Monthly Archives: August 2014

frank, i am a terrorist, important things to remember, OM, pictures

peek tures

Image

this is the latest incarnation of Operation Mindfuck:

140831 operation mindfuck

imagine you’re walking down the street in downtown seattle, pushing a baby carriage and probably thinking about going shopping at the pike place market. as you are crossing the street you encounter a strange guy going the other direction, who hands you this tiny envelope and then walks off…

THIS is Operation Mindfuck… 👿

within the next week or so, i AM going to manifest a typewriter, which i intend to use to write cryptic messages on the outside of the envelopes.

chirp

okay, this is probably supposed to say “crip”, but it’s my impression that it says “chirp”… woo… i’m really afraid of the illiterate gang-member-wannabe who imitates birds that lives in this remote “suburban” neighbourhood… woo… 😐

the front half towing the back half

this is a picture of a sign. the sign is a picture of the front half of a car towing away the back half of the car, right?

thought so…

Ebeneezer Squeezer The Second

Ebeneezer Q. Squeezer The Second — The Apprentice Holy Snake

frank lies in the sun

Frank Zappa enjoys a puddle of sunlight

getting old

wouldn’t you know… 8/

i had a real, manual typewriter for many years. i had actually cleaned it up while i was in the tech school, but neglected to realise that the plastic keys were soluble in the degreasing soluion in which i vapour-degreased it (before oiling it back up again), so for a long time my perfectly functional manual typewriter had sort-of-roundish misshapen keys… if you were able to touch type (which i still can — thanks to my paternal grandfather — in spite of the fact that i have a brain-injury and type approximately half of the speed that i used to be able to, on a good day), it didn’t make that much difference.

i finally got rid of it after i got married, when we moved into our first house, in renton… after having carried it around with me for many, many years… i hadn’t used it in about 10 years, and… well… who actually uses a typewriter any more?

well, now i’ve got a project that would be perfect for a typewriter, and… 😐

oh well…

maybe i can scrounge one up on freecycle.

blood pressure, health

yay…

i’ve been worried, because my blood pressure has been higher than what is considered to be normal (not a lot, but just by a few points, every now and then), and everything i’ve read makes it sound very likely that i have prehypertension… i don’t know my “family history” and don’t have any reliable way of finding out, because i haven’t actually spoken, face-to-face, with my parents for more than five minutes or so, in more than thirty years…

— AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY —

(and i DEFINITELY suffer from white coat hypertension) but i have been worried because i went to the doctor recently and he expressed concerns about my blood pressure as well, and ordered a blood draw so that i could have lab work done.

i have been spending the past few days resigning myself to taking blood pressure medication for the rest of my life, and not enjoying the prospect.

the labs just came back…

and it’s 100% normal, across the board… and the “areas of concern” that the doctor pointed out last time are also way down, into the “normal” range, as well.

so, i’m pretty sure the diagnosis will be “investigate the DASH diet, excersise regularly, and don’t worry about it.”

which is what i’m already doing. 😎

house stuff, pictures

after

Image

140814 after

yes, it was almost a week ago, but, whatever… it’s done, and i got the screens for the two big windows today, so that part of the house is FINALLY finished…

of course i still have to replace the trim that’s rotting off, and paint the whole thing again…

ah, the pleasures of being a home-owner…

OM

operation mindfuck

1 Comment

140817 OM business cardannouncing Operation Mindfuck. in the grand old tradition of very weird and/or subversive lives of such luminaries as kerry thornley and greg hill, and with inspiration from people such as robert anton wilson, buckminster fuller and aleister crowley, i have undertaken to join the fray and started my very own attempt to jolt people out of their everyday existence in a way that — just maybe — might bring about some shred of enlightenment into their dull, padded minds.

for a while now, i have had this directory entitled “do this”, which contains ideas for future art projects. i combined an idea that i thought was particularly inspiring with an idea that had been sitting in my “do this” directory for a while and had some business cards made… and they have already been supremely effective!

yesterday, when i was taking my morning constitutional, i encountered a bevy of jehovah’s witnesses out canvassing the neighbourhood. there were at least two cars full of them, and they were hitting up the neighbours without remorse. as i was walking by, one of them came out from a neighbour’s front door (no doubt, after having been told in no uncertain terms to get off the person’s property), and handed me a pamphlet and asked if i had seen this. i took his pamphlet, and asked him if he was so insecure in his own belief that the only way he could feel justified in believing it is by convincing others to believe the way he does. he responded by pulling out his well-worn bible and saying “here’s why we do what we do…” to which i responded, pointing at the verse he was about to read, “it doesn’t matter”…

whereupon, i pulled out my cards that say “THERE IS NO ENEMY ANYWHERE” and handed one to him. he said no, and pulled away, but i put the card on the dashboard of his car, and it slid off, so he bent down to pick it up, and then i handed a card to an older guy who had come up, and was on the passenger side of the car, and then another card to a teenager — who was wearing a too-large suit and looked very uncomfortable — and then i walked away.

i got about half-a-block away, and looked back… and they weren’t there. both of the cars had packed up and split in the time that it took me to walk half a block…

and that was just from the “THERE IS NO ENEMY ANYWHERE” side… i hate to think what happened to their insulated, beige world when they turned the cards over and discovered that the bearer of this card is a genuine, authorised OHO… i imagine the teenager probably wouldn’t know who baphomet is, but there’s a good chance that the two older guys who got the cards will know…

tee hee hee… 👿

then, later on, i went to a snake suspenderz gig in georgetown, for a birthday party for a bunch of aging hipster/steampunk-wannabes, and passed out a few cards to them, as well. the birthday party people had a much more positive reaction to them.

house stuff, karass

miscellaneous/update

i went to the Festival Of The River in arlington, to perform with members of my karass, i.e. The New Old Time Chautauqua, specifically, with The Fighting Instruments of Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra, for which i am, now, the default official substitute tuba player… which means that if the regular and/or scheduled tuba player can’t make it (there are at least 7 of us, and i only know three of them), i’m the first one that gets called.

or something like that…

anyway, that was last weekend. because of the fact that i was marching (i.e. moving my body in a more-or-less upright position, using my feet, and playing my tuba at the same time) over uneven terrain, i completely blew out my embrochure, which is a little scary, because we have a snake suspenderz gig this weekend. i’m pretty sure i will have recovered enough by then to be able to actually play, rather than making weak, mewling noises, but at this point, i’m not 100% sure yet.

i don’t like marching that much, and i like marching on uneven ground even less. it looks fancy to have a marching band marching around the festival, but if it is on unpaved pathways, it has the distinct possibility of leaving the brass players with permanent injuries that affect their ability to play their instruments.

anyway, i went and got new pages for my flip-folder, and a new lyre, so that i can march and actually read the music without having it flapping all over the place (and i can not believe that there is NO online definition of a lyre, which is a small, portable music stand that attaches to an instrument — or, in the case of some flute lyres, to the musician themselves — for use in marching bands. seriously… there’s one sentence about lyres in the entry for Music Stand at wikipedia, but that’s it… no pictures, no descriptions… nothing. everything else is about the lyre which actually is (or, rather, used to be) a stringed instrument used by the ancient greeks, which is the predecessor of the lute and guitar. disgraceful, internet… totally disgraceful! 😐 ).

i demolished the front porch three weeks ago, with the impression that it would be replaced that weekend.

little did i know, at the time, how intensely long and drawn out the process would actually be…

today, three weeks later, we STILL can’t go in and out through our front door. today, for the first time in three weeks, i actually used the front door to exit the house (which is a wonderful feeling, let me tell you), but i can’t actually get off the deck without jumping, because the stairs, which are made and sitting on the deck, are not yet installed. he’s allegedly coming back tomorrow to “finish” a project that he said was going to be finished THREE WEEKS AGO… i’ll be glad to see him go, when he finally goes, but i’ll believe he’s going to finish tomorrow when i actually see it. 😡

at least he’s done a good job… i’d be really pissed if we had to replace the deck again soon. it appears, at this point anyway, that we probably won’t be replacing it, but the next owners of the house may.

also, this is a message for rosemary. i understand that you can’t reply, because of your email problems, but i may be able to help you with that. i’m replying to your most recent snail-mail letter to me, and i will include more details with that. basically, if you would like, i can set up an email address for you at hybridelephant.com, and you can access it over the web, just like you did at yahoo, but with less hacking… i’ll include more details in my letter, which should get sent out by friday, 15 august.

articles, links

snrk…

Was Robin Williams murdered by the Illuminati?

INTERNET — Fans mourn the death of Robin Williams, famed comedian who popularized rainbow suspenders in the 80’s with his spunky alien television character, Mork. However, newspapers around the world report this smiling and funny man committed suicide by asphyxiation without making any serious attempt at explaining how or why. In what appears to be yet another clear case of celebrity homicide by the Illuminati, such vague and general explanations by the media have been swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the gullible sleeping masses.

Robin Williams was beloved by billions, and his movies brought joy and compassion into the hearts of adults and children everywhere. It is rare that such a passionate man could make it very far in the movie industry without selling his soul to the devil and succumbing to Illuminati influence, and perhaps there was a building tension in his life between his compassionate side and the hateful necessity of Illuminati membership. Perhaps this tension tore Robin Williams apart and he did commit suicide, or more likely, perhaps he decided to leave the Illuminati once and for all and was quickly eliminated by an assassination squad that made his death look like a suicide.

In Robin Williams’ classic movie Hook, the grown Peter Pan returns to Never Never Land — Michael Jackson, being the greatest opponent of the Illuminati in our generation also used this imagery for his Illuminati refuge — where he again learned to fly, although it was supposed to be impossible for an adult. As it is said in the bible, only those with the heart of a child may enter the kingdom of heaven. Did Williams decode his own movie and try to learn to fly, to return to Never Never Land, where the Illuminati’s powers are reduced and regressed back to that of Captain Hook, from the early modern period? Almost surely, yes, but this time, he didn’t make it through to the end. Hook won, and Robin Williams was murdered by the Illuminati.

dead people

dead people

Robin Williams — they say he was battling severe depression… aren’t we all, especially now that he’s dead. however, it’s vaguely comforting to know, not only that he could have been battling severe depression, but that my severe depression hasn’t gotten that bad…

yet…

i tried to find a video clip from “The Birdcage” that has my favourite line of all times: “So, this is hell. And there’s a crucifix.”, but i couldn’t find one anywhere… 😛

my music

The Church of The Pleistocene

this is very quickly becoming “an album”… it’s not there yet (i only have 330.3MB on disk, and i want to fill it up, as much as possible, so there’s room for quite a bit more), but what is already there is definitely shaping up in quite a satisfactory way.

because of the fact that i have a backlog of almost-finished, and finished tracks that don’t have a home yet, i actually just added three more tracks to this, which now puts me up to 15… which is still only half of the disk, but this really isn’t about how much stuff is on it so much as it is about the quality of the stuff that’s on it.

i know when i’ve created music that i really like when i don’t even have to be listening to it for it to put a smile on my face… really… and this has the extra, added bonus of, when i am listening to it, i spontaneously erupt in laughter, or experience shivers going up and down my spine.

i’m particularly proud of Lamentations:
which causes me to bounce up and down and emit squeals of evil glee whenever i hear it. it’s an incomprehensible, gnome-like beginning which very quickly devolves into utter senselessness, out of which comes a definite pattern, which, again, fades into gibberish, which slowly resolves into a preacher talking about jerusalem. this is due, in part, to my receiving my complete “Thru The Bible In 5 Years” USB stick, which is packed full of fun noises with which to play around… 😎

geek stuff, rants, spam

spam WTF?!?

i’ve got a directory of addresses to report spam originating from certain domains. quite a few of these domains include an upstream domain (which, theoretically, is responsible for making sure the hosted domain doesn’t send spam) that is enom dot com.

just out of curiosity, i typed host enom.com into a terminal, and it gave me 98.124.253.221

then i typed dig -x 98.124.253.221 soa which told me that rightside.co is the SOA for that IP address. whois rightside.co gave me enom dot com, which uses nameservers provided by akam.net

rightside.co or The Rightside Group owns enom dot com, and a bunch of other registry-related web sites…

host akam.net returns nothing….

salamandir@Gingko:~$ host akam.net
salamandir@Gingko:~$

however, i have a sneaky way to get around things that return nothing in my terminal, and that is DomainTools dot com. they tell me that akam.com is owned by Akamai Technologies… the people who are responsible for serving between 15 and 30 percent of all web traffic…

so, to conclude, quite a number of the people behind the domains responsible for the spam i receive on a daily basis, ultimately, buy their server time from akamai technologies.

i’ve read that up to 80% of all internet traffic is spam, and it’s all coming from a company that serves between 15 and 30 percent of all web traffic…

how does that make ANY sense whatsoever?!? 😛

bssb, chautaqua, parades, philharmonic

yesterday

yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…

no, no… that’s not right…

yesterday i got up early enough to be in magnolia by 8:00 so that i could sit by the side of the road for three hours while i waited for the magnolia seafair parade to happen around me… with me as the tuba player in the SANCApators. because of the fact that i was the tuba player, there are no pictures — of me or anyone else — that i took, but i’m pretty sure there were pictures taken of me by other folks, because i wore my kilt, a rainbow tie-dyed shirt, my tall hat-of-many-buttons, and my steampunk goggles. carrying an enormous tuba in a parade, dressed in that costume, was definitely an experience… unfortunately it was an experience for everyone else, because i was too busy trying to play the parts and keep more-or-less in line with the six other members of the band… 😐

this is the second seafair related parade that i have participated in this year. i didn’t go to greenwood, because my car isn’t “finished” yet, but i’ve been in chinatown, magnolia, and, in a couple weeks, briar…

next weekend is august 9th, the day that will live in infamy… because i have three different gigs scheduled with three different bands, in three different cities…

i’ve got the festival of the river with the fighting instruments of karma; i’ve got the ballard locks gig with the ballard sedentary sousa band; AND i’ve got the huson’s garden party with the fremont philharmonic… ALL ON THE SAME DAY… 😛

i’m going to make the fighting instruments gig, because they are actually paying the chautaqua $10,000 to do the show, so the chautaqua wants to give them their money’s worth… i may be able to make the garden party, which starts at 7:00, if everything goes as planned and i am able to leave arlington by 6:00, and i encounter no traffic in everett or seattle…

… now i need a place to hide away, oh i believe in yesterday.