’m driving them down to pier 30, and then we’re watching their truck for a week until they get back.

i recorded a new piece of music yesterday, in between cleaning up and being here when roy and irene arrived. it’s in 11/8, which is interesting seeing as how the rhythmic samples that i used for the basic tracks were in 4/4 originally… it came out really well, in spite of the fact that i didn’t have any real inspiration, and no clear idea of where to go with the synthesizer when i started out. i’m probably going to perform it at the art sharing in bellingham next month.

painting my car is officially sort of on hold until i can come up with money or something to fix the “minor” oil leaks which resulted in my having no oil when i took it in to get the oil changed the other day… which probably won’t be until i’m employed again.

GFR!!

today was going to be the day that they sent me the correct battery for my new phone. instead, they sent me another phone, and no battery. it has now been two weeks that this has been going on. i had moe call them, because i knew all i would do is get more upset. it’s a good thing, because despite the fact that the guy said he was going to send me a battery when i talked to them this afternoon, in fact, there was no order for a battery at all. i don’t believe that they continue to do business that way and continue to get customers. moe says that one of the reasons we use qwest is because they’re the cheapest. they certainly don’t waste their money on things like competent customer service. i’m scheduled to receive a package on friday that should make everything all right, but at this point, i’ll believe it when i see it.

rgf

they fixed my phone… they also called me at 7:00 am to have me push some buttons on the phone to make sure it works… even when they are trying to straighten out a screwup that they caused they screw up.

i took pictures of the car in preparation for painting it. i’d post them except there’s nothing to compare with… a before, but no after yet. i also bought paint today. surprisingly, not a single art supply place had what i wanted, which is one shot. i ended up getting gloss enamel at mclendons, which is the last place i would expect to find it. i’ll post pictures when there’s something to post, but don’t hold your breath… i’ve been known (recently) to get to the starting point of an art project and then let it sit for a while. especially since i’m not quite sure whether i should use the sivaananda lahari or whether i should use sri vinayaka ashtottara sata namavali, which would be more along the same lines as the license plate that says GANESHA… the problem is that i’ve got sivaananda lahari in devanagari, but i’ve only got a romanized transliteration of the sri vinayaka ashtottara sata namavali, and i don’t trust my ability to re-transliterate it back to devanagari, and i don’t want it to be incorrect, even if nobody would notice.

i’m going to the vedanta society by myself for the first time since my injury. swami’s lecture is going to be The Wonder That Was Sri Krishna.

now here’s the kind of meme i would prefer to see more of…

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

it was right on the money, too: hinduism, 100%; jainism and mahayana buddhism, 80%; “neo-paganism” (whatever that is) 75%; unitarian universalism 65%… it would be interesting to see what gliz would do with it.

here’s something new, and it fulfills the law of fives as well:

http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html

frg

not only does my “new” phone have a battery that doesn’t fit, but they were supposed to pick it up yesterday and they didn’t, which means that now they’re going to wait until after the long weekend to pick it up, which means that it’s going to be that much longer before i get the “correct new” phone. and to make matters worse, for some unknowable reason (in other words, they don’t know why themselves, and in fact they denied that anything was wrong until i had them call the number), my “old” phone doesn’t work any more, and there’s probably no hope for it until tuesday, because of the long weekend.

also i had to shut off two more email addresses at all of my domains, because all the mail they were getting was spam. i spend as much as an hour a day dealing with spam, and i’ll sure be glad when something is done about this problem.

qwest SUCKS ASS!
spam SUCKS ASS!

a lot of grief could be spared a lot of people if these two things simply ceased to exist.

zif

i suppose i should probably update this thing, even though i don’t feel much like it. my contract ended friday of last week, which means that i’ve got to go into overdrive with the job search. it’s thursday, and so far i have made twice as many job contacts as i made during the same period four months ago. no prospects yet, but that’s not surprising given the economy these days. hopefully something will happen soon. meantime, i’ve finished the updates on the hybrid elephant web site, and i’m waiting for one more order before i post them.

i’m gearing up to paint my car. i’ve decided on using passages from the sivaandanda lahari of sri sankaraacaarya. now all i’ve got to do is procure the correct paint, and lay things out on the actual car. maybe i’ll actually be able to get it painted before i have to go back to work again.

they screwed up the primary system in washington recently, which means that now you’ve got to choose one of three political parties, and then vote only that party in the primary, which is totally wrong, and should be abolished immediately. i don’t know who the candidates are, but i’m probably going to vote libertarian, because neither the republicrat nor the democretin candidates do anything for me at all. ultimately i believe the whole party system should be abolished, along with the electoral college and most of the laws, but i suppose it’s not going to happen during my lifetime, unless bush gets us into the war of armageddon, which, unfortunately, isn’t too unrealistic.

something completely unexpected happened: we got a real new car, along with dramatically reduced car payments. a guy from the dealership kept calling monique and hassling her because there’s apparently a huge demand for SUVs, despite they’re being one of the most inefficient vehicles in existence, and the guy wanted to know if we wanted a new car so that he could have our SUV. so we took our 2000 tahoe with 12.9% interest and traded it in for a 2005 venture with 1.9% interest. it’s a minivan, which isn’t much better, but it’s a step in the right direction. now all i have to do is to figure out what to do with the car that doesn’t work and has been sitting in our driveway for over a year.

i finally got fed up with having three monitors, keyboards and mice on what limited desk space i have, so i got on ebay and bought a four port KVM switch, which will reduce the clutter on the desktop considerably, as well as giving me the option of having one more computer, eventually. sadly, it’s being delivered by parcel post, rather than the somewhat more timely UPS, so i haven’t got it yet. along the same lines, we got a notice saying that they were upgrading our wireless network and the current wireless phones we have will stop working. it’s okay though, said the notice, because we’re going to be given (as in free of charge) new wireless phones that will work with the new network. well the phones were delivered today, and moe’s is really cool, but they somehow screwed up (leave it to qwest) and they sent the wrong battery with my phone… so i don’t get a new phone until tuesday. it sucks because moe has been getting a whole bunch of new toys recently (an ipod, a powerbook, a cell phone…) and all i’ve been getting is worried because i don’t have enough money coming in…

which is why i don’t feel very much like updating this recently… sigh…