Monthly Archives: July 2026

anhedonia, busking, geek stuff, moe, moe's mom, nursery, panto, players, TAA

↑D

let me see…

moe has Teaching Animals Academy up and running… at this point i’m not sure whether i am still hosting it, but i don’t think so… although i still haven’t gotten official word that i am NOT hosting it any longer, so that’s maybe something i should ask about, eventually. she also has been BUSTING HER BUTT (and mine, and anybody else’s who might be foolish enough to show up on the property) getting the house ready for two new tenants — dyllan, who is 25% owner of the business, and has spent the past few years living in her van, and courteny, who monique and i have known ever since she was a kid, who is now an adult, and works as a veterinary doctor in the clinic moe manages, but STILL LIVES WITH HER PARENTS! — which means getting rid of the nasty-ass sort-of-a-fence around the property and putting in new fences, and gates everywhere, building a door between the upstairs and the downstairs, to prevent unwanted mixing of pets, painting and refurbishing everything. another big advantage to having the house lived in by tenants is rent, which goes towards paying off the mortgage, but DOESN’T come out of our pockets. 😉 moe’s mom has been in and out of the hospital — again — so we’ve got her dog… which moe plans on dying teal and purple later on this afternoon… 😈

the nursery is doing well. i’ve got two space queen plants that are very close to being ready to switch to flowering lights, and i have 5 space queen clones which are less than a week old, so they’re still looking a bit bedraggled, but i still have hopes for at least two of them, which is pretty much all i need anyway. i’ve also got one… at this point, i can only say “dead” plant, which came from darol. i’m not sure what it is about darol’s plants, but it seems as though when i’ve tried to grow them, they either die, revegetate, or something else which makes the plants produce very little bud… on the other hand, my neighbour, who has two starts from darol on his deck, currently, is on the verge of producing another “christmas tree”, like he did last year, only this year the buds are going to be bigger, because instead of back in the shady part of the yard, he’s got them growing on his deck, which gets A LOT more sunlight, and is also where his automated watering and fertiliser rig is set up.

panto is done for the summer. now is the time for the script committee to re-insert all of the gags that we took out to make the show fit inside an hour, with no intermission, for OCF. we’ll probably start rehearsals again in october, with a somewhat modified cast, and better sets, as usual. i haven’t been out busking since i got back from the fair. i keep thinking i should take my harmonic flute and electronic rig, and busk in redmond, because it’s fairly close and has a big public park right in the middle of town, or in freeway park, or myrtle edwards park, or volunteer park, in downtown seattle… but i’ve got this problem, where i think, “yeah, i’m going to do this, i’m REALLY GOING TO DO THIS!” right up to the point where i’m ready to start loading stuff into my car, and then i talk myself out of it: i’m paranoid, or i’ll get harassed by the cops, or something like that. 😒 at this point, i’m going to blame anhedonia, because i can’t think of any other reason.

the scam/spam/text-messagers have decided that, if they give me a phone number to call, i’m GOING TO call and harass them, so they’ve moved on to a different tack: they now send me text messages where, for some reason, they call me “null” (which makes them REALLY easy to spot), and have some nonsense about my cloud account being cancelled — nonsense, because my cloud account is on the shelf, behind me, and is 12 TERABYTES of space that I CONTROL — and request that i click a random-six-character .com URI, with a solidus and six random characters after it, which, after several redirects, deposits me on a site at “riskfree-download-speed-program.autos” or “install-protect-safe-download.autos” or some other hogwash, and then tries to get me to add my credit card number to their bogus payment window… and, if i close the browser window, and click the URI again, after several redirects, i land somewhere else, which makes the whole thing REALLY difficult to track. and it only “works” on my phone. if i copy the six-character URI, and try to open it on my desktop computer, or try to open it on my tablet, it goes to google.com. the whole thing is driven by javascript, so i have taken to disabling javascript on my browsers. 😒

ocf, pictures, some random hippie

some random hippie, 2026

260710 some random hippie
260710 some random hippie
260711 some random hippie
260711 some random hippie
260712 some random hippie
260712 some random hippie

Some Random Hippie, 2025
Some Random Hippie, 2025
Some Random Hippie, 2024
Some Random Hippie, 2024
Some Random Hippie, 2023
Some Random Hippie, 2019
Some Random Hippie, 2018
Some Random Hippie, 2017
Some Random Hippie, 2016
Some Random Hippie, 2015
Some Random Hippie, 2014
Some Random Hippie, 2013
Some Random Hippie, 2012
Some Random Hippie, 2011
Some Random Hippie, 2010 – apparently doesn’t exist… 😕
Some Random Hippie, 2009
Some Random Hippie, 2008
Some Random Hippie, 2007
Some Random Hippie, 2006
Some Random Hippie, 2005 (with Schmootzi The Clod)
Some Random Hippie, 2004

didjeriflute, incense, ocf

post-OCF update

i left wednesday, 260708, and got back on monday, 260713. i got my wristband, laminate, and parking pass with unusual speed, proceeded to morningwood odditorium, set up my camp in EXACTLY the same spot i had last year — which is still not the spot i wanted, but it was close enough: there was a group with ENORMOUS sets, and a pair of stage crew who had an ENORMOUS tent (and a baby) taking up the spot i wanted… oh well, maybe next year — and made it back out to north miss piggy (the “alter-abled” parking lot) by 17:00 (5:00 pm) without difficulty. the shows went well, i managed to eat relatively normally and avoided emergent bathroom incidents, got to know a few more folks that have been involved with the panto for a few years that i haven’t gotten to know before… played my harmonic flute less than i wanted to, but that was okay… i celebrated my 66th birthday on saturday by playing my harmonic flute in four different locations at the fair (Jill’s Crossing, Altared Space, The Bush That Looks Like A Dragon, and the intersection just south of the Ark Park and Du Caniveaux stage which has the disco ball), sold one CD (to a sound engineer), and was gifted a small hair clip that is shaped like a lemon on the end of a twig with leaves… i loaded out some of my stuff on sunday evening, and helped other crew members load out, and then helped take apart the stage, and managed to break free of the fair before 11:00 monday morning, so i missed the major traffic snarl in portland…

and when i got home, i was met with a dentist appointment, a(nother) medical emergency with moe’s mom (which meant going to her apartment to rescue her dog), a BSSB rehearsal for a performance that is happening on saturday 260718, a circus class, and the fact that moe is still up to her eyeballs in getting her new business running, which, in this case, means she has been at the school until 23:45 (11:45 pm) pretty much every day this week, painting and digging fence post holes. 😕

AND, i got an incense order from SOUTH KOREA on wednesday (my first order from south korea, EVER), which i just shipped out this afternoon… it has a REALLY STRANGE address — Jisan Mokryun Apt 5-410, Yonghak-ro 42 gil 13, Suseong-ku — which, i assume, is the name of the apartment building (“Jisan Mokryun”), but i’m not sure what “Yonghak-ro 42 gil 13” means, and “Suseong-ku” is apparently a neighbourhood in Daegu, but… who knows? hopefully the postal code will get it where it is going without too much difficulty.

i am SO FUCKING TIRED…

ocf, panto, philharmonic, players

pre-ocf update

i leave for OCF tomorrow. i’ve got my list completely filled, except for soap, which i intend to use to take a shower this evening, and then put in the box. i’ve got a 6-pack of beer in the fridge, and a 5-gallon bottle of water, and my small flip-top box to put in the car, first thing tomorrow, and i hope to leave as close to 07:00 as possible, because i still need to water my plants, and their light doesn’t switch on until 07:00.

once again, i’m putting in my 12’x24′ aluminet shade cloth, to loan to the company, because now that we have moved the fence, the backstage area is going to be bigger, and we will be able to use it this year. the weather-guessers say that it’s not going to be as hot this year, but it’s still going to be between 85° and 90°, which is plenty hot enough. and because of the fact that macque isn’t going this year, there’s no advanced mosquito advisory, but, if moving the fence a few weeks ago is any indication, it’s going to be a mild year for mosquitos.

the show — Peter Pan — is surprisingly together, for a change. our last rehearsal, last thursday, was largely off-book, which is astounding! usually when we have our final dress rehearsal at the fair, there are still a few people who have scripts in their hands, but this year, it is not to be! we’re playing up the “men dressed as women, women dressed as men” aspect of the show this year: peter pan is played by a woman, mr. smee is played by a woman, nana is played by a man, the crocodile, the lost boys, and the shadow are all being played by the same woman (amy funbuttons), wednesday WENDY is being played by a man — and, yes, there is a crossover with wendy and wednesday, from the addams family…

this year, the band doesn’t have a drummer. sasha, the last remaining drummer from the cirque de flambé days, has finally decided that he has too much trouble walking around the uneven surfaces of the fair — i remember when sasha did the traditional cossack dance, when we were at fairhaven, 40 years ago — so he’s not going to be there. the fremont philharmonic is once again being represented by “Father Guido’s Righteous Hand” — five people, and a massively cut-down arrangement of pretty much everything. we’re playing the same preshow, so that we don’t have to figure out what we can and cannot play on the fly.

micro-tuba

¡¡SKOOZDAG

i may not know any WORKING repair technicians, but i’m not COMPLETELY out of the loop…

i contacted my friend (since high school) dave cole, who is currently a RETIRED repair technician, who currently lives in wenatchee, and he recommended a guy in fremont, tony portela, with whom i made an appointment this afternoon. when the time came, i went down to his shop, which is, literally, a stone’s throw away from the former hale’s palladium (boy has that neighbourhood changed A LOT since i was down there last!), and he and i spent a pleasant hour, chatting about this and that, while he freed up my two stuck tuning slides. he actually didn’t use any new, secret methods, basically the same things i had tried, only his “trying” was more forceful, and he did actually use a bigger hammer… and some weird plastic goo that forms around the tuning slide and then hardens so that he could whack on it more forcefully without denting the slide tubes.

and then he ultrasonically cleaned ALL my tuning slides, and lubricated them with lanolin (which i have never used on a tuning slide).

so, now my micro-tuba has ALL working tuning slides, and it only cost me $100, which i consider to be a fair deal! 👍👍