another week closer to the eschaton…

A Patriotic Duty: Repeal the Patriot Act and The Patriot Act: When Truth Becomes Treason – i am a patriot? americans are not nearly afraid enough.

Not Enjoying TSA Grope-Down is a Suspicious Activity – “a very large segment of the population” are terrorists, and will no longer be able to travel by anything more technologically advanced than a bicycle.

Protecting Us from Our Freedoms and PATRIOT Act Extension Scheme Sells out Constitution – here’s an idea… let’s overthrow these douchebags and get back to the concept that america was founded on: FREEDOM!

When they took the fourth amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
     I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
     and I can say nothing about it.

and, speaking of freedoms, As The DEA Raids Dispensaries, It Hands Out Cannabis Growing Licenses To Big Pharma – cannabis is illegal because it “doesn’t have any medicinal value”… unless you happen to be a big pharmaceutical company that has enough money and clout to lobby the government, at which point, the same government that imprisons you hands out permits for medicinal research without questioning what the end result will be used for. 😛

Fine Print Blurs Who’s in Control of Online Photos – watch out, you may be giving away commercial rights to artwork that you created, if you upload it to the wrong place…

Radio host says Rapture actually coming in October – “wait, i was wrong” says the guy who was wrong two times before… is anybody really going to buy it this time?

President Obama’s Aunt graduates from Unification church seminary – that would definitely make me think twice about voting for him again… it’s sort of like saying his aunt is a scientologist: do we really want these people in charge of our country?

Oakland school’s lessons in gender diversity and Male-only clams stay fit by having sex with other species – more things to drive the creationists crazy… seriously, they’ve made enough “discoveries” just about sex over the past 100 years to completely wipe out any hope the creationists had of convincing me that their story is anything but a fairy tale…

finally, Tupac still alive in New Zealand – there’s a rumour that pbs.org has been hacked, but if they had been, then presumably they would have taken down anything posted by the hackers – as long as they knew it was there, which they might not… yet… the page no longer exists, so maybe they found it while i was writing this… very weird…

wuff

the ballard sedentary sousa band played today at folklife, which meant that i actually left the house at 7:30 this morning, in order to get to the center grounds by 8:30. of course the BSSB didn’t actually play until 12:30, but if i had gotten there much later than 8:30, i wouldn’t have been able to find a place to park closer than about a mile and a half away. of course i also had a 10-hour parking pass, but i still would not have been guaranteed to be able to find a parking place.

so i wandered around the seattle center grounds for a few hours for a few hours, mostly before the humongous crowds of people got there. then i went back to my car and retrieved my instrument and went back up to the mural amphitheatre for the performance. it went fairly well: we had 5 trombones this afternoon, which is one less than the full compliment. i played all right from the audiences point of view (i didn’t make any mistakes that someone in the audience could have said came from me), but i didn’t play as well as i would have liked, because there wasn’t anywhere where we could warm up before going onstage.

but then, when the performance was over, the humongous crowds of people had well and truly arrived and it took me half an hour and several detours to get from the mural to the place where i had parked, because the humongous crowds of people were EVERYWHERE, and several times large sections of the humongous crowds of people had actually stopped in the middle of the path… yes, i know that it’s expected behaviour for humongous crowds of people, especially when there are such attractions as a hat vendor, or a t-shirt vendor, or that sort of thing, but i still get extraordinarily peeved at people who are walking along, and i am walking behind them, and they suddenly STOP for no very obvious reasons, which makes me stop as well, or look for some way around them… which is difficult to find when there is a humongous crowd of people everywhere… it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that i was taking up about 3 times as much space as i would have been ordinarily, because i had my trombone and my stands… there were times when i wish i could have taken my trombone stand and shoved it up the butt of the person in front of me, to get them to move out of the way, but there wasn’t anywhere for them to move, and even if there was, the same thing would have had to happen with the person in front of them, and so forth…

it’s 5:00 now, and i feel like i’m just beginning to come down from the instanity…

bun rab

bun rab
there have been a lot of ’em around this year. pretty regularly i see them early in the mornings or in the evenings, but this guy was out at 10:00 in the morning, and didn’t run away when he noticed that i was watching him… he was also about half as big as the “normal” ones i usually see, so he may just be a baby that doesn’t have his “rabbit sense” entirely clued in yet…

update

i’ve been working on a new web site template for the mercer island vet clinic, which is essentially finished, but it hasn’t had the content added yet, so it’s not live.

i’m about a week away from my first colonoscopy, which starts in a week with multiple degrees of laxatives and purgatives and a clear-liquid fast… which should be a “thrill”… and then, to top it all off, i get an anesthetic that causes retrograde amnesia and i have to get a ride home, because i won’t be allowed to drive for 24 hours afterward, so i’m probably going to have to take the bus to the clinic, which is the same general location that they took me when i had my brain injury. 😐 then i have to schedule another appointment with dr. wackaloon to talk about my allegedly-high blood pressure. what i maintain, which is what i maintained before i tested “high” at his office the last time, is that i run a little higher than normal, which has been reinforced by the fact that i have been checking daily for 26 days, and my average is 143/95 – which is a little higher than normal… but my life is not as “relaxed” as i would like it to be, so it’s understandable…

the ballard sedentary sousa band is performing at the mural amphitheatre on sunday, for folklife. i pulled off a miraculous save and got the last remaining parking pass when it’s original recipient (clayton) wasn’t at the last rehearsal to claim it… which means that i’ll be able to park relatively close to the amphitheatre, for free, rather than having to pay to park a couple of miles away and take the bus there and back, which will also mean that i may actually spend more than the requisite hour or so that i have to be there.

the unauthorised authorisation dialogue went away when i realised that i have the leap.cc site in my RSS feed as well… i deleted the site, and the dialogue went away and has not come back. as far as i can tell, there’s still no site at leap.cc, although the domain itself doesn’t expire until 2013… weird…

add it to your calendar!

it would be really nice if we weren’t playing to a “crowd” of three people, like we were the last time we appeared at the can can… so, come and cheer us on… and have a beer and some food as well. the can can is a cool place, despite the thin crowds…

Snake Suspenderz will be performing with He’s My Brother She’s My Sister at 8:00 pm at The Can Can, 94 Pike Street in the Historic Seattle Pike Place Market. Tickets are $5 at the door.

weird

my awesome web stats informed me that normally my bandwidth consumption is around 28MB per day, but on 16 may, 2011, i had 104.29MB of transfer, most of which were music files… in the past, i have posted links to Tenor Leak Fellatio, Cat Stretching, Wraith Ugly, DJ RX – White Lines and a bunch of other mp3 files, which were downloaded anywhere between 40 and 90 times, by people in the united states and china primarily…

of course, that was also the day when my friend Bunger Mulkin! downloaded the 75MB zip file i posted for him, as well… that may well have been part of it…

also the post from 080118 of my blog was visited by someone from pakistan at approximately 9:00 am this morning… weird…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Contact Congress Now Before it Deals Away Your Privacy Rights! and Congressional leaders agree on four-year extension of PATRIOT Act – here’s an idea… let’s overthrow these douchebags and get back to the concept that america was founded on: FREEDOM!

What International Law Says about the Killing of Bin Laden – “A targeted killing of a terrorist does not, contrary to what US President Barack Obama has suggested, do a service to justice; rather, it runs contrary to it. A state governed by the rule of law, treats even its enemies humanely. It arrests terrorists and brings them before a court.”

Secret Service interrogates Tacoma 7th grader – instead of going after real terrorists, the secret service is strong-arming a seventh-grader – without representation – about something he posted on facebook…

In public statement, TSA lies about the Constitution – i keep wondering when enough is really going to be enough… 😐

Obama’s Middle East Hypocrisy – “hope,” “change,” peace, democratic values, closing Guantanamo in one year, ending torture, illegal spying, and detention without trial, “a new era of openness”…? i suppose democrats are just as “honest” as republicans when it comes to getting elected…

This Is What A Police State Looks Like and Warrants Let Agents Enter Homes Without Owner Knowing – “The ACLU said it expects delayed-notice warrant numbers to keep growing each year as long as certain parts of the Patriot Act remain on the books”…

When they took the fourth amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
     I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
     and I can say nothing about it.

Stephen Hawking: ‘There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story’ – stephen hawking is one guy who i would say is not wrong about too many things, and if he says heaven is a fairy story, it doesn’t look good for people who say he’s wrong…

Government Orders YouTube To Censor Protest Videos – broadcast yourself… unless it’s doing something that the gummint doesn’t approve of, even if it’s not the gummint of the country you’re in at the time…

Microsoft Structured Acquisition Of Skype To Avoid U.S. Taxes – this is wrong on so VERY many levels… but my impression is that most people are not even going to notice, or, if they do, they’ll think that it is good for the economy…

The RIAA Picks A New Legal Target – my impression has always been that you don’t want to keep documents to which you don’t want other people to have access, on “the cloud”, especially media files that you downloaded, but here’s a very good reason to avoid that practice, if you have done so in the past…

finally, False May 21, 2011 Doomsday prophet Harold Camping "deserts" devastated followers, church offers solace and Harold Camping ‘flabbergasted’; rapture a no-show – being wrong once is bad enough, but when a “prophet” is wrong twice somebody should check on the followers of that “prophet” as well… The Incredibly Tiny “christian” Universe

the rapture!!

so far, the rapture hasn’t happened… i’m preparing to have a big ol’ laugh at harold camping’s expense when the day is over… 8)

unauthorised authorisation dialoguein other news, i got a new unauthorised authorisation dialogue, like the one i got back in august of last year, but it’s for a different site… the site, LEAP.cc, is the site for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which i have visited a while back, but there currently is no site there, and, instead, it asks for an authorisation (which i have NEVER provided), so i’m thinking that either they’re not in business any longer (not very likely) or someone has hacked their site. needless to say, i didn’t enter anything into the fields, and it’s acting pretty much the same way as the twitter dialogue that was coming up last year, so i’m going to guess that it’ll go away eventually.

the rapture still hasn’t happened… i’ll let you know something else comes up… 8)

Scientists confirm Extraterrestrial genes in Human DNA – for some reason i thought this was appropriate, despite the fact that it was originally posted in 2007…

Family Radio, which is harold camping’s “ministry” is offline… it’s the end of the world as they know it…

spooooons…

i have been taking a “constitutional” in the mornings for the past couple of weeks (it keeps my blood pressure down), and when i returned i realised that i had a HUGE pile of detritus left over from the deck-wrecking project blocking our driveway and, more importantly, blocking access to the recycle bin and the garbage bin… so i unloaded my car and reconfigured it for hauling junk to the dump, and then spent the rest of the morning(!!) sorting the pile of detritus into stuff that gets hauled to the dump, stuff that’s mostly dirt to begin with – which gets hauled down to the organic-junk-and-yard-waste pile at the bottom of the property, and a pile of stuff that won’t fit in my car. it turned out that i put about half of the pile in the “mostly-dirt-to-begin-with” category, and it turned out that i didn’t even fill the back of the car more than half-way with stuff that gets hauled to the dump. the rest, a pile of 8 or 10 twelve-foot-long 2x8s and 2x6s are now in a place where they won’t block access to anything except, maybe, the guys who come to pump the septic tank in another five years or so… but i hope to figure out something else to do with them before then…

then i took the stuff to the dump. when i was driving away from the dump, i stepped on the brake pedal of ganesha the car, and it floored easy without seriously affecting my speed – something which was only slightly less alarming because i was going less than 5 miles per hour. i pumped on the pedal once or twice and it came back to the point where i was able to control the car’s speed, but it was acting strangely for 10 minutes or so after that. i had to get the oil changed in the car anyway, so i took it to the repair shop, where i learned that i have to get the rear brakes and the wheel cylinders replaced.

great… i have to spend more money on a car that isn’t going to get anything but LESS reliable as time goes on… 😐

spoons & web design

i am just now realising how many spoons i expended over the weekend. apparently, without realising it, at least monday was also involved. it’s a good thing that this is a slow week, which will give me the chance to rebuild my spoon reserve a little before the next time…

meanwhile, i have volunteered my services as a wordpress admin to seattleartcars.org which is currently run by a committee consisting of several (i.e. more than 5) highly creative people who don’t have any idea how technology works, and one or two curmudgeonly geeks who (understandably) don’t want to allow people they don’t know – or people they know, who they know have no clue how technology works – access to their computers, but don’t have the time or inclination to administer a wordpress site themselves… well, it turns out that the one curmudgeonly geek upon whose server seattleartcars.org currently lives, isn’t even really the host provider, but apparently he’s running WHM or something which makes pretending to be a host provider a lot easier than it would be otherwise… he doesn’t even have his own nameservers, which is something that i’ve had for 3 years, even though i don’t have something like WHM installed (because it’s not necessary for the type of web-hosting i provide)… in any event, what the committee plus geeks approach has bought them is a wordpress site with a bunch of plugins that nobody knows how to use, nobody who has the time to update the site, and a geek who hosts the site, but doesn’t want to give anybody new administration priveledges… i’ve already made some minor (i.e. for the most part invisible) revisions to their site, but i continually run up against at least one person who says that they’re “going to take care of everything”, and at least three others, including the geek/host-provider, who only read the first couple of sentences of their email messages and/or don’t respond to direct questions the first time… or the second time… or the third time…

i’m beginning to wonder if i really want this job, especially considering that, as far as i know, it doesn’t pay anything…

another week closer to the eschaton…

war is not healthy for children and other living thingsBin Laden Sons Say U.S. Broke International Law – it’s what i’ve been saying all along: killing osama bin laden was not an act of “justice”, it was an act of revenge. killing osama bin laden reduces the united states to the same level that we are claiming that the “terrorists” occupy. if we truly wanted justice, osama bin laden would still be alive, in custody, and awaiting trial for his crimes.

No Pictures, It Did Happen: Al-Qaida Admits Osama’s Dead – whether he was dead before now or not is still a question, but answering it is sort of a moot point… now, finally can we MOVE ON and discuss other things? thank you…

we can talk about the helicopter that crashed in the process of killing him… technically it’s not about killing bin laden, it’s about the helicopter… 🙂 Pakistan Hints China Wants a Peek at Secret Helicopter – was it worth it?

Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant – anybody remember that, or are you too overwhelmed with curiosity about the US murder of osama bin laden? it’s quite likely that we’ll still be dealing with the repercussions of fukushima long after everyone has forgotten who osama bin laden was…

Renewable energy can power the world – there’s still hope, if you want to pursue it… there’s no telling how long we can hold out, though, and fairly soon we won’t have choices any longer one way or the other…

TSA Defends Pat Down Of Baby: Stroller Set Off Explosives Alarm – instead of hunting down real terrorists, the gummint is feeling up babys in strollers and harrassing their parents when they complain about it.

Aircraft carrier left us to die, say migrants

the back porch project

the back porch projectwe have been wanting to replace the back deck for a couple of years now. its underpinnings were significantly rotten in a number of mostly invisible places, which i could ignore if i wanted to, but recently, when i leaned on the railing near the stairs and the railing fell off it was beond the point where i could ignore it safely any longer.

thaddeus came over with a couple of teenaged rousabouts and took away the decking yesterday, which left a gigantic hole in our back yard, and, with the help of a guy at home depot who actually designed it and put together a list of materials, i put together a porch, so that we don’t walk out the back door and fall three feet to the ground, and finished it off, today, with a set of steps… which i created despite the fact that it was pouring rain most of the morning…

The Shaggs!!

because of the fact that i worked the “late night” shift at a local college radio station for three years or so between 1980 and 1984 (KUGS 89.3 FM) i became familiar with a whole bunch of extraordinarily obscure music… stuff like “The Passion and Transfiguration of a Post Apocalyptic Eunuch” by David Snow, “Perfect Lives” by Robert Ashley, “Einstein On The Beach” by Philip Glass, music by The Glass Orchestra, The Nihilist Spasm Band and suchlike…

it is that experience, digging through literally tens of thousands of 33⅓ RPM vinyl albums, that has gone a long way towards forming my musical tastes today…

however there is one group, The Shaggs, that i’ve never quite been able to figure out, although i find their music fascinating… never been able to figure out, that is, until this afternoon, when i came across this video about the early years of The Shaggs at the BBC. now i understand: their music is the result of not being allowed to listen to popular music, until, one day, they were essentially forced to make “popular music” by a father who was obsessed and psychotic… they made a grand total of one album, “The Philosophy of The World”, and broke up upon the death of their father/manager because, as dot said, “it was embarrassing.”

get out there and watch the video now, because the BBC is only putting it up for a short period of time (and i can’t figure out how to download it, which is irritating). fortunately, i’ve got the album in my collection… one of the advantages of having the “late night” shift at a college radio station and having a collection of the weirdest possible music which no-one will notice when it goes “missing” from said radio station… 😉

DNA testing

i am paternal haplogroup R1b1b2a1a2c, which comes from the south of france, in the basque regions, and maternal haplogroup H1a1, which comes from from europe, near east and central asia…

which doesn’t surprise me that much…

another week closer to the eschaton… the osama bin laden edition

Portland Maine Mosque - osama today islam tomorrowObama Bags Osama — So Now What? – here’s a hint: the “global war on terror” just entered a new, more violent phase, and here’s the reason why: Justice or Vengeance? – you’ve probably heard the phrase “justice has been served” in relation to this event, but “justice” has very definitely not been served. if justice were to have been served, even a little bit, osama bin laden would still be alive, aboard a US warship somewhere, awaiting an impartial (i.e. with the US not providing the judge or jury) trial for terrorism, instead of swimming with the fishes. it is hypocritical to hold another country to a higher standard than we are willing to live up to, ourselves, and dishonest to imply that justice has been served. what has “been served” is childish, selfish, vindictive and wrong in every sense of the word.

My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death – we might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if iraqi commandos landed at george w. bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the atlantic…

‘Most wanted Nazi’ Sandor Kepiro, 97, tried in Hungary – they’re still maintaining a veneer of respectability, and actually trying nazis in a court of law, in spite of the fact that they’re ancient, but when it comes to osama bin laden, it’s a lot easier to just kill him… 😡

The danger of confusing the death of Osama Bin Laden with an act of justice.

Osama bin Laden Death: Pakistan Says US May Have Breached Sovereignty

Why the truth will out but doesn’t sink in

White House fumbles getting its Osama bin Laden story straight

Osama bin Laden: Murder Without a Corpse

Bin Laden: When the Lie Becomes the Truth

A Final Word on the Bin Laden Hoax

Why Bin Laden Was Not Taken Alive

Osama Bin Laden shot dead in front of relatives, claims Al Qaeda leader’s 12-year-old daughter

Bin Laden’s Daughter Saw U.S. Troops Kill Him

Bin Laden was captured alive and then executed, ‘claims daughter, 12’

The Slippery Story of the bin Laden Kill

Why Didn’t We Capture the Terrorist Kingpin and Interrogate Him?

Michael Moore: ‘Bin Laden Was Executed’

Salman Rushdie: Pakistan’s Deadly Game

OUR GRIEF IS NOT A CRY FOR WARWaterboarding ‘Worked’?: Media Push Pro-Torture Message

Imperialism and Bin Laden’s Assassination

I Don’t Believe It

Dead Empire Walking: On Playing into Al Qaida’s Hands

12 Questions About Bin Laden

Cannabis found at Abbottabad Compound

don’t get me wrong, i’m just as happy to see osama bin laden dead as the next guy, but when we have to arrive at that point by doing the EXACT SAME THINGS that we are accusing him of doing, there’s nothing i can do but speak out about it. there were 3,000 plus people killed in 9/11, and since then, there have been 50,000 or so killed in the “global war on terror” since then, but those dead people are not vindicated by osama bin laden’s death… and by killing him, it is as though we are saying that they have died for nothing.

There is nothing normal about celebrating death

Despite the Death of Osama bin Laden, the Terrorists are STILL Winning

and, just in case you had any doubts, Bin Laden corpse pics will be malware, says FBI

this is a… joke…?

McCartney & CleesePaul McCartney to marry John Cleese

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has announced he is to marry for a third time, this time to legendary Python star and himself three-time divorcee John Cleese.

While the details of the service have yet to be worked out Sir Paul confirmed that ‘Eleanor Rigby’ would be played during the ceremony, and when it gets to ‘All the lonely people, where do they all come from?’ spouse-to-be Cleese has promised to walk up the aisle in an appropriately spectacularly silly way.

The happy couple first met at a Divorcee Anonymous meeting, and found that they could share their desparate experiences of lost marriages and an unfulfilled search for a love to match their first betrothals, a quest each has embarked on for many years without success – until now.

The service will take place in New York, with Terry Jones giving the reading in a screeching harridan voice, Ringo Starr conducting the choir, who haven’t yet quite got used to his unique brand of syncopation, Stella McCartney providing decorative pineapples and Eric Idle singing a eulogy, which will be based on such delightful puns as ‘Always look on the bride side of life,’ something which both Cleese and McCartney have agreed to vow in church never to do again.

With both men contentedly well off, and with the wisdom of old age it seems like a marriage set to last although, just in case, the pre-nup runs to one hundred and forty pages.

a thing that is different about me

before my brain injury, i was mostly right handed. i was (among other things) a juggler, and, when it comes right down to it, i could use both hands equally well to do most things (a significant difference, however, was that i held lathe tools as though i were left handed). i was also quite accomplished at drawing and calligraphy, with my right hand.

however, since my injury, i have been predominantly left handed… and it’s REALLY annoying… 😐

i can write equally well with both hands, but not particularly legibly with either… and forget doing calligraphy, with either hand. i remember beautiful things used to “just come out of my pen” prior to my injury, but i realise, now, that they were actually coming out of my HAND, and that ability is, now, nowhere near what it used to be.

i “lose” things that i put into my pockets – like my car keys (i “lose” them about twice a week) because they’re in the wrong pocket. i “forget” that my right hand is there, and subsequently try to load more than a reasonable load of stuff into my left hand, and then realise – as i am headed away from home, or the car, or whatever – that i am carrying more than i should in my left hand, and nothing in my right hand.

the first time i tried using a computer, after i had my injury, i tried to operate the mouse with my right hand, as i had before my injury. it felt really awkward and confusing, so i switched to my left hand, which felt totally natural, as though i had been mousing with my left hand my entire life. i continue to be a left-handed mouser.

i can type, slowly… before my injury, i could type 95 – 100 words per minute, with 100% accuracy. now, eight years after my injury, i can usually get to around 45 or 50 words per minute, with 50% accuracy, if i’m really warmed up and feeling good. usually it’s more like 35-40% accuracy, and/or 35-40 words per minute.

i have re-learned how to juggle… sort of… prior to my injury, i could juggle three of pretty much anything, pretty much indefinitely, including different size and weight balls, a ball, a pin and a ring, and such like, as well as being able to keep four balls in the air, and occasionally five for a couple of passes. now, eight years after my injury, i can keep three of the same size and weight balls in the air for 5 to 10 passes… if i’m lucky. usually i juggle until i get so frustrated that i give it up about once a week, but it’s really frustrating that i can’t do it as well as i used to be able to.

people always say “why complain? i can’t juggle at all and i haven’t had a brain injury…” but the point is that i used to be able to juggle really well, and now i have trouble doing the simplest of patterns… the ability to do it is still in my mind, but my hands don’t cooperate – and it’s not for lack of trying… you have never had the ability, so you don’t know what losing it is like.

That Song

That Song is a “jam”… i.e. “not a finished piece”. my recollection is that it was called “that song” because it was one that we played fairly frequently, but not one that we worked on enough that it had a “working” title… it was just “that song”…

okay, i know she’s fast, but this is ridiculous…

i just got home from running some errands, and i let the dogs out of their kennels and put them outside – like i usually do – except that zora, instead of going outside, goes around the corner toward the cat privy. i hold the door open for magick, and then – and this is important – i CLOSE THE DOOR (so the cats won’t get out) and go to look for zora. when i can’t find her in or around the pantry, i start calling her, and head around the counter – there’s really not many places she could have gone – calling her again and again. i’m becoming a little disturbed, because i can’t find her and i start imagining what moe will do to me when i tell her that her championship agility dog is missing. i head back into the bedroom and check her kennel, and all of the other kennels (because she likes to go and “clean up” after other dogs who might have eaten their breakfasts in the kennels any time within the past two weeks or so), but she’s not there, and i’m beginning to get worried, calling her louder and louder.

then, i open the door, and find magick lazing in the sunny patch right outside the door. i call zora again…

and she comes running up the stairs, from around the corner… OUTSIDE!

in order for zora to get outside, she would have had to run past me, and get out the door before i closed it (remember that? i said it was important…)

i hesitate to blame this on my brain injury, because she would have had to run right past me, right in front of me between the time that i saw her going around the corner in the other direction and the subsequent closing of the door in preparation for going to find her… and i may be brain damaged, but i’m not blind… at the same time, i don’t know how else to explain it…

squeeee!!

i just realised that, when i get spam via my “questions/comments” form from my web site, i can’t prevent the sender from sending me more spam, but i can prevent them from getting to my web site ever again

that’ll show ’em! 👿

meta

i’m feeling very pleased with myself, because i have recently figured out (on my own, mind you, without any help) how to add shortcut icons, or “favicons” to my sites… they’re the little tiny icons that appear in the address bar of your browser, next to the URI:like this
like this

a day

new ear plugsi had to take the piccolo i repaired back to its owner. i also had an appointment with ned. they were separated by four hours, but i decided that it would be best if i drove, parked and made a day of it. i delivered the piccolo, and then i went to laughing buddha and bought two new ear plugs. i do this instead of expanding my ear ‘ole (which i would do in a cold second if i could: it’s terrifically addictive…), because my beautiful wife doesn’t like it, and it’s not a good thing to do things that my beautiful wife doesn’t like. 😉

then i wandered and took pictures. they’ve completely destroyed four blocks of capitol hill, right across from dicks and the place where my acupuncturist’s office used to be, walled the entire four-block area with 18-foot walls, and dug an ENORMOUS hole, rather like the one that they dug in downtown seattle back in the ’80s. then i went to west seattle and wandered a little more. there are the obligatory pictures if anybody is interested. i found out that my blood pressure is higher in the morning than it is in the afternoon, and if i record my blood pressure in the morning, it looks a lot worse than it actually is… which is a MASSIVE relief, because for the past five days it seems to have been getting higher and higher… but it’s because i was checking it in the morning. if i check it in the afternoon, it is apparently a lot more reasonable… i.e. diastolic 115 in the morning and 85 in the afternoon.

another week closer to the eschaton…

"Safe" Radiation is a Lethal Three Mile Island Lie and Nuclear Power Can Never Be Made Safe – in case there were any questions… unfortunately, i am getting the very strong impression that it’s going to have to happen to us, in “somebody’s back yard”It’s Time to Close California’s Nuclear Power Plants – before we’re going to do anything to stop it… and by then, it may be too late.

No Place to Hide: Internet Tracking Probe Unveiled as New Smartphone Spy Scandal Unwinds – even on cell phones which do not have GPS capabilities, they still have “location service” software that triangulates on the closest cell phone towers, and stores that information in unencrypted files. i have known this for years, which is one of the reasons why i don’t use my cell phone that frequently…

meanwhile, Steve Jobs Lies About iPhone Tracking – because nobody will know anything if they don’t admit it…

Obama: War is peaceand, in case you were completely clueless, President Obama Makes a Fair Trial of Bradley Manning Impossible By Declaring Him Guilty

Obama Doctrine Allows for Regime Change by Assassination – and when he can’t just declare someone guilty and have that stick, the next step is to try assassination.

Obama Doctrine Allows for Regime Change by Assassination – only the people who follow bin laden’s lead will not see this as a reason to give up, but they will see this as a reason to redouble their efforts… 😡

and, by the way, they’re already up in arms about it: Taliban commander vows to avenge Bin Laden’s death – this is why the whole idea of killing osama bin laden was wrong from the very beginning… oh well, i suppose they’ll never learn… 😐

TSA Molests Miss USA, Makes Her Cry… For Your Safety

White House releases Obama’s "Long Form" birth certificate – and judging by some of the comments, that is not going to make one iota of difference… although i like the one that says “now do we call them the ‘after-birther’ movement?” i may disagree with how obama is running the country, but i’d still much rather have him than pretty much anyone else from the republicretins who is saying that they want to be president at this point… palin, trump, santorum, romney, gingrich, pawlenty, bachman, huckabee… Obama Birth Certificate Number Proves Forgery? – what did i say?

BP Expects to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico within Months – oil spill? what oil spill?

An illegal substance sold legally

Belgium reaches one year without a full government – which just goes to show you that, ultimately, we don’t really need a full government to get things done… a fact which somebody should have noticed by now…

Superman Renounces His U.S. Citizenship – he’s tired of “having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy.” republicretins in real life are outraged… 🙂

Continue reading another week closer to the eschaton…