THEY are terrorists! 8D

Obama’s Hate Crime Laws are ‘Hate Christian’ Laws – if you want to look at it that way, that’s fine with me, but if you are saying that crimes carried out because of homophobia are “christian”, then i have two things to say: 1) your perception of what Christ says about love is perverted, and 2) stay away from me. i may not be homosexual, but i can guarantee you that i am your worst nightmare and i won’t wait until you’re asleep before i will make your life a living hell simply by existing! 😐

Continue reading THEY are terrorists! 8D

fnrb

091025
Snake Suspenderz is playing for the Halloween Oddville Spectacular given by Captain Trendo and The Blue Collar Cult this evening at the Jewlbox Theatre in Belltown. for those of you who are reading this, who are very far away from belltown and/or have other things to do this evening, you are welcome to head on over to hobbit’s place to download the latest of our “rehearsal tapes” and get yer snake suspenderz fix that way.

and for those of you who have no speakers, try having fun at translation party, where you can automatically translate any phrase to, and from japanese many times, until you reach equilibrium.

Mrs. Awdrey Gore’s C clarinette

gorey house membershipthis is my 2009 membership card and pin for Edward Gorey House, which makes me “an integral part of building the foundation for the success and longevity of this celebration of the life and legacy of Edward Gorey”. now all i have to do is come up with some use for the “Ogdred Weary” font that is in my collection.

old, european fingering system C clarinetalso, this C clarinet is going to be the first official instrument fixed in the new workshop. it’s from thaddeus and it has definitely seen better days. it needs at least new corks, some new pads, a ligature and a thumbrest, and it could also use a new case, as the one that it’s currently in was made for a metal, Bb clarinet. it shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours to crank this out, given the rate at which i fixed clarinets when i lived in bellingham, but it may take a bit longer than that, because it has been a while since i had to crank that hard.

wait… what?

Congress passes ‘Pedophile Protection Act’ – umm.. no. this is wrong. being a homosexual is not the same as being a pedophile. not only that, but the law will not get in the way of free speech, regardless of how hateful or divisive, and illegal behaviour will still be treated as illegal behaviour, but now “we, the people” will be afforded slightly more equal protection than before.

and not only that, but i seriously question america’s “judeo-christian” heritage. my understanding is that “we the people” was specifically meant to include those for whom the “judeo-christian” part doesn’t apply.

the fact that people think this way disgusts me. this is one of the main reasons i believe that i am an alien, because this way of thinking is totally the opposite of the way i think by nature.

Continue reading wait… what?

my life so far has been one which hasn’t engendered much of a sense of hope for the future, or making of long term plans, which has resulted in my being fairly "depressed" (although i would call it "realistic") most of the time. it’s strange, when i go through a period where things go "my way", because i either don’t make any plans at all and patiently wait for things to change, or i make very conservative plans that are easily realised. it’s really strange now, because things seem to be going "my way" a lot more than i am used to: i qualified for disability, i have some extra money, i’ve got my own property with a workshop and plans to put it to good (i.e. profitable) use, i’m keeping very busy with four different bands, my business is growing… slowly, but steadily, etc., etc., et cetera… (which is latin for “and others”)

which is why i tend to be a bit superstitious when (for example) moe went down to big building to meet micah and his girlfriend this afternoon. the last time anybody in this family went to big building was the day i had my brain injury. i told her that she could meet him at big building if she promised not to have a brain injury.

at the same time, it’s really difficult for me to make plans. i have all these ideas for stuff that it’s impossible for me to do, primarly due to lack of materials at this point: i have an idea for a new art car, which (naturally) requires a car, i’m on the verge of going out and buying a pen lathe because i have a couple of different ideas for stuff i could make with it (seriously, at this point i’m thinking that it’ll either be a pen lathe or a 1.5" button press, with the other one coming in 6 months or whenever i can scrape together the money), there’s the outside of the workshop that could really use some artwork, and i have a fairly good idea of what i want to do, but it requires making stencils and i don’t have the material – and the weather really isn’t particularly conducive to working on the outside of my workshop at this time of year…

it leaves me feeling like i’ve forgotten to do something important, but i can’t remember what. i’ve been doing a lot the past few days, processing and shipping out incense orders, meeting with clients, preparing files for printing and sending them off to be printed, web-related updates, preparations for adding a new product line on the web site, photography for the same, rehearsals with snake suspenderz and banda gozona – for which i copied a book of trombone music, because i’m going to be playing trombone now… but i’ve got this uneasy feeling that something important has fallen through the cracks.

aha!

so i was going through the oscommerce forums last night, desperately searching for the solution to yesterday’s problem, and i came across this comment on a post whose solution i have already tried (and failed) to get working – despite the fact that the installation instructions are only in german, and they produce only a marginally understandable machine translation. however, the comment mentioned that paypal wants the shipping calculations turned off on their side if i’ve got the shipping calculations already figured out on my side – which sort of makes sense in a bizarre, round-about sort of way, so i tried it.

i have since gotten 3 orders – itself a bit of an anomaly, since i haven’t gotten more than 2 orders in the past 4 months – and all of them included the shipping charge information that used to be missing from the emails i get from paypal.

riiiiiiiight… turn it on and it’s broken, turn it off and it’s fixed… that makes sense.

and it is paypal’s fault. now the only problem is that when i tell them that, there’s a strong probability that they’re going to say that i’m doing it wrong… 😐

oy…

so i have this problem: a customer makes an order from my web site. he puts products in his shopping cart and clicks checkout. he is taken to a page where he puts in his name and address, and chooses a shipping method, and clicks confirm. he is then taken to a secure paypal page, which allegedly confirms his order, and points him in the right direction for payment.

i say allegedly, because the past couple of orders i have received have had the right amount for the product that was ordered, but have had no shipping information… which means that i have had to write to my customers and convince them to send me more money before i send their order out… which is awkward, to say the least.

as far as i’ve been able to tell, after having read the oscommerce forums for a few months, i’ve got everything set up the way it’s supposed to be on my end, which makes me suspect that it’s a problem on paypal’s end. this suspicion has been strengthened by the fact that i’ve had no less than two different paypal tech support geeks confirm that they’ve been having a problem with shipping to oscommerce sites. their immediate solution is to change the way it’s integrated, which, in my case, requires a scrapping of my entire product line and starting again from scratch. obviously not an option in my case.

however, i just got off the phone with a paypal tech support geek who basically said ‘yeah, it’s our fault, but we’re not going to do anything about it, so you should really talk your oscommerce friends into changing their software to match what we’re doing now.”

<head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk>

yah-fucking-hoo!!

finished worhshopthe workshop is officially finished enough that i was able to take apart and diagnose my space heater, go to home depot and get the materials and fix it with tools that i haven’t used for 4 years. now i have a workshop with a space heater. all i gotta do now is get a new blade for my band saw and i’m ready to roll.

ketchup

now that i am not intensively, obsessivly scanning pretty much everything in sight i can sit back, listen to mozart and catch up on my more mundane life before i disappear into the workshop for extended periods of time in an attempt to work off some of this horny creativeness that has been plaguing me for the past 4 years.

i’ve already glued a whole bunch of stuff that has been sitting around for a few years because of this or that which prevented me from actually completing the project. i’ve located an unfinished pipe left over from just before we moved which has yet to be finished, and a couple of already finished pipes which i will probably put on the web site soon. i’ve got to get a new blade for my band saw, because the old one has no teeth left (a condition i remember it being in before we moved, but since we were moving, i did nothing to remedy the problem). i also need to see about replacing the cord – or something similar – on my portable electric radiator so that when it starts to get really cold i will be able to heat the workshop adequately. i’ve also got at least one jewelry making project that i have to finish; a new necklace for a pendant that my mother-in-law has had for the past 20 years.

now that i’ve divested myself of all but 6 milk crates full of stuff – which are things like my books of lessons, service readings and suchlike from SRF, paper and labels for the printer, books for which we (still) don’t have space, and a couple of boxes of miscellaneous decorations – i’ve discovered a bunch of things that i only vaguely remember, such as a pair of enameled chinese hand excersice balls (with bells inside that cause one of our dogs to bark insanely when she hears them, but only when both moe and i are both in the house) which have already been used for their intended purpose. there are also a couple of wooden, jointed human drawing figures, of which i only remember one (the smaller one) from before we moved.

i am afraid of being eatenand apparently the fremont philharmonic is not breaking up, although we still haven’t decided for sure who our new leader is going to be. at this point, the concern is more for trolloween (which i am not going to attend because of a paying gig with snake suspenderz) and Alad’din in december. at this point we’ve recruited a couple of potential new members, including clayton, who already plays in two other bands that i play in, who will be playing tuba for trolloween and potentially euphonium for the pantos, and the guy who played tenor sax at trolloween last year, who expressed extreme interest in playing with us on a more permanent basis. we’re still sort of looking for a trumpet player, and possibly a trombone as well (yes, silveradept, i have mentioned your name, but there are a couple of other possibilities as well).

finally, here is another result of my going through boxes of stuff that i haven’t looked at in years, a little piece that i call “i am afraid of being eaten” which was what was written on the other side of the paper. when i found it originally, it was folded in half three times, with the title written on the outside. it is something that i found on the ground in bellingham when i lived there (which means that it was before 1995, and i seem to recall that i’ve had this particular piece since the 1980s). i remember when i was living in bellingham and i was depressed, i would read this and think that my life could be so much worse than it was, although at times i can remember reading it and relating quite well to what was said there. i wish i had the whole story, but i’m glad i got this one page.

grmf

i finished moving the majority of the stuff out of the piles of boxes that have been stored first in the dining room, then the living room and finally the office/spare bedroom of our miniscule house and into the newly constructed workshop. i even got rid of the 2 extra 4’x8′ sheets of sheetrock (although i haven’t got rid of, and i’m not sure i want to get rid of the extra 4’x8′ sheet of peg board), as well as most of the old but still functional computer equipment.

which reminds me… i advertised the complete computer system again for $200 this time, and someone called me about it and asked if he could just take the mac. i said if he wanted the mac, he would have to take the whole system, to which he agreed. i also agreed to take $30 if he would help me move the desk from the office in the house to the workshop in back of the house and he agreed to that as well. however, from the moment he arrived he was trying in many not-so-subtle ways to get me to give him only the mac, and even moreso when he discovered that he was actually going to have to help me figure out how to get the desk out of the office, that he was going to have to lift the desk in order to move it, and that the place we were moving it to was not actually somewhere in the house. because of the fiasco that occurred when we couldn’t immediately figure out how i got the desk in to the office to begin with (it was a very tight squeeze, and it would only fit out into the corridor immediately outside the office door on it’s side with the upright supports facing in one direction, even though it would fit halfway through the office door with the upright supports facing in the other direction, and we had to try it both ways before i remembered how it actually fit), i actually agreed to give him the complete system for no money at all, despite the fact that he and i both thought better of it several times during the entire ordeal.

basically what it came down to is that he wanted to come and take only the parts of the computer system that he wanted, leave the rest for me to deal with, and he didn’t want to actually do anything for it. i came very close to just saying that i would deal with both the desk and computer system myself if he would just shut up and get out of my house. you don’t arrange to come to my house at 12:00 and then show up at 2:30 and then tell me how i’m supposed to give you the things that i’ve said i’m going to give you, especially when you have agreed to do some work with me in exchange for the things i’m giving you and then you’re so recalcitrant about doing the work. if you don’t want to do the work, that’s fine. if you don’t want the entire computer system, that’s fine. but when i’ve said that i will give you the whole computer system in exchange for some work, you don’t come to my house and then say that you only want part of what i’ve said i’m going to give you and you don’t want to do the work you’ve said you’re going to do.

anyway, i’ve still got 4 or 5 more boxes of holiday stuff, my “odd food” collection (which includes a package of ramen-like stuff labeled “mixed food flavour”, a gummy foot, “men’s pocky”, colourless M&Ms, “Nihilist” chewing gum [it has no flavour] and several other prizes), a box of bongs, and some other miscellaneous, stuff which is wholesale going in the loft of the workshop.

then i went to a banda gozona rehearsal last night, where it was decided that instead of playing sousaphone, i would be playing trombone, which is a lot smaller and easier to carry, and because of the fact that it was my original instrument, there’s a good chance that i’ll be a lot better at actually playing all of the notes, despite the fact that i’ve been learning the sousaphone parts for two and a half years and swiching to trombone will mean learning entirely new parts for all of the songs.

by the time i got home last night i was in an absolutely vile mood, and i woke up this morning in an almost equally vile mood, which wasn’t helped by the fact that when i was in the process of replacing the broken doorknob in the office, i succeeded in locking myself in the office, and i had to escape through the window. i’ve never actually been what i would call drunk in my entire life, but i’m seriously thinking about getting drunk tonight, simply because it would be something else vile that i’ve never done, and i’m not likely to want to do it once i’ve come out of the vile funk that i’m in currently.

sneak preview

i’m slowly making progress scanning my sketchbooks, although i’ve slowed down considerably and still only have 16 of the 24 sketchbooks scanned, but i figured i’d offer a little sneak preview of some of the reasons why i wanted to have this stuff available on the web, rather than secreted away in a sketchbook that even i can’t access immediately. this is a tract from 1988, and contrary to what moe suggested, this was several years after i took more acid than everybody else that i know, combined… although it does seem to have had a certain effect on the outcome of my artwork.
tractfrom this point i’m a little bit less sure of the dates and the numbering of the books falls apart. i’m pretty sure that the last date in book 16 is 880601, but the next date i can find is 890512, which is almost a year later… which means one of a number of options, including that there are at least two sketchbooks that are “unaccounted for”. i recall photocopying a whole ream of stuff several years ago (before scanners became commercially available) and being frustrated because i couldn’t photocopy the coloured drawings in colour (i did actually photocopy some of the coloured drawings in greyscale, which was the exact opposite of what i wanted and only made me more frustrated), and the missing books could have been lost during that time, but i can’t be entirely sure.

of course, another possibility is that i simply couldn’t afford a new sketchbook for that year. i was astonishingly poor during that period, and it’s a distinct possibility, but again, i can’t be entirely sure.