Monthly Archives: February 2026

art projects, budgies, diverticulitis, poop, spam, spam text messages

UPD

it’s weird… i can login using my linux box, but for some reason, i CAN’T login on my tablet, despite entering the same password, and my authenticator app LIVES ON my tablet… i think, ultimately, it’s going to take turning off 2FA, and then turning it back on, but i don’t want to do that… yet. 😒

260217 - Cookie Monster, Oscar The Grouch, Bert, Ernie
260217 – Cookie Monster, Oscar The Grouch, Bert, Ernie
we got two new budgies to go with our two less-new budgies. we’re naming them after characters on sesame street, because two of them (ernie and bert) “interact with the public” — i.e. they are “clinic pets” at the clinic monique works at — so calling them tony and tommy was… less desirable. 😉
260219 - Bert, Ernie, Oscar The Grouch, Cookie Monster
260219 – Bert, Ernie, Oscar The Grouch, Cookie Monster
the new ones are oscar and cookie monster — green and blue — to go with ernie and bert — “violet” (which looks blue to me) and yellow — and i’ve actually got sesame street finger puppets from when i was, probably, 10 to 12 years old…so, now we have a whole flock of budgies, which is good, because budgies live in flocks (in australia) in the wild, so that helps.

i’ve got another flare-up of “smoldering” diverticulitis. i recognise the symptoms in time to go get medication for it without going to the hospital, now, but it royally sucks having constant diarrhea. fortunately, unlike the last time, i am NOT in the middle of a performance, and my circus and unicycle classes are on break this week, so the “have to be out in public” parts of it are a lot less, but it doesn’t make it even the slightest bit more tolerable. 😒

the mornings full of spam text messages are back in full swing: anywhere from three to ten spam text messages between 06:00 and 11:00 or so, about 5 days out of 7. i now have over 1,200 blocked phone numbers on my phone, but that doesn’t stop ’em from coming up with new ones, every single day. and, i’m sorry to say that, at least they’ve got one thing right: americans, by and large, are the dumbest people i have ever met, and, if it is possible, i’m pretty sure they WOULD give scammers their money of their own accord, because, no kidding, folks, these scams are THE MOST OBVIOUS… messages from “8P-P-le Support” and “Ap-p-le support”, messages that contain the words “PrivacY, PoliCY”, messages from “Apple” with return addresses in Cork, Ireland, and a phone number in Rosco, Illinois, messages that claim “Your Apple ID was used at CHILD PORNOGRAPHY WEB SITE” which assure me that “Your IP will be BLACK LISTED SOON”, the person answering the “Apple support” line telling me that his name is “James T. Kirk”… the worst are the messages allegedly from “PayPal” which don’t address me by my full name, which is one of the things legitimate PayPal does to assure you that it is not a spam-scam. seriously! have you EVER known paypal to CALL YOU??? jeez! 🙄

one would really think that people would get the idea, eventually… 🙄

i’m reporting every single one to the phone company, apple, and the federal government, but none of them has resulted in THE SLIGHTEST decrease in their occurrence. 😒

finally, here’s some relatively new art:

260214 the deception pass bridge
260214 the deception pass bridge

people suck, spam, stupid people

warum???

frequently the spam text messages i get include phrases like this:

MESSAGE
Your Ap-p-le id was used at ONLINE STORE for $195.99…

who actually BELIEVES that this could POSSIBLY be a legitimate message??

i received TWO spam text messages, in a row, THIS MORNING which included the phrase

Please reach i0S Experts to cancel immidiately.

who looks at this and says to themselves “this is a legitimate message”?? wrong grammar, wrong capitalisation, wrong spelling… “oh, it MUST BE a legitimate message, i should call them immIdiately!”

humanity is on a serious downhill run towards rapid extinction, if this kind of thing is any indication. 😒

danville, people suck

down the street from our house…

shortly after we moved in to our current house, i noticed this anomaly, down the street from our house, across the cedar river, near the intersection of SE 253rd and SE summit-landsburg road…

the anomaly
the anomaly
especially coming up the hill on 253rd, there is a VERY visible “slash” in the side of the hill, which i took to be the former entrance to a mine, or something like that…

it turns out, that is exactly what it is. from the late 1800s up until 1959, when the landsburg seam was exhausted, this was a coal mine. after the coal was all dug out, the mine collapsed into what they called a “subsistence trench”, which, in 1960, was the “ideal” place to dump a wide range of organic and inorganic industrial waste, including paint waste, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cyanide, metals, and oily sludge. naturally, in the early 1980s, this all had to be cleaned up when the state decided to create the “cedar river watershed” — the main source of tap water for seattle — less than half a mile up the road, and the cleanup and monitoring continues to the present day. the astounding part is that the “cleanup” consisted, largely, of removing the accessible barrels of toxic waste (approximately 100 barrels of an estimated 4,500 barrels were actually removed), and filling in and capping of the northern trench with concrete, which occurred from June 3, 2019 to November 9, 2020… the really astounding part is that we moved into our house on April 12, 2020, which was before they finished capping the trench! 😖

EEEEWWWW!! THERE’S A TOXIC WASTE DUMP RIGHT DOWN THE STREET FROM OUR NEW HOUSE!!! and less than a half-mile DOWN STREAM from the source of seattle’s water supply!! 🤨🤯

so, naturally, i HAD TO go and see what all the fuss was about! and today, i finally got around to doing it. my friend ian and i hiked up to the northern part of the trench, and walked down the western edge of the trench to the portal, and back.

260202 the south end of the trench
260202 the south end of the trench

Danville: A King County Coal Mining Town
Landsburg Mine Site, Phases I and II | Ravensdale, WA

human beings really suck! especially when it comes to figuring out what to do with our garbage. 😒

drumpf, noose, politicians

shart

i continue to be on a self-imposed “noose-fast”, but, nevertheless, some things still seem to leak through. the most recent one is the possibly apocryphal account that #drumpf once again shat himself on camera. having just gone through a bout of diverticulitis, myself, i can say, with absolute authority, that, sometimes, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stem the tide of shit, and when one is under a great deal of stress (as i’m certain #drumpf has been for the past few years) is definitely one of those times… combined with the fact that common indicators for diverticulitis include obesity and a high-fat diet, i would say there’s a better than normal chance that our SCROTUS has diverticulitis… 😈