Category Archives: bizarre

i had a really weird dream last night

i had a really weird dream last night. before my injury, i had bizarre, vivid dreams pretty regularly. since my injury, i have had less than a dozen dreams i could remember, and none of them have been as bizarre or vivid as they were before my injury.

i miss those dreams… 😢

nevertheless, the dream i had last night is another dream i have had in a long series of dreams, starting before my injury, that have involved a “house” that i have “lived in”, usually in the past, but sometimes, temporarily, in the present. it is an old, not very well maintained house, with victorian architecture, that has been “updated” at least once, in the past, before i lived there the first time. the “house” has at least 5 floors (sometimes many more than that), which include the sub-basement, the basement, the first, or ground floor, the second floor, and the third floor, and each floor above ground is more rickety and more falling-apart than the previous one. even under the best of circumstances, the house is an “abandoned” house, which, when it was first built, was a large, fancy house, but lost most of its “fanciness” a very, very long time ago.

last night, i was staying in the “house” with a bunch of my friends from cirque de flambé/fremont players, including one person — simon neale — who died a few years ago. in the dream, i know he had died, so i figured it must have been a “flashback” or something like that. at first, i was on the third floor with a bunch of random people (and at least 2 more floors above, which is why the “house” is so weird), and one of them wanted to move some large boxes down to the ground floor, and asked me if they could take the elevator. i told them that the “old” elevator still sort of worked, but that it was scary, because i remembered that, in another dream involving the “house”, i took the old elevator up, and it just kept on going up, and didn’t stop, once it reached the top floor of the house. i recommended the “new” elevator, which was in the front of the house, and had been installed comparatively recently, but which didn’t go up beyond the third floor, or down below the ground floor, but, because of the “house” being in general disrepair, i was skeptical that there was a path to the “new” elevator that would support the person AND the large, heavy boxes that they wanted to move.

then, i was on the ground floor, moving my stuff into a vacant room which i was going to occupy temporarily. i looked out the window, towards the back of the “house”, which was on an alley that i recognised as being in downtown seattle, in the early ’70s… in fact, it was one of the large, victorian houses on the opposite side of the same street that “The Monestary” (a gay disco club that was torn down in the ’80s) was on. there was someone backing a pickup truck into what looked like a parking space, directly behind the “house”, but which i knew was actually the buried roof of the basement, which was very definitely NOT designed to hold up a pickup truck… the truck went backwards, hesitantly, until it fell through the roof, and the whole back side of the “house” collapsed. i managed to find my way out of the “house”, which is where i ran into simon, who was dressed in his “captain hook” costume, from the panto “peter pan”. i mentioned to him that the house had collapsed because someone drove a truck into the back yard, but simon was having trouble with his “hook” prop, and said that i should find another way in.

it was at that point that someone sent me a text-message which caused my tablet to emit its characteristic “clown horn” noise, which woke me up. it turned out that the text message was from one of my friends from the cirque de flambé/fremont players, which confused THE HELL out of me for several hours afterwards.

once again… 😒

DJ is a non-verbal, autistic child, approximately 10 years old, who lives two houses down from our house, at the end of the dead end street. when we first moved in, his parents were in the process of getting divorced, which happened shortly after we moved in. since then, he has been here less frequently, and without as much “fanfare”… without the dogs, WITH pants, more frequently with an adult present, NOT randomly showing up on our back deck, or in our kitchen, that sort of thing…

until about a week ago. suddenly he was around, fairly late at night (after 20:00), by himself, doing things he hasn’t been doing for more than a year: turning on the sprinklers in our front yard, playing, sans pants, in our neighbour’s back yard… this afternoon, i discovered that he has been pulling on the man-gate to the back yard on the east end our house… fortunately, the ground is sloped, so if he pulled, the ground prevents the gate from opening… but if he pushed with the same vigor that he pulled, he would have gotten into our back yard. 😒 he actually snuck into our neighbour’s house — much like his ventures into our kitchen, prior to us getting the fence and the locks 😒 — where he proceeded to let their new cat out, before being caught by our neighbour, who just happened to be home… 😒 the cat came home about 3 hours later, so that’s good, but…

it turns out that one of the reasons he hasn’t been showing up as much is because his father got an alarm that goes off when DJ leaves the property… but DJ learned how to turn it off a couple weeks ago, and his father is only JUST finding out about it… 😒🤨🙄

it’s not the kid’s fault, and i don’t want to call the cops, because interacting with the cops will only further traumatize the kid, and, very likely, the cops will, ultimately, not be able to do anything anyway, but his father is a real piece of work, and, if nothing else, could REALLY use some professional help… for both him AND the kid! 😒 his comment, as he was walking away from a confrontation with the neighbour and i, this afternoon, was that he “didn’t know what to do”, and suggested “putting him on a leash or tying him to the ground”, which i immediately characterised as “cruel and unusual punishment, which he ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT deserve”… 😒

😭

after busking, today, i was driving home, up hobart-ravensdale road, and i got to the wind-ey part, just south of the cedar river, right before the summit-landsberg cutoff, and i encountered a deer which had been hit by a car, going the other direction. the car that hit the deer didn’t even slow down, but the injured deer was wobbling and bouncing all over the roadway, as i drove up. there were two cars going the other direction, which almost hit the deer, and three cars (mine included) going the other direction, which narrowly avoided hitting the deer. it wobbled over to the guardrail on the opposite side of the road, tried to jump, failed (because its back legs were no longer working), and i was able to pass, but almost immediately after i passed, the deer wobbled into the middle of the road again.

i cursed, because the only thing i could think of to do to help the deer was to kill it, because it was so injured that it probably wouldn’t walk again, if it survived at all… but the only way i had to kill it was to run it over with my car, which isn’t guaranteed to kill it, but IS guaranteed to mess up my car, and, besides that, there were two other cars going the same direction as me, and two cars going the opposite direction, and, with the deer wobbling around in the middle of the road, there is no guarantee that hitting the deer won’t also involve hitting another vehicle… and, by the time i had worked all this out, i was already on the other side of the cedar river, and away from the excitement. 😒

i drove the rest of the way home — about a mile and a half — in a daze. i texted moe, and she recommended that i go back and check if the deer was still on the road, and if it was, to call 911, but i didn’t… there were at least 5 other vehicles present, one of which had actually pulled off to the side of the road and stopped by the time i rounded the bend at the bottom of the hill, and there’s a sure bet that at least one person had enough wits about them to call 911… and, besides, i was (and still am) REALLY distressed by the whole thing, and going back, even if it was completely gone, would have just made it worse. 😭

i suppose it’s what i get for living out in the sticks. 😒

sigh… 😒

today, i got two letters(!) in the standard mail(!).

one of them was an official letter from the DOR, telling me that i had, recently, assigned myself “administrator” of my account…

except that it was addressed to the wrong name

the other one was an unofficial letter, in a hand-addressed envelope, from a rental company which now, apparently, owns the property that i lived in EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO(!), informing me that they had received a letter from the DOR at that address (seriously, i haven’t gotten mail there for EIGHTEEN YEARS 🤯), and that i should update my address with them.

they included the letter they received.

it was a letter, addressed TO THE WRONG NAME, informing me that my business account does not have an administrator, and gives instructions on how to apply for the position.

that’s not the bizarre part.

the bizarre part is that the return address on the hand-addressed envelope is “YDPAGES”, all in uppercase letters, with the address 12819 SE 38th St., Bellevue, WA 98006.

the letter is on the letterhead for RNR Property Investments, at the same address, and is signed by the CEO for RNR Property Investments, whose email address is at ydpages dot com.

is this starting to sound a little sketchy to you? it is to me…

that address is, now, a UPS store (which doubles as a post-office box location). that address is also, literally, RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from the place i used to work before i got my job at software.com (which became openwave)… according to my handy list of when things happened, i worked there from 1996 to 1998… at that time, there were no buildings there, just raw hillside, covered with second growth forest. i used to eat my lunch on that hillside. i found psychedelic mushrooms on that hillside…

this guy, who sounds REALLY sketchy, somehow got standard mail for my business, at an address i haven’t used in almost 20 years, and mails it to me, and it gets here at EXACTLY the same time as a message from “the government” about EXACTLY THE SAME THING

if i weren’t already paranoid enough, as it is… 🤬

maybe i was a bit hasty…

it’s definitely “not all bad” living here, but things are definitely NOT “normal”, by any stretch of the imagination.

we were supposed to have a fence installed… BEFORE we moved in… but COVID19 put an end to such frivolities, and we moved in anyway.

now we’ve got to leash the dogs when we let them out to go potty. not because our dogs would be irresponsible, but because the other dog owners on the street are being irresponsible… there are three dogs, from two separate houses, which “roam freely” on the street: no fence, no leash, no humans… three separate dogs. one of them (bentley) is friendly enough when he’s not startled, but the other two (hershey is one of them, i don’t know what the other one is called) are less amicable, and hershey likes to push his limits.

but if it were just the dogs, it would be tolerable… barely…

however, there’s also the issue of DJ, a seven-year-old autistic boy who lives at the end of the street, two doors down from us. this morning, i went out to the mailbox and discovered a partially clothed (he was wearing a shirt, but no pants) DJ, and the two aforementioned dogs, wandering aimlessly by the pond across from our house. i said hi, but DJ doesn’t speak. so i went back into MY house, only to have DJ try to follow me. and when he couldn’t get in the front door, he went around to the back, and climbed over three locked gates and x-pens we put on the deck to discourage the other dogs from coming up on the deck…

apparently, the previous owners thought DJ was cute, or something, and gave him cookies when he showed up on their porch.

and he is “cute” in the way that all children are “cute”… but when encountering him, sans adult, and sans pants, it is a bit unnerving… and when he tried to follow me into the house, and then climbed over the barriers in his way to get onto our back deck, it was more than a little disturbing.

particularly since moe “facebook-messaged” his parents, waited half an hour, got no response, went to his parents’ door, and woke up his father, before she could get help for him.

on one hand, it’s a really good thing we didn’t call the cops, but on the other hand… what parent, in their right mind, allows their non-verbal, autistic child to wander the neighbourhood WITHOUT PANTS, on a friday morning?? and if we hadn’t been warned, ahead of time (moe and her farcebook group saved the day), we probably would have called the cops… and it would have served them right, although it would, doubtless, have been incredibly traumatic for the kid.

it’s a REALLY GOOD THING that, when the fence is installed (we’re hoping for next week… really…), it will be a SIX FOOT fence. 😖

neighbours

i’ve had some difficulty with some of our neighbours… not the ones that live around us, but ones that live further away. one lady was kicking her dog, and when i scolded her for kicking the dog, she suggested that i should kick her, so i did… poor impulse control is common for people with brain injuries, but i didn’t kick her anywhere near as hard as she was kicking her dog, and she had no reason to kick the dog to begin with… but that’s not the point…

the other neighbour is the guy a few blocks away, who i wrote about earlier, who i didn’t kick, but i felt like it, and i was left wondering how i should deal with this guy who was being a dick.

i figured it out…

this evening, as i was walking past their houses, i performed The Turkey Curse. i will continue to perform The Turkey Curse every time i walk past their houses until i am satisfied that they have been properly cursed.

hee

so i found a way to make QR codes fail to work…
an irritating QR code that doesn't work
ETA: almost immediately i discovered that, while it didn’t work when i tested it locally, for some unknown reason, as soon as i posted it, it started working… weird… i’ll have to play around with it some more… 😐

uh oh…

And More – Do We Give A Shit? – listen to this music while reading this post. 8)

so i went to check The Church of Tina Chopp‘s mailbox today, and i got this, extremely curious letter, which is very difficult to read:

The Church of Tina Chopp received another letter from this guyL.J.M. Steijn
Juliana van StolBergstraat 30
2805 CN Gouda
The Netherlands

CHURCH OF TINA CHOPP
P.O. Box 1864
Milton
WA 98354
USA

Gouda, 2 Augustus 2012

Dear Sir/Madam,

At 19 Januar 2010 I have wrote you a letter
And i have seen on Internet, the site: PRZXqGl.HYBRiDElEPHANT.
COM, my letter was on it.
I don’t have never give permission to insert it on Internet.
I also won’t it to see my letter on Internet.

Because I am a Christian and I don’t stay any longer after the pur-
port of this letter, and I reject it.
Sexuality is a holy thing, and is only permit between married couples.

Therefore, I will ask you; please remove my letter from Internet,
and destroy my letter they I have send YOU, at 19 Januar 2010,

Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely,

Leo Steijn

😮

ordinarily, i would remove the letter and say no more about it, but this guy is, either, really crazy, or has just converted to “christianity” and doesn’t want is “sin” to be known. if he is really crazy, then i don’t have a problem with posting his insanity online, especially since it was addressed to me, and regardless of whether or not he gives permission for it to be posted on internet, i have no problem with it. if he just converted to “christianity” and is trying to cover up his previous indiscretions, then i feel i have an obligation to post it, just to show the “christians” that they are just as “sinful” as everyone else, regardless of how “holy” they may now feel…

and either way, i think it’s really amusing that he would randomly send me snailmail almost three years ago, and just be taking offense at what i did with it now, almost three years later. it reminds me very much of Morena Cobbs‘ lame attempt to get her name removed from internet…

not to mention the fact that, apparently, leo steijn also sent mail to The Church of Moo (apparently the voice behind the usenet newsgroup alt.cows.moo.moo.moo), AND The Church of Virus. apparently, at one point, leo steijn was in search of bizarre churches, but now he has apparently decided that “christianity” is the only one, and all of those other “bizarre” churches have to be condemned… sorry, it doesn’t work that way… 😐

here’s a bizarre tale…

a long time ago, before cell phones, internet tubes, and the evil koch brothers…

during the mid-1980s, i had been living in a rooming house on capitol hill, whose landlord was a young guy whose father actually owned the house, and he was “gaining job experience” by being the live-in landlord. i really didn’t know him that well, but he was very lax in keeping up the house: he did nothing about the windows which were leaking water when it rained, he did nothing to fix the central heating of the house, which meant that the upper floors (including where i lived) had no heat at all, he wasn’t too concerned about the fact that i regularly bought my own food, but had nowhere separate to store it, and if i left it in the “common areas” it would get eaten by the other housemates (including himself), even if it was clearly marked… when he refused to address any of these issues, i went to the city housing authority, who informed me that he didn’t have a permit to have a rooming house, and it was in a residential area that didn’t allow rooming houses, so the housing authority came in and shut the guy down, which meant that i had to find another place to live, fast.

i looked at an apartment on terry belmont and east union (terry and east union was where i lived in the mid-1990s), where it appeared that they were in the process of completely remodeling the place. as it turned out, the apartment had been inhabited by an old lady, and her cats, who had lived there for 50 years… but nobody knew she had cats, until she was out shopping one day, and had a heart attack (or something like that) and was taken to the hospital, where she died. she apparently didn’t have any relatives, and she had paid her rent in advance, so nobody bothered to access her apartment until several months (like “more than six”) later, at which point they discovered what used to be the cats, which had clawed open the refrigerator and eaten the food that they could before dying of starvation… which resulted in a BIG mess, which they were in the process of cleaning up when i came around to look at the place.

at that point, i really didn’t care who used to live in the apartment, or their cats. i was just interested in getting out of the rooming house before something (or someone) blew up, so i said that i was moving in whether they were done cleaning up or not. it turned out that they did a pretty good job of cleaning up everything except the refrigerator. while it was “clean”, it had a smell like rotten death, and the only thing i could find that would successfully mask the smell was pine-sol, which, of course, made everything that i kept in my refrigerator taste of pine-sol… believe me, it was WAY better than tasting of rotten death.

anyway, about a week or so after i moved in, i had this really weird dream, where this little old lady was ranting and fussing about because there was some unknown person in her apartment, and she couldn’t find any of her cats. i had the same dream for a couple of weeks, with minor variations in the plot and the cast, until i consciously realised that this was the old lady who used to live in my apartment… at which point, the next time i had the dream, i told the old lady that i was the person in her apartment, and she could hang around as long as she left me alone. after that, i started noticing that somebody was calling my name from the kitchen when i was in the living room… or someone was opening latched cupboards or slamming the bathroom door, when i was in the kitchen… friends of mine commented on these bizarre phenomena on a regular basis. even when whe wasn’t making her presence physically known, i could tell she was around, because everything would smell of pine-sol, instead of incense or cannabis…

adopt a ghost

at some point, i found a piece of cardboard with the words “ADOPT A GHOST” on it – i think it was on a pizza box, but i can’t be sure – which i still have.

eventually, after about 2 years, i moved out, and back to bellingham… and the ghost came with me. she would call my name from the kitchen of the new house i lived in, and open the closed cabinets, but it seemed like she was fading away. probably a year later, i didn’t notice these things happening any longer. my guess is that she moved on.

at this point in my life, i would say that, quite apart from my being enlightened, my belief system falls somewhere between athiest and esoteric shivaite (with hints of buddhism, judaism, and unorthodox christianity thrown in for good measure), and i’m not sure i would believe a story like that if it hadn’t happened to me… for that matter, i’m not sure i would believe a story like that in spite of the fact that it happened to me… i guess i may just be waiting for someone to tell me that i’m crazy, so that i can tell them “i know, i know…” 😐

shooze

birkenstock athensi am fairly bizarre… maybe you already knew that, but if you didn’t, there it is. one of the ways i am bizarre is that i have worn exactly the same style of shoe, more or less, for the past 30 years. when i was born, i had some congenital difficulties with my legs and feet. i don’t know very many details, but i do know that i had my right leg in a cast from the age of 6 months or so, until i was about a year old, which meant that, among other things, i didn’t crawl: i went straight from “creeping” to walking, and, thus, didn’t get the crawling that is so necessary to a normal baby’s development. i also had to wear “orthopedic” shoes and a brace at night, to “help straighten out” my feet, and i was forced to do pointless excercises (stand facing a wall, and do “push ups” against the wall, while keeping my heels on the floor) until i was about 5 or so. even with all that “help”, i managed to destroy just about every pair of shoes i owned, by “running over” them on the outside, until i found the birkenstock athens.

when i find something that works, i tend to stay with it until i have to change… that’s why i’m bizarre.

i have owned three pairs of athens sandals, one pair of brown, and two pairs of black, in the past thirty years. i have gotten them “recrafted” — which, in “birkenstock terminology”, means grinding off the rubber sole, separating the leather uppers from the old cork footbed, and putting on a new cork footbed and covering it with a new rubber sole — uncounted times. the brown pair finally bit the dust last year, when the leather straps broke. then one of the black pairs came back as “un-recraft-able” from the birkenstock repair guy, and i was in a quandary…

i had known for some time that birkenstock had officially stopped making the athens style sandal a number of years ago. in fact, the 2nd pair of black ones that i bought, i had to order them from europe, because they had discontinued the style in the united states, and that was almost 15 years ago. so when my second pair of birkenstocks came back as “un-recraft-able”, i jumped into action.shooze

shoozefirst, i called birkenstock central to make sure that they really don’t have any more, and while i had them on the phone, i asked them about making my own, using an “un-recraft-able” pair as a template. they had never heard of such an idea before, but definitely encouraged me to see if i could do it… of course i already knew that i could, but that way they can’t complain… 😉

i went to mcpherson leather supplies in the international district, and bought enough leather for three pairs of sandals (and spent all of $36… if this works out the way i think it’s going to, i’m probably going to go into the business of making obsolete birkenstocks for bizarre people). i also had the “un-recraft-able” ones traced by the birkenstock repair guy, so that i had a template.

then i cut out mirror images of the template (one for right, and one for left), which i intend to take to the birkenstock repair guy, who will put the cork, footbed, and buckles on for me, and voilá… a new pair of “athens” sandals.shooze shooze
8)

BBWP audition

Big Bois With Poise Audition for America's Got Talent
Big Bois With Poise, preparing for an audition

BBWP had our audition for America’s Got Talent this morning at 9:00 am at the downtown sheraton…

before i say anything else, i would like to point out that this is the third time this week that i have driven, and parked on the orange level of the WSTCC parking garage. i know that some people park there every day and it’s no big deal, but i used to live, literally, right across the street from the WSTCC, and i used to walk through it every day on my way to and from school and work, but now i live in a different city, almost in a different county, and it has been, literally, years since the last time i was in the WSTCC, much less parked there… it’s bizarre.

anyway, we parked and walked a block to the sheraton in our dongy-hats but no buckets, which raised quite a few eyebrows, and generated some really interesting comments from passers-by… “is this a video game??”, “what are you doing?”, that sort of thing. then we got to the sheraton and went up to the third floor “metropolitan ballroom”, checked in, and finished up our costumes, including getting up on our buckets. because of the fact that the audition was held inside, they didn’t want us to bring fire toys, so we all got zunis (i have been calling them “zoomies” for years… 😳 ), and they had a strict limit of 90 seconds per act, so we did a “cut down” version of the big bois chant.

then they talked to us for a few minutes. the “celebrity judges” weren’t there at all (big disappointment), there was just a guy running a camera and two “non-celebrity judges” sitting behind netbook-style laptops. the 90 seconds of our act started off with krissy doing her “monkey call”, which is quite loud and took the judges completely by surprise. they asked what we do for “real life” jobs (i said i’m a tuba player… it’s more or less accurate. i put down “professional freak” on the paperwork that we had to submit) and how the act developed, and a few, superficial things…

then they started talking about what we should plan on if we get to the next round of auditions. obviously the guy couldn’t say “you’re in”, but from what he did say, i’d guess that there’s a better-than-50% chance that we’re going to “pass” this audition and get to the next round, simply because what he was saying had a lot do do with the logistics surrounding doing our act with fire — which, apparently, for the 2nd round of auditions, will, actually be happening… but the next round of auditions is happening february 23rd to 25th in san francisco…

yes, adam, it’s likely that i will be coming to san francisco later this month. we should definitely plan on getting together while i’m there… 8)

my understanding is that they will be emailing chris within a couple of days to confirm…

we’re gonna be on TEE-VEE!!! 😀

gauri shankar

Gauri Shankar Rudrakhsha have been an interest of mine for some time, and i actually own a 7 mukhi gauri shankar bead

gauri shankar rudrakhsha

gauri shankar rudrakhsha

so i was sort of amused this afternoon when i was out for my walk and i passed the abandoned house up the alley from our place, where i discovered an abandoned gauri shankar pumpkin.gauri shankar pumpkin this was not growing, but apparantly had been deposited there, probably by teenaged doodlehums who frequent the area, and had smashed a few pumpkins a little further up the street.

genius!…?

this guy has it all figured out: Russian ‘genius’ lived with 26 female bodies – the guy is a college professor and museum curator, and he speaks 13 languages… and he had a little “thing” for corpses in teddy bear costumes… but because of he didn’t actually produce the corpses, and they were all people who died many years earlier, the guy will probably not face any charges…

if an “ordinary” person did this, you can be guaranteed that the local government would come up with a “law” that he “broke” in order to put him away, but because of the fact that this guy actually knows something that most people don’t, and the local government knows that, the guy gets away with anything he likes…

as long as he’s not hurting anybody, i say more power to him! 8)

i’m not sure what to think of this…

we have a border collie, lucy, who is obsessed with things. when we first got her, she obsessed about the cats, who were not amused. then, when we got stanley, she obsessed about stanley and forgot about the cats. then we got mango and it was as though stanley never existed…

mango has started staying at monique’s work over night, to cut down on the amount of travelling he has to do – and he was intended to be the “clinic bird” anyway – but lucy still obsesses about where mango used to be…

it has been 8 days now, and she’s still obsessing about mango’s empty cage…lucy and not-mango
if it’s possible, she’s obsessing more since he’s been staying at work…😮

giant metal chickens

this may be what a “meme” looks like when it is in the early stages of formation…

i have seen references to giant metal chickens in three different places around the web during the past couple of days. while i am pretty sure that two of them aren’t, one of them may have been in reference to a band called Giant Metal Chickens, but i’m not sure, and i can’t find the link now, which, in itself, is enough to raise my suspicions. and one of them was a client and friend of mine, who posted pictures of a giant metal chicken which may or may not have been her own personal giant metal chicken, in high point north carolina…

giant metal chicken - high point, NC

bizarre…

which brings up another story…

my first semester of my first year of college was spent living in the dorm, first with a guy named josh, and then with a guy named joe. around the end of that first semester, i found, not a giant, but certainly much larger than normal chicken, made out of aluminum foil – for all intents and purposes, a “giant metal chicken”.

of course this chicken ended up in my dorm window, where it was the object of much amusement and derision from the other people who lived in the dorm, and at the end of the semester, joe asked me if he could take it home with him. he assured me that he would bring it back at the beginning of the next semester, and, as we were all moving out of that particular dorm anyway, i figured that if he took it, that would mean that i wouldn’t have to explain why i had a giant metal chicken to my parents, who were already under the impression that i was more than a little strange anyway.

naturally, when the next semester started, joe didn’t have my giant metal chicken. apparently his dog ate it.

and they thought i was strange…

i was reading my RSS feed and came across this…

deborah harry, chris stein. clusterthe picture on the right is from a collection of famous people hanging out with their vinyl. this particular one is deborah harry and chris stein, but what’s important is the vinyl that’s hanging above their heads. among the albums is Cluster II, an album that has been in my collection, in one form or another, for quite a number of years…

it’s actually kind of strange, because i don’t know who chris stein is at all, and i only have a vague notion of who deborah harry is, but i recognised the cluster album right away… oh well… 😉

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… 😉

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.

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…

W. T. F.?!?

USB Typewriter – i keep looking at it and… i can’t imagine how much “free time” someone must have had to actually work out how to do this, and then make it happen… and, further, i can’t imagine why anyone would want something like this… and why they would pay $800 to $1000 for one… especially since you can buy a perfectly good, non-usb typewriter for as little as $18, and one like the usb typewriters for $400… 😮

forwards into the past!

another highlight from the genealogical information that i got yesterday is my great great grandmother Martha Ann (Mattie) Solomon‘s death certificate. according to what i can gather, contrary to “family rumours” that have been creeping around since i was a kid, she was not a native member of the Creek tribe. however she was murdered by an “insane woman” in 1938, shortly after my father was born…

weird! 😮

i’ve got this problem…

one of the blogs i subscribe to is The News Biscuit, which is sort of like The Onion, only from britain. i’ve even got it classified in my RSS reader as “humour”, so there’s no doubt about the origin of such articles…

the problem is that twice in one week, now, the news biscuit has printed an article that i read all the way through before i realised that it was from the news biscuit. they’re apparently good enough at imitating legitimate news sources that, while i found the subject of both of the articles to be somewhat bizarre, neither of the articles seemed entirely out of the question, especially considering how bizarre society has become over the past 50 years or so.

the first one, on wednesday, was Environmentalists to withdraw protection for ‘Rubbish Animals’, and then there was Ancient lump of coal saved from arson attack to be displayed in museum today.

i think i need to start paying more attention… 🙂

another week closer to the eschaton…

Future Shock? Welcome to the New Middle Ages – those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. the middle ages were also characterised by illiteracy, the catholic church and the plague… just sayin’…

THE RICH REALLY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE POOR – speaking as one of the poor, tell us something we don’t already know… 😐

WikiLeaks’ Most Terrifying Revelation: Just How Much Our Government Lies to Us – and, if they have their way, the government is all set to make it so that we never find out how much they lie to us. minitrue in action.

also, CIA Doesn’t Want You To Know It Gave Iran Nuclear Blueprints – oops… 😐

US government getting more interested in IPv6 – they’d better be more than just interested in it, considering that all remaining allocatable IPv4 addresses would now fit into a /6 prefix (≘ 67,108,864 addresses).

Microsoft confirms code execution bug in Windows – BWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH! 😀 it’s just like i said… another good reason not to use micro$awft products…

and, speaking of “another good reason”… Hepatitis A warning issued after Christmas communion – if you took communion on xmas, and you live in long island, they’re saying that you need to get vaccinated… the blood of christ is infected!

Miami-Dade police buy drones – they work so well in afghanistan and iraq that now they’re being used by domestic police forces as well. presumably they won’t be firing missiles with them, just yet… “At this point, it doesn’t really matter if you’re against this technology, because it’s coming…”

meanwhile, Passengers overpower plane hijacker after he storms cockpit shouting he had bomb – no department of homeland security necessary.

The Next Net – abandon the corporate internet!

va fan culoSupreme Court justice: No protection for women in Constitution – reagan-appointed justice scalia wants to force us to live one hundred fifty years in the past. “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.” — Susan B. Anthony

Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert and Have scientists discovered how to create downpours in the desert? – my impression is the more we tinker with the inner workings of how the planet really works, the more likely it is that we will have to deal with the unexpected, and potentially disasterous consequenses of our tinkering… of course, on the positive side, once we have blown ourselves up, it won’t be more than 100 years or so until the planet is back to the way it’s supposed to be, more or less.

uh oh… Disaster Tax Rules Don’t Apply For BP Oil Spill Claims – so, in spite of the FACT that the gulf oil spill is the largest oil spill ever to have happened, if you live in the gulf region, have had your income affected by the gulf oil spill, and made claims against BP for lost wages or income, you will still have to pay income tax at the highest rate because BP claims that their oil spill was never officially proclaimed a “disaster”… i bet some people are going to be really thrilled to learn that…

Congressional Prayer Caucus asks for ‘correction’ to ‘E pluribus unum’ – federal endorsement of a religion or deity violates the united states constitution.

All drugs should be legalised – now, let’s see if we can be as forward thinking as they appear to be in the old country, eh’? it would eliminate things like Grandpa killed in drug raid from happening.

Commuter outrage as terrorist attempts to blow himself up on Quiet Carriage – there is definitely something insane with a society that can make jokes about people blowing themselves up…

Florida Professor Arrested for Having a “Suspicious” Bagel on a Plane, Man at JFK declares rabbit, Customs says it found cocaine, Planet That May Not Exist is For Sale on Ebay, in 10 Acre Chunks, Woman Arrested After Trying To Return Wallet, Saudis detain Israeli vulture for being ‘Zionist spy’ – why do i bother? 😐

another week closer to the eschaton…

The animal world has its junkies too, Men Have Clitorises, BIOLOGICAL EXUBERANCE – more things you’re not supposed to know, the lack of knowlege about which is used to keep the world in bondage… we have always had the power, but now we only have very small amount of time to break free of the chains, before we quite literally blow ourselves up. who knows how long we’re going to last before…

Drug decriminalization pays off in Portugal as US weighs its options – if the US gummint is really considering this, it would be a giant step forward, but i fear that it will take 15 or 20 years before we’re smart enough to actually try it… and by then, it may be too late…

Pakistan on strike against bill to amend blasphemy law – okay, here’s my idea: this is the 21st century, for gawd’s sake. if they want to have laws that keep them in the 14th century, that’s fine, but we won’t interact with them at all. we could even build a 15 foot wall around their country, to make sure that nobody is sneaking modern stuff in. this means that if anyone wants to leave the country, they do it the same way they would have in the 14th century; if someone wants to communicate, they do it the same way they would have in the 14th century; no cell phones, no electronic anything, no planes, trains or automobiles, no hospitals or modern medicines, or modern anything at all… and if they want to interact with us, they should be required to follow modern laws… which means no laws about blasphemy, men and women should be treated equally, regardless of their sexual orientation, no stoning for committing adultery or loss of a hand for stealing bread, or anything like that… what do you think?

Almost Everything Is A Crime In America Now – the way to fix this problem is to toss the current system, wholesale, and start from scratch. it is possible to do without war, but we have to do it consciously. conversely, TSA officer sentenced for stealing from fliers’ bags – and he doesn’t even get jail time, just probation and a $5,000 fine, for stealing 5 laptop computers and an xbox… it’s this kind of thing that will make tossing the current system a lot more difficult. keeping the good of everyone in mind is a fair amount more difficult when someone has essentially gotten away with something which would have been disasterously stupid for anyone else to even consider. Counter-terror ‘expert’ tells cops: Kill militant Muslims, ‘including children’ – this is another reason why changing the way society works without war will be extremely difficult. i’ve heard about this shoebat character before, and it seems to me that he has been blatantly lying his way around washington DC for at least five years and nobody seems to have taken notice of his lies…

Terrorist Watch List May Exceed US Population by 2019, World Population by 2023 – we are ALL terrorists! even the people who don’t want to be terrorists!

AHA! i thought soOops! Bribing Nigeria for Cheney’s Freedom Not Legal

Police demand new powers to stop and search terror suspects – this wouldn’t disturb me so much if they hadn’t already been denied their previous demand for new powers to stop and search terror suspects…

Israel bombed Syrian nuclear facility – it’s just a matter of time before the lid blows off, and the world as we know it comes to a screeching halt… and that sickening thud that you hear is society taking the first of many ultimately fatal wounds… 😐 don’t say i didn’t warn you…

Julian Assange, The Rosenburgs and the Espionage Act of 1917 – Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, says that the Espionage Act of 1917 is unconstitutional, and that julian assange is just as innocent as his parents were… and his parents were executed…

The naked truth about scanners – we don’t need scanners, we need more effective social engineering…

Woman Who Protested TSA Pat-Downs At OKC Airport Banned From Flying – on tuesday, “they were unable to clear an unusual contour of my buttocks area,” but they letting her fly on wednesday, presumably after she had cleared the TSA screening…

Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database – still no word on how easy difficult it will be to have your name removed from the terrorist watch list, if it ends up there in error…

Conservatives have larger ‘fear center’ in brain – now that we know what causes it, the next step is to look for an effective treatment… 😉

NOLA lawyer prepares challenge to declaration of Gulf seafood’s safety – i wouldn’t eat seafood from the gulf at this point… it might be safe, but there’s a good chance that it’s not, regardless of what the gummint tries to make people think.

WTF? OMG, LOL! – someone at DHS needs to RTFM about the intar-tubes, i think…

Exposing The False Sanctity Of ‘Intellectual Property’ – COPYING IS NOT THEFT! i like the idea of calling it “Imaginary Pooperty” instead of “Intellectual Property” though…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – just what we need… immortal mice…

Scientists Attempt to Crack Secret Code of the Axolotl – the race to extinction is on between the scientists who want to probe this creatures’ secrets of limb regeneration, and the general public who think that the creatures are delicious. my bet is on the general public…

97% of INTERNET NOW FULL UP – the number of allocatable IPv4 addresses just dropped below one hundred and fourteen million, and they’ve been being assigned faster than ever. there are less than 91 days until there are NO MORE IPv4 addresses. get yours today, because in May 2011, there will be no more…

10 Skills Needed To Thrive In A Post-Collapse World – this is something else that i am going to bet nobody (else) pays attention to… which is why the collapse is going to come as a deadly surprise to most people…

Mozilla rages at MS, Apple and Google’s ‘trojan horse’ tactics – it’s things like this that are exactly the reason why i use AdBlock and NoScript, and don’t use microsoft anything or google chrome, or apple itunes and safari… i want my computer to do the things I want it to do, not the things that some multinational corporation with sneaky and not entirely ethical reasons wants it to do. “Shove your plug-ins where the sun don’t shine!” 😛

Wireless gets a free pass on net neutrality – Throttle away, mobile broadband providers! net neutrality gets the boot on wireless networks… wired networks are next on the chopping blog block

Sites With Government Seized Domains Are Moving On – so despite the fact that the DHS seized a bunch of domains without due cause, they missed the mark, because they seized the domain names, but not the web sites, and now the web sites are starting to resurface with different domain names… theoretically, of course, this could go on forever (my main web site, for example, can be found at hybridelephant.net and hybridelephant.org, as well as hybridelephant.com). what have the DHS accomplished apart from a big waste of money and resources, when Copying Is Not Theft!

Homeland Security’s Domain Name Seizure May Stretch The Law Past The Breaking Point – so DHS is operating outside the law… what else is new? but at the same time, they’re getting really blatant about it, farming out the actual seizure of the domains to the company that runs seizedservers.com

Fed up with ICANN, Pirate Bay cofounder floats P2P DNS system and With Domain Name Seizures Increasing, It’s Time For A Decentralized DNS System – yep.

Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding" – the DOD engages in “at best, an egregious malpractice.” instead of closing down gitmo, as promised, they are now moving beyond physical torture, and giving inmates a “treatment dose” (which is five times the prophylactic dose) of an anti-malarial drug – whether they actually have malaria or not is an entirely different question – which causes severe neuropsycological side effects such as homicidal and suicidal thoughts, severe insomnia, hallucinations, intense vertigo, paranoid delusions, aggression, and anxiety, and which was researched in MKULTRA mind-control experiments carried out by the CIA during the 1950s. at least they’re not using physical torture any longer… that we know of… 😐

Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners – and they say i’m a terrorist… we left the 19th century behind us 200 years ago, and this guy wants to drag us back there. 😛 apparently they think in circles as well – Without a guide humans walk in circles

Elected Official Says TSA Pat Downs Promote ‘Homosexual Agenda’ and Man arrested after ejaculating during TSA pat-down – which headline is a joke? hint: neither one…

Google beat box – finally, something that google is good for! click “listen”…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Spanish woman claims ownership of the sun – just wait until she gets sued for sunburn…

evil googleAnti Sarah Palin Post Gets Google Censorshipdon’t! be! evil!!

FCC may forgo ‘Net Neutrality’ for wireless networks – say goodbye to the internet…

Homeland Security Seizes 70+ Websites for Copyright and Trademark Violations and Homeland Security shuts down dozens of Web sites without court order – due process be damned, after net-neutrality fails, you’d better believe that they’re going to start cracking down on anyone who has a web site with which “they” do not agree, regardless of whether it contains illegal material or not… and of course nobody cares, because net-neutrality is something of which most people aren’t even aware.

Bioencryption can store almost a million gigabytes of data inside bacteria – “a single gram of E. coli cells could hold up to 900,000 gigabytes (or 900 terabytes) of data, meaning these bacteria have almost 500 times the storage capacity of a top of the line commercial hard drive.”

Minn. Pol With Gun Outside Abortion Clinic Says He Was Just In Area ‘Checking On’ His Girlfriend – this is how one married, republican politician justifies potentially unlawful behaviour: it’s all a “misunderstanding”, he was just “trying to check up on her”… with a loaded gun… of course if he had been a democrat, or an ordinary citizen, he would have been put in jail, and there would have been no story…

Drug tunnel uncovered at San Diego-Tijuana border, officials say; nearly 20 tons of marijuana seized – if they had passed Proposition 19, they wouldn’t have to worry about it, but because they didn’t, the federal government now has to make a big deal out of it, and waste the taxpayers’ money to rid themselves of something that would have been useless otherwise.

Willie Nelson charged with pot possession in Texas – give willie a break: he’s a celebrity, he’s already got massive problems with the government, and he’s an old man, for god’s sake! 😐

Civil Unions for Illinois? – civil union ≠ polygamy, regardless of how much you say it does…

FoxNation.com Reposts Anti-Obama Article From The Onion, Doesn’t Mention It’s A Joke – it’s things like this that are one of the principle reasons why the terrorists have won the war on terrorism.

this is why people treat torture as though it was “no big thing”… – Torture memo author compared waterboarding to speeding – dude, where’s my country? 😐

Clueless Patsy Set-up by FBI in Christmas Tree Bombing Plot and FBI stopped Portland bomb suspect from taking job before sting – the FBI has been up to their old shennanigans again: finding a mentally disturbed 19-year-old kid, preventing him from getting gainful employment, building him up to believe that he’s serving a greater purpose, convincing him that he’s building a bomb (complete with a real test explosion in a remote area), and then arresting him and claiming that they’ve caught another “terrorist”. if they actually had a terrorist, my guess is that nobody would recognise him… 😐

Rep. Kucinich slams fake Afghan elections, fake withdrawal, fake Taliban – i still say he would have made a much better president than the democretin that won…

and, while we’re on the subject of the fake taliban, The ‘Fake Taliban’ Is A Real Embarassment To NATO – “It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.” also Afghan "peace talks" impostor paid by MI6

Woman: TSA Agents Singled Me Out For My Breasts – i wonder how much longer this is going to go on before someone decides to do something violent?

TSA Glass Box Mother Over Stored Breast Milk – she’s a mother, and pumps breastmilk for her infant. she doesn’t have a problem, until one day she’s held up because the TSA doesn’t know their own rules, so she files a complaint. the next time she travels, the TSA is waiting for her and makes up rules to prevent her from making her flight. the reason they get away with it…?

Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional – 😐

and then the TSA touches their balls... like this...TSA Worker Accused Of Assault Had Prior Record and TSA Groin Searches Menstruating Woman and TSA Tactics Find Ominous Parallel in Nazi Germany and Children Being Trained That Being Taken From Parents & Molested Is Normal – whatever happened, opt-out day apparently didn’t have any effect, and things are continuing to get worse at a surprising pace…

Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects? – federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. why aren’t they?

TSA Administrative Directive: Opt-Outters To Be Considered "Domestic Extremists" – we’re teetering ever closer to the edge of an abyss…

meanwhile, Child Finds Loaded Gun Magazine On Flight – oh yeah… the terrorists have definitely won… 😐

"Barefoot bandit" suspect pleads innocent – go colton!

another week closer to the eschaton…

A Vegan No More – i wasn’t vegan, but i was a strict vegetarian for 15 years, and i didn’t have as severe health problems as this lady did, but in a lot of ways, this could be a story about me.

92% of Afghans never heard of 9/11 – four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to “destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan.”

Sir, There’s a Camera in Your Head – this guy has a lot going for him in my book: he hacked a video game and placed a virtual avatar of himself as a suicide-bomber hunting president george w. bush, he confined himself to an art gallery where people could shoot him with paintballs, and now he’s having a camera implanted in his head, and displaying the pictures it takes in a museum in qatar, but what makes me really sit up and take notice is that his current show is called The 3rd I, which was the name of the magazine i designed and printed in the mid-1980s… great minds really do think alike… 8)

Huckabee Calls For Lawmakers To Ignore Court Rulings They Disagree With – um… no. 😐

10 Ways to Outfox Cops That Are Abusing Their Powers to Trick You – common sense, really, but they’re all there, in a brief, understandable format.

How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers – “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you, fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

FBI pressuring Google, Facebook to allow ‘back doors’ for wiretapping and Debt collectors using Facebook to stalk and humilate – more reasons to avoid using google and facebook… not only that, but Tim Berners-Lee says Facebook ‘threatens’ web future – and, personally, i believe that tim berners-lee is a person who we should probably listen to when it comes to the future of the web…

Suspected bomb in Namibia was ‘security test’ – wait, so the suspected bomb that everybody was so up-in-arms about earlier in the week was actually a US made “dummy” bomb to test security?? i would say that whatever test that was designed to be a part of, is a resolute failure, if it took them four days to figure out who sent it…

$11,000 fine, arrest possible for some who refuse airport scans and pat downs – if you decide that the porno-scanner and the sexual assault enhanced pat down are too much for you, don’t plan on going to the airport at all, ’cause you’re not gonna get out of it, one way or the other… 😐TSA US Department of Molestation

TSA Opt-Out Day, Now with a Superfantastic New Twist! – wear a kilt and strike a blow against the very big stupid! or, if you’re a celebrity like penn jillette you can get your own, private escort to assure the TSA goons that everything will be okay…

Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer and Does TSA Behavior Fall under Definition of Terrorism? – the government are terrorists! porno-scanners and fondling…

Why Congress Isn’t So Concerned With TSA Nude Scans & Gropes: They Get To Skip Them – now it all makes sense…

One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans and Leaked Body Scanner Images Do Not Show The Whole PictureAdvanced imaging technology cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image is automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer? i think not… it’s just a matter of time before somebody posts a web site that offers porno-scanner pictures…

Fly With Dignity – sign the petition to end invasion of privacy and “dick-measuring” scanners now!

Sanford Airport to opt out of TSA screening – orlando says enough is enough. they set a good example for everyone else.

TSA Likely To Face Multiple Sexual Assault Charges For New Searches – the war on terror is over. the terrorists have won.

Is your ISP throttling you? Just switch—if you live in the EU – if you live in the US, you’re quickly running out of options, and those in charge apparently don’t care.

Oil to run out 100 years before replacements become viable, study claims – when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout… and that’s gonna’ be about all you can do, because there will be no more oil… 😐

Google Is Assembling a City – “When society inevitably collapses, Googleville will be the sole safe haven, but only those with company IDs will be allowed in.” this is the reason why i am more than a little bit suspicious of google and their motives for doing things like sending me $100 in free advertising if i respond by a certain time…

The Dominant Culture Is Killing The Planet…It’s Very Important For Us To Start To Build A Culture Of Resistance – yep.

Panic after ‘Devil attack’ at school – they still blame things on the devil? this is the 21st century, people… 😐

Aleister Crowley for President, 2012 – “We realize that Aleister Crowley is dead. And British. And, moreover, not running for office. Nevertheless, we believe that the most effective vote you can cast in 2012 is one for Aleister Crowley.”

another week closer to the eschaton…

"Damn Right": Bush Boasts about Waterboarding – can we arrest him now?? 😛 apparently not: Torture? Check. Covering Up Torture? Check. Rule of Law? Nope. – “We cannot say that we live under the rule of law unless we are clear that no one is above the law. I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.”

Will Internet censorship bill be pushed through lame-duck Congress? – “A lot of the things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that the people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted.” — Frank Zappa

High Society exhibition: can dope give us hope? – “the ban on hallucinogens is holding back vital research into their medical benefits.” wow, man… trippy science stuff! 🙂

China may be bigger economy than US within two years and Is the American Dream Over? and The US Has Lived on Borrowed Money for Too Long – it’s gotten bad enough that other countries are starting to put it together…what do you think the probability is that this isn’t the end of the US as a superpower? further information regarding our imminent economic implosion and what we can do about it: As the Country Falls Apart, It’s Time for Our Revolution

Sikhs outraged at US airport turban searches – people, you’ve got to realise that not everyone who wears a turban is automatically muslim… or a terrorist… 😐

BP blamed for toxification and BP Successfully Disposed of the Oil … In the Gulf Food Chain – it’s still going on, and it’s worse than anybody imagined… again… 😐

and, while we’re at it, Chemicals in Fast Food Wrappers Show Up in Human Blood – more toxic chemicals are leaking from places where we don’t expect them, and ending up inside our bodies. wonderful…

Global Oil Availability Has Peaked : EU Energy Chief – meanwhile, where are we going and what’s with this hand-basket?

Is Death the End? Experiments Suggest You Create Time – this is the end, my only friend, the end. the end of laughter and soft lies, the end of nights we tried to die, this is the end

NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY! – if you’re travelling, wednesday, 24 november, 2010 is the day when you can say no to the dick-measuring radioactive backscatter scanning device… of course you don’t have to limit your opting out of “security theater” that doesn’t really protect anyone to wednesday, 24th november, it’s just that everyone else will (presumably) be doing it as well…

Naked Body Scanners To Store Biometrics and World’s Pilots Reject Naked Body Scanners Over Radiation Danger, Privacy Breach and TSA Responds To Airport Molestation Complaints – more power behind We Won’t Fly and Don’t Scan Us.

Oklahoma voters may have also banned Native American rights – i’m going to bet that someone’s going to complain about that… and the fact that they’re being stupid and childish about the whole thing won’t enter into the matter at all…

Senior US appeals court judge says drug war ‘lost,’ country should try legalizing marijuana – this is the direction we should be going, a senior, sitting federal judge calling for legalisation… now if only they’d listen to him: a federal judge said essentially the same thing in 1988, but nobody listened to him.

Inside My Haunted Head — What It’s Like to be a Schizophrenic – i don’t have schizophrenia, but there’s a lot more about this story that i can relate with than i’d like to admit.

Mass action shields soldier’s funeral – “The Westboro protesters didn’t stay long once they saw the supporters.” this is how we should be responding to all the extremists in our society: not by bombing them into oblivion or making unenforcable laws against their beliefs, but by gathering together and saying “no, we won’t allow you to behave like children around us”.

Arizona Reminds Residents Not to Drink From Toilets – this is where john mccain is senator…

another week closer to the eschaton…

i woke up this morning, and checked my email. i had 4,856 new messages, all with the same subject line, which included the word “MLM”… please stop sending me these messages. they’re not accomplishing what you think they are, they’re really annoying, and i’m about to block your country’s IP addresses because of it. there are better ways of doing… whatever it is that you’re expecting to be able to do by sending out 4,856 spam email messages… 😐

A piece of their mind – they share thoughts… in spite of the fact that they have two sets of eyes, one can “read” what the other is seeing, without actually seeing it… The Fascinating Story of the Twins Who Share Brains, Thoughts, and Senses has more, including a video… fascinating!

The Return of the Stoned Ape – smart people do more drugs because of evolution. now it all makes sense… 😀 and, while we’re at it, Smart people SLEEP LATE as well… so there!

and now, to more mundane topics…

Fnord33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True – fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord. beware, the paranoids are watching you. fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord.

The Information Super-Sewer: Will the Internet be Hijacked by Corporate Interests – funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth. also Final nail in coffin for Net neutrality?all 95 house and senate candidates who pledged support for net neutrality lost their races. what does this mean? it means that your unlimited, uncensored, unthrottled and open internet service will be going away as soon as the major corporations that now own internet are going to get to decide how much to charge you for how much access… which means that it won’t be too long before internet will be exactly like television, unless you can afford to make it better.

A Modest Proposal to Republicans: How to Trim the Budget – hint: it’s something that a republican would never think of…

Chomsky: US-led Afghan war, criminal – to date there is no evidence that al-qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks, and still we use that as justification to make war on a people who have their own problems.

The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World – copyright was never primarily about paying artists for their work, and trying to make it about that now is obfuscating the real reason, which is to make the distributors as much money as possible. copying is not theft, piracy, or anything else illegal, and the sooner we toss the current copyright law fiasco and start over again, the better.

Minnesota Mom Hit With $1.5 Million Fine for Downloading 24 Songs – copying IS NOT theft! (my new mantra).

Bankruptcy of U.S. is ‘Mathematical Certainty,’ Says Former CEO of Nation’s 10th Largest Bank – yep… the end is coming, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be particularly pretty when it gets here.

Voters Approve Sharia Law Ban – meanwhile, fear, insanity and unreasoned reactionism comes to oklahoma, whether they like it or not… oh well, there are always 49 other states… 😐 meanwhile, it appears that Oklahoma Voters May Have Accidentally Voted Against Ten Commandments, Too – that’s what they get for being stupid and making nonsensical laws without thinking them through.

Details on PayPal’s Site Outage – they have been doing okay, despite the bad things that i continue to hear about them, but they apparently went down for anywhere from two to twenty four hours, depending on where you are, and so far they’ve not released any information other than to say “something broke. it’s fixed now, and we’re sorry.”

Google calls bug bounty hunters to YouTube, Blogger – $3,133.70 a bug seems like a lot, and i seriously doubt that their actual testers get paid anything like that. what this is, really, is an attempt by google to have volunteer “testers” hammer on their technology without having to pay them for doing so. then, when a “tester” discovers something, google can claim that they found it, pay the “tester” a minimal, one time fee and never mention the “tester” to anyone ever again… everybody’s happy, at least temporarily, and the big corporation profits at the expense of the american drone, who doesn’t notice because he’s too busy telling all of his friends how 733T he is… you can’t make a living on it, but it’s the american dream come true… 😐

Seagate squirts out rectal cleaning sprayno shit… 🙂

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: President Obama Visits Chicago and a Homeless Man Begs Him for Alms – no further comment needed.

Marijuana Legalization: Not If, But When – agreed, it’s just a matter of time, but it’s going to have to be the entire country, or it’s not going to work… and whether or not the entire country legalises it through a revolution or through a civil election still remains to be seen.

New Mother’s (False) Positive Drug Test Leads to Baby’s Removal… Poppy-Seed Bagel the Culprit – the only way to solve problems like this is to legalise all drugs, but if proposition 19 is any indication, even when we’re winning, we’re really losing… and while we’re at it, No reason for pot prohibition – when are we going to get the idea that the war on drugs is a collosal failure? not for the next couple of years, at this rate… 😐

not only that, but A molecular link between the active component of marijuana and Alzheimer’s disease pathology – the active ingredient in cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydracannabinol (THC), competitively inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), the key pathological marker of alzheimer’s disease. are we ready to legalise it yet?

Cargo plane bomb plot: passengers to face ‘ludicrous security measures’ – now that we have successfully prevented another terrorist plot from even reaching the country, of course, the logical response is to put more stringent measures in place to insure that innocent citizens are harrassed, poked, prodded, scanned and examined in new and unusual ways, to make sure that the terrorists don’t win again… oh, and by the way, Yemeni mail bombs suspect ‘had identity stolen’ – so we really don’t have any clearer an idea who did it then we did a week ago… swell…

For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance – they’re now searching your “crotchal” area, and they really want to get you to use the “Dick-Measuring Device” back-scatter imaging device, so be warned…

Pollution in China – this is why stuff is cheap in america. remember that the next time you buy something.

Obama may let CIA run more ‘hunter-killer’ teams roam abroad – this is premeditated murder and i question what the real intent is…

Why I don’t voteW? T? F? i can understand a multitude of reasons for not participating in the farce of elections these days, but basing your abstinence in voting on 1 timothy 2.12 is far beyond anything that i could possibly figure out…

McDonald’s furious after San Francisco bans Happy Meals – apparently they didn’t get the memo

Ram Dass Has a Son! – DNA tests confirm it, and ram dass is okay with it, so it doesn’t look like it’s going to cause a major uproar (like it has with other “spiritual” teachers), but it also is pretty much not what you would expect…

another week closer to the eschaton…

in honour of the “holiday” Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN – trick or treat for UNICEF…

A Helpful Venn Diagram by Dave MakesArkansas school board member to resign over anti-gay post – the problem with this guy, and all of the “christians” out there like him, is that the only reason he’s sorry now is because he got caught. if he hadn’t posted those comments on facebook, maybe expressed them privately, but for the most part kept them to himself, then he would continue to be a member of the arkansas school board, and nobody would be wise to his warped sensibilities. the “problems” caused by minorities of any kind are going to be solved only when these hateful, and unfortunately quite large portions of the population are eliminated, either through re-education or attrition.

Furious growth and cost cutting led to BP oil spills, past and present and Panel Says Firms Knew of Cement Flaws Before Spill – if you thought it was over, think again…

Fresh blockades as a quarter of France’s petrol stations still drya couple of weeks ago i posted a link to an article which said that there is no “plan b” to fall back on, in case “plan a” (which appears to be something along the lines of “ignore it and maybe it will go away”) fails. this is exactly the kind of chaos that you can expect to see more of, as time goes on, and oil becomes more and more scarce. here are some examples of how things are falling apart faster than we can fix them:

The scary actual U.S. government debt – “Let’s get real, the United States is bankrupt.”

What It’s Like to Work in Walmart – an underemployed teacher gets a job at walmart, hillarity ensues. beware: this could will probably happen to you.

Oops: Pentagon loses contact with nukes in Wyoming – it’s all right, folks, nothing to see here… move along.

Google finally admits that its Street View cars DID take emails and passwords from computersDON’T. BE. EVIL! 😛

Group offers $10,000 to anyone who can disprove the claim that ‘cannabis is safer than alcohol’ – they’re confident that the $10,000 will remain unclaimed, and i don’t doubt they’re right, but i doubt that it’s going to make that much of a difference when it comes to legalisation. most people are pretty stupid, and that includes the people in charge… 😐

meanwhile: Study: Alcohol more lethal than heroin, cocaine – overall, alcohol outranked all other substances… cannabis, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower… BIG surprise, especially considering that the alcohol lobby has been pouring money into the campains against the legalisation of cannabis…

Sex researchers: "Size" does matter – year-long study from turkey concludes that men with a higher body mass index last longer in bed. mcdonald’s advertising to follow soon.

I Can’t Find My Phone – finally, a web site that’s actually good for something!

John Cage still being cheated out of royalties for his silent work

another week closer to the eschaton…

news has been too depressing the past week, so this week’s collection of links is going to be mostly fluff. i’ll leave it up to others to decide which is which.

Christine O’Donnell: Where In The Constitution Is The Separation Of Church And State? and she’s now offering a reward of $1,000 For Anyone Who Can Find The Phrase "Separation Of Church And State" In The Constitution – why is there still any question about whether or not she’s actually qualified to be a state senator? that’s like saying sarah palin is qualified to be president of the united states… 😐

Former Surgeon General calls for legalization of marijuana and Dozens of law professors nation-wide endorse Calif. marijuana legalization – but the federal government is going to continue to prosecute people for cannabis, in spite of state laws that legalise it… it’s not exactly what i was expecting from obama and crew when i voted them into office… 😐 They’ve Stopped Pretending

The World’s Largest Gummy Worm – 128 times more massive than a traditional gummy worm, it’s three pounds and 4,000 calories of gummy… um… it looks suspiciously like a dildo…

Dead Sea scrolls going digital on Internet – yep…

Apple Patents Anti-Sexting Device – all the more impetus for kids to learn a large vocabulary.

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum – Lorizzle dang dolor sit amizzle, shizznit we gonna chung the bizzle. We gonna chung sapien velizzle, dang volutpizzle, owned quizzle, break it down vizzle, arcu.

another week closer to the eschaton…

Future Chaos: There Is No “Plan B” – sooo… have fun while you can, i guess, ’cause if plan A fails, there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of chaos, almost immediately, and there’s nothing you as an individual, and not much you as a group of well armed and well prepared people can do about it… 😐

norman foster and the dymaxion carIt’s the 1930s car that was meant to change American lives. And now the Dymaxion’s back. – one of my lifelong dreams has been to own and/or drive a dymaxion car. maybe someone will be able to pull it off this time. 🙂

Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Could this new gel be the biggest dental breakthrough since the introduction of fluoride?

Squishable, Breathing Smart Phones – for high paid geeks with way too much time on their hands.

David Harmer GOP Tea Party congressional nominee from California says ‘Abolish’ public schools and California shooter says he saw Glenn Beck as ‘schoolteacher’ and Republicans’ ‘scary’ immigrant photo depicts Mexicans in Mexico, photographer reveals – we’re still losing to these morons?!?

and this is for those who think that the budget crisis that we’re currently in the middle of is the fault of the democrats: Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show – and we’re still losing to these morons?!? 😐 admittedly the democrats are nothing to write home about, but they’re not the source of the current problems, and i really wish the republicans would remember that when they put all these ads on TV about how evil the democrats have been recently: we’re still recovering from the bush years, which were principally republican, and we will be for quite a while yet, so just cool it.

Multnomah County stops prosecuting dozens of illegal acts as crimes or Oregon county decriminalizes heroin, meth, cocaine and shoplifting, among others – but the federal government is going to continue to prosecute drug crimes anyway, even if states legalise or decriminalise them, so there’s really not an awful lot of news here.

Holder: US will enforce marijuana laws despite how Californians may vote – this is the reason why the only way we’re ever going to make any kind of substantial change in the “war on drugs” is to legalise them at the federal level…

according to a new RAND study, either Legalizing pot won’t hinder Mexican cartels or Marijuana Legalization Would Markedly Cut Mexican Drug Cartel Profits… you decide which is really the truth… 😐 here’s the Marijuana Policy Project’s spin on it – What Exactly Did that RAND Study Say About Cartels and Marijuana?

Tracking devices used in school badges – big brother waches over your kids, too, whether they’re at school or not.

Microsoft’s search engine will mine Facebook data – another reason not to use either microsoft or facebook. i have placed a directive in my robots.txt file that specifically denies microsoft’s search engines from indexing my site (while allowing everyone else), and i don’t use facebook… but my wife does…

Facebook is ‘killing privacy for commercial gain’ – a law against facebook… now there’s an idea… 🙂

Can a Person Be Moral without Being a Christian? – hint: his answer is no. “[I]f God is not your god, you will serve Buddha. Or, if not Buddha, perhaps Allah. Or, if not Allah, perhaps Baal. Or, if not Baal, perhaps Confucius.” let’s see: buddhism, confucianism and islam are recognised, but i don’t know of any modern baal-worshippers, except for jews, and, by extension, “christians”, who worship בעל (ba’al, or “lord”)… and he apparently doesn’t recognise hindus, or jaina, or taoists… maybe i shouldn’t expect so much. i keep this guy in my regular news feed primarly because he is so absurd. he gets more absurd with every new post. maybe he’ll follow the pingback to my site and learn how truly absurd i find his views. maybe not. who knows…

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are Related – isn’t internet wonderful?

NSFW – the National Schools Film Week, you pervert… 🙂 now if it was NSFW it wouldn’t be so bad…

snrk… 8*

domain names registered in the Cook Islands end with a “.ck”, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. the following “Community of Interest” suffixes are available for domain names registered in the Cook Islands:

".co.ck" is used for business organisations. Companies must register their corporate name or trading name, or some form of abbreviation. For example, Telecom Cook Islands Ltd. has registered "telecom.co.ck" as their domain name.

it makes me wonder how they would feel about me registering “suck-my.co.ck” or something along those lines…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Think US politics are absurd? Brazilians elect actual clown to Congress – brazil has its collective shit together in more than two ways that i’ve noticed recently… maybe american politicians should be paying more attention to the brazilians…

60% of countries will be bankrupt within 50 years – the only hopeful thing about the future is that i will very likely die before that happens.

Drug cops smash into wrong house, terrorize elderly couple and Pot raid at school turns up tomatoes – if it were legal, they could be spending their time going after real criminals instead of hassling immigrant grandparents, and kids about their tomatoes… 😐

Why Comcast can (but probably won’t) read your e-mails, IMs – every now and then i need to remind myself why i am NOT a comcast customer. this will do for a couple of years, until something else awful and terrifying is revealed about their policies…

GPS directs driver to death in Spain’s largest reservoir or Un hombre fallece tras hundirse su coche en la presa de La Serena – i, for one, welcome our new, robot overlords… or not…

Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back and Student finds tracking device on his car; FBI demands it back – what…?

Hello, this is your ISP. You have been disconnected from internet. Have a nice day. – if micro$awft gets its way, this could happen to you if you get any kind of malware or virus. more reason to use linux, of course, but why would anyone think this is a good idea to begin with is a little mystifying.

Android phone auto reverts jailbreaks – i agree, that people who are required to pay for a piece of hardware to make their lives easier, should be able to use that piece of hardware for whatever they choose. the company from which you buy a cell phone does not retain an “interest” in the hardware, once you buy it… much as i like the approach taken by the makers of the android cell phone, i don’t think they should be able to arbitarily “take back” a phone that has been modified.

Woman screamed about God while destroying art and California Stem Cell Agency Rewards Blasphemy While Admitting the Humanity of Embryos Slated for Destruction – yep, people are still concerned about what other people do being “blasphemy”. in one case, a woman broke into a protective plexiglass housing and destroyed a piece of art, and in the other, people, for whom it did not make any difference, were “forced” to comply with the wishes of the people who were crying “blasphemy” and take down an otherwise inoffensive piece of art. i wrote to the contact person for CIRM (i encourage you to write to him as well) and sent him this:

i am not offended by any language, but because of the fact that you have seen fit to remove the poems in honour of stem cell awareness day, i can no longer see them, and that offends me.

No-one has the right not to be offended.
     — John Cleese

A truly great library contains something within it to offend everyone.
     — Jo Godwin

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
     — Salman Rushdie

Being offended is a natural consequence of leaving the house.
     — Fran Lebowitz

The most efficacious method of dealing with deviancy is to ignore, to the furthest point of our tolerance, those items which we find offensive.
     — Ilbert Geis

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
     — Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778

by the way, if you’re interested, the poems that were too “blasphemous” to post on CIRMs web site, can be seen here. USAToday is good for something after all.

Insane Clown Posse is actually a Christian band, and nobody knew – i knew there was a fundamental reason why i didn’t like them apart from their encouragement of drunken violence…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Feds want backdoors built into VoIP and email US Would Make Internet Wiretaps Easier – yes, the united states government wants to listen in on your phone calls, and analyse your email messages, because you might be a terrorist. forget about innocent until proven guilty, forget about warrants, if these people don’t get what they want, heads will roll… and they might just roll anyway.

Web’s creator slams ‘blight’ of web disconnection laws – tim berniers-lee has a point, and we should listen to him…

2 out of 3 Android apps use private data ‘suspiciously’ – DON’T. BE. EVIL! 😐

Red Hat says end software patents – the supreme court heard the Bilski case earlier this year, and it ruled that the patentability of intangible products should be reduced. red hat takes it one step further, and says that the patentability of intangible products should be eliminated entirely, turning the entire software industry on its ear. it’s a great idea, but it’ll never work out in practice, because people are still too greedy.

Downloads are not performances – despite the fact that i belong to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), i actually think this has the potential of being a good thing. whaddaya know?

Microsoft surrenders Live Spaces future to WordPress – part of me wants to laugh at the people who signed up for the micro$awft me-too web 2.0 hype, but part of me wonders if wp is really the best choice, if micro$awft chose it to replace their hype… 😛

Authorities Plan To Trawl Phone Calls And E Mails For Signs Of “Resentment Toward Government” – my guess is that they won’t have to go far, especially since my resentment towards government is plainly evident, and has been for quite a number of years… 😐

US Is ‘Practically Owned’ by China – don’t get too comfortable, the new bosses will be arriving soon…

The Proof Is In The Numbers: America Is Getting Poorer – where’s that hope-y, change-y stuff that they were talking about? it’s about time for that stuff to start kicking in, isn’t it?

Attempts to Ban Fake Marijuana Are Further Proof of Prohibition’s Failure – more flap about K2 and the valiant, but ultimately futile attemps to ban it. all the more reason to legalise cannabis. especially when the creator of the substance that makes K2 popular says this about attempts to ban his substance: “It’s not going to be effective, is the ban on marijuana effective?”

Key ingredient staves off marijuana memory loss – now that we’ve lightened up (a little bit), we’re discovering that cannabis really is good for something. The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition – legalizing drugs would save roughly $41,300,000,000 ($41.3 billion) per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition, and produce roughly $46,700,000,000 ($46.7 billion) annually in tax revenue. and we’re still fighting a “war” that we can’t win?

Barefaced cheek on Google Street View – ireland welcomes the google street view cameras with characteristic abandon.

Boss Hogs Bacon Chocolate Sueyts – yum… 🙂

another week closer to the eschaton…

The City That Ended HungerBuckminster Fuller said that we, as a people, have posessed the technology for 50 years (and he said this almost 50 years ago) to create a world where nobody has to work to survive. Why Bother Working At A Job You Hate? and The RICH Economy are my attempts at changing the world’s consciousness, but it may be that Belo Horizonte, brazil’s fourth largest city, has taken it one step further. brazil has a number of other interesting features upon which i have commented previously.

meanwhile, back in hell america, Building sand castles on Florida’s beaches is illegal – this is how BP is hoping to make you think that the oil spill is gone.

What the TSA isn’t saying about Full Body Scanners and Your Right to Opt Out – Say “I Opt Out.” Every Time. – has an interesting URI – Don’tScan.Us – and is there to remind everyone that, when travelling by air, you have the right to say “I OPT OUT” when confronted with a TSA request to what amounts to a strip search. also Portable, rapid DNA analysis tech developed – Big Brother doesn’t care whether or not you have fingerprints, and is interested in your DNA instead… more orwellian doublethink: Welfare is Employment Rights are Privileges War is Peace Illness is Health Collapse Is Recovery

Judge orders lesbian reinstated to Air Force and yet the congress in it’s infinite wisdom has decided that, even though a judge also ruled that DADT is unconstitutional, they’re not going to do anything to change it at this time. correct me if i’m wrong, but the judge that said that DADT is unconstitutional basically said that it’s against the law for the military to enforce the law as it currently stands, and still, congress feels that it’s okay to leave the law as it stands, right? that settles it, our government, and likely the governments of the countries in the rest of the world as well (since they all cooperate with each other, more or less) is irreparably broken. it’s time for that major shift in the way people think that i’ve mentioned before to actually start happening now…

and, by the way, now there’s Irrefutable Proof the Bush Tax Cuts Were a Miserable Failure – and we’re still losing to these morons…

despite the fact that Yes on Prop 19 Holds Steady Lead, 47%-42%, in Latest SurveyUSA Poll, this is what supporters of prop 19 are up against: Ex-Drug Czar Bill Bennett: Showtime’s “Weeds” is “Damaging,” Jonas Brothers Should Fight Prop 19 – regardless of whether prop 19 passes or not, however, Federal judge rules Colorado’s medical marijuana law is no defense for US drug charges. california can legalise all it wants, but until the federal government changes its mind, people will still end up going to jail for smoking a joint. and, while we’re at it, T-Mobile Claims Right to Censor Text Messages – big brother just got a little bigger and a little less like your brother.

along the same lines, according to Chapter 69.51A RCW on Medical "marijuana" (which is actually called “cannabis”, but i’m not arguing at this point), apparently i wouldn’t qualify anyway… oh well… 8/

Twitter blames website upgrade for re-introducing XSS holehopefully, the last word on my battle with twitter and their most recent cross-site scripting bug… which is still gone on my machine, but presumably that’s because i deleted my account before this latest round happened, and when they re-introduced it, i didn’t have an account to infect any longer…

twitter… 😐 feh.

Trojan poses as skeleton key jailbreak utility – but it only works on iPhones… wait, what? 8) heh heh heh… i am so glad i’m not a mac-head any longer…

GoDaddy.com Goes on the Auction Block – recently i read a couple of articles detailing how a whole bunch (<200) of wordpress blogs hosted by godaddy got hacked. i don’t know whether selling godaddy will make things better or worse, but it’s one of the reasons why i don’t use godaddy to begin with.

IE captain flees Microsoft for Google – when i was first getting into testing software, back in 1996, i attended a planning meeting in advance of the release of IE3 (which was still crawling with bugs, in spite of bill gates’ claim that micro$not released “bug free” software), and chris wilson was there, although he wasn’t as “important” then as he later became. however giving up micro$hit for google is sort of a lateral move for someone who is allegedly as “important” as he is… and, given that he is ultimately responsible for such travesties as IE4 and IE6, i would think that google would have second thoughts about hiring him…

How do you copy 60 million files? – yet another reason why linux rocks, and you should use it and not that crap operating system from redmond.

Nuclear Winter And Peace – look… another article by Fidel Castro… you might get the impression that he’s actually changed the way he thinks recently, and that i agree with him now…

pubic schools billboardOops! Billboard spelling error creates embarrassment

The true history of the Koran in America – reports of qur’ans in american libraries go back at least to 1683, and the first qur’an to be published in america was in 1806, over 100 years later. both thomas jefferson and john adams owned one and read it frequently… just sayin’…

Pope’s astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him – unfortunately, is not a joke… nor is this: Christian group declares jct 9 on M25 cursed, although it took me several readings to confirm that it was, in fact, totally serious… what?!?

Church of Body Modification – this has been the subject of a bunch of spam messages i have been receiving recently, but it’s a real thing, and it looks fairly interesting…

Fabrican – it gives the reference to “jeans so tight you must have sprayed them on” a whole new meaning…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Google guy "invaded teen users’ privacy" Google damages users’ brains – DON’T! BE! EVIL!

On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View – this is what happens when you take any religion to its logical conclusion.

Linus Torvalds outs himself as US citizen – gadzooks! i can’t wait to get out, and linus is on his way in… tell ya’ what, linus… i’ll trade you. Silence is the Death of Liberty is an example of why…

New 64-Bit Windows Rootkit Already ‘In The Wild’ – i’m tellin’ ya’… it’s pointless for micro$awft to create “new” operating systems, because they’re all based on former, defective, operating systems, and they’ve already got a built-in cadre of hackers who are already 98% of the way to breaking anything new that they come up with, before they release it. NOTICE TO MICKEY: the way to fix this is to use an entirely different approach, right from the very beginning – instead of basing your next 64-bit “super secure, can’t be hacked” OS on the same 8-bit kernel on which every other MS OS has been based, why not try something that no-one expects and build an entirely new kernel? what? you’re not creative enough to do that? oh, well forget it then…

Open source: a savvy bet, even in tough times – another way of putting it is that “free” is a very good way to keep me as a customer… Principia Mathematica Corporatica

Massive La. Fishkill Prompts Oil Spill Questions, Gulf Oil Refuses to Stay Hidden Underwater and In legal filings, BP says thousands of oil spill victims do not have right to sue – will it ever end? not during this decade…

Nation of Israel Buys @Israel Twitter Account From Miami Pornographer – bwaah hah hah hah hah! 8D

Purging Evil – society still has a very, very long way to go. my impression is that it will continue to be as bad as it is, if not worse, until there is a fundamental shift in the way we think and behave, and guys like cal thomas are preventing that fundamental shift from happening. yet another example (the web is full of them, there’s no counting how many stories like this there are) ‘Devil’ appears in bathroom tile – and, yes, both of these are serious. the people reporting the stories believe that they’re true, no matter how absurd they really are. more absurdity:
Scientists are creating ‘mice with human brains’ Montana Republican Party wants to make homosexuality a crime Mother Denies Heart Surgery For Infant, Cites Religion – these are not jokes.

another week closer to the eschaton…

i don’t use facebook for a large number of reasons. primary among these is that, despite the fact that a lot of my current friends are facebook members, there are certain people from my past that might want to get in touch with me, and i would prefer it a great deal if they did not know how to get in touch with me. not being a member of facebook is a good way to accomplish that. among the other reasons, in no particular order, are these: Facebook users ‘are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem’, Understanding the latest Facebook privacy train wreck, Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook, More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook and Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? i’m not going to rant about this, despite the fact that i could rant for quite some time about facebook, because whatever i say, people are going to do what people are going to do, and one of those things is to use facebook in spite of it’s obvious and blatant flaws.

reminder: THIS is the reason why i am no longer using LiveJournal for anything remotely blog-related. i know enough about how these things work to realise that there’s probably a lot going on that i don’t understand, and that i don’t know about, but there’s one distinct advantage to having a blog located on a server over which you have exclusive control, and that is that you don’t have perverts sysadmins stalking poking their noses in where they’re not supposed to be. if you’re looking for an alternative, i can host your domain and you can run your own version of wordpress there, and i promise i won’t comment on flocked entries. contact me for more details.

Death by iPod – this is directly related to last week’s link detailing people still falling for scams, despite the fact that they’ve been running essentially the same scams for at least ten years… society needs a collective brain upgrade. examples: Google squirrels into human brains with Scribe experiment and Russia Uses Microsoft to Suppress Dissent

Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats – “The vast majority of malware – more than 99 per cent – targets Windows PCs”. another very good reason to use linux.

50 Mind Blowing Facts About America That Our Founding Fathers Never Would Have BelievedSheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers – for example…

Stuffed Pony Blown Up By Bomb Squad Suspicious ‘FurReal’ pony blown up near elementary school – it was a battery powered, stuffed pony, in the vicinity of an elementary school… because the clowns at clownland security didn’t have anything better to do…

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Unconstitutional – this actually happened a few days ago, but i haven’t seen it in any of the regular news at all. the “christians” will say that it’s further evidence that they are a “persecuted minority”. meanwhile Self-Described ‘Christian Counterpart To Osama Bin Laden’ Arrested In Plot To Bomb Abortion Clinic and Self-labeled ‘Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden’ allegedly planned clinic bombing – “christians” are the real terrorists.

What does it take to be happy? About $75,000 – money can’t buy happiness, but apparently $75k a year will get you pretty close…

New research restores psychedelics’ medical respectability – first they were used as medicine for thousands of years, then they decided that they have no medicinal value, now they’re saying that they might have medicinial value after all… i wish they’d just make up their minds and stop decieving us. sign The Vienna Declaration to advocate for evidence based drug policy and strengthen the call for policies driven by evidence. join the movement to end the failed war on drugs!

Cannabis Yoga – to help you come down from your stressful life. this is not a joke.

Noam Chomsky to become new X-Factor judge – this is a joke.

further growl update II

apparently either something was “stuck” in my computer that i deleted when i deleted and re-uploaded my blog yesterday, or something else is going on, because so far, the unauthorised authorisation dialogue that has been plaguing me for the past three days has now flown the coop… grr. it’s back again… 8/ it’s like it waits until i’m actually typing a post before it shows up… weird!

apparently the process of disinfecting those two files that i discovered yesterday completely re-did the way the blog “plugins” work, because when i booted up this morning, i suddenly discovered that wordpress does, in fact, keep track of things that it seems to have been forgetting for a while now. maybe the thing that is supposed to email commenters when there’s a new comment will suddenly start to work now…

also, i’m sorry to say it, hobbit, but i have miraculously discovered a bidding war over the collection of conan books which is now up to $22 and the auction still has 9 hours before it’s over…

further growl update

i’m fairly sure that the authorisation dialogue message that (still) won’t go away is somehow connected to my blog. when i shut down my computer yesterday, there was an authorisation dialogue box on my screen, but when i started up this morning it wasn’t there. so, i paid very close attention to what i started up, and the order i started things up, and kept track of the processes that were running on the computer. it didn’t show up again until i logged into my blog, at which point it showed up almost immediately.

so, i deleted all of the files except for the database and re-uploaded everything. in the process of re-uploading the files, i discovered a couple of files that were infected from last year, that i probably missed when i was cleaning up last year. 8/

of course, when everything was uploaded and the database got reconnected, the first thing that happened was that the authorisation dialogue box came back, so i’ve got a couple of other options, the first of which is rebooting my local computer, to see if there is something that is stuck in my local machine.

another week closer to the eschaton…

we’ll start out this week’s post with a public service announcement: National Chronic Illness Awareness Week is coming up 13-19 september. be nice to somebody: one in two americans has an invisible chronic illness or condition!

Predator drones patrols of southern US border start Wednesday – this is now a police state, where only the priveledged live, the starving refugee is given temporary status, and the illegal immigrant is hunted down and summarily killed ejected.

example: California Cops Taser Senior Citizen in His Own Home – couple returns home, man falls, wife calls 911, cops show up and taser man when he refuses to go with them. beware – this could happen in your home, to you.

Oil Rig Explodes Off The Louisiana coast – didn’t we already go through this once? and, by the way, we now have a BP ultimatum: Let us drill or funds will dry up – considering that it took them all of a week to make the money that they have spent on cleaning up the spill, i think that they could go a little while longer before they are completely out of money…

More War Lies – war is peace, love is hate, lies are truth… business as usual.

Stephen Hawking Breaks Atheist Rules – yep, he said there doesn’t have to be a “god” in order for everything to be here. broke the rules, indeed… Is Stephen Hawking’s New Book Science or Science Fiction – “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi

Top Web Scams of the Decade – in other words, if you don’t know that you shouldn’t respond to random, sketchy-sounding email from someone you don’t know, you probably shouldn’t be online at all. Pew Study Claims One Fifth Of American Adults Don’t Use The Internet – i’ve got an idea: make it so that you have to have a license to use an internet-connected device, in the same way that you now have to have a license to drive a car. kill two birds with one stone…

Budget cuts bring end to Stockton narcotics unit – hey, let’s move to stockton! 8)

California pot legalization ‘could end Mexican drug war’ and Marijuana activists stage Mexico City smoke-out to protest prohibition – hint: legalisation of cannabis could go a long way towards ending the war on drugs everywhere

The Pain-Killing Power of Marijuana – especially with people like this guy’s brother pumping out new research…

Two new scientific studies reveal hallucinogens are good for your mental health – another thing hallucinogens are good for! 8)

Ancient brew masters tapped drug secrets – another thing beer is good for! 8)

Mind-Altering Parasitestoxoplasma gondii on the loose!

growl update

i went to the twitter web site and quickly determined that there wasn’t a way to connect with a tech-support drone who had any hope of giving me a cogent answer to my (primarily twitter-related) problem – one of the reasons i was so hesitant to get wrapped up in this whole thing to begin with… 8/

anyway, i went to the #kubuntu IRC channel on freenode and met up with someone who, once he had seen the picture of the dialogue box, had the idea that it might be a gnome dialogue, which is odd, considering that i am running KDE. admittedly, i do have a few gnome applications installed (synaptic, for example), but as far as i know, none of them are using the gnome-keychain application from which this seems to be a dialogue box, so he suggested that i remove it, which i did.

after logging out and logging in again, it looked as though the dialogue had vanished (a good thing), so after waiting around for half an hour or so, i quit the IRC client.

almost immediately the authorisation dialogue came back… 8/

i then began shooting down processes that looked suspicious, starting with anything even remotely gnome-related. eventually i shot down enough processes that my system became unstable, so i had to completely shut down the machine and restart.

at this point, the dialogue hasn’t come back yet. i’m not sure whether it’s because of the fact that i removed software, or whether it’s because of the fact that i hadn’t actually shut down the computer, or if it’s because both of those things happened… at this point, i’m not completely convinced that the dialogue won’t come back again.

ETA: it’s back… 8/

another thing i learned about was the existence of yet another browser, rekonq, which has some interesting quirks and probably won’t replace firefox any time soon, but it’s an interesting addition to the collection.

another week closer to the eschaton…

Can psychedelic drugs treat depression? – gee, weren’t we discussing the very same possibility FIFTY YEARS AGO⁈⁈ before all this “war on drugs” crap took over everyones’ consciousness⁈ we’ve lost 50 years of medical technology breakthroughs because of this stupid attitude that “some drugs are bad”… 8/

Why The Wars Can’t Be Won – if you needed further explanation.

Nuclear Winter – by Fidel Castro, 24 august, 2010. also, Fidel Castro has a blog, so get out there and subscribe, comrades…

Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy but that’s not what they want you to think: Corporate Media Dismisses Castro’s Bin Laden Claim As Far-Fetched Conspiracy Theory

Obama administration claims roughly 75 percent of the oil had been removed or Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that 3/4 of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there? who knows for sure any longer, the reality is, the environment is severely screwed, and will stay severely screwed for quite a number of years… 8/

Calling a truce in the war on drugs – remember when england fired the chairman of it’s "Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs" and he shot back? well, he’s at it again, and he makes just as much sense as ever. will the government listen to him this time? probably not…

The facial recognition software that will put a name to every photograph in the internet – big brother is watching! coming to a browser near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/

Steve Jobs Is Watching You: Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware – big brother is watching! coming to a iphone near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/

Mobile X-Ray Scanners Hit The Streets – big brother is watching! coming to a street near you soon, whether you want him to or not… 8/

L.A. authorities plan to use heat-beam ray in jail – but only on “unruly” residents.

Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations – if you weren’t paranoid enough already…

Every Time You Forward an Email You Donate To Al-Qaeda – now we’re going over the line into stupidity… 8/

Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims and Special Investigation – Evolution reflect the way i’ve been feeling about the general public recently, so watch out if you have to be in contact with me for any length of time, especially if you’re upset about either of these issues.

Upgrade Excreta – single malt whiskey from elderly diabetic piss, composting toilets and sparkly shit to lighten up your day…

another week closer to the eschaton…

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web – oil spill? what oil spill? wasn’t that two weeks ago? 8/

and, while we’re on the subject of oil, 2,487.5 mpg! Catchy headline unneccessary – “We find it incredibly thrilling to report mpg ratings that require a comma so we’re going to write it again: 2,487.5 mpg. Wow.” that’s right, they’re talking about two “prototype” internal combustion, gasoline powered cars, in measured competition one got 437.2 miles per gallon, and the other got 2,487.5 miles per gallon… detroit is still hyping their 20 – 25 mpg cars as “energy efficient”, “fuel saving”, and other preposterous blather, despite the fact that mileage on my cars hasn’t changed significantly in over 30 years. apparently, we “umayrakins” are swallowing it hook, line and sinker, and begging for more. it’s my understanding that you can’t sell a car in europe these days that doesn’t get at least 40 mpg… what do we have to do to get these “prototype” cars into mass production?

oh, and by the way, Senior U.S. scientist rescinds previous claim that ¾ of oil from spill is gone, says most is still there and Top Expert: Geology is “Fractured”, Relief Wells May Fail … BP is Using a “Cloak of Silence”, Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government – what? were they really thinking that we would believe that they could clean up two months worth of oil spill in less than a month? and once they got the well plugged up, the first thing BP did was go back to it’s habit of not sharing information with anyone again… it all goes back to that link that i found a couple weeks ago, where the guy was claiming that the BP gulf disaster may have triggered a ‘world-killing’ event

Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us – right on! its about time somebody said it! it’s about time we all get down to learning at least Ten Reasons to Become Self-Sufficient and Ten Ways to Get There

It’s time to presume the web is guilty – it’s an interesting way to look at it, but i think he may have something there. especially considering that Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash – when i was a software tester, there was this thing called “good enough” which was a state where the software still had bugs, but it was “good enough” to release to the public, because the bugs that it had were small, inconsequential, difficult to show, or inconsistent enough that there wasn’t an immediate need to fix them. there were exceptions to the “good enough” rule, which included software on which peoples’ life depended, such as avionics, medical software, and that kind of thing, but when i was a software tester, the concept of a virus that spread through email was something that had only recently been realised and hadn’t been around for more than a couple of years, and most of what appeared on the web was presumed to be innocent. now we’ve gotten to the point where software testers can’t assume that “good enough” really is good enough any more, and even when it is completely bug-free, software may be vulnerable to a specifically designed attack. moral: your computer is suspect. be wary of anything it tells you, and watch your back at all times.

cardinal francis george, head of the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, has gone on record regarding proposition 8, saying no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined. he obviously hasn’t seen this video, shot at the honolulu zoo on november 11, 2004, of a chimp raping a frog. that’s about as natural as it comes, and if nature intended for a frog to provide oral pleasure to a chimp, then two people of the same sex having the right to marry, or an individual’s choice to use cannabis shouldn’t be far off, right?

Church Vows to Burn Qur’ans Without Fire Permit – the church said they were going to burn qur’ans, but the gainsville fire department said that they can’t burn books without a fire permit (shades of Fahrenheit 451, anyone?). now the church says, permit or not, they’re going to go ahead with their “protest”, because islamic law “is totalitarian in nature,” islamic teaching contains “irrational fear and loathing of the west” and that the qur’an teaches that jeezis “was NOT the son of ‘god'”. again, i would ask, is "christianity" that much different? change “irrational fear and loathing” to the east, and remove the negative from the last statement, and i would say that the similarities are striking…

there are a couple of things from LiveScienceOne Common Ancestor Behind Blue Eyes and Age Confirmed for ‘Eve,’ Mother of All Humans – that i’d be willing to bet are going to be abused massively and frequently by “christians” who will say that they just prove that “eve” exists, even though it’s only about 196,000 years older than the “young earth creationists” claim, and even though both of the articles specifically say “this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman”… it’s just a matter of time before they latch on to this and try to twist the meaning of the words to fit their own schemes…

How Can You Control Your Dreams? – i have never seen, and probably will never see inception but lucid dreaming has always held a great deal of interest for me.

Simon’s Cat – that is all.

another week closer to the eschaton…

let’s start off with a bit of double-you-tee-eff, shall we? Topless sunbather accused of sensuously rubbing in sun cream – keep in mind, this happened in italy, where it is legal for women to go topless on the beach everywhere, and not just in secluded areas. apparently, however, that was okay with the mother of the teenage boys the sunbather was accused of troubling, it was when she started rubbing on the sunblock that the mother started to get upset. i wonder if anyone thought about asking the teenaged boys what they thought?

Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future – they’ve decided that we can’t have the music ourselves, but now they want to mandate that, in the future, all mobile devices will come equiped with an FM radio, so that other people can program our music for us… or something like that. honestly, the whole copyright system is so screwed up that i don’t pay that much attention to it any longer, except when it involves copyrights that i hold…

so i did a little bit of research into whether washington state has a water rights law that prohibits homeowners from harvesting rainwater. what i discovered is that rainwater collection is a complex issue, but homeowners are not prohibited from having a rooftop rainwater collection system, and that under certain circumstances, it is perfectly legal for property owners to have cisterns of 30,000 gallons or more. Rainwater Collection in Washington State is the place to start. i understand what the people are saying about modern folk thinking that we have to ask permission to excercise our inalienable rights, though. it’s time that changed.

Warning to Travelers About New, Drug-Resistant ‘Superbug’ – it’s the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine…

Voogle Wireless – don’t… be… evil!

Senate Passes "The ______Act of____" – H.R. 1586 started out as one thing (TARP taxes), became another thing (an aviation bill), and is now a batch of spending policies… and it has one of the most unlikely names imaginable.

Marijuana legalization in Mexico gaining support – now all we have to do is convince our “leaders” to do the same thing… if the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow, even if it is begrudgingly.

Why hemp could save the world – this is an article by D.M. Murdock, otherwise known as acharya s, who i’ve been reading about for 20 years or so. she’s got a lot of interesting things to say, and this is one of them.

Science supports medical marijuana – this is a response to a journalist who is apparently misinformed concerning science and cannabis, but it’s good reading all on its own.

Taking God to School is an article about how we should be bringing back “Prayer, The Ten Commandments, learning about creation, readings from the Bible” in public schools. as you have probably already guessed, i think this woman is not only wrong, but crazy, and possibly dangerous, but apparently that doesn’t matter, because “God is not bound by policies and politically [sic] correctness”. that phrase catches my eye. first of all, i don’t know who they’re fooling by saying that they know what we should be doing in our public schools when they can’t even use proper grammar to form a sentence, and if they’re claiming that “god” isn’t bound by political correctness, then they are, essentially, saying that their “god” isn’t politically correct. for people who have such a hangup about conformity, it’s rather unexpected for them to acknowledge that their “god” isn’t politically correct, and it makes me wonder if even they don’t take what they say seriously…

Muslims Seek to Censor Gospel of Christ – another one from “christian” news wire that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, this one is about muslim leaders having a press conference to plead with legislators to do something about “christian” protestors demonstrating in the public forum around mosques. of course the public thoroughfare around any place of worship is fair game for protesting, but let’s put the shoe on the other foot: what if muslims were “spreading the gospel” of mohammed outside a “christian” church? the “christian” leaders would be having seven kinds of a hissy fit, and demanding that laws be drawn up immediately to prohibit such a thing (see Strippers protest church for a change), so why the furor about muslim leaders heading them off at the pass? not only that, but it’s only a press conference, nevertheless these “christians” somehow interpreted this as their “potential for violence” and say that “gentle christian saints” (HAH!) will be holding their own “press conference” outside the mosque. then, there is something that made me wonder even more about these peoples’ sanity: they say that “Islam is not a religion, nor a cult, but a total and complete 100% system of life. It has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components.” — and “christianity” isn’t? and “christianity” is somehow different from all that? and “christianity” is somehow better than that? never, in the 2000 years since jeezis, has there ever been any evidence that is the case. PERIOD. “The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.” that means ANY religion, whether it is “christian” or muslim. they shouldn’t get a special law that prohibits islam any sooner than they should get a special law that prohibits “christianity”. people who get upset about things like this are stupid to think that they’re going to get special treatment just because they happen to believe in the right things, and they’re stupid to post things like this on the web, because there are people who will, undoubtedly, work out the flaws in their logic and see how stupid they are…

Man tries to get his name legally changed to Boomer the Dog and Unicorn Being a Jerk – now there’s some craziness that i can get behind… 8)

colour me frustrated… again…

Incoming BP CEO: Time for ‘scaleback’ in cleanup⸘⸘⸘WHAT‽‽‽ maybe in his dreams… 😐

Swastika no longer viewed as Nazi symbol – reading just the headline, one would be inclined to think that the movement to Save the Swastika might be having some effect in enlightening people who think that (卐 ≡ nazi), but when one actually reads the article, it would seem that the Anti-Defamation League is probably more aptly named the “Anti-Swastika League” because, while they’ve admitted that the swastika isn’t just a nazi symbol, they’re still of the mistaken opinion that it’s a “more generalised symbol of hate”, which is also incorrect, as any hindu will tell you. hindus and buddhists, and, for that matter, jews, should express their outrage about this (here is the letter i wrote them, if you need some encouragement or an example): it’s racist and against the very principles they stand for, for the ADL to say that the holy symbols of another religion are a “generalised symbol of hate” without qualification!

and while i’m on the subject, i feel really sorry for the lack of intelectual development displayed in Culture Served Raw – A Universal Symbol of Hate – remember, we’re talking about TEN THOUSAND years of history as a symbol of good, compared to 90 years as a symbol of evil. not only that, but the blogger in question won’t even approve any comments that don’t agree with his preconcieved notion of how evil the swastika has been, and is completely ignoring the fact that it’s only been a relatively short time that it has been anything but a symbol of good. one thing i learned very early, is that the only way to change history is to remember it differently. it’s clear that this blogger is doing exactly that, and i feel sorry for them. Swastika, a “Universal” symbol of hate? – “I understand the aversion toward the swastika in the West but to say it is universally a symbol of hate could create more intolerance, not less.”

Researcher demonstrates ATM “jackpotting” at Black Hat Conference – a number of years ago, when i was working as a software tester, one of the projects i worked on was for Triton Systems, testing a little gadget that supposedly was able to do standard ATM functions from your desktop, with the aid of your computer. they actually gave me one of their little desktop gadgets to fool around with (unfortunately, they didn’t give me any actual money to go with it… cheapskates…), and i found a number of ways to crack their proposed software and make the gadget do all sorts of things that it wasn’t supposed to do. my understanding at the time was that they used essentially the same software for their stand-alone ATMs that they used for the desktop gadgets, and ever since then i’ve wondered whether or not it was possible to do the same things on their stand-alone ATMs. apparently it is.

Collecting rainwater now illegal in many states as Big Government claims ownership over our water – it’s illegal to collect rainwater in washington? i’ll have to look into that… and if it is, get a rain barrel or two… 8)

President Wyclef? – gawd help the haitians… they’ve already suffered enough…

A priest in eastern Europe has been accused of drowning a baby boy as he baptised him. – death by superstition? i thought that had been eliminated from our society years ago… 😐

jeez, first it’s uganda wanting to kill gays, and now a Kenyan gets 14 years for sex with donkey; blames devil – something must be wrong with that whole region of the world…

U.S. Copyright Group ‘Steal’ Competitor’s Website – another blatant case of the pot calling the kettle black…

Seattle’s Aerial Transport Lifestyle System – it’s the future… right?

and, last, but certainly not least, The Blue God of Judaism – a blog by Rabbi Robert dos Santos Teixeira, LCSW, that will examine the similarities between YHWH and Siva. maybe he’ll address my question concerning the ancient biblical patriarch worshipping a sivalingam

Continue reading colour me frustrated… again…

i suppose it’s what i get for having a 1 inch ear piercing…

i’m wondering how these people stay in business… it’s clear to me that nobody pays attention to the actual diameter of large gauge body jewelry, in any case.

i have recently bought what i assumed was beautiful jewelry from two different locations online, and after a month of going back and forth with the first one, i got a refund for half my order, because they kept sending me ear plugs that they claimed were 1 inch, but in reality were up to ⅛" too small. the second one looks like it’s going to be a similar story, although i just received the plugs today. one of them is close enough – .995″ – that i’ll probably wear it anyway, but the other one actually said “25 mm” on it, and from what i understand, is almost half a millimeter smaller than one inch.

it was, in fact, beautiful jewelry, but it was small enough that if i wear it for more than a day, my piercing closes up enough that i can’t wear the other jewelry i have, which is the right size. particularly the black tiger eye plug that i have, that i love… one inch, and because of the fact that it’s made of stone, there’s no fudging when it comes to putting it in. if my piercing is too small, i have to taper back up to an inch, or it just doesn’t go in

the problem that i have been seeing consistently in a large portion of the body jewelry that i have looked at over the past 6 months or so has been that the gauge is measured at the outside edge of the plug, and it should be measured in the middle. thus, a 1″ gauge ear plug will actually be larger than one inch at the outside edge, by as much as .05 inch. that way, your piercing maintains at one inch, and there is a flare that protects your jewelry from falling out unexpectedly, which is what happens to me pretty regularly when i wear jewelry that i buy online, and most jewelry that is available in retail stores.

it makes me want to hurry up and get the lathe tools that are the only thing standing in the way of my being able to make (and, more importantly, sell) ear plugs that are the right size

weird…

when i lived in new york, probably 1971 or thereabouts, a whole bunch of my music classmates and i were transported to a theatre in downtown buffalo, new york, where we took part in an experimental music recording for some artist. i don’t remember anything about who the artist was, or what the recording was ultimately used for, but what happened is permanently etched on my mind: we were taken to the balcony, directly in front of the stage which had a whole bunch of stripped down pianos, and a bunch of what looked like large metal junk piled on it. there we were each given a small bucket full of tennis balls, and encouraged to be very quiet, and throw the tennis balls at the pianos and metal stuff. specifically, they told us that noise from the tennis balls was encouraged, but noise from our mouths was not. it was an occasion that was enjoyed thoroughly by everyone, and they collected the tennis balls and re-distributed them to us at least three times. then we all got on the school bus and went back to the school, which was in williamsville, a suburb of buffalo.

why do i bring this up, apart from the fact that it’s an interesting bit of trivia about my life?

i was poking around on wikipedia today, and i found this, which is in the first part of the article abut Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. in the article, he was being encouraged in a project “Piano Tennis”… “after collecting pianos, they stripped and aligned them in a hall, striking them with tennis balls.” (wikipedia).

my family moved to the buffalo area in 1969. according to wikipedia, brian eno graduated from the Winchester School of Art in 1969, and he was in london in 1971 when he joined roxy music, so the probability that the artist that made the “experimental music recordings” that i took part in was not brian eno is pretty high, but i would be willing to bet that it was someone who saw eno’s performances at the winchester school, or someone that had heard about them…

anyway, i was so intrigued by the whole process that when the school i was attending had to “throw out” a piano that was “broken”, i persuaded the music teacher to let me have it, and i took it apart and wrote a piece of music for the “prepared” piano-harp in 1973, not long before we moved back to seattle.

by the way…

one of my articles was published on American Dream Or Bust a while ago, and i just got around to checking it out.

some doofus named bill commented in such a way as to make him look like a complete, raving loony, or a “christian” racist, or, possibly, a combination of the two. i tore him a new asshole (scroll down past the database error messages to read the comments).

i find it really disturbing that people like bill are in control of what happens in the world – not bill specifically, of course, but people like him. we are never going to change the fucked-up situation the world is in until people like bill are marginalised to the point where nobody pays attention to them any longer.

if i don’t come back from OCF, this is why

How much oil has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico – according to the estimates that have been made public. the faint-hearted should not click for more information.

Immorality is Worse than BP Oil Spill – it’s an interesting way to put it, but knowing that the author is a “christian” makes me realise that even saying “no, it’s not” wouldn’t make any difference, and they would just go on believing blatantly wrong things in spite of clear evidence, so i’ll just put their link here so that everybody else can see what stupid, stupid, STUPID people we have become…

TSA To Block Websites With “Controversial Opinions” – the move to shut down free speech on the internet accelerates… at this point there’s not an awful lot standing in the way of How to Access the Internet (A Guide from 2025) becoming a reality… 😐

County coroners can’t back Brewer beheadings claim – the governor that implimented the “papers please” illegal immigration law in arizona, blatantly lies about people being beheaded in the desert, in a bid to get re-elected. fortunately there are people out there who know how to check facts, and they’ve blown this wide open.

Subway To Start Tessellating Cheese July 1? – you may not read about the previous items on the standard online news sources, but i followed a link from yahoo to get this one. our planet is simultaneously being soaked in crude oil and suffering the rule of idiots, but i’ll be damned if they’re going to get away with selling me a sandwich that has uneven cheese distribution… 🙁

a few days ago marist published a poll which asked people if they knew what country from which the united states declared independence. of adults aged 30 to 44, 15% weren’t sure, and 10% said a country other than “England” or “Great Britain”. of all adult U.S. residents 20% were “unsure”, and 6% said a country other than “England” or “Great Britain”. here are the poll results:



&nbsp
USA Residents
On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day. From which country did the United States win its independence?
Great BritainUnsureOther countries mentioned
Row %Row %Row %
USA Residents74%20%6%
RegionNortheast84%10%6%
Midwest74%21%5%
South68%26%6%
West75%18%7%
Household IncomeLess than $50,00063%30%7%
$50,000 or more86%9%5%
RaceWhite82%13%5%
Non-white56%35%9%
Age18 to 2960%33%7%
30 to 4475%15%10%
45 to 5979%17%4%
60 or older76%19%4%
AgeUnder 4567%24%9%
45 or older78%18%4%
GenderMen81%12%7%
Women67%28%5%
July 2010 Marist Poll National Residents "N=1004 MOE +/- 3%" Totals may not add to 100 due to rounding.

things you learn from r. crumb…

so i recently broke down and purchased R. Crumb’s monumental project, The Book of Genesis, and i was flipping through it appreciating the elaborate artwork, when i came across this:

this is an illustration of a story i had located many years ago, and then promply forgot, but this is actually a better way of looking at it, and illustrates my point even better than i could have previously.

namely, what is this ancient biblical patriarch doing worshipping a shiva lingam?!?

i’ve wondered about this for a long time, and now that i have an actual illustration of it, it will be easier to ask unsuspecting “christians” why this founder of “christianity” felt it was okay to worship the way those “godless heathens” do…

ښالاماندر

Humans will be extinct in 100 years – a wonderful way to start out the post, but i’d tend to treat anything said by the guy who helped wipe out smallpox with a great deal of respect. you can argue about it all you like, but this is a guy who knows what it’s like to become extinct, and if he says humans are on the way there, i’d tend to believe him.

Scientists discover riding a bike is incredibly hard – in spite of the fact that the formula they came up with sounds pretty interesting (inertial forces + gyroscopic forces + the effects of gravity and centrifugal forces = the leaning of the body and the torque applied to the handlebars), given all the things that are going wrong with the world currently, there have got to be better things for “scientists” to be working on, don’t you think?

6-Year-Old Northeast Ohio Girl on ‘No Fly’ List – more idiocy on the part of home clownland security. all their antics sure make me feel a whole lot safer… 8/

and, speaking of feeling safer, Police tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn’t breathe – wow… just… wow.

no further comment necessary… 😐

Apple collecting, sharing iPhone users’ precise locations
Apple now collecting, sharing precise location of iPhone users – yet another reason why i’m no longer a mac fanatic… i’ll use a mac, but i’m NOT getting an iphone, and i’m probably not going to get a smart phone at all… 8/

Opt Out of Behavioral Advertising – Opting out of a network does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns… but it’s a start, and if you’re as paranoid about network privacy as i am, you’ll understand the necessity for such a thing.

about every two weeks or so i get a call from a person who is looking for an “incense” called “K2”, or “Spice” – Toxicologist Warning to Parents: Look for Signs of K2 – ‘Fake Marijuana’ and After Indianola teen’s suicide, Iowa officials set sights on banning K2 – i find it really sad that people have apparently resorted to poisoning themselves, because it’s the only legal alternative, rather than getting legitimately high from something that is illegal, but has never killed anyone. from The 420 Times, “If you’re a kid and you’re thinking of trying K2 because it’s still legal to buy in your state, you’d be better off running the risk of buying real, illegal marijuana. Even if you get caught, you won’t die from inhaling a toxic substance or experience “hallucinations, severe agitation, elevated heart rate and blood pressure, vomiting and, in some cases, tremors and seizures,” like you do from K2. You’ll just be another statistic in The War on Drugs.”

Continue reading ښالاماندر

沰⅘ – ⅂ℐℵΚℨ & stuff

Microsoft hides mystery Firefox extension in toolbar update
also
Cyber War: Microsoft a weak link in national security – this is why i don’t use windoesn’t: I should be the one to decide whether or not to install software on MY computer, regardless of how “important” or “necessary for correct functioning” it is. the fact that microsoft thinks it can get away with installing something that i don’t know about, on MY computer is insulting to my intelligence and very definitely goes to show how evil this company really is. i would expect nothing less from a virus, and microsoft is – supposedly – better than that. 😡 and, the fact is, originally, microsoft didn’t intend for its software to be used on “critical networks” and was (and to a great extent, still is) only in the software business for the money, not caring to ensure that their software actually works the way it is supposed to. this was driven home to me a few years ago, when i was working as a “vendor” at microsoft (i had access to microsoft facilities to work on microsoft projects, but i was actually working for another company, so my microsoft-issued ID card had “V-” in front of it), testing windows XP. not a single bug that i logged (and there were a lot of ’em) got fixed during the 9 months that i worked there. needless to say, most of them are still out there on your windows XP computer, and will never get fixed – because microsft “isn’t supporting” windows XP any longer. 😡

and, speaking of evil companies, the latest word is that BP buys Google ads for search term “oil spill” – so that it can attempt to “direct internet users to its website as it attempts to control…” flack from detractors, who are just about everybody these days. they should listen to Buzz Aldrin’s Answer To The Gulf Oil Spill

i’ve had people tell me that i should really have a more positive attitude. i say Does a positive attitude make you more motivated to learn from your mistakes? and i find, like the researchers (at the Journal of Organizational Behavior) did, that a negative attitude is more conducive to learning from your mistakes. so i’ll keep seeing the dark cloud, and leave the silver lining to others.

and, from there, directly into the random, things-that-make-you-say-WTF category…

Quantum Jumping? – “Quantum Jumping is the process of ‘jumping’ into parallel dimensions, and gaining skills, knowledge, wisdom and inspiration from alternate versions of yourself.” what… the… fuck?!? he seems to be about as random as gene ray, but somewhat more commercially oriented.

Prefixes & Words Based On Latin Number Names – now you know what it means to say “for the duoquadragesimary time, learn these things!” 🙂

Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis – the latest, up to the minute research on the problem of whether giraffes can or cannot swim. according to this research, apparently they can. what do you know…

finally, Chinese internet addicts stage mutiny at boot camp – you WILL NOT survive an attempt to control geeks in need of internet.

Toxoplasma Modified Humans – i’m glad to see that people who actually know what they’re talking about are looking into this, because i have been suspicious of Toxoplasma gondii for number of years, and this guy seems to be talking about the same stuff that i’ve been wondering about for a long time. the big question is: is ‘the meaning of life’ merely to accelerate the reproductive cycle of a parasitic protozoa? disturbingly, it also sounds suspiciously like the scientologists’ story about microscopic aliens controlling our behaviour…

Can we arrest him now? – i guess the phrase about “liberty and justice for all” was only for some people… 😐

Continue reading

Indian gentleman makes ass of Professor P.Z. Meyers

some of this story suffers from being written by a person (or people) whose native language is not english, but still, there’s enough scientific and journalistic integrity to make me severely wonder what ol’ P.Z. would make of it:

ETA: apparently he would do it differently… oh well, i guess i couldn’t have expected a lot more.

Miracle man survives without food for 70 years

Ahmedabad, Apr 26: Survival of a Hindu ascetic, claimed to be not taking food or water and not passing stool or urine for over 70 years, has baffled the medical fraternity and now defence experts are studying about the miracle man to emulate the practice for soldiers1.

Experts of Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), in collaboration with the doctors of the city-based Sterling Hospital, have launched an observational study of the 81-year-old Prahladbhai Jani alias ‘Mataji’2, who is living in a cave in the temple town of Ambaji in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district.

The round the clock study from April 22 to May 7 will cover all aspects of physiology and biochemistry. The saint is kept in isolation at a special ward in the hospital and even mediapersons were kept out of bounds.

Talking to mediapersons at the hospital, Dr Sudhir Shah, a neurologist, and Dr Ila Wazgan of DIPAS said the main aim of the project is to study how a human being can survive without consuming food or water and not passing stool or urine for so long.

Dr Shah, who had conducted a similar study on the saint in 2003, said ‘There are incidents of prolonged fastings in our country. But they have been taking some water. In the case of Jani, he is not taking any food or water. What is medically more important and baffling is the fact that he is not passing stool or urine’.

The saint has informed the doctors that he has rare ‘Kundalini’ power (serpentine energy), a Yogic feat.3

Explaining the rationale behind the study, Dr Wazgan said ”If we can find out the reason or unveil the mystery behind Mr Jani’s survival without food and water, the study may help in working out strategies in managing calamaty-struck people, soldiers deployed at extremely hostile terrains like high altitude mountains and places with the scarcity of water and food”.

Considering the interest taken by DIPAS, some new parameters have been added to the study, Dr Shah said.

An interesting fact ascertained by doctors is that Mr Jani’s brain is as efficient as that of a 25-year old young man though he is aged 81. There are no signs of aging. Even today he can climb a seven storey building without any exhaustion, said Dr Shah.

The saint has shown evidences of formation of urine, which seems to be reabsorbed from his bladder wall. However, at present the medicos do not have any scientific explanation for the same but help of senior scientists and medical personnel of the country is being taken for the same.

A series of investigations are being carried out on Mr Jani according to a pre-determined protocol and additional tests are carried out as per suggestions of the team.

”If everything is ok with Jani, the study on his condition will continue for ten or 15 days. The defence wing wants to understand what is the structure of Mr Jani’s body, what is special about it, because of which he can survive normally. Whether the same can be replicated in other’s body, is the main question. If the answer is yes, it could be useful for soldiers and astrologers’4, added Dr Wazgan.

As per the details provided by Mr Jani’s followers, at the age of seven years, he left home in search of spiritual unfoldment. At the age of eleven years he was blessed by a goddess. He claims that since that blessing, he has gained his sustenance from nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate5, and has not passed urine or stools since then.

Mr Jani had explained to his followers, ”I get the elixir of life from the hole in my palate, which enables me to go without food and water”. Almost daily Mr Jani enters a state of Samadhi characterised by extreme bliss and enormous light and strength. He says that he has never experienced medical problems. He says that he did not speak for a period of forty-five years.

A Video of Prahladbhai Jani is also available, for those of you who might be skeptical.


1: the problem is that for soldiers to actually achieve the state that Mr. Jani has achieved, they would have to give up being soldiers.

2: the name “mataji” means “respected mother”… ?

3: Obsolete A specialised skill or profession. trust Indian journalists to use obsolete English…

4: “and astrologers“… ??

5: i learned about this while i was going through the preparation for my 2nd Kriya initiation, but i didn’t give it much thought at the time…

happy international cannabis appreciation day

Stoner Voice & Data Systems truck

i was walking home from the post office this morning, and i saw this truck, so i took a few pictures. as i was walking away, i noticed this guy staring at me from across the parking lot, and, as it happens, my path pretty much intersected where he was standing, so i figured that he was responsible for the truck and wanted to ask me why i was acting suspiciously around it. as i walked over, he said “can i help you with something?” i replied, “well, i was taking pictures of the truck because it says ‘Stoner Voice & Data’ on it, and today’s 420…” he said “So?” so i said “well, 420 and ‘Stoner’ sort of go together”, and wandered off.

does he really have no clue what the word “stoner” means these days? was he deliberately trying to get me to “incriminate” myself by drawing the comparison between his truck and cannabis?

oh well… happy 420.

link dump ? for a change

now that i’m finished frantically trying to put out a raging forest fire with a watering sprinkler (for the moment, anyway), i’ve got the time to post a whole bunch of things that i’ve been reading recently, that make me go everything from “hmmm” to “AARGH! *#%&!!?!”…

first up, in the “AARGH! *#%&!!?!” category, Religious Tefillin Prompts Scare On Plane – the way i see it, a 17-year-old jewish kid was putting on his tefillin (“phylacteries“, for the uninitiated) in preparation for morning prayer, while at the same time, one of the flight attendents, who thought he was a terrorist, diverted the plane, where he was met by clown homeland security and a bomb squad. there’s so many levels of stupid here… my mind boggles… 😐

continuing to boggle my mind, in more ways than one, Slime mold validates efficiency of Tokyo rail network – more evidence (as if we needed it, which apparently we do) that the creationists are wrong… in more ways than one.

which brings me to the fact the following symbol, a full colon followed by a dash::–is called “dog’s bollocks” by typographers (much in the same way that the name for the symbol that represents “the artist formerly known as ‘Prince'” is called “bruce” by typographers: they’ve got to have something brief to call it), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. the interesting part is when someone delves into The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary… it just goes to prove that you can read the dictionary and find vulgar, 60-year-old emoticons. the only thing remaining is to see how long it will be before the L33T kiddies figure it out and start using it themselves…

there’s a rare (she’s been spending all of her free time studying these days) post from moe, about her new birthday present – yes, another dog. we are now, once again, officially a four-dog family. and the new one is obsessed with staring at the cats, in order to try to get them to move… it’s really funny… or frustrating, depending on whether or not lucy’s been at home all day.

and finally, this evening, Man Stuck In No-Man’s Land – a story from right around here… and it’s from the onion. it’s good to see the onion doesn’t ignore the little people… 🙂

Continue reading link dump ? for a change

GROWF!!

the PHBFH is reaching out and tweaking me from three counties and 15 years away…

i responded to a freecycle advertisement for a shower chair – the kind that disabled people use so that they will be less likely to fall in the shower. it so happens that i have one, left over from when i had my brain surgery. it’s been sitting at the bottom of our property and vines have been growing over it for the past three years or so, but being as how it’s made of aluminum and plastic, it’s still perfectly useable, once the vines are removed. i did so, and responded to this lady whose email user name is “meowphhtkitty”. she didn’t seem particularly motivated to come and pick it up, and i didn’t seem particularly motivated to take it to her, so i arranged for her to pick it up last weekend, and when she didn’t show up the first time, i just let it slide…

but then she wrote back yesterday and said that she was going to be working in auburn, fairly close to my house, and was going to come by to pick up the chair after she got off work. this time i went out – in the rain – and picked most of the vines off the chair, so that all she’d have to do is wash the brown leaf-stains off it and it would be ready to go…

she didn’t show up again.

this time i was more intrigued. i wrote to her asking why she hadn’t shown up, and – this is where the PHBFH comes into it – she wrote back from a different address: one from DSHS, where she is, according to her signature, a “Support Enforcement Officer” at the “Seattle Division of Child Support/DSHS”.

she made some lame excuse about how her boyfriend forgot to pick her up and her phone battery being dead, but she’s the DSHS drone who took the call from the PHBFH and had the police come over and roust me and my son out of a deep sleep at 3:30 in the morning on a sunday, 12 years ago, because the PHBFH wanted to make sure that she got her check from DSHS on time (which meant that she had to be in custody of my son), but my son wanted to stay and be the best man at my wedding…

i’m not 100% sure of this, of course, because i never actually learned the names of the DSHS people that were involved, but i know for a fact that the PHBFH was ripping off DSHS, she was crazy as a loon, i was taking care of her child and paying child support so that the PHBFH could get away with not having a job, and i couldn’t get anybody to pay attention to the problems I was having with the PHBFH.

and, of course, after my son turned 18 and i was no longer required to pay child support, the PHBFH went certafiably nuts and was involuntarily committed to the state mental institution, which is what i had been trying to tell people ever since my son was about seven years old. of course, by then it was “too late” – my son was already 18, i was already relieved of my child support obligation, and there was nothing anybody could do about it…

i haven’t been this angry at someone for a LOOOOONG time… and it is very likely that “meowphhtkitty” has no idea who i am or what my circumstances are…

but if she thinks that she’s going to be a no-show twice, AND be associated with the place that let the PHBFH step on my balls, she’s got another think coming.

FEZOROCITY!

fezthe first of two fezzes arrived in the mail today, which is surprising considering how large it is and the fact that i only won it on tuesday. it is, however, everything that it was advertised to be, and a whole bunch more: it comes with a support which is a gadget to keep its shape when it’s not being worn, and a rain cover(!)… and it’s from peoria! i’m not 100% certain of this (and, at this point, the only person who would know is my mother, to whom i have not spoken in 5 years, at her request), but there’s a very strong probability (≈95%) that my grandfather was a member of the mohammed shrine. it doesn’t have my grandfather’s name in it, but it’s not too difficult to pretend, especially when you have a hole in your skull to begin with… 😉

i now own two fezzes, and soon i will own three fezzes! it just goes to show you what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it… and have internet backing you up… 8)

also, i realised that my being #32 in the order of the fez is just another confirmation of the law of fives, which is the discordian concept that all things happen in fives, or are some how, directly or indirectly, related to the number five. i’ve always thought that Tina Chopp and Eris are good friends, if not two different names for the same being…

linque dump Ⅲ

At 13,000 years, tree is world’s oldest organism – that’s incredible… something that has been alive longer than humanity as such has been on the planet… it should be a clear indication to the creationists that they’re wrong, but it’s not.

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come! – by bishop john shelby spong. someone who the “christians” would be wise to listen to… but they won’t.

Google’s Street View camera car hits a baby deer – and, of course, takes pictures of it.

why are people SO FUCKING IGNORANT?!?

Ugandan president urges softening of anti-gay bill – this is the ugandan president, saying – once again – that he is not going to allow the “kill gays” bill to pass. an admirable effort, if it actually happens, however, despite repeated assurances from the ugandan president, i still doubt will actually come to pass.

at the same time…

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda – this is somewhat of a surprise, considering their stance on killing gays. you get the impression from the first article that uganda is mostly a country of mortified “christians” who want to avoid the gay plague. there’s no clue from the first article that uganda is also a place where “crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.”

if they’re really just mortified “christians” then i would suspect them to shun “witchcraft” as well, but somehow these supposedly “christian” ugandans are more mortified about gays than they are child-murdering “witch-doctors”.

it’s as though they’re saying “it’s perfectly normal for us to want to kill gays, because they’re evil, but when it comes to getting ahead, a little child sacrifice, especially if it is someone else’s child, couldn’t hurt anyone.”

“(Homosexuality) is not allowed in African culture. We have to protect the children in schools who are being recruited into homosexual activities.”… but if there’s even the remotest chance that doing so would help us get a little bit ahead, we’re not above mutilating or killing children, either…

i’m not sure i even want to try to understand that one… 😐

damn!

i have recently discovered that i have been ripped off by two different companies since december. the first one was the host servicie that i was so excited about a few months ago, 1&1 internet, who, i have since discovered, earned an "F" from the Better Business Bureau for “Number of complaints filed against business, Failure to respond to complaints filed against business, Number of complaints filed against business that were unresolved and Overall complaint history with BBB”. they “bait-and-switched” me into a contract for hosting services that ended up costing 12 times more than i would have agreed to, and then, in spite of the fact that their headquarters is in germany, they claimed to not understand when i told them that 4/10 didn’t mean the 10th of april, it meant the 4th of october…

the second company is Pipeline Data Processing, otherwise known as SecurePay, which also has an "F" from the BBB, has a reputation for holding funds, and charging you for things after you’ve already cancelled your account – like they did with me. and they said that it was all in the contract i signed, but i never signed a contract. the contract they sent me when i complained about the $300 withdrawal had a scan of my signature that could have been off a check or something… but i NEVER signed a contract. i was actually lead to believe that there wasn’t going to be any long-term contract.

the thing that pisses me off so much, though, is the fact that i would have learned about these rip-offs simply by typing the name of the company and the word “complaints” into google. instead, i figured that it was okay because the people sounded sincere, and signed up with both of them, and got ripped off. i am not immune to the very big stupid… 😡

i’m going to have to close my business account and open another one, because of pipeline data processing’s propensity for random charges well after my contract was cancelled, i’ve already got an investigation going at the bank, and the pipeline representative recommended that we file a police report for fraud, because they weren’t going to look into it otherwise.

garbage drama

back to mundane stuff…

they haven’t picked up our trash for two months, ever since we switched to once-a-month trash pickup, so i called to find out what was going on. it’s not that we haven’t paid, either, because we haven’t gotten a bill in two months as well. in fact, they sent the bill on the 14th, and it’s probably already been paid, but that’s beside the point. when i called to switch to once-a-month pickup, they told me that it would be on the first thursday of the month. so i put the trash out and they didn’t pick it up, so i called and they said that they had made a mistake, that they would pick it up on the last thursday of the month. so i waited for 3 weeks, put the trash out, and – they didn’t pick it up… 8/

so i decided on another tack, and put the trash out every week last month. they picked up our recycling (which is most of our waste these days, fortunately) on the second and fourth thursdays, just like they’re supposed to, but they didn’t pick up the trash! 8/

so i called them this morning. they told me that the pickup would be on the first thursday of the month, then they changed their minds and said that it would be on the last thursday of the month. then, realising that they had just given me conflicting information, they said that they would check it out and call me back. about a half-hour later, i talked with the dispatcher for the company that covers south king county waste management, who told me that the real pickup date was the thursday of the first full week of the month. not only that, but she said that, because of the fact that customer service was confused about our pickup dates, our address was not even included on the route list that they gave to the driver, which is why we haven’t had a pickup in two months.

that’s all very well and good, i said, but the fact is that our trash hasn’t been picked up in two months, and i’m running out of space. so the dispatcher for south king county says that she will request a “courtesy pickup” (“for no charge”), since there was a screwup on their end. a half-hour or so later, i heard the garbage truck backing up, and fifteen minutes or so after that, i get another call from the dispatcher, who says that they tried to pick up the trash, but the can was too heavy and their driver couldn’t lift it. we have our own, 33 gallon container, which has to be loaded by hand, rather than paying the county for a 35 gallon container that the truck can pick up, and the driver has a weight limit to spare him having to lift heavy trash bags into the truck, so if i wanted our trash picked up, i was going to have to go down and “portion it out” into chunks that were small enough for the driver to lift.

so i broke it down into three garbage bags and the remaining garbage in the can, and supposedly they’re supposed to come back tomorrow, and of course, now that we’re back on the route list, the next trash pickup is supposed to be next thursday… 8/

i’ll believe it when i see it. meanwhile, if i reckoned correctly, we just paid a bill for $60 for the past two months… when, because of a screwup on their part, we weren’t getting any service at all

grumble, mutter… and they wonder why i get upset about things like this… 8/

hee…

i’m still sick. i went to see a doctor (i am uninsured, so it cost two arms and half a leg!) today. the good news is that i don’t have pneumonia, but i do have bronchitis, so now i have an inhaler (which cost the other half a leg) which is good for 20 days. the doctor said that i would probably be feeling better in a week or so, but that the inhaler would help me get through the banda gozona gig that i have on saturday, the fremont philharmonic rehearsal on monday, and the snake suspenderz gig on thursday. dr. wackaloon (no shit… okay, so he’s not really dr. wackaloon, but his real name is closer to “wackaloon” than you might think) said my blood pressure was a little high – 150/100 – my pulse was high and my oxygen level was low, so he told me to check my blood pressure again in a week, which is another reason to have a sphygmomanometer, one of which i have wanted for about 15 years. he also didn’t believe me when i said that my profession was “freak”. oh well.

plagiarism

gah… i’ve been sicker than i have been in a long time over the past few days, which has left me in a fouler mood than normal, and it hasn’t been being helped at all by the person i mentioned in my last post. i’m on the uphill swing, at this point, but i’m still pretty sick, which is going to be interesting, since i have to take a five-mile walk to pick up Ganesha The Car from the shop this morning, and later on i have a fremont philharmonic rehearsal, which is probably not going to end up happening, because i’m so sick.

i was reviewing my web statistics a few days ago, and discovered that the person, a nandita prabhu who has several other blogs as well as the one linked in my previous post (which no longer exists), posted a new entry in one of her blogs called Plagiarism, where she outlines the process by which she gets artwork to post in her various blogs. she says things like:

People allow me to use these copyright images (I take their permission)

and

I think it is “Ok” for my readers to “borrow” the content of my blog but please ask me before you decide to do so.

and

To sum up, You want to borrow something that’s fine all you have to do is “ASK”.

not only that, but all of her blogs are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, but the images that she hotlinked from me, and the images from other sources that i checked on his “The Broken Tusk” blog (which is now deleted) all had very clear watermarks or other indications that they were actually copyright to other places, and there’s no indication, not only that she has permission to relicence the images, but that she has permission to use the images at all.

strangely, when i received email from her on friday, she said

i had no idea of this at all. Infact I have been doing this from so long and i had no idea its wrong. Is it a problem even if i say that the pic is from this website ( like source) ?

and other things that, if i hadn’t actually read her blogs – all of them – would make me believe that she has any idea that this is the wrong way to approach “borrowing” other peoples’ artwork.

normally i don’t give much credibility to any laws governing “intellectual property”, but in this case, she’s coming across to me as one thing, and she’s posting on her blogs something entirely the opposite, which makes me very suspicious indeed. it seems to me like she is trying to come across in her email as a clueless newbie, and in her blog as a person who has her shit together, which is not a way to gain my confidence in the least.

i commented on her blog, and have received several emails from her. i guess i’m going to have to wait to see how this all works out, but at this point, i don’t hold out much hope. i’m certainly not going to prosecute myself, but considering how many other web sites she “borrowed” artwork from (several of which replace the hotlinked graphics with ones that say things like “this image stolen from…” – i’d be willing to bet that someone else will, unless she gets her shit together.

coming to the end of another moisture festival

i met ukulele dick at the moisture festival the other day. his “real name”, acording to his schtick, is Banjo Penis. i traded him a copy of serpentine for a copy of his ukulele dick cd and a copy of his “Dick Dujour” cd, Music to Scare Children by. i’ve been listening to them on and off throughout the day, and i must say, the guy is more than just a ukulele player. i also made buttons for him that say “Act Dorky, Live Forever”. i’ve got performances on friday and sunday for sure, and possibly saturday.

the big news, or maybe not so big if you hang out with the right people, i guess, is that circus contraption is breaking up. i have no idea why, but i can imagine, as with most artistic organisations like that, that there were some artistic differences somewhere along the lines.

other news: my SSDI hearing is the 24th. i’m approaching it with an interesting mixture of hilarity and dread. i got to see part of the forms ned was filling out earlier in the week, and he said about 10 things, of which i would think that 1 of which should be enough to get me on the “disabled” list in a perfect world, but because of the fact that the world is decidedly imperfect, i don’t know if it will help or not. we’re going to work on it some more after the moisture festival is over.

also i’m getting ready to be able to accept credit cards on hybrid elephant, but i’ve only gotten one order since i went live with the new site, so i’m wondering if i can’t put it off for another month until i get more of an idea about whether or not people are going to notice it.

despite the fact that i won the battle of the computer in record time – this time – i learned a bunch of things that i didn’t know in the process. the main thing i learned is that the intermittent quiet scratching noise coming from the computer is the power supply fan, which, instead of turning on and doing what it is supposed to do when power is applied, in fact, it rotates weakly, not anywhere near fast enough to be anything like the heat sink that it’s supposed to be, and intermittently emits a scratching sound that makes me think that it, too, is not long for this world.

johnny jetpack

Johnny Jetpack Propulsion Laboratories

on friday, the combined birthdays of nathan arnold, aka johnny jetpack propulsion laboratories, and christopher huson, aka mr. bunny, among others was celebrated. combined total 100 years, 50 a piece. the fremont philharmonic played, as did the titanium sporkestra. nathan is a major source of inspiration for me, because he does really stupid cool things with dangerous substances like liquid nitrogen and high intensity lasers. there are a whole bunch of photos there, and all of them were made out of selected junk, with the exception of a smoke machine, which was actually not used that much…

and that thing that looks like a water bottle, is, in fact, a water bottle.

my name is salamandir and i’m a geek

i’m a geek. i have known it for a while, and there have been several events in my life that have made it sometimes painfully obvious. well, this is one of those events in my life. there is a link on the wikipedia page about cantheism which is in the “External link & sorce” part of the page, the first link is to a “Cantheist website”, which, if you click it, takes you to a pretty green page all about cantheism, with a link at the bottom to Chris Conrad’s web site

that is all very well and good, but what i discovered this afternoon is that it is on a domain that i own and have control over… and i didn’t know it was there.

not only that, but there are apparently other pages in the same directory, complete with graphics, that i not only didn’t know about, but have not linked on my own site, that i know of, in at least 10 years. the date on the page that has a date is september 15, 2000, which may be around the time they were placed there.

upon further investigation, of course, i discovered that they actually are linked to one of the pages that i haven’t looked at since about 2001. i posted the information, and forgot about it. but internet didn’t, and now, without me having to do anything, a page of information that I make available is a resource on wikipedia.

tee hee

meme cover art

i don’t usually go for this kind of thing too often, but this one came up with such appropriate stuff on the first time that i had to share. i followed the directions at Wikipedia Names Your Band and came up with this for a band name, this for a title, and this for artwork. i haven’t decided what kind of music “CSM Râmnicu S?rat” plays yet, but there are all sorts of possibilities, especially with an album title and artwork like that… 😎

spam?

i got this very strange email today. it said:

you drive like you have sand in your vagina. your car smells like ass and I thougbt my friend crapped her pants but it was just your nasty car. I hate you.

i’m puzzled that anyone would respond that way to me. i’m not surprised that people react to my car, that happens all the time. what puzzles me is the combination of stuff that, if taken separately, would each represent a valid, if totally ludicrous complaint about my car and/or its occupants… but taken as a whole, i just have to sit back and wonder who they are and why they were so upset with me.

i don’t know what it must be like to have sand in ones vagina, but i can’t imagine that it would be very comfortable, and it would probably limit ones mobility quite a bit. i don’t know about anybody else, but i use my car to enhance my mobility, and if they saw me driving, then they would doubtlessly be aware of that. also, i am a very contientious driver: i make mistakes from time to time – i just got a ticket from one of those automated corner-watcher-robot-flashy things in federal way – but most of the time i’m a very safe driver, whether it’s on the street or on the freeway.

and if they saw me driving, then how can they be sure that it was my car that smelled like ass? i have driven through some mighty smelly areas within the past week or so, and the smell was definitely not coming from my car. if they saw the car while it was parked somewhere, i can understand why they might react that way, even though i know for certain that my car doesn’t smell like ass. it also doesn’t smell like what you would expect a car to smell like, and i’m pretty sure that some of the numbskulls around here would not be able to tell the difference. but at the same time, it makes me wonder how they saw me driving poorly enough to know that i drive like i had sand in my vagina?

and to wrap the whole thing up, they say “i hate you” – in case what they said previously hasn’t sunk in yet. well, personally, i would think that if a person was wound up enough to say the other things about me, saying “i hate you” is overstating it a little. it’s as though they thought they weren’t being clear enough about their feelings, and wanted to make sure that i knew what they were talking about. it also makes me think that they were just ranting to rant and picked me because my email form was easily accessible.

i think, and this is all just conjecture, because i’ll never know for certain (the return address on the email response form was [email protected], and i’ve already tried and failed to sent email to that address), but it’s possible that this was written by one of the teenagers that sped past me on the freeway this afternoon, only subsequently to get pulled over by the police. my guess is that they got pulled over for speeding and/or reckless driving because they incredulously and minutely examined all sides of my car – at freeway speeds – before blasting forwards at about 90 miles per hour… whereupon the fuzz, who was in an unmarked car to my right rear, and who i knew was there, flipped on their lights and went after ’em.

i guess feedback is one of the reasons why my feedback form is there, but sometimes i really wonder whether such things are good to have in a place where just anybody can get hold of them… 8/

bleep bloop boing bing…

snake suspenderz is playing at the national kazoo day celebration on saturday. we’ll be playing at the back gate stage at artichoke music on hawthorne in portland. we spent all day today and completed mixdown of all 16 tracks, and we should have a stack of 50 finished, marketable CDs to take with us on saturday.

the fremont philharmonic is in full rehearsal mode for the moisture festival, and i may be playing tuba for the sanca-pators in the moisture festival as well: i heard from a couple of sanca-pators (clayton – who also plays with BSSB and banda gozona – and thaddeus – who also plays with snake suspenderz) that they might need a tuba player, so i wrote to eben, the leader of the sanca-pators – who also plays with BSSB – but i haven’t heard back from him yet. is that incestuous enough for your sensibilities? the fremont phil has got a few other gigs coming up, including a benefit for honk fest west at the end of february. allegedly we’re going to play in honk fest west in june as well, although my recollection is that we were supposed to play last year, as well, and then we cancelled out at the last minute.

moe got home saturday, and i took the doggies with me to the airport, so that they could see that she really was somewhere else and not just hiding from them for the past 2 weeks. they spent almost the entire time she was gone, and they were home, staring at the door and barking occasionally when they imagined that they heard her driving up, as though they were going to cause her to walk through the front door by sheer force of their doggie wills. paddy, our oldest dog now that allie is gone (she’s 11) lost 5% of her body weight during the time moe was gone. she ate all of her food, and i didn’t notice her acting strangely or anything, but moe said she looked thin, so she took her to the clinic yesterday. she doesn’t appear unhealty, but moe is extra careful with paddy, because they are as close to soul mates as a person and a dog can be.

banda gozona played at the central area senior center in a benefit for cascade peoples’ center last saturday, after moe got home. it was the standard oaxacan shindig, which meant a lot of food, a lot of music, a lot of people speaking spanish, and a lot of chaotic disorganisation. i’m beginning to start to get the hang of what we are playing most of the time. it’s only taken me two years of playing with the group. it helps that i’m not the new guy any longer.

also…

i upgraded to WordPress 2.7 last night, and it’s still pretty shiny and new, but i’ll see what i can do about mucking things up soon enough. at the moment, i wonder about the header graphic, which used to have a pretty purplish gradient in it, but now, from what i can see, is a glaring emergency orange-ish.

ETA: it’s not orange any more, but apparently the upgrade broke my ability to make the header more than one colour. presumably there will be a fix for it eventually, but in the mean time, i changed it to all purple instead of all orange… easier on the eyes…

i am a fucking terrorist, damn it!

god damn it, it’s a fucking good thing i don’t live in south carolina, otherwise i’d be guilty of a fucking felony and face a fine of fucking five thousand dollars… i wonder what shit-for-brains asshole came up with that idea, and if they’ve ever read the fucking bill of rights before they accepted their fucking job… >8/

interesting/amusing/annoying

so in restoring the Church of Tina, i discovered that, for some (obvious now, but then it was a) mysterious reason, the entire site worked the way it was supposed to, except for this page, which is part of the church of tina’s elaborate disclaimer. instead of getting the page, i was getting a “403 – Forbidden” error (similar to the much more common “404 – File Not Found” error, which you have undoubtedly seen before). i didn’t remember it being forbidden before, and so i renamed the file, and re-uploaded it in an attempt to straighten out the problem, but it was still showing up as forbidden. then i looked at the page with my linux terminal and discovered that the reason why it wasn’t working was because the permissions had been reset to 600 – which means the owner of the file (presumably me) can read and modify the file, but if you’re not me, then you can’t even see the file. when i reset the permissions to 644 (i can modify the file, and everyone else can read it), it reappeared on the web site like magic – no more 403 error!

except for the fact that I would not have reset the permissions so that nobody could see it, and the only people who administrative permissions on the file (which would supercede my permissions) are the host providers – drizzle!

i don’t know this for sure, and i can guarantee that if they did do something strange like change the permissions on the file without telling me, that they wouldn’t admit to it, but i would bet that the subject of the file in question contacted drizzle and complained, and drizzle arbitrarily changed the permissions on the file in order to get her to shut up and go away.

they were sneaky enough to not just delete the file (because then i would know that they had been up to no good), but they did something to the file that wouldn’t be perceived by someone who is using windoesn’t, and only perceived by someone using mac or *ix by looking at it with the terminal, which nobody uses these days…

goddamn drizzle anyway… i can’t wait to get another ISP… 8P

what?

i got the first incense order of 2009 today, but i ended up refunding it, because it was for $18 worth of incense and they wanted it shipped to great britain, which would add an extra $35 to the cost, and i can’t see receiving a package that is worth more than its contents making someone very happy. people keep doing this: ordering a relatively small amount of incense and then asking me to ship it to obscure places like brazil, turkey or england. don’t get me wrong, i’m happy that customers from that far away are coming to me for incense and stuff, but there has got to be some way of letting such people know that the shipping costs are going to bite them in the ass…

8/

i just got email from the guy. apparently he is fine with the extra cost (which i can’t figure out, but under these circumstances, i won’t argue with him), but now he’s got to resubmit his order… wonderful.

new years’ rant

okay, over at Unreasonable Faith there’s a discussion going on which started out with the guy giving believers “your chance to convince us atheists there is a God. Pitch your best case for why we should believe in a deity”. i normally agree with atheists a lot more than i do with “christians”, but i couldn’t resist, especially since mine is a somewhat unique position (which i will explain more fully in a minute) to which few, if any, other people subscribe – which is just fine with me.

although, as i said, i tend to agree with athiests a lot more than i do with most “believers”, ultimately, i am a “believer” myself, and everything that i have experienced to this day only drives home to me that my way of thinking is the correct one for me, if for no other person. i know that a God exists, and that He (for lack of a better term) has three defining characteristics: the God that i worship is infinite, unchanging and eternal. ultimately, the God in Whom i beleve can be described as existing beyond “normal logic” because of the fact that in order to meet the criteria of being infinite, unchanging and eternal, God would have to be able to do what seem to us like impossible things, for example being in multiple places at the same time, or being both right and wrong, or both black and white, at the same time, without having to worry about whether or not one thing conflicts with the other. if what you call “god” is unable to exhibit these three qualities then, to me you are not referring to the God that i know to exist.

i realise that this puts me in the category of “mystics” (some might say “crazy people”, i’ll deal with them in a minute) who say that God exists beyond normal understanding, and without some sort of “mystical experience” you’ll never understand what i am talking about, but i’m not the only one to believe this way, and from what i’ve been able to see, the ones who believed the way i do had significant hardships, but were a great deal happier overall than people who went along with the herd, whether athiest or “christian”.

i look at my life as depicted in this story, called When the Waters Changed

Once upon a time, Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially horded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water which, when consumed, would drive men mad.

Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.

On the appointed date, the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.

When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they seemed to have no memory of having changed, or being warned that it would happen. When he tried to talk to them, he realised that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.

At first he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

eventually, i’ll run out of my special store of water, and be forced to drink the water everyone else is drinking. then, presumably, i will give up thinking like a crazy person and start thinking like everyone else.

if that happens, please kill me.

happy new year.

happy VEWPRF

i-love-satan.jpg

in the past, i’ve tried to go along with whatever holiday might be celebrated around me whether i “believed in it” or not, however in the past few years it’s gotten to the point where i’ve taken a long, hard look at the traditions, the history, and the meaning of several Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festivals (VEWPRFs) and tried as much as possible to separate myself from them, primarily because of the fact that i don’t “believe in them” in any conventional sense, and to me, the people that really do believe in them, particularly “christians” really make me wonder about the future of the human race. i’ve had the chance to go “caroling” with a bunch of other brass players, and while i appreciate the music very much, and would really like to get together with a bunch of people who all appreciate the music, and can play it well, i decided not to go – and not entirely because of the fact that “the weather outside was frightful” (although that was about ⅔ of the reason). the weather is also the reason we won’t be spending xmas (one of the VEWPRFs i was talking about) with the inlaws in portland this year – although we probably will be spending new years day with them (’cause i have the gig where i’m paid the most amount of money i have ever been paid for something EVER on new years eve – i’m being paid $100 an hour for an hour’s performance with snake suspenderz), and while it won’t exactly be the same as xmas with them, it will still very likely have the same history and meaning. with my in-laws particularly, i have learned that it’s a lot easier if i keep my mouth shut, because, if nothing else, they give good presents and don’t expect an awful lot other than to see that my wife is healthy and happy, which she seems to be taking care of all by herself.

dont-fuck-with-santa-claus.jpg

and when you look at xmas, from it’s beginnings all the way to today, you discover that it’s basically one lie after another with no apologies or attempts to hide them: jesus, if he ever even really existed, was more than likely born in the spring, and the fact that his birthday is celebrated when it is, is primarily because of the fact that the “christian” church took over pagan solstice celebrations of one kind or another, and in the process of making it basically illegal to have any other kind of celebration, at the same time it started pushing it’s own version of VEWPRF as a “legal substitute” so that the (formerly) pagan worshippers – who still continue to this day – wouldn’t rise up and overthrow their oppressors. and at this late date, there’s less of “jesus’ birth” and more commercialism and “santa claus”, to the point where jesus – the supposed “reason for the season” (which, in reality, can more be attributed to axial tilt than the birth of a supposed “saviour”) – is almost forgotten, even by supposed “christians” for whom this should be a time to remember their saviour. and that brings up the discussion: “saved from what?” saved from sin? who created sin? if it was God, then didn’t he have some reason for creating it? shouldn’t He expect us to sin, if He created it to begin with? if it wasn’t, then why do we have to be saved from it? how is jesus any more likely to save me than norm, down the street, or myself, for that matter? if it weren’t for the fact that i have experienced “the indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (which is nothing at all like the “christian” people would have you believe), i would deny that such a thing exists, simply because of the fact that the way the “christians” describe it is totally absurd. if it weren’t forced on them when they were children and unable to see how the adults were lying to them, “christianity” would have completely vanished ages ago.

and as far as my experience of the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit”, which happened many years ago (although it continues to this day), i am aware of the fact that it’s such a profound, personal experience, that any attempt i make to describe what it was like will sound equally absurd. i’m okay with that, and don’t blame you if you think i’m crazy, but like i said, it was so much different from what the “christians” say that comparing the two is a difficult thing. my impression is that “christians” only have about a quarter of the story, and instead of being inspired to learn about the ever expansive THING that they call God, they’ve decided that that’s all you ever need, and are afraid of anything that stretches beyond their comfort zone.

so, along with everything else, my views about both Christmas and xmas (similar to the difference between Christians and “christians”, for those of you who are keeping score) are skewed enough that celebrating it myself is kind of out of the question, despite my general tendency to celebrate whatever holiday “most of us” are celebrating. so you’ll pardon me while i wish everyone a happy VEWPRF and go off and hide somewhere until february so i don’t have to listen to another round of “Jingle Bell Rock”. 8/

SNOWPOCALYPSE! OMG! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!1!

081221 snowpocalypse!

cinderella finished its second week of performances amid more snow than i’ve seen around here for a long time. it started snowing on thursday and finally quit yesterday, but there’s a prediction that it’s going to start up again tomorrow… i took the train from tacoma to seattle saturday (quite an enjoyable trip, by the way) and stayed at heather and stuart’s place saturday night. my windows computer is broken (again) – it appears to be the same sort of thing that it was the last time, in that it appears to be a power supply issue, so i’m hoping that i can replace the power cord (again) and everything will be back to normal, but i’m not holding my breath. i took my mac laptop with me on saturday and recorded both shows and 5 potential demos for the fremont phil, which i have since burned to a DVD (although i didn’t have to, because even with several gigs of space taken up by the recordings, i still had more than 120 gigs of free space left!!!). sunday i did another show, without a trumpet player, because our regular trumpet player, teacher ted, thought he was going to fly out early sunday morning (fat chance – all flights out of sea-tac were cancelled due to the snowpocalypse), and our substitute trumpet player, a high school student named shimpuku, was stuck north of lake washington. after the show, i got a ride home from macque and norma, who have a four-wheel-drive jeep with chains, which is a good thing, because the roads were almost totally impassable due to seattle’s having this weird thing about encouraging compact snow and ice rather than salting the roads. the national weather service prediction is for precipitation, most probably snow, at least 50% (and as much as 80%) of the time until thursday, and has predicted snow for 8 out of the past 10 days. we had around a foot and a half of snow, and had to dig the car out, and then dig the driveway out before we could go anywhere yesterday. when we finally got dug out, we went to buy tire chains for moe’s car, and on the way discovered that the car was overheating – or so we thought, it was actually the temperature gauge that died – not the thermostat, the temperature gauge in the instrument panel, fortunately, because if it had been the thermostat it would have cost several hundred dollars to fix, but because of the fact that it’s in the instrument panel, it’s actually safe to drive the car even though the temperature is wonky. of course, the first thing that happened this morning is that moe decided that it wasn’t snowing right then, so she would try to go in to work, and on the way she drove over something that broke the chains, so she had to stop the car in the middle of highway 99 (thank gawd she wasn’t on the freeway) and take them off, leaving her with a big, empty minivan with no traction, somewhere between home and mercer island at 6:30 in the morning.

anyway, the cinderella performances went amazingly well despite sunday’s lack of a trumpet player, and saturday evening, when we weren’t expecting anybody to show up, we actually had almost a full house, including a whole pile of noisy kids which was almost exactly like OCF. Fremont Philharmonic dot com is now in existence, but it doesn’t have much there at this point except for stuff that only applies to members of the fremont phil. also i’m talking with macque and bfly about consolidating all of the fremonstor theatrical organisations on one host.

“christian” =? child abuser

this morning during my daily perusal of the RSS feeds, i learned that yet another young “christian” couple has been arrested in relation to the death of their two-year-old daughter. if my two-year-old child had died, i would be upset, to say the least, and if i had been arrested in connection with that child’s death it would definitely add several more layers of stress to the whole ordeal, but this couple were arrested because they – wait for it – allegedly

beat their child to death with a hammer, to “excorcise demons” from her.

now i’m not saying that child abuse is solely a “christian” thing (i was subjected to abuse myself, as a child, and my parents are agnostic as far as i know, and i’m not talking about this sort of thing, which could be seen as child abuse or a tasteless joke – pun intended) but things like this, especially when it comes to young couples who feel the need to “excorcise” whatever demonic spirits inhabit their child, is not only ridiculously common, but it appears to get “swept under the rug” by most of “normal” society – although how anyone could consider beating a child to death with a hammer for any reason “normal” is beyond me. and i’m sure that people who aren’t “christian” beat their children with hammers, and other things, far too frequently, which makes me wonder: why is it that, when something like this appears in the news media, the perpetrators aren’t specifically identified as “christians”? if they were even suspected of being wiccans, for example, there would be no hesitation to directly identify them as such, to further villify their religious beliefs. but i read two or three articles a week concerning “christians” who torture and/or kill their children, or “christian” leaders caught having sex with children, or that sort of thing, and while it is made obvious by the context of the article that the perpetrators are “christian”, there’s no direct mention of it.

furthermore, i wonder if any studies have been done on the percentages of different religions who abuse their children. i’d be willing to bet that “christianity” is right up there near the top of the heap…

growl!!

okay, some time between now and the middle of january (the sooner the better as far as i’m concerned) there will be an interruption of services for a couple of days (maximum) while i swich host service providers. the last straw for me came yesterday when i called drizzle support with a question about hybrid elephant, only to discover that somehow, unbeknownst to me, the hybrid elephant account information was for someone in spokane – liz dreisbach, the leader of the ballard sedentary sousa band. somehow drizzle got the impression that, back in august(!!) when liz changed the contact information for sedentarysousa.com, she was also changing the contact information for hybridelephant.com. so now, according to drizzle, hybridelephant.com now belongs to liz, despite the fact that hybrid elephant has been under my control for the past five years(!!) and they hadn’t even contacted me to find out whether or not this was actually the case!!

of course the control panel access still belongs to me, but if i hadn’t found out about it, liz would have very likely been billed for hybrid elephant in january, which would have been tremendously confusing and embarrassing for both me and her, but that’s not the complete reason why i’m switching host providers. drizzle disabled telnet/SSH access to their servers back in march or some time earlier this year, and recently they decided to disable news services (usenet) as well, which is something that i use fairly regularly. also, in the past year or so their “technical support” personnel have become extremely surly and incompetent. not only that, but in researching host service providers i came across two, at least, that offer more services, and are less than half the cost of drizzle.

i have been a drizzle.com user ever since i switched away from aa.net, almost 10 years ago, and i have owned the hybridelephant domain since 2002. i suppose i’m lucky to have gotten 10 years of reasonable service from them, but it’s time for a change. now, along with everything else, i have to prepare my web sites to be moved, get in touch with my registrar to change the domain host profile on my domains, contact spamcop to change my “real” email address, and probably a whole bunch of other things that i haven’t thought of yet. 8P~

I AM A TERRORIST IN SPITE OF THE GOVERNMENT! (and you should be too, if you know what’s good for you)

this is not supposed to happen: Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

not here. not in MY country. not in the country founded on this document with these enumerated rights and this declaration of independence from state-mandated tyrrany signed by these men.

it’s time for action: it’s time to either leave the country, or start fomenting revolution or – preferrably – both. yes, the government has “changed”, but in spite of everything that has been said apparently it’s still just business as usual, and nobody seems to be taking the slightest bit of notice as the government is snatched away from “we the people” in bits and pieces right before our eyes!

the police and sherrifs are supposed to handle law enforcement. the national guard is supposed to handle civic emergency response. the military is for fighting wars. deploying the military on united states soil is declaring war against the inhabitants of that land.

That’s us, citizens.

and yes, i know they SAY it’s to bolster security against terrorism and national emergencies. just like the patriot act and FISA and no-fly lists were supposed to do. and yet, everyday citizens are being prosecuted or restricted based on discoveries from these “protective” mandates for non-terrorism or treasonous activity.

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a guidebook.

welcome to the U. S. S. A.

Continue reading I AM A TERRORIST IN SPITE OF THE GOVERNMENT! (and you should be too, if you know what’s good for you)

HA!

There Probably Is has a rotating text header that says, among other things:

Think For Yourself!
Christians have always offered people opportunity to explore for themselves. We want to give you an opportunity to think for yourself. What’s missing from life when you take God out of the picture?

this is the same web site which belongs to the guy who claims to be a “spiritual leader” of a community, who has, so far, completely ignored my honest query to him.

this is exactly why i’m so frustrated with “christian” behaviour. i exist, despite your efforts to ignore me, and i won’t go away any faster if you pretend i don’t.

in other news, it’s all their fault: much to the chagrin of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, McDonald’s has patented the making of a sandwich.

VALIDATION!

if i needed more, here is yet more confirmation that hinduism is correct path for me, regardless of what the “christians” have to say about it: i emailed Rev. Evan Cockshaw, who is the genius behind "There Probably Is" and asked him why he hasn’t posted my "testimony” yet", and guess what?

he ignored me. of course…

it seems pretty typical for “christians” to ignore someone if they’re not immediately willing to accept the dreck they’re swimming in. on the other hand, as i’ve said before, the hindu teachers i have met – even the bogus ones – have taken delight in answering questions that would appear to be blasphemous to the normal “christian” mind. and even the bogus hindu teachers i’ve experienced are more entertaining than about 99% of the “christians” i have experienced.

also Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’

Continue reading VALIDATION!

hungary harrison “christian”

that’s where some guy ordered incense from today – budapest, hungary. he ordered $4.25 worth of incense, so i have to add $50 shipping for $4.25 worth of incense.

personally, i think he should know that it would be cheaper (and probably better quality) to buy it closer to home, but i think the problem is that internet makes normal people stupid. i have many examples of this: regan fraser, brendan fraser‘s brother, was my housemate at one point about 15 years ago, and when he found out that i worked with internet, he begged me to get involved in this scheme that he had to rip people off by accessing their bank accounts over internet. or the client that i currently have who is convinced that his virus protection program “is tired” of notifying him that he has a virus – he’s convinced that he’s got a virus, even though three different virus scanners have given him a clean bill of health…

someone turned me on to a whole pile of information about my great-great-great-grandfather and his descendants that are a part of my family, but not directly related to me. apparently such people include William Henry Harrison along with several other william henry harrisons (I through V, i think).

i submitted the following to There Probably Is dot com, and i really hope they actually post it, but i get the impression that they won’t.

Brief Biography
I am a Hindu Christian Dervish Buddhist Thelemic Tinite Antichrist Anarchist Tuba-Playing ? (??? – Canis nyctereutes procyonoides) with a Brain Injury.

Submit your story
I believe in God because … i was raised by parents who were largely agnostic. They may have had some religion, but if they did, they kept it to themselves. I attended a Unitarian church when I was small, but the classes I took were more along creative lines than religious ones, and I grew up thinking of “church” as more of a social club than a place for worship.

Then, when I was first starting college, I encountered people who claimed to be “christian” but were more like parrots than people in terms of what they told me about “christianity”. They couldn’t give me a good enough reason to believe, apart from pie-in-the-sky promises to which nobody in their right mind would pay attention.

I took a class called “Introduction to Personal Philosophy” which everybody informally called “The Fly In The Fly-Bottle” or just “the fly-bottle class” in which there was an assignment that caused me to change my mind. The assignment was “for a certain, set period of time (I chose a month), act as though there is an all-powerful God and see how your life changes.” As soon as I believed that there was a God, I was able to see Him everywhere, although He (and I use the term advisedly) was not what the “christians” said He was like at all. For one thing, He wasn’t always a “He” – sometimes She was a thought, or feeling, or a smell. I quickly learned that when coincidences happen – for example, I went for an entire week where the price of everything I bought ended with 84 cents – that is God communicating with me in a way that I didn’t immediately understand. Everywhere I looked, and everywhere I look to this day, I see God essentially “peering out” from behind everything, saying “Here I am!” There is no question that I have of God that He has not answered, and He guides my every step.

His name is Ganesha.

i guess i’m disappointed with them for discriminating against me, but at the same time, what did i expect from a “christian” web site?

meh!

the battle of the computer has begun again… 8/

i was finishing recovery from the battle of a couple months ago, and (finally) getting around to installing LilyPond. admittedly, the computer was a little busier than normal, because i also had firefox, openoffice, the gimp and my music player running at the same time, and the computer crashed. as i was already running late to get to a client’s place by 3:30, i figured i’d start the whole process over when i got home, so i just shut everything down and took off.

when i returned, at 10:30, i booted the computer and i had a bizarre icon in the “systray”-like thing in what passes for the task bar in kubuntu, which i discovered was the “disconnected” icon for the network manager. this was a little strange, but not entirely unexpected, so i got out the terminal and typed in ifconfig eth0 down and then ifconfig eth0 up, but nothing happened. i fudged around with some of my system settings to see if that did any good, but ultimately i couldn’t get it connected, so i went to bed.

this morning i got up early and tried to get the network connected, because i had to transpose a part for the ed mcmichael memorial that i am playing for tomorrow, and, as the network was disconnected on my main computer, that meant that i had to transpose the part on windows (which is the only other place that i have lilypond installed). so i fired up windows and, lo and behold, the “Local Area Network cable disconnected” icon was there, as well. 8/

so then i fired up MacOsX, which went out and found internet without a problem – naturally. but i then realised that the macs are connecting directly with the router via wireless, whereas linux and windows connect to the router by way of wires, which go through an ethernet switch. so, i unplugged linux from the switch and plugged it directly into the router, and it worked. 8/

so i’ve narrowed down what is wrong, and at this point i have ordered a new ethernet switch, which should be delivered in 3 days or so, but the only computers that currently have network access are the wireless computers (mine and moe’s) and linux – and, despite everything, i still haven’t gotten mac and linux to talk to each other. 8/

and, to make matters worse, i had to resort to using a flash disk “sneaker net” to ferry the transposed part from windows to linux, where i could print it.

i guess i should be glad i know how to figure out what’s wrong with this mess of wires and computer-junk, because if i didn’t, then i’d really be screwed.

random not dead people geekery

a few years ago i posted a form on the web that asks for bizarre and non-existent information from people who respond to it, which, when submitted, then emails me the results. i hid it on the web (no prizes for figuring out where) in a place where people who were looking at the link wouldn’t necessarily see it, and click it by mistake when they clicked a link to go somewhere else – my experience as a stage magician has helped me considerably when it comes to computers in general and this is no exception.

after getting the person’s email, name and “Period”, the questions it asks are:

Diagram A
Diagram A

1. Who is God?
2. THAT THAT IS IS THAT THAT IS NOT IS NOT IS THAT THAT IS THAT THAT IS NOT NO THAT THAT IS IS NOT THAT THAT IS NOT IS THAT THAT IS NOT THAT THAT IS NO THAT THAT IS NOT IS NOT THAT THAT IS IS THAT NOT IT?
3. Rstndxvrl bsntgrblr woognex; sneg kluppits gsmxdrb snt twzznrks splt fznig trook fsaabowntfsst. Aqno feblat aigs nxtmbbr wzzl vbnestrxr?

the fourth question is “Put a dot where you think you are on Diagram A” with a table cell containing “Diagram A” which is a plain white picture with no marking except a small word “Essex” circled with an arrow pointing to the left side of the picture. you can’t actually put a dot on the picture, but i’m fairly sure that doesn’t stop people from trying.

the final 2 entries are “Describe in detail. Be concise and specific. Give examples when necessary.” above a text box – where people usually write complaints about the fact that they can’t actually put a dot on the previous diagram – and the final text box says “Sign someone else’s name”.

occasionally i’ll get an email from someone who has stumbled on the quiz (which is deceptively titled “Qualification Examination”) and the responses look like this example, which i got yesterday:

email: [redacted]
name: Mammy
period: 23

1: Myself
2: yes
3: Vsr; grfner webttn vsblttr
5: it really is, isn’t it?
6: robert anton wilson

i updated the form today to ask where they came from and why, and i’m thinking about ways to ask something like “Explain your answer” after every question, without completely redesigning the form.

in other news; How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie

the very big stupid

i’ve been increasingly disturbed to the point of disgusted revulsion by things like 17 Kids And Counting (don’t look for it if you haven’t already seen the show, it’s really not worth it) – a reality TV show about an ignorant christian family (emphasis on the quotation marks) who doesn’t know when to quit having kids (at last count there were 18 kids, and no sign of slowing down), who are apparently a “pop culture phenomenon” because of (or in spite of, i haven’t been able to decide which yet) the fact that they encourage their kids to not even hold hands or kiss until they’re married because they want to save their “godly purity” for their spouses – do the parents not even kiss their own kids for fear of messing up their purity? it’s never revealed… – and another kid getting killed with a gun, only this time the kid had the gun with the permission of his parents, and it was an uzi, which overbalanced due to the recoil with the predictable result that the kid “receiv(ed) a round in his head”. the shooting was ruled accidental, because they followed all the rules (the parents gave consent and the kid was with a “qualified instructor”) but the result was something that any intelligent person could have predicted before the “self-inflicted accidental shooting” ever occurred.

on top of that, i have actual neighbours (as in more than one house within a mile of mine) who have not one, but three mccain-palin campaign signs in front of their houses – because one just isn’t enough. i’ve been astounded at the way the mccain-palin campaign is being so blatant about their waste of materials in their larger campaign signs: the large signs that i’ve seen, which are larger than the large signs that people put up in their yards, and actually require a framework and extra supports, are as big as four large yard signs, but only contain the words “McCain-Palin” surrounded by a field of blue. the words are strategically centered and small enough that most of the sign is blank. it is as though they are saying “we waste resources faster and better than anybody else”…

i read this in a blog written by The Progressive Curmudgeon®, with which i don’t entirely agree (religion doesn’t necessarily cause stupidity, although “christianity” is more apt to do it than any other religion on the face of the planet), but which i believe says a lot about why we’re in the current mess we’re in. unfortunately he, too, feels as though there’s still a very good chance that the GOP will steal the election despite the popular democratic vote. also, there’s a rumour going around that

John McCain isn’t losing the election, he’s throwing it. After the way they treated him in 2000, he’s getting his revenge by destroying the party. What we are seeing isn’t an old man who fumbled his change over 8 years. This is a angry, vengeful bastard who’s grown sick of the scumbags who have infested his party. He’s decided to burn the house down while they are all still in it. This is an 8 year long lead up to revenge.

which is a very interesting concept indeed, although not very likely, and not confirmable even if it is true. as stupid as people are, that doesn’t necessarily mean that john mccain is one of them, despite outward appearances, although the likelihood of this actually being the case is minuscule.

it’s people like the duggars, the parents of the kid who shot himself with an uzi, and john mccain that make me wish i had died when i had my brain injury… it’s really not very pleasant to continue to live in a world where this kind of person is a majority of the people around you.

Continue reading the very big stupid

translation? anyone?

???????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????? ?????? (Motty) ??????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????? 1978 ????????????????? 2 ??????? (????????????????????????? ?????????? )

it’s about motty, and it comes from here, but apart from that, i’m stumped… anybody got a clue?

murf

FSM yesterday. i didn’t do so well – i only made $65 – but at least i made my nut. i finally got my phone working as a music player, and i rigged up some battery-powered computer speakers to be a portable music player for FSM. i discovered, however, that the music that was on my phone was “inappropriate” for the FSM… not that it was “bad” music, just “inappropriate”: i wouldn’t expect to be hearing The Residents (for example) in a shop that sold spiritual doodads, and my impression is that most people would actually be driven away by a shop that played The Residents anyway. fortunately i have about 2gb of specifically spiritually-oriented music (mostly hindu chants and suchlike), so i loaded them on my phone, so i’ll be ready the next time.

i’m still somewhat frustrated with the music player on the phone though. it only holds 4gb total, takes forever to update the library (especially when i have removed files), and updates the library every time i start the music player, even when i haven’t removed the card since the last time i started up the music player. also, it will only play .mp3 and .wma files. i don’t use anything that can create .wma files. i assume it’s windows media because linux will play .wma files with caffeine. and it won’t even allow me to put .ogg files on the card. apparently the act of initializing the memory card puts some kind of discriminatory software on it, because it says that it’s copying the files, but they never actually show up, even when i have it mounted on my computer. it will take .flac files, but they don’t show up on the music player, which isn’t too surprising. from what i’ve been able to see, apparently verizon, LG and micro$not are close pals… 8/

the size of the memory card really amazes me. i recall when an 80 megabyte hard disk was an electronic black hole, that i could throw files in for ever and not even come close to filling, and that 80 megabyte hard disk was the four times the size of my mac laptop, and had a SCSI interface to my computer. now a 4 GIGAbyte memory card is small enough that i have to be careful not to break it – or lose it – and it’s not even the smallest memory card – or the one with the most capacity – on the market these days.

i decided to do a major overhaul of the Hybrid Elephant web site, which involves updating every incense page with graphics of the products, and confirming that i actually have all the incense i’m trying to sell. so far there haven’t been any major catastrophes, but i didn’t know, for example, that there are several varieties of incense that used to be displayed on the site that i don’t actually have any longer, and i’m unable to get more. it’s gonna take a long time – which is to say more than a week – to get all the kinks worked out before i post the new pages, but there are already changes that you can see (or can’t see any longer) on the site, and there’s likely to be more as the next week or so progresses.

just got a confirmation for the Punk Rock Flea Market on december 6th. trolloween rehearsal tonight at BFD.

public service annoucement

if you’ve watched any TV at all for the past month or so, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen advertisements for Riddex Plus™, which is supposed to be a thing that you plug in to the wall, that sends digital pulses through your electrical wiring and drives out bugs and rodents… except it doesn’t work!

and not only doesn’t it work, but apparently the people who are advertising it have known, not only that it doesn’t work, but that they aren’t supposed to advertise things that they know won’t work for five years!!

the fact that they are going against the government’s specific directive does not say much for the government’s specific directive, but it says less about the motivations of the people who manufacture this crap, that they think they can pull the wool over our eyes again, just because it’s been a few years since they were slapped on the hand for doing exactly the same thing, and it starts to be insulting when you get to the point of addressing the intellect of those who are actually going to watch the advertising… do they think that our attention span is so small that nobody will notice, or what??

my recommendations? first: DON’T BUY IT!

second: if you feel motivated to do so, contact the TV station and file a complaint, or contact the FTC and file a complaint… or just stop watching television all together…

OCF 08 – a retrospective

milestonei left home for OCF at 6:30 am on wednesday. my first stop was the fred meyer’s in puyallup, which i got to before they opened, so i had to wait outside for 10 minutes or so until they got around to unlocking the doors. i got water, but neglected to get bug spray, a fact which i would intensely regret later. the trip down was relatively uneventful, however when i got off the freeway south of portland for a food and pee stop, i noticed that as soon as i stopped moving forward, the temperature in Ganesha The Car shot up to the red zone. i put some water in the radiator (which was completely empty) the temperature went back down to the normal range almost immediately, but it was a little frisson of anticipation that made life interesting.

before the fairi was actually able to get through the H.I.F. (Hippie Ineptitude Factor) surrounding checking in with little difficulty, but i didn’t realise that there is a big difference between asking and informing when it comes to announcing that your plan is to drive in to chelamela with a full load to be delivered to morningwood odditorium. if i had informed them of what i was doing, i would have been able to drive in without any problem, but because i asked if it would be okay for me to drive in, i was told that i couldn’t drive in without a van or a pickup load of stuff. so i waited for a gator (gaiter?), which is a motorised utility vehicle with a long string of carts that it tows behind it, to ferry my load to the stage. i then found a camping spot behind the stage, in the middle of a huge swarm of voracious mosquitoes which proceded to cover my back with about 5000000000 mosquito bites (of course, they chose the only place on my body where i can’t kill them or shoo them away, and where i can’t scratch). so i got my tent set up as quickly as possible, which was a chore, because it was hot and sweaty, which made the mosquito infestation even worse, and there wasn’t quite enough room under the bushes, so i had to incorporate the undergrowth into the structure of the tent, and got my stuff loaded into it, inflated my (new) bed, and then went back to the outside where i left my car, and parked in scoff-lot. i got finished with all the essential stuff around 3:00 pm or thereabouts, but because of the fact that the ritz was only open for showers (no saunas until thursday 8/ ) i had to put up with an extremely itchy night.

before the fairthursday was spent finishing the stage and wandering around gawking and taking pictures of the places that i knew would be full of people within the next 24 hours. it’s really odd to see nobody there, when you know that when everyone else sees it, they’re going to see everyone else as well. it really makes me want to come back in the winter, to see what the fair site is like when there’s really nobody there. i’ve got some friends in eugene that might actually make it possible for me to do that, at some point…

i also got attacked by huge swarms of voracious, bloodthirsty insects – something that very rarely happens to me – so i decided to go into town to buy bug spray… and ice… and beer… well, okay, the ice and beer were for other people, but i was going into town anyway, so i made the run so they didn’t have to, and that meant that i had beer when i got back. i blocked off my parking space in scoff-lot and told the guy at the gate that i would be back in half an hour, which i was. however, when i came back in, another guy told me that blocked spaces in scoff-lot were taken immediately, and that i should head for outta site parking, which is about a mile further down the road. this is where i learned the difference between asking and informing the people of what i am going to do. the next guy i came to (there were three or four of them along the road) i told him that i was going to scoff-lot. he told me that scoff-lot was full, and i said that was okay, so he let me get through. i drove up to scoff-lot right behind the tow truck, but because of the fact that i not only was able to say that i blocked a spot, but because of the fact that i was able to say that it was in row J, the guy let me in anyway – much to the chagrin of the people who were being towed to the dead lot, which is all the way at the far end of the site. and when i got to row J, what do you know? my spot was there, right where i left it… i am certain that at least part of this is because of the fact that i invoke The Remover of Obstacles ON my car, especially because, all the way back in, everyone was telling me that scoff-lot was full and the fact that i had blocked off a parking space didn’t make any difference.

still, it’s a LONG way from scoff-lot to chelamela when you’re carrying four bags of ice. stuart and i went back for the beer with a black plastic garbage bag, so that i wouldn’t have to carry it in alone, and so that we wouldn’t be stopped and potentially asked to share, which is definitely a possibility.

the discowe had a dress rehearsal thursday evening, immediately followed by a disco, which was an incarnation of the same un-namable evil that first manifested when disco was still popular, 30 years ago, so i took pictures of it from a distance, and then immediately left to go to the ritz, where i sweated out about half of the mosquito stingers in my back and got to feeling relatively clean again.

the lizard in the gazeeka boxfriday was the beginning of the fair for most “ordinary” people, which meant that it was the beginning of a working weekend for me. we did two shows a day, one at 12:00 noon, and one at 3:00 pm. on friday, we also did a 10:00 pm burlesque show. because of the fact that Big Bois With Poise were Short Dudes With Boobs this year, an act which doesn’t include fire, we opted out of the fire show. in spite of the fact that we didn’t use fire this year, they asked us to perform anyway, which gives you an idea of how intensely popular BBWP has become. the band really didn’t have much to do during the burlesque show (a fact which depressed stuart to the point where he said that if we do the show next year, we should ask for a specific slot to be an act, like everyone else, and then just vacate the stage rather than sitting there for the entire show), but because of the fact that i had BBWP duties, i also decided that it would be fun to be a part of the gazeeka box as well, so maque gave me a lizard costume and i was his ex-wife’s attorney, much to the amusement of everyone.

the cast and bandthis year’s panto is the traditional tale of cinderella, with the expected panto gender-bending, marginally obscene innuendo and horrendous puns. we’re getting good enough at this that this year we didn’t even have as many problems with the feral children who see every single performance and screw things up by anticipating lines and heckling us. at one point simon called a girl up onstage who had been anticipating his lines, and taped her mouth closed with gaffer tape, much to the amusement of everyone. the audiences absolutely despised the ugly stepsisters, who were played by chris huson and dan “the body” goodman. i actually heard him introduce himself to a group of tourists as ‘dan “the body” goodman’, which i found to be really amusing. we did actually get three new pieces of music on thursday at the dress rehearsal, and there’s still more to come, but presumably we’ve got a while to rehearse now that OCF is over. it was all 100% original, 100% new music, including a couple of pieces by amy bob.

i was standing in the food line at hospitality camp when a person i didn’t know came up to me and said “you’re salamandir”… i didn’t know what to say, so i said “yeah…” it turned out to be the mother of a friend of ezra’s from bellingham, who ezra refers to as “jordan(e)”. it seems oddly coincidental that i would have to go to the oregon country fair to meet a person who i know from bellingham, but oddly coincidental is a very good way of describing the oregon country fair.

friday was also my birthday. i’m 48 now, an age which i, in my wildest dreams, never imagined that i would actually reach. whoopie. 8/

saturday night the fremont philharmonic played at the ritz. i took off right after our 3:00 performance was over, and got there about 5:00, so i was well and truly sauna-ed by the time the rest of the band showed up, which was around 8:00. when i walked up, tuba in hand, i was met by a woman who said “NO tubas!” in an authoritative voice that i recognised immediately to be a joke, and, later on, i talked to lem and david, who were part of the ritz crew responsible for music. i was very suprised to learn that they don’t allow bands with drum sets to play. “at all?” i inquired, and they responded yes, which concerned me a great deal. it turned out that the guy who i thought was responsible for us getting to play, peter toms, aka professor petrol von huffenfuel, isn’t actually a part of the ritz crew, but the fremont philharmonic is apparently grandfathered in, so we weren’t kicked out for having a drum kit. i finally got around to arranging “Rubber Duckie” for the phil, and, of course, we played that. we also played “Il Ballon di Quaqua”, with a great effect. i talked to david on sunday and he said that he had frequently seen bands that had the entire ritz singing along, but he had never before seen a band that could get the entire ritz dancing. we also were offered a gig at a nudist colony near portland.

gnomesthe fair had to put up with an infestation of gnomes this year, which was amusing and frustrating at the same time: the gnomes were rowdy and rambunctious, and always getting into trouble. they broke in to our back stage area and drank all our tequila, and from there it went from bad to worse. they were ubiquitous. sunday, they were seen shaking down a vendor in the meadow, and when confronted, became belligerent… i think tricky bunny was a part of them, but i’m not sure, because they were wearing annoying gnome costumes, and avoiding my camera. also, i was walking up the eight saturday and i was accosted by a huge flock of people in flamingo costumes. they all gathered around me, honking and cooing and fanned me with their wings for about five minutes, and then flew off again. once again, it is my understanding that tricky bunny was a part of that as well, but i couldn’t tell. as i was walking away from the encounter, i wondered how one could take a picture of such an experience that would come anywhere close to reflecting what i actually experienced.

lightsi met a whole bunch of people, including positively stephie, who had vibrating massage bugs that felt really good on my mosquito-bitten back, and a family of neon people, the father of which works at adobe and will probably be looking for the pictures i took of them.lights

i saw a sign, of which i was not able to take a picture, unfortunately, which said “The Oregon Country Fair – Psycho-Spiritual Rejuvanation For Everyone”. it’s kind of ironic that i would see that, because i was talking with ned a week ago, and he was saying, based on what i have told him, that things like OCF are like medication for me, which is absolutely true. it’s just too bad that OCF only happens once a year. it’s even more ironic because i realised even more this year that an observation i made about OCF last year is also absolutely true, and that is that OCF is basically a big, hippie-oriented mall without the mall. it’s strange that i should get so much benefit from something that, at it’s lowest common denominator, is specifically designed to extract money from unsuspecting tourists.

there are a whole bunch more pictures which are the only things left of OCF 08. so go look at them… you know you want to…

important stuff for everyone

i’m leaving for the oregon country fair tomorrow, and there’s still a lot to do. but, at the same time, there’s a bunch of web sites that i want to remember, so here they are:

‘World’s longest concert’ resumesJohn Cage is at it again, for those who didn’t know, despite the fact that he’s been dead since August 12, 1992.

California to Legalize Weed for Everyone – i’ll believe it when i see it, but at the same time, it’s another good reason to move away from this benighted state…

Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug – aaah, mushrooms: my favourite drug. i have spent many autumn hours, accompanied by cows, searching through wet grass for little hiding gnome-caps. perhaps this is a step in the direction of making them legal as well…

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? – answer: apparently not. good thing i never signed up with facebook…

Continue reading important stuff for everyone

blurgh…

it’s the end of june and i haven’t written about the oregon country fair yet… two more weeks…

so we’ve been rehearsing for cinderella twice a week, and the band has an extra rehearsal tonight. as far as i know, we still don’t have all the music, but i may be hallucinating. we have to learn “Do The Hustle” but i’m not going to learn it – i took a vow when i was in high school (when the song was still popular) that i would never learn the hustle, which i have never broken, and this performance is no exception. i’ll learn the chicken dance – which we also have to learn for this performance – but the line is drawn with the hustle. pam made this twisted suggestion that we play the chicken dance when we play at the ritz, and i totally agree: i can’t wait to see 300+ naked hippies doing the chicken dance.

a few weeks ago we changed rehearsal spaces for the BSSB. apparently, after warmly welcoming us to the crown hill baptist church a year ago, the baptists got a new pastor who decided that we weren’t “christian” enough for them, and so they summarily kicked us out, with very little warning. fortunately, the senior center at the good shepherd center was waiting for something like that to happen. the good shepherd center is closer by about 15 miles to where i live than just about anything in crown hill (although it’s still not in ballard, strictly speaking), and i’m already very familiar with the layout, because that’s where ezra went to the ballet school before the ballet school moved downtown. there’s an added bonus which i found about on the tenth, which was our first rehearsal there, which is that they also have a pancake supper from 4:00 to 6:30 on the second tuesday of the month, which, coincidentally, is the same night we have one of our rehearsals. i showed up early with my trombone and was ushered into the room where they plied me with food and adulation for being part of the band. not at all bad, especially since i wasn’t expecting it.

i’ve got a lot to do this week. the weeks are stacking up that way for me a lot at this time. i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal tonight, a rehearsal for cinderella on monday and wednesday, a concert with the BSSB on thursday in burien (for which i still don’t have more than a time), then moe and i are going to portland to visit my god-help-me-mother-in-law, then i have to be back in seattle for the traditional BSSB at the locks concert on sunday, next monday is the final cinderella rehearsal, next tuesday is a rehearsal for the BSSB, and then next wednesday i’m leaving for OCF.

last year i was really depressed when i returned from OCF. i don’t see any reason why this year should be different, but at the same time, i’m hoping that this year it won’t be so severe. the fact that i am going to burning man (and not having a brain injury) this year may help, but at this point i’m not sure how.

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!!

Friday 13th not more unlucky, Dutch study shows – it’s always been lucky (or at least not unlucky) for me…

now that i’ve gotten that out of the way…

big joint over chicagoBig Joint Over Chicago – aspires (no pun intended) to be the second largest building in the world (after burj dubai). say what you like, it still looks like a big joint.

Medical Marijuana – from the New York Times… maybe this is the beginning of the kind of publicity we’ve been waiting for…

Marijuana’s potency hits 30-year high – it’s true that cannabis has doubled in potency since the 1980s (from around 4% to around 9%), but it’s also true that users self-regulate their dosage, and if it’s more potent, they tend to smoke less. this is the first time i’ve ever seen this in the mainstream media, and it may be another sign of change, as well.

finally,

Baby born with penis on back – another wonderful appendage to go in my multiple appendages category… too bad they cut it off…

Continue reading FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH!!

link dump

Inflatable Electric Cars – the wave of the future… if you can wait until they’re commercially available…

Giraffe milk, meat confirmed kosher – a long time ago, my mother used to go to an “exotic meats” butcher, and get things like hippo, rhino, giraffe, elephant, and other suchlike, unlikely meats, but not tell the rest of us what we were eating until after we ate. now i can be assured that, at least when we were eating giraffe, the meals were also kosher.

Hints of ‘time before Big Bang’ – more evidence that the creationists are wrong.

Dispatchwork – a group of artists went around Bocchignano, a village near rome, and made patches for the decrepit brickwork out of lego blocks.

All Indicators Point to a Softening of America’s Harsh Marijuana Laws – it’s about time, but i’ll believe it when i see it.

Good News – well, good headlines pasted over regular depressing news. i must admit, when i first clicked on the page, it made me feel really good, but once i clicked one of the links, i went from feeling good, to confusion, to depression very quickly.

Pictures of a Rocket Car from Los Angeles Metblogs

hack this… 8/

CAPTCHAso i’ve been downloading a couple of disks i found on A Closet of Curiosities, and one of the disks is shared on RapidShare. as a share-point for blogs, rapidshare is as good as any other, i suppose, but their name is not semantically accurate – it’s anything but rapid. after downloading one file, i have to wait 80 minutes before i can download another file, and once i’ve waited the requisite 80 minutes, i have to enter the symbols in the following CAPTCHA, but only the symbols that are attached to a cat… yes, the pre-download page very clearly says “Only enter symbols attached to a cat.”

any human can see that the CAPTCHA has the characters YKRZB4G, but it takes a very skilled human being to discern that the code that it wants is KZ4G. as you may have guessed by this time, it took me several tries to get beyond this.

i understand that such things are necessary to prevent teenage doodlehums from doing undesired things with computer resources, but this is getting a little ridiculous.

grumph… 8/

interlake class reunion

i received this in email this morning. my 30th high school reunion means that i am OLD

but, the thing is, i don’t want to go to my high school reunion! when i was in high school, i only had 4 friends (and one of them was my girlfriend, who was in a different class than i was) out of the entire school, which was probably 1,000 students at the time, most of the other people either didn’t know me or actively hated me for one (usually lame) reason or another, i actually spent most of my junior and senior years attending music workshops in a different city, and, to top it all off, they want $100 a person to gain entrance to the reunion…

i can think of several reasons why i should spend $100 on something other than going to my high school reunion… 8/

mump

the fact that we may have as little as 20 years before all hell breaks loose has really affected me. i’ve always felt a little guilty about bringing a child into a world that is so screwed up, but the fact that i have brought a child into this world when he’s not even going to get a full lifetime of living out of it is verging on being too much.

nevertheless, i apparently can’t stay away from the news that brings me down… and it does bring me down, in spite of the fact that the sprinkling of news articles you read here are on the humourous side of depressing, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

You’ve Been Left Behind is a place for true “christian” believeroonies to leave messages for their loved-ones who are not taken in the rapture – for $40 a year until it happens. it is not a joke, unlike Post Rapture Post whose creators are athiest.

Obecalp is a “medicine” that is being marketed by a mother who has no qualifications to dispense medicine other than being a mother. ordinarily, doctors are not permitted to prescribe medicines that they know to be ineffective, but because of the fact that she’s not a doctor, everything should be fine… and you don’t have to have a prescription to buy this “medication” – i hope she doesn’t advertise by unsolicited email, because that would just be too ironic.

AI Robotics has produced the “Perfect Woman™” who is, reputedly “More Fun™”… you can “Preorder Now™”…

if you insist on using windoesn’t, Built-in Windows commands to determine if a system has been hacked and More built-in Windows commands for system analysis will help keep the bots, virii and crackers at bay a little longer than they would be without them… although why anybody still uses windoesn’t is beyond me at this point.

also, there’s some pictures from folklife that were taken by Reynaldo Martinez, one of the dancers for Guelaguetza. the first couple are of me, and most of the rest of them are the dancers for whom we were playing.

elbow

i performed at folklife for most of yesterday. i did not get shot. in fact i didn’t hear about the people who got shot at folklife until after i got home. i suppose it’s one of the advantages of the the low-information diet i’ve been trying to adopt, but this agregator that is built in to my email client is making it really difficult, especially when i tell it what news i want or don’t want to read… 8/

meanwhile,

New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability – this is a step in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go before copyrights on intellectual property is fixed.

MusOpen – like this, for example… free, public-access music!

Does Constitution apply to enemy combatant on U.S. soil? – he may or may not be a terrorist, but the way he’s been being treated – as a legal and legitimate citizen of this country, where he lives – has implications for everyone. if the US government has its’ way, every single one of us could potentially be declared an enemy combattant and “disappeared”… i saw a guy wearing a t-shirt yesterday that said “THE LAND OF THE FREE* – *some exceptions may apply”

Could an Acid Trip Cure Your OCD?

Practicon Dental Supply

Continue reading elbow

I AM A TERRORIST! 8/

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.

Congratulations, America … Children are Being Tortured in Your Name – the US has imprisoned 2,500 children since 9/11 as “enemy combatants”, in violation of the Geneva Convention against classifying children as POWs… bad enough for ya’? if so, don’t read any further…

Government May Have Massive Surveillance Program for Use in “National Emergency”

Two Sick Stories – i don’t know which is worse: the government spying on americans at the RNC, or deaths because of lack of legal status for cannabis…

Audio Recording of McCain’s Political Endorser John Hagee Preaching Jews Are Cursed and Subhuman – people are still ranting meaningless drivel about obama and rev. wright, and nobody’s been paying attention to the real, scary shit mcain and rev. hagee have going on…

Bush IQ: Mild Mental Retardation – much as i would like to believe that this story is true (it would explain a lot), i don’t think it is.

Continue reading I AM A TERRORIST! 8/

hey, i know that guy!

PZ Meyers is a biologist who runs a blog called pharyngula which i follow pretty regularly because, among other things, he is really good at pushing the buttons of the anti-evolutionist whackos, and this is no exception… except this time he rips into a guy that i actually know, and debated with myself a few years ago. the first letter he tears into is by glen howard of north bend, one of the two owners of the vet clinic moe works at… glen howard has a doctors’ degree in veterinary medicine, which only goes to show that you don’t have to be smart enough to find your own butt with a map to get a doctors’ degree…

And Then So Clear

first business card for MIVC since 060315. that can’t be true, but i can find no business records for anything before that… although i had backups of a file called 070312-MIVC-BC.qxp, so i must have done a business card for them since 2006… but i can find no business records for them. bizarre.

being a professional computer geek for eddie, who is almost completely blind, and completely (utterly, hopelessly) computer-illiterate. i went over there today to get the “lay of the land” so to speak, in terms of where he was with computer hardware. he’s got Win98 2nd edition, and he was trying to run a HP all-in-one printer/fax/scanner (which gives me a non-standard warning message about not being compatible with something on the system, joy) and a HP flat-screen monitor that defaults to 640×480 and 16 colours in W98, and gives me a strange message when i try to boot gutsy from a live CD – something about re-setting the resolution to 1024×768, which i would have done if i could have remembered the arcane command that you type into the text-based interface – which is, in fact, dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg – which i knew was written in my linux grimoire, but not currently accessible to my memory. however, during my download and burning of the hardy CD i read the system requirements and figured that a 500mhz pentium III might not run something that modern anyway, so i dug around and located CDs of kubuntu 7.x and 6.x as well, so if i can’t get hardy working, i’ll have a couple of back ups. i figure i’ll go back tomorrow with a USB hub and a 4g flash stick and back up all the data, and then install whichever kubuntu will run. his internet is on a dial-up connection, and i’ve never had to deal with a modem and linux, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.

i downloaded 2g of YMO tracks, which is all of their studio albums and a whole pile of live stuff including a couple of rehearsals. i also downloaded a gig or so of sanskrit chants, which i’m going to burn to CD and take to FSM with me, so that i can have appropriate music in my booth.

Federal judge rules students can’t be barred from expressing support for gay people – a principal at a south florida high school testified that he “believed rainbows were “sexually suggestive” and would make students unable to study because they’d be picturing gay sex acts in their mind” – but, apparently wearing “other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag” was okay. the fact that the students had to get the ACLU and a federal court involved before their first amendment rights were restored says something about both the students and the society in which we live currently.

Will you marry me – temporarily? – this is coming from iran… why don’t we have such things in this country?

Childish superstition: Einstein’s letter makes view of religion relatively clear

Polar bear listed as threatened species – and just last night i was sitting next to an elderly lady who was ranting about the fact that there is no global warming, because we’ve been having unseasonably cool weather locally recently. hello? wake up and smell the coffee… kthxbye…

Musical SpongeBob™ Digital Thermometer – good for oral, underarm or rectal use, plays “SpongeBob SquarePants Theme” at the end of temperature taking… what every home shouldn’t be without.

Continue reading And Then So Clear

ip

when i was about in 5th grade or so, my trombone teacher had me work from Remington Warm Up Studies for Trombone, which was a soft-cover book that couldn’t have been more than 24 pages or so, and cost $2.95. i went through two or three of them by the time i graduated from high school, because they were so flimsy.

so i’m wondering why amazon dot com wants $86.50 for the book now… and if i want to buy it from amazon in germany, i could pay as much as $305.95 for it…

why is this so expensive?!? also, why can’t i just download it as a PDF and print my own copy?

… oh, that’s right, stupid copyright laws… 8b

dream

map

i was sick yesterday, and spent all day sleeping and watching teevee because i didn’t have the energy to do anything else. i feel a lot better, although not back to 100% yet, today. my ears and sinuses are still plugged up. nevertheless, i had a very bizarre and very vivid dream last night, which was another one where it was so strange that i actually woke up, thought about how strange it was, and then went back to sleep and continued in the same dream, which is very rare indeed.

front elevation

i was walking in downtown seattle, looking for an apartment. it was as though i was walking downhill, towards northlake, and i ended up at the level of lake union, but as it is in most of my dreams, things weren’t exactly like they are in reality. i saw a building in which i remembered renting an apartment many years ago (1984-1985?) that had a for rent sign in the window, so i decided to check it out. i went into the ground floor office, which had been some sort of office associated with a railroad, years ago, but the railroad, and most of the buildings surrounding it, had gone out of business years ago, and the other buildings had been knocked down, so there was an enormous vacant lot surrounding the buidling. the whole place had been a combination railroad/shipping waystation, or something like that years ago. in the ground floor office of the building, there was a strange machine that had strips of perforated tickets hanging out of it, that was built into the ceiling, an old, worn, wooden desk, and a free standing sink which was incorporated into the stairway to the second floor, which i didn’t remember seeing when i had lived there previously.

bottom floor

the whole dream was permeated with that familiar feeling that i knew exactly where i was, and had known exactly where i was for a long time. i climbed up the staircase, over the sink, and continued over several wooden boxes that had been stacked on top of the sink, to the second floor, where the apartments were. i wondered about how they could get away with making the staircase in such an unstable fashion, which was definitely not “up to code” – the staircase went up to the level of the sink, then there were narrow wooden boxes stacked on top of the sink, which weren’t secured or anything, and i almost sent the whole stack of boxes tumbling down before i got to the top of the staircase.

top floor

when i had lived there previously, there were two other guys that lived in the other apartments, ludwig and olympia. i noticed that ludwig’s name was still on one of the doors. the bulk of the weird machine was on this floor. it was very old and dusty, and had huge wads of different kinds of perforated tickets crammed into it. i went into the apartment that i had lived in previously, which was the one that was for rent, remembered what it had been like to live there previously, and figured it would be a good place to live again. then ludwig (who bore an uncanny resemblance to someone i know from bellingham, reinholdt lockinvar) showed up, and remembered me immediately. he had been a piano player when i knew him previously, and he was currently working as a pianist and organist. he asked me if it would disturb me if he practiced, and i said no, so he left and soon i could hear him practicing some organ piece on the grand piano that i knew he had in his apartment. i was looking around and came across a bunch of artwork that had apparently been left by the previous tenant, who was apparently a graphic designer. looking through the artwork, i discovered that some of it was actually art that i had done – business cards and logos and suchlike – and i also found a toque almost exactly like the one i have now, except that it was darker colours and had different buttons on it, which i remembered from when i had lived there previously.

i was really interested in what had happened to the neighbourhood since i had lived there previously, which i figured was fifteen to twenty years ago, and i talked with ludwig (reinholdt) and olympia for a long time, going downstairs (over the boxes again) and back up several times. it was also a really strange building, because although ludwig’s apartment was in the front, and my apartment was in the back, there were windows in my apartment that looked out on both the front and the back of the building. also i’m not sure if there were two or three doors in the hallway outside the apartments, because it kept changing, although it didn’t seem to affect me that much when it was happening.

MILFs?? boobies??

i just came across this, and it is SO bizarre…

Mom angered by racy books in clothes shop
May 5, 2008

LYNNWOOD, Wash (UPI) — A Washington mother with a teenage son said she was outraged to find books with sexual content on sale at the teen clothing store Urban Outfitters.

Marci Milfs of Lynnwood said she plans to file a complaint with the city of Lynnwood about the books, which she said do not belong in a clothing store aimed at children and teenagers, the Everett (Wash.) Herald reported Monday.

Milfs said she has already raised the issue of the books — which include “Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults,” and “Porn for Women,” a book featuring pictures of men doing housework — with state Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, and conservative non-profits including Morality in Media, Concerned Women of America and the American Family Association.

The mother said Urban Outfitters’ corporate office in Philadelphia refused her demand that the books be removed.

sweet breast pudding

“They said they are not sex books or pornography books, but that they are art books and their goals are to support artists,” Milfs said.

However, Milfs maintains the books should not be seen by children.

“It’s not freedom of speech,” she said. “It’s selling adult books to teenagers.”

this has got to be a joke, right? her name is “Marci MILFs”?!?

somebody at UPI is having a good laugh about this one… 8)

also, Bizarre Breast Puddings From Japan make me wonder why we’re not so open minded in this country…

more depressing stuff…

what is it with five-year-olds and guns?

Boy, 5, shoots himself; parents charged – and – Indiana boy, 5, shoots sister, 4, to death

now when i was five years old, my father owned a gun. i remember seeing it, once in my father’s closet. i’m fairly sure it wasn’t loaded, and even with nobody telling me what it was, i remember knowing that it was dangerous and i wasn’t to touch it, a sensibility that i have carried through to this very day – i went with a friend a couple of years ago when he was moving to los angeles and “needed a gun for protection” (from what? he never said), and i actually convinced myself to try target shooting with him. i still have one .45 auto round on the shelf in front of me at this very moment, but i don’t have anything to shoot it from, and while it is very dangerous to have a single bullet around, i’ve also got a bottle of lamp oil, a bottle of lighter fluid, a bottle of methyl alcohol and a bottle of paint thinner on the desk as well, and i don’t worry too much about them, either. a few years later, my father inherited an antique, single-barrelled shotgun from somewhere or another, and i got to “play” with that on several occasions, but it was so old that they didn’t make cartridges for it any longer, and someone had removed, and lost, the firing pin a long time ago, so it was more like the “broken gun beneath the bed” of the old jethro tull song than anything else.

but what i can’t figure out is why people who own guns keep them just lying around their house, in a loaded state, in a place where children are likely to pick them up and shoot people? i actually wrote “and accidentally shoot people”, but then i realised that if i didn’t know what a gun was, or if i did know what it was, but had the sensibilities of the normal five-year-old, the fact that i would shoot someone (including myself) is almost a given. the fact that parents would just leave a loaded gun in a place where unsupervised children could hope to find it seems so utterly moronic to me that i wonder why they were allowed to have children in the first place! you (theoretically) have to have a license to own a gun, you should also have to have a licence to have children, and in order to get that license, you should have to prove that you have more sense than a peanut… 8/

blah… 8/

mother-in-law came to visit yesterday, which is a chore for everyone, as, although she drives, she apparently has this irrational fear of driving on the freeway… for long distances. i’ve never been able to get the complete story from anyone: she drives on the freeway in portland, but is too afraid to drive on the freeway to come visit her only daughter in seattle… and when her father (my grandfather-in-law, and as grumpy an old dude as that i have never met before) lived in chehalis, she would drive up on the freeway to visit him, but for some (as i said, it’s an irrational fear) reason, seattle is too far for her to drive, so she took the train.

i had a cinco de mayo performance with banda gozona yesterday, so i missed out on the prelude, but i had to drive her to the amtrak station this morning (moe had already left to go teach), which turned into a nightmare such that, once she arrived home in portland, she decided that she had to go directly to the hospital instead of going home first. i won’t go into all of what happened, but i never thought i would have occasion to be so intimate with my mother-in-law… and i’m glad she has a high tolerance for pain, because if it had been lower the probability that i would have been even more intimate with her is very high. she’s a hardy soul, though, and the fact that she will recover from whatever she did to herself in the bathroom this morning is practically assured. i was late to my rehearsal, however…

i have been really depressed for a while now, and part of it is because DVR has been stringing me along and then unceremoniously dumped me a couple of weeks ago. it may not be as bad as it sounds in the long run, but it’s pretty depressing at the moment. although i found a site where they built a building that could be used as a workshop very nicely, for about $1,000. it’s built entirely of rammed earth, which means that, properly built, it’s very stable and can handle massive weigh, which could mean that i could dig out a corner of our front yard, build a rammed-earth building, and put a flower garden or something like that on top.

other things that have been contributing to my depression include the state of the world, and the state of the country. while the entire country is up in arms about obama’s former pastor, nobody seems to be paying attention to the endorsement mccain got from “rev.” john hagee. i’ve been familiar with hagee since he was an unknown radio televangelist, and he scares me a lot more than a pissed-off black guy who used to be pastor to the guy who’s trying to become president. this writer, who claims to have smoked pot at woodstock, thinks that despite it’s gaining more acceptance in the “normal” world as time goes on, cannabis will not be legal in the forseeable future for five really stupid, but ultimately probably quite accurate reasons. while at exactly the same time, in canada(da) they’re pushing for legalisation, and, in arizona, cops make a $2.5 million pot bust when they pull over a commercial truck with an improperly displayed license plate… and they’re telling us to keep a lid on your emotions at work, because to show them is a "career limiting move" (as we used to call such things when i worked at micro$not).

there have been some things that are breaks in the depression, though – precious few, unfortunately – but they include dolphins playing with bubbles (courtesy of my friend kamalla), a seal fucking a penguin – which should disturb the “christians” and the anti-furries in the audience (who knows, there may actually be some), and a license plate that is not only displayed properly, but encourages cannabilism.

also, there has been a profusion of puppies in my life recently. here’s a picture.

4-week-old puppy
sleeping puppy

Continue reading blah… 8/

yes, i’m still here…

Hybrid Elephant @ The FSM

it’s just that i’ve been really depressed, and not much is happening in my life recently. i went to the fremont sunday market (flying spaghetti monster) last weekend, and made $80. i’ve got a banda gozona rehearsal thursday and a performance saturday (cinco de mayo, oddly enough, on 1st may… oh well). i got an inquiry about whether or not i ship internationally and i’ve decided that i really should post that on the web site somewhere, so it’s more obvious – yes, i ship internationally, but (for example) to the UK i have to require $25 USD extra to cover shipping costs, which, for most people that order incense from me, would be more than their total order. in general i recommend that if it’s not a domestic order, that the customer should order at least $100 worth of product, or to find some place “closer to home” from which to order.

i’m slowly making progress on my most recent stencil project, which is a picture of gurdjieff. after toying around with various ideas and size possibilities, i finally cut it out – it took two tries, because the first one i got confused and cut out one of the eyes in reverse. it’s taken a while, but it looks like it will do. now i’ve just got to figure out where to paint it where i won’t get caught arrested

gurdjieff stencil

i’ve been really depressed recently, because i’ve been dealing with DVR for the past few months and just came to the point where they’ve finally decided that they can’t help me make Hybrid Elephant more profitable. one of the ways they said they might be able to help is by helping me work out some sort of out-building on our property that i can use as a workshop/recording studio – i had in mind a 20 foot shipping-container-sized office, which would mean less time spent constructing it and more-or-less guaranteed working things like lights and electricity… but after stringing me along since january they’ve decided that they can’t (or, more likely, won’t) help me, because Hybrid Elephant is not “niche” enough, and too “fringe” for their liking…

so if any of you want to buy me stuff to make me happy, Middlesex University Teaching Resources would be a good place to start… they’ve got all kinds of geeky stuff. anything would be fine. surprise me.

other than that, here’s a link dump from the past few days:

John Cleese reports on laughter – appropriately enough…

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies – this person took the concept that any food can be made better by adding bacon to one extreme… and before you say “eew” think about it a little bit… it actually sounds pretty good, and i’m tempted to try it.

McCain opposes equal pay bill in Senate – meanwhile, the world continues on it’s way to hell.

The very first McDonalds commercial – meanwhile, the world continues on it’s fast track to hell-in-a-handbasket… 8/

The Trailer to Chemical Wedding – which is coming in may. this will either be a total misrepresentation of uncle al, or it could be very interesting.

A Closet Of Curiosities – which is a music blog courtesy of my old friend spreznib, with whom i hope to be making our own music soon.

sigh

when i see things like the pastor who gave a sermon about the evils of pornography at a pornography convention and a “modern” country where women still “belong” to men, i have to keep reminding myself of something that one of my first gurus (dr. burrows, not my satguru, and not even a hindu) told me when i was in my 20s. she said that the more clear the line dividing “good” and “evil” becomes, the closer we will be to the time when spirit returns to the earth in a bodily form (jesus return, kalki appearing, that sort of thing). the more diverse and divided things get; the more direct the proponents of a such a profound division are willing to be, the closer to “the eschaton” – whatever that means – we are. it will all be over soon… i’ve just got to hold on, and it will be different soon.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is mostly inhabited by, and ultimately designed and created by people who are acting under some sort of illusion, delusion or misconception
— salamandir 890628

all the strange stuff, all at once

for those of you who are actually going to the moisture festival on saturday evening – the 10:30 show only – you will be priveledged to see the new Big Bois With Poise performance, and because of that (and because of the fact that i’ve been sworn to secrecy) i will not post pictures of the outrageous costumes that are a part of this year’s show. after saturday i may post them. stay tuned.

Cat poo coffee: $100 a cup – this doesn’t have much to do with toxoplasmosa gondii, but once again, it makes me wonder if we’re not all just puppets, and the real rulers of the world are these bizarre microscopic organisms… watch, as i get older i’ll get more and more convinced of this to the point where i’ll become obsessed with ridding the world of this microscopic menace… you wait… it will happen…

West Chester Gorilla Suit Construction Workshopdamn, i wish i lived closer… 8/

??????????????????????????????????2?????0410?????????????????? – no, it’s not japanese spam, but if you would like an anglicised version, thank ThinkGeek for at least partially translating it… these japanese are crazy!

this is ridiculous! it’s why i’m against work in general, but this goes far beyond just work. why don’t they take an earlier, or later train to avoid having to shove them in like this? and these days, why don’t they telecommute? especially in japan… i’ve said this more than once today, but these japanese are crazy!

Malware still malingering for up-to-date anti-virus users – apparently having anti-virus software and keeping it up to date is no longer enough to keep from geting infected by malware… if you use windoesn’t… if you use mac or linux, their virus detection software – courtesy of panda reaserchdoesn’t even work! no wonder i’ve been reading recently about how windows is collapsing

Continue reading all the strange stuff, all at once

grr

Stop Making Movies About My Books
April 2, 2008
By Dr. Seuss

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.

Horton, my favorite—look how he’s been treated!
Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.

Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
If I knew one dark day I’d costar with Mike Myers.

And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they’ve done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!

It’s icky, it’s tacky, it’s awkward, it’s wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it’s an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!

But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life’s work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har’.

Why it’s simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.

Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You’d cut out my heart for a “Thing 1” T-shirt.

For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
knowing just how you’d franchise my good name some day.
Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
the first of my classics you’d acquired for looting.

Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.

So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
And so help me, I’ll rise up and kill you myself.

No Sneetches by Sony—
No One Fish: On Ice
Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
Don’t sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!

This must stop! This must end! Don’t you see what you’re doing?
You’re defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it’s dried up and you’ve sucked out your pay
There’ll be no going back to a simpler day,

When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you’ll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You’ll have plenty to watch while you’re burning in hell.

two ends of the bizarre spectrum

Actor Cleese wants to pen Obama’s speeches – regardless of how brilliant john cleese things barack obama is, the only thing i can think of when i hear that cleese wants to be obama’s speech writer is “ooh eeeh i were all hongry like…” or “‘e’s shuffled off the mortal coil and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! this is an ex-parrot!” or “ooh, my brain hurts!” i wonder how good a speech writer he would be to a black man running for president, and at the same time, if he’s anything like his old python compatriot terry jones i would love to hear political speeches written by him. i think obama’s already fighting an uphill battle, though, and having the chief python as a speech writer isn’t going to help any…

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms – a very disturbing short documentary that was produced in 1940’s-era russia. it’s really disturbing, so if you’ve got a weak stomach, don’t view it. at the same time, if you don’t have a weak stomach, the first thing i think of is, if they were creating zombie-dogs in 1940, who knows what sort of zombies they’re creating these days?

Continue reading two ends of the bizarre spectrum

I AM A TERRORIST!

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.

i sincerely wonder why the revolution hasn’t started yet, and i despair for a country that can sit idly by while these kinds of things are perpetrated on us in the name of “protecting our freedoms”. really… bush has gone too far this time, and it’s time somebody did something about it. >8/

Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S.

Continue reading I AM A TERRORIST!

moisture musings

the 5th annual moisture festival is into it’s second week of performances, most of which feature the fremont philharmonic. we’re getting more into playing “other peoples'” music more, which is a good idea, i think. we’re also becoming “the” band for a number of performers like godfrey daniels, which is amusing since apart from the moisture festival, we’ve never performed with him as godfrey daniels. it’s much more mellow and laid-back backstage this year, but i think that part of that is because i am not responsible for the programs this year.

these are some of the links i’ve been perusing in the mean time:

Archbishop of Canterbury attacks Creationism – it’s getting pretty obvious that something is wrong with intelligent design when someone like the archbishop of canturbury comes down on the side of the evolutionists…

Hybrid embryos created in Britain – speaking of “intelligent” design…

Two-headed baby hailed as divine – and here’s how india deals with it. (NOTE: i am discounting the fact that this was published on 1 april by knowing that they don’t have april fools day in india. i may be wrong.)

Faeces hint at first Americans – new evidence further negates any “young earth” intelligent design explanations that i have heard…

Pregnant man tells Oprah: It’s a miracle – now this is something i’ve been reading about for a couple of weeks, and it is one of those rare instances when my wife and i disagree. i think it’s perfectly natural for a transgender man to want to have children, but my wife thinks… i’m not sure what she thinks. it’s “unnatural” or something is my guess. maybe she thinks the kid will grow up confused or something. but my point is that kids already grow up confused with “normal” parents, and both my wife and i are fine examples of that. if a kid has even an outside chance of having a relatively normal life, parents should be able to be parents without regard to what their genitals look like, and if, as in this case, the man is already pregnant they should be able to get medical care without having to go through nine doctors! my son is an excellent example of how someone with screwed up parents can have a much more “normal” life than either of their parents had.

The Hypocrisy Gospel: Get Rich for Jesus? – ever wonder why the religious conservatives adore the prosperity gospel so much?

finally,

Battle over Pot Possession in Alaska Is Back in the Courts – prohibitionists, once again, make some sort of lame excuse to overturn alaska’s legal home use of cannabis. they’re going to lose, of course, because their excuse is lame (“it’s not your father’s marijuana”, reefer-madness propaganda), but it’s got a lot of people upset in both camps.

Continue reading moisture musings

bizarre and funny

Why records DO all sound the same – No, it’s not you – records do all sound the same these days.

Sony BMG Sued for Software Piracy – Assets Seized – PointDev, a small software company, mandated a bailiff to raid one of Sony BMGs owned building in January this year. The raid revealed that four of the Sony BMGs owned servers contained the pirated software. This is too good to be true, but in fact, it is true. Now if it only makes a difference…

The coming financial collapse of the U.S. government: Fed papers reveal what’s in store for Americans

Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe

Continue reading bizarre and funny

link dump

Watch out, you’re being watched – The unsettling thing about living in a surveillance society isn’t just that you’re being watched. It’s that you have no idea.

NSA releases new version of Linux software – let me see if i’ve got this straight: a version of one of the most secure operating systems in existence, being offered by the most paranoid geeks the government can find, right? i’m not sure whether i would trust this or not…

Sex Offender Running for Mayor in Texas – if “christians” can run, why not sex offenders? they may even be the same people.

Rules of Moopsball – the precursor to calvinball, it involves three hundred and twenty-four people, and takes three days.

Lord Arunachala – Lord Siva said: “What cannot be acquired without great pains – the true import of Vedanta (Self-realization) – can be attained by anyone who looks at (this hill) from where it is visible or even mentally thinks of it from afar.”

Does the Human Brain Possess Potential “Super Powers”?related

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison – For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.

Lying for Jesus? – Richard Dawkins expounds on the recent fracas with PZ Meyers being expelled from Expelled.

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk – and eleven other reasons why english is my native language.

Gay Black Jewish Klansmen for Tolerance and Understanding

Continue reading link dump

moisture venting

diemo

the moisture festival opening was last night. the fremont philharmonic played a grand total of 4 tunes, and then vacated the stage, while artists with artificial music, and artists who performed with the zebra kings performed for 2 hours. this was primarily because of RB deciding that we would play the first half, and then conveniently scheduling all the artists that had artificial music for the first half, while saying that the zebra kings (which includes RB himself) would play the second half, including hacki’s performance, and godfrey daniels’ performance, both of whose music we have actually been rehearsing for the past month, unlike the zebra kings, who sound as though they haven’t played together since last year. i really think that once they actually get a professional theatre manager, instead of RB – who is a contractor and a musician on the side, but is definitely not anything like a professional anything – the moisture festival will actually be fun to play. until then, there are, by definition, going to be problems that are a direct result of having the person making the schedule one of the performers as well.

also, the program this year is a joke compared to the program that i produced last year! they actually copied my format – they used a different title font (they actually used papyrus, a “distressed” font that i find particularly annoying), but everything about the format is essentially the same. they even used some of the same ads. also, they cheaped on the printing, which means that the greyscale graphics are at a larger screen density, and coarser than they were last year, and the “colour” cover is on cheaper paper, with no UV coating, and is only colour on one side – and i’d be willing to bet that they paid at least twice as much for it than they did last year. of course they didn’t post the actual schedule in the program, and included numerous warnings that the schedule can change at a moment’s notice. in general, i say “ha ha!”

i took a whole bunch of pictures, but only three of them are worth looking at, because the rest of them were taken from the back of the theatre, with no flash, which means blurry at best. i like the picture of diemo, though. i got down on his level and snapped the photo, and then i was able to turn the camera around and show him the picture, which was really cool. he seemed to like it, too… 8)

passing time

snow! in march!

the opening night of the moisture festival is today. i’ve got to be there no later than 5:30, and we begin playing at 6:30. until then, i am waiting for UPS to deliver 1000 postcards i had printed for margot lovinger, which, according to the UPS web page, has been “out for delivery” since 4:45 this morning. the last time i remember this happening, the guy came shortly after i was forced to leave, and because of the fact that it happened on friday, i wasn’t able to actually recieve the shipment until monday. there’s a good chance that will happen again with this shipment, because i have to go help bill nelson with another one of his computer problems tomorrow morning. if it weren’t for the fact that his computer problems inevitably turn out to be much easier to solve than he makes them sound when i’m talking to him on the phone, and if it weren’t for the fact that he is enthusiastic about paying me, i would consider telling him to find another helpdesk geek.

snow? in march??

well, my UPS shipment just arrived, so i’m outta here.

grump!

okay, i’ve about had it with the “Athiest 1 – Magick 0” posts that i have been seeing around for the last couple of weeks, in regard to the athiest rationalist who challenged a “tantrik magician” to kill him on television. it’s wrong thinking from the start, and here are some of the reasons why.

by the way, with the exception of the first, all of these reasons assume a hypothetical person who is able to kill the rationalist by using “magic” powers without actually touching him in any way. whether such a person really exists or not is a subject for another discussion at some other time.

1: because of the fact that this took place on television, there’s a good chance that the station that broadcast it was legally liable if anybody died on their set, regardless of how they died. the probability is extremely high that both the rationalist and the “tantrik magician” knew this, even before accepting an appearance on the show. this was not a challenge, it was an entertainment event, and it was known ahead of time, exactly what the outcome would be.

2: the (hypothetical) person who actually has the power to kill the rationalist isn’t the person who is going to be widely known as a “tantrik magician”. such a person avoids fame, would not actively seek out the spotlight, and, when in the spotlight, would demonstrate that anyone could do the things that they do, and/or to give thanks to God (or whatever you may call it) for the abilities that are being ascribed to them. however, especially if they are widely known, such a person would also be very careful about the words that are used to describe them. any words – such as “tantrik magician” – that imply that their powers are in some way “super natural” will be avoided at all costs, and any violation of this would be swiftly and sternly dealt with.

in fact, just from knowing this much, i can tell you with absolute certainty that the “tantrik magician” failed to kill the rationalist, knowing no further information. by the way, if you haven’t already read the article, the “tantrik magician” – big suprise – failed to kill the rationalist.

3: the rationalist, in accepting a challenge from a “tantrik magician”, knew from the start that he would fail, so this wasn’t really a “challenge” at all. such people don’t know a real saint when they see one, because of their mindset that tells them that such people don’t exist. a real saint could perform any miracle, with as much documentation anybody could ask for, and such a person would find some way to prove that they didn’t actually do it.

4: the (hypothetical) person who actually has the power to kill the rationalist will not respond to challenges to “prove” their powers. such a person would consider the whole subject of responding to a challenge superficial, pointless, and actually deterimental to the actual reason why are on earth.

5: perhaps the most important point of all is that the (hypothetical) person who actually has the power to kill the rationalist will be known as a person of peace, and would never kill another conscious being for capricious reasons or to prove a point. this, if no other reason, is why all challenges like this will be met with silence from the people who could actually do it.

Continue reading grump!

oy… 8/

i’ve got to get this off my chest because it’s been really bothering me. about a week ago i posted about a lady i had seen doing psychic readings with a deck of cards that i designed, and i posted a picture that was clearly identifiable as the lady in question. however, i didn’t ask her permission before i posted it, and it very definitely was not okay with her that i had done so – don’t bother looking for the photo at my flickr gallery, because it’s not there either. i deleted it at her request. but the problem is that i may have irreparably broken any chances that i had to find out more about where she got the cards, or find out about her “psychic connection” with them, and even to get to know her and become friends with her. i did something, without thinking, which, if someone had done it to me, i might have taken exception, and that, if i had thought about it for two seconds, i probably would have done entirely differently. it’s not an excuse, but i’m not used to people paying attention to me on the web – it’s such a big place, and i’m just one person… apparently that doesn’t make any difference. in the words of the lady, i am “a dirt bag”, and at this point, i tend to agree with her, which is why i haven’t posted anything for a few days.

HYPOCRITE!!!

if you haven’t heard, oklahoma state legislator sally kern recently made some “unfortunate” remarks about gays and terrorists:

“unfortunate” because according to what i have read since then includes the fact that, apparently, sally kern has a gay son, who she has disowned because of his sexuality:

Sally Kern Scrubs Gay Son?

when confronted by the (800,000-some and still rising) people who were offended by her comments, she said that if she had known she were being recorded, she wouldn’t have changed what she said, and she was not going to apologise for standing up for “god’s” word:

Freedom or Hate?

first, i wonder how pathetic, puny, childish minds like this ever get elected to public office, then i wonder why it is that when they make their pathetic, puny, childish opinions public like this, that there isn’t more public outcry to get them out of office… and then i remember that this is reality that we live in, and regardless of how nice it would be if we all just got along with each other and respected each other’s private lives without having to make pathetic, puny, childish statements about how “god” doesn’t approve of us, it’s simply not going to happen until we make a concerted effort to rid ourselves of the remaining pathetic, puny, childish mindset that currently plagues us as a whole.

i remember thinking that it was going to be my son’s generation that made the substantial changes that need to be made in our society in order to keep the human race from bombing ourselves into oblivion, but the older i get, the more i see that, even if my son’s generation gets a start on making those changes, it will still be a long, uphill battle to save the planet from ourselves. 8P

Continue reading HYPOCRITE!!!

whew!

yesterday was full of incense orders, appointments, and rehearsals. i got up in time to go to my 10:00 appointment with the DVR lady and her business consultant (more about this later), and discovered that i had a $35 incense order. so i put the order together and was printing out the invoice when i realised that the person to whom i am sending it lives in the UK, which means that i have to figure out extra postage, and then write to them requesting that extra postage before i ship it. as of 1:30 today (more than 24 hours after i sent the request, i still haven’t got a reply from them. i hope it doesn’t turn out that they only notice when their order doesn’t come and they file a complaint with paypal… 8/ ). in any event, the result of all this was that i left about 15 minutes late for my appointment. fortunately i was able to call and let them know, so they woudln’t decide that i wasn’t there and decide not to help me at all.

i ended up getting to my appointment about 5 minutes late, but then i ended up sitting in the lobby for about 15 minutes before someone came out and told me that the appointment was actually scheduled for 10:30, not 10:00, and that the business consultant hadn’t arrived yet. 8/

finally the business consultant arrived, and she, the DVR lady and i talked about Hybrid Elephant for about 2½ hours. she ended up saying not very much that made me feel as though they actually are going to help me, including a blanket statement, which she did clarify later on, that the DVR won’t help people who are interested in self employment. she did qualify this by saying that those people who do get help from DVR with self employment are a lot more likely to be people who fit into the “niche markets” rather than the “fringe economy”, and that, on the surface, Hybrid Elephant sounded a lot more like the latter than the former. however she did say that it has very definite “niche market” potential, and that i should endeavour to work more towards developing those things, which included print brokering and musical instrument repair – neither of which are entirely out of the question, although both could use some help that i either can’t afford, or don’t know how to give them before they become anything like sustainable business material.

i had hoped to come home and take a shower before going to my 3:00 appointment with ned, but as it was i had just about enough time to come home, slam down something to eat, throw my trombone in the car and head out again. i made it to my appointment with about 15 minutes to spare, and when it got out, there wasn’t much point in driving more than i had to, so i drove up to ballard and took a nap until it was time for my BSSB rehearsal, from which i got home at 10:00, at which point i was so tired that i fell asleep on the couch.

that being said, here are a few things that i have found interesting from the past couple of days:

Cats Help Shield Owners From Heart Attack – this makes me wonder a lot about what toxoplasma gondii has, if anything, to do with it… and i, personally, can’t imagine how toxoplasma gondii could not have anything to do with it, considering how prevalent and insidious the microbe is…

The day the wiretaps go dead is about warrantless wiretapping, and how ordinary citizens can secure their communications against such travesties of democracy, while our supposedly democratically elected leaders are going about the business from a completely different angle: House Steers Its Own Path on Wiretaps. we can only hope that they will continue to be successful, if we want to keep democracy around.

finally, we have Crazy ‘Pot Will Make You Sell Your Children’ Warning from Otherwise Sane Senator, which just goes to show how far we have yet to go… 8/

Continue reading whew!

flash from the distant past

Hybrid Elephant at the Fremont Sunday Market

i went to the fremont sunday market yesterday. i didn’t do as well as i did last week, but i still made $60, which is nothing to sneeze at.

i had this really strange experience, but first, a little back story.

when i was living in bellingham, before i moved to mount vernon (let me see, mental calculations, approximately 15 years ago – gawd, am i really that old?), i was doing graphic design work for almitra, who was trying to pull together a “new-age” business, or commune, or teaching center, or something like that. she was also my introduction to the the himalayan academy, because she had found the 500 pound sphatika lingam that ordains their temple. looking back on it, i don’t see why i worked for her as long as i did, not only because she was one of the truly crazy people that have plagued my life, but also because she didn’t actually pay me in money, but rather in tangible goods, like an african aligator-skin drum, and a Mac LCII computer (which she ended up having a good friends of mine steal back from me), but this all happened before that.

one of the things that i designed for almitra was a deck of cards called “Words of Power”. they were triangular cards with a sri yantra on the back, and various words and their “interpretations” in fancy print on the front. i don’t remember all of the words, but they were all in a very fancy typeface that was very distinctive, and there were enough individual words to make a deck of 50 – 75 cards. all almitra did was come up with a list of words, and this idea, i did all of the design work and had the cards printed at this place in mount vernon, near where i lived several years later. after the cards were printed, i gave them to almitra, keeping a couple decks myself for my portfolio, and quickly forgot about them. i remember finding them when we moved from renton to auburn, but they’re currently buried somewhere in the pile of boxes in our dining room, and have been for at least two years.

Words of Power cards

yesterday, i was at the fremont sunday market, and i had occasion to see one of the people who really appreciates fine quality incense that i have come to know. she was a vendor as well, and someone i first met last year when i went to the FSM (i can’t help but think of the Flying Spaghetti Monster when i use that abbrevation). she had a table where she was giving “readings from a real, live psycho”, and – and this is the really weird part – she was using a deck of “Words of Power” cards as her medium.

Readings with a live psycho

i was passing by, and i saw the cards, and, without saying anything, i picked one up and turned it over to make sure that they really were the same cards i designed, and then i said “i designed these cards.” she immediately responded by grabbing the card back from me and saying “no you didn’t!” she said that she had a mystical relationship with the cards, and when i came back, a little later, with my camera so that i could take a picture of her with the cards, she said “no, no!” and tried to hide them from me – she was in the middle of a reading, though, and i got a shot of her and the cards anyway.

i haven’t even thought about those cards in 15 years! and almitra is one of the many truly crazy people i have dealt with in my life. i couldn’t have possibly imagined that anyone would use something that a crazy woman came up with as a legitimate vehicle for discerning the future before i actually saw it for myself.

o_0

suspects – either pornographers or journalists, i haven’t completely decided. if nothing else, it’s a good reason to avoid P2P software and to use DHCP… if there’s any doubt about your computer, try ShieldsUp which will tell you where the problems are, and make suggestions about what to do to fix them, hopefully before the police show up.

Child porn found on 20,000 computers in Virginia"Using a national online system that enables them to remotely download incriminating images directly from a suspect’s computer"waitaminute… somebody, somewhere has a software application that can discern incriminating photos from ones that are not incriminating on any computer, regardless of it’s operating system whether or not it is a server, and whether or not it is protected by a firewall, and that gives them the ability to download those images without leaving a trace in the target computer’s log files?

if they have the ability to download such images from computers regardless of their network presence or operating system, then why don’t they have the capability to replace the images, or shut down the computer, or introduce a virus, or block its network access? i can just see the shocked look on the pornographer’s face when he comes home one afternoon to discover that his entire hard disk has been wiped clean, or all of his pornography has been replaced by pictures of My Little Pony™.

maybe the reason why they are so confident of their numbers is because of the fact that they introduced the incriminating photos themselves. can you imagine a better way to get "potential terrorists" out of the way than to plant child pornography on their computers without their knowledge?

"using the nationwide software system, child pornography can easily be downloaded from the computer hard drives of individuals who utilize peer-to-peer file-sharing" so either they’re using P2P software themselves and have access only to the target hard disk’s "shared folders", or they’re using some "law-enforcement-only" software to access entire disks on P2P networks, not just the “shared folders”. i would think that people who had “incriminating” files on their computer, regardless of whether it was child-pornography, pirated music or plans to blow up the white house, would be smart enough not to put them in a place where they can be downloaded, willy-nilly, by just anyone. those criminals that aren’t that smart deserve what they get.

somehow i doubt that their investigation is actually happening that way, but you’ve got to think that a person whose job it is to write a newspaper article about computers would know enough about them to know.

Continue reading o_0

Urine Palace

Playing Politics With Intelligence – As President Bush and his aides reject the accusation that they are playing politics with matters of national intelligence, it’s worth noting that they have done precisely that many times. Bush and his top associates have a tradition of selectively disclosing intelligence findings that serve their political agenda — while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them. Think the run-up to war in Iraq. Think Valerie Plame…

ANTI-SEMITES FOR OBAMA – the tennessee republican party issued this press release today, in the wake of barack obama’s hesitance to denounce, or reject, anti-semite louis farrakhan’s support in last night’s debate. of course they did – they’re republicans and they’re from tennessee, what did you expect?

Ever wonder where L. Ron Hubbard stole Scientology from? – apparently there was a book published in 1934, in german, by Dr. A. Nordenholz called “Scientology – The Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge” – in german it’s “Scientologie – Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens” – which bears a striking resemblance to L. Ron Hubbard’s “Scientology”. it makes me wonder what Anonymous and/or the RTC will have to say about it.

If you like mazes this should keep you busy for a while.

Doctors demolish myths on medical marijuana – New analysis shows feds are wrong on pot… as if we needed another group of scientists to tell us that…

Continue reading Urine Palace

dead people

William F. Buckley Jr. 1925 – 2008 – in 1982, while the PHBFH was pregnant with ezra, i went to eastern washington to be a migrant fruit picker for a season. because of the fact that i didn’t have any money, i found a telephone credit card number, that allegedly belonged to William F. Buckley, which i used to call the PHBFH every day. i talked for hours, from the pay-phone up the road about a mile from the orchard i was working at, which was about 50 miles outside of lake chelan, washington. i can only imagine how large “William F. Buckley’s” phone bill must have been, because i figured that if i was using it with no consequences, there had to have been several hundred (at least) other hippies who were also using it. it finally quit working after i returned home, around christmas or so of that year. ezra was born in january of 1983.

stuff

i took a 24-exposure roll of pictures of the lunar eclipse the other day. none of them came out, which really disappoints me because i had ideal lighting – i was out in the middle of nowhere with no artificial light pollution – i had a SLR with a telephoto lens and a tripod, and no trees or anything like that, but i totally forgot about aperture and exposure settings, and so i ended up with 24 clear, not-a-speck-on-them negatives. i feel like a lousy photographer, especially because there were a couple of the pictures that i would have been really proud of if they had come out, but i couldn’t even hit one out of 24, and it’s all because i forgot something as basic as aperture and exposure. 8/

i’m feeling really isolated because i’m in my tiny, crammed-full-of-boxes office with the door shut because apart from the four dogs and three cats that we normally have, there are no less than three temporary dogs (two of which are going home tomorrow, thankfully), and they keep on chasing the cats in here, or coming in to “check up” on me every five minutes, which is really distracting. i’m trying to be nice to moe, because of the fact that she couldn’t really help it this time, but at the same time, seven dogs puts me just about over the edge, especially when i wasn’t really expecting it… so i isolate myself and hope that it doesn’t get to be too much before tomorrow morning.

i went to the “Seattle Freeze” this afternoon. i wasn’t sure whether i was going to freeze, or whether i was going to take pictures of people trying to interact with frozen people until it was time to freeze. i decided to freeze, which is a good thing because it was only for 5 minutes, and compared to the total number of people in westlake mall, the number of people who actually froze was infinitesimal. i took a few pictures, but the only one that is more than just a small crowd of people milling around is this one.

big dog, small car

the huge hairy shape in the back of that convertible is a dog, who was barking at passers-by.

my first acupuncture appointment of 2008 was this afternoon. the treatment was to make the tips of the fingers of my right hand less numb than they have been, and it very definitely worked, although it was also the most painful acupuncture appointment i have ever had. not only was there a needle in the top of my skull, but there were needles in the tips of all five fingers, and in at least two places on my shins, and they were in exactly the right position to hurt really bad when i tried to move over so that i would have some place to put my hand so that it didn’t hang off the edge of the table. ever since my injury my right hand has had the sensation of being asleep and having a heavy glove on all the time. it’s been going away very, very slowly, and at this point the only place that still feels like it’s asleep is my fingertips, but they’re definitely more “awake” since acupuncture.

i also got word that the Big Bois With Poise is going to be in the moisture festival this year…

the moisture festival… aah, the moisture festival.

this time last year i was frantically trying to get the schedule from them so that i could get the typesetting finished and get the printing done on their program, and not getting anywhere because they had their heads so firmly implanted in their asses (collectively), and by the time the moisture festival was over, i was so dissatisfied with the whole thing that i wasn’t sure whether or not i was even going to be a part of it this year. now that this year has actually happened, i’m still attracted by the fact that it was the single highest paying gig i had last year, and this year the phil is going to play more than we did last year (which still isn’t enough, in my opinion, but there’s not very much i can, or desire to do about it). i haven’t had anything to do with the people that made life so miserable last year (although the likelyhood that that will change is dramatically increased the closer to actual production time we get), so i don’t really know anything, but from what i’ve heard so far, the chaos that i waded through last year doesn’t even scratch the surface of the chaos that is currently going on, so the probability that the phil is going to play more, and/or BBWP is going to perform more is a definite probability.

time to take brownies out of the oven.

happy valentines day lupercalia

Christian Right’s Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth – eminentize the eschaton! more jeezis horseshit.

Latest Anti-Pot Quack Science: ‘Marijuana Makes Your Teeth Fall Out’ – more anti-cannabis horseshit

Scientists breed world’s first mentally ill mouse – schizophrenic mice… just what the world needs… 8/

Continue reading happy valentines day lupercalia

i am a bellinghamster

DREAM – i was in bellingham, but it was weird bellingham, that was older and/or newer than real bellingham. at first, i was on my bike, travelling from the north side to the south side, but i was going down high street/indian street from the university, and i had to go by fred meyers on lakeway before heading to the south side, but the further down indian street i got the less like actual bellingham it was. i noticed this and went 1 block north to high street, and i found houses i recognised, so i went back one block south, and found myself in the middle of an office complex that hadl, from the look of the architecture and the age of the trees, been there for at least 50 years. indian street was gone, and it was as though the university had expanded to take over part of sehome hill to jersey street and east all the way to chestnut or holly street. there was also a weird part that was sort of like a dream that i had a while ago (i’m not sure whether or not i actually wrote about it), where i was on my bike in bellingham and going from the madhouse by my friend eric’s house on mason street, but there was a railroad track, a much bigger freeway and this strange lighting effect that made everything look as though it had been filtered through something that removed all the colour and made it look like antique photos. also the store at potter and humboldt was in a different place, right next to the railroad track and closer to lakeway.

anyway, travelling along the back of one of the long buildings along where indian street used to be, i discovered this strange thing that was kind of like an aqueduct, but was now more like a sewer, sunk into the ground and covered with brickwork that was broken in parts, so part of it was open to the air, and the further toward chestnut i travelled, the more broken the brickwork became, until it was more like a brick-lined ditch with broken bricks, a little water, and a bunch of grass and weeds growing in it. there were also large brick buildings that looked like they had been there for at least 50 years, surrounding a big, open space with massive trees and pathways criscrossing the neatly manicured grass. eventually i left my bike somewhere, for some unknown reason, and headed back up the hill towards the university. i actually went through some of the buildings, because i could. inside they were more like hospitals: a lot of people wandering around with drip sets and posts with drip bags on wheels, butts sticking out from ill-fitting hospital gowns and such-like. it must have been an older hospital, though, because there were no automatic doors or ramps, it was all stairways, manual doorways between levels, and hallways going off at bizarre angles. at one point i realised that i had forgotten my bike, and went back, ostensibly to get it, but i didn’t get far because a huge crowd of people were getting in my way, almost as if the classes were changing or something: one minute there were just the people that looked like they should have been in a hospital, and the next minute there were all these people that were all going different places all at once. they didn’t realise they were getting in my way, but there were more of them than i could deal with, and i realised that i had forgotten where my bike was anyway, so i proceded back the way i had been going to begin with. there was a part where i went up a stairway to a door that came out the back of the hospital-like building, with a bike rack along the back of the building. the hill continued up, but i noticed that this was the highest point you could get to on the paved pathways, and if it hadn’t been for the huge trees below, there would have been a great view.

eventually i got to what had been the end of jersey street, where it goes into sehome hill, and i remember thinking that, at one time, i had gone up to sehome hill by the same route when i did the blessing before my son was born, and i thought about how different it was now, with all of the buildings and neatly trimmed grass.

weird

Few From Obama’s Youth Remember His Drug Use – a couple of things strike me about this article. first, my high school girlfriend went to occidental starting in 1979. i wonder if she knew barry obama. the other thing that strikes me is that it really wasn’t that long ago that bill clinton came under intense scrutiny over whether or not the fact that he “didn’t inhale” made him enough of a druggie to impeach him. it’s astounding enough that a black man has a possibility of becoming president, but a black man who lets it be publically known that he did inhale. and yet cannabis is still illegal. i really wonder about people… 8/

Continue reading weird

The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny

Speakers at Academy Said to Make False Claims – lemme see if i got this straight: three born muslim, converted to “christianity” middle-eastern men with “western” citizenship, who say that they have been involved with terrorist acts in the past, but are now “reformed”, get to travel around the country, including the US Air Force Academy, talking about their experiences… <yeah, that’s likely… 8/ >

If Mukasey Won’t Investigate Federal Crimes, He Should Resign – related links here, here and here.

Wikipedia ruled by ‘Lord of the Universe’ – hindus no longer have to worry about mahesh prasad varma so much, but there are still charlatans out there, and they own more than you think.

Continue reading The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny

another victory against wage slavery!

well, i’m back from troy’s with 500 business cards for NBAC, and now i know all the juicy details about why troy quit MMP. apparently there have been substantial changes happening that i didn’t know about. bart is now “general manager”, which means that instead of being back in the press room, being useful, he’s now up front, surfing the net and goofing off. bart says that he’s going to “do something” about the fact that numerous jobs have been going on the press without being spell checked and okayed by the customer (i actually used to have a proof stamp, that had to be initialled by the customer before i would put jobs on the “to-be-printed” pile – that stamp disappeared shortly after my injury [i suspect carl was behind it], and when i got out of the hospital, nobody knew where it was). troy was tired of taking flak for it, and complained to bart, but bart was apparently too busy surfing the net and goofing off to do anything about it once he left the press room. finally, one of the new (sales)girls came back and read troy the riot act for printing a job that hadn’t been proofread, and he told her to eat shit and die. when mike told troy to apologise to her, troy told mike to eat shit and die, and walked out.

good for him. it wasn’t enough that he was working from 3:00 am because of where he lives, and it wasn’t enough that he was only making $17 an hour when the industry standard for a press operator with his experience is more like $30 an hour, he shouldn’t have to put up with taking the blame for doing stuff that wasn’t his fault to begin with. of course this means that now bart will either be forced back into the press room, or he will have to hire a new, presumably competent press operator who is willing to work for $17 an hour.

also, apparently, mike is under the impression that quark xpress has been purchased by microsoft. i don’t know where he got that idea from, but it was probably from sharon, who is doing my job now, and who hates quark, despite the fact that it is consistently more reliable than adobe.

The Beetles!

no, not the fab four, the insect that has been around since the dinosaurs, and accounts for 25% of all lifeforms on the planet. i started out with Whirligig Beetle Gets Rock ‘N’ Roll Legendary Name, because it included a quote from roy orbison’s widow, barbara. then i saw Slime-mold Beetles Named For Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, which is from 2005, but still elicted a guffaw from me. from there i proceded to Will Beetles Inherit The Earth? which makes me think that human beings are probably not the “ruling species” on this planet, and it’s arrogant of us to think otherwise. in fact, if humans succeed in killing ourselves off, as it appears like we’re bent on doing these days, beetles will probably not only survive, but not even notice that anything has changed.

yes, i am a geek.

big brother is everywhere!

Closing the noose on the USA – this is the beginning of having a storm trooper on the corner, asking for papers to go from one part of town to another, making sure that you’re where you’re supposed to be, doing what you’re supposed to be doing. what will have to happen before people will say enough?

Jack Bauer Cellphone Network to Detect Nukes, Surveil Cities – We’re sure some readers are already screaming “Big Brother” and alt-tabbing to their blog window to write about this evil new “Nokia 1984 phone”

Cloudwar – on january 8, bush signed an order expanding the power of federal law enforcement and spy agencies to combat internet attacks on government

Continue reading big brother is everywhere!

great… 8b

i just received a letter from DSHS/DVR – the Department of Social and Health Services, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. they are in receipt of my request for vocational services (it’s about time! i applied almost 5 years ago, and this is the first i’ve heard from them except for a notice telling me that i was on the waiting list.) and have scheduled an appointment for me on "Monday, 2/12/2008 at 10:00 am."

i wonder if this is a test, to discover whether or not i am aware of the fact that neither the 12th of february, nor the 2nd of december, if you’re being european, come on a monday this year… strangely enough, they’re both tuesdays…

if it is a test, i wonder how i should respond…

jeezis pirates with illegal drugs and super-vision…

Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision – right here in my own back yard…

Guess which drug is illegal? – mark morford is god!

The Pirates Can’t Be Stopped – will that stop them from trying to defeat the pirates? only time will tell, but at this point, it’s not likely.

Banned From Church – more fun with jeezis

Continue reading jeezis pirates with illegal drugs and super-vision…

stress level back up to 75

the letter i wrote to my "friend" CO resulted in the end of our friendship. this isn’t as stressful to me as the fact that other friends of mine actually live in the same city with CO, and have to put up with her much more personally, and on a daily basis. i’m really glad i don’t live in that city any longer, but it’s really sad to think that some of my former friends are so hung up with childish, petty bickering that they miss out on what’s really important.

sigh… oh well… 8P

i have had too many certifiably crazy people in my life – R&B, osiris, almitra, zanthia, JR, the PHBFH, and now CO – they have all had fairly similar attributes, and i am SO tired of dealing with people who are crazy in that way. you know people say i’m crazy, and i’m sure other people say they’re crazy, but until you have dealt with a person who is certifiably crazy, you won’t know what i’m talking about. you say you’re crazy, i say i’m crazy, but then we get on with our lives and everything is good. but with certifiably crazy people, you don’t have to say they’re crazy, because you’re too busy dodging whatever they just threw at you, both figuratively and literally. they can seem like nice, safe, “normal” people (and i use that word advisedly) one minute, and be completely off the wall the next, and you don’t know from one minute to the next what they’re going to do.

it’s like they say: crazy people make even sane people act crazy. i am SO glad i’m 100 miles away from CO, in a completely different city. 8/

this corrupt society

In the future, your music could be listening to you

Man wants his $400K back from the FBI – Rule #1: NEVER let cops into your house unless they have a warrant, and if they have a warrant, allow access only under protest! regardless of how much they seem like they’re “on your side”, you can never trust cops to do the right thing when they have the opportunity.

NBC disinvites Kucinich from debate – no matter how they say it, they don’t want kucinich at their party, which is one of the primary reasons why he gets my vote even if he is forced to withdraw from the race.

Faith Based Science

Continue reading this corrupt society

Bush can’t resist starting one more war before leaving office… 8/

Mischievous ‘Filipino Monkey’ could have triggered latest US-Iran row – i realise that it’s just a name, but does the “filipino monkey” really have a radio that will reach all the way to the strait of hormuz? it’s about as likely as “the new jersey monkey”…

Continue reading Bush can’t resist starting one more war before leaving office… 8/

real life drama… 8/

hi CO,

i must admit, i haven’t read your letter thoroughly yet, but on the surface, it appears as though you have a lot to say about KM, and not all of it is positive. you apparently also have a lot to say about what KM said about MO which also is not entirely positive. you say that KM is a gossip, and then you go into great detail (6 pages) about exactly why KM is a gossip. this is the first i have heard about it, apart from the fact that KN told me that he and KM were banned from TMH. KM didn’t want to tell me anything, but it appears as though someone wanted to “gossip” about what has been going on, even after i said “i won’t even pretend to understand”…

you say you feel that i have “judged” you. quite the opposite is actually true. i have not judged anybody: i consider what i know of both your stories to be so outlandish that “i won’t even pretend to understand” and prefer not even to hear about it.

just so you know, of all the people i know, apart from MO, KN and KM were the only people who cared enough about what was going on, to come and see me when i was in the hospital – not even my parents came to see me. they came for 3 days and stayed in the same room you stayed in, at my house in renton. i have known you for a long time, and i have never had particularly good feelings about BE, but as long as he was married to you, i treated him with respect. in the same way, KN is married to KM so she gets my respect by defaut.

at the same time, i have never had any reason to believe that KM is a liar, and i have never heard the negative things that KM has allegedly said about MO… and, just for the record, MO is a “weirdo who hates people and only likes animals”. in that way, MO and i are very similar, although i admit that MO seems to like animals a little more than i do. nevertheless, i have the very strong impression that the things you reported to me were overheard as a part of a conversation with someone else, not part of a conversation that you had with KM directly, and if they were a part of a conversation that you had with KM, there is a very good chance that you grossly misunderstood what she was saying. i say this because i know that KM’s way of speaking is very easy to misunderstand (having done so repeatedly myself) and has a tendency to grate on people who don’t understand what she is trying to get across. nevertheless, i don’t believe that KM has any reason to be anything less than 100% truthful.

i haven’t spoken with JE and GY for a long time, and i know nothing about any conversations you may have had with them, or with TA, or with anybody else concerning KN and KM. one of the reasons that i am glad that i finally moved away from bellingham is that i am out of the line of fire when somebody like PHBFH, or AL, or JR decides to go off on me or one or more of my friends, and part of the reason why i said “i won’t even pretend to understand” in my previous letter is because even if you tried to explain it to me (as you apparently have), i still don’t understand why people that were all my friends when i was in bellingham, now seem to be turning against each other, almost as if they have nothing better to do with their lives.

regardless of what you say, as long as KM is married to KN, she will be a very good friend of mine. in the same way, regardless of what you say about KM, you will continue to be a very good friend of mine, and as long as you and KM don’t get along, for whatever reasons, i will fail to understand it.

i haven’t decided whether or not i will bring all of this up with KM, because i don’t feel that it is important to my friendship with her, but if i do, i plan on including your name, and i expect to hear some equally wild story from KM about how insane you are… to which i will also give absolutely no credence, because it will very likely be as wild and ranting as your story apears to be.

this strikes me as being very similar to a situation that i was involved in a few years ago, when PHBFH and i were still in the middle of our court battle over custody of E. PHBFH had introducted to the court signed affidavits from two people who were supposed to be very good friends of mine, who, in reality, had been out of contact with me for almost 10 years – C and WJ – saying all kinds of hurtful and untruthful things about me. i talked with both people some time later, and they were both intensely sorry that they had said those things in PHBFH’s presence, because they were unaware of how sick PHBFH really was, and how their words would be twisted against them.

it strikes me as similar because it seems as though you have all of these stories about other people (JE & GY, TA, L, D, etc.), but i have seen no evidence of this myself, and, in fact, i know from having talked to D, that he still “sneaks out” and visits KN and KM, despite what you say about KM trying to “influence” him against you. admittedly, i am out of the line of fire, and drama that originates in bellingham often times stays in bellingham, but at the same time, i have more important things to do with my life than determining which of my two friends’ outlandish stories about the other friend is true or not.

yes, yoganandaji said “treachery is the greatest sin before God”, but i think you should pay attention to what he says about “friends who stab you in the back”, because even though i said “i won’t even pretend to understand”, you took it upon yourself to “gossip” about KM anyway. i don’t care: guruji loves both of you equally anyway, and so i love both of you equally anyway.

corruption in high places

Bush can’t resist starting one more war before leaving office – iran, of course, says that the video is a fake…

Supreme Court Weighs Photo-ID Requirement for Voters – photo ID that costs money… but it’s not a poll tax, because there isn’t a fee for voting, just a fee to get the ID that means you can vote…

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills – didn’t i read a report about something like this a few months ago? well, in any event, it’s happened again…

why do we put up with things like this? it wasn’t that long ago that people were marching in the streets, demanding change (yes, i’m referring to the ’60s), and now we just lie down and let them roll over us! i do what i can, but i can’t do it alone by any stretch of the imagination, and the more i read of stuff like this, the more i am tempted to just abandon ship and go somewhere else.

Continue reading corruption in high places

random bits of this and that

Bush Begins Preparations For Nation’s Final Year – let’s start things off with a bit of humour – or is it?

Conservative pastor urges buying Microsoft stock to fight its gay rights efforts – a black man uses race and his position as a pastor to encourage white people to discriminate against gays?

Iraqi Soldier Who Killed U.S. Troops is a Hero in Iraq – what do you expect? the US troops were acting like assholes, and they got what they deserve for a change!

Adobe, Omniture in hot water for snooping on CS3 users – yet another reason not to use adobe products… it’s too bad that adobe went from making one of the best page layout programs in existence to the microsoft-clone that they are currently…

Continue reading random bits of this and that

paypal gripe

i am apparently ineligible for a paypal debit card because i have “insufficient transaction history”, despite the fact that i have been a paypal member for 3 years. when i have to purchase something, i have had to transfer money to my bank, because i have a debit/mastercard from the bank that allows me to make purchases as though they were credit card purchases, but the vendors that i make purchases from don’t accept paypal as a payment method. when i don’t have enough money in my bank account, i have to transfer money from my paypal account to make purchases, which takes two or three days. so i have made transfers from my paypal account, but apparently that isn’t “sufficient transaction history” for them. according to paypal, i have to make at least $20 (in two purchases of $10 each) from my paypal account before they can issue me a paypal debit card. unfortunately, because of the fact that the vendors that i purchase from don’t accept paypal as a payment option, i am apparently ineligible for a paypal debit card. the lady i just got done talking to said that all i have to do is make two $10 purchases from my paypal account to be eligible. this is after i have waited two months for a paypal debit card that i have applied for twice, and gotten zero response from paypal during that time that even came close to explaining why i was not eligible. if i were to go to a bank (like i did recently when i changed banks) they would not hesitate to give me a debit card regardless of what kind of transaction history i had, but with paypal, apparently you have to make purchases through paypal before you can be eligible for a paypal debit card, regardless of how long you have been a paypal member, and regardless of what your transaction history is. is that stupid or what?

wake up! pat robertston contradicts the bible!

Pat Robertson predicts violence, recession for 2008 – i thought the bible specifically said something along the lines of “you should never pay attention to people who predict things that don’t come true”… if i recall correctly, acknowledging that he has made predictions that didn’t come true himself is one of your biggest clues that pat robertson doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Continue reading wake up! pat robertston contradicts the bible!

very weird dream

i was at a chinese restaurant in downtown seattle, near the king street station, eating with moe and several other people i don’t know. when we finished, we went out onto the street by way of this weird little tunnel that went below the street and let us out on the other side of the street from the restaurant, which is where things started getting really screwy. the tunnel came up in another restaurant, or possibly in an across-the-street extension of the restaurant that we had been in, and it was full of people and bicycles. we had the dogs with us (in a restaurant?) and half the people in the restaurant started complaining about a dog in the restaurant and half of them wanted to eat zora. i wouldn’t stand for it and demanded to see the manager, who told me that it would be best if we all left the restaurant through the back door, which meant going past all the people in the restaurant, through a door into the kitchen and down a little hallway to the street. when we finally made it to the street, i knew that i had parked the car exactly one block from the restaurant, so i knew that it couldn’t be more than one block in any direction from where i was standing, but i went one block and suddenly found myself in the middle of a large black gang rally where i was the white person. they didn’t want me there, and made their intentions known, so hastily i kept going another block, in a straight line, away from where the other people at the restaurant were standing, and somehow i found that i had gone around 2 sides of a triangular block, and was approaching the place i just left. when i got back to where i started from, i apologised to the people for making them stand around, but the car wasn’t where i expected it to be. it was then suggested that i go the opposite direction, back the way i came, and the car might be there. so i headed back, and found myself on the edge of a manufacturing yard with a whole bunch of metal rails on stands, and a number of railroad spurs, surrounded by a fence. i started to head across the yard when a whole bunch of workers showed up and started singing “When You’re A Jet” from West Side Story, and encouraging me to join in with them. at first i was in too much of a hurry, but then i couldn’t help joining in, eventually taking up one of the minor lead roles. i noticed that they had changed from workers to a tough-looking puerto rican street gang, but they seemed friendly and were impressed with my singing and ability to play hand rhythmns on the various barrels and rails that were sitting around in the yard (which i have been unable to do in reality since my injury: the left hand works the way its supposed to, but the right hand just wobbles, shakes violently, or, at best, is significantly slower). when the song was over, i was even more in a hurry to find the car than i was before, but my right leg had started to get tired, so i was skipping instead of running, and suddenly i started to fly. it was a little disturbing at first and i slowed down so that i would lose altitude, but then i realised that i could spot the car from above a lot easier than i could on the ground, so i went up again and almost immediately ran into overhead wires (i always run into overhead wires in my flying dreams! it’s SO annoying!) and got tangled in them. i noticed that the alaska way viaduct was right next to where i was, and that i was in a part of seattle that had random, triangular shaped blocks and was 2 or 3 blocks away from the water. i somehow managed to get free of the wires, and i came back to earth in another manufacturing yard, which was very muddy. the puerto rican street gang was there, although now they had changed into the cast from Welcome Back Kotter (which i have never watched – even one episode), and they told me that i should get out of the way if i didn’t want to get wet. just about that time, i noticed that the mud was getting soupier, and from across the yard, a whole bunch of water was coming towards me, so i started flying again and almost immediately got tangled in the overhead wires again, this time i actually broke one of the wires and had it wrapped around my right leg, which was now almost useless for walking. i worried about what would happen if it bridged the gap between two other wires while it was wrapped around my leg, but when it did so i was not injured in any way.

Merry “christmas”… 8/

GOP Rep Declares US a Christian Nation, Calls on Americans to “Stand Up” and “Worship Christ” – because, you know, “christianity” is opressed by the forces of the devil, and stuff like that…

Colo. Church Gunman Left Twisted Trail – this is what comes of raising your kids to be good “christians”.

Charlie’s Angels – 10 years distributing toys to families of inmates apparently isn’t “christian” enough for gay-hating ministry.

Muslim helps Jews attacked on New York subway – the attackers were “christians”, of course.

Continue reading Merry “christmas”… 8/

the 2nd time i’ve had this dream this week

i was in a house that felt like my own house, except that it was on a higher hill and had a view from all around. this guy i didn’t recognise came driving up to the house, and i recognised his car as being from a dream i had a couple of nights ago (which is one of the reasons i find this dream particularly significant). he was an indian guy (from india, not a native american), and he started talking to me about his interpretation of ganesha. i was very interested in what he was saying, and listened intently (although i can’t remember, now, exactly what he was saying). while he was talking, a number of other people drove up to the house, and one of them had a stand, like the one i created at the punk rock flea market last weekend. the guy who was doing most of the talking was a guru for the other people who showed up, and the other people were very impressed with what he was saying. i, on the other hand, was skeptical, and kept asking him questions, most of which he answered in a logical and straightforward manner. he was tall, thin, and clean-shaven, with dark skin and black hair that came down to his shoulders and a big smile. he seemed very friendly and personable, despite the fact that the other people were in awe of him and kept a respectful distance. i don’t remember why, but i decided that this guy was representing a cult (i don’t remember which one) that i was not interested in joining, although i seemed to agree with most of what they were saying. when i informed the guy that i was not going to join his cult, the other people started drifting off and the guy with the stand started packing up. i did say that i wanted to buy an earring from him, which was a silver statue of ganesha with rudrakhsha seeds. i hung it from my 1″ ear tunnel, which the guru thought was extremely funny.

penis enlargement

i have been getting comments in my blog that are spams recently. it’s a very good thing i have a moderation queue, and only accept comments from people who have registered, otherwise i would be bitching more about it.

in other news, my brand new power supply that i bought less than a month ago as part of my ongoing battle with the computer, failed yesterday: i cycled the power, and when i tried to start up the machine again, it didn’t even budge. i panicked, asked advice from my net-geek friends, and then took the whole CPU to re-pc this morning and had it officially diagnosed. it’s a good thing it failed yesterday, though, because if it had waited until today to fail, then i wouldn’t have been able to get a refund from re-pc, because it would have been more than 30 days since i bought it.

weird contact from india

someone sent me email with the contact form on Hybrid Elephant yesterday, which i just noticed was from a yahoo address in india. it was confusing. it said:

info

contect details

it was apparently from someone named s.m.patel and it had an IP address that resolved to here, which is apparently a Ram Mandir in indore (not this one, but south west, on the other side of indore, in between Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport and Sirpur Tank, in Angad Kapoor’s Region)…

anybody have any clue what it means?

i have a swastika on my art car… get used to it!

so i submitted pictures of my art car to the national 2008 Art Car Calendar.

this was the response they sent me:

Hi,

You have a beautiful car, but I do have a problem with the swatstika on top.

Yes, I know that I am ignorant and narrow minded, but the image is embedded in my brain as an evil symbol of hate.

Next year if you would allow me to cover it up or replace it with another symbol, then I would feel more comfortable to have it in the calendar.

I truly apologize if I have offended you in any way, but that is my opinion and I publish the calendar.

Thank you for submitting your car for the calendar.

so this was the response i sent back:

if people like you continue to be in positions where they can determine what other people see, then the swastika will never regain that which it had for everyone, for literally thousands of years before anybody ever heard of the nazis. if that happens, it will be a sad day for humanity.

one of the reasons why i put a swastika on my car is to show people that it had another, entirely opposite meaning from the one people like you have put upon it in the past 85 years.

you may not cover or alter the artwork on my car. to do so would be a misrepresentation of what i meant for my art car, and i will not permit you to do so.

i am offended, but i will get over it. however, you should examine your prejudices again in a year or so and see if they haven’t changed, because if they haven’t, then it is possible that you have offended The Remover of Obstacles, and i can’t speak for Him.

William J. Schnoebelen

William J. Schnoebelen – Another Bob Larson

the following is an approximate biographical timeline extrapolated from the biographical information found at http://www.withoneaccord.org/store/Biography.html

1941 maximum birthday – AGE 0
1947 maximum “a teacher of witchcraft, spiritism and ceremonial magick” – age minimum approx. -4, maximum 6
1951 minimum birthday – AGE 0
1963 maximum “active member of the Freemasonic fraternity” – age minimum approx. 13, maximum 23
1968 approximate “a careful student of the UFO phenomenon”, minimum “a teacher of witchcraft, spiritism and ceremonial magick” – age minimum approx. 18, maximum 28
1971 “degree in music and education” – age minimum approx. 20, maximum 30
1972 maximum “in the Church of Satan” – age minimum approx. 21, maximum 31
1975 minimum “active member of the Freemasonic fraternity” – age minimum approx. 24, maximum 34
1977 married. minimum “in the Church of Satan” – age minimum approx. 26, maximum 36
1979 minimum “a devout member of the LDS (Mormon) church” – age minimum approx. 28, maximum 38
1980 Masters in Theological Studies – age minimum approx 29, maximum 39
1984 “saved” – age minimum approx. 33, maximum 43
1990 Master of Arts degree in counseling – age minimum approx. 39, maximum 49
2007 age approx. 56 – 66

all of these dates are approximate, at best, but even still, given the error probability of 10 years in either, the probability of overlap, and the probability that the whole thing may be off by 10 years or so, i still find it ludicrous that this guy is perceived as an “expert” on anything, and that he has the balls to stand up and tell the rest of us what “god” expects us to do.

he received a masters in theological studies before he was saved?? when did he have the time to study to become a Naturopathic doctor, a Nutritional Herbologist or a Certified Natural Health Professional – which could be literally anybody regardless of how much they have studied, especially given the “christian” disregard for those professions? i know from personal experience that anybody can be a “certified natural health professional”, especially if they don’t give any other credentials. mormon church temple recommends for both him and his wife after only being members of the mormon church for a year? it doesn’t seem likely, although it does seem likely that he was a satanist until he met his wife, who was a mormon. also, it seems to me that the mormon church elders’ quorum president would either have to be an extremely local position, or be somebody who was born a mormon. and the place where he got his MA in counselling was liberty universty, which is jerry falwell’s joint.

is this creative elaboration, or outright lies?

bizarre

so i’ve apparently got a customer, or something… his name is lamar, and he has been trying to get me to sign up for a number (i think it’s 4 now) of “social networking” sites, the most recent being wayn dot com (WhereAreYouNow), but looking at their terms and conditions, i wouldn’t go anywhere near them if i had to (which i don’t). in the past he’s added me to a “friends network” at facebook, friendster, and myspace. i have no idea who he really is, although some time back i interacted with a guy named “lamdon” who was a representative for nado poizokhang, one of my incense suppliers, and “lamar” might be the same guy… or he might be a guy that bought incense from me a couple of times last year. i really have no clear idea of who he might be, other than, perhaps, a persistent spammer. at the same time, if he’s a customer, i don’t want to alienate him, at least not without figuring out who he is first…

more brain injury/SSDI stuff

University of Washington Neurological Vocational Services – Harborview Medical Center

Dear Sir/Madam:

We have appreciated working with you for purposes of vocational rehabilitation. As per our discussion, we unfortunately need to terminate our service arrangement at this time for the following reason(s):

We have been unable to identify a funding source for your service. Please consider WorkSource and call us as we may know of a community program in your area.

[handwritten]recommend EnSo for your business needs. Good luck.[/handwritten]

Again, our best wishes in your future employment efforts.

except that EnSo is a place that gets personal assistants for people with developmental disabilities, and doesn’t have any way to deal with a person with a brain injury who wants help with his business.

i also talked with the legal assistant for the attorney that is supposedly handling my SSDI appeal yesterday. she says that there is a fourteen to sixteen MONTH waiting period for a hearing, and they just submitted my request for a hearing in july, so it’s probably going to be september to november of 2008 before i even hear anything from them… what do they want me to do in the mean time? the only way they are willing to "expedite" the waiting list process is if the person requesting the hearihg is dying. they also said that the hearing is where most people get approved. i wonder how many people go homeless and starve while waiting for a hearing because they don’t have enough money to shop or pay rent… i wonder how many people die because they’re waiting for a hearing and they can’t get it "expedited" because they’re "not dying"… but, instead, our government is apparently willing to ignore our lying president and fund two wars over a commodity that is going to be gone in 50 years anyway…

and people wonder why i’m depressed…

however, there is a bright spot in all of this. i called the woman at EnSo, and she told me that she had received email indicating that DVR had actually got a new director and was eliminating their waiting list. she forwarded this article to me and encouraged me to call DVR and “light a fire under ’em”, which i did. the result is that instead of 2 years, they have me down to 3 months, so it’s possible that, by january, i might have some help with my business… but i’m not gonna hold my breath, because i’ve been burned by government organisations that were supposed to help me in the past.