terri schiavo died a few minutes ago… now the battle is for where and what manner she will be buried. michael says she will be cremated and buried in pennsylvania, the parents want her not cremated and buried in florida…

can’t they leave well enough alone????

http://www.moisturefestival.com/

The 2005 Moisture Festival, A springtime celebration of comedie and varieté featuring Fyodor Karamazov, Du Caniveaux, The Fremont Players, Zebra Kings, Lelavision, Kevin Joyce, Martha Enson, PK Dwyer, Godfrey Daniels, Dangerous Flares, Artis the Spoonman, Flordigan Can Can Girls, Dr. Calamari and Acrophilia, Berlin’s Hacki Ginda, Avner the Eccentric. Tom Noddy the Bubble Guy, Rhys Thomas Jugglemania, Buttrock Suites, Magical Mystical Michael, Circus Contraption, The Aerialistas, Canote Brothers, Henrik Bothe, Baby Gramps, The Peculiárs, Amanda Starr, Widow Twankey, Cirque de Flambé, Christian Swenson, Savannah Fuentes, The Fremont Philharmonic, Janet McAlpin’s Madame X, Frank Olivier plus Late Night Burlesque! with Indigo Blue, Wade Madsen Ultra, and More!

Dates: March 30 – April 10th

Location: Hale’s Palladium, 4301 Leary Way NW, Seattle, WA

Ticketing Information:
Kids: $5.00
Matinee show: $10.00
Evening show: $15.00
Late show: $10.00
Fri. and Sat. night shows: $20.00

amusing, in a scary sort of way when you think about it, the Furry Home Page (thanks to ) at Furry Elementary School, in sandusky, ohio… and the reason it’s scary is because if you look at it with anything other than internet exploder (which i do by default, since micro$nooze doesn’t make IE for linux, and even if they did, i wouldn’t use it anyway), it looks like shit… it looks like it was made by a 5 year old who doesn’t know anything about HTML, because it doesn’t validate… but instead of making sure it’s compliant with industry standards for such things, instead, the perkins school district, whose ultimate purpose is "Excellence in education for all", makes it everyone else’s fault on their "technology" page, by saying that if you use firefox (which, while good, is the only alternative they offer, ignoring mozilla, or safari, or konqueror, or galeon, or…), "some web sites, including those of Perkins Local Schools and NOECA, may not appear as the web designer intended, and some dynamic content may not function correctly."

wull yeah, if the "web designer" has a pole up his ass and can’t write HTML because he relies on micro$hit to do all of the important stuff for him because he doesn’t understand how to do it himself, yeah, i can see how that might happen…

i wonder how much money micro$not has thrown at the perkins school district… i wonder if there are any computer users who run mac or linux systems in the perkins school district… if i was in sandusky, ohio, i would have some words with the school district’s network administrator, or their "webmaster" or whoever he is – i’d email him, but there appears to be no email address for Philip Alldredge – and if that didn’t work, i’d consider moving to another school district just on principle.

my LJ style changed again… i wonder how long it’s going to be before somebody does something about it?

changes from component to generator, changes from english to danish, changes from purple to blue…

i don’t have much to say, but i’ve got a lot to say about it…

about terri schiavo… just about as much has been said about the case as can be, but i’d like to add my two cents. much as the "CULTure of life" would like to ignore the fact, people actually don’t grow new brains… and that’s exactly what terri schiavo would have to do in order to be anything other than a persistent vegetable for the rest of her natural-born days, i don’t care how many "sounds" you hear coming out of her!! to illustrate this, here is a graphic:

the dark areas on the left are places where there used to be brain material, but are now spinal fluid… i don’t care how much wishing and believing the parents do, i don’t care how much they wish that they heard her say "i want to live", their daughter simply won’t grow back even a fraction of that brain material. she’s a vegetable! QUIT APPEALING THE DECISIONS OF PEOPLE WHO KNOW MORE THAN YOU AND LET HER DIE, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!

more links that express my views pretty well…

if you want to stop the government from doing "cat" scans without your knowledge, then you’ve got to see Pet Foil Hat Technology… some people will buy anything…

and then, we have the "Art Outlives Politics" section of the post, which includes the recent actions by banksy, and Will SpongeBob Make You Gay?, yet another attempt by the religious right to control anything that might prove to make people realise how insidiously stupid the religious right is…

finally, we have art imitating life… or life imitating art?

oh, by the way, The 2nd Annual Moisture Festival starts next week…

okay, this is getting really annoying… my LJ style changed again! without me doing anything to it… i don’t know what is going on, but among other things, i changed my password, just in case.

i’m distressed and depressed, so i don’t feel like updating that often. i’m still here, and things are still as good as can be expected, considering that i’ve experienced a brain injury and been unemployed for almost 9 months, and there’s a good chance that we’re going to have to move pretty soon, which means that i may have to go another year or more before i actually get a chance to have the poppies that i successfully planted earlier this year actually grow to maturity in my yard… and i won’t have the multicoloured roses all over the yard… oh, yeah, i can plant more, but then i’ve got to wait for them to grow, which won’t be this year, and probably won’t be next year either. there’s so much more about this that i could say, but that’s what i’m thinking about right now. i’m not particularly disappointed at leaving our current location, it’s just that i don’t know where we’re going to end up yet… and the last time this sort of thing happened in my life was shortly before (as in a couple of years before) i broke up with ruth. and i can already hear moe saying that she’s NOT ruth, but old habits die hard (even if what i’ve been experiencing recently can’t exactly be described as a "habit")… and i have the added "bonus" of having my injury now, so if we did break up (for God-knows what reason), i’d be even more out of it than i was the last time. thus distress and depression.

according to ezra (who talked with her last week) katharyn is out of the state loony bin in steilacoom. apparently she was transferred to some regional care-center in bellingham, but as she has basically told her care-givers not to give any information about her to anyone, including ezra, and as she still maintains to ezra that she was "kidnapped" (in spite of the fact that she is now a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic), ezra has been unable to find out an awful lot more than that.

i’ve noticed that, about every 2 weeks or so, something gets messed up on the livejournal server such that my livejournal style gets changed from it’s current "component" style to "generator" style, which is definitely undesireable, and means that i’ve had to learn all of the nuances of the "component" style so that when it changes i can change it back as soon as possible. i would prefer it if it didn’t happen at all, but at least i’ve been able to learn all of the twiddly little details enough that i can tell almost immediately when it’s about to change, and change it back again fairly quickly.

okay, ezra has this goal of putting up 100,000 stickers that have this stylised picture of a bald man with the words "the bald man is watching you", similar to the picture shown here. this is a story that he told me about one recent expedition to help realise this goal. he says he was out putting up stickers recently in pioneer square, and there was a person standing outside of an art gallery smoking a cigarette who saw him and inquired if he was the one responsible for the stickers (which he is). she said that she is a member of a nationwide group of people who have been subjected to "testing" by the U.S. government, which she’s not supposed to talk about (<ding ding> wacko alert going off…). she said that in seattlle, there’s a guy named frank, who is paid by the government to make sure that members of this group who have been subjected to this "testing" actually don’t talk about it, and, coincidentally, he looks exactly like the bald man. now this is a person who, previously, didn’t know about ezra, or who was responsible for the bald man, but she said that she had a friend who lives in seattle, who is also a part of this group of people who have had this "testing" done to them, and this friend of hers had drawn a picture of this woman (her name is lynn) punching this guy named frank. she showed it to ezra, and he said that indeed, it looks almost exactly like the bald man. i said that, if it were happening to me, it would either inspire me to put up more stickers, or it would scare me enough that i would stop putting them up all together, with my particular preference being towards the former, and he agreed that he felt the same way. at that point, we got to talking about internet domains and suchlike, and there’s a good chance that the bald man is going to end up with a domain which people can go to, to find out more information (such as it is) about the bald man.

there’s a site which has, among other things, an article about starting a revolution (which is stuff i’ve been saying for 30 years), and an article about how to arm ourselves once that revolution has begun. and this site has chocolate deities and an interesting story about ganesha. here’s a funny story about the cats and the roomba. then, of course, there’s nice-tits.org which is 100% work safe, oddly enough. finally there’s 13 (more) things that do not make sense, if you needed some extra things that make you go hmmm…

i’ve noticed that on some (but not all, which is what makes it weird) of my livejournal pages, instead of my name being "?????????", which is what i would expect, it is "महà¥?श्वरदस", which leads me to believe that the FPI character set is not making it on to all of the pages. does anyone else notice that, or is it just me?

it’s amazing what i can do when i’m depressed…

yesterday was π day in the united states (3/14), but it won’t be π day until 22 july (22/7) in the rest of the world.

(courtesy of some guy i used to work with)

I thought we were all sufficiently geeky to see the significance of today, 3/14.

If 3/14 isn’t enough, look at the rest of the schedule: 3/14, at 1:59, for 26 minutes. That’s 3/14 1:59 26′. Or, smooshed together, 31415926.

The 22/7 part was especially obscure, it was supposed to be a joke about how 22/7ths (3.1428571428571428571428571428571…) is an excellent approximation for Pi (3.1415926535…), and thefore 22/7 (July 22nd for those European metric chaps) is an approximation for Pi day (3/14). There’s a good lesson for engineers in this, as 22/7ths is a “good enough” version of Pi for all but the most demanding applications, despite being a (literally) infinitely less complex expression than Pi. Something for us to keep in mind to temper the natural tendency to “overengineer” solutions.

More resources on Pi and Pi Day:

Pi Day Mission Statement
Pi Day openly promotes the celebration of mathematics education, the collective enjoyment of mathematics, and the ageless, multicultural interest in pi. Educators, students, and parents are encouraged to join together in a variety of public activities, expressing in imaginative ways, their passion for the longstanding creative nature of mathematics.

http://www.mobot.org/education/megsl/pi.html
http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/pi/
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/pi/pi.html
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Edu/RSE/RSEorange/buttons.html
http://www.joyofpi.com/pifacts.html

2006 is the 300th anniversary of Pi, in that the first recorded use of the Pi symbol to represent this ratio was in a book in 1706, so maybe we’ll have a bigger celebration next year. Any maybe a real blowout in 2020 (314 years after publication)?

now you know.

i’m not sure what is happening but it’s probably not going to be entirely good. we only have $1000, and we need $2600 this month. i’m not sure what’s going to happen, but we’ve already shut off our cable service, and moe is working on finding us a cheaper cell phone provider… we’ve also talked about selling the house, and the new car, and moe’s new computer, but that’s all we’ve done, and at this point i don’t know how much of it is going to actually happen. i’ve also applied (again) for disability benefits, in spite of the fact that i already applied once and was denied… because i understand that they deny everybody the first time around in hopes that we’ll get discouraged and look for help somewhere else, but i’m desperate at this point: i’ve already applied for 14 jobs this week, and i don’t have any hopes of hearing back from anyone, because i haven’t heard back from anyone in 8 months.

meanwhile, somebody sent me a check, so now i have to go make a pipe. it’s a good thing i have a whole bunch of creative outlets (i’ve made 3 more sets of runes since sunday, and i’m now the sound effects coordinator – read "funny noise maker" – for the cirque and the players), otherwise i’d really be going nuts.

i wonder if has seen this… if not, it seems like an appropriate link for him.

blatantly stolen from … without even responding to the one he posted (although i probably will eventually)

1) Does my username suit me?
2) Is my journal’s title cryptic or descriptive? What do you think it means?
3) Does my journal expand your knowledge of me?
4) Do you think my bio describes me well?
5) Which of my interests surprises you the least?
6) Which of my interests surprises you the most?
7) Which of my interests needs explaining?
8) Which of my userpics suits me best?
9) Which of my userpics suits me least?
10) Which of my userpics needs explaining?

in a pouch with "instructions"… do you think $35 is too much?

yay! cirque du soleil has dropped their appeal, which means that now we have "successfully defended our trademark" in court. now, if they sue in civil court (which they still have the opportunity to do), we would very likely win, and at that point, macque said that we would very likely countersue for damages, harrassment and whatever else he could think of… at which point we could very likely own cirque du soleil! we’re gearing up for a very busy year, which includes shows in canada in may, three weeks of shows in seattle, and a show in reno in august or september, along with the fremont players’ shows at the moisture festival, the oregon country fair and other places, and all of the stuff that the phil is doing as well. also, nathan is coming back!! which means we have johnny jetpack to look forward to this season as well… WOO HOO!

Top 10 advantages of being a member of a circus family:
10. The bearded lady will always save your ass in a bar fight.
9. Being able to tell the teacher, “The lion ate my homework.”
8. You never get yelled at for dangling your sister from high places.
7. You can run off and join corporate America.
6. If you get tired of Beppo the Mime’s snoring – you can just close your eyes.
5. No matter how many of you there are in the family, you can rest assured you will all fit into the family Volkswagen.
4. Watching Mom kiss dad goodbye every morning before she loads him into the cannon and fires him off to work.
3. All Spandex laundry loads
2. Buying Elephant-Chow is cheaper with the circus discount.
1. When your rebelious kids run away… they end up in medical school.

in other news, i suppose i should have been more skeptical from the very beginning, but now there is a conflicting version of the details surrounding the capture of saddam hussain, which makes a lot more sense than the "official" version. also, remembering all those arguments made 1,500 deaths ago is one way of saying "i told you this was going to happen", especially when i told you this was going to happen before any of those deaths occurred! maybe i’m psychic, but somehow i doubt that’s going to make a lot of difference. and the muslim community in spain has finally issued a fatwa against osama bin laden, as if it is really necessary to do so to show the rest of the world that islam condemns attacks on innocent people… and, again, i seriously doubt that it’s going to make an awful lot of difference anyway. 8/

busy-ness…

i took my car in to have the valve cover gaskets replaced, so now it doesn’t spit oil and smoke as much. but it still generates a funny smell from time to time, so i took it in again. this time he said that i have to have a whole bunch of seals and an O-ring replaced, and he said that it would be the easiest to replace by doing all of them at the same time as i get my timing belt replaced. the seals and O-ring are apparently not that expensive of themselves, but the cost comes with the labour, and it is multiplied exponentially if i have them replaced separately. it’s my impression that hahn replaced the timing belt a little more than a year ago, shortly before i actually bought the car, so i don’t think i have to replace the timing belt yet, but that brings up two other issues, which are 1) if hahn replaced the timing belt, did he also replace the seals and O-ring, and if so, why have they failed already, and 2) honestly, i don’t have the funds to replace all of these parts at this point, so what happens if i drive it anyway? the guy said i shouldn’t drive it that much, and if i do, i should check my oil every day, but i’m paranoid.

while i was waiting for the diagnosis of my car, my cell phone rang (i have it set so that it plays the theme from "Uncle Meat" by frank zappa), and the salesperson on the other end (i know it was a salesperson because they started the "conversation" by assuring me that it wasn’t a sales call) said that "president" bush needed my help… riiiiiight… obviously they have no clue who they’re talking to. looking back on on the situation now, i wish i would have said something witty and acerbic, but as it is, i said forget it, and hung up.

in the past 3 weeks i’ve made 3 orders from om imports, and i’m getting pretty close to having "enough" incense again, but not quite. i just ordered 6 different auroshikha fragrances, 2 tulasi fragrances, a hem fragrance, and 2 tapestries. also, i got email from the guy at glow industries, checking up on me to see if i got the catalogue he sent… but i’m still not sure whether i want to represent them with hybrid elephant or not… however moe suggested that i probably could carry some of the more questionable items at The Church of Tina Chopp, and when i pointed out that the church isn’t really set up to sell stuff, she said "why not? every other church does it…" which got me to thinking about what it would take to set up something for the church… more thought is required.

thanks to , i have links to the biscut-eating dummy, boobies, more boobies, and furries from japan, and, thanks to i have another in my long list of reasons why i am a terrorist, Senator Byrd is correct to equate Bush with Hitler… too bad bringing hitler into it will do more to make the religious right see us as lunatics, but it can’t be helped, especially when they’re right for a change.

ooooohh-kay… i suppose the fact that i had an injury to my left hemisphere does nothing to influence that… or, maybe (as kitty pointed out) now i have enough room to grow more brains than most people have…

i got my first order of more than $50 yesterday. somebody from sammamish, which is right up the road from me, so to speak. too bad i have to charge them sales tax, but i don’t think it matters that much. he ordered auroshikha rose, sandalwood, jasmine, frankincense, and myrrh, all of which i am getting (hopefully) in a shipment tomorrow. now all that needs to happen is that there needs to be more people like him. check it out!

i got a dealer’s catalogue from "Glow Industries" (no link, ’cause they don’t have a web site!), which, according to reliable sources (the indian representative for Sital, somebody ironically named "Guru"), is the US outlet for Sital brand incense. they have been trying to get me to check out their catalogue for at least a year (through the use of spam, which is why it hasn’t been working), and i finally gave in and ordered a catalogue from them to get them off my back. apparently they either are not the US outlet for Sital any longer, or they don’t have Sital products in their catalogue, but i’m not sure which. they have a lot of "body jewelry", but no indication of whether it is made with surgical steel or not. they push the fact that they are suppliers of "Satya Sai Baba" nag champa incense, but they are apparently unaware of the fact that i don’t carry sai baba incense because of the fact that everyone who sells incense carries sai baba incense, and it’s really not that good anyway, compared to the champa fragrances i do carry. they also carry a whole bunch of products that make me wonder whether i really want to represent them or not… things like "tobacco accessories" including "hand-blown glass pipes", "cigarette" rolling machines, and "grundge-off", and "adult toys" including dildos, vibrators, pocket pussies, and Ms. Pinky (after whom the frank zappa song is named).

i have another "random" (i know it’s random ’cause the computer printed form letter they sent me says so) job search log review tomorrow. just so that everyone knows ahead of time, i have four job contacts on my log for the date in question (12th february), which is one more than the minimum required, but i’ve been averaging 8 to 10 job contacts per week (this week i have 10 job contacts, and it’s only monday). i still find it somewhat hard to believe that somebody is getting paid, by the state, to check my job contacts to see if i actually made them or not, and to "recommend job search activities" to me (which, so far, has been one recommendation for a job that was posted 6 weeks previously – meaning that by the time i got the recommendation they had already hired somebody else). WAGE SLAVERY SUCKS!!

You scored as Hinduism. Your views are most similar to those of… Hinduism! Consider becoming Hindu, if you aren’t already. Hinduism 90% Satanism 85% Paganism 70% Islam 50% Christianity 40% Atheism 40% Judaism 20% Which is the right religion for you? created with QuizFarm.com

Belief-O-Matic
Your Results:
The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.

both of these are easily predictable, although the second one is somewhat more comprehensive… but scientology? secular humanism?? mormons?? jehovah’s witnesses??? and my beliefs are more compatible (which isn’t saying that much) with a non-theist than with "mainline to conservative christian/protestant" or with jehovah’s witnesses, despite the fact that i chose "most important" in response to the question about how important the section on worship is compared to the other sections.

i originally followed this link because it contained the term "Fire Vortex", but it turns out that the whole page deserves a lot more perusal than just the fire vortex link… but i’m going to have to change computers to be able to listen to the whole thing, because my main (linux) computer doesn’t have any sound hardware. on the other hand, this link doesn’t require sound hardware, but i still wouldn’t recommend it unless either you or your partner are masochists.

unrelated linky links:

Chavez Says Washington Plots His Murder, U.S. Denies – uh… yeah. "We have enough evidence… If anything happens to me, the person responsible will be the president of the United States"… and if they were planning chavez’ assasination, do you think they would cop to it? i think not.

Judge: Schwarzenegger Delayed Nurse Laws – let’s elect him president next… can we please? that way we can suffer even more when we get wounded in the (inevitable) war and have to wait in line because there aren’t enough nurses to go around because the government is doing "new studies" to make sure that the nurse to patient ratio isn’t too great…

Subaru at Top in Quality Survey – why did i include this? because i drive a subaru, that’s why!

ezra performed in this year’s BFA Dance program this evening at the Broadway Performance Hall. it went really well. ezra was the solo dancer in the first piece. of course, i really liked the piece that used Knee 5 from Einstine On The Beach (an opera by philip glass that drove my parents up the wall), and there was one where the sound score started with a bunch of sounds from the audience – people coughing and rustling papers, along with a couple of people with photo flash units (after having been specifically told that, in order to protect the safety of the dancers, no flash photography would be allowed made it really obvious to me that it was part of the performance, but apparently not everyone is so observant, as the people next to me started making "uh-oh" noises). it was a really good show, and of course, was all the better because my kid was in it.

here is a good article about anarchy with which i totally agree, so if you’re a department of clownland security mole you should take note: i don’t often classify myself politically (although i am a terrorist). also, there’s a bloticle (blog article?) about "birth control" for republicans that is along the lines of something that might actually work. i’m big on karma too… kinda strange mixture, but it works for me.

Which Animaniacs Character are You?

You are… unique to say the least. Though the events around you often seem complex, even convoluted, you tend to drift off into your own world. It’s nicer there. People tend to think you’re joking, even when you think you’re being serious. Though, seriousness is taxing for you. You’d rather play all the time than do boring work of any type, and perhaps that’s why inane dribble tends to issue forth from your mouth.

ZORT!

moe did this meme as well… hers was… wait for it…

Pesto the pigeon???

oh well, what did i expect?

oh, by the way, the cirque de flambé got written up in Exhibitor Magazine… W00t! also i’ve gotten two orders with the new shopping cart, and i haven’t been doing anything different, which i think is a good sign. i ordered a whole pile of incense which came today, and another huge pile which is scheduled to be delivered on tuesday. check it out!

i’ve had a set of original dubé juggling clubs for about 25 years, i bought them from jack bosco, of the bosco boys (the juggling team before the flying karamazov brothers started happening). before my injury i either really liked them, or really hated them (depending on how much juggling i was doing), because they were extra heavy, and had lead tape wound around the handles.

recently there have been a series of workshops for the cirque and other folks (those who are now in charge say that we have to have workshops that are open to the public in order to keep our 401C3 tax exempt status, but i’ve never heard of it before, and we were 401C3 tax exempt for 4 years before those who are now in charge showed up, so i don’t know if i really believe them or not). the workshop that was given this week was on club swinging, and the big bois with poise were supposed to show up for it because there is a lot of similarity between spinning poi and swinging clubs, and at this point just about anything would help, so i went. because of the fact that tim “fyodor karamazov” (the instructor of the workshop) had requested that if we had clubs of any variety, to bring them, i dug out my dubé clubs (which i haven’t touched since my injury).

i would expect that clubs, whether they are for juggling or swinging, would be sturdy, and resist breaking. as i said, i’ve had this set of dubé clubs for 25 years, and i have juggled (and, thus, dropped) them a lot during that time, so i was quite surprised when, in the first five minutes of the workshop, i dropped, and broke two of my set of three clubs!

dubé has a warranty on all their products for the lifetime of the original owner… but i bought them from jack bosco, so i’m not the original owner… but i bought them 25 years ago, so not only do i not have the receipt any more, but i sort of wonder if anybody will notice that i’m not the original owner or not. what i am sure of is that they don’t make this variety of clubs any more.

i guess i’m going to find out…

does anybody else remember these? they used to put emblems like this on LPs (those things on which people bought music before compact disks) to dissuade people from copying them onto cassettes (which people used to make music more portable before the ipod). did anybody else believe them? apparently not, because music is still being converted from one format to another with great abandon, despite the fact that "it’s illegal", and as far as i have been able to tell, music isn’t dead… at least not yet. along the same lines, i modified my master license application so that now, $20 later, i own the trade name Rent-A-Geek, but i found out that there are two other businesses in king county that also use that name, not to mention the one in philadelphia, the one in maine, and a few other places i found thanks to a $6 business name search… so now i’ve got to consider getting the name trademarked, so that nobody else can use it, because if i don’t then someone else may do the same thing, and despite the fact that i’ve been doing business under that name for 10 years, i may not be able to use it any longer. if anything is killing the creative person’s ability to do business, it’s that kind of thing.

how much inside is another example of a guy who, if he’s making enough money doing things like that (which may or may not actually be happening), then there’s a good chance that i can do it too… on the other hand, he could be making enough money at it by being in the primary business of nepotism, i’m not sure.

mahasivaratri is next tuesday. happy mahasivaratri everyone.