heat wave continued

bakon vodkathe heat wave continues, but it was typically overcast this morning, and now, at 4:45 pm, it’s only 88 so it’s considerably cooler.

i got started taking down the existing shed today. i got it completely emptied out and all of the shelves deconstructed and then i broke myself. i was taking out the last shelf and suddenly there was a sharp pain in my lower back, and if i hadn’t stoped right then and gone inside and lay down, my guess is that it wouldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes until i had passed out from the pain. i took a couple of ibuprophen and iced it for about half an hour and it feels considerably better, but i’m going to have to take it really easy tomorrow if i want to get the shed taken down without injuring myself even further. i figure now that it’s empty, it shouldn’t be too difficult to take the walls down, take the roof off potentially in one piece, and take the framework apart in such a way that i can use most of it for other stuff later on.

i got my bottle of bakon vodka yesterday. i haven’t opened it yet, and i’m debating whether i want to open and try it, or whether i want to keep it unopened and pristine as a collector’s item. a lot of it depends on whether or not i am able to obtain another bottle of bakon vodka. i put my name on the list at the liquor store on 4th avenue in downtown seattle two months ago and they said they would call me when they got more in, but according to the person i talked to yesterday, they have had at least two previous deliveries in the past two months and they didn’t call. the guy would only allow me to buy one bottle because it sells out so quickly, despite the fact that they hadn’t called me. i plan on going back tomorrow and seeing if there’s a different guy that will sell me another bottle.

banda gozona is playing for somebody’s quinceañera (15th birthday?) in west seattle tomorrow, and i’m thinking of going to the FSM on sunday.

heat wave!!!!1

oh. my. GAWD it’s been hot the past few days!! we’ve shattered old heat records three days in a row! three nights ago the lowest the temperature got was 69, which shattered the old record (set in the 1950s, i think), and then two nights ago the lowest it got was 71, and last night the lowest was 72. yesterday it was almost 120 in olympia, and i, personally, saw a reader board in des moines that said 103. needless to say, i’ve been keeping the computers turned off most of the time, and only doing email once a day for the past few days. it’s slightly less hot today, but still, the weather report says that it’s going to hit 99 later this afternoon, so as soon as this is done, i’m turning the computer off again. it’s the end of the world or something. it’s just WAY too hot!

in other news, i paid off the roofers today to the tune of almost $9,000, i got a date set for building a workshop(!!!) on 18th august, and the guy is coming over for a site check today. also moe and i are going to doe bay, camping in one of their yurts, the 9th through the 13th, and we get to pay ½ price because we’re “friends and family” now… 8) another really good reason why, in spite of the gawdawful heat, this is a very good place to live indeed.

that must be it…

i’ve recently had some moral discussion with myself concerning my attraction to the blog pharyngula, because of the fact that, while i agree with PZM most of the time, whenever he makes broad, sweeping generalisations about acupuncture, chiropractic or religion i usually get winged in the process. basically i don’t know whether it’s actually a good thing that i’m attracted to what he writes because of the fact that there is so much disparity between the stuff that i agree with and the stuff i disagree with. i was thinking about this today when i was reading an entirely unrelated article, and he said “I know evil when I see it” and proceded to rant about a hypothetical priest raping a child. that was when i saw my dilemma in a new light. not necessarily that raping a child is evil, but that he, and people who think like him, are exactly the same as “christians” when he says that he can concretely define the difference between good and evil. raping a child is not evil, it just is, in the same way that everything else just is, including God.

for some people it may be difficult to hear and understand this, but the thing is, God is neither good nor evil. God exists in a place where the dual opposites of good and evil are meaningless. good and evil don’t matter to God, which is why they both exist in plenty on earth, and, likely, elsewhere as well.

of course, if the priest really were a “man of God”, he wouldn’t rape the child for other reasons, but this is the root of my discomfort with pharyngula. i have the same discomfort with “christians” and i have actually done my best to limit my contact with them because i don’t like the way they make me feel when they say their stubborn, stupid, ignorant lies and maintain them as fact. they “know evil when they see it” in exactly the same way PZM does, and while PZM doesn’t spout anywhere near as many stupid, ignorant lies as “truth”, he is just as stubborn about the ones he does spout as the “christians” are.

“cult” = “christian”

It’s easy to spot signs of a cult – okay, let’s look at this from a bigger point of view: are not “christians” characterised by claiming that they, and they alone, have the truth about “god”, and dismissing other religions as wrong or misguided? and what about “god” giving their founders a new revelation that “corrects” the “errors” of others”? what about the differences between eastern and western orthodox catholics and methodists, or presbyterians and jehovah’s witnesses? what about the war over whether to perform the sign of the cross with two or three fingers? do they not add other authorities (like billy graham) to whatever canon they work under and secretly substitute their own teachings for things with which they disagree? what is it, if not in the message that “the only way… is through faith and trust in Christ” that makes “christianity anything different than the “cults” that he is warning against?

the fact that i can easily find “christianity” in this article that is supposed to be about “cults” should be warning to any “christian” who might be reading this, that even in such notable and presumably “christian” personalities as billy graham there is enough hypocrisy and lust for money that we should all be extremely careful about what we take as “The Gospel Truth” when it comes to making a personal decision like what one’s spiritual path should be.

if you’re really concerned about whether or not a group may be a “cult”, i would recommend evaluating it with the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame.

Continue reading “cult” = “christian”

fezerocity!

my first real fez

okay, i have just realised one of my lifelong dreams, which is to own a fez. i’ve owned a few things that are frighteningly close to being fezzes without actually being them, including a touque which i wear as though it was a fez, minus the tassle, and a genie hat that was given to me in exchange for a bunch of mail-art a few years ago. however, as much as these hats look like they might be fezzes, they aren’t. of course, i could join some shrine-like organisation, but the fact is that, in general, i find the whole concept of fraternal organisations totally meaningless. the only fraternal organisation i have even thought about joining, which doesn’t wear fezzes, was e clampus vitus, a few years ago, but my wishes were dashed when i expressed my excitement to join by wearing a red shirt and a vest to my inquiry, which is apparently one of the few wrong things to do among clampers, and i was denied membership. i don’t think i would have gotten along too well with them anyway, as most of them were also eagles and very right-wing-nutjob types.

anyway, my old friend and band-mate howlin’ hobbit recently obtained (i don’t know whether he bought it or it was given to him) a fez from fez-o-rama and was so impressed with it that he joined the order of the fez and has been spreading fezerocity all around for a few weeks, and it was he that finally caused me to get off my duff and order my own fez, which i am currently wearing. yes, i am a geek, deal with it.

i actually wanted to receive my fez before snake suspenderz performed at renton river days, this afternoon, but the UPS delivery didn’t happen in time. i had to leave at 3:00, and the UPS delivery usually doesn’t happen until 4:00, so i wore my touque and roughed it.

HAH!

based on what i have read in a variety of places over the past 6 months or so, i have apparently been one of the few negative interactions with 1&1 which have had positive (to me) reprocussions. i just received a phone call from a very pleasant sounding lady who was a 1&1 representative, who wanted to know why i had cancelled my account. when i told her about being bait-and-switched (i only told her an abbreviated version of the entire, sordid story) she agreed that she would probably have done the same thing. then she asked if there was anything 1&1 could do to entice me back, to which i responded “absolutely not”. what i didn’t say is that i would find it rude and insulting if they offered such a deal, and the fact that they offered it made me think even less of them that i already did. i may have been sucked in by the very big stupid, but i learned something from it, which, i suppose, is the important part.

grf…

the paypal module suddenly decided not to add the shipping to the total when people use paypal to check out. it’s always been somewhat wonky, and has required two separate emails and usually a trip to the administration interface, or to my paypal account to figure out exactly what they paid at checkout, but until now it has worked more or less. now, it’s definitely headed towards the “less” side of things. oddly enough, i know practically nothing about how the customer gets from my web site to paypal’s web site and back with presumably encrypted payment information, and now it’s cropped up and is biting me on the ass. i don’t want to have to put an extra page in explaining why i am deficient, especially since every other online company seems to do it more or less seamlessly. i suspect part of it will involve buying a SSL certificate, but i want to examine all my options (of which there may actually be none) before i spend the money to do so.

okay…

so i just noticed that i haven’t posted about the result of my buying PA speakers for Ganesha The Car, so here goes…

MY CAR STEREO IS AWESOME!!

i bought two PA speakers which were installed under the bumpers in front and back. these are speakers that are used outside, for phone announcements in auto lots, or sirens, or that sort of thing. each speaker is 25w, which doesn’t sound like much, but i’ve only had it up to 30 and it’s ear splitting. the volume control goes up to 50, but i don’t think i’m ever going to have it that high. the stereo is now a JVC KD-ABT22, which, again, doesn’t sound like much, but it is much more what i wanted than the original stereo which was the manufacturer’s installation. the new stereo has a fancy removable faceplate that has an auxilliary input jack which i can run directly to my phone (or ipod, or whatever) for inside music, and i’ve got a new switch on the dashboard that lets me turn on the outside PA speakers as well.

i’ve already used the PA at SACBO, at OCF and a couple of other places. i really need to find out what it sounds like to a stationary observer, and to an observer in another car when i whiz by on the freeway, because i have been running the PA speakers on the freeway on occasion.

hee…

so i got another letter from the attorney general for the commonwealth of pennsylvania today. it contained two letters, one from the attorney general’s assistant who was assigned to work on this for me, and the other from joseph quinn of 1&1 internet inc., which is the amusing one. it says:

I am responding to complaint B09-7341 filed against 1&1 Internet Inc.

We understand that you have been unsuccessfull in attempting to cancel your 1&1 internet account.

Your customer ID 19710337 was locked onto a 1-year contract upon the account’s registration. This was a special deal that included discounts and other benefits, saddled with a contract of one (1) year.

However, we certainly do not wish to continue to bill and invoice you for a service that is no longer used or wanted.

In this, was [sic] have set customer ID 19710337 to cancel within the next two (2) weeks time. You will not be billed or invoiced any further for this service. We are currently removing all your relative information from our internal systems.

Furthermore, we can see that you have been trying to cancel for soe time.

As such, [sic] we are refunding your two (2) most recent invoices. Both refunded invoices are for the $59.97 amount. This would bring your refunded total to the $119.94 amount.

Hopefully, this will resolve any outstanding complaints that you may have.

let’s examine this a bit more closely…

i was unsuccessful in cancelling my account, because after repeated attempts to do so, your employees refused to listen or respond appropriately to my requests. despite your claims otherwise, when i signed up with 1&1, it was with the understanding that i was signing a three (3) month contract, and the first i ever heard about a 1 year contract was after i made the second payment for 3 months.

at the same time, if i had known that it was going to be this easy to break a one-year contract, i wouldn’t have rasied so much of a stink about it, and simply written to the attorney general when i first had my suspicions that i had been bait-and-switched.

i am currently under a one (1) year contract with my new host provider, which provides me with better quality, more reliable and more industry-compatible service, for around $85 a year. if i had maintained the one (1) year contract with 1&1, i would have had less reliable, less industry-compatible service with a greater possibility of being blacklisted for sharing an IP address with a spammer or a phisher, and i would have had to pay around $200. if that’s what you call “discounts and other benefits”, then i suggest you invest your money in a quality english-language dictionary. it might help with your grammar as well.

i don’t have any complaints with the resolution of my claim, however i will still recommend against using 1&1 services to my clients, because i disagree with your sales tactics and how this complaint had to be dealt with in order to reach this conclusion.

rejoice!

tuba player of the djinn

1&1 internet has decided that i really did have a contract that was only 3 months, because they have decided to release me from that contract, as i requested, plus refund the last two invoices (totalling about $120, hooray!) and no longer hassle me about having a contract that expires in december…

of course this happened after they were contacted by the attorney general for the commonwealth of pennsylvania (where they’re located) and by the better business bureau…

i wish it didn’t have to go this far, but at the same time, i’m really glad that they didn’t push it any further, because i was prepared to get really nasty with them, and i doubt that it would have been pleasant regardless of how it came out.

in other news, there are now pictures of the oregon country fair online. there aren’t as many pictures as last year, but that is primarily because it rained sunday and there’s only so many pictures of wet, muddy hippies that one can take before it starts to get redundant. my physical birthday was while i was at the fair. that day, i played two shows for the fremont players, plus i played an open mike at the morningwood odditorium, i played the midnight (eastern time) show on the main stage, for which i got a custom-printed bandana, and i played an 11:00 pm show at the ritz. all in all, i would say that it was one of the better birthdays i have had in quite a while.

back from OCF

i arrived on tuesday and left on monday. sunday it rained – HARD – all day, so sunday night was a little muddy and monday morning was complicated by the fact that the safety crew decided that nobody could drive past the craft lot. i was efficient and took half my load out sunday night, and so i was able to get the rest out in one load, early this morning… it was really muddy, i was being facetious before. OCF happens in what, in the wintertime, is a cross between a bog and a riverbed, and it doesn’t take much rain at all to bring things to a complete standstill. nevertheless, we were one of the few theaters that did all our shows in spite of the rain, and because we had an awning and convenient food booths handy, we had fairly large audiences for both shows in spite of the mud.

the other days were better though. saturday was my birthday. i did two shows, one at noon and one at 3:00, i did the open mic at morningwood with my long flute and digital delay at 5:30, the “midnight” show (which is actually at 9:00, midnight eastern time) and a show at the ritz at 11:00, plus i spent 2 hours in the sauna.

i’ve got a whole bunch of pictures, but i haven’t got them organised yet. more later.

bleh…

moe & holly

portland yesterday: we got up at some ungodly early hour and i drove to portland while moe did half of her homework. then we had breakfast at the cadillac café with moe’s friend holly, who, for one reason or another, we haven’t seen since the day we got married. after breakfast, we went to moe’s mother’s house, which is actually in milwaukie, whereupon, once the doggies were secure, i proceded to take a nap for a couple of hours – which probably made all the difference in my mood later on. i came to about the time people started arriving. apart from anne, nancy, moe’s mom, and bill, a friend of anne’s, who are there all the time, there were elena and ralph, old friends of moe’s mom, and their friend greg, who looked like he was about 15 (moe later told me that he’s probably in his early 20s), and “bert” (alberta? roberta?) and bill #2. i’m not exactly sure who they are, or were, friends of, but bill #2 was more than a little deaf, he was very opinionated to the point of racism, and he liked to tell everybody about his opinions whether they liked it or not, because he was deaf enough that he spoke very loudly and was able to be heard by the neighbours across the street. of course, because of the fact that it wasn’t my house and i wasn’t even completely sure who the guy was, i couldn’t say anything, and the primary residents of the house (anne, nancy and bill #1) were too “polite” (or too afraid) to say anything to him – he’s apparently a retired military “hero” or something like that – which meant that most of the time from then until we left was spent in avoiding conversations with him. moe later said that “bert”, his wife, apparently doesn’t even like him any longer. there was something odd about greg, too. i’m not quite able to put my finger on exactly what it was, but his behaviour in general seemed to be somewhat affected, like he wasn’t exactly sure of how to act. and, at one point, he said something along the lines of “god fucking damnit”and stormed out of the house, with no further explanation. when asked about it, ralph and elena both said that it was “probably nothing” and that apparently he did this sort of thing fairly frequently. there was a whole bunch of tobacco smoking going on, not the least of which was by anne, a retired nurse who has had at least one stroke already. it was all i could do not to say something rude about it. when i first encountered this dysfunctional family group, almost 12 years ago, i described them as a real-life situation comedy but now, 12 years later, i would describe them as barely tolerable, and that only because they are my wife’s family. if not for that, i would very likely have nothing to do with any of them, in much the same way that i currently have nothing to do with my parents… and for a lot of the same reasons.

and that’s not to mention the fact that two of our three doggies are traumatised by all of the fireworks going off everywhere. moe gave them a zanax and that quieted them down a little, and the bark collar (an ingenious little device that has an electronic sensor which senses a bark happening and sprays a little eucalyptus into the dog’s face every time they bark) helped a little as well, but yesterday was generally a stressful day for everyone. fortunately we decided to return home before dark, so that when the fireworks were the loudest at least the doggies would have a familiar bed to hide under.

the only good part about the holiday is that now it’s over there’s one fewer days until OCF. i leave on wednesday, and the only reason i can wait is because i don’t have any choice in the matter.