germinated 240618, so we’re around 30 days in. a good start, in my opinion. 👍
home grown
Monthly Archives: July 2024
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somebody, recently (i would say probably within the last 2 or 3 days, at most), left flowers on his grave… the only possibilities that ian and i could think of is 1) his father, which, considering his father, isn’t particularly likely, 2) some cousin or relative that ian and i don’t know about, which is somewhat more likely, but, considering the location (finn hill cemetery is in a REMOTE corner of central, western washington, not close to ANYBODY’S house, with the exception of — possibly — his grandparents’ house, but as his grandparents are also buried in the cemetery, not particularly likely), or 3) some random church-goer who regularly goes around to the cemeteries in the area and leaves flowers at random graves, to make it look like someone remembers these people… which, considering the remote, out-of-the-way location, we figure, is the most likely possibility.
and, now, there are cucumbers planted there, as well. see ya’, randy. 😉
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ian and i are going to visit randy’s grave tomorrow. i plan on planting cucumbers, in the Tinite tradition, because randy, in his Osiris RaNebo persona, was one of the original high priests of the church of tina… although i am also aware that, in the Tinite tradition, planting cucumbers is to bring the dead back to life, and, of all the people i know who are dead, i’m pretty sure randy is happier being dead, so it’s more “in the Tinite tradition” than it is in the hope that it will, actually, bring randy back to life… in fact, in reality, i’m hoping that it DOESN’T bring him back to life, because, given the political and social climate these days, i’m going to bet that randy would NOT be pleased that he has been brought back to life.
nevertheless, i’m going to plant cucumbers on Osiris’ grave, because that’s what a Tinite would do. it doesn’t have to make sense.
an embarrassment that wasn’t
so, ON MY BIRTHDAY, in 2015, i took this picture of a furry in xavanadu…
again, ON MY BIRTHDAY, almost 10 years LATER, in 2024, i posed with Timber, a furry dog, in the photo ID booth…
without realising that they were the same person, and under the impression that they WEREN’T the same person, i, enthusiastically, told Timber about this picture i took of another furry, a few years ago…
today, after exchanging emails with Timber, i found out that both of these furries have THE SAME PERSON underneath the fur-suit! 🤣
it’s NO WONDER that, when i saw Timber, in 2024, i IMMEDIATELY thought of the furry that i took a picture of in 2015. he says “I intentionally tried to make them look quite close to one another in the facial markings and general body pattern”. he doesn’t wear the older fur-suit at fair any longer, but he says that it’s “a real treat to see some more pictures of my “younger” self from a few years ago.” 😉
immediately post OCF
things went A LOT more smoothly than… just about ANY other OCF since i have been attending…
i left at 09:00 and pulled in to the public lot (i think it’s called “Trotter’s Field”) at around 14:30, and i WALKED UP to the registration booth — there was NO waiting in line in the broiling sun for hours at a time — and the guy found my name in his registration book right away… it took MAYBE twenty minutes, total! then, while i was on the way back to my car, i realised that my car was parked in THE MIDDLE of a huge, colossal, developing, traffic FUCK-UP that it was going to take me an hour to slog through… so i decided to wait in line, and not stress about it…
the guy in the car DIRECTLY behind me, on the other hand, was definitely impatient and stressed. he kept honking his horn and yelling, as though i could have gone anywhere. the traffic-control hippie eventually went back and talked to him, but he still kept yelling until i pulled away from him, at which point he started yelling even louder, because the traffic-control hippies weren’t letting him bully his way into the line ahead of everyone else. 🤣
then i proceeded to the “full-load teddy” booth, but the second-to-last hippie before the booth said that if i wasn’t actually driving into the eight, that i didn’t need a teddy, and to just drive right on through, which i did… i very quickly found out that this was a LIE, but, by the time i found out, i was already most of the way to the stage, and the hippie that informed me of the lie wasn’t going to waste my time by sending me back for a teddy. 😉
i drove up to the stage, unloaded my gear, got the second choice of camping spots — the first one had too much undergrowth and wasn’t big enough for my tent 😢 — got my tent set up and my gear loaded in, and took my car to where the SCOFlot used to be, only to discover that they have turned the SCOFlot into camping, and the new “handicapped” lot is north miss piggy, which is across the street and back towards registration, but still not that far from where i was camped. i found the lot, and parked, with the assurance that, as long as i had a handicapped placard, that all would be well, AT LEAST until thursday, and MAYBE all weekend, but the hippie in charge of the lot wasn’t sure.
so i left my car with the assurance that, if i came back tomorrow, they would let me know whether or not i had to move it somewhere else at that time… and it turned out that i didn’t have to move it at all… and i was a little stressed about having an expired handicapped placard, but they didn’t ask, and i didn’t tell, so i was able to use the handicapped placard with no problems… and, as sasha said, it’s not as though my handicap expires when the placard expires… even though it’s not REALLY my placard to begin with… 😉
i walked back to camp and was drinking a (cold) beer, backstage at the morningwood odditorium, by 18:30, a full TWO HOURS before i was planning! 👍👍
the shows were, typically, disorganised and chaotic at first, but not bad. the band member who missed the last rehearsal at the sweat shop who said he “absolutely was going to make the dress rehearsal at the stage”, arrived after the dress rehearsal was over, but it didn’t make any difference. we put together music for a last-minute show called “Pappenspiel”, which was two older german people (from berlin) doing bizarre, clown/puppet/mask-type stuff, which went A LOT better than i expected the first time, and got progressively better every show. i forgot to pack ear plugs (they’re already on the list for next year), which was a bit of a problem friday night, but nothing i couldn’t sleep through, and there was a booth two or three down “Phun Way” from morningwood, that was giving away free narcan, free COVID tests, and free earplugs, which was a LIFE SAVER saturday night! 😎 the bassoon player and her partner tested positive for COVID saturday evening, and left, hurriedly, sunday morning, before the first show, but, somehow, we managed to adjust the show tunes to cover the fact that we were missing an instrument… and — SO FAR (fingers crossed) — there hasn’t been anybody ELSE in our crew that has tested positive since then. we took down the stage, and had all of the crew stuff mostly packed up and staged for the arrival of the truck by 21:00 sunday evening, and, once again, i sat around back “stage” at morningwood drank beer, smoked pot, and talked about The Church of Tina Chopp with a pretty young girl who is a philosophy major in college, but never heard of it before… 😈
it was UNREASONABLY hot — between 95° and 110° every day from about 10:00 until sunset, but it cooled off nicely once the sun went away… but, of course, the lack of sun at night only encouraged the mosquitos, which were RAVENOUS. the backstage area had some new bug-repeller devices that worked better than the ones we have used previously, so it wasn’t so bad backstage, but everywhere else the bugs were endemic. i went by white bird on wednesday evening, to warn them about my recent bout of diverticulitis, but the only time we actually NEEDED someone from white bird was when one of the UkeLadies had not been hydrating enough and passed out just as she was going on stage… she had to be hauled out in a moving cart, but i saw her the next day and she said she was fine. once again, i avoided the ritz — i didn’t even walk by it, because of the heat — and i only took one shower, which was 5 minutes (or “three pushes” of the knob that lets out the water) of INTENSELY cold water, which was enough… but it was not enough, and i took a LONG shower pretty much as soon as i got home… five days of unreasonably hot weather and only one shower was a little much, but it wasn’t enough to make me even THINK about not going again next year…
monday morning, i woke up around 07:30 and decided that it would be a GOOD THING to break camp and pack up BEFORE it got to be hot as hell, with the result being that i pulled out at 09:15 and arrived home at 14:35.
and now, the pictures:
i don’t know how he was handling the heat… it was 100° in the shade, and he was wearing a full-body fur-suit… i would have DIED! 😱
Varigated Meadowhawk is Sympetrum corruptum, which is an interesting binomial name, but it gets even more interesting when you realise that there is also a Sympetrum ambiguum, or “blue-faced” meadowhawk… 😉
Some Random Hippie from 2004 to 2019… then EVERYONE missed two years, because of COVID, and then i missed a FURTHER year because of COVID (😒)… then Some Random Hippie from 2023.
next year i qualify for elder status! 😉👍
immediately pre-ocf
i’ve checked 99% of the things off the list, and loaded the car, but i’m still remembering stuff i should take, but aren’t on the list — like my bathrobe, and my aqua-sox, which means partially unloading to add stuff to already packed boxes, and then reloading the car. 😒
the remaining 1% are things that need refrigeration, which means *REMEMBERING TO GET SOME FREEZER PACKS AND PACK THE STUFF IN THE REFRIGERATOR*, tomorrow morning (unlike what i did last year. 😒); and things like soap and weed stuff and glasses, which i’m actually going to USE before i leave, tomorrow morning…
i did all the available laundry, washed all the dishes i could wash (there are a few that get hand washed, which i’m saving for later), mowed the lawn… this morning, before it got so FUCKING hot — seriously! it’s literally 100°F in the shade! 😠 which NEVER used to happen around here!
but i’m still anxious… which is why i’m taking microdoses with me… i’m anxious because oregon is EVEN HOTTER than here, and predicted to get into the 120°F range by sunday. i’m anxious because i was recently hospitalised for a condition that EXPERTS have told me “may or may not recur”, pretty much regardless of what i eat, or don’t eat, i’m pretty sure that the folks at “White Bird” (what passes for medical staff at OCF) are NOT prepared to deal with diverticulitis, and i REALLY don’t want to end up having to go to urgent care, or the hospital, in a place where i don’t know where anything is, and is far away from home… i’m anxious because i keep thinking that there are things that i should have put on the list last year, but didn’t, and i will get to portland, tomorrow, before i remember what they were… 😖
tomorrow, i expect to leave no later than 10:00, which means that i’ll get there around 13:00 or so… whereupon i will stand in line for a couple of hours to get my wristband, argue with the hippies about driving my car in to morningwood odditorium, unload my car (which i am allowed to drive in to morningwood, because i have a “full load teddy”… which happens EVERY YEAR… 😒) amid sweltering heat and massive mosquitos who don’t know the meaning of picardin or DDT (much less eucalyptus, which is ENDEMIC at the fair), unpack and set up my tent in one of two places (one i want, and the other one is probably what i’ll get), schlep all the rest of my gear into the tent, amid the aforementioned oppressive heat and mosquitos, and then drive my car to where it will be parked for the weekend, which, again, will be one of two places, depending on whether or not the hippies decide my expired handicapped placard is still worth something: either they’ll let the fact that it’s expired slide, and i’ll park in the SCOFlot, which is about a mile from where i’m going to be camped, or, if they WON’T let it slide, it means that i’ll likely have to park in “Outta Site”. which is about TWO miles from where i’m going to be camped. my guess is that things will start to “chill out” (figuratively, if not literally) by 20:00 or so, at which point i’ll probably eat something and wander until it cools off enough to go to bed.
it’s going to be okay…
but i’m anxious. 😒
Franklin, Washington
i went for a 3 mile walk up the green river gorge to franklin, a ghost town east of black diamond. there’s not much of a “town” there, any longer, having been abandoned by 1920, and i didn’t see any ghosts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t there, if you believe in such things.
there is, actually, a “Green River Gorge Resort” which has the DISTINCT trappings of a former hippie commune, or something like that, although, these days, who knows who lives there. i parked across the street, at a public-access artesian well.
here is what is left of the town of franklin. click to embiggen.
uphill about half a mile from the site of the town, is an open mine shaft from the turn of the 20th century. it’s allegedly 1,300 feet deep, but there’s no way to verify that, at this point, because safety nerds took after it, in 1984, and made it “safe for human consumption”.
micro$ump
the latest episode of my battle to be able to send email to live.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, and outlook.com, all of which are overseen by their overlord, micro$weat.com.
i tried to send email to a colleague at live.com.
i got the following, in response:
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Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822;(edited to protect my colleague’s privacy)
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; live-com.olc.protection.outlook.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [the dedicated IP address of my mailserver] weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [CY4PEPF0000EE3E.namprd03.prod.outlook.com 2024-06-30T22:00:08.936Z 08DC9901E2784A1E]
—–
so, i went to the place where you get your IP address delisted — https://olcsupport.office.com/ — and this was their response:
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Thanks for your patience while we investigated your request.
Below your IP address(es) and their status(es) are listed.
(the dedicated IP address of my mailserver);
Nothing was detected to prevent your mail from reaching Outlook.com customers.
—–
so, i wrote back, detailing the problems i was having, and this was their response:
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I do not see anything offhand with the IP’s (the dedicated IP address of my mailserver) that would be preventing your mail from reaching our customers.
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so, i wrote back AGAIN, with the bounce message above, and this was their response:
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We have implemented mitigation for your IP (the dedicated IP address of my mailserver) and this process may take 24 – 48 hours to replicate completely throughout our system.
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SO! you HAVE BEEN blocking my IP address, in spite of the fact that you told me TWICE that you aren’t…
INTERESTING, and not in the fun, finding-out-new-things way! 😒
so, i wrote back again, asking what i was to do when the INEVITABLE bounce error comes back the next time, usually in about two weeks.
this was their response, and it REALLY annoys me! 😠
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I do apologize, but I am unable to provide any details about this situation since we do not have the liberty to discuss the nature of the block. We regret that we are unable to provide any additional information or assistance at this time.
—–
basically, they are saying “shut up and go home. we don’t want to fix our problem which we have conveniently placed upon your shoulders. nyeah!”
also, they are saying “yes, we blocked your dedicated IP address, and will do it again, for no very obvious reasons, which we don’t have to tell you.” 🤬
i am SO glad i don’t use micro$hit software, hardware, or online services! micro$leaze is THE WORST!!