this is why paypal SUCKS!

so – naturally – i haven’t heard anything about whether or not the email that i received from "[email protected]" really was from paypal or not, and the person i talked to last week said that i would hear from the fraud department in two to three days, so i decided to call and see if they knew anything…

why do i always decide to torture myself early in the week… 😐

i talked to one person who had a very strong accent of some kind or another (to the point where i had to ask them to repeat their greeting, because i didn’t understand what they had said AT ALL). when i had confirmed that i had, indeed, called paypal, and not some place in madagascar, i explained my problem, and was promptly put on hold to wait for the fraud department.

half an hour later, i was greeted by an american girl who couldn’t have been much older than 20, who assured me that if i hadn’t heard anything, that my email was probably fraudulent. i then explained that the email had two parts, one of which matched the guidelines for a “real” email, and the other of which matched the guidelines for a fraudulent email, whereupon she changed her tune, and said that the email was real. i proceded to tell her about the fact that i traced it to a uu.net account, whereupon she changed her tune again and said that it was clearly fraudulent, which, she said, was made obvious by the fact that i hadn’t heard anything…

at that point, i politely ended the conversation, and proceded to hit myself in the face with my keyboard, because it is more comfortable… 😛

THAT is why i don’t keep a balance in my paypal accounts… it’s just not worth the risk. 😐

another week closer to the eschaton…

proud to be a liberal

The Patriot Act Anniversary Week Round-Up – When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry… the Patriot Act has been extended until 2015…

Scum Thy Name Is Quan – Scott Olsen, member of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War and a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq… was shot in the head last night by Oakland police, and is currently in critical condition. Mayor Jean Quan’s statement: “I commend (Police) Chief Jordan for a generally peaceful resolution to (the) situation…” #OWS statement: “It is unconscionable that American government officials would sanction the use of such extreme force against peaceful citizens.”

Facebook partners with Labor Department to "help" job-seekers – facebook is implementing facial recognition routines, and buddying up with the federal government… that can’t be good…

Killing For Sport? – 😮

There’s a Cop in Oakland Deserving of a Severe Beat Down – 😮

Up to 20 million tons of debris from Japan’s tsunami moving toward Hawaii – 😮

Colombian president calls for legalisation of marijuana – Juan Manuel Santos, the Colombian president, has called for the global legalisation of marijuana… too bad he’s just the president of a country where brown people live…

catsup

in spite of numerous, obvious problems that i was too brain damaged to see through (and i continue not to be able to see through, so i did it a different way), i managed to get the bare bones of a gallery put together for the fremont players, although a link to a finished site is a long way off yet, primarily because of the loads of other crap that i’ve been having to deal with… and general malaise over the fact that i can’t do the same stuff that i used to be able to do prior to my injury… for example, prior to my injury, i was more or less right-handed: i did a lot of stuff ambidexterously, but i moused with my right hand, i wrote with my right hand, i could juggle, i typed around 100 words per minute, etc., etc…. but now i am predominantly left handed, i mouse with my left hand, i can write equally well (which is to say, awfully) with both hands, i can’t juggle more than three or four passes without dropping stuff all over, and it has taken me approximately half an hour to type the preceding paragraph… 😛

and the checkout stands at all the stores are for right handed people, which means that left handed people have to figure out how not to drop things while checking out with the wrong hand… it gets really tiring after a while, and i imagine that people who have been left handed all their lives gave up on it a long time ago… 😛

i was feeling really good about the fact that i was playing a lot more, and then all the gigs dried up. i’ve got trolloween tomorrow (which is fun, but not paid), John Philip Sousa’s Birthday Bash (another fun, but not paid gig, although we’ll probably get fed) next sunday, we’ve got a run of panto performances coming up in december, and snake suspenders has a paid gig, and a non-paying gig coming up within the next few weeks, but it seems like my calendar has had whole weeks with nothing in them for two or three months, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any busier for the forseeable future. it’s been two weeks since snake suspenderz has been out busking, and we did well enough the last time we were out that i would have expected it to become a regular gig, but i haven’t talked to any of the other snakes for almost 3 weeks…

brain damaged brain… 8/

i figured out why it wasn’t displaying like it should (a simple <p>…</p> took care of it) but i’ve been fighting with the code for this web page all day, and i haven’t gotten much of anywhere… and it seems as though things that are supposed to work, simply aren’t, for one reason or another… it actually seems as though what i want can’t be done using standard html and css — even though i KNOW it CAN be done, quite easily…

blah… 😛

GRR!!

okay, so i’m working on some new web pages for the fremont players. i’ve got a REEEEAALY simple CSS file, that basically sets margins and text alignment:

body {margin-top: .25in; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 2in;}
.center {text-align: center;}

and i have an equally simple HTML file that’s going to be my index page (when i get this ☢☹‼‽⁂@#* “difficulty” worked out) which looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="index.css">
<title>The Fremont Players</title>
</head>
<body>

<span class="center">The Fremont Players present</span>

</body>
</html>

now one would think, just from looking at the code, that the words “The Fremont Players present” would be centered, a quarter of an inch below the top of the page… but…

text alignment problem

and it looks the same whether i’m using firefox, safari, or opera… which means that SOMETHING is WRONG

but i can’t figure out WHAT… 😐

“Protect” IP?!?

much as i disagree with things like facebook and twitter, i don’t want them entirely shut down, but that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t get off our collective ass and prevent it: How’s That Free Speech Thing Working Out For You – The draft bill would: 1) Give the government and private corporations new powers to block access to sites accused of copyright infringement; 2) Criminalize the streaming of copyrighted content; 3) Restrict cloud-based storage services, music lockers, and the like; 4) Create the aforementioned new liabilities for sites that encourage the posting of user-generated content.

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.

MAKE SOME NOISE ABOUT THIS
or forever hold your peace!

paypal’s response was to have me send the spam message to spoof at paypal dot com, which, if my previous experiences are anything to go by, is the last thing i will ever hear about this message… 😐

oh well…

my car stereo experienced an electronic hiccough yesterday, but taking out the suspect fuse to determine if it was bad or not (it wasn’t) fixed everything.

yesterday had a phil rehearsal in preparation for trolloween. today has a BSSB rehearsal in preparation for the sousa bash.

we have a number of houseguests starting thursday and ending sunday.

THIS is the way to start the week… 8)

i got another email, purportedly from “service at paypal dot com”…

this time, the subject line was “Notification of PayPal Account Transaction”…

usually, if paypal sends me a “Notification of PayPal Account Transaction” i get another email (from myself) with details from my web site about the transaction that just occurred. this time, i just got the notification, and nothing else.

this time, instead of addressing me as %%FIRST%% %%LAST%%, they had my full name, although they didn’t say how much the transaction was… so i logged into my paypal account and looked.

no big red number at the top of the page… my account is balanced. i don’t owe anything… as it SHOULD BE 8)

i’m still not sure where the spam message i got from uu.net came from – and i’m still going to call them (bleh, ecchth, ptui) and see if i can find out, because it’s still a major concern – and i STILL want to cancel my paypal account, but those things are less of an immediate event at this point, and i’m willing to let them try to explain themselves (especially about the message from uu.net) before i leap to a decision.

another week closer to the eschaton…

trust george carlin to lay it right out there, and not pull any punches… too bad nobody’s listening to him either… 😐

Fukushima Update and BP’s Gulf of Mexico PR, One Year Later – you thought you’d heard the last of these, but you were wrong… they’re only just beginning… but nobody cares, because they’re allowing things like this to happen in spite of the fact that they’re the worst environmental disasters ever… 😛

TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon – The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, an particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized…

We Don’t Need a Warrant, We’re ICE – The Fourth Amendment strictly prohibits warrantless intrusions into private homes and the Constitution’s protections apply to both citizens and non-citizens alike… unfortunately, nobody’s paying any attention, and even if they are, nobody cares anyway. 😐

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.

Huckabee to Anti-Union Crowd: Deflate Car Tires and Mislead Voters – and i thought i was a terrorist… turns out huckabee is a lot more likely to suggest illegal activities than i am…

Occupy Wall St. Pepper-Spray Cop Anthony Bologna Loses 10 Vacation Days for Violating NYPD Rules – “Frankly, I don’t want him to lose any vacation days at all. That means he spends more time on the job with an even bigger attitude… I think he needs a very long rest someplace quiet and stress-free.”

and, by the way, i bet, as a kid, he was called “tony baloney” which is why he’s wound so tight now… 😉

Throw Them Out With the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue – “It is illegal… to be homeless or live outdoors for any… reason.”

Sen. Sessions Wants To Cut Food Stamp Program, Claiming It Has ‘Surged Out Of Control’ – 😮

Cannabis Genome Sheds Light on Hemp Domestication and Let Our Farmers Grow and Record-High 50% of Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana Use and California Doctors’ Group Says Legalize Marijuana – but nobody will pay attention, because everybody knows that "marijuana" is a schedule one drug with no medical uses and a high propensity for abuse… 😐

US Army to fly ‘kamikaze’ drones – 😮

We Are Not Your Human Resources – We are not your human resources! We. Are. Not. Your. Human. Resources.

it hasn’t been all bad, though…

111021 fez-up seattleyesterday we had a fez-up (left to right: Fez-Monger, Howlin’ Hobbit, yours truly, and Henrik Van Tiki who was visiting from hawaii) and the few days of not having anything specific to do gave me the time to do some research on where to get the next step of turning ganesha the vehicle into an actual vahana for ganesha, which resulted in my getting the stereo installed today… seriously, the people at car toys wanted $400 to install it, and the people at Foss Car Audio did it for $250, but it took me three days of calling people, driving around and getting estimates… anyway, the next step is getting it ready to paint, and getting the windows ready to tint.

also, there are some photos of my wanderings in tacoma, while i was waiting for my car to be done. the photos are from my telephone, so they’re not as good quality as i’d like, but… 8)

this isn’t really the way to end the week, either…

i got an email message, purportedly from “paypal at paypal dot com” with a subject line that read “Keeping Your Account in Good Standing”…

if you’ve ever had the displeasure of actually calling paypal, you’ll probably recognise their “security pointers” that they broadcast over the telephone while you’re on hold, which say things like “an authentic email message from paypal will address you by your first and last name”, while a bogus message will address you as “paypal user, or paypal member”…

the message i received addressed me as “%%FIRST%% %%LAST%%”…

i often receive email that has obviously been designed as html, and rendered as text because i don’t let my email client render html, for security reasons. the message is usually flagged, and if i want to allow it to render the html, i click on a button and it renders all of the non-executable, local bits of the html it can find, and if it has left anything else out (like scripts, calls to external web sites, images, and that sort of thing), i get the opportunity to click yet another button to get the full effect (hint: i very rarely click the first button and i have a policy of NEVER clicking the second button. if i want to see it that bad, i’ll usually go to my browser instead of my email client).

when i looked at the source of the message (as text only), i found that it had a malformed html section which didn’t trigger the first flag. in the html section, it actually had my first and last name, instead of “%%FIRST%% %%LAST%%”

the message said that they had noticed that i had a negative balance, and since it was only $0.30 – which was listed as “$%%NEG. BAL. AMOUNT%%” in the text version of the message – the account had been brought to balance, as their way of saying “thanks for using paypal”…

“cool,” i thought. “they have finally seen the light, and have taken steps to resolve a very, very frustrated customer”…

WRONG!!

when i logged into my paypal account, there was the big, red -$0.30 at the top of my account.

furthermore, when messages come from paypal, they have specific IP addresses referenced in their message headers, which this message did not have. this message referenced IP addresses which are associated with uu.net – a NOTORIOUS, OLD SCHOOL source of spam.

what i read in this situation is the following: some spammer has access to my paypal account.

what i’m supposed to do (according to paypal) is report it to their spam control department. unfortunately i know, from past reports to paypal’s spam control department, that they won’t accept reports from me, and even if they did, they won’t do anything to solve the problem.

now i REALLY want to cancel my paypal account… 😐

#OWS: Let Me Tell You Wall Street Asshats a Little Something About Hippies

#OWS: Let Me Tell You Wall Street Asshats a Little Something About Hippies
Oct 19, 2011 – by One Pissed Off Liberal

One of the attack memes for right wingers and know nothings is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is merely the wacky doings of hippies, or aging hippies, or dirty fucking hippies.

Now I don’t want to make this all about hippies…because it isn’t. The #OWS movement is a phenomenon all to itself. Blaming it on hippies is just typical weasel behavior from the champaigne-sippin’, caviar-dippin’ greedheads of Wall Street crowd – you know, the ones who got us into this mess in the first place. It’s just their way of avoiding responsibility, and boy howdy are they good at it.

But hippies, young and old, are involved…and that’s a damned good thing.

Let me tell you something about hippies. Hippies didn’t export anyone’s jobs, hippies didn’t lie us into an immoral war, hippies didn’t conspire to steal anyone’s pension funds, hippies didn’t order anyone tortured, hippies didn’t steal so much that it crashed the economy of the entire world, and hippies don’t go on national tv and spew nonsense and propaganda for a very nice living.

So go ahead and blame hippies for everything…as if they had ruled us for decades. We should be so lucky. But we weren’t that lucky – not by a long shot. Instead, we got you.

So if the hippies have some advice for you Wall Street assholes, maybe you should listen. You could do worse. You did do worse. You did a lot worse.

Hippies told you to mind your planet. Hippies told you to make love not war. Hippies told you to not let greed grab you. But did you listen?

No. You and your minions in Congress and elsewhere turned your backs on responsibility. You abandoned the people and sold your souls to the highest bidders. Consequences be damned.

You should thank what gods may be that there are still hippies, that there are still people who put humanity over corporate profits, that there are still those who insist that we do the right thing rather than the profitable thing. We just may save the planet from assholes like you.

Meanwhile, our bought-and-paid-for politicians can’t do shit:

Global warming? Sorry.

Unjust wars? Nope, nothing to be done.

An oppressive and unjust Military Industrial Complex? C’est la vie.

Class warfare by the 1% against the 99%? It’s only class warfare when we say it is.

The disastrous drug war? Whatcha gonna do?

Loss of precious civil rights? Quit yer bitchin’.

Mercenaries on the streets of America? What’s to worry about?

Corporate takeover of the country? Yawn.

No, our bought-and-paid-for politicians can’t do anything that doesn’t involve shoveling cash into the coffers of the already filthy-fucking-rich. And by their inaction they would doom us all.

You greed-deranged fools who have done these things to us had better hope that the dirty fucking hippies come riding to the rescue. Otherwise we are all going to suffer a fate that only you deserve.

I don’t care what anyone says, there is something sweet and pure about old hippies like Ben Masel and others. People who still retain their principles and ideals and are still willing to stand up for humanity in the face of unrelenting tyranny. They deserve respect not scorn. Bless them all.

spam

i logged in this morning and discovered 78 spam comments in my spam directory…

usually i log in and discover – at most – one or two spam comments. frequently i log in and find no spam comments at all (which is the way i like it), but 78 was a bit of a shock…

i also discovered that they are all from 4 or 5 different IP addresses…

since i installed my anti-spam plugins, my ability to control who comments has become a lot easier. i thought i had blocked those 4 or 5 different IP addresses already, but…

i have one method of blocking IP addresses from WP, and i have another, completely different method of blocking IP addresses from OSC. they’re similar, in that they both work off of lists, but the lists are in different places, and configured differently.

apparently i had blocked those 4 or 5 different IP addresses from OSC, but not from WP… and, it is my personal experience, that when spammers don’t get to leave spam everywhere, they get upset and try to mail-bomb me until they are completely blocked from communcation with me, at which point they get frustrated and go try to mess up somebody else’s good time.

bye spammers… go mess up somebody else’s site. you’re not going to get in here and all you’ll achieve is to piss me off… and you won’t like it when i’m pissed off.

dead people

Pete Rugolo – despite the fact that he was kenton’s arranger 15 years before i was born, i grew up with stan kenton music from the time that i was old enough to remember. my father was a frustrated, but quite good tenor sax player, who was faking it as an electrical engineer, and, as a result, we always had jazz of some sort or another playing in the background. stan kenton was in heavy rotation…

at this point, i’m probably one of the few people who will know who you’re talking about when you say that pete rugolo died…

i really admire the artists at 0100101110101101.org

somehow, the artists at 0100101110101101.org invaded a rather up-scale art exhibit with art that wasn’t what the up-scale art exhibit’s curator thought it was. “The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its authenticity or worthiness.”not dieter roth artwork

Dieter Roth never made this work, it’s a fake. We invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet: an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.

THIS SHOULD BE news! 😐

this is definitely NOT the way to start the week…

hybrid elephant had $0.00 in its paypal account (which is normal, i HATE paypal, and you’ll see why in a minute).

on 10th february, 2011, after someone made a $22.00 payment for something that they decided they didn’t want, i refunded $22.00 to that person, and had a $0.00 balance when i was finished. i consider this to be normal.

on 4th september, 2011 (the last time i had to refund any money), i had $0.00 balance, a person made a payment of $33.00, i refunded $33.00, and had a $0.00 balance when i finished. it was a nice, normal transaction.

today, i had a $0.00 balance, a person ordered $7.00 but didn’t include the extra $30.00 for shipping (they’re located outside the US), and so i refunded their $7.00 order… but now i have a -$0.30 balance: NOT a “nice, normal” transaction at all… but that’s not the part that makes it really bizarre.

i called them up, to find out what’s their problem. after 45 minutes of wangling around with an automated anti-service drone that wouldn’t let me talk to a real person and only wanted to give me my account details, i finally got a real person, who put me on hold for another 15 minutes while he got a “specialist” to help me.

the “specialist” told me that when a person’s money is refunded, there is a transaction fee of $0.30, and if i had never had to pay it in the past, that i was “lucky”. she said if she put my account on hold while they “investigated” it, that there is a good possibility that i will owe substantially more than $0.30, for previous refunded transactions that haven’t been charged the $0.30 transaction fee.

the only options i have are NOT paying the fee, and having my account put on hold, cancelling the account all together, or biting the bullet and paying the $0.30 transaction fee (which i have NEVER had to pay in the past).

if she had said that they didn’t charge a transaction fee for refunded transactions in the past, but that, as of some recent date, they decided to add a transaction fee for refunded transactions, i would very likely sigh and pay the $0.30, but because of the fact that she said they had ALWAYS charged a transaction fee for refunded transactions, i am livid.

i have been a paypal member for 7 years, and 7 years worth of $0.30 “forgotten” transaction fees, regardless of how few of them there have been, could potentially add up to substantially more than i am willing to pay, and my only other option is to close down the hybrid elephant paypal account and move to a “cash only” plan which wouldn’t be anything close to satisfactory for anyone.

at this point, i might as well just shut down the entire business. 😛

another week closer to the eschaton…

now that it’s coming up on the 1 year anniversary, i’m wondering whether i should be doing this weekly post – another week closer to the eschaton… – before i started putting all the “news” news in a weekly post, i put pretty much all of them up when i found them, and didn’t take the time to comment much on them. now, the more i focus on the abysmal news that’s out there, the more i feel like i’m essentially fighting a losing battle with people who don’t notice and wouldn’t care even if they did notice. if you find these weekly posts useful, please comment… otherwise i may be taking a break to refocus my thoughts.

The Job Killers – “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” this kind of thing is primarily the reason i am so discouraged with the “news”… it seems like nobody cares, because it’s getting worse by the hour, and nothing — save a lot of words (but no actions whatsoever) — is happening to change it. 😐

There comes a time when the workings of the machine become so odious that we must throw our bodies onto the gears of the machinery to make it stop.
     Mario Savio

Poor People Have Rights TooW. T. F!?!? 😮

House GOP Proposes So-Called ‘Let Women Die’ Bill That Lets Hospitals Deny Life-Saving CareW. T. F!?!? 😮

FDA Allowed Unsafe Levels of Contaminants in Seafood after BP Oil Spill – really… who is surprised by this shocking revelation? 😐

in case anybody was wondering, i am the 99% and i take offense at the ignorant, right-wing attempts to muddy the situation with things like their “I am the 53%” web site. you may be 53% intelligent, but unless you’re as rich as croesus, you are also the 99% and you are also are being taken advantage of, and SCREWED OVER just as much as the rest of us. – Not Just The ’53 %’: The Working Poor Pay More Of Their Income In State And Local Taxes Than The Rich In 49 States and Raise My Taxes and 99 or 53, We’re Still All The Same also Responding to Erick Erickson’s ‘We Are The 53%’

Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll – and this is how the 1% fights back…

Occupy Elections: A Call for the Second American Revolution in 2012 – A small, criminal cadre of extreme right-wing ideologues manufacture the voting machines that secretly count our ballots… We want our goddamned democracy back!

Tony Bennett on 9/11 Attacks: ‘They Flew the Plane in, But We Caused It’ – George W. Bush: “I think I made a mistake.”

Obama’s New Tactic Against Medical Marijuana Patients: Suspend Free Speech and We Are The TSA, And We Approve This Message – freedom of speech doesn’t include yelling fire in a crowded theatre, and, apparently, doesn’t include advertising LEGAL medical cannabis dispensaries or using the letters T, S, and A in an unapproved manner…

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.

Another 29 Airports Will Irradiate Passengers – but nobody will do anything about it, because nobody cares, and they won’t care until somebody dies, and by that time, it will be too late.

The True Cost of Commuting – for a two car family that commutes around 40 miles a day, it works out to $125,000 over a ten year period… can you afford that? i certainly can’t… 😐

BP to Risk Worst Ever Oil Spill in Shetlands Drilling – after having already caused the “worst ever oil spill” in the gulf of mexico last year, i’m still wondering why these people are still in business, and not facing a firing squad… and, by the way, there’s more of this crap headed into an ocean near you: Oil spill disaster New Zealand’s ‘worst in decades’

Is Obama’s Drug Policy Worse Than Bush’s? The War on Medical Marijuana Escalates – short answer: yes. 😛 also, Former NYPD Detective Testifies that Police Regularly Plant Drugs on Innocent People to Meet Arrest Quota – “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mohandas Karmachand “Mahatma” Gandhi

Children to be banned from blowing up balloons, under EU safety rules – with all of the micro-managing childrens’ lives that’s being legislated these days, it’s a wonder those of us who grew up before this “enlightened age” ever managed to make it to adulthood at all… 😐 as much as i really want to vacate this country, i get the impression that europe isn’t an awful lot better…

ICANN rescues time zone databasechaos averted

busking

hat formerly belonging to Jon H. Stebbinsi got up at an unreasonably early hour this morning and went down to the FSM to busk.

while there, i found one of the vendors had a hat for sale for $10, that i couldn’t resist. it’s not a costume hat, it’s a real, authentic, merchant marine hat, that probably belonged to an officer. inside the hat was a little printed card that said “Return this Bernard Cap to:” that had the name, address and phone number of someone who was completely unknown to the person from whom i bought the hat.

i googled the name, and came up with some confusing results. googling for Jon H. Stebbins – the name as it is actually written on the card – gets no results, but it asks if i meant to type “John H. Stebbins” and gives a lot of nautical and marine references for that spelling. the one, glaring exception to this is the record of the courts opinion in reference to the case of U.S. versus Stebbins, from 2005, in which John H. Stebbins, Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, raped his 6-year-old daughter, was convicted in a military court, and was sentenced to life without parole, plus a $75,000 fine. the opinion of the court was that he deserved everything he got…

however, if i just google Jon Stebbins, the first results i get have to do with the author of the book Dennis Wilson, The Real Beach Boy, The Lost Beach Boy and other classics…

i’m not sure either one of these is the Jon H. Stebbins that previously owned my hat, but if that’s the sort of people i’m going to find when i search for him, i think i’ll give it a miss…

it’s a cool hat, though… 8)

busking went really well, despite the fact that we were a trio (sketch had another engagement). we got a lot of really positive feedback from the people in charge, and made a fair amount of money at the same time. i could get used to this… 8)

i’ve got a new client…

thanks to the people at edgewood tire showing off their fancy business cards, i got a business card order from this guy named lamar, who wanted his cards to say $$ CASH $$ FOR JUNK CARS & TRUCKS with his name and phone numbers. i didn’t actually talk to lamar, but he wrote down what he wanted on a napkin and the people at edgewood tire put in the order for him.

this, needless to say, is not the way i have done business with people who needed printing in the past. usually i’ve found that when people write something down on a napkin, that some time has to be spent figuring out exactly what is needed. i told sally (one of the owners of edgewood tire, i think) that, and she agreed that it was not exactly the best idea, so i left my phone number and told her to have lamar give me a call.

days passed by, and lamar didn’t call me.

i stopped by edgewood tire again, and sally said that lamar said (already you begin to see why i was leery of doing this) that what was written on the napkin was what he wanted, and that i shoud just go for it. i still wanted to at least talk to the guy before i typeset something, but when i called both of the numbers he gave, and asked for lamar, nobody had any idea who i was talking about, so sally actually called lamar while i was standing in her office, and then handed the phone to me. it didn’t take long. he gave me the impression that he wanted them in a hurry, and suggested the word CASH should be in red. i asked him if he wanted any artwork, and he said that the words should take up the entire card… in fact, he said “if there is any room left on the card, fill it with the words i gave you.” i asked him if he needed to see a proof copy before i sent them out, and he said no (which is another BIG RED FLAG in the “normal” printing industry). i said i would see that his need for cards was met, and that if he needed any changes, we could talk about it for the next time.

so i whipped out a card that filled as much of the available space as possible with words. and sent them off with faster than normal delivery service… which was a mistake, because UPS couldn’t find my address (which is a down side to living in the “unincorporated” part of king county) and the day they were supposed to deliver it, the status suddenly changed to “we don’t know where you are, delivery postponed indefinitely” and i actually had to go down to the UPS package center in pacific to get it.

armed with the business cards, i, once again, tried calling both of the phone numbers on the card, and got the answering service for pacific auto glass, who didn’t know who lamar was. i began to think that i may never see payment, but i took them to edgewood tire and said that lamar could pay for the replacement gear that my new car needed, and sally said that was an acceptable arrangement, so i left the cards with her.

but i got to thinking… i actually have a junk car that i need to get rid of, so i tried calling them again. this time, there was an answering machine that said that if you need a new windshield or have a junk car, leave your number… so i did.

this time lamar actually called back. we made all of the arrangements for him to pick up(!) the old ganesha the car before he asked for my name and phone number (heh heh). when he found out who i was, he immediately put in another order for 1000 more business cards. he really likes them, and says that the word “cash” is exactly what he wanted…111013 cash for junk cars & trucks business card

oh my GAWD, what have i gotten myself into?

so i sent an email message this morning to a friend of mine, who has an @hybridelephant.com email address.

i sent a very similar message to him yesterday, which got through without a problem.

today, i got a “Mail Delivery Failure” notice, one minute after sending the message, with the following piece of insightful information:

This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

>>> <REDACTED>@hybridelephant.com (reading confirmation): 550 High probability of spam

—— This is a copy of the headers of the original message. ——

X-BINDING:
X-Spam-Rating: None
X_CMAE_Category: 0,0 Undefined,Undefined
X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=Yv2NtvkX c=1 sm=0 a=BUl4cw8wsZUA:10 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=QZ0zsqwyAAAA:8 a=9BvCZD0AAAAA:8 a=ivGNPCBhAAAA:8 a=2EfxiS_7of43nIBC7_sA:9 a=i3_x7-eabgX1RcdejPkA:7 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10 a=HCwVASBe7R0A:10 a=xM-QfRgW2ikA:10 a=h1z2HnThejPjI9jbmxDx3A==:117
X-CM-Score: 0
X-Scanned-by: Cloudmark Authority Engine
Authentication-Results: smtp03.embarq.synacor.com smtp.user=<REDACTED>; auth=pass (LOGIN)
Received: from [XX.XX.XXX.XXXX] ([XX.XX.XXX.XXX:35639] helo=ginko.localnet)
by smtp.centurylink.net (envelope-from <REDACTED>)
(ecelerity 2.2.3.47 r(39797/39798)) with ESMTPA
id A8/D2-28819-8B8C59E4; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:04:57 -0400
To: <REDACTED>
Subject: physics is to math as…
From: <REDACTED>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:04:55 -0700
X-Benediction: Tina Chopp is God! Praise Her or DIE!!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain;
charset=”utf-8″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <REDACTED>

my email-message-header-reading skills are a little rusty, but if i’m reading this correctly, smtp.centurylink.net (208.47.184.132) received the message from me (helo=ginko.localnet), smtp03.embarq.synacor.com (208.47.184.2) authorised me as an approved sender, and then rejected the message because it looked like spam, despite the fact that the Cloudmark Network Feedback System they use says that it isn’t.

so, i sent it again. same result, so i called tech support.

bad move… 😐

after calling them twice and spending more than an hour on the phone…

and having me resend the message again… 😛
 
(albert einstein said “a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”)

and doing a bunch of other pointless, useless activities, such as shutting down and restarting both my client and my computer (with the predictable lack of results), the lady said she was escalating the issue and promised that i would get an email within the next 24 to 48 hours.

i didn’t even have to wait that long. i just got email from [email protected] which said:

I am sorry but the issue you are requesting assistance with is an unsupported issue. CenturyLink is responsible for making sure the modem is properly connected to the internet which it is. Also , for your email of <REDACTED> to be accessed at www.mycenturylink.com and so limited support on a few email software clients. We do not provide assistance with specific computer, hardware, software issue(s), port forwarding, advanced modem configuration, gaming devices/issues, the inability to access certain web sites, and so forth.

My recommendation is that you contact the original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or the customer service department of the product for the type of assistance you are requesting. Please bookmark the following link: http://www.ctlhelp.com. At this site you will find the exact same level of support that you get when calling in or chatting with us but without the hold time. As an added bonus you will find assistance on several topics like the ones mentioned above that CenturyLink does not provide support for.
You can find an overview of our support boundaries…

… blah, blah, blah, fucking blah… 😐

so, what it comes down to is that THEIR email server is telling me that i’m sending spam, and that they don’t support whatever problem i’m having with their service. 😛

Elwood Decker!

Elwood Decker -- Infinite Bliss And Eternal Peace To AllElwood Decker: A Path to God

Elwood Decker

i’m indirectly responsible for this… at least for the first one…

i originally heard The Bobs song “Elwood Decker” in 1996 or 1997, thanks to my my beautiful wife (who is THE Bobs fanatic), and immediately wondered who the hell he was… so i proceded to find out.

after some preliminary internet searching, i wasn’t able to find much about elwood, but i found a connection between elwood and a guy to whom i may be related, norm hammond. it turned out that norm hammond posessed all of elwood’s paintings, and it turned out that they had just hung a gallery showing in the old train station in oceano (the bobs changed it to nipomo, which is in the same neighbourhood, but more euphonious) of elwood’s paintings. norm sent me a bunch of reproductions, one of which is currently hanging on the wall behind me. i suggested that elwood really should have a web site, and norm said that he was working on several avenues to publicise elwood — at the time he was in the process of writing a book about him — but that he had never even thought of a web site. i suggested elwooddecker.com and (although i hadn’t expanded the business to the point that it is now) suggested that i could register it for him and build a web site. he said that he would think about it, but he was more interested in writing at that time. i haven’t heard from norm since then, but that’s okay, because it appears that elwood got a web site anyway.

i also put together a one-page biography of elwood, with one of the pictures of him that norm had sent me, and gave it to richard bob at the bobs christmas show, the last time they did the show at jazz alley (1997? 1998?).

of course that was some time before i got involved with the cirque de flambé and the fremont philharmonic, which would, eventually, get me to the point where i am friends and colleagues with matthew bob… 8)

another week closer to the eschaton…

It Knows – okay, i’m frightened now… 😮

Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet – it’s likely because those highly secret and secure military networks all run windoesn’t…

In Alabama, It Goes Like This: No ID, No Water – when i lived in alabama (in the 1960s), they taught us “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”… i can see how that might have changed over the years…

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked – you can’t copyright facts, but apparently Astrolabe doesn’t know that and now the entire universe is getting ready to implode… 😐

RIAA Law Lets Law Enforcement Ignore 4th Amendment, Search Private Property With No Warrants – 😮

U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill and Feds Tell Legal CA Pot Dispensaries: Close In 45 Days or Face Prosecution – 😮

No Evidence Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Cause Crime – a new study by the RAND corporation… too bad nobody’s paying any attention…

In terms of yields, economic viability, energy usage, and human health, organic farming is better than conventional farming – and the Rodale Institute has got 30 years worth of data to back it up.

Paul floats Obama impeachment – killing al-awlaki is “a movement toward tyranny.”… however, Al-Awlaki sibling claims Anwar is still alivemaybe not

Private Anti-Piracy Investigator Spills The Beans – former ‘anti-piracy investigator’ explains how he fed police cases, inflated ‘piracy’ stats…

Want to Know the Tea Party Platform? Go to the Sources – tea party? no thanks, i’m drinking whiskey… 😐

Guilty as charged: proof of ‘human fingerprints’ on climate change – but you can be assured that some “christian” climate-change-denier is going to come up with reasons why each one of them should be disregarded.

Boffins place living creature under control of brain chip – stuff to irritate the creationists… 😉

not so random rant about the shit box

the other day i was “confronted” by a customer (it’s sort of difficult to say that it was a “confrontation” in the normal sense of the word, because the entire interaction took place over email, but bear with me, because it was a confrontation) concerning the fact that, along with the religious items and incense i carry, “there is a product called a ‘shit box‘”. he was concerned that i am causing my customers offense, and he demanded that it be renamed or removed at once. when i told this customer that i didn’t have the power to rename the “shit box” he accused me of “writing an essay” about it, when, actually, i wrote three or four very terse statements. this is the “essay” that he accused me of writing.

thanks for the advice, buddy, but i don’t do business that way, and here’s the reason why.

St. Francis of Assisi said “when the devil says to you again, ‘You are damned,’ you answer him confidently, ‘Open your mouth and I will shit in it!'” and Yunmen Wenyan said, basically, “The Buddha is a dried shit-stick.” if such illuminated personages as St. Francis and Ummon used the word “shit”, then it’s apparently okay for me to use the word. not only that, but jesus said “that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” and if saying the word “shit” defiled a person, then St. Francis would not have said it.

at the same time, i am quite familiar with people who are pretty well defiled, despite the fact that nothing but bible scripture spews out of their mouths: people like jerry falwell and james dobson and robert schuller and harold camping and creflo dollar and benny hinn and jim bakker and peter popoff and bob larson and…

on the other hand, if it is automatically assumed that anything with the exact combination of letters “S”, “H”, “I”, “T” defiles a person, then, automatically, that makes referring to shittim wood (a common feature of the old testament book of exodus) something that a “christian” would not want to recite, for fear of “the word”…

and that doesn’t even take into account those people for whom english is a foreign language, and to whom the letters “S”, “H”, “I”, “T” are meaningless and something else is used in its place… which includes, by the way, both St. Francis and Ummon…

further, if people are going to be offended by the “shit box” what would they have me call it? Eco-Friendly, Portable Toilet is an accurate description, but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue the way “shit box” does, and calling it an “eco-friendly, portable toilet” won’t really help you when you need to go, and you’re in a tent, asking for it in the pitch darkness of the middle of the night…

not only that, but i didn’t actually name it myself, anyway. that honour goes to the people at The Brown Corporation and i wouldn’t presume to rename something simply because a person like one of these tells me to to do so… even if i did have the power to do so…

WHICH I DON’T!!

finally, i am a weird duck. i don’t do things for the same reasons that most other people do them, and that includes being in business. i am in business PRIMARILY to give thanks to Ganesha, and then to provide quality products and servies to my customers… and i do that in spite the fact that i use language differently than most people, and that i am not offended when someone says “shit”. if a person is offended by the fact that i carry the “shit box“, there’s nothing i can do about it, and if they’re so offended that they choose to buy their incense or devotional statues somewhere else, there’s nothing i can do about that, either… and, to be honest, i would rather that they go somewhere else anyway, because their uptight, holier-than-thou attitude is just going to piss me off.

The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business.
     — Frank Zappa

no more drizzle, but what have i gotten myself into?

and, coincidentally, it’s raining outside… what do i have to do to get away from it? 😐

today i cancelled my drizzle account. this has been coming for a few years, but already i get the feeling that it’s out of the frying pan, into the fire…

i get connection speeds that are at least five times as fast with the new provider, but they gave me a modem/router which has settings that they “don’t support”. they told me right up front that if i enable MAC authentication, it isn’t supported…

with drizzle, i had a static IP address. the new guys only offer DHCP, which means that, if i want to connect to my mac from my linux box, every day, i have to go to the terminal on the mac, type in “sudo ifconfig” and get the IP address, which is then used on the linux box to connect the linux box to the mac. every day both the linux box and the mac gets a new IP addresses, and the old ones quits working, which means that the connection on the linux box dies.

and, yes, i AM aware of the fact that MAC authentication does not refer specifically to Macintosh computers.

i know that there is a way to get the linux box to automatically find the mac on the network, and automatically change the addresses so that the icons in dolphin work from one day to the next, but i’ll be damned if i know how to do it… and, at this point, it has already been demonstrated that the people at the new ISP aren’t going to be any help at all… 😛

nameservers

my domain, hybridelephant.com has ns5/ns6/ns7/ns8.thewebhostserver.com as its nameservers: that is, when you go to any page on hybridelephant.com your request is actually handled by one of those four servers. the web site (and all of my clients’ web sites) actually lives on a server called us8.la.thewebhostserver.com.

because of the fact that i design and host web sites for the community, i have registered two nameservers of my own, ns1.hybridelephant.com and ns2.hybridelephant.com, and pointed them at two of my nameservers. they’re not “real” nameservers, but they work just as well, as long as they’re pointed at my real nameservers.

from time to time, i check IntoDNS to make sure internet knows where to find me. this afternoon, i checked and discovered a whole bunch of error messages where, when i checked the last time (a few months ago) everything was copascetic…

it’s generally been my impression that if I don’t change my DNS settings, they DON’T change unless something is SERIOUSLY wrong, so naturally i freaked out… just a little, but it was definitely something that made me sit up and take notice.

after some wangling around, it was determined that it was because i had hybridelephant.com’s nameservers set to hybridelephant.com. it works, it just throws errors all over the place. the solution, i come to discover, is to create “real” nameservers. to do that, i would have to “upgrade” my account to a “reseller” account. currently i have a “shared hosting” account. if i upgrade, in order to be able to afford the account, i would have to drop from 30gb of space (which is the “master”, or largest shared hosting account avaiable) to 5gb of space (which is the “starter” or smallest reseller account available), and that would still be more than twice what i am currently paying. the “up” side is that i would get to have “real” custom nameservers, and my clients would all get their own cPanel account (which they would have not the first clue about how to use)…

of course, the “starter” account comes with a lot of other stuff, like web templates and legal documents, and a free WHMCS license — that i don’t, can’t or won’t use — all for more than twice as much as i am currently paying for 30gb of space.

the only thing i would use is the “unlimited SSL certificates” but in fact, i only really need one, and i’m fairly sure there are other ways to get a SSL certificate…

at this point, i can deal with the intoDNS errors… it works, i get a pointer to my nameservers for my clients who don’t understand, and i get FIVE TIMES AS MUCH disk space, for more than HALF the money…

another week closer to the eschaton…

the republicans are responsible for the national debt

When the World Outlawed War – “on August 27, 1928, in Paris, France… the Kellogg-Briand Pact – outlawing war – was … ratified by the United States Senate in a vote of 85 to 1 and remains on the books to this day as part of what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land… One way to revive a treaty that in fact remains law would, of course, be to begin complying with it.”

Why You Shouldn’t Take Notes on Terrorist Plots – the FBI has another carefully crafted “homegrown” terrorist, who couldn’t have even dreamed of doing the stuff he’s accused of planning without the help of the FBI, that they’re parading around claiming that they caught another “terrorist”… and, what do you know? he’s a “muslim”… 😐

At what point does the need for security eclipse human dignity and compassion? – a woman who recently had a bilateral mastectomy had her breasts fondled by TSA agents who made things significantly more difficult, and said things like “if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear… “And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.” 😐

WARNING: Corporate-Fascist Military Coup Brewing in the United States? and Is the United States a Police State? – yes, yes it is… thank you for noticing… hopefully something will be done about it soon… 😐

U.S. secretly asked Japan to help dump nuclear reactors – The United States secretly sought Japan’s support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world’s oceans…

Electrical problems trigger radioactive steam release at Nuclear Power Plant on Lake Michigan – houston, we have a problem…

BP’s Back, Baby! – what oil spill?

Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales – and when they investigated, and confirmed that this was true (in 2008!!) they fired the investigator for “incompetence”…

Magic Mushrooms Can Make Lasting Personality Changes – “People who had mystic experiences while taking the mushrooms were more likely to show increases in a personality trait dubbed ‘openness,’ which is related to creativity, artistic appreciation and curiosity” but nothing is going to come of it, because “Psilocybin mushrooms are a schedule I substance in the U.S., which means the government considers them to have a high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical purpose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.”

Who does Obama think he is, Michael Corleone? – 😮

CIA, Pentagon fight to keep Osama bin Laden death photos secret – how long do you suppose it will be until they’re leaked or published? sounds to me like it’s just a matter of time… osama bin laden lives! 😉

School: It’s way more boring than when you were there – new studies show that the disappearance of art, music and even recess is having a devastating effect on kids as we prepare them as widgets.

Most Food Stamp Recipients Have No Earned Income – 😮

Russia may legalize cannabis for agriculture, industrial use but Feds To Legal Medical Marijuana Patients: You Don’t Have Second Amendment Rights. Period. – it’s always been a case of uncle sam versus the russkies, it’s just now the rôles are reversed. 😐

Artificial leaf makes fuel from sunlight and ‘X’ now a gender option in Australian passports – more stuff to bug the creationists… 8)

Man Accuses Daughter’s Homework of Promoting Islam – this is from the great state of georgia, which should explain a little of the headline…

How Apple’s Lion won’t let you trash documents – this is why i’m never upgrading my mac beyond 10.6.8. 😐

Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare – why is this news?

McDonalds to launch ‘Unhappy Meal’ for binge eaters – five normal hamburgers, five normal cheeseburgers, three Big Macs, eight Chicken McNuggets, four litres of coke, fanta or sprite, four McFlurries, an apple pie and a free toy. 😮

so i went to bellingham yesterday…

so i went to bellingham yesterday. it has been a long time since i’ve been in belligham, and it has been even longer since i have seen the… crazy hippy freaks unique crowd that was there for kenyth’s 77th birthday party last night.

kenyth was my advisor when i first started college, and i started college during the latter part of the last century, but that comes later.

first, i drove through mt. vernon and saw many cow-fields adjacent to the nookachamps river that are going to be ripe for mushrooming in a few weeks, and, basically, i’ve decided that i’m going to take at least one weekend day and do exactly that… because mushrooms are my second favourite drug (the first is hashish, but that’s a separate story).

it took me about an hour longer than i thought it was going to, to get to bellingham, which still puzzles me somewhat. i went to ken & kamalla’s place, but nobody was home, so i then went to the madhouse, which is where i spent the night last night, and talked to darol and the lady who lives in the cabin (which was my space, 25 years ago) for a while, then i went out to wander until it was time for kenyth’s party.

the first place i went was the lake whatcom railroad trail, near where i used to live on valencia street, where i walked east (up hill) on the trail to this spot, where i found this:
old railroad bridge
it was somewhat strange back before everything got developed, but it is somewhat stranger now that it’s the only remaining evidence of a railroad line that used to go right through the middle of what is now a shopping mall and a fairly populated neighbourhood.

i then continued wandering east on the old railroad grade until i found a place that was built about the same time i lived there, which is a dam which funnels all of the water into a creek. a long time ago, shortly after the dam was first built, i used to go there and hide in the tube at the south end of the dam, and grafitti the inside of the tube. at one point, i even took a couple of sheets of plywood down there, so that i didn’t have to worry about getting soaked while i worked. i cleaned debris and gravel out of the tube at least twice, and i had a cozy, invisible little camp/hidey-hole there for a couple of years. now you can still get into the tube, but there’s a sizable pool at the bottom of it at this point, so you’d have to be a spry 20-something to get in there… i imagine that i could probably get in there now, but i imagine that if i wasn’t careful, i would get wet, and i didn’t want to do that yesterday, because it was threatening rain, and i didn’t have a change of clothes handy…

then i went down the tracks a little further, until i got to whatcom falls park, which is another place i used to live eons ago, when ezra was small. this is the place where the PHBFH lived, while i lived in the madhouse (when the PHBFH was living up to her acronym, which was about half of the time), when we went to vancouver BC to see the opera, when ezra was a tiny baby, and there were several old lady opera attenders who looked down their noses at us because we had a “babe-in-arms” at the opera, and everybody knows that babes-in-arms disrupt civilised things like opera… and they didn’t even notice when ezra went to sleep, shortly after the opening chorus, and slept all the way through, without making any noise at all. then, when we got home, very late at night, it was raining, so i parked the car while the PHBFH got out to open the door, so that we could avoid having ezra out in the rain for too long… except that the PHBFH wouldn’t open, or go anywhere close to the door, because it had a teensy little frog, smaller than the diameter of a dime, sitting on the door handle… 8)

then i went back to ken and kamalla’s place, where there was someone home this time, although it wasn’t kamalla, because she was apparently in california visiting her grandkids. i engaged in geek/music and/or music/geek talk with ken until it was time to go to kenyth’s party… which, coincidentally, was in the same dance studio where ezra took lessons from the time that he was 5 until he started at the pacific northwest ballet school, which used to be the nancy whyte studio, but is now called the “Presence Dance Studio”…

kenyth & francieas i said previously, kenyth was my advisor during the time that i was at fairhaven college, which was 1979 through 1984, and again, on and off, from 1986 to 1989. prior to my arrival at fairhaven, kenyth was actually the dean of the college, but by the time i got there, he was “just a professor”. his two “specialty” classes were “Introduction to Personal Philosophy 101” which was informally known as “the fly in the flybottle” or simply “the flybottle class”, and “Awareness Through The Body”. when i first started at fairhaven, you could take body awareness as many times as you wanted, but you could only take the flybottle class once… however, it had such a powerful effect on me that i actually took it twice (with kenyth’s approval) – although i never took body awareness at all (which is kind of a shame, now that i think about it).

before i met kenyth, i was a child from bellevue, a place which is, like it’s new york namesake, an excellent place from which to escape. kenyth introduced me to the person i would eventually become. he did this by allowing me to be me, gently, uncritically and with a great deal of humour (as well as various other things), and by not requiring me to be anything which i was not. it didn’t take long for me to realise that i acutally am another person, one who is 180 degrees different from the person my parents wanted me to be (who was boring and had no life).

and i saw a whole bunch of crazy hippy freaks unique people whom i haven’t seen for quite some time. i saw: douglas drake and joni papp, who i saw at burning man in 2008; karl meyer and stephan freeman, who i see at the moisture festival every year; sally peyou, who i got email from last week, but haven’t actually seen since 2007; yoav and yael yanich, deirdre morgan, kathy veterane, darby freeman, lisa carderelli, dani cutler, jamie jedinak, and a lot of other people whose names i am already forgetting again… all of whom i haven’t seen in at least 20 years… i got email addresses for the people i’ve been thinking about, and wondering what ever happened to them…

i went to sleep, and woke up in the madhouse for the first time since 1989 and it felt so right… if i ever have the opportunity to move back to bellingham at any point in the future, you can bet that i’m going to jump on it in a second. 8)

kenyth's dance