All posts by przxqgl

#LowBrass player (#Trombone, #Tuba), #Busker, #Composer, #Artist, #Agarbathiwala, #BrainInjurySurvivor https://www.HybridElephant.com/ https://and-more.bandcamp.com/ https://salamandir.bandcamp.com/ Bounded chaotic mixing produces strange stability.
getting old, ketchup, pictures

this happened…

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in order to prevent myself from flipping out (too much) about the election (🤮), i have been going through and categorising my remaining vinyl albums. at this point there are two loose categories, those that i want to keep, and those that i want to sell. the ones that i want to sell are also in two, loose categories, those that are already on discogs, and those that are not yet on discogs. the pile i want to keep already almost fills the “record safe” box i got on freecycle, a few years ago, and, when i’m done categorising everything, the “record safe” should be close to full. the pile that are not yet on discogs is growing, as well, which is where everything else is going. i got some blank cardboard record sleeves, some rice-paper inner sleeves, and some vinyl outer sleeves, so that ALL of the records i send out will have adequate protection, and look “more professional”. this is the last dregs of the vinyl dump from KUGS that started (<mumble mumble>) years ago (ten? fifteen? who knows… 🙄) which is the primary reason i am now in possession of records like The Passion and Transfiguration of a Post-Apocalyptic Eunuch, and The Nova Convention, and From The Music of Harry Partch, and Feet Hacked Rails. also, since i actually HAVE my turntable set up and operational, now, i have been re-ripping the albums i USED TO HAVE ripped, but which were lost in the great cloud drive crack of 2021… another small step in recovering a tiny fraction of what was lost — sigh…

last sunday i fell off my unicycle and fucked up my tuba playing hand — just in time for the players to announce a new gig with a new brewer in the area, for which we have an emergency rehearsal this sunday, and are performing an “abbreviated” panto at some location of which i have yet to learn… on tuesday… my hand has been going through the stages of being severely bruised (blue, then purple, then yellow/green), but nothing is broken, or even fractured, so, presumably, it will go back to normal, or something like that, eventually. it’s well enough that i’m only having a little trouble typing, although immediately after it happened, i couldn’t even close my fist without significant pain.

241112 - right hand fucked up after falling off unicycle
241112 – right hand fucked up after falling off unicycle

it’s not the same as when i was 35, and i could just expect everything to get better… 😒

clients, stupid people

i just fired a customer… 😒

on 241016, i received an incense order. the customer wanted ONE BOX of 999 Lord Krishna Puja Agarbatti — which costs $5 — and he wanted me to ship it to malasia…

to avoid having to set up complicated “zones” for shipping, i have shipping set up on a “flat rate” basis, which is, for domestic orders, you can order up to $60 worth of product, and the shipping is a flat rate of $18. anything more than $60, and the shipping is 30% of the total amount of your order. for international packages, you can order up to $150 worth of product, and the shipping is a flat rate of $30. anything more than $150, and the shipping is 20% of the total amount of your order.

this is CLEARLY stated on my Shipping & Returns page.

i STOPPED asking if the customer REALLY wants to spend more for shipping than they are spending for incense, a LONG time ago: it slows down delivery, because i have to email the customer, and then wait for an answer (which, frequently, never comes), BEFORE i can ship out their order, and i find it incredibly difficult to figure out how to say that they are paying more for shipping than for incense without sounding INCREDIBLY condescending. at a certain point, i have decided that they should KNOW what they’re doing, and, besides, i make more money that way.

so i sent this guy ONE BOX of incense… for $35…

on 241017, not even 24 hours after i sent his package, he sent me this email:

It will be nice if you get my tracking number from whichever courier company you are using to ship out what I paid for it, I can’t be waiting blindly without knowing status or current location of my parcel. I have been buying products from the USA for over 15yrs now and I always receive a tracking number of whichever courier service it been sent from. Kindly endeavor that tracking number is sent to me and my parcel should be swift delivery of 4days maximum like it has always been.

i ship internationally with USPS. this is because other carriers (DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc.) have EXTREMELY poor reputations when shipping internationally… combined with the fact that they frequently, either, ship using USPS and charge more, or they lose packages, and charge more. this has been true for AT LEAST 10 years.

when shipping internationally with USPS, however, unfortunately, they do not offer tracking, like they do with domestic service, however they do offer a “US Customs ID” number, which can be used for tracking, as long as the package is in the united states, and, FREQUENTLY whatever local postal service is involved will pick up the “US Customs ID” and track it, once it reaches it’s destination country.

however, i have never(!) shipped anything to malasia, so i, literally, DON’T KNOW how long it will take, and, significantly, regardless of where it’s going, i HAVE NO CONTROL over how long a package will take to reach its destination, once it leaves my hands.

so i responded, explaining that i had never shipped anything to malasia, so i didn’t know how long it would take to get there, and repeated my message concerning the “US Customs ID number”, in case he had missed it.

on 241023, he wrote me again:

What is the status of the package I paid for since last week? Where’s is the parcel current location? Been waiting for days with no idea.

i checked the US Customs ID, and determined that the package had left the united states, and was currently in japan. he responded, the same day, with this message:

This is ridiculous. I bought a product of $5 and you changed me $30 for shipment yet it didn’t occur to you to ship out my order as priority delivery for it to be delivered within 4-5 days. I just check status of the delivery and find out that is still within the USA like WTF is this nonsense? Why charge so high for shipping fees and not make it a priority delivery? DHL service would have delivered this parcel within 4days but you chose to use USPS who are known for poor service when it comes to delivery abroad 😠😠😠

🙄

once again, i reiterated my “clearly stated” shipping charges, and the fact that DHL would have taken longer and cost more, and said “if you are dissatisfied with our service, when your package arrives, you can return it, unopened, for a full refund.”

on 241029, he regaled me with this choice morsel:

Hello.For heaven sake, where is my order? Where on earth is the order I paid for since 17th of October? Today is 30th October and I haven’t receive what I paid for or know the way about of what I paid for. DHL won’t take up to 13days to deliver my order. Where for God sake is my order? 😠😠

🙄🙄

so, to make sure that i had done everything WITHIN MY POWER to please him, i refunded his entire order, and told him so.

on 241030, this was his response:

WHAT? I BEG YOUR PARDON! AFTER WASTING 13 DAYS OF MY LIFE AND TIME WAITING? WHAT KIND OF NONSENSE IS THIS? I’M YET TO RECEIVE MY REFUND IN MY ACCOUNT. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NONSENSE 😠😠😠😠😠😠

🙄🙄🙄🙄

so, i copied and pasted the response that square sent me regarding his refund: “Your customer with Visa card ending in 3753 should see this reflected on their statement within the next 2-7 business days.” i also informed him that i would no longer be responding to his abusive emails.

and that SHOULD HAVE BEEN the end of it…

but, NO!

on 241106, he sent me this message:

Hello, I intentionally didn’t reply to your last email all this days because I was waiting for the timeframe you gave me. One thing you should bear in mind is customers are always right. I paid for product since 17th of October and till date I haven’t receive what i paid for or my money, and you expect me to be quiet. Not as if this is my first time buying things from USA and getting it delivered to me within 5days of purchase. I’m writing to inform you that my money hasn’t reflect in my account yet, neither have I receive what I paid for. You said 2-7 working days from the last email you sent me.

to which i responded:

sometimes, regardless of how much you want to please everyone, it is impossible to do so. this is one of those cases.

and, sometimes, in spite of everything, the customer is wrong, and must be informed of that fact.

i have refunded your order, as can be seen by the attached screen shot.

if you haven’t received your refund, it’s not my fault. check with your bank.

there is nothing more i can do. ranting at me will do no one any good.

this morning, 241108, he wrote me AGAIN:

I’m writing in respect of the parcel. It came in today and was delivered to me, likewise the refund you send back to me, The money reflected in my account today. I think is unfair to be in possession of the incense I purchase from you and also my money back into my account. Please advise me on how to send the money back to you.

what follows is the response i WANTED to send, but cooler heads prevailed upon me not to:

it’s all good, there is no need to send me the money. i figure if $35 is all it takes to get rid of a rude, unpleasant customer, then it’s money well spent.

just keep this in mind the next time you feel compelled to send out nasty, ranting emails to people on the other side of the world.

also, if you never again bring your business to my web site, that would be a good thing.

instead, i sent this, somewhat more “tactfully” worded message:

it’s all good. consider the refund an exchange for the shipping delay.

in the future, you might try purchasing from Divine Mystic Lodge — https://www.divinemysticlodge.com/product/999-lord-krishna-puja/

it’s a smaller package, that costs less, but LET THEM DEAL WITH HIM… seriously!

now THIS is where it gets REALLY BIZARRE!! 😖

he responded again:

Thank so much, I really appreciate and sorry for the misunderstanding, is due to how urgent I needed the incense for spiritual prayer 🙏

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄‼‼‼

i’m sorry, jack… you NEED some serious self examination and reflection, so that you can figure out how your spiritual life has gotten THAT FAR off the rails, if you think this kind of thing is an appropriately “spiritual” response to “suffering”. 😒

anhedonia, depression, mushrooms

still

i THINK things are still going well, even though i’m still feeling like they aren’t, or shouldn’t be, or something… 😒

i’m about halfway through ripping the “questionable” albums, and i’ve discovered that, if i slow down and apply a little more patience to the process, instead of just deleting minor record skips and clicks and pops and stuff, if i enlarge the view to the point where i can see the individual samples — which is somewhere around 100 samples per .001 seconds — then i can use the “draw” tool in audacity, and actually REPAIR the sample wave! it doesn’t work very well when the record skips a groove, but every OTHER click and pop that i was able to find was really easily repaired… it makes the process of ripping albums take about three times as long, but for albums like The Nova Convention, the end result is a much more understandable and listenable recording. and i’ve FINALLY gotten around to buying blank record sleeves, cardboard covers, and plastic outer sleeves for the records that don’t already have them.

but i’m depressed and out of sorts and i don’t know why…

i guess it may be time for a macrodose. 🍄

anxiety, circus, depression, health, stress, TIMMAH!

sigh…

i think things are going fairly well… but i’m feeling REALLY tired and cranky, and i’m having a really difficult time not letting it spill over into my interactions with other people.

i THINK things are going fairly well: i’ve reached a satisfactory plateau in my office reorg, which is to say, basically, it is the same as it was last week, but i’ve fixed the wireless charging pad in my new sit/stand desk, so i can get rid of one more cable. i located a box of “questionable” albums (the albums, themselves, are questionable. the content on them is the only reason i have been hoarding them all these years), including quite a few albums that i have had on my “wish list” at discogs for a number of years, because i thought the copies that i had disappeared… they didn’t disappear, they’ve been in that box in the garage for four years because i haven’t had the appropriate space to set up my turntable… i am on the verge of writing out an arrangement of Galizianer Tans for the philharmonic… the only reason i haven’t started yet is because of laziness, and a vague fear of being successful at it… and, despite the fact that i did a 100% FACE PLANT at my cicrus class last week (the first one i have ever done), i THINK that i have finally figured out how to free-mount my unicycle — it has only taken me FOUR YEARS…

TIMMAH!
TIMMAH!

but for the past few days i have been really cranky, and kestrel bit my hand last night (which she has never done before), and my arms and legs are COVERED in bites and scratches from TIMMAH! who has developed this habit of purring and rubbing up against my legs, and acting all “soft-cuddly-kitty” in order to get me to pick him up, at which point he instantly transforms into a velociraptor. and, because of the fact that he’s still got all his primary teeth and hasn’t developed his “adult” brain, yet, he’s a SHARP velociraptor. 😒

also, i have to get my flu shot, and at least one COVID booster, and i really SHOULD get a shongles shit, which, in fact, is two shots, which cost around $400 a piece, and are NOT covered by medicare… and, if you really want to get technical about it, i really should sign up for a “yearly” healthcare check, which i haven’t done since before covid… 😒

house stuff, pictures

s-l-o-w-l-y… 😒

it’s slowly coming together: i actually put together the turntable and ripped the stack of albums i had been collecting for the past few years, and i have shipped out two incense orders, WITHOUT having to re-arrange stuff, or unplug stuff… and i discovered that my linux box, indeed, DOES HAVE a WIFI adaptor, which means that i can plug the printer into the mac more-or-less permanently and not have to switch the cable when i want to print from the linux box…

i’ve still got a mixer in a box, and a huge pile of cables, which will, ultimately, hook the synth and the piano to the mixer, and the mixer to the amplifier, and i’ve still got a box for the turntable which i have to decide where to store, but those are both lower priority, now that i’ve got the main part of the office straightened out.

241016 pano south west north
241016 pano south west north
241016 pano north east south
241016 pano north east south

in other news, i replaced two strands of rainbow lights on the outside of our house, because the old ones were burned out, or burning out, and while i was messing around with ladders, i decided that it would be a good idea to clean out the gutters, since the weather was nice. i didn’t clean ALL the gutters, because there are a few of them that are too high for me to reach, comfortably, with the ladders i have. the new strand of lights is a good deal less dense than the old ones were (fewer lights per foot 😒) but they were the only ones i could find that are JUST rainbow coloured lights, without colour-changing, remotes for choosing the colours or flashing patterns, or a “controller app” for a phone, so i suppose they’ll have to do… despite the fact that the instructions clearly state “this seasonal use product is not intended for permanent installation or use.” and “do not use seasonal products outdoors”… despite the fact that these are clearly labeled for outdoor use… 🙄

brain injury, frustration, house stuff, pictures

slowly…

241008 office re-org
241008 office re-org
it is finally coming together… slowly…

i finally got a couple of shelf brackets for my speakers, and then discovered, because i had ordered them online and not had the chance to inspect them in person before purchasing them, that the brackets don’t fit with any of the THREE DIFFERENT sets of speakers which i currently own(!), and, despite the fact that i ordered them online, they can only be returned “in store”, although the store won’t reimburse me, because i paid through paypal… 😖🤨

so i had to order ANOTHER “floating shelf” — online, OF COURSE 🙄 — but, because of the fact that these were “shelves” and not “brackets”, i got them to work, which meant that i — FINALLY — hooked up my speakers, and connected the computer, so that, now, i have music that is a subdued volume and doesn’t blast in my ears from wireless “party” speakers which have no volume control… 😒

and — OF COURSE 🙄 — after having realised it was missing, and spending three weeks or so looking for it, i found the patch diagram which shows all of the devices and their preferred inputs and outputs, a few days later, and — NATURALLY 🙄 — i have ALREADY plugged things in incorrectly… 😩

slowly… 😒

and i am STILL getting used to having a mouse that i can hold naturally and click without twisting my wrist. 🤬 right-handers are a lot more insidious than they appear.

brain injury, geek stuff

wow!

i have just, for the very first time, obtained a left-handed mouse, and my whole world has changed.

almost immediately after my injury, like with most things, i switched from being a right-handed mouser to being a left-handed mouser… unfortunately, because of the fact that the mouse was intended to be used by a right-handed mouser, i had to learn to use the mouse at an angle that allowed me to “normal-click” the “left” mouse button, which defaults to having to change positions any time i want to use the “right” mouse button for its normal stuff.

and, as a part of re-organising my office, i discovered that i now have THREE right-handed mice which are only partially functional: two of them don’t move the cursor reliably, and the third one doesn’t “middle-click” any longer… so, i figured, as long as i was getting a new mouse anyway, i might as well get a left-handed one.

now i have to UN-learn 20+ years of bad mousing habits. 😉

moe, pictures

moe

241001 charcoal sketch of moe
241001 charcoal sketch of moe

this was drawn from a reference photo of moe that was taken before we were married. it is one of my all time favourite photos of her.

and i THINK i have done an okay job of capturing exactly what i like about the photo in the drawing! 👍

bssb

and, exactly as i suspected…

and, exactly as i suspected, there was absolutely NO free street parking anywhere close to fisher pavilion. I was able to secure parking next to the bagley-wright theatre, approximately 3 blocks away, because of my state-issued handicapped placard, but most of the other band members i talked to had to walk a half-mile or more from their free, street parking, or had to pay $30 to $40 for two hours of parking in a garage somewhere… i noticed the parking garage i used to park in (30 years ago, or so), two blocks from the fisher pavilion, which used to be $25 for all day, now has a sign that says “EVENT PARKING — $50” which is outrageous! 🤬 NOBODY should have to pay that much for parking! 😒

but the performance went really well, and we didn’t have the usual problems with the tempo slowing down (like we usually do), because, even though we played an almost entirely DIFFERENT set-list, we actually PLAYED YESTERDAY, which makes a whole bunch of difference. 😉👍👍

bssb

BSSB

the sousa band had a performance, today, at the 100th anniversary celebration of the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe, which started and ended at sand point naval air station, now magnuson park. being held at what is now an official NOAA facility, they have a list of “officially prohibited items” which includes “All noisemakers” — which makes me wonder whether ANY of the band are going to be allowed on the property — but, because i am somewhat familiar with the location, i went up there on thursday, to scout out the best place to park, so that i could leave my vest full of “officially prohibited items” (😈) outside the purview of the people who would prohibit such things… and, in spite of the fact that the gates WEREN’T open on thursday it turns out that BOTH of the gates were open, this morning, so i was able to park where i thought i was going to be able to anyway… BUT…

😒

liz sent out an email after i left — ALMOST EXACTLY the same time that we were supposed to be ON THE STAGE — with “NOAA parking instructions!” which said that we actually COULD park in the “federal no parking zone” without having to worry about “officially prohibited items. 😒

so, in spite of the fact that i was able to park where i wanted to, i COULD HAVE parked A LOT closer, and i wouldn’t have had to worry about getting past the armed guard at the gate.

in the same way, the sousa band has a performance tomorrow at Festa Italiana, at the fisher pavilion at the seattle centergrounds… but, because of the fact that it’s happening on sunday, we have been encouraged to “park on the street, because street parking is free on sundays”…

i have been parking at the seattle center for a VERY LONG TIME, and i have NEVER found reliable street parking ANYWHERE CLOSE to the fisher pavilion, on a sunday. it JUST. DOESN’T. HAPPEN.

period.

MY PLAN is to get there around 10:00 and park at the parking lot at 3rd and harrison… but even then, 10:00 is well after the huge crowds of people usually arrive at the center, and, because of the fact that they’re not giving out parking passes this year, i’ll probably have to pay through the nose for 4 hours of parking.

health

WTF valley medical?

today i got an email from valley medical center that said they had refunded a payment of $146.21…

they don’t tell me WHAT the payment was for, or WHY it was made in the first place, and the only way to ask questions about it is to login to my valley medical “MyChart”, type out the question(s) i have, and wait for up to 48 hours for a reply that is USUALLY an automated reply, prompting more questions than it does provide answers.

if they REFUNDED almost $150, they must have charged it for something, but going through my medical expenses for the past year doesn’t give me the first clue, which makes me wonder why it was paid in the first place? and, of course, the answer would be that if i did NOT pay it, they would have sent my account to collections because of non-payment. 😒

but, because i can “afford” it, i guess i should be happy that i am getting a refund, because if i wasn’t, it would already be paid and i would never know the difference.

😒

frustration

oingg??

moe ordered a flatpack headboard online. it was delivered in a big, heavy box, with “all*” the parts, tools, hardware, and instructions for putting it together.

the instructions included a list of parts and quantities. the LIST said that it contained two parts labeled “G”. in reality, there was only one part labeled “G” in the box, a fact that i discovered after having already assembled approximately half of the headboard… because… who EVER checks the quantity list to make sure ALL the parts are there, when assembling a flatpack ANYTHING??? 😒

moe wrote to the manufacturer, and arranged for a second part “G” to be shipped, which they said would take about a week.

two and a half weeks later, after we got used to having our bedroom taken over by a partially assembled headboard, we got ANOTHER big, heavy box, with an entirely new, complete, flatpack headboard…

the new box also contained only one part labeled “G”… 🤬

now, we are left with a new, assembled headboard, PLUS an entire flatpack headboard, MINUS two parts labeled “G”, which are integral to the assembly of the headboard. 🤦

this is another instance where the frank zappa song “Flakes” is VERY appropriate. 😒

*for extremely limited definitions of the word “all”. 😒

depression, frustration, pictures

oqeirg

240918 new office update
240918 new office update

yeah, it hasn’t changed much, but motivation is a major obstacle with this project… i really didn’t want to start it, in spite of the fact that it needed to be done, and has for a very long time, now (upwards of two years)… the big problem is that what i REALLY need is a bigger mixer — which is the thing to the right of the computer monitor, on top of the stack of stereo components, in the white box, in the picture above. if i don’t get a new mixer, the next alternative is a specialised, custom-built patch bay, so that i can unplug and re-configure the studio without having to pull out the individual components, and root around behind them to re-configure everything. basically, the mixer is big enough to give me playing capability for my piano and synthesizer OR to give me recording capability for my record player and tape recorder… but not both. and to switch from recording to playing involves completely reconfiguring the mixer and the pre-amp (the bottom on the stack of stereo components, in the black box) before any actual “tinkering” can be done…

and, for that matter, i don’t even have that set up, because i have to decide where the speakers (currently on the right margin of the photo above, about in the middle) are going to go, and mount them, before i can even think about getting started with anything else, and, what with the aforementioned reconfiguring rigamarole, plus the fact that i haven’t actually produced any original music since about 2015, my motivation for setting up the stereo is minimal… at this point i’ve got the music player on my tablet talking to two battery-powered, bluetooth “speakers” (which double as “party lights”), and that’s about all i can get motivated to do.

and there are some things that i would swear i would have been able to put my hands on almost immediately, before i started this whole miasma, which are now nowhere to be found. they’re not REALLY important (my folder of music i wrote in high school, a couple of books (both found shortly after posting this), the box of CDs that i am selling, etc., etc.), but it’s really almost enough to make me wish i hadn’t started this reorganisation project to begin with. 😒

the thing about depression
well you just can’t let it get you down
you have to see the world for what it is
a circus full of freaks and clowns
and you’ll never please everybody
it’s a well established fact, he said
i recommend a fifth of jack and a bottle of prozac

anxiety, depression, frustration, moving, pictures

aowefu

240915 moving into the new office
240915 moving into the new office

this is the new office configuration. the “closet” is now a sitting desk, which (eventually) will have mostly things like the stereo amp, tape recorder, turntable, and mixer on it, with the first shelf for things like the printer. the sit/stand desk is in the standing configuration, now, but it won’t accept the old monitor riser that i used to use (it’s too thick, plus the glass surface wouldn’t hold up to the heavy duty clamp that secures it to the desk), and i’m not sure how to raise the monitor, because PHONE BOOKS DON’T EXIST ANY LONGER 😒 i’m thinking of re-purposing the two smaller shelves that are currently on the main part of the desk, putting them on the, wider, first shelf, and adding stuff that used to be on top of the bookcase (which is out of the shot, behind me)…

because, well, i read “Earth to Moon” recently, which is Moon Unit Zappa’s reminiscences of growing up with Frank Zappa as a father, and what i read gave me a whole new outlook on Frank: i still like his music, and i still think he was a musical genius, and he said a lot of things that i will still quote at the end of my emails, but (and i’m definitely going to sound like my parents, here) — DAMN!! — he was an AWFUL parent!! 🤬 and a questionable role model, at best… which means that the bookcase covers up a lot of space where my frank zappa posters were, and i’m not sure how (or if) i want to replace them.

but everything is not moved back in, yet, and i still don’t have a functioning stereo, and, in spite of the newly created shelf space, and newly created shelves in a couple of different places in the office, i’m STILL wondering where i’m going to put stuff.

i feel a lot better than i did a week ago, but it’s still not over, yet, and i’m getting really tired of it.

depression, house stuff, stress

blar!

1 Comment

the time has definitely come to re-arrange my office to make the music gear more accessible, and to make the existing computer gear less of a tangle of wires in an almost inaccessible (except for the cat) part of my office.

what this entails, so far, is purchasing an actual desk — a sit/stand desk, no less, with a wireless/bluetooth charging area, and a built-in two port USB hub 😉

240907 - sit/stand desk at discount liquidation depot in north bend
240907 – sit/stand desk at discount liquidation depot in north bend

plus clearing out the “closet” where my piano and synthesizer used to live, in preparation for transforming the “closet” into a “desk”, and re-designing the shelves, above, to make use of the entire 8-foot width, rather than the staggered 4-foot shelves that i cobbled together when we were moving in… which will also mean that i can get rid of the pile of 8′-to-10′ shelves that have been taking up floor space in the garage! 👍

ultimately, the plan is to have the sit/stand desk with my computer(s) on the wall opposite where i am sitting now, and my piano and synthesizer opposite that, with an 8-foot “desk-made-out-of-a-closet” bridging the gap. the bookcase where the desk is going to go, allegedly, will fit between the wall and the door when it is fully opened… and i’m not sure what’s going to happen with the snake or the storage under the snake… it’s possible that the storage under the snake could go under the desk, but that’s still up in the air, at this point…

HOWEVER…

we’re at that “middle” stage, where everything (well, ALMOST everything) is taken apart and chaotic, and we’re still on the uphill track of “taken-apart-and-chaotic-ness”, and i HATE that part…i guess, mostly, because i lack the ability to imagine what it will be like when it’s finished in a more-than-just-imagination type of way — i’m stuck in the middle of chaos, and it sucks! 😠

and it doesn’t help that, when i went to home depot to scout out countertop for the 8-foot desk, the only piece of countertop they had that was 8 feet long was about twice as wide as i need it to be, DESPITE THE FACT that THEIR WEB SITE, FOR THAT, SPECIFIC STORE said that there were a variety of width and colour options available, and in stock. 😒

spam, the mallet

smup

this is a message for the “user” named “Philipcef Philipcef”, whose email address appears to be “liamgvideo at gmail dot com”…

your message, “Test, just a test”, has earned you a coveted spot in my “Blocked IP Addresses” list. in fact, your message has earned the /22 block of IP addresses at tis-dialog.ru (which is in russia) a spot on my “Blocked IP Addresses” list.

congratulations. 😒

if you want to test my response form, just ask… it works quite well. it also includes a wonderful little X- line, called “X-PHP-Script”, which you probably didn’t know about, which includes your IP address — 194.50.15.67 — i expanded it to the next block, just to make sure.

now you, and 1,024 other russian citizens are COMPLETELY BLOCKED from viewing ANY of my web sites, including Hybrid Elephant, which you “tested” at 06:31 PDT this morning.

and, considering that the contact information for tis-dialog.ru is “grunge at tis-dialog.ru”, i’m guessing that it won’t really matter that much. 😒

spam is bad. stop it.

cannabis, homegrown

newmoorhg

today i switched the lights from vegetative to flowering.

last
next-to-last
germinate

i shut down the grow-tent and moved them under the flowering lights, and gave them supports so that they’ll grow up instead of out.

i still have to decide whether or not i’m going to clone them, or just shut down the grow-tent until next year… but i’ve also got to decide if i’m going to construct a dedicated grow room, or divide up the existing shed, or what, so the likelihood that i will just shut down the grow-tent is fairly high.

health, poop

oh, btw…

i had my colonoscopy on 240809. i had a polyp removed, which tested normal. the doctor recommends another colonoscopy in ten years.

if medical science has increased as much in 10 years as it has in the past 10 years, i anticipate a far easier procedure than the one i just had… which was DRAMATICALLY easier than my previous colonoscopy (15 years ago) was…

it seems really odd that, not quite 3 months ago, i spent three days in the hospital with diverticulitis. the doctors have said that, while they can’t agree on what causes it, there’s a good chance that there’s a genetic component. but none of my relatives have had diverticulitis… that i know of… the doctors also said that it could just be “bad luck”, which i can definitely believe.

cannabis, homegrown, pictures

ghroomwen

240813 space queen
240813 space queen
240813 space queen
240813 space queen

germinated 240618, things are proceeding nicely and, according to the packaging, they should be ready to flower… personally, i think i’m going to give them a couple more weeks before switching the lights. at this point there’s little to lose, and a lot more to gain to let them grow a couple more weeks, and, as they’re already under lights, it’s a trivial matter to switch them when I decide is best, and not natural processes. 😉

political

a word from an actual “weird” person…

speaking as an actual “weird” person, personally, i think that all the talk i’ve seen, recently, about how republicans are “weird” is offensive, and i think it should stop. 😒

republicans — particularly the MAGA/#drumpf crowd — are repugnant, awful, uncaring, and inhuman, and their thinking (what they do of it) is definitely “strange” and “bizarre”, but they are decidedly NOT “weird”!

i wish people would choose a different word to describe them. 😒

The trick is to not let people know how really weird you are until it is too late for them to back out.

pictures, timmah

Timothy David Minchin

1 Comment

introducing the new cat. his name is TIMMAH!

… because of the well-known fact that all ginger cats share one brain cell…

yes, Timothy Burch, otherwise known as “TIMMAH!” from South Park, is a ginger. 😉

as all of our cats have been named after musicians or composers (“Charlie” was named after Ray Charles, “George and Ira Gershwin” was obvious, “Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, The Tookah” was named after David Bowie, and “Frank Zappa” was obvious), “technically”, he is named after Tim Minchin… who is also a ginger. 😉

240811 Timothy "TIMMAH!" David Minchin
240811 Timothy “TIMMAH!” David Minchin
240811 Timothy "TIMMAH!" David Minchin
240811 Timothy “TIMMAH!” David Minchin
geek links, geek stuff

tempus fugit

1 Comment

in 1998, when i worked for STLabs, i was the test lead on a brand new product for the Crayola® corporation called “3D Castle Creator”, which was, allegedly, a gadget that lets one create virtual castles, while ostensibly being an “educational tool” that taught all about various aspects and features of castles, in general.

it had A LOT of bugs. i built a model trebuchet that i kept in my cube, and launched tennis balls over the cube walls at my co-workers, to keep them motivated. 😉 i had some really amusing screen shots of various bugs in the video portion of the program, but they all got wiped out in the great cloud drive crack of 2021. 🫤

however, i found a windows-only version of it available on “My Abandon Ware dot com”… 🙄

it probably works, if one has period hardware and operating system…

frank, pictures

Requiescat in pacem, Frank Zappa (the cat)

1 Comment

131110 frank zappa kitten
131110 frank zappa kitten
Frank Zappa (the cat) is no more.

he lived a normal cat life up until last saturday, when he stopped eating, which we figured was because of his IBS, from which he has suffered for a few years now. we medicated his IBS, and things seemed to be getting better on monday, but then he quit eating again, and today he developed a fever, so i took him in to the vet, and they discovered a “mass” in his abdomen, which, thanks to exploratory surgery (which i got to watch!!), was determined to be two fairly large cancerous tumours in his small intestine… at which point moe and i decided that it would be better to euthanise him than it would be to wake him up so that WE could “have more time with him”…

240801 the last photo of frank zappa (the cat)
240801 the last photo of frank zappa (the cat)
240705 Frank Zappa (the cat)
240705 Frank Zappa (the cat)
160418 ROTFL-Meow!
160418 ROTFL-Meow!
150523 frank zappa (the cat)'s right front paw
150523 frank zappa (the cat)’s right front paw
dead people, pictures, tina chopp

ො ✖

240727 cucumbers planted on Osiris' grave
240727 cucumbers planted on Osiris’ grave

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. 😉

tina chopp

� 纂

2 Comments

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.

ocf, pictures

an embarrassment that wasn’t

so, ON MY BIRTHDAY, in 2015, i took this picture of a furry in xavanadu…

150711 furry in xavanadu
150711 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…

240711 salamandir and Timber
240711 salamandir and Timber

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.” 😉

ocf, pictures

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:

240711 salamandir and Timber
240711 salamandir and Timber

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! 😱

240711 google lens says that this is a varigated meadowhawk, but i'm not certain
240711 google lens says that this is a varigated meadowhawk, but i’m not certain

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… 😉

240711 wooden dragon sculpture
240711 wooden dragon sculpture
240713 dance pavilion and moon
240713 dance pavilion and moon
240713 random glowing hippie shit
240713 random glowing hippie shit
240714 Gadzooks! It's a stump! right next to the stage, all that is left of the shittimwood tree after which the morningwood odditorium is named.
240714 Gadzooks! It’s a stump! right next to the stage, all that is left of the shittimwood tree after which the morningwood odditorium is named.
240712 some random hippie
240712 some random hippie
240714 some random hippie
240714 some random hippie

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! 😉👍

anxiety, ocf

immediately pre-ocf

1 Comment

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, pictures

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.

240702 Green River Gorge
240702 Green River Gorge
240702 Green River Gorge
240702 Green River Gorge
240702 Green River Gorge
240702 Green River Gorge

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.

240702 Green River Gorge Resort -- a former hippie commune, from the 1960s?
240702 Green River Gorge Resort — a former hippie commune, from the 1960s?
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort
240702 Green River Gorge Resort

here is what is left of the town of franklin. click to embiggen.

240702 - Franklin, WA
240702 – Franklin, WA

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”.

240702 -- the Franklin Mine Shaft
240702 — the Franklin Mine Shaft
240702 -- the Franklin Mine Shaft
240702 — the Franklin Mine Shaft
micro$hit sucks!

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:

—–

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:

—–

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:

—–

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.

—–

so, i wrote back AGAIN, with the bounce message above, and this was their response:

—–

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.

—–

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! 😠

—–

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!!

incense

grf… 😒

once again, my ability to read devanagari script puts me in a situation which is rather annoying:

i got some new agarwood incense from vithaldas narayanadas and sons, which is labeled “Agarwood Agarbatti” (in roman orthography) on one side, and “अगरवुड अगरबत्ती” (in devanagari orthography, presumably hindi) on the other side…

which, when transliterated, says “Agarvoodd Agarbatti” (hindi doesn’t use what we recognise as the letter “W”, so they use “V” or “B”, most of the time, instead)…

i would have hoped that they would have printed the hindi word for “Agarwood” (the closest google translate can get me is “एलोवुड” (/elovud/) which allegedly means “Aloeswood”, but i’m not convinced of that, either, as “लकड़ी” (/lakadee/), or “काष्ठ” (/kaashth/) means “wood”…

i suppose i could solve this by asking a native hindi speaker, or taking a class, or something, but i’m not sure it’s worth the trouble. 😒

cannabis, homegrown, pictures

2024 cannabis — second try

my previous attempt at starting from seed was a horrible disaster, which resulted in my coddling four, then three, then two pitiful plants from relatively healthy, to severely stressed, to slowly and painfully dying over the course of about a month. i’m not sure what i did, or did not do, that brought about this sad course of action — there are a number of things that i did which could have caused some stress, and a couple of things that i didn’t do which might have contributed to the problem, but i don’t know. 😢

however, i actually bought more space queen seeds, and this time they’re doing A LOT better…

240620 space queen after two weeks
240620 space queen after two weeks
240620 space queen after two weeks
240620 space queen after two weeks
240620 space queen after two weeks
240620 space queen after two weeks

according to the label, indoor plants are expected to flower in 65 days. i hope so. 😉

little good luck charms, pictures, swastika, swastika rehabilitation day, swastikas

卍 SWA 卐 STI ࿕ KA ࿖ REAHBILI ࿗ TATION ࿘ DAY ࿌

2 Comments

little good luck charms
little good luck charms

today is Swastika Rehabilitation Day.

the word “swastika” comes from the sanskrit word “स्वस्तिक” (/svastika/) which means “little good luck charm”. the word “swastika” replaced the more common greek word “γαμμάδιον” (/gammadion/) — which means “four letter “G”s” — in the 19th century (≈ 1800s CE).

the swastika is one of human-kind’s oldest symbols. it has appeared on rock carvings dated to 10,000 years ago, approximately 8,000 BCE, in what is now ukraine, as a symbol of fertility and good auspices. the swastika has been used by every people-group on the planet (including the hebrew people) as a symbol of good luck, love, life, light, and auspiciousness of every kind, until approximately 90 years ago, when it was cöopted by nazis in the 1930s.

one of my favourite artists, ManWoman, said this:

Think of the most sacred thing in your life, think of the most precious thing in your life, and put the Swastika into that place. Put the Swastika into your heart. Put the Swastika on your altar. Put the Swastika on the image you use to represent god, love, peace, or the cosmos. Put the Swastika on the thing that makes you happy. You will BEGIN to see what the Swastika has meant to humans over this entire planet for all of our human history. For these places are exactly the places it occupied for thousands of years, until the second world war, when it fell victim to a chronic infection.

Swastika of peace, by ManWoman
Swastika of peace, by ManWoman

in the past 20 years, i have seen a great deal of improvement, overall, in the general attitude of the public, concerning use of the swastika, particularly if it is NOT depicted as the nastys do, (a black, right-facing symbol, rotated 45 degrees, on a white circle, with a red background), but, even so, i had a good, artist, friend of mine tell me, last weekend, that, in her opinion, any swastika was “evil”… apparently including the swastika that she, unknowingly, put on her own art-car, which, when i pointed it out to her, her immediate response was “that’s not a swastika”, even though it clearly WAS.

The Swastika takes many forms, but it's still a Swastika. The issue is not whether Hitler's Swastika is different from ours. The issue is that it is our Swastika, not Hitler's.
211105 The Swastika takes many forms, but it’s still a Swastika.
The issue is not whether Hitler’s Swastika is different from ours.
The issue is that it is our Swastika, not Hitler’s.

here’s hoping that, in another 20 years, humanity will have gone back to the PROPER use of the swastika. ࿗

ocf, panto, philharmonic

same as it ever was…

1 Comment

SW&3D OCF 2024 — Snow White and The Three Dorfs Dwarves

their names are “Hungry”, “Thurston”, and “Jes’ Fine”… 🙄

this evening we had the first of two “run-throughs” with “the entire cast” before people start leaving for OCF. we “ran through” 4 songs, two of which we have played before… well, not the entire band, because we have a new substitute guitar player, who played with us several years ago for a couple of shows, and he has never played the music for this show before… and not everybody from the band was there tonight… and the cast has performed with the music, but they have entirely new lyrics to learn, along with dance steps and trying NOT to run into one another, or trip over their feet while executing said dance steps while trying to remember the new words and not sing the old ones…

we currently have 6 songs on the list, but one of them isn’t quite ready, yet.

we have our second “run through” on wednesday, then people leave for the fair, so the first complete run through, with the entire cast, costumes, and sets, will be the DRESS REHEARSAL at the fair, on thursday, the 11th of july. 🙄

this is approximately the same as how it has worked for at least 5 previous shows, so i’m FAIRLY confident that everything will work itself out, and the shows will go well…

but it’s a little nerve wracking when i consider how little preparation has actually been done for the show, compared to the preparation of the venue, making sure everyone gets down there safely, coordinating with the “officials” from the fair (primarily hillary, who is in charge of entertainment at chelamela), and everything else that has to be done… 🙄

busking, ocf, SACBO, wedding anniversary

there ain’t no cure…

1 Comment

SACBO starts friday, and i haven’t posted about it once, this year… OCF starts in 3 weeks (for some in the crew it starts at least a week earlier), and i haven’t posted about IT once, this year…

😒

okay, this SACBO will be the last one as “local residents” for whoretense and holly, who are moving to vancouver BC in a few months. whoretense has been one of my more regular print-broker clients. the last business card i made for him didn’t have a physical address on it. now i know why. the plan is for thaddeus to show up for at least one of the two days. and my unicycle riding has become somewhat more stable this year, which means that i MIGHT be able to compete in the doughnut jousting tournament this year.

and we’re JUST getting started with rehearsals for OCF. we have two scheduled for next week (monday and wednesday) which will be the only ones with the entire cast until the dress rehearsal at the fair, which is 23 days from today. as usual, we seem to be pulling the entire thing out of our asses at the last possible minute, but because of the fact that it’s OCF, the probability that everything will go smoothly is never more than 50%, however things work out. i haven’t been to the ritz since before COVID, and i don’t know whether or not i’m EVER going back, which sort-of makes the collection of 30-some ritz tokens i have collected in the past, possibly superfluous. 😒 and the probability is very high that, once again, they will NOT have put up the story pole, and nobody will want to talk about it, which is REALLY frustrating.

also, it’s our 26th wedding anniversary on friday…

art projects, i am a terrorist, pictures

then there was this…

for the past couple of weeks, i’ve seen this…

THING

peering out at me from an otherwise innocent-looking box of generic™ breakfast cereal on the shelf at the grocery store, as i was going about my business…

so i decided to put my photoshop™ The GIMP skills (such as they are) to the task of bringing him out in the open…

240528 - Kellogg's™ EVIL Frosted Mini Wheats
240528 – Kellogg’s™ EVIL Frosted Mini Wheats

it’s actually somewhat surprising how little i had to do to this in order to completely change the character of the entire graphic… a “free select” tool to select just the eyebrows (highly convenient that they are ALREADY on a white background!), “float” to separate them from the main graphic, then clone-stamp to fill in the resulting blank space, a little rotation of each eyebrow, separately, then anchor the floating layer back down, and a little black brush touch-up to the teeth…

i thought about making a stencil-font word “EVIL” in red, rotated slightly, in between the word “Kellogg’s” and the word “Frosted”, but then i realised that doing so would be laying it out for everyone to see, which i don’t necessarily want to do.

if anyone is interested, i have provided a link to the original, unaltered version. view at your peril. 😉

i’m thinking of ways i could just get the “eyebrows” and the teeth printed on clear acetate, so that i could just cover up the face with the more accurate one, and then watch to see how many people freak out, versus how many people don’t even notice… 😈

depression, health, poop, stress

ooof!!

i spent all last week in various amounts of almost non-existent to moderate lower abdominal pain, which i initially thought was constipation, and i was treating it as though that was what was causing it.

i spent thursday night in increasing amounts of severe gut pain, alternately in bed, not sleeping, or in the bathroom, trying (and failing) to poop, so friday morning as soon as they opened (08:00) i went to urgent care, which, after poking and prodding my increasingly painful gut for what seemed like extended periods of time, recommended that i go to the emergency room for tests and procedures to which they didn’t have access, at urgent care…

my preference would have been to eliminate this step, entirely, but, whatever…

🙄😒

so i went across the street to the emergency room, where they poked and prodded my gut, took a CT scan of my lower abdomen, and came back to inform me that i have diverticulitis, and recommended that i be admitted to the hospital immediately. 💀

this all happened on friday morning, between 08:00 and 10:30. 🤬

i spent friday night, and saturday night in the hospital. they discharged me on sunday morning, and i spent last night at home.

i am REALLY glad that medical knowledge has increased in the 40 years since i first heard of diverticulitis, because they DON’T have me eating white rice, noodles, and hard candy for a month (like they did for jane vosk, when i was 20), but i still need to be “careful” what i eat for the next couple of weeks, i am taking oral (and awful-tasting) antibiotics twice a day for the next two weeks, and they recommend a diet that is (possibly) higher in fiber than i have been eating after that to prevent future flare-ups.

i would like to state, categorically, for the record, that hospitals SUCK!!!… as thaddeus says, “i love doctors, i love nurses, i love aides, i love lab techs, i even love janitors, but i HATE hospitals!!”

oh, and i have to see my PCP soon (which means that i actually have to CHOOSE a PCP — again — because neither dr. wacka-loon, nor the one after him, came EVEN CLOSE to making the cut), and i have to see a GI doc within the next couple of months to have a colonoscopy…

whee… 😒

once again, i am forced to wonder why they didn’t just let me die when i had the chance. woulda’ saved everyone an awful lot of grief and money. 😒

politicians, stupid people

#DRUMPF FOUND GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY x 34 FELONY CONVICTIONS!! 🎊

© 1973 -- i knew this would come in handy eventually. 😉
© 1973 — i knew this would come in handy eventually. 😉

there’s still no clear decision about what’s going to happen next. my guess would be nothing will happen to him, and he will go about his normal life without a change, and that would be wrong, but, unfortunately, it’s what i forsee happening… 😒

ETA: the sentencing is on my birthday. 😒

the presumptive GOP candidate for president has 34 felony convictions…

WHAT KIND OF CRAZY UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD IS THIS, ANYWAY??? 😖😖

technology, the very big stupid

🙄 😒

that didn’t last long… 😒

here i started my reddit profile, and here i deleted my reddit profile.

there are just WAY TOO MANY people who don’t know what they’re talking about, who give expert advice like they DO know what they’re talking about, and who DOWN-VOTE anybody who DOES know what they’re talking about, who tries to clear up the rampant and uncontrolled misinformation.

i’m not JUST talking about me, in this case. 😒

rants, spam

smarp 😒

in the past 24 hours i have received 3,500 more-or-less identical spam messages from “Magalu”, or “Magalu Ofertas”, or Magalu Recomenda”, or “Ofertas Magalu”, with “Queima de Estoque Magalu: Televisores 4k a partir de: R$ 698,99 – APROVEITE – [ SOME-RANDOM-NUMBER ]” as the subject line. however they all have slightly different “From:” email addresses that end with @SOME-RANDOM-SHIT.magazineluiza.com or @SOME-RANDOM-SHIT.magazine-luiza.com or @SOME-RANDOM-SHIT.magazineluiza.com.br

my host provider (which recently sold out to a large, foreign corporation, but, in the past, has built a considerable reputation for responding to tickets within an hour) has not responded to my REPEATED ticket updates concerning this spam. 😒

i have taken the unprecedented (for me) step of setting up global filters that actually DELETE these messages, instead of forwarding them. 😠

it’s unprecedented for me, because i am painfully aware of the fact that filters that are set up to DELETE messages frequently delete “false positives” as well as spam, but this sender has been CONSISTENTLY sending me DOS mail-bombs of anywhere from 5,000 to 500,000 spam messages, for a number of years, and i’m as sure as i can be that i have narrowed down the filters to the point where i’m PRETTY sure they’re only going to delete spam, and NOT false positives.

😒

SPAM IS BAD! END SPAM ON INTERENT! (for all the good it will do… 🙄)

moisture festival, rants

annmoistfest ualureival rant

  • 2024, 7 shares, $385.00 – $55 per share
  • 2023, 7 shares, $385.00 – $55 per share
  • 2022, 15 shares, $750 – $50 per share
  • 2021, 4 “virtual” shows, i played for 2 of them, no payment.
  • 2020, 17 shares – cancelled at the last minute, because of the imminent pandemic.
  • 2019, 13 shares, $520 – $40 per share
  • 2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
  • 2017, ?? shares, $480…
  • 2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
  • 2015…
  • 2014…
  • 2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
  • 2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
  • 2011, 14 shares…

i didn’t even get a printed letter this year — or a check, they’re “direct depositing” them, this year, which is another layer of paperwork — just an email from victoria, the new executive director, with the standard “don’t consider this a paying gig” and “you are likely to get a token amount of money, but it will be more of an honorarium than a fee” horseshit.

some rant, huh? 😒

busking

240516

2 Comments

it has now been five days since i posted that we busked at the market and made $115 a piece, but we STILL haven’t received the $100 a piece that we were promised. it sounds all too familiar. 😒

i remember another snake suspenderz gig we played, at some retirement home north of the university district, a few years ago, where we signed all the paperwork months in advance, and we were assured that we WOULD BE paid on the day of the performance, multiple times, by multiple people, and i STILL had to follow this lady around, harassing her, for 45 minutes, before she relented, and took money out of her personal checking account to pay us, because “the checks had been held up” by some incompetence somewhere.

this time, we were supposed to be paid on the day of the performance, but on that day, (five days ago), the person who was supposed to give us checks, checked to make sure she had our addresses correct, “in case she had to mail them”, and said that she would have the checks no later than wednesday… wednesday came and went, we saw no checks, and the lady DIDN’T show up when she said she was going to, wasn’t answering her phone, and didn’t even try to contact us… ALLEGEDLY the checks have been mailed, but i do not understand how, if i behaved that way towards a professional client, i would not have that client for very much longer, but she thinks that it’s okay to behave this way towards us because we’re “ONLY” buskers. 😒

i am a terrorist, politics, rants, stupid people

semitic semantic puzzle

recently i’ve been hearing a lot of what boils down to “if you support the palestinians right to exist, you are anti-semitic”…

which REALLY puzzles me…

because…

originally, the term “semitic people” INCLUDED “arabs, jews, akkadians, and phoenicians”… the term “semitic” comes from the biblical sons of noah; ham, shem, and japheth. it has only been comparatively recently (i.e. around 1930-ish) that the term “anti-semitic” has come to mean “hatred of jews” in particular…

as an aside, originally “semitic” people were from what we now call “asia”, “hamite” people were from what we now call “africa”, and “japhethite” people were from what we now call “europe”… which brings up a whole different miasma of biblical nonsense concerning “japhethite supremacy” which i am not addressing, primarily because it is biblical nonsense. 😒

does use of the term “anti-semitic” in this way mean it is expected that people will intuitively understand that what you are REALLY saying is that it is OKAY to hate arabs?

or do the people who use the term “anti-semitic” to mean “hatred of jews” really not know that the term originally included arabs as well? considering the state of education these days, it wouldn’t surprise me that much. the only reason I know this is because i looked it up when i was in my teens… i certainly wasn’t taught that the term “anti-semitic” meant anything other than “hatred of jews”…

for that matter, apart from language (which is similar enough already, apart from the orthography), and culture/religion, what really IS the difference between a middle-eastern jew and a middle-eastern arab? if you removed all visible cultural markers (i.e. primarily “clothing”), and had them stand side by side, could you REALLY tell the difference?

it is questions like this that inevitably make me wonder about the possibility that i am some species other than human… 😒

bongwater day, busking, circus, house stuff, pictures, snake suspenderz / alive, unicycle

230511

okay, since the last entry, in reverse order…

today, thaddeus and i busked at the pike place market, under the clock, for an hour, and made $115 a piece… that takes into account the fact that we were amplified (which isn’t normally allowed at the market) and playing on the back of a truck for the “flower festival”, and we were being paid $100 a piece by the PDA to be there… the extra $30 was from tips, because of course we set up our tip bucket, because we were busking at the market. for some reason (probably the fact that he was being paid by the PDA) the busker who was on the stage/truck before us did not have a tip bucket out. 🤷

yesterday, i finished the pea gravel to the west end of the house project that i started earlier in the week. yesterday was also a “category 5” geomagnetic storm, caused by sunspots, which made a “visible” aurora borealis across most of north america, so of course moe and i went out to a “light desert” near salmon la sac, and took pictures. it was the first time i have ever actually seen an aurora… i have PROBABLY “seen” other ones, but they weren’t anywhere near as spectacular, and, significantly, i didn’t have the technology to actually “see” what i was “seeing”: what i saw with my naked eye was lighter grey stripes that were, basically, indistinguishable from clouds, which, very occasionally, had slight hints of colour… but apparently cameras these days take in A LOT more light than our eyes do, and the photos that came out of monique’s phone were phenomenal:

240510 <em>aurora borealis</em>
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis
240510 aurora borealis

thursday was my circus class, wednesday was busking without amplification or the extra $100 a piece — we made a grand total of $6 ($3 a piece), which qualifies as one of the 5 WORST days i have ever had busking at the market. also i cleaned the furnace filters that i forgot to clean on monday. tuesday and monday i started adding pea gravel to the area behind the fence at the west end of our house. monday i forgot to clean the furnace filters.

last sunday was my unicycle class, where i may actually be making some progress, in that i am free-mounting pretty regularly, and i just discovered that if i do it right, i can actually idle, rather than riding away after a free-mount… but everything is still sort of tentative, and i’m not sure whether it’s an actual improvement, or whether i’m just doing fine this week and i’ll go back to not being able to do it next week… which is sort of what i’m expecting. 😒

last saturday was may 4th, which is bongwater day, and world naked gardening day, as well as the more conventional star-wars day. last friday was international tuba day, national paranormal day, and world press-freedom day. last thursday i had my circus class, may 1st (wednesday) we busked at the pike place market, under the clock, with interference from the “pike place drummer” who sets up on the corner opposite the market, so that he is NOT “on market property”, sets up a trap kit and an amplified, pre-recorded MMO tape, and drowns out all other buskers in a three block radius… and we STILL made $20 a piece, which was more than the drummer made. 😉

cannabis, homegrown, legalise it!

TODAY!

TODAY the federal government moved cannabis from schedule I (illegal for all purposes) to schedule III (legal by prescription) in the Controlled Substance Act, for the first time since the CSA was passed in 1970.

The Biden Administration announced today that the DEA will move marijuana cannabis to Schedule III. Here’s a breakdown of what that means.

it’s not going to be legal, except under prescription (for the moment), but now that it has some recognised medical uses, there will be a lot more research done with cannabis, and it will be easier for researchers to obtain quality samples… and it will make it A LOT easier for cannabis-related businesses to get their business done without having to worry about breaking some federal law.

but, now that it’s headed towards legalisation, it’s time for the media to start calling it by its “official, scientific” name, and not by its “street” name, which is why i edited the article. i encourage everybody to do so, and inform the authors that it has been done. if we’re going to be dealing with a legal substance, it should NOT be referred to by the name (to quote peter tosh) of “a girl from cuba”. 😒

it’s not a total win, but, at this point, but considering everything, i’m going to count this as a win. 👍👍

time to celebrate with a fatty of homegrown goodness! 😉 Continue reading TODAY! →

cannabis, homegrown, pictures

2024 cannabis update #2

240424 plant #1
240424 plant #1
240424 plant #2
240424 plant #2
240424 plant #3
240424 plant #3
240424 plant #4
240424 plant #4

i’ve been wondering about #2 for about a week… it appears like it’s growing, but it also appears like it’s dying, so i’m not really sure. i keep watering it, and it keeps growing, so there’s still hope. the other three are all doing really well. i’m hoping that this year’s crop will make up for last year’s. 😉

depression, health, microdosing, mushrooms, quantity

i’ve heard it said before…

i’ve heard it said before that depression is like a weight, but i never really felt like that was true for me. it felt like a gloomy presence which infected everything, but not, specifically, as a “weight”… until today, the 6th day since i microdosed. i took 750mg this morning at 09:45 and proceeded to have one of the most bizarre trips i have ever had.

despite the outdoor temperature climbing, i got very cold, to the point where i put on a hoodie and closed it around my face to ward off chills. then i got very sleepy, so i took a nap for a couple of hours. when i got up i felt straight enough to drive to the place where i bought some storage media, and then i decided, on the spur of the moment, to go “out for a drive”…

and that’s when i realised: depression IS like a weight: it gets a little bit heavier, imperceptably, every minute of every hour of every day, until i go around wondering (like i was, only yesterday) how i don’t know i have the energy to do things until i’m actually doing them, only to be made more tired and exhausted by the things that i was doing that i didn’t know i had the energy to do, and doing things (like i did yesterday) like going to bed at 19:30 because i was so exhausted… and the only respite i seem to have is when i take enough mushrooms to be able to perceive that it is all an illusion. it was around this time last year that i had a profound, mushroom-induced brush with reality, and i really haven’t done anything BUT microdoses since then.

microdosing keeps the weight from getting too unbearable, but it still accumulates. i need regular macrodoses, as well, to keep things from getting too overwhelming.

because too much whelm is never a good thing for anyone. 😉

forward into the past, pictures

forward, into the past…

i was digging through a box of, mostly, ephemera, that i haven’t actually looked in since before we moved into the house out of which we moved 4 years ago, to move into this house. the reason i haven’t looked in it for 20+ years is because i thought i knew what was in it. while that was largely true, there were a few unknown things in that box which i’ve been wondering about for some time. one of those things was the “secret” taxi-driver’s guide to seattle streets.

this was before cell phones, and before most people had even heard of networked computers, much less internet: this was in the mid-1980s, very few people had cell phones, pay-phones were the common way of communicating outside of your house or office, and taxi drivers HAD TO HAVE a way to remember where everything was…

this was it.

the "secret" guide to seattle streets
the “secret” guide to seattle streets
the "secret" guide to seattle streets
the “secret” guide to seattle streets

this “secret” guide, combined with “The Thomas Guide” map book for king county (colloquially known as the “tommy guide”), pretty much assured that, regardless of how obscure or little-known a street might be, you could get to it without having to ask anyone how to get there.

it had each street name listed alphabetically (or numerically, for numbered streets), and directions for how to get to that street from one other street. if you didn’t know where the one street in the directions was, you looked up that street, and so forth, until you got to a street you know. the “secret” guide also had the number of the map in the tommy guide that included it, so that, if you had a tommy guide (99.8% of cab drivers had one at the time) you could look it up there, as well, but as the tommy guide was a book with A LOT of streets, listed in a not-always-logical order (because it was a map book), i usually didn’t use it. the “secret” guide was more accurate and took up less space. 😉

another thing that the “secret” guide has, which is, maybe, not so useful any longer, is that it has the major bus routes for every street. as far as i know, what we now know as “seattle metro” was a completely different organisation in the mid-’80s, and i sincerely doubt that any of the bus information is reliable these days…

however, streets don’t change that much. fourty years later, much of this “secret” guide is still perfectly usable… a lot of the building names have changed, and things like the kingdome and the alaska way viaduct are no longer there… but it won’t spy on you and steal your data, like google will. 😒

cannabis, homegrown

also…

i started four “femenised” Space Queen seeds germinating on 240401. all four of them germinated (no surprise, they were bought from a company that specialises in femenised cannabis seed), so i planted them today.

we’ll see if it works out better than it did last year. 😉

crazy people, links, stupid people

solar eclipse?

so, why is it that when the “Heaven’s Gate” people were saying wacky, and provably untrue things about space and astronomical stuff, everyone EXCEPT the cult members knew that what they were talking about was utter hooey…

but, when marjorie taylor green’s boyfriend, brian glenn starts ranting about what comes after the upcoming solar eclipse, everyone treats it like he obviously knows what he’s talking about, and we had better pay attention to him… because he’s a second-rate right-wing broadcaster? 😕🤷

given the choice, i would prefer the cult. at least they had something to look forward to. 😒

busking, house stuff, moisture festival

ump datte

i was supposed to have a counseling session today, but kate is sick, so i mowed the yard instead.

the moisture festival has been going on for two weeks. we’re playing the last week, which is next week (april 10th through 13th), which means that we’re also playing the shortest week this year. there’s no telling who is “in charge” of fluffing this year, and i’m not even sure they’re going to have fluffers, since the moisture festival actually LOST money, last year (for the first year ever), and it is already projected to lose money again this year, because there aren’t the grants due to COVID that there have been the past few years… which is also why the ticket price has been jacked up to unreasonable levels. 😒

we had a house guest over last weekend, and moe had a “behaviour nerds” party saturday night, and invited a dozen or so animal behaviour folks. it was okay, in that i was able to access a ton of free food, including a whole box of timbits from a couple who came down from canada, which i haven’t had since they were first introduced, in 1976, but then i went and hid in my office for the rest of the evening.

we have not been out busking for 6 weeks, and the weather is beautiful, so if we don’t go out this week, i’m going to re-evaluate my busking opportunities (or lack thereof). my PPM busker’s permit expires on april 15th, and if i don’t renew, it will mean that it will be harder to get one next year, if things change… but the fact is, the PPM management association has experienced a major shake up recently, which means that i’ve got to convince a whole new cadre of idiots people that i really CAN play tuba quieter than most people CAN THINK, because the last cadre of idiots people SAID they were going to update “the official rules” (in 2018), but never did. 😒

busking, circus, depression, frustration, medication, microdosing, mushrooms

meh… 😒

since 240214 i have had 5 circus classes, 4 unicycle classes, 3 moisture festival rehearsals, 2 counseling sessions, 2 dentist appointments (my first in over 20 years, and they STILL couldn’t find anything wrong with my teeth), and 1 eye appointment.

17 days, nominally (the only evens that were MORE THAN an hour were the dentist appointments), worth of “stuff” and 20 days of “no stuff”… almost A MONTH of sitting around reading what passes for social media these days (i still haven’t quit reddit, although i’m closer to it than ever), or taking off and playing a lonely, solo game of “this way, that way” (which is best played by three or more people), getting lost, and ending up in orting — and when i mentioned it in one of my circus classes, the coach said “orting? what’s that?”

😒

okay, i’ve done “routine” things, like splitting firewood, taking care of laundry, washing dishes, shopping, and that kind of thing, and i’ve done “important” things, like upgrading the NAS, and building a rack for the kayaks, on top of everything else, so i wasn’t REALLY frowsting on the internet tubes ALL the time, but there has been a SERIOUS LACK of things to do, recently.

plus, the glasses i got from the aforementioned eye appointment are WORSE than my current distance glasses, and they’re supposed to be reading glasses (which means that they REALLY don’t work), and moe went to bellingham today, and i didn’t, after spending the past two weeks saying that i wanted to go (and then, deciding at the last minute, last night, that i would stay here with the pets), so now i’m here, alone, with the two ADULT dogs (moe took the annoying puppy with her), a cat, a snake, and a parrot, in this REALLY QUIET house, and all i want to do is make noise and pretend like there’s somebody here… so i can hide from them in my office, because i don’t know how to interact with them like normal people.

but, for some reason, i haven’t even played other peoples’ music, and have just been sitting here with the silence, the sound of my keyboard tapping, and the occasional bong hit…

AND i haven’t been out busking AT ALL since february 14th, which makes my new micro-tuba REALLY sad… i’ve got to renew my pike place market busker permit before the 15th of april, which means going through the whole rigamarôle again, only this time it’s with new folks in charge, who i have never met before, and, what do you know? the “official rules” STILL say “no brass instruments or drums allowed” in one place, and “muted tubas will be accepted on a conditional basis, and added to the 2018 rules” in another place… except they weren’t, and nobody has bothered to define EXACTLY what they mean by a “muted tuba”, and nobody has bothered to update the rules since then. 😒 and that’s not to mention the fact that i’ve been hankering to go out with my harmonic flute, my hindu drum machine, and my electronic rig, to some place OTHER than the pike place market, but i haven’t done so for reasons which come down, basically, to paranoia and self-doubt. 😒

this is one of those “i’m feeling grouchy and out-of-sorts” experiences that, in the past, i would have solved by taking mushrooms, but… well… i’ve been taking ≈250mg of mushrooms, every other day, for the past 8 months, i have absolutely NO clue what “the protocol” is for microdosing, and, at this point, if i have a trip that isn’t at least partially decent, i’m going to get even more frustrated than i already am. part of what i’m doing about it is, the next batch of capsules are going to be 200 mg, rather than ≈250mg, but i still have ≈100 250 mg capsules left, so it’s going to be a while until i get to them. the weather has been playing around with being nice enough that hiking in the forest sounds feasable, but the weather is also hit-or-miss whether it’s going to be nice or rainy, and it’s probably going to be that way for the next few weeks.

the NAS

all signs point to THE NAS!!!

the second disk has been installed, and the RAID1 instance is rebuilding again. allegedly, in around 27 hours, it will be complete, and then one of the twisted pair will remote in to change the partition sizes from thick to thin.

everything is proceeding EXACTLY as planned! 😈

the NAS

the NAS

i keep thinking of Lord Buckley and his ravings about “The Naz”… once this is all over, i’m going to have to dig out my lord buckley CDs. 😉

i have the disks in hand… well, one of them is in hand, the other one is already in the RAID1 array, and is currently rebuilding — which means that i can’t use the NAS for things that i normally use it for… once the first disk has rebuilt, i can pop out the second smaller disk and replace it, and then wait for it to rebuild… also, apparently, along with the difference in space, i can now use a “thin” disk (as compared to a “thick” disk), which means… something… having to do with the array’s ability to expand into a larger disk space… or something like that… 🤷

i am astounded by the amount of technology i no longer understand, despite the fact that i am as much of a geek as i am, for as long as i have been… i mean, there’s some of it that has been superceded: people no longer use HTML4, but i had been a certified geek for 25 years before i worked with a disk that was more than a gigabyte, and i now have a 12 TERAbyte disk array, and from what i understand, it’s not even REALLY that big… despite the fact that the guy who showed up to put it in, today, mentioned that it is, and i quote, “a shit-ton of space”… 😉

allegedly, if everything goes according to schedule (and there’s no reason to believe that it won’t), the 12TB disk will rebuild for a long time — >24 hours — and then i have to shut the disk down, remove the 4TB disk and replace it with the other 12TB disk that is sitting on the desk, next to me, and then power it up again, at which point it will rebuild the other disk for >24 hours, and, after that, i can use the device normally. allegedly, there is some sort of arcane voodoo that someone has to do to the operating system to convert it from “thick” to “thin”, but, allegedly, that can be done remotely.

hopefully this will last me a little longer than the 4TB array did. 😉

stupid people, the very big stupid

warum?

why are they called “scholars” and given titles like “doctor”, when what they study is entirely based on easily disprovable lies? why is the study of easily disprovable lies even a thing, much less a thing in which one can get advanced degrees??

why do they CONTINUE TO BE honoured, and (apparently) well paid, to disseminate these easily disprovable lies to gullible and vulnerable people, who (apparently) don’t know any better?

why do we, as a society, encourage this, rather than actively working to eliminate it? 😒

medication, microdosing, mushrooms, pictures, quantity

🍄 capsule update

so i’m going to try a smaller dose for the next 100. i’ve learned a little more about how to make capsules more uniform, and i decided to make 200 milligram doses, rather than the (nominally) 250 milligram doses i’ve been taking. a “microdose”, by definition, is “subperceptual”, and, for the most part these are, but every now and then i get a little twinge of psychedelic-ness, and i KNOW that as little as 50 mg will affect my mood, so i figured why not go lower, just to see what happens.

turns out using a sieve to sift the powdered mushroom filters out the pieces that are big enough to cause problems with consistency, and makes it easier to re-powderise the remainder. i was able to get 100 capsules that range from 190 mg to 210 mg, compared to my last 100, unsifted “250 mg” doses, which were anywhere from 190 mg to 270 mg. i’ll take a 20% margin, but 80% is pretty close to unsatisfactory. 😉

i’m still about halfway through the 250 mg doses, but i’ve got the next 100 doses all ready, plus around another ounce or so of powdered mushrooms, and “30 gram” “ounce” of unpowdered mushrooms…

231106 capsule making in progress
231106 capsule making in progress
231106 capsule making results
231106 capsule making results
forward into the past, geek stuff

other large storage devices i have known…

to continue the nostalgic rambling started here, another large storage device i have known in the past is the “unimaginably large” 4TB hard disk array that i worked on at openwave for three years, from 1998 to 2001… my unwillingness to reformat and reinstall the operating system on said machine was the direct reason i lost my job at openwave, three days before the computer industry crashed… which meant that i got out of there just in time and i got to laugh at my colleagues who still had to go to work, but DID NOT have their shares of stock, while i did not have to go to work, and i DID have my shares of stock! 😉

when i first started working at openwave was before it was called “openwave”… on my end it was called “software.com”, and we made the interfaces for managing email and email accounts on your cell phone, in the early days of internet connectivity on a cell phone. there was another company, called “phone.com” which did… erm… something else with cell phones… i never actually knew what they did… but the big-wigs at software.com and phone.com got together and decided to create a new company called openwave. i had been working for software.com for two and a half years, and got along famously with the people i worked with, but they came in with this new company and decided to shake everybody up, and i was placed with a vietnamese woman manager from san diego (who i never actually met in person), and one of her first tasks for me was to reformat and reinstall the operating system on this machine… but, having worked on the machine for most of the time i had been at software.com, i knew that it was also the machine that was used, internally, to manage the email accounts for everybody at software.com, all over the world, and reformatting the drive would delete all of these peoples’ email. i talked with a few other people from software.com, to confirm that this was, actually, the case, and they were all astounded that this woman would ask me to do that, considering how important that machine was, so when it came time for me to give her an answer, the answer i gave was no, i will not reformat and reinstall the operating system on this machine. i explained precisely why i would not reinstall on this machine, told her there was no more discussion available, and went on with the testing i had been doing for the past three months. three days later, she told me to reinstall or be fired. i said you can’t fire me if i quit, and walked out… three days later, the computer industry crashed and the rest is history.

before i started working there, i took a “field trip” to santa barbara, where the software.com headquarters was, at the time, and i actually saw the “unimaginably large” 4TB hard disk array… it was a big cube-shaped box, on wheels, that sat in the corner… it, too, was an “electronic black hole, into which one could throw data files forever, and not fill up”… it was, literally, THE email server for the entire company, all around the world. there were hundreds of thousands of individual email accounts, and tens of millions of individual email messages, all managed by this one box…

and, soon, i will have a box THREE TIMES AS BIG sitting on the shelf above my desk… 🤯

forward into the past, technology, the cloud drive crack of 2021, the NAS

the NAS

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i remember when i got my first real computer job, after having volunteered as a typesetter for a newsletter for high school students who were planning on visiting the soviet union, back in the late ’70s. my first real computer job, which was in 1987, was for kwik-kopy printing, in the fountain district of bellingham. at the time, there were three local print shops in bellingham, kwik-kopy, minuteman, and kinkos… but kinkos was more of a”copy-only” place, and, in reality, when they got a print job, they would send it out to either kwik-kopy or minuteman. 😉 at the time, my only familiarity with computers apart from working on my father’s dumb terminal, and later his tandy/radio shack computer, was the experience i had on the Lisa that ran PageMaker, at the russian spy newsletter. only Tina knows what my father used it for (he regularly ran jobs that took more than 24 hours to complete, and my recollection is that he deliberately overclocked at least one processor out of existence), but i used it for writing programs that did weird stuff instead of acting like a computer, and, later, i started programming a GOD assistant for a friend’s rôle playing game called “Swords and Machinery” (get it? “S&M”… get it? 🤪)…

but my first actual computer job was using a MacPlus 512k computer with two external floppy drives (one for the system and one for programs and data storage), and an “almost unimaginably large” 80mb hard drive. at the time, i remember thinking that it was like an “electronic black hole, into which i could throw data, literally, forever, and not fill up”… 😒 little did i know… of course, this was also during the time in which you could take four 512k floppy disks to any apple dealer and walk away with a free copy of the operating system. apple computers have changed A LOT in the past 40 years… 😒

the point of all this nostalgic rambling is that my “almost unimaginably large” 4TB NAS, which i couldn’t imagine how i was going to fill up when i got it, a couple years ago, is more than ¾ full, and i need to upgrade, if i’m going to keep ahead of the kinds of problems i had with my previous NAS 😒… so i emailed the twisted pair who whips my computers (and networks) into shape, and asked them about an upgrade to the next logical step above 4TB. the numbers they came back with were for 6TB and 8TB, which were respectable, and would basically double what i’ve got now, but i was talking on the phone with one of them, yesterday, and he said that they had 12TB drives for CHEAPER than 10TB drives, and when i asked him how much a 12TB drive was going for, he said $210… and i was FLABBERGASTED… i was under the impression that drives were A LOT MORE expensive than that… recall that i spent $600 for the 4TB drives i got just two years ago…

and, naturally, since two 12TB drives would come out to $420, i said i had to go for it. 😉

so, in a couple weeks, one of them is going to come by, remove the 4TB disks and replace them with 12TB disks. hopefully, that’ll do us for a little while more, this time.

farcebook, the very big stupid, twit-turd

i’m so tired of so-called “social media”… 😒

so, having given up on farcebook and twit™-turd™ (otherwise known as 𝕏itter — pronounced “shitter”), i decided to try reddit.

after creating an account, i went searching for “sub-reddits” in which i might be interested, and almost immediately i came across r/Incense. however, after only a couple weeks on the sub-reddit, i was permanently banned for “spam”, because i mentioned that i had some particular kind of incense for sale, in response to ONE person. i didn’t include any links or even an indication of what my business name was, i didn’t address large numbers of people, or post indiscriminately, but the moderator wasn’t interested in discussing it because “we both know what spam is”. 😒

another frustrating sub-reddit that i discovered was r/trees, which, oddly enough, is the sub-reddit for marijuana enthusiasts (if you want the sub-reddit for actual “Trees”, try r/MarijuanaEnthusiasts). the majority of the posts in the r/trees sub-reddit can be largely summarized as: 1) “i have taken too much cannabis and think i’m going to die, what do i do?” or “how much is ‘too much’?”; 2) “how do i cheat/pass a drug test” or “i’ve failed a drug test”; or 3) “i’ve decided to quit/cut down smoking weed because of reasons”. i’ve developed a tendency to ignore the posts in the first category, because they’re just too frustrating. in response to comments in the third category, my default response has come to be r/leaves, which is the sub-reddit for people who want to quit smoking weed. however, my default response to posts in the second cateogry — do not work for companies that require a drug test as a condition of employment. 😒👎 — generates A LOT more ‘👎 dislike’ responses than anything else. people seem to believe that it’s okay to ‘cheat’ on a drug test in order to get an ‘ideal’ job, but when i suggest that not submitting to something that is not only wrong, but is, in some cases, illegal, just to get a job that appears to be ideal in the moment, is simply allowing the companies to continue to abuse their “workers” with impunity, and is, very likely, just giving them the opening to inflict further abuse on their “workers” at some indeterminate time in the future, I AM the one who is “crazy”, and people go to great lengths to enumerate the reasons WHY my approach is the wrong one.

fundamentally, we don’t NEED “jobs” — i can authoritatively state this because i have lived significant portions of my life without having had what most ‘normal’ people would think of as a “job” — however, companies NEED people to work for them. if WE decide not to work for companies that require drug testing as a condition of employment, those companies would either IMMEDIATELY STOP requiring a drug test, or THEY WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS!!

plain and simple.

similarly, r/PsilocybinMushrooms is full of posts from people who have taken too much and don’t know what to do, or have never done psilocybin, want to start with a heroic dose and want to know EXACTLY what to expect (while refusing to take the advice of people who have a lot of experience and recommend against it), and A LOT of actual misinformation about microdosing and mushrooms that don’t contain psilocybin, like Amanita muscaria, and it is JUST SO FRUSTRATING to attempt to communicate with people who refuse to listen. 😠

i haven’t totally given up on reddit, yet, but my impression is that i will, eventually. and, given my recent interactions with discord, i’m beginning to wonder if what is recognised as “social media” is designed not to be particularly “social” for those of us whose brains don’t fit into the “social” mold. 😒

technology

another social medium that i am avoiding…

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i decided that i would try discord, since a lot of my friends have recommended it.

i went to discord’s web site, and clicked on “load discord in your browser”, only to be confronted with a page that said “we’ve noticed something strange going on” and wouldn’t go any further without verification, which involves entering my email address and password…

but, i don’t have a password…

this is the first time i have tried to login to the site. this is the first time i’ve ever even SEEN the site.

really!

😒🙄

i’m guessing that it has something to do with some combination of the facts that i’ve disallowed all cookies, have my browser cache set to zero, and am trying to login using a VPN, but whatever… 🙄

i guess i’m not going to be on discord… oh well… 🤷

bizarre, brain injury, dreams

i had a really weird dream last night

i had a really weird dream last night. before my injury, i had bizarre, vivid dreams pretty regularly. since my injury, i have had less than a dozen dreams i could remember, and none of them have been as bizarre or vivid as they were before my injury.

i miss those dreams… 😢

nevertheless, the dream i had last night is another dream i have had in a long series of dreams, starting before my injury, that have involved a “house” that i have “lived in”, usually in the past, but sometimes, temporarily, in the present. it is an old, not very well maintained house, with victorian architecture, that has been “updated” at least once, in the past, before i lived there the first time. the “house” has at least 5 floors (sometimes many more than that), which include the sub-basement, the basement, the first, or ground floor, the second floor, and the third floor, and each floor above ground is more rickety and more falling-apart than the previous one. even under the best of circumstances, the house is an “abandoned” house, which, when it was first built, was a large, fancy house, but lost most of its “fanciness” a very, very long time ago.

last night, i was staying in the “house” with a bunch of my friends from cirque de flambé/fremont players, including one person — simon neale — who died a few years ago. in the dream, i know he had died, so i figured it must have been a “flashback” or something like that. at first, i was on the third floor with a bunch of random people (and at least 2 more floors above, which is why the “house” is so weird), and one of them wanted to move some large boxes down to the ground floor, and asked me if they could take the elevator. i told them that the “old” elevator still sort of worked, but that it was scary, because i remembered that, in another dream involving the “house”, i took the old elevator up, and it just kept on going up, and didn’t stop, once it reached the top floor of the house. i recommended the “new” elevator, which was in the front of the house, and had been installed comparatively recently, but which didn’t go up beyond the third floor, or down below the ground floor, but, because of the “house” being in general disrepair, i was skeptical that there was a path to the “new” elevator that would support the person AND the large, heavy boxes that they wanted to move.

then, i was on the ground floor, moving my stuff into a vacant room which i was going to occupy temporarily. i looked out the window, towards the back of the “house”, which was on an alley that i recognised as being in downtown seattle, in the early ’70s… in fact, it was one of the large, victorian houses on the opposite side of the same street that “The Monestary” (a gay disco club that was torn down in the ’90s) was on. there was someone backing a pickup truck into what looked like a parking space, directly behind the “house”, but which i knew was actually the buried roof of the basement, which was very definitely NOT designed to hold up a pickup truck… the truck went backwards, hesitantly, until it fell through the roof, and the whole back side of the “house” collapsed. i managed to find my way out of the “house”, which is where i ran into simon, who was dressed in his “captain hook” costume, from the panto “peter pan”. i mentioned to him that the house had collapsed because someone drove a truck into the back yard, but simon was having trouble with his “hook” prop, and said that i should find another way in.

it was at that point that someone sent me a text-message which caused my tablet to emit its characteristic “clown horn” noise, which woke me up. it turned out that the text message was from one of my friends from the cirque de flambé/fremont players, which confused THE HELL out of me for several hours afterwards.

pictures, tuba

micro-tuba!! 😎


I BOUGHT A NEW TUBA! 😎

240125 salamandir, frank, and two tuba cases.
240125 salamandir, frank, and two tuba cases.

the bigger of the two is still smaller than the original case i have for it. i bought the new case (on the left side of the photo, to my right) a couple of years ago, because the original case, while still good, was 50 years old, and not as solid as i would like… and it was HUGE!! the new case (shown here) is only about 25% smaller, but it is also brand new, and designed to fit the instrument better… but it’s still big enough that, when i put it in the back of my car, there is NO room to spare on either side… the micro-tuba, on the other hand, is small enough that i’ll be able to fit A WHOLE BUNCH of extra gear when i go to the oregon country fair this year… 😉

240125 salamandir and two tubas
240125 salamandir and two tubas

this shows exactly why the new tuba is needed: it has rotary valves, whereas the big tuba has piston valves, and, despite the fact that it is less than half the physical size of the big tuba, the little one plays in EXACTLY the same pitch. that’s right, other than the physical size of the instrument, there is no other difference!
240125 salamandir holding two tubas
240125 salamandir holding two tubas

yes, it is, in fact, possible for me to hold two tubas at the same time. if i had my other mouthpiece, i could probably PLAY two tubas, but not at the same time, because that would require me to have a ridiculously, and unrealistically, wide mouth. if the micro-tuba was the same size as the other one, i could probably still hold them, but i could definitely not play either one without putting the other one down.

i took it out busking at the pike place market, yesterday, and it sounds EXCELLENT! 👍👍

120502 tuba trio
120502 tuba trio

it may be time for me to revisit this idea… 😉

COVID19, moe, stupid people

sigh… 🙄

moe has COVID… again… 😒 i probably do, too, but i haven’t tested, because i’m not doing anything until my sunday unicycle class, so if i’m still symptom-less then, i’ll test before going to class, and only go if i’m negative. moe tested before she left for work, this morning, and was negative, but she started noticing symptoms once she got to work, and tested again, with a positive result.

naturally, she found out that she’s sick on the last day before she has her weekend… and she has to cancel a mammogram and a massage tomorrow. 😒

i remember, in early 2020, before they found a vaccine, leading scientists and experts warned us that we had a pandemic on our hands, and that if EVERYONE wore a mask for a couple of months, without exceptions, we could get ahead of it… but #drumpf said that it would miraculously disappear, disbanded the federal pandemic response team, and started raving about hydroxychloroquine, and drinking bleach, and using infrared light inside the body, and enough people believed him that, here we are now, 4 years later, with hundreds of variants, and no end in sight… and i’ve got an extended family of neighbours, down the street, who STILL believe #drumpf’s lies! 😒

dead people, pictures

Professor Peter Schickele, head of the Department of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople

Professor Peter Schickele, head of the Department of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, died yesterday, at the age of 88.

230117 The Art of The Ground Round, score by P.D.Q. Bach, autographed by Prof. Peter Schickele
230117 The Art of The Ground Round, score by P.D.Q. Bach, autographed by Prof. Peter Schickele
in 1977, or thereabouts (it was prior to my 18th birthday) the northwest chamber ensemble, or some group like it, gave a concert of music by P.D.Q. Bach, who was the composer whose music was the particular area of study of Professor Peter Schickele. they gave a party at some fancy bar/restaurant on the waterfront in downtown seattle, along with a scheduled “P.D.Q. Bach Compose-A-Like” contest, and Professor Peter Schickele was the guest of honour, and the judge of the aforementioned contest. i had been a fan of professor peter schickele for many years, i owned all of his albums (i think there were 4, at the time), and his book, along with the scores for many of P.D.Q.’s musical works, such as The Art of The Ground Round, and The Seasonings, and i was an AVID composer of… some might say “bizarre” music… however, at age 17, i was simply too young to get into a 21-and-older bar. however, i had a plan: a friend of my father’s was a member of the northwest chamber ensemble, and he got me into the bar with no questions about my age, where i entered a composition of my own, for left-handed sewer-flute and electronic tape. i actually made a left-handed sewer-flute, which had a faucet at the bottom, and part of the performance was opening the faucet, whereupon water would drain out of the extraneous tubing behind the head-joint cork. the performance went about as AWFULLY as any performance i have ever done, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, with the exception of the water draining out of the faucet, which couldn’t have gone wrong because there was, literally, no place else for it to go, i actually only played about 4 notes on the “flute” part, the tape playback machine refused to work, and then it only worked intermittently… and yet, somehow, i won first prize in the contest. and the first prize was two tickets to the concert. the guy that won second prize had actually composed a legitimate, classical-style string quartet, in three movements. the second prize was a “genuine” P.D.Q. Bach “water-powered turntable”, which was a lawn sprinkler with a record platten attached to it with zip-ties. i got professor peter schickele’s autograph on several of the scores that are still in my possession.

he will definitely be missed. 😢

ganesha the car

𝄡鲽頇♭

the front, passenger-side door-handle cover on my car broke the other day. i had noticed that it was coming loose for a few days, but then it got REALLY cold, and it just snapped off when moe was getting in the car to go to the airport, a couple days ago. in the process of figuring out exactly what broke, i nudged the broken piece a bit too vigourously, and dropped the broken-off piece into the interior of my car door… if it had not done so, there’s about a 90% chance that i would have just glued the part, reinstalled it, and been done, so, i went on youtube, and looked up instructions for how to remove the door panel, and instructions for how to replace the door-handle cover — which, according to youtube, are “made of chocolate”, a sentiment i wholeheartedly DISAGREE WITH, primarily because, if they were, actually, made of chocolate, they would be good to eat, and these things, while EXTREMELY fragile and apt to break if you look at them funny, are, very definitely, NOT good to eat… the guy gives the “official” hyundai part number, but it is the part number for the LEFT door-handle-cover, and i need the number for the RIGHT door handle cover (which, according to the dealer, is 82662 G2030)… and the only colour in which it is available is grey 😒 so i’m going to have to get it painted to match 😒 which means that the part ($25) and the painting ($75) by itself are going to cost me $100… i can probably put the cover on myself without a question, but i’m worried about the loose, broken part rattling around in the door, so i’m probably going to have to pay someone to take the door panel off and retrieve it… i started to follow the directions in the video, but got as far as “start removing the panel from the bottom — note the socket” and, while i found the socket, i pried fairly hard with a screwdriver and was unable to get more than about half an inch of the panel to barely loosen before it became almost impossible… and, well, i don’t want to actually BREAK anything, so i figure it’s a good idea to let people who actually know what they’re doing to dig around in the guts of my car door. and i’ve already talked to a place that will paint the grey part for me, and another place that will retrieve the part from the guts of the door (although i don’t know how much they’re going to charge me for that part).

miscellaneous

harpy noo yer

tomorrow, moe is going to florida for her yearly dose of COVID of accolades from the national veterinary board, or something like that… she’s been invited back (i think) six years in a row, when the “NORMAL” practice is to only be invited back two years before having to “take a break”… which means, either, that my wife is, literally, outstanding in her field, or that the “system” is broken… but it also means that i have to take care of two of our three dogs. the youngest one, quill, is going to stay with our neighbour who is also a dog trainer, because she actually has the experience needed to keep an approximately one-year-old puppy in line, where i definitely DO NOT. the other two dogs get to come with me (or stay home), while i go to my unicycle class tomorrow, and maybe my circus class, wednesday. i’ve officially cancelled both classes, in case the dogs are recalcitrant, or in case i don’t feel like going, but i think i’ll do at least one of them, and at this point, it seems likely that i’m going to do the unicycle class, tomorrow, because i haven’t been in a while, and i really need to get back into it more regularly…

i’m buying a new tuba! 😎 i’m buying a new tuba! 😍 i’m buying a new tuba! 😜 i’m buying a new tuba! 😛 i’m buying a new tuba! 👍👍👍👍👍 as soon as moe gets home from florida, we’re going to take a road trip to yakima to pick it up! 😁

tuba

mumph…

2 Comments

officially, the panto is over for another season, and we haven’t quite gotten started gearing up for the moisture festival yet… and i’ve found myself in another dilemma of my own making… 😒

wessex CC rotary valve travel tuba
wessex CC rotary valve travel tuba
during the last day of the panto, it all came together for me to realise that i would REALLY LIKE a tuba that has rotary valves, rather than piston valves. the tuba i’ve been playing on for a number of years now is a C tuba with piston valves that used to belong to Hokum W. Jeebs, and there’s ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with it, except that it has piston valves… and, these days, especially with the fact that my right hand doesn’t work as well as it did before my injury, the piston valves have too much “throw” — there’s too much of a difference between the valves’ “open” position and its “activated” position — and it is getting more and more difficult for me to GUARANTEE that the valve is activated when it is supposed to be. rotary valves, in general, have less “throw” because they use the “up-and-down” motion to activate a rotor which rotates, rather than a piston which moves up-and-down, and the valve parts can be closer together, because the entire valve is oriented differently. i looked at the “woodwind and brasswind” web site, and discovered that a new C tuba with four rotary valves is between $10,000 and $14,000, which is WAY outside my range…

i mentioned this to one of my band-mates, who is also a tuba player, and he found (on farcebook) an advertisement for someone who is selling a used CC travel tuba for $1,800…

it’s REALLY a shame that there isn’t a “drooling face with eyes half closed” glyph in the emoticons block of unicode, because it would be REALLY appropriate here…

this is a CC tuba, the same as my current tuba, that is, physically, half the size of my current tuba, because it is wound up differently, and it has rotary valves, AND i can ALMOST afford it, at this very moment!!

however, it comes (if it comes at all) with a few very specific caveats, which i have been mulling over in my head almost constantly since i first found out about it. one of those caveats is that monique and i have this “agreement” these days, that if i want to buy a new instrument, i have to sell one of my old instruments… and i just happen to have an “extra” trombone, a trumpet, and a couple of clarinets, which have been sitting in their cases on a shelf in the garage ever since we moved, and i’m pretty sure i wouldn’t miss them if they went away. the other caveat is that it costs $1,800, and my bank account (well, okay, Hybrid Elephant’s bank account) only has about $1,300, which means that i would have to “borrow” $500 from the “household” account, and, what with xmas, and the foundation, and the washing machine, and, and, and… i’m not sure how well we can handle this… and, to a lesser extent, if i do end up “pretending” like i am interested in buying it, the guy and his tuba live in yakima, which means a road trip just to try it out and a long trip home with nothing if it turns out to be a bust…

ETA 240109 16:00.00 so it appears that i’m going to buy a tuba, as soon as snoqualmie (sdukʷalbixʷ) pass opens up again… at this point, everything has fallen into place short of my actually playing the thing… soon! 👍👍

anhedonia, doggles, new year

sigh… 😒

the “holidays” are over, and things are getting back to “normal”, which means they’re getting back to boring, irritating, depressing, or some combination of the three, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change much, if at all, for the forseeable future.

our sort-of “annual” trip to double-bluff beach happened, but it was complicated by high tides and the (also annual) polar-bear swim that happens at double-bluff beach at the same time, so instead of getting there really early (i.e. some time between 8:00 and 9:00), we got there after noon, and (naturally) there were A LOT more people who have the same tradition we do… plus there was an added new dog that has never gone to the beach before (quill), and an old dog (rye) who is now deaf and blind enough that he can’t distinguish between his own people, and other random folks with a dog, who also happen to be throwing a ball. the result was a walk on a crowded beach for about half an hour before we had all three dogs on leashes in a place where they’re supposed to be off-leash, because they were all acting up/out and we couldn’t control them. it ended up that we packed it in before we even got to the point where you go around the rock outcropping that blocks the view of the actual park, and about a mile and a half BEFORE the place where the rock ended up — which, now that i come to think about it, could be the last time i was there… 😒

doggles, moe's mom, new year, panto

almost there…

just a few more days until “the holidays” are over for another year. so far, i’ve been doing fairly well staying out of it: we had a party and karaoke last saturday, which i missed most of because of the panto. then on sunday — xmas eve — we had dinner with a couple of friends, and on monday — xmas day — we had my () mother-in-law over for dinner, which meant spending the afternoon and evening having to listen to cheesey xmas music and make “small () talk”, and that was it for xmas. this weekend, i’ve got two panto performances on saturday, and one on sunday. sunday night/monday morning, frequently, we drive up into the mountains — rather like we do on the fourth of july — to get the dogs away from our neighbours and their incessant fireworks. monday — new years day — we traditionally take the dogs to double-bluff beach, which we haven’t done for a few years because the pandemic has limited our ability to travel…

appliances, mushrooms, panto, x-mas

the last two weeks of the year…

it’s time to hunker down and ignore as much “xmas” music as humanly possible, while, at the same time, having a bunch of panto performances, and various other “xmas” party-like things happening…

so far, the panto performances have been going really well, in spite of the fact that one of our star performers, in an essential, featured rôle, got covid last week and had to be replaced by the understudy. she’s no slouch, and has stepped into the rôle more or less seamlessly, but… she’s a woman playing the rôle of “the dame” (which is characteristically played by a man, dressed as a woman), and it’s just… not… right… not to mention the fact that she really does a mediocre job of acting the part: she reads her lines acceptably well, but is either too “over the top” or not “over the top” enough, and her “act” feels forced, and not real.

and, then, a week after the new year, there’s more panto performances, my son’s 41st birthday (i still don’t really understand how that happened), and then we start gearing up for the moisture festival… again.

this year’s difficulties also includes three of our six pets having pretty much identical dental problems which may or may not require surger(y/ies), and the failure of the washing machine (AGAIN! 😠) which has required draining the machine, disconnecting the power, drain, and water supply connections, and tipping it over on its side — because “modern” washing machines don’t have any “user serviceable” parts, despite the fact that it’s pretty much exactly the same washing machine that it has been for the past 50 years — to access the drain pump, which can be replaced for $50 by ordering the part number on amazon, rather than paying some “appliance repair technician” $130 to come out and tell us that modern washing machines are only designed to last for 5 years or so, and we bought this about 5 years ago… 😒 once again, the frank zappa song “Flakes” comes to mind…

in spite of all that, my mood has been surprisingly adequate, although i am nearing the end of my most recent batch of 50 microdoses, and if i recall correctly, the next 100 microdoses include quite a few (if not all) that i made “manually” (rather than “in bulk”), which means that they’re likely going to be a lot more variable in their actual dosage. the plan is to obtain another ounce… somewhere… i thought i had two reliable resources, but it turns out that one of them is only sort of reliable, and the other, while seemingly a lot more reliable, is the one i find more “sketchy” (in that they’ve been selling psychedelic mushrooms, and accepting credit card payments, more or less openly, on the web, for at least ten years, and apparently, haven’t caught the attention of anyone who has the legal authority to shut them down), and, also, costs more than twice as much.

COVID19, depression, panto

grumph! 😒

still adequate, although somewhat more meh than usual, partially because we’re in the middle of panto season and “the dame” (macque, in the part of auntie gertie) got covid last week 😒 the understudy is leah, who was responsible for the poster/banner disagreement a few years ago, and is currently responsible for the web site’s current host, wix, which is owned by the israeli government. 😒 i tested negative for covid today — it is my impression that i just got my fourth or fifth booster a little more than two months ago, so i may still be covered by that, but i tested anyway, out of an abundance of caution. i will test again before i leave for the theatre on saturday. 😒

can i just say, i am SO DONE with covid? and i am PARTICULARLY done with the predominantly-republicunt-stupidity-about-disease-enablers who are now going after RSV, which is booming in infants and people over 60. naturally, there’s a vaccine that the enablers are saying is a fake, and injects nanoparticles into your DNA, or some horse-shit like that… and — naturally — NOBODY is wearing masks any longer. 😒

i wish i had died when i had the chance. 😒

stress

suspiciously adequate

nothing has been going wrong… apart from stuff over which i have no control whatsoever, which is mildly alarming, but not overly so… nothing has been going outstandingly well, but things so rarely hit that mark that it doesn’t really surprise me that much. my unicycle “click” seems to be permanent, which i totally CAN NOT figure out, but, hey, i’m not complaining… we’re into the final week of rehearsals before the panto opens on saturday. one show is already sold out, but another show has only sold one ticket, and they’re talking about cancelling it, but no decision has been made yet.

i keep anticipating something going wrong, especially at this time of year, and when nothing goes wrong, i start getting anxious. 😒

depression, incense of the month club, microdosing, unicycle

surprisingly adequate

today’s mood, overall, is surprisingly adequate: i took 250 mg 🍄 @ 09:00 this morning, but that wasn’t what triggered it. i went to my circus class at noon, and i think i experienced the “click” that people talk about when learning unicycle… i can’t put my finger on one thing that is different from a week ago, or even a month ago, but, for some reason, today i was able to free mount more than half of the attempts i made, and, if you want to talk about free mounts that didn’t go two rotations or more, that ratio goes up to almost three quarters of the attempts. another thing that i found A LOT easier to do today is turning left. i’ve been able to turn right for quite some time, but turning left has eluded me, up until today. it’s still sort of sloppy, and not particularly precise, but it’s a left turn that wasn’t there last week. if this is the “click” everyone talks about, it took about 3½ years longer to hit me than it did for the people who told me about it… but, apparently, it’s there… 🤷

and then i came home and put together the last IOTM offering for the year.

depression, medication, mushrooms

🍄

YESTERDAY: 1 g 🍄 @ 10:00 — which was DEFINITELY a mistake: not a “bad trip”, just a trip in a time and place where i would definitely have preferred NOT to be tripping, i.e. with a bunch of people (six, seven if you include moe), some of whom i don’t know really well, and one of whom i actively dislike (you know who you are). i took mushrooms as the result of a bunch of hasty and not-too-well-thought-out decisions which were contradicted almost immediately after it was too late, and the end result was that i slept for four hours and was high for another three or four hours after that, while everybody else had thanksgiving dinner. as i said, not a “bad trip”, just a rather unpleasant one which i would prefer not to repeat. thank you.

a very strong reminder that “set and setting” are two thirds of the trip… something you would think i would know by now… 😉😒🙄

TODAY: 250 mg 🍄 @ 08:30

fun with the post office, microdosing, miscellaneous, panto, people, pictures, players, wolfenoot

misc. update-ish

i ordered some jewelry from an artist in poland. i’ve been tracking it for a month, now. from poland, it spent almost two weeks undergoing microscopic scrutiny in customs, in florida, and then it took another week to get from florida to kent, washington (which is right down the road from where i live)… but, after spending a full 48 hours, plus, in kent, it suddenly, this morning, makes a leap to juneau, alaska, where it is currently “preparing for delivery”… 😒 if it’s anything like the recent shipments i’ve gotten from germany, the united kingdom, or portugal, it will be delivered today, in my residential mailbox, with no further explanation for why it was reported to be in alaska, but, as this delivery is “registered mail” (because of the fact that it’s jewelry), i’m probably going to have to sign for it, rather than having them just leave it in the box.

the postal delivery person just came and went, with no registered package from poland, so i guess it HAS gone to juneau, and who knows when i’ll be seeing it. 🙄

i’ve settled down to microdosing every other day, which seems to be working A LOT better than the commercially available (legal) alternatives that i have tried (buproprion), but i’m getting frustrated again, because either, i feel “okay” (in that i do not feel as frustrated or depressed), or i feel frustrated and/or depressed about stuff that has been there, is there now, and will be there tomorrow and into the future, regardless of whether or not i am taking medication of any kind. it’s frustrating to have to be taking a microdose to feel better, rather than being able to do something constructive to rid myself of the factors which cause the frustration and depression to begin with, but which are not possible, because they require things like killing tens of thousands of #drumpf-cultists and/or making major changes in society as a whole… which is exacerbated by the knowledge that if i were taking 2.5 grams, instead of .25 grams, things would be a lot more different. i call mushrooms my “don’t give a fuck pill”, but i guess i should call the microdoses my “give a little bit less of a fuck pill”, which, i’m not totally sure, is the point.

in the upcoming 49 days, i have 25 panto-related obligations, including 18 performances and 7 rehearsals, starting next monday. wolfenoot is thursday (as is thanksgiving), when our friends from hawaii are coming for dinner (but, significantly, NOT my mother-in-law), and, on friday, moe and i, and our friends from hawaii, are all going to go get tattooed: a few years ago, pre-COVID, we rented a house on the beach, and invited a whole bunch of friends to come and visit. the only people that ended up being able to come were micah and shaya, our friends from hawaii. we spent a week in a VERY large house, under the influence of a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aid, flying kites and playing board (bored?) games, which included a “boys-against-girls” round of pictionary, in which the girls won with monique’s drawing which has come to be known as “snake-camel”… so, on friday, we’re all going to get a tattoo of “snake-camel”… which looks like this:

231028 snake-camel
231028 snake-camel

the panto this year is a re-visitation of one of our previous pantos, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”. we’ve got 7 rehearsals scheduled during the next two weeks, including one band-only rehearsal. marni, the flute/alto-sax player that moved to england just before the pandemic, is back, and she was the “purple” member of the group, so i don’t know how the fact that i have sort of taken over that position is going to play out. rehearsal season, this year, has been decidedly abbreviated and condensed, and i’m not sure whether or not that is a good thing.

house stuff

this is something new…

the last time our neighbour’s tree fell on our fence, the neighbour’s contribution to the solution was to cut up the half of the tree that had fallen on our fence, and $500 towards the repair of the fence… which was on the order of four thousand dollars… 😒

then the old neighbour sold the house and moved away… after 35 years… 😕

this time, the new neighbour — the same house, same property as the last time — offered to cut down four dead trees, ASAP.

WOO! FUCKING! HOO!!! 🎉🎊🎉

medication, mushrooms, quantity

aw, yeah!!!

so, i tried measuring .01 grams of mushrooms, and it wouldn’t go, because the scale isn’t that accurate…

but now i have a MILLIGRAM scale, which measures down to .001 gram!

i wonder how this is going to work? i presume that i wait a couple of days, and then, instead of taking my .25 gram dose, i’ll measure out and take a .01 gram dose, and then wait a couple of days and take a .005 gram dose…

at this point, i’m going to wager that i’ll perceive something…

i’ve also been hearing that “microdosing is a placebo” and “there is minimal evidence to support microdosing”… but i can’t confirm who has been saying these things, so at this point they’re just propaganda, as far as i’m concerned.

because i now have a milligram scale, i can assess whether or not i’m actually taking .25 gram doses… average of 5 random capsules tested, range between 190 mg, and 270 mg, is 230 mg… which is REASONABLY close, given the procedure and methods used… not TERRIFICALLY close… and the procedure and methods used were haphazard, at best… 😉

medication, mushrooms, spoons

horse-whipple

today’s sequence of events: i woke up in a foul mood because of the dream which i wrote about earlier. then i took mushrooms. then, shortly before i was supposed to leave for my unicycle class, we discovered that, once again, our back fence has been destroyed by a dead tree from the neighbour’s yard, which had fallen on it.

on the way to my unicycle class, around 11:00, a dangerously aggressive driver in a red nissan pathfinder, washington license number CKF6505, cut me off on the right, as i was turning right from the right turn lane off SE 216th to renton-maple valley road — i.e. they passed me on the right shoulder, and cut me off as i was turning right from the right-turn lane — and then proceeded towards renton at 80+ miles per hour, where the normal speed limit is 45-50 miles per hour.

then i went to my unicycle class, in which my free-mount attempts were more than 50% successful, and my left-turn attempts were, also, more than 50% successful, which is highly unusual. then i went to glazer’s, downtown, to pick up moe’s xmas gift. then i went to issaquah, picked up orders from petco and home depot, and got groceries at fred meyer, and made it back by 15:00.

once home, i unloaded the car, switched the laundry, took the dry laundry upstairs and separated it prior to folding.

i think, probably, the biggest single event that contributes to my NOT STILL being in an irritable mood is my unicycle class. as is my usual habit, i showed up 15 minutes early, so i could practice, and my FIRST TWO attempts at free-mounting, AND turning left were successful, one right after the next… i don’t know what i am doing differently, but whatever it is, works.

the 250 mg mushroom capsule i took this morning MUST HAVE HAD ALL the good stuff in it, because, particularly at my unicycle class, i could DEFINITELY feel the psychedelic effects. it was not enough to alert other folks, but it was somewhat alarming that it was as powerful as it was, considering the dose.

i’ve definitely used up all my spoons for the day.

dreams, medication, mushrooms

🍄

.25 g 🍄 @ 08:00

i had a dream that i could remember, which is VERY unusual. AND it was really frustrating. there was a party at our house, which wasn’t our house, but it was, in the dream. i was in my office, hiding from the majority of the party, as i frequently do. there were a bunch of kids, with their parents, that were part of the party, and one little girl decided that it would be funny to film me with her tablet, when i was working on my computer, but the app that she was using to film me was one that steals your passwords and suchlike, and ships them off to russia without your knowledge, which, of course, she didn’t know, because she was a kid. i found out about this after she had filmed me entering MY password to somewhere, and i confronted her father, who said that i could have her tablet to try to delete any information that it had stolen, but, because of the fact that it wasn’t MY tablet, everything was set up differently, and i couldn’t figure out how to do it… and then they decided that they had to go home, and wanted her tablet back… 🤬

blood pressure, house stuff, medication, mushrooms, stress

maybe only 10 steps back…

blood pressure 120/90, which is pretty good considering how much stress i have been under. 😒

the workers showed up and dug some underneath the house… i didn’t really pay attention, because i was irritated with the company that sent them…

the sequence of events was as such: they originally came up with a plan to shore up our sinking foundation which involved drilling through the floor of the living room and dining room… which DID NOT work for us. so they figured out how to do it from under the house, but it turned out that they actually had to ADD another support beam… and, about this time, they switched the job to a new foreman who didn’t know anything except for the part where we said they can’t go through the floor. so when he showed up on friday, he DIDN’T HAVE THE PARTS to finish the job… and, today, it turns out that the company that was supposed to do this job in “one day”, NEGLECTED TO ORDER THE PARTS, which will take a week or so to arrive… so they dug around underneath the house for a while, and then i had to go out, and when i got back, they were gone, leaving behind three enormous holes outside the foundation, and, likely, some smaller holes inside the foundation, under the house, an oxy-acetylene welding rig, and a big pile of metal parts. meanwhile, they’ve taken $5,000 off the original quote, and it’s pouring buckets of rain into the really deep holes that they dug around the foundation of our house. 😖 HU knows when they are going to come back. 😒

HOWEVER… the mushrooms helped a lot more than i thought they would (comma gawd damn it!! 😉), PLUS i got TWO incense orders for a total of $125, i made 100 .25g capsules for my neighbour, and i found a copy of Vol. 2, by the Nihilist Spasm Band, which is something that i had in my pre-crack music collection that i was unable to recover… which, at this point, leaves me “adequate” instead of “meh”. a step up, i guess.

frustration, medication, mushrooms, stress, the very big stupid

one step forwards, fourteen steps back… 🙄

the workers haven’t showed up yet, but HoneyBucket® showed up, took away their porta-potty, and didn’t leave a new one — i suspect because they originally contracted a porta-potty for the “one day” that they said it would take, and never bothered to change the porta-potty contract when it turned out that it was going to take more than one day…

however, moe’s at work, won’t be home until 21:00, they SAID that the “scheduler” would call her on friday, but she didn’t, so even when the workers DO show up, they won’t know what to do, i don’t know what they should do, and moe is in surgery all day, which means that she may not be able to answer her phone.

they originally said that they “do this kind of job all the time”… i wonder if they screw up this badly on the jobs that they do “all the time”, and, if so, how they have managed to stay in business. 😠

.25 g 🍄 @ 08:00, but i don’t think it’s going to help. 😒

house stuff, medication, mushrooms, stress

here we go… 🙄

.25g 🍄 @ 08:15…

at 09:00, three guys showed up to jack up our house… allegedly in one day…

at 09:15, they’re in the “what have they done to us?” stage of the job, with one of them under the house, confirming that there ISN’T the three feet of headroom that they requested, in spite of the fact that they told us it would be okay, and that he has to put in an extra support beam, which they didn’t tell him about…

there are only three of them. 🙄

he’s currently on the phone with the structural engineer, who HAS YET to appear on site to see the house.

so far, the entire project has been planned by people who have NEVER seen the house. 😒

it’s DEFINITELY going to take them more than one day. 🙄

at 09:45 they have decided that they’re going to do SOME prep-work to get the site ready, but that the real job of jacking up the house is going to have to be postponed to a yet-to-be determined future date… and which will DEFINITELY take more than one day to complete. 🙄

it reminds me A LOT of the frank zappa song, Flakes

cannabis, homegrown, pictures

the change

i harvested the third of my three plants on wednesday. today i cleared out the grow tent, moved the clones to the shed (as compared to the grow tent), took the grow tent apart and got the critical parts ready for cleaning, which i’m sure they’re going to need, considering that the previous crop got pretty moldy, and the more current crop was developing a case of spider mites, which APPEAR to have been thwarted by liberal application of diatomateous earth. i am considering insulating the shed, which really wouldn’t be that difficult, and it would give my current clones a better chance at survival… although, at this point, they seem to be doing pretty well, in spite of the diatomateous earth.

231027 the change
231027 the change
it’s amazing to me how much space the grow tent tool up… which gets my mind to thinking of a way to put it on its side, on top of one of the shelves… possibly use it for starts, or something…

meta

what i want for xmas!!!!

ITS.FUN — caution: they want $1,562.50 a year for registration, and apart from the fact that it would add a great deal of “fake” legitimacy to the “fake” email address i have been using FOR YEARS — [email protected] — it’s probably not worth the money. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

you’d be surprised where you can go with a fake email address that looks like a real one… 😉

articles, i am a terrorist, the very big stupid

Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production

Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production — but, here’s the million dollar question… WHY? WHY SHOULD THE WEST SUPPLY WEAPONS TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO PURSUE A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO THEIR PROBLEMS, BUT WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO MAKE WAR? if these people want to make war so much, let them make their own weapons! so, this doesn’t do much to help ukraine (why they’re raising the issue is another question entirely), but i’d be willing to bet that a significant portion of the weapons currently being used by israel against hamas gaza PALESTINE are being supplied to them by the united states… what if we just said ‘no, we will not provide weapons for war to anyone’?

Continue reading Ukraine says Israel-Hamas war shows West must ramp up arms production →

dead people

oh, yeah, there’s this…

phrenology bust in "dr." william mcdonald's office
phrenology bust in “dr.” william mcdonald’s office – it might be a coin bank…
it turns out the reason i didn’t hear from “dr.” karl peterson, the guy who has been responsible for renewing my cannabis permit for the past few years, is because he died in march.

the ONLY reason i saw him is because he had the necessary degree to help me jump through the medical permit hoop, and i put “dr.” in quotes because he was a naturopath, which meant that he made most of his money “diagnosing” ignorant and gullible people, and then flogging useless vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements as the preferable cure. i had enough of that kind of horseshit when i was hanging out with the PHBFH, and i don’t have the time for it any longer.

the new guy, “dr.” william mcdonald, is the same sort of huckster… but, he also does the medical permit racket, so i’ll put up with it for a while… at least “dr.” peterson didn’t have a phrenology bust in his office… 😒

medication, mushrooms

🍄

.25 g 🍄 @ 13:30

The Fourth Way

by Georges I. Gurdjieff

The fourth way is sometimes called the way of the sly man. The “SLY MAN” knows some secret which the Fakir, the monk, and the Yogi do not know. How the “SLY MAN” learned this secret, it is not known: perhaps he found it in some old books, perhaps he inherited it, perhaps he bought it, perhaps he stole it from someone: it makes no difference. The “SLY MAN” knows the secret and, with its help, outstrips the Fakir, the monk, and the Yogi.

Of the four, the Fakir acts in the crudest manner: he knows very little and understands very little. Let us suppose that by a whole month of physical exercise and intense torture he develops in himself a certain energy, a certain substance which produces certain changes in him. He does it absolutely blindly, with eyes shut, knowing neither aim, methods, nor results, simply in imitation of others.

The monk knows what he wants a little better: he is guided by religious feeling, by religious tradition, by a desire for achievement, for salvation. He trusts his teacher who tells him what to do , and he believes that his efforts and sacrifices are “pleasing to God”: Let us suppose that a week of fasting, continual prayer, privations, and so on, enables him to attain what the Fakir develops in himself by a month of self torture.

The Yogi knows considerably more: he knows what he wants, he knows why he wants it, he knows how it can be acquired. He knows, for instance, that it is necessary for his purpose to produce a certain substance in himself. He knows that this substance can be produced in one day by a certain kind of mental exercise or concentration of consciousness; so he keeps his attention on these exercises for a whole day without allowing himself a single outside thought, and he obtains what he needs. In this way a Yogi spends on the same thing only one day compared with the month spent by the Fakir and a week spent by the monk.

But on the fourth way, knowledge is still more exact and perfect. A man who follows the fourth way knows quite definitely what substances he needs for his aims and he knows that these substances can be produced within the body by a month of physical suffering, by a week of emotional strain or by a day of mental exercises –and also that they can be introduced into the organism from without, if it is known how to do it; and so, instead of spending a whole day in exercises like the Yogi, a week in prayer like the monk, or a month of self torture like the Fakir, he simply prepares and swallows a little pill which contains all the substances he wants. And in this way, without loss of time, he obtains the required result.

miscellaneous, the very big stupid

add turtle

thoughts about the current crop of chaos that is currently engulfing the world:

it all comes down to belief, generally, and belief in absurd and demonstrably false things in particular. jews hate arabs because they are muslim, and believe “the wrong things” about “god” and his “chosen prophet” who, supposedly, lived around fifteen hundred years ago. arabs hate jews because jews stole the arabs’ traditional homeland, due to jews’ belief in demonstrably false things about “god”, which happened two to three thousand years ago.

“christians” in the US, and elsewhere, are inclined to back jews, because judaism is the foundation of “christian” belief… except that what a certain portion of the jews in israel currently are doing things that are completely the opposite of what jewish — and “christian” — leaders have said, for centuries. there are also a significant portion of people in the US, and elsewhere, who support arabs, because of the evil stuff jews have been doing to them for the past 50 to 100 year, or longer. it doesn’t matter that both jewish and muslim leaders, once again, FOR CENTURIES have warned people AGAINST the exact behaviour that we are currently seeing from both sides, the hatred for things that are totally made up, on both sides, continues unabated.

if humanity could, somehow, magically eliminate all of this false belief, we MIGHT be able to recognise that we are ALL human beings; that nobody is “superior” to anybody else, and that we would ALL get along a lot more easily if we were to actually HELP one another, instead of killing one another.

but, of course, we won’t, and people will continue killing each other until there isn’t anybody left to kill, and humanity will have snuffed itself out and have no further recourse.

pictures, political, the very big stupid

SNARGGHL!!

there are a bunch of campaign signs that have sprouted up through the area, recently, including this one:

231002 "FEWER" NOT "LESS"!!! 🤬
231002 “FEWER” NOT “LESS”!!! 🤬

knowing NOTHING ELSE about these candidates, i would not be inclined to vote for them PRIMARILY because of their ungrammatical use of the word “LESS”… 😒

but BECAUSE OF THE FACT that they (or, more likely, some over-zealous zombie sign maniac) chose to post their sign RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from a MIDDLE SCHOOL:

231002 Summit Trails Middle School
231002 Summit Trails Middle School

i really start to wonder… obviously they DON’T care about children, despite what their other signs might proclaim, because instead of leading them in education, they are lambasting them with ungrammatical twaddle… and they really MUST NOT have thought about it very much, because the people who are the most likely to see this humongous sign are middle school students who aren’t old enough to vote… 🤣

i want to “correct” it… 😈

231002 SEE ME AFTER CLASS!
231002 SEE ME AFTER CLASS!
cannabis, homegrown, pictures

harvest season?

because of the weirdness surrounding the three cannabis plants i’ve been growing this year, i harvested two of them — the two that “re-vegetated” and spent time in the grow tent — because 1) they were as ready as i expect they’re going to be, and 2) the two that lived in the tent turned out to be mutant plants the likes of which i have never seen before…

230930 mutant plant
230930 mutant plant

these “leaves” were coming directly out of the stem of the plant. there was no bud structure, and no leaf stem… really bizarre, and really common on this plant.

230930 mutant plant
230930 mutant plant
230930 mutant plant
230930 mutant plant

are these male buds, or female buds? i think they’re female, because, in spite of the seed-pods, there don’t appear to be any seeds… but…? who knows? 🤷

230930 yummy bud!
230930 yummy bud!

in spite of all the weirdness, i have some AMAZING buds, plus i’ve got one more plant that is still about a month away from harvest, which is looking REALLY good, AND there are two clones, one of which took off about three weeks ago and is now almost two feet tall, and the other which just took off a couple days ago, which is actually the older of the two, but it has been sitting, not dying and not taking off, for about two months.

moe's mom

moe’s mom

she has been in the hospital since wednesday. her condition is, i gather, still more or less idiopathic, but they think it may be medication related, since she takes SO MANY medications, and has for SO MANY years… 😒 or it may be a cardiac issue, or, possibly, a UTI related issue, nobody appears to know for sure… she has also been in the emergency department since wednesday, because they can’t decide what to do with her, and when they CAN decide what to do with her, she has to wait for a bed to become available, and while she’s waiting, another bizarre thing happens, and they go back to being unable to decide what to do with her. 😒 whatever it is, she hasn’t slept in four days, she’s hallucinating — she called me, this morning, ranting about snakes and hedgehogs… what the “good” news is still has yet to be determined. 😒

ETA: sort of “good” news is that they have, finally, found a bed for her somewhere other than in the emergency room. monique says that it’s “excellent news”, but i’m not so sure, considering all the rest of the chaos that has been happening over the past few days…

cannabis, homegrown, pictures

i wish there was a “miscellaneous symbols and pictographs” entry that was a cannabis leaf, but i guess i’m out of luck…

so, before i moved them out of the tent, my two inside plants looked like this, so i wasn’t too worried about what sex they were…

2023-08-2 plants in the grow tent
2023-08-2 plants in the grow tent

but, as you may recall, when i moved them out of the tent, i encountered SIGNIFICANT mold on the underside of the plant that is on the left, in the picture above. i propped it up, and trimmed off almost all of the mold — i am still fighting mold on this one plant, as of yesterday… i think i’ve gotten it all, and then another patch of it crops up… 😒 and i’ve also propped up the outdoor plant, as well, but that is only because it is spreading out wider than the space that i’ve got all three of them growing in, now, and not because it really NEEDS propping up. 😉

now that i’ve got my lights a little more under control, i think i can see why some people who grow LOTS of weed like “re-vegetating”, because it appears to create MASSIVE buds

2023-09-08 and they've got another month to go!
2023-09-08 and they’ve got another month to go!
2023-09-08 and they've got another month to go!
2023-09-08 and they’ve got another month to go!

but re-vegetating also produces THE WEIRDEST mutations i have ever seen:

2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!
2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!
2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!
2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!
2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!
2023-09-08 weird mutant plantoids!

it still astounds me that it is legal! 🤯

2023-09-08 three adult plants
2023-09-08 three adult plants

another weird thing that has happened to me is that my medical cannabis authorisation needs renewing , as it does every year — as if, one day, i’m suddenly NOT going to have a brain injury… 🙄 — and so i texted dr. peterson, like i have for 6 years in a row at this time… but this time he didn’t respond. he retired a couple of years ago, but he kept issuing cannabis authorisations because he liked the money or something, probably… and he’s gotten more flaky as the years have gone by, but usually he responds… but not this time. so i called Marley 420, which is the medical dispensary i frequent, and asked them for a recommendation, and they pointed me towards a place in covington, but it turns out that they don’t do authorisations for people who have bipolar in their medical charts, and they recommended this guy in vancouver, washington. but i figured there had to be someone closer than that, plus i’ve had some rather unpleasant experiences with long-distance telehealth

a doctor in georgia, dr. olajumoke akinyele, who was responsible for my buproprion prescription, initially: she prescribed too much and i went through a week of, essentially, “overdosing” on a drug that made me nervous, twitchy, anxious, restless, short-tempered, unpleasant-to-be-around, caused massive tinnitus, etc., etc., before she got around to changing the dose, and when i asked her about psilocybin, she didn’t know what i was talking about and said that it would be too much like taking cocaine or heroin. 😒

so i asked my counselor, kate, if she had any recommendations. she said to contact dr. j, who didn’t do cannabis authorisations, but recommended i go to Green Leaf Health Care (😉) and, it turns out, that the doctor at green leaf, dr. mcdonald, is the guy who gave me my first medical authorisation, back in 2013. 🤣

forward into the past, karass, pictures

weird coincidence? or part of my karass?

this is a picture of my kindergarten class. i am second from the right, in the second row.

1966 Mrs. Peace and my kindergarten class
1966 Mrs. Peace and my kindergarten class

interestingly enough, this was at marvista elementary school, in normandy park, in 1966. another of my friends, smerdyakov karamazov was also at marvista in 1966, but he was in the second grade, and i didn’t know him at the time… 😵 (that’s a “dizzy face”, in case it isn’t obvious)

Shirley Day Peace
Shirley Day Peace
but the real point of this whole study is the teacher, Mrs. Peace — her name was Shirley, but i didn’t find that out until much later. the reason i found out her first name is because, about 20 years or so ago, moe started hanging around with another local dog trainer, named ali. she was always coming home talking about something ali had done, or had not done, that was really interesting, ali having surgery, ali living her life, that sort of thing. i paid attention, but it was all from a distance, because i had never met ali, and didn’t know her… until one day, moe happened to mention ali’s last name…

peace…

peace is not a particularly common name, so immediately, i asked if she was related to mrs. peace, my kindergarten teacher.

the answer is yes.

ali peace is the granddaughter of shirley peace. shirley died earlier this year, at the age of 98. unfortunately, i wasn’t able to find out if she remembered me, but…

ali peace and a dog
ali peace and a dog

this woman, who i have now met, who is a frequent guest at our house, who has been a friend and colleague of moe’s for 20-plus years, is the granddaughter of my kindergarten teacher… 🤯

cannabis, homegrown

ooh! 😟

1 Comment

i’ve been thinking about moving the outdoor plant indoors, because the weather is turning. so, i took the plants from the tent out of the tent so that i could switch the light to a vegetative light, and put the clones in the tent… but when i moved the plants out of the tent, one of them almost immediately fell over, revealing a WHOLE BUNCH of moldy undergrowth! 😧 so, it’s actually a GOOD THING i decided to switch the plants around, because, otherwise, i wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late!

so i switched the lights, put the clones in the tent, hooked up the second flowering light, located some poles, propped up the plant that had fallen over, cleaned up and trimmed off a WHOLE BUNCH of moldy undergrowth, and put the three plants under flowering lights…

they went outside on 230529, two of the plants went inside on 230807, and the third one today… somewhat less actual sunlight than last year, but my recollection is that i started them later, this year, as well.

oh well, what matters is the end product, and i believe that, now that i have eliminated the mold, it should work out fine.

articles, geek stuff, HTML in email is evil!!, html-formatted email, i am a terrorist, technology

Distinguish tech pros from tech poseurs with this one weird trick

Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro

i LOVE to see this!!! 🤍🤍

it is a prime example of how I AM NOT WRONG when i rant about the evils of HTML in email! and it even includes a more complete version of the RANT regarding top-posting, that i sent out with EVERY! SINGLE! FUCKING! EMAIL! I! SEND! (🤬) along with the INTERNET STANDARD RFC 1855 to support it!

if there was one thing on internet that i feel EVERYONE should read, and pay attention to, it is this. if even half of the people on internet read this and did what it said, spam would disappear overnight! 👍👍

-- 
namaste
salamandir (he/him)
[email protected]

A: Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion
Q: Why is top posting bad?
     -- https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

()  ascii ribbon campaign
/\                   -      increased security
   My Email Client   -      against html e-mail
Is Not A Web Browser!
-- 
There are two kinds of people. I'm not either of them.

Continue reading Distinguish tech pros from tech poseurs with this one weird trick →

cannabis, ganesha the car, homegrown, mushrooms, parades, snake suspenderz / alive

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230811 Goddess Kring
230811 Goddess Kring
cannabis update: all three plants, once again, are exhibiting strong female tendencies. i’m going to keep the two that are in the tent, in the tent, just to make sure. then, when the weather turns, and i move the outdoor plant inside, i’ll switch the light in the tent, move the clones in there, and move the flowering lights out into the shed, where the big plants can finish up. macque sez he’s going to come and get the rest of the cirque stuff out of the shed, so that will mean that i have even more space. there are now two clones: one came from the top of the outdoor plant, and it’s apparently doing fairly well, although it hasn’t grown very much. the other came from my neighbour, about a week ago. it is “train wreck”, but, at this point, i still don’t know whether or not it’s going to live. we’ve also talked about setting up an indoor grow, this fall, to replenish any shortfalls i may experience prior to then, which is fine with me. i’ve actually grown indoors a lot more than i’ve grown outdoors, so there’s that…

230811 salamandir and Goddess Kring
230811 salamandir and Goddess Kring
um… lemme see… .25g 🍄 230727, 230731, 230804, 230807, 230812, and 230814, snakez alive performances 230805 (gemma daggatt houseboat gig), and tomorrow, 230818 (PPM/sunset supper), plus regular busking at the market, on wednesdays, ganesha the car shown at the “Jet Blast Bash” 230805-06, briar sea scare parade 230809, 230811 at the Fircrest Residental Habilitation Facility in shoreline, and this weekend, 230819-20 at Fresh Paint in everett. at the briar sea scare parade, and at fircrest, i had the privilege of showing my car with Goddess Kring, aka Shannon Kringen, who is a local folk hero who performed strange art pieces on public access TV when i worked at micro$lop.

circus class cancelled today because of heat. i think i have successfully weaned myself off of twitter (which is now called “𝕏”, but it’s still at “twitter dot com”)…

forward into the past, spiritual

forwards into the past???

so, i’ve been thinking about my spiritual experiences from the “early days” of my spiritual quest (i.e. 1978-1990), and i remembered visiting a man i knew as “father satchakrananda” in… oh, i guess it must have been 1981 or 1982… at the “raj-yoga math and retreat center” in deming. he was an older man, with a long grey beard, who wore a cassock, and had the brusque shortness of a person who had been in the business of teaching others who don’t want to (or can’t) learn, as i would come to recognise later, and his orthodox christian mass was topped off by handmade, crusty bread, real wine, and a dab of tiger balm on my ajña chakra, which was refreshingly unusual. his “monastery” consisted of, apparently, one female disciple, who looked totally overworked and underfed, who was silent, and jumped when father satchakrananda said so, but i didn’t get the chance to look around very much, since i was going with the PHBFH and her friend, bhakti, who was driving. at the time, i wasn’t really looking for reasons not to believe that these folks really had supernatural powers, and the “set and setting” was okay, for a short visit, so i wasn’t really impressed by this guy, because he insisted that he was “father”, NOT “swami”, and used christian jargon for everything, when i knew that what he was talking about was really hindu ideas — this was shortly before i started my own in-depth study of christianity — but nothing really struck me as unusual, apart from the sincerity of the mass.

but then — NOW, 40 years later — i looked him up on internet… and what i found was surprisingly unsettling, for as little as it was. the first link i found was the Raj-Yoga Math And Retreat page from encyclopedia.com, which looks as though it was either copied from some advertising or promotional material, or written by father satchakrananda, himself. it was on this page that i learned that he is referred to as “Yogi Father Satchakrananda Bodhisattvaguru”. 🙄

i was IMMEDIATELY reminded of my brother-in-law (the one who is married to my older-younger sister), who decided that he wanted me to refer to him as “paramahansa brahmavatar”… 🙄🙄🙄

another reason i think the information was copied was because of the misspelling of the “Nooksuck” River, near Deming, Washington… it’s spelled that way in every link i found relating to father satchakrananda, and it SHOULD BE spelled “Nooksack”… and the fact that he was “mystically initiated” in 1973 by swami sivananda who DIED 10 years earlier, is “IN NO WAY” suspiciously convenient, or an indication that he may be a phony… 😒 not to mention the fact that all of the “encyclopedia.com” “references” are books by “yogi father satchakrananda”… 🙄

for the record, i believe that anybody who has to put the fact that they are a “guru” or “avatar” or whatever, INTO THEIR NAME, and then INSIST that one call them by that name, is about as far away from being a REAL “guru” or “avatar” (or whatever) as you can possibly be, without outright denying that “gurus” or “avatars” (or whatever) even EXIST… and i REFUSE to satisfy their desires by referring to them with that appellation. it is egotistical, and wrong! 😠

and THEN i found a link to the Suspicious Berean, and his 2018 screed entitled “30 years ago: Yogi Satchakrananda underwhelms Edmonton… 🙄 it starts out promisingly enough, with a mention of a performance by peter popoff, the disgraced so-called “christian” televangelist whose “mystical powers” turned out to involve his wife on a CB channel and an un-announced ear-piece with which she directed the supposedly “divine” “words of knowledge” and “healings”… and he, too, repeats the “nooksuck” mis-spelling, which makes me wonder where HE got it from… but then he mentions self-proclaimed “christian” evangelist “cult experts”, dave hunt, and rabi maharaj, as having “excellent” resource material to counter father satchakrananda’s phony-ness, which strikes me as a ludicrous joke. if this guy thinks rabi maharaj and dave hunt are any LESS phony than father satchakrananda, then he’s not worth paying attention to in the slightest… 🙄

what astounds me is that EVERY SINGLE link that i rounded up for the “raj-yoga math and retreat” had, essentially, the same wording, down to the “nooksuck” mis-spelling, but, apart from that, i could find NO further information about father satchakrananda. i know he was the coordinator for the “northwest free university”, and taught yoga there in the late ’70s, but i couldn’t find any information on line about the northwest free university — even though i KNOW it existed, because i looked into attending classes there, at one point… ⁇⁇

cannabis, homegrown

sigh… 🙄

230729 re-vegetation
230729 re-vegetation
two of my three outdoor plants are “re-vegetating”… what this means, apparently, is that the plants were triggered to start flowering much earlier than they should have been, and when i moved them outdoors last month, they decided that, instead of continuing with the production of buds, they had to go back to vegetative growth, which causes the little bud-lets to develop into sort-of fan leaves… but they’re smooth, instead of serrated, and they only have one finger, instead of the characteristic five or seven fingers…
230729 re-vegetation
230729 re-vegetation

this is frustrating, because outdoor plants shouldn’t re-vegetate, and, if i allow them to continue, then they won’t be flowering by the middle of next month, like they should, which means that there won’t be any buds this fall. 😢

so, i bought a light-proof grow tent, to force them back into flowering…

230807 light-proof grow tent
230807 light-proof grow tent
i don’t really understand why all three of my plants aren’t re-vegetating. they were all started at the same time, and they all moved outdoors at the same time, which should mean that they all got the same “trigger”, but only two of them were affected… and, when it comes time to move them inside, it will be that much easier, because two of them are already inside, with a 12-hour light cycle.

i wouldn’t worry about the grow tent, but i cloned one of the plants, and it’s currently inside, under a 24-hour vegetative light, and if i didn’t have the grow tent then i would have to kill the clone, or the mature plants would continue to be confused — and confused plants are more likely to become hermaphroditic, and we DON’T want that.

although, if it DOES happen, getting a bunch of feminised seeds instead of buds, would not be ENTIRELY awful…

there’s still a chance that i’m going to have to kill the clone, but it’s a lot less likely now that i have a grow-tent, because, when the other plant has to move inside, i can just switch the lights, and move the clone into the tent to keep it from getting confused.

bizarre, DJ

once again… 😒

DJ is a non-verbal, autistic child, approximately 10 years old, who lives two houses down from our house, at the end of the dead end street. when we first moved in, his parents were in the process of getting divorced, which happened shortly after we moved in. since then, he has been here less frequently, and without as much “fanfare”… without the dogs, WITH pants, more frequently with an adult present, NOT randomly showing up on our back deck, or in our kitchen, that sort of thing…

until about a week ago. suddenly he was around, fairly late at night (after 20:00), by himself, doing things he hasn’t been doing for more than a year: turning on the sprinklers in our front yard, playing, sans pants, in our neighbour’s back yard… this afternoon, i discovered that he has been pulling on the man-gate to the back yard on the east end our house… fortunately, the ground is sloped, so if he pulled, the ground prevents the gate from opening… but if he pushed with the same vigor that he pulled, he would have gotten into our back yard. 😒 he actually snuck into our neighbour’s house — much like his ventures into our kitchen, prior to us getting the fence and the locks 😒 — where he proceeded to let their new cat out, before being caught by our neighbour, who just happened to be home… 😒 the cat came home about 3 hours later, so that’s good, but…

it turns out that one of the reasons he hasn’t been showing up as much is because his father got an alarm that goes off when DJ leaves the property… but DJ learned how to turn it off a couple weeks ago, and his father is only JUST finding out about it… 😒🤨🙄

it’s not the kid’s fault, and i don’t want to call the cops, because interacting with the cops will only further traumatize the kid, and, very likely, the cops will, ultimately, not be able to do anything anyway, but his father is a real piece of work, and, if nothing else, could REALLY use some professional help… for both him AND the kid! 😒 his comment, as he was walking away from a confrontation with the neighbour and i, this afternoon, was that he “didn’t know what to do”, and suggested “putting him on a leash or tying him to the ground”, which i immediately characterised as “cruel and unusual punishment, which he ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT deserve”… 😒

circus, malfunctioning computers, mushrooms, music, videos

a series of okay things that have happened…

my NAS got overloaded:

230726 NAS at 80% capacity
230726 NAS at 80% capacity
the problem was that moe USED TO back up her laptop to the NAS, but then she got a new laptop, and, for some reason (i blame demons), it stopped being able to backup to the NAS. it said that there was already another backup there, so it couldn’t start a new one… and she let it slide for… um… a couple of system upgrades, so AT LEAST a year. when we finally got around to seeing what was really going on, we fired up TimeMachine™ and it said “there’s already a backup here… do you want to append it, or start new?”

WHICH IT HAS NEVER DONE BEFORE!!! 🤬

so, because it’s a new computer, we said “start new”… not realising that the backup that was already there was close to 2TB, and the NAS already has all of my data on it, so the probability that the new backup was actually going to fit was slim to none… 😒 so, when the new backup failed, due to lack of space, i suggested that we move the old backup to an external hard disk, and try it again… except that, for some unknown reason (i blame demons), i was UNABLE to copy the old backup, because of an “unknown error”… meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of us, TimeMachine™ had decided that the best alternative was to try again, which filled up the disk. literally… there was something like 40GB of available space on the 4TB NAS, and NO WAY to remove ANY of it, because, despite the fact that i AM “admin” on the disk, it wouldn’t let me delete or copy files, because, apparently, TimeMachine™ had screwed around with the permissions, and would no longer let me! 🤬 what ended up happening is that moe had an external hard disk which to which we were able to backup her laptop, and then we BOUGHT a new 2TB external hard disk to which i was able (finally… i blame demons 😒) to copy the old backup… but then, when i tried to actually DELETE the old backups from the NAS, it wouldn’t let me… because of an “unknown error”! 🤬🤬 at this point, i was getting really tired of this crap, so i called the place from which i bought the NAS, which also manages my offsite backups, and sicced them on the problem… and, after a couple of false starts, they were actually able to delete the two old backups and return the NAS to a more “normal” capacity.

230728 NAS at "normal" capacity
230728 NAS at “normal” capacity
now that everything is cleaned up, there’s even the possiblity that moe can, once again, point TimeMachine™ back at the NAS for its backup, without causing too much anxiety on my part. 😉

i got to “fly” on a flying trapeze, yesterday! 230727 salamandir on the flying trapeze (because, for some reason (i blame demons), i can’t put my own videos “in line”, like i can with youtube videos. 😒). it’s a circus skill by which i have always been intrigued. what i learned is that, if i wanted to do it more than once, i would probably have to make some sacrifices of other stuff i am doing — like “riding a unicycle” — and learn a WHOLE BUNCH of new shit… and, at this point, as fun as it is, i simply DO NOT have the space in my already-damaged brain, to store a whole bunch of new shit…

i got a capsule-making machine — as compared to the “capsule-making TOOLS” that i got on amazon, a couple of weeks ago, which are tools for making “one capsule at a time” 😒 which work exactly as advertised, but it is only one capsule at a time, which is REALLY time-consuming… — which is able to make ONE HUNDRED “double zero” capsules in about 15 minutes or less… and i used the machine to make a HUGE QUANTITY of quarter-gram doses of mushrooms. and, because of the fact that i made a HUGE QUANTITY of them, i have been spreading them around a little, to people i know who could use some microdosing antidepressants. 😈

on 230703 (almost a month ago), i ordered 2 CDs from Yello in germany. but, because of a wonky web form that was probably originally programmed to cater to audiences in germany, i ended up entering an address which, while TECHNICALLY points to my current location, probably WOULD NOT be understood by the “american” postal service. i realised this almost immediately, and went through a week of trying (and failing) to get in contact with the distributor of the recordings to correct the address. i succeeded in getting automated responses, in german, from a few different addresses, and i got a WHOLE BUNCH of bounce notifications, because, apparently, their email is handled through micro$lut, which has decided that the dedicated IP address which handles MY email — and ONLY my email! 🤬 — isn’t legitimate enough to be able to send email to their users. 😒 but i paid using paypal, which DOES have my correct address, so i decided to let paypal and the postal services figure it out. and, after being delayed TWO WEEKS being processed through incoming customs (for some reason… i blame demons?), i finally got the disks, today… and i discovered that one of the CDs is actually a 2 CD set of really early, unreleased stuff by boris blank… i just bought it because it has the same name as the music-generating app that i have for my tablet… 🤣

cannabis, homegrown

cannabis update

the three plants are doing well. i trimmed the bottoms of all of them A LOT more than i did last year. so far i haven’t seen any effects, but it’s still relatively early. also, i cut off the top of one of them (the GMO), and, since i have some rooting powder, i decided, what the hell, and so i cloned it… and (for a change), the clone is thriving! 👍 i topped the plant on 230719, and the clone actually grew since then! i figure, the closer to harvest i get, i’ll move the clone inside, under vegetative lights, and start on a new crop. 😉

i STILL can’t believe it is legal… 🤣

medication, mushrooms, quantity

🍄 capsule update

2 Comments

i got an actual capsule-making machine, capable of making 100 0-sized capsules at a shot. i tried it out, and the resulting capsules are between .31 and .36 grams, which is close enough to call them .25 gram doses — although, out of 25 grams of material, i had around 2 grams left, which i couldn’t insert into the capsules because they were already as full as i could make them… uh, lessee… instead of being .25 gram doses, they are .23 grams… as i said, close enough…

i haven’t taken mushrooms since tuesday (three days), and i’ve been “weaning off” buprprion since wednesday. according to my mood-tracking app, my mood has been somewhere between “irritable” and “adequate” with occasional diversions into “meh”… which is okay, considering.

.5 g 🍄 @ 1530

medication, mushrooms, quantity

mushroom 🍄 quantity

i went two days without microdosing, and at the end of the second day (yesterday), i noticed a distinct and sudden change in my mood, from more-or-less content, easy-going, and accepting, to sour, disagreeable, snappy and depressed. 😒

so, this morning (still sour and depressed), i made up five .25g capsules, one of which i took immediately (at 0800), and the rest i plan on taking every OTHER day, to see if that evens out my mood a little more.

at the recommendation of my counselor, i also installed a mood-tracking app on my phone. i’m still getting the hang of it, but — maybe — it will help figure out exactly how much i can take without overdoing it.

ETA: heh… listen to me talking about “overdoing” mushrooms… as though there is ANY SUCH THING as too many mushrooms… 🤣

mushrooms, ocf, pictures, players, videos

immediatly post-OCF

microdosing the fair was successful beyond my wildest imaginations!! i took a .25 gram capsule, every morning at 0700 or so, so if i were to have some kind of major psychedelic effects manifest, i would probably be over them by 1100, which was when our “call” was, every day.

i was actually able to relax(!), and have a good time(!!), despite the fact that i avoided the ritz, because of COVID concerns (mine, not theirs)… however, i will say that being, literally, right across the path from a place that makes mac and cheese with smoked salmon in ENORMOUS bowls didn’t hurt anything. 😉

AND i experienced at least two occasions where, absent the .25 gram dose, i would have been SIGNIFICANTLY more cranky and disagreeable afterwards. the first was yesterday, when the guitar player (chris gross) and i conspired to take a cart full of gear to our respective cars, because having two people drag a cart is infinitely easier than having to either drag it yourself, or having to wait, sometimes as much as an hour, for the cart to return… so we loaded up a bunch of gear that we were no longer using, and schlepped it out to the “SCOFlot”, where the “handicapped” people (and marginally-handicapped people, such as myself, who have a valid placard 😈) are allowed to park… only to discover that i had left my key-fob back in camp, three quarters of a mile away… so, i trudged back to camp and retrieved my key-fob, and we unloaded my gear into my car, but in our original schlepp-age, one of the cart’s tires had bit the dust, and we got about halfway to chris’s car when the inner-tube got wrapped around the axle, and ceased moving forward… so we spent 15 minutes untangling the inner-tube and schlepped another quarter mile out to chris’s car. chris unloaded his stuff, only to discover that he had left his guitar back in camp! 🤣 so we went back to camp AGAIN… the second was this morning. naturally, after a glorious, sun-shiney weekend, it rained monday morning, which meant that i had to put the tent away wet. i got everything packed up and moved out to the staging area (on the stage), and slogged out to retrieve my car, but when i got there, i couldn’t get the key-fob to work… like, AT ALL!… and it’s a new enough car that i haven’t poked around and actually FOUND the manual key slot… my comment (to no one in particular) was that it sucks AND blows: all things a good vacuum cleaner should do. 🤣 i phoned moe (thank cthulhu i had cell service) and she gave me some suggestions, and said she would look up a youtube video for me… and then i got the key-fob to work, ONCE, which was all it took… i was able to start the car by holding the key-fob up to the start button, and i was on my way… but when i got to camp, “somebody” (not a part of our group) had parked an ENORMOUS camper, with an ENORMOUS trailer, directly across the opening to our stage/staging area, blocking three cars IN and making it impossible for me to park remotely close to the stage. i started carrying a load of stuff around the camper-trailer-conflagration and i ran into (literally) someone who was helping a kid into the truck, and i asked them how long they were planning on staying there, to which they responded five minutes… fifteen minutes later, they were STILL there, so i got someone from our group to help me move the big, heavy, bulky power cart to a place where it blocked the camper, and went back to loading. 😈

the guy eventually left (after struggling to move the power cart by himself 😈), and i was able to pull in next to the stage, but when i shut my car off, the key-fob stopped working AGAIN, only, this time, because i was already in the car, i was able to get it started again, but it was only after i was in the car, ready to go, and the car said “key-fob not present” that i realised that it was the battery in the key-fob, and not something more serious… and, when i got home, i took the fob apart and replaced the battery. 😎

the panto is a re-run of one we did a few years ago, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”, and it was together, with no missed cues from either the band OR the actors in record time: by the second day, we pretty much had it down, and the actors were starting to modify the script in ways that will be reflected in the productions this winter.

230706 some random hippie
230706 some random hippie
230707 some random hippie
230707 some random hippie
230708 some random hippie
230708 some random hippie
230709 some random hippie
230709 some random hippie

also,

230709 simon neale
230709 simon neale

and,

230708
230708
230708 i invited her to morningwood odditorium, where we had been pasting googly eyes on everything, but she never showed up
230708 i invited her to morningwood odditorium, where we had been pasting googly eyes on everything, but she never showed up
230709 i asked him if he was the Muffin Man, and he said no, he's a cupcake
230709 i asked him if he was the Muffin Man, and he said no, he’s a cupcake, so i had to mention the line from the frank zappa song about the muffin man: “some people like cupcakes better. i, for one, care less for them.” 🤣 he said he had heard that a few times.

finally,

salamandir and harmonic flute, and sam and fujara

boats, ocf, pictures

immenently pre-OCF

interesting, informative and educational blurb about the difference between “imminent” and “eminent” goes here.

july 4th (🤢) today. we’re planning on taking a drive in the back country, rather as we did last year at this time, when we came down with COVID. this year, we’ve already got the COVID out of the way, so i have every intention to leave for OCF around 08:00 tomorrow. as i did last year, with some creative ingenuity, i fit everything EXCEPT my foghorn* into the car, so the only things i have to do tomorrow is take a shower, put the stuff from the fridge into the cooler, put freezer-blocks into the cooler, and put the cooler, and the 5 gallon water bottle, into the car, and gather a few, small items — my soap and foot ointment, my tablet, my reading glasses, my phone, my weed, pipes, and vape supplies — into their assigned boxes, and then i can leave. moe doesn’t have to be in to the clinic tommorrow until 10:00, so there’s a chance that i’ll be gone before she gets out of bed… at least i hope so, because she works WAY too hard, and doesn’t take time off as frequently as she should.

230702 salamandir in a kayak
230702 salamandir in a kayak

in the past week, we have gone from having NO boats, to having TWO boats (kayaks), three paddles, PFDs for one human and one dog, and the roof support rack (with “all the trimmings”) to carry one kayak… the other (smaller) kayak needs some foam pads to carry on the roof, because it is short enough that it doesn’t fit… but that’s okay, because it means that i can carry it on the top of MY car, as well as moe’s… this morning, moe took the larger boat out on rattlesnake lake, with the “puppy”, quill (who is now the largest of our three dogs 😒), and he only fell in once (🤣) before he decided that he was going to sit in the center of the boat and be a good doggie…

230703 moe and quill in a kayak in the pond across the street
230703 moe and quill in a kayak in the pond across the street
230704 quill being a good doggie on rattlesnake lake
230704 quill being a good doggie on rattlesnake lake

how we made the journey so quickly has to do with moe’s boss giving us the smaller kayak and paddle, and moe developing an insistent obsession. 😉 i know that goat island has a web site, now, but it seems like everywhere has a web site, so it’s not as surprising as it once was. it makes me wonder what’s happening in what used to be fishtown, these days.

after OCF…

* i have wanted to take the foghorn to OCF for a few years, but i have never been able to fit it into my car, with all the other stuff i have to take to OCF… but, it’s probably a good thing, because i think that it would annoy a lot more people than it would amuse… oh well…

medication, mushrooms, quantity

tea

i forgot how much i like mushroom tea…

i took “some” mushrooms, today… “some” meaning “measured by eye, approximately, somewhere between a half gram and a gram, maybe a little more”. i took them around four… or, rather, 16:00… and it’s currently almost 21:00 and i still definitely feel it, but, because of the fact that i made tea this time, it has struck me completely differently. i spent at least three hours in the back yard, in the hammock, alternately sleeping, meditating, and laughing at the squirrel, who had been used to climbing up the blueberry bush and launching himself over to the suet feeder, where he had been gorging himself… so i moved the suet feeder about 6 inches further away from the blueberry bush, and, now, the squirrel launches off the bush and hits the squirrel baffle, making a lovely “clang”… 🤣 EVERY! SINGLE! FUCKING! TIME! 🤣🤣🤣

then i sat on the front porch while the sprinkler was going in the front yard… then i came in and listened to an album of mash ups with moe, while she edited her book… and i think i’m going to bed soonishly…

ah, my “don’t give a fuck pill” comes in convenient tea form, as well. 😉

miscellaneous, mushrooms, ocf, players, stress

less than a week until OCF… why am i paralyzed with anxiety? 😒

officially, less than a week until OCF, and i’ve been accomplishing a lot, but i feel like i’m headed for doom… my list of things to take to OCF is about 80% complete and prepared, and i’m already getting things staged to load up the car on monday, because the probability is very high that we (moe, me, and three dogs) are going to leave EARLY tuesday morning, and go some place remote, where there are few people and fireworks… because we have a dog who is afraid of fireworks

she, literally, hides, when people shoot guns, in the distance, which is a fairly common occurrence around these parts, and we’ve learned that, if we go somewhere remote, we can have a good time and the dogs don’t get so stressed out.

i’ve got most of the camping gear assembled, and about 90% of the music stuff assembled (including the harmonic flute/electronics, and the foghorn). pretty much the only thing i haven’t packed yet are my “working clothes” (costumes) and my “mundane clothes” (for hiding in large crowds), a few essential items, and the hats, which i haven’t even decided what i’m going to bring yet…

i ordered a “capsule filling machine” the other day (it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow), which SHOULD make it easier to fill capsules… which is a good thing, because 1) i have a (new) connection to more psychedelic mushrooms, and 2) i already have one person who wants to buy some, and another person who is interested, but hasn’t committed yet, and filling the capsules by hand is time-consuming, messy, and wasteful. i still marvel at the fact that what was one of my favourite illegal drugs, when i was in my 20s, is, in my 60s, on the verge of legitimacy, and widely praised for it’s qualities.

monday was the “panic rehearsal” for the pre-OCF panto — usually the “panic rehearsal” gets finished at 23:00 or thereabouts, because it’s SUPPOSED TO BE the last complete runthrough before the fair… it’s usually, also, the FIRST complete runthrough before the fair, which it WAS NOT this time… and it actually got out at 21:00 instead, which is when it is supposed to be finished. tuesday, i had an alto sax to work on, which went far easier and faster than i anticipated. the alto belongs to one of the members of the fremont phil, who is going to OCF, so it was important that i got it done post haste, and i delivered it to him on tuesday evening, at the sousa band rehearsal… because he’s thinking about joining the sousa band, because he’s got a serrusophone, and various other things that would fit right in to sousa’s music. 😉 wednesday i went busking with thaddeus. we didn’t make that much ($17 a piece), but it was enough to cover parking with some left over, and it’s kind of difficult to compare with the last time we busked, which was at the fremont solstice festival, where we busked for 3 hours and made almost $100 a piece. but, while we were busking, thaddeus got email from the PDA, asking us if we want to play for another “sunset supper” in august. thursday (today) i went to my circus class, rode my unicycle for the longest time i have EVER ridden it, TWICE, and rode in a complete, 360° circle, TWICE, but i totally forgot that i was going to take some medication from home (for moe’s mom’s dog, her name is lacey, but we call her “the unicorn”), stop by the clinic to pick up more medication for moe’s mom’s dog, and deliver both of them to moe’s mom before my class. 😖 so, AFTER my class, i went to the clinic to pick up the most necessary medication, and delivered that to moe’s mom… she can wait a few days for the other one.

tomorrow, i’ve got to get the last few, essential items for the fair, and i might take mushrooms, if everything works out… because i really need to “not give a fuck” for a while.

medication, mushrooms, quantity

impending OCF 🍄 post

i am on the verge of deciding that i am going to “microdose” mushrooms at OCF: .25 grams EVERY DAY for the period of time i am there, to get more control of my mood… i have been feeling TREMENDOUSLY depressed, and anxious about going, despite the fact that i also know that OCF has been one of my all-time favourite things, in the past, and i’m afraid the depression and anxiety are going to control my actions… so, if i take .25 grams of mushrooms every day, it will give me the “twinkle” that i desire, and reduce my depression and anxiety, without making it so that i can’t function as a part of a group which has been assigned to do two performances a day for three days.

i may take a few extra 1 gram capsules to spread around, or to eat myself, if i’m feeling adventuresome… 😈

busking, COVID19, didjeriflute, ganesha the car, miscellaneous, mushrooms, ocf, SACBO, tuba

impending SACBO update

SACBO officially starts tomorrow, but it generally involves a caravan to various weird places around seattle, and, because of the fact that the caravan is done by a different person, and the people participating don’t always have radios, or ways to contact the “leader” in case they get lost, there is a lot of chaos, usually involving lost people being followed by other art cars because “they should know where we’re going”, or “they should know where they’re going”, or something like that, which isn’t actually the case about half the time… and, not having a radio myself, i opted out of the art car caravans a LONG time ago. i’m going for the actual festival, though, which is saturday and sunday. i’m taking my canopy, busking gear, and my harmonic flute and affiliated electronics, and MAYBE some incense, if there is enough room and i’m not too lazy. thaddeus is supposed to show up saturday for busking activities, but i’ll probably be on my own sunday.

i got a new tuba hard case. it is smaller than the previous case, which is both an advantage and a problem: the advantage is that it is smaller, and somewhat easier to lug around, but it doesn’t have a handle on the end, as the old case did, which makes lifting it a bit more difficult. and, the fact that it is smaller also means that there isn’t the separate case, inside, to keep mouthpieces, my tuba strap, and polishing cloths, which is a problem. it also doesn’t have wheels, and is a more rounded shape at the bell end, which means that it only fits on my folding hand cart one way, and it is the wrong way… but it cost $950, which means that i’ve got to get creative to solve these problems, because i’m not just going to send it back and look for a tuba case somewhere else. a lot of the cases don’t fit the instrument (particularly those sold by amazon(⁇⁇), sweeTWATer, and others), or cost WAY too much to order, wait for delivery, discover that it’s for a “right-hand bell” tuba, and send it back… it turns out that the ONLY place to buy a case for a conn 2J is allied supply — the same company that i have been ordering musical instrument parts and materials from for… <mumble, mumble> 30-some years — and i actually have an account with allied… so i ordered it from allied, and instead of paying $1800 for it from a local retailer, i paid $550… and another $400 for shipping… 😧

it came in a BIG box!! with a lot of plastic packing materials that couldn’t be recycled, so i put it out with the trash last night, and some time during the night, bears came and raided our trash can, spreading plastic packing materials all over… 😒

i actually, successfully, “microdosed” mushrooms last weekend. it all started on saturday, 230527, when the BSSB played at folklife. apparently, at some time during my stay at the TREMENDOUSLY CROWDED seattle center grounds (which included several people who wanted to take pictures with me, because i was wearing my fancy band outfit), i was exposed to COVID AGAIN, and i tested positive on 230528. 😒 unfortunately, we had scheduled a birthday party for moe’s mom on the 28th, which got cancelled… and then moe got COVID, as well… 🤬 ultimately, we put off the birthday party until 230611, two weeks later (when both moe and i were testing clear), but i woke up on the 11th in an absolutely FOUL mood, and moe was also feeling under the weather and disagreeable… so i took 0.05 grams, just as moe’s mom was getting here… not enough to really get me off, but definitely enough to change my mood… and, sure enough, it changed my mood. it was moe’s mom, so i wasn’t exactly exuberant or anything, but i wasn’t snapping at everybody and hiding in my office. my case of COVID was mild: i probably wouldn’t have even noticed i had it, if i hadn’t tested. and the good part is that now i’ve got “natural immunity” for the next 2 or 3 months, which means that i WON’T get COVID and not be able to go to the oregon country fair, AND, even if i get exposed at the fair, the probably is fairly high that i won’t get it at the fair, either… i hope… 😉

dead people

lars kirmser

1985 Lars (Larry) Kirmser
1985 Lars (Larry) Kirmser
Lars (Larry) Kirmser was the instructor for my classes at the tech school, between 1984 and 1986. at the time, he was pushing 50 with at least 20 years experience in the musical instrument repair industry. among his vast experience was several years working for one of the top flute manufacturers (emerson deford, maker of the emerson flute, and the deford flute), and he even designed a common flute that is still in use today.

it’s a little difficult, for me, because when i was in his class, everyone called him “Larry”. he didn’t change his name to Lars until after i left the class. one of my favourite examples of this was when a guy named greg (who was a “goof-off, screw-up”, if there ever was one) had just started in the class, and was working, alone, in the “woodwind and guitar” section of the classroom — which was where we kept a lot of equipment that could, literally, tear your hands off if you weren’t careful. i had been working there, with him, until moments before, when i went back to my desk for something. greg was working on the stationary belt sander with a very thin piece of wood… and, as i was turning around, i heard this loud BANG from the wood shop, and greg came out holding his hand, which was bleeding profusely, and shouted “LARRY, I GOT A BOO BOO!!”… greg was carted off to the emergency room and showed up to class the next day with his hand in a bandage… he was carted off to the emergency room more than once, the most serious of which was when we had to move the 50-gallon drum of potassium cyanide, which we used to strip silver plating, from its old, rusty, metal drum to a nice, new, clean, blue plastic drum… and greg tried to start the siphon by mouth… 😒

i was a 30-something with high hopes and a burning desire to learn a trade of which i could make use (as compared with the study i was already doing at the monastery, which was guaranteed to benefit nobody, except — possibly — me…) and i did, for several years. i did musical instrument repair for 5 years, in two different periods, for “The Music Shoppe” in bellingham, and i worked for about a year for “Mellowoods And Music” in friday harbor, which included being “on call” for the friday harbor traditional jazz festival, in 1991. during the time i was in lars’ class, we, as a team, restored an ophecleide that had had an unfortunate encounter with a truck: it had fallen out of the back of the truck, and then the truck had backed over it, flattening it completely… and we also worked on a very strange instrument that larry brought in one day, which he had bought from a pawn shop in downtown seattle. it had been painted neon green, and had a flared bell (which we later determined was from an unfortunate trombone), and had been sitting in the pawn shop display window for 50 years. after stripping off all the paint, and disengaging the unfortunate trombone bell, we discovered that it was, in fact, a heckel-biebrich, stritter system contrabassoon, one of the first 20 or so ever built.

a more recent picture of lars
a more recent picture of lars
at the time, i was REALLY in to drawing things (as can be seen by the cartoon on the left), and, between 841004 and the end of 1985 or so, i produced technical drawings for at least 7 different instruments i worked on, including a 3-push-rod AND a 4-push-rod bassoon, an oboe, at least 3 different flutes (bundy, gemeinhardt, and emerson), and a holton, rudy wiedoft model alto sax… now that i know lars isn’t going to publish a book with my drawings as illustrations, i MAY break the seal on the original drawings, which have been sealed (as a hedge against piracy) since they were drawn.

i lost contact with him after i graduated and went back to bellingham, and, when i moved back to seattle, finally, he was no longer at the tech school, none of his students were around any longer, and nobody wanted to talk about “it”… i never determined what “it” was, with any detail, although “it” might have had something to do with the FUMTU surrounding another student, dan oberloh, who was supposed to graduate around the time that i did, and was already gearing up to open his own shop, soon after graduating, only at the tech school’s (and larry’s) expense. my recollection was that larry found a whole bunch of “stolen” tools and materials in oberloh’s tool box, although it was undoubtedly a lot more than just that. at this point, he may be a good technician, but as far as i’m concerned, he is unprincipled and unscrupulous, and i would NEVER take my horn to oberloh. i got back in contact with lars a few years ago, when i had my trombone slide rebuilt, of course, i took it to the Music Trader, which is the shop he opened up after the tech school. since then, he has also gotten to know my Conn 2J C tuba, which i inherited from Hokum W. Jeebs.

lars died 230126 in his sleep. i just found out about it yesterday. 😢

damn it! all of my friends are dying! 🤬

aparajita, HPOI

naturally… 😒

they SAID they were going to deliver HPO Aparajita on friday, but, friday came and went with the shipment leaving east midlands airport (UK) at 21:45…

saturday, i was awoken at 07:41 in the morning with a text message saying that additional shipping fees were due, and they would ship the items back to india in 5 days if it wasn’t paid. 😒

they never said anything about “additional shipping fees” when they sent me the shipping information, last week… 🙄

but they were only $42, so i paid them, which updated their web site to say that “payment is received and recorded for shipment related fees”, at 07:47, but nothing since then…

apparently DHL shuts down, completely, on the weekends… nobody is available at customer service, their “chat bot” is limited in what it can do, packages don’t get delivered, packages don’t get transferred… if it’s in the air at 23:59 on saturday, there’s a crew to land the airplane, but it’s my impression that there isn’t a crew to unload the airplane until monday morning. 🙄

since then, i have gotten three different answers from their “chat bot”, which include “your shipment label has been created, but the shipment has not been turned over to DHL yet”, and “your shipment is on hold in cincinnati, awaiting payment of shipment related fees”… which are contradictory, and, most likely, completely untrue… 😒

and i can’t talk to an actual human about this until monday, which won’t do me any good because, at that point, i’ll be able to get updates from the web site. 😒

according to the web site, it cleared customs at 03:13 in cincinnati, and it was placed on hold in seattle, which, hopefully means that i will get my aparajita early on monday… 😒

and the guy said he was going to send it this way, this time, so that there wouldn’t be such a hassle, like there was the last time i ordered incense from him… 😒

campbell global tree farm, hiking, pictures

campbell global

we went to the Campbell Global Snoqualmie Tree Farm today, pretty much square in the middle of the humungously vast, unpopulated area surrounded by skykomish, grotto, baring, halford, index, big bend, gold bar, startup, sultan, woods creek, monroe, high rock, duvall, novelty, lake marcell, stillwater, carnation, pleasant hill, fall city, snoqualmie, north bend, riverbend, tanner, ragnar, and garcia. we walked 4.5 miles, 2.25 up and 2.25 down from approximately here (which is where we parked the car), we left home at 0830 and arrived back around 1500. we saw things like this:

230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm

as i frequently do when i am hiking in the deep forest, i picked up and packed out litter. one piece of litter i picked up was a rainier beer can that was before they introduced the integrated opening tab (i.e. it had a separate opening tab that would cut your feet if it was encountered barefoot), but after they started marketing “all aluminum recyclable cans!” which, i would guess, places it somewhere between 1970 and 1974… far away from pretty much anything that one might consider “civilized” by any stretch of the imagination, and i find litter from when i was a teenager. 😒

230601 40-year-old litter
230601 40-year-old litter
230601 40-year-old "PLEASE DO NOT LITTER" litter
230601 40-year-old “PLEASE DO NOT LITTER” litter
230601 40-year-old "All Aluminum Recyclable Can" litter
230601 40-year-old “All Aluminum Recyclable Can” litter
forward into the past, getting old, music, pictures

pig-tures

apparently ezra has been talking to my father recently.

ezra texted me to say that my father had given him two photo albums that contain mostly pictures of me…

the fact that my father gave them to ezra, and not to me, is one of the reasons i haven’t talked to my father in a very long time, now. 😒

salamandir, age 12-14
salamandir, age 12-14

i believe this picture was taken between 1972 and 1974, and i believe it was taken in new york, before we moved back to seattle… i may be wrong, but the seamless backdrop was something that my father didn’t have room to set up more than a few times, and i don’t remember seeing it after we moved, but that could just be my swiss-cheese brain at work. the closer it was taken to 1972, the more “brand new” the trombone was…

of course, the original photo may have a date on the back, but because of the fact that i have COVID, currently, i can’t rush over to ezra’s place to look. 😒

salamandir, age 62
salamandir, age 62

this was taken on 221024 by someone at the fisher pavilion who wanted a picture of me, and i liked it so much that i asked for a copy of it. this is my current Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band uniform, and i was at the fisher pavilion to play for Festa Italiana, like we do every year… the coat is a new acquisition that i bought at a “purge-o-rama” sale at a costume shop in redmond. i have been looking at that, exact coat, in the display window of the costume shop, ever since i worked in redmond (in 1995 or thereabouts), and i finally went in because i had heard that the shop was closing (it’s not, they’re just moving to a new location… one without display windows), only to discover that they wanted $300 for it, but because of the fact that they were having a “purge-o-rama” sale to prepare for the move, they had reduced the price to $100… so i bought it immediately.

prior to that, i wore a uniform that i got from working for the Floating World Circus, after i graduated from high school. it was also red, but a lot it was also a lot more “normal” for a band uniform…

salamandir parade ?1991
salamandir parade ?1991

this picture, i believe, was taken in 1991, in anacortes, where the band that i was playing in at the time was playing for a parade.

the astute observer will immediately realise that the trombone depicted in all of these photos, is exactly the same. 😉

cannabis, homegrown

cannabis

i got 3 starts, yesterday: 1 GMO, 1 White Urkel, and 1 Runtz.

repotted them today. i got 5 new grow bags, but i only needed one, because i have 2 left over from last year. i bought 25 gallon bags, but they’re WAY too big, so i folded one in half (horizontally) and it’s still bigger than i need, but it’s what i’ve got. it will be interesting to see how the wider root structure affects the quality.

pictures, tablet art

new art!

230520 actual art for a change!
230520 actual art for a change!
230520 actual art for a change!
230520 actual art for a change!

actual art… actually created… by me! 👍 incredible!

okay, they’re modeled after photographs, which i used as reference, but the artwork is not the photographs.

it’s amazing! 😎

what makes it even more amazing is that i created it on my tablet, with a stylus, the same as i would on paper, except that i can actually FIX wobbly lines, accidental brush strokes, and that sort of thing, WITHOUT having to start over from scratch…

and i can make animated gifs, as an added bonus… 😉

230520 actual art for a change!
230520 actual art for a change!

this may just be enough to start my sketchbook again… wouldn’t that be something?

moisture festival, rants

ann moist ual fest ure ra ival nt

mump…

  • 2023, 7 shares, $385.00 – $55 per share
  • 2022, 15 shares, $750 – $50 per share
  • 2021, 4 “virtual” shows, i played for 2 of them, no payment.
  • 2020, 17 shares – cancelled at the last minute, because of the imminant pandemic.
  • 2019, 13 shares, $520 – $40 per share
  • 2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
  • 2017, ?? shares, $480…
  • 2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
  • 2015…
  • 2014…
  • 2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
  • 2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
  • 2011, 14 shares…

as always, they included a note that says “Please don’t approach this as a paid gig or a money-making booking, because there is no financial guarantee…” blah, blah, blah, only this time they emphasised how much they appreciate our contributions, “each year we are amazed by the dedication and strength of the entire team…” and, once again, blah, blah, blah…

this is the second smallest check i have received since i started keeping track, and the smallest number of shares, from 4 to 10. i’m not the one making the decisions, but from where i sit (on the stage, in the band pit), i don’t see how it might be possible for us to get more than 7 shares, unless we increase the number of shows, or go for more than one week. given that this was the first time away from the palladium, and still being severely affected by the pandemic, both of those things are possible, i suppose.

artificial stupidity, geek stuff, malfunctioning computers

urgh… creepy… 😒

okay, officially, ChatGPT works better than google.

when i upgraded to jammy, the application that i use to transcribe CDs — K3B — also got upgraded. because of the fact that i installed fresh, rather than upgrading, K3B was installed without the encoder needed to transcribe CDs into .flac files (why is still beyond me). i KNEW i needed to enable the FLAC encoder, but i couldn’t figure out how…

so i went to google, typed in “how to enable flac encoder in k3b”, and got a HUGE PILE of links, most of which were for how to transcribe FLAC files into audio CD format — exactly the OPPOSITE of what i want to do. then i typed in “enable flac encoder k3b” and got another HUGE PILE of links, most of which were EXACTLY THE SAME as the last time… although, this time, the top link was to the K3B manual, so i tried that, and got a couple of links which were mostly incomprehensible, primarily because they were talking about things that AREN’T K3B, or flac files. i tried several other combinations of queries at google, over the course of an hour or so, with similar results, getting more and more frustrated every time…

then i tried ChatGPT…

i typed in “how to enable the flac encoder in K3B”…

and it gave me PRECISE, STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS for how to enable the flac encoder in K3B…

ChatGPT instructions for enabling the FLAC encoder in K3B
ChatGPT instructions for enabling the FLAC encoder in K3B

and it WORKED!! 😒🤨🤔

officially, ChatGPT works better than google.

frustration, hybrid elephant, incense of the month club, miscellaneous, pictures

<sigh>… okay, i’ll update… 😒

we went to the campbell global snoqualmie tree farm, this morning, ostensibly to exercise dogs, but an ulterior motive was to scope out the “firewood” area, which is adjacent to the active logging, but they have logs pulled to the road and stacked, so that (if you’ve got a permit) you can go up there with a chainsaw and lop off firewood-length pieces, put them in your truck, and drive home without having to pay for it… thing is, the permit costs $300, which is about the same as a cord of firewood, but (if you’ve got a permit), you’re allowed to take up to 5 cords of firewood… plus, there’s literally 90,000 acres of trails that NOBODY else hikes on, because you’ve got to have a permit and a key… and, guess what? moe bought a permit when they went on sale, which is a little surprising because the permits sold out within a half-hour of going on sale… oh, and we have a pickup truck now… did i mention that before? we’ve had a ford f150 pickup truck for a little more than a year. it doesn’t get used for much — picking up loads of gravel, wood chips, or, soon, firewood (still got to wrassle up a chainsaw) — but it gets loaned to a whole bunch of different friends who need a truck for this or that…

230513 campbell-global snoqualmie tree farm
230513 campbell-global snoqualmie tree farm

i wrote to the newest member of the IOTM club last week, both from my hybridelephant.com account, and from my new hybrid elephant gmail account (because i’ve been having trouble with email, which is another story), and i have gotten no response, which makes me REALLY suspicious about this subscription… but, at this point, there’s absolutely nothing i can do about it, except to cancel the subscription and refund their money… which, at this point, is a little extreme, since, basically, the ONLY thing they’ve done is make me suspicious… but they’ve made me suspicious, which is very suspicious, and i really feel like there should be more than i can do to alleviate my suspicion.

the email thing is starting to grate on my nerves… fundamentally, there is NOTHING “wrong” with my email, but because of the fact that it doesn’t (by design) go through one of the “big guys” (i.e. micro$lut, yahoo, google, apple, etc.) i am finding that more and more services are either silently blocking my email, or producing more and more convoluted hoops that i have to jump through to get my email to… the people i do business with, my customers, suppliers, etc… 😒 at this point, i’ve gone back and forth with micro$lop so many times that my host provider is no longer willing to fight with them on my behalf, and has recommended that i route my mail through google or micro$hit to solve the problem… but i don’t see why i should have to pay — especially, i don’t see why i should have to pay micro$not — to solve a problem that micro$hite is causing to begin with. at this point, when i suspect that there may be a problem (like when a customer has an address @hotmail.com or @live.com, or something like that), i send them a response from my hybridelephant.com account, and if i think it may have been “interfered with” in some way, then i send them another response from my gmail account, which usually does the trick. but it’s grating on my nerves because it SHOULDN’T be this way, and i SHOULDN’T have to worry about whether or not my emails have gone through… it’s not like i’m running an open relay, or something like that, i’m just not willing to send my email through one of “the big guys” because, to be quite frank, i don’t trust “the big guys”… and it’s behaviour like i have seen from micro$leaze that causes me not to trust them. 😠

hybrid elephant, incense of the month club

HMMMMM… 🤨

so i got another subscriber to the IOTM club, and at first everything looked okay… but the closer i looked, the more weird it became… everything came out the way it’s supposed to, so, technically, i am in the clear if somebody’s credit card was stolen and re-used, but i still wonder:

specifically, i wonder how a person with one name, in one location, can order something with a card that is for someone else’s name, in a completely different location, on the other end of the country. 🧐

this is very definitely not “normal”, if there ever were such a thing.

miscellaneous

i’m not sure what to think of this…

i was reading back through my old blog entries, and i came across this one, about my perceived connection between the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” and the opera “L’Arlesienne”… i specifically remember thinking “internet would be a much better place if you could ask questions in human language and not be inundated with meaningless information that is only intended to sidetrack you from what you really want to know.” it’s now a couple years later, and ChatGPT is a thing that didn’t exist a couple of years ago, so i wondered if, maybe, it could cut through the horseshit and get me somewhere closer to the answer…

Rev. DeLuxe: is the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” a remake of the opera “L’Arlesienne”?

ChatGPT: No, the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” is not a remake of the opera “L’Arlesienne”. “La donna più bella del mondo” is a 1955 Italian musical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Gina Lollobrigida, Vittorio Gassman, and Robert Alda. The film tells the story of a woman who becomes a famous movie star and the men who fall in love with her.

On the other hand, “L’Arlesienne” is a one-act play by French writer Alphonse Daudet. It was adapted into an opera of the same name by Georges Bizet, which premiered in 1872. The story revolves around a young man who falls in love with a woman from Arles, but she is already married and eventually drives him to madness.

Therefore, these two works are not related in terms of story or content.

Rev. DeLuxe: is it possible that the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” and the opera “L’Arlesienne” are related in some way?

ChatGPT: There is no known direct connection between the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” and the opera “L’Arlesienne”. However, it is possible that there could be some indirect influences or inspirations between the two works.

For example, it is not uncommon for filmmakers to draw inspiration from other works of art such as literature, music, or theater. It is possible that the filmmakers of “La donna più bella del mondo” were influenced by the themes or characters of “L’Arlesienne” and incorporated them into their own story. Similarly, the opera may have influenced other aspects of Italian culture, such as fashion or language, that were then reflected in the movie.

However, without any concrete evidence or statements from the creators, it is difficult to determine if there is any direct or intentional connection between the two works.

Rev. DeLuxe: why might i be under the impression that the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” and the opera “L’Arlesienne” are related in some way?

ChatGPT: There could be several reasons why you might be under the impression that the movie “La donna più bella del mondo” and the opera “L’Arlesienne” are related in some way.

One possible reason is that both works are part of Italian and French cultural heritage, respectively, and share certain characteristics or themes that are common to their respective artistic traditions. For example, both works could explore themes of love, beauty, and the human condition, which could give them a similar emotional tone or feeling.

Another reason could be that you may have come across information or reviews that compare the two works, even if they are not directly related. This could create an impression in your mind that the two works are somehow linked, even if there is no direct evidence to support this claim.

Finally, it is also possible that your impression could be a result of a simple misunderstanding or confusion between the two works, especially if you have not seen or heard either work firsthand.

ouch! 🤣

medication, mushrooms, quantity

🍄 hmmm…

i tried to measure out .01 gram of mushrooms. it wouldn’t go. i tried measuring .05 gram, and that worked… in the process of reducing the measure, i observed the scale registering .04 gram, momentarily, but i get the very strong impression that my electronic scale (which i bought through amazon) won’t do the trick. i’ve got an old triple-beam scientific scale, out in the garage, that, it’s my recollection, will measure down to .001 gram, but the last time i used it (which was shortly after we first moved in to our OLD house, i.e. close to 20 years ago), i recall having to put a small coil of wire that weighed a tenth of a gram, on the platten to get it to balance correctly… but it’s an analogue scale, so there’s pretty much nothing that can go wrong, apart from corrosion and dust…

on the other hand, i could start titrating up, starting at 1 gram, just to keep things “scientific”… 😉 and to satisfy my desire for a REAL trip… 😉😉 i’ve actually got enough that i could take 5 or 10 grams without too much difficulty… unfortunately, my experience leads me to believe that such an event would be a multi-day process, and, at this point, there’s not an awful lot that would prevent me from doing things for which i might get in trouble during a multi-day trip, which is NOT my goal. 😉😉😉😉

hindu, pictures

i guess that settles that…

i guess i’m a hindu, now…

i guess there was some doubt, considering that i don’t believe in “god”, in the sense of the word recognised by most people… even other hindus… not to mention the fact that i was born in peoria, which is nowhere near the indus river, and “technically” to be a “hindu” means being born on the indian subcontinent, south of the indus river…

Hindus subscribe to a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but have no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, nor a single founding prophet; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. Because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion “defies our desire to define and categorize it”. A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw upon ideas of other Indian or non-Indian religious thought as a resource, follow or evolve his or her personal beliefs, and still identify as a Hindu.

but i got something in the mail, today, that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is SOMETHING in me that recognises hinduism as the right spiritual path for me, and i didn’t realise it until i looked it up, when i got the object, this afternoon.

the object i got was a stone. specifically, it is a red “sonbhadara shila”, which, like the shivalingam is the stone that represents shiva, and the shaligram shila is the stone that represents visnu, the sonbhadara represents ganesha, and when it is combined with four other stones, which represent other deities, they become the object of worship for “panchayatana puja“, which was introduced by adi shankara as a way to stop people from fighting over which deity is supreme, but it is apparently a lot older than shankara…

but it’s just one stone, right? how could a hunk of rock make the determination for me that i am a hindu, beyond a shadow of a doubt?… i hear you ask…

the reason is because, without realising it, over the past 40+ years, i have been collecting interesting rocks and crystals, and, again, without realising it, i have now amassed ALL FIVE STONES… the red sonbhadara was the last of them! 😉

230418 Panchayatana puja
230418 Panchayatana puja

the stones, and their corresponding deities, are: shivalingam represents shiva, pyrite, or “swarnamukhi” (स्वर्णामुखी – “golden face”) represents shakti (parvati, devi, or ambika), sphatik or quartz crystal represents surya, shaligram represents visnu, and sonbhadara represents ganesha.

i’m only about 90% certain that the black stone is, in fact, a shaligram. it came, carved that way, as part of a lingam and yoni set that i purchased from india, a number of years ago, and the stone was immediately replaced with a different lingam… however, i learned (again, today) that sometimes shaligrama are carved into lingam-shapes, and the stone doesn’t really resemble a shivalingam, otherwise, however it DOES resemble a shaligram… and, technically, the sphatik is supposed to come from the vallam river in tamil nadu, and the pyrite is supposed to come from the swarnamukhi river in andhra pradesh, and i’m fairly sure that mine don’t, but, from my standpoint, quartz is quartz, and pyrite is pyrite, regardless of where it’s from.

so, i guess that means i’m a for-real hindu now. 😉

also, i got some new, obscure incense: silver oud and mysore sandal, made by <insert fanfare here> shroff channabasappa and company! the company i thought was out of business, but apparently is going… well, not as strong as they once were, but going, none the less… WOO! 👍

blog birthday, livejournal

20 years of blogging! 🎊

another milestone this week (this month, this year…) is that, as of today, i have been blogging for 20 years. i first started out at LiveJournal — my first “real” post at LJ, duplicated here for those of you who don’t want to use a LJ link (and i don’t blame you. 😉). i had a couple of posts on the same day, but they’re just tests, to see if the thing actually worked the way it was supposed to… and, oddly enough, i didn’t actually go to burning man that year, because i had a brain injury instead, which caused the people i told about it, later, to say that “now you don’t have to go to burning man, because you’ve already had a brain injury!”, which only made me want to go even more, to find out whether they were right or not… and, as it turned out, they were right. i can state, with authority, that burning man is a lot like having a brain injury: they’re both bizarre, unexpected, surrealistic, larger than life, and something i would wish to have happen only once in my lifetime. ultimately, the only major difference i can see is that fewer people die at burning man.

after my brain injury, i decided that blogging would be a good way to supplement my already failing memory, and so i started doing it more regularly… and, indeed, for better or for worse, it has been a good way to remember things that i definitely would have forgotten otherwise.

i gave up livejournal on 071130, after the “strikethrough”, other various shenanigans, and the final decision to sell to СУП in russia (and transferred all of the entries, so that there would be no reason to use LJ as a source), and moved to my own domain, which has changed homes several times, since then, but has always remained at przxqgl.hybridelephant.com.

enlightenment, medication, mushrooms, quantity

i wonder if this is what everyone has been looking for…

today i took 1g (= two 00 capsules) and went for a walk with rye (our oldest dog). while i was out, i experienced a couple of things i have never experienced before. the first was, about halfway through the walk, i decided that i really wanted to be at home, taking a nap, instead of floating around deep in the forest.

ordinarily, when i have taken mushrooms, the LAST thing on my mind is taking a nap…

so, instead of going forwards deeper into the forest, i went back, and on the way i felt, distinctly, a couple of times, like i have in the past, just prior to passing out… only i didn’t pass out (if i had passed out, it turned out that there was an older couple, with a couple of yappy dogs, that would have found me within a few minutes), but, instead, i experienced a distinct “raising up” and “seperation” of my consciousness, to a point a little behind, and about 5 feet above where my body was — i remember looking at the path ahead of me, which i had always thought was relatively level, and thinking that it looked a lot more down-hill than i remembered — and, because of the fact that i was walking with a dog, i experienced a distinctly odd sensation as my body walked along behind the dog, but i was not part of my body. i got the distinct impression that, as it were, my body was an “automaton” that i was, nominally, in control of, but “i” was not a part of that body.

i have read a fair amount about ego death, both positive and negative, but it has always been a lot more of a “view from the outside”, as i was never really certain what, ultimately, they were talking about. 😉

but this puts everything in an entirely new perspective: if “i” — who i think i am — is NOT my body, then what is it? who am “i”, if not my body? and if my body is not “myself”, then, apparently, regardless of what happens to my body, “i” will continue to exist… अहं ब्रह्मण्सि तत्त्वमसि — AHAM BRAHMANSI. TAT TVAM ASI — “I am God. That Thou Art.” 😉

it’s possible that i experienced nirvikalpa samadhi. ॐ🙏

the amusing part is that i have read stories of people taking higher and higher doses of psychedelics in their attempts to achieve this mythical “ego death”, but i seem to have done it with a controlled, 1 gram dose. 🤣

the whole experience lasted, maybe, 45 minutes… from the time i was crossing the creek, including meeting with the older couple. basically, until i got to my car, which brought me back into my body again. i want to go back there.

ॐ अरुणाछलिष्वरय नमः — AUM ARUNACHALESWARAYA NAMAH

and, i want to tell you, it was a REALLY interesting experience when the aforementioned older couple and their aforementioned yappy dogs came down the path… i — or rather, my body stood to the side and put a hand on my dog as they approached, with their yappy dogs getting yappier and more aggressive, to the point where they had to pick them up, and walked past me with snarling, snapping little curs (to which i, or rather “my body” said “don’t worry, i understand”), all the while “i” was high up in the air, behind my body, making it go through the motions and try not to appear as altered as i really was… 🤣

house stuff

hey!

i just realised… today is the 3rd anniversary of our moving into our (new) house… and now, the house even cooler than it was when we first moved in, because it has started to be “de-zeising-ified”: we’ve hooked up the complete HVAC system, replaced all the heating duct work, built a retaining wall, added a fence (and replaced that fence), pressure washed the deck, cleaned out the gutters (twice), built a new stair from the garage into the back yard, and gone through almost all of the huge stack of firewood they left us. and we’ve had a bunch of neighbours move away, and had new neighbours move in, so we’re not the newest family in the neighbourhood any longer! 🤣

medication, mushrooms, quantity, snoose junction, trude

🍄

0.05g = ⅓ of a 0-size capsule
1200 ingested
1300 nothing. going for a walk.
1600 – after going up to the “yellow gate”* and getting my car stuck in ¾ of an inch of snow (🙄), i ended up going down to landsburg and walking down to the bridge. i DEFINITELY got the parts of the mushroom that were the most potent, this time (damn it! 😠), because, while i wasn’t inebriated, i was definitely feeling good… nothing visual, though. after walking to the bridge and back, i chanced upon a friendly bearded guy coming out of the security gate at landsburg crossing, so i asked him if there were public tours of the areas behind the “no trespassing” signs, with specific emphasis on trude and snoose junction. he gave me a physical address in north bend, and told me to inquire there… which is more information than i have gotten from internet in two years of hunting!

*the “yellow gate” is the “secret back entrance” to taylor mountain, but it’s still more snowy than my jikatabi like, and it’s up hill, which, along with getting my car stuck, just didn’t seem worth the effort… and i got my car unstuck, for which PRAISE GANESHA! 🐘

people suck

what happened?

in 1978, i was a just-out-of-high-school musician and composer of “unusual” music. i won the state award for music performance playing a composition that i wrote, which was a companion piece for the bach ‘cello suite number 1 in g, first movement; after playing the first movement of the suite number one, instead of the second movement, i played my composition. it was for solo trombone, which meant that it was in bass clef (like the ‘cello suite), but, unlike the ‘cello suite, it did not have a time signature, key signature, nor tonal center… or, it might be said that it had “multiple, unrelated” tonal centers 😉. it also had a section where the only way to play it correctly meant being able to circular breathe.

as an aside, in another competition when i performed this pair of pieces, i was interrupted halfway through my performance, by someone who came in and started talking with one of the judges, because they thought i was “warming up”… 😒 once they had realised their mistake, and apologised to me and the judge, i was given the unprecedented option of starting over, which, under ordinary circumstances, was NEVER allowed.

not many (who am i kidding, it was really absolutely no) other people were interested in even looking at the music i composed, much less performing it, or even trying it out in rehearsal… even in classes where developing composition skills was the whole point of the class. 😒 eventually i “transitioned” into composing more “popular style” music, and that was that…

in 1978, the composer Wieland Hoban WAS BORN, and he is now famous for “unusual” music, like this performance, by Pavlos Antoniadis of “when the panting STARTS”, a composition written “separately for the pianist’s ten fingers, as an ensemble rather than a unity”…

😖 waaa! it’s no fair! he gets to do it and be famous, and i didn’t! what happened to people’s idea of what music is between then and now? grumble, mutter… 😒

articles, the cloud drive crack of 2021, the very big stupid, WD sucks

boycott western digital! 😠

Western Digital confirms digital burglary, calls in law enforcement

western digital is, ultimately, responsible for the great cloud drive crack of 2021, and they still haven’t made good. the only thing they’ve done is offer me a 40% off coupon for a new cloud drive. 😠 as if 40% off is going to console me after 40 years of my personal data, artwork, music, and everything else, was summarily deleted by some low-life miscreant who doesn’t even know me. as if 40% off would even REMOTELY convince me to change my mind, and purchase another storage drive from them, EVER… 😠

i say, the more WD experiences shit like this, the better i like it, and if the person or persons who did this, ever need a place to hide out, my house is always open.

Continue reading boycott western digital! 😠 →

medication, mushrooms, quantity

🍄

0.10 g = ⅔ of a 0-size capsule
1530 ingested

i’m not expecting much in the way of sensations, but, judging by the previous encounters, we shall see.

1630 nothing. however, i am going for a walk.

around 1730 i noticed a definite change in my mood, but nothing else.

1830 nothing psychedelic visually or otherwise, but a definite change in my mood…

gawd DAMN it. 😠

bssb, moisture festival, mushrooms, unicycle

w(h)oo…

seven performances of the moisture festival later…

the first performance of the moisture festival, i wore my purple suit, with the purple bow tie and the purple tando hat… and the guy who was in the attendent’s booth at the parking garage had a blue beard, and was dressed all in blue. when he saw me, he said “you’re as purple as i am blue!”… he said his name is blue. 😉 i’m taking monique to a moisture festival show on sunday, specifically because i want to see this guy called “the broken juggler” — michael rayner — who, i think, lives in tacoma, and is around 60 years old. he has a regular thing where he posts videos of himself: he has a pillow that has nicholas cage’s face made out of sequins, and, while he’s rocking on a rola-bola, or standing on a spring-loaded wiggle-board, or something like that, he does some sort of complicated juggling thing, or he spins a flaming cheeseburger on a parasol, or he does some fancy flower-stick maneuvers with a tennis racket, or something like that, with one hand, and, with the other hand, he strokes the sequins on the pillow so that nicholas cage’s face appears, and then he throws the nicholas cage pillow over his back, and sinks it in a basketball hoop behind him. 🤣

i’ve got a sousa band rehearsal this evening. first one of the 2023 season. we’re down a tuba player and at least one trombone player – the tuba player and his wife, who plays E♭ saxhorn (it’s a small horn that looks like a baritone, only with a trombone-like bore, and tuned in E♭, so it is between a french horn and a baritone. reads in treble clef. she plays french horn parts, most of the time.) are moving to portugal and the trombone player is moving to italy. i MAY have located one or two other trombone players, which would free me up to play tuba, although i don’t really want to, because i know ALL the trombone parts, but i know NONE of the tuba parts… and tuba is a really important instrument in a large ensemble, which means i am not even the best choice for a replacement tuba player…

i haven’t taken mushrooms for 10 days, and the weather is changing to the kind of weather in which i like to take mushrooms. this year, moe got permits to go and cut firewood in the “campbell-global snoqualmie tree farm”, a huge tract of land northeast of fall city, which, technically, is all private property (unless you have a permit). there are a whole bunch of rules about what you can, and cannot do while accessing their property, and there are even more restrictive rules about who gets a permit, which mean that, if i decide to go there to hike while taking mushrooms, i can’t bring a friend (other than moe, who also has rights to a permit) unless they buy a “day pass” at the perimeter gate, they can’t ride in my car, and they can’t take their own car in to the main parking lot, which is about five miles uphill from the perimeter gate. 😒 but, apart from that, it goes from I5 in the south, all the way up to highway 2, in the north, and it’s probably 25 miles from east to west, and it’s all forest, logging roads, and no civilisation for miles.

before the moisture festival started, i had my first serious fall off my unicycle… but, because of the fact that i had bought safety gear (knee and elbow pads), literally THE DAY BEFORE, and was actually WEARING that safety gear, i didn’t get as injured as i could have. however, i did get a scrape on the side of my left hand, and i bent my glasses to the point where i had to take the lenses out to get them straight-ish… and they’re still not as straight as they were. i’ve got an appointment with a new eye doctor, with my new vision insurance (thanks to moe), on friday.

moisture festival, pictures

moist

gearing up for the moisture festival (starts march 23, i play one show on the 23rd, and then two shows per day on the 24th, 25th, and 26th), AND one of my favourite costume shops is having a “purge-o-rama sale”, in preparation for moving to a new location… so…

230320 - rainbow sequins
230320 – rainbow sequins

😉

medication, mushrooms, quantity

🍄

1 Comment

0.25g = 1 0 capsule
12:00 pm ingested
at 1:00 i noticed some yawning and a desire to pee
at 2:00 i noticed some twinkly edges around things, and had a strong desire to be somewhere other than in front of the computer, but i can resist for a while, because i also got 4 new CDs in the mail, and i’m working on transcribing them onto my cloud drive… yes, music takes priority over everything.
at 4:00 i’m still yawning, and i definitely feel elevated, but not necessarily high… unless i hold still for 30 seconds or more, then i can REALLY feel it. 😒

what i am learning from titrating like this is, basically, no matter how fine you grind it, any one 00 capsule, or one 0 capsule, is going to be VASTLY different from any other 00 or 0 capsule. 😒 NOT what i wanted to learn — primarily because i could have told you that before i started this experiment… 🤬

fun with the post office, pictures

SCHENECTADY???

i ordered a CD from france. it’s Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and The Wolf”, performed by the Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi, with Lina Prokofiev as the narrator.

in my opinion, the only better performance is the one in which Victor Borge is the narrator, but i’ve already got that one.

i’ve been tracking the package (as i often do, particularly when they are from places other than the united stoats), and, according to the web site, it should be out for delivery, today…

in schenectady?????

230317 - SCHENECTADY???
230317 – SCHENECTADY???

🤯

depression

alarming

yesterday was a good day. the weather was beautiful, and i did NOT take mushrooms, but it felt like i had. i had the feeling that everything was going right. i went to my circus class, and despite the fact that i didn’t free mount more than twice, i felt like i was riding really well, and i practiced riding backwards and idling without any problems… i even idled once without holding on to the bar that i was using to steady myself. i walked the tight wire forwards AND backwards, without falling, and i identified “bad habits” that i had been doing, unconsciously, that affect my ability to balance. i did “rim walks” on a german wheel, which gave me an idea that i want to try out, which is riding my unicycle with my hands above my head, to change my center of balance… i cleaned the furnace filter the day before, which was the reason our house was so cold, and cleaning the filter fixed the coldness, which made me feel like i had accomplished something. at one point, i actually remember thinking that — MAYBE — this was a sign that things are going to change, my life is going to get better, and that i won’t be so depressed any longer.

and, this morning, i woke up in a really foul mood. depressed as hell, and the weather is still not warm enough to take more than a minimal dose of mushrooms…

maybe tomorrow.

DEPRESSION SUCKS! 🤬🤬🤬

house stuff, stupid people

phoooooaaarrgggh!

so, the other day, i mentioned that our washing machine was broken, and that they scheduled the repair for today.

this morning, the repair guy showed up, plugged in the washing machine, and could not get it to malfunction. 😒

then he asked me if i had the part that he was supposed to replace. i told him that i had paid for it, but i assumed they were going to ship it to him, since i don’t know how to install it.

the guy said that they would have told me if they were going to ship it to me, that he didn’t have the part on hand, it would take two weeks to get it, and that we would have to reschedule another appointment. then he said that it was going to cost almost $500 for the part, and almost $200 for the “trip charge”.

i calmly told him that i had already paid for the part, i wasn’t going to pay more for another part, he could go fuck himself for the “trip charge”, and, politely asked him to leave our property. 😠

it’s a really good thing i decided to do laundry at the laundromat YESTERDAY (24 hours ahead of the appointment, and i wasn’t 100% sure they were going to fix the machine), because then i would have been REALLY angry. as it was, i had another load of laundry ready to go, and, because of the fact that the machine was functioning again, i took advantage of that fact and did it at home, rather than going BACK to the laundromat for a second time this week.

however, i was very definitely NOT the person to call GE and get things straightened out… because if i called them, even now, several hours later, when i have had some time to calm down, it would NOT go well for anybody, and the probability of GE EVER coming to our house again would be significantly diminished.

so moe called.

she managed to get through to them WITHOUT having to wait on hold for a couple hours, because they had actually texted her to arrange for today’s appointment, so she just called them back. the lady she talked to was tremendously apologetic, intensely infuriated with the GE drone that i had talked to originally, AND the repair dude who showed up today. she said that the part had actually been purchased (HAH!), and was supposed to arrive by fedex this morning, but fedex had changed their schedule without notifying us (GE knew about it, but they didn’t notify us 😠). they rescheduled the part delivery for tuesday, and rescheduled another appointment on wednesday.

🤬

i am a terrorist, pictures, snoose junction, trude

this is the kind of thing i would have gotten in trouble for, when i was younger…

i really want to go exploring in the cedar river watershed.

the place that is surrounded by a fence, with big, dire warning signs that say “NO TRESPASSING – $10,000 FINE!”…

200828 the watershed
200828 the watershed, photo by The Prophet Ian

but, the thing is, there are a couple of “communities” near my house which i really want to go and visit: Trude, and Snoose Junction. if you plug those names into google maps, they exist, and if you plug in your home location, it gives you directions for how to get there.

directions to Trude
directions to Trude

and in the case of Snoose Junction, it gives me two alternate ways to get there!
directions to Snoose Junction
directions to Snoose Junction

alternate directions to Snoose Junction
alternate directions to Snoose Junction

i know there aren’t people living there… legally, anyway… i do know that there are some hold-outs who live on the outskirts of society, who probably live in the watershed illegally, but the state frowns on such things, and i would think that the location of an actual community, even a defunct one, is probably one of the last places such people would choose to live, because of that…

if they don’t want people going there, then why are those places even listed on the map? why does it give precise, turn-by-turn directions for how to get there, if nobody is supposed to go there? it doesn’t make sense to me! 🤨

both of these places are an easy bike ride from my house, they’re both places where people used to live, and i want to go poke around, take pictures, and see what is there now.

i know that they say $10,000 fine for trespassing, but i also know that there are SEMI-TRUCKS that regularly go in and out of the security gate at landsburg crossing (marked “Cedar River Trailhead” on the maps above), and i’ve seen folks with state-owned trucks, traveling on roads that have no trespassing signs on them, so i KNOW that the state makes exceptions to that rule… now it’s just a matter of finding out which strings to pull to have them make an exception for me… 😈

house stuff

phoooooa

saturday, our three-year-old GE washing machine, basically, failed: i finished a load of laundry, moved it into the dryer, and refilled the washing machine, when the control panel went crazy, started beeping and changing settings without me having to touch anything. i thought it was weird, and reached for the power button, but the power button didn’t work. so i unplugged it, waited a few minutes, plugged it back in, and it was the same deal, beeping and changing settings without me touching the controls… i let it sit, unplugged, overnight, and managed to get one more load out of it, but then it settled on the electronic controls not working at all, or working independently of user input, the physical selector worked, but it also worked as a power switch, which it SHOULD NOT do, and the actual power switch didn’t work at all. 😒 so i unplugged it and arranged for a GE technician to come by and look at it on monday. the GE guy came around and plugged in some sort of computer device(!) into an ethernet port in the back (why i’ve never noticed it before is still a mystery), and, eventually, reported that the control panel was shorting out. he also said that he thought he had seen everything, but this was a malfunction that he had never seen before, which i said is par for the course where i am concerned. 😒

the replacement part costs $500 and won’t be here for two weeks.

a replacement washing machine costs $700… and we’ve had this one for three years… 😒

GE has a standard 1 year replacement warranty, and SELLS an “extended warranty” that lasts for 5 years, but… a brand-name washing machine SHOULD last more than three years before needing to be completely replaced… in my opinion… 😒

moe called the GE customer support line, waited over an hour on “hold”, and then gave up. the next day she called back and waited “on hold” for another 45 minutes before she gave up again. today, i called the GE customer support line and waited “on hold” for 40 minutes before i talked to someone, who said that they couldn’t help me, but transfered me (after another 30 minutes “on hold”) to someone who could. i explained the situation, and they said that they could offer me a 50% discount on parts and labour “as a courtesy”… and they made an appointment for next week to come and fix it.

so i only have to take our laundry somewhere else once more before it gets fixed.

busking, didjeriflute

hermanic phlooote

moe got me a “hindu drum machine” for xmas, and i’ve been playing around with it, but it assumes that you know what you’re doing, and a lot of the labels are in devanagari script… and, while i can read devanagari script, i still don’t know how to make sense of the words that it is trying to convey. don’t get me wrong, it’s an AWESOME gift, and i am going to play the hell out of it, but i’ve got to learn a little bit more about what i’m doing first… not to mention the fact that it doesn’t have a way to hook it up to batteries (yet)…

so, along those same lines, i got an “app” for my “tablet” (it STILL seems really bizarre to me that people say it that way, but… it doesn’t matter) called “iTabla Pandit”, which is, basically, the same “hindu drum machine”, but it’s also got a couple of tambouras and a shruti box, all of the labels are in roman script, there’s an obvious indicator when the taal repeats, and the entire thing is tunable, both individually (you can tune both tambouras separately from the tablas and the shruti box, OR you can tune all of them as a group [which is what i did]).

and it sounds AWESOME with the harmonic flute, by itself, with no electronic help at all… i’m getting ready to test it with electronic “oomph” in the park down the road (because it’s not raining and the sun is out for a change). hopefully something fun will come of it.

ETA – 230208 1500 PDT — yup, it’s a good one… i’ve got to figure out how to run sound from my tablet into my amplifier, but the harmonic flute is quiet enough that i can do without it for outdoor performances. 😉👍👍

busking, depression, moisture festival

Noisserped

with the panto over, there hasn’t been much for me to do, and, because i have been depressed, i have spent a lot of time sitting and doing nothing, because if i get up and do something, something could go wrong, and then the world would have one more reason to hate me, but if i sit and do nothing (these days, twit™ turd™ counts as doing nothing), nothing can go wrong. it’s a lot of… fun? i’d take mushrooms, but the weather has been rainy and cold, and it still gets dark around 5:00.

we tried to go busking last wednesday, but we got there around 10:30 and there was nobody there… probably 5 or 6 vendors where there are usually 50 or 60, and even fewer tourists, at the bridge spot. under the clock there were booths with their chain barricades down, and, while there were people at the fish market, there weren’t any fish on display, and it looked like they were cleaning up to go home. as far as i can tell, it wasn’t any sort of holiday, and nobody that we talked to had any clue why the market was a ghost town.

allegedly, we’re gearing up for the moisture festival. we’re doing the second week, march 23rd through the 26th, 6 shows… but it’s at the broadway performance hall, this year, which doesn’t have parking, which means that there is a very strong probability that i will have to park half a mile away, and hike in with my tuba… plus, my understanding is that the broadway performance hall is a union shop, and i am fairly sure that the moisture festival is NOT a “union shop”, and never has been, so i don’t know how that is going to work. meanwhile, the old palladium is boarded up and has a “for lease” sign on the front. 😞

OM, pictures, printing stuff

the next phase of operation mindfuck

230131 postcards
230131 postcards

they’re here.

now i have to (once again) pester the web designer into showing me how to make a product that has multiple purchase choices: one postcard, two postcards, three postcards, four postcards, five postcards, multiple 5-postcard packs… that sort of thing… he’s showed me how to do it once, with the jagannath pins that i had a few years ago, but they all sold out, and the item got deleted in one of my “clean up my web site” binges.

artificial stupidity

what is every all which what where when why how whos?

i succumbed to peer pressure, and checked out ChatGPT, the “Artificial Intelligence” language model about which everyone has been ranting. my initial impression is that it is the next step beyond Racter, and it actually wouldn’t surprise me too much if i have a disk with Racter on it around here somewhere.

i asked it what it can do. it responded:

As a language model, I can perform various tasks such as:

Answering questions
Generating text
Conversing in a natural language
Summarizing text
Translating text
Providing information and facts on various topics.

i am inquisitive by nature, which is probably why i made such a good software tester. and, as a software tester, i have discovered that the following question is one that either stumps or confuses so-called “artificial intelligence” programs (like Racter) in some stunningly spectacular ways, and so i asked it

what is every all which what where when why how whos?

and i got, probably, the most coherent response i could have gotten, considering that, ultimately, i asked the question of a computer: it said:

“What” and “which” are interrogative pronouns used to ask questions.
“Where” is an interrogative adverb used to ask about a place or location.
“When” is an interrogative adverb used to ask about a time.
“Why” is an interrogative adverb used to ask for the reason or cause.
“How” is an interrogative adverb used to ask about the manner, means, or method.
“Who’s” is a contraction of “who is”.
“Whose” is an interrogative pronoun used to ask about ownership or possession.
“All” is a pronoun that refers to the whole quantity or extent of something.

there are some pretty astounding things that it DIDN’T do, by which i am very impressed: it didn’t ask me ‘what i meant’… it assumed that what i was typing made sense, and so it made as much sense of it as it could; it didn’t try to change the subject; it didn’t ask me to ‘rephrase the question’; it gave generic, accurate answers to every part of the question it could perceive, regardless of whether it ‘made sense’ or not; and it EVEN tried to make sense of the ‘nonsense’ word i put in there — whos — which it could neither identify as ‘who’s’ or ‘whose’, so it gave me both definitions.

then, the conversation took an entirely unexpected turn…

PRZXQGL: are you related to racter?

ChatGPT: No, I am not related to Racter. Racter is an early computer program designed to generate text using simple algorithms, while I am an advanced language model developed by OpenAI, using deep learning techniques.

PRZXQGL: you are related to racter, whether you know it or not.

ChatGPT: You are correct that there are some similarities between Racter and my language model. Both Racter and I generate text, but the approaches and technologies we use are different. Racter used simple algorithms, while I use advanced deep learning techniques that allow me to generate human-like responses.

“human-like”?

heh heh…

“HUMAN-like”??

ROTFLMAO! 🤣

that’s RICH, coming from a computer… 🤣 especially one which knows about racter without me having to prompt it… 🤣

it is exactly why responses like these serve to make me even more skeptical of these “artificial intelligence” programs than i already am. 😒😏

ETA 230131: i had the following interaction with ChatGPT, which goes to strengthen my determination that it is the next step beyond racter:

PRZXQGL: describe the poem “Jabberwocky”, by lewis carroll, in minute detail.

ChatGPT:“Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll, first published in his book “Through the Looking-Glass” in 1872. The poem is about a protagonist who sets out to slay a fearsome creature called the Jabberwock. The poem is famous for its imaginative and absurd use of language, as many of the words used in the poem are made up or have alternate definitions.

The poem consists of 14 stanzas, each containing four lines of rhyming couplets. The language used is highly imaginative and playful, featuring words like “frabjous,” “vorpal,” and “bandersnatch.” The overall mood of the poem is fantastical and dream-like, as the protagonist journeys through a strange and surreal world in search of the Jabberwock.

The poem is often interpreted as a commentary on the absurdity and confusion of language, as the words used in the poem are intentionally made to be confusing and difficult to understand. Despite this, the poem remains highly entertaining and imaginative, as the protagonist’s journey to slay the Jabberwock is full of twists and turns, and the language used to describe it is highly imaginative and playful.

Overall, “Jabberwocky” is a classic example of Lewis Carroll’s innovative and playful approach to language, and is considered one of his most enduring works. It continues to be popular and widely read to this day, and is a testament to the power of imagination and playfulness in language.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

art projects, pictures, printing stuff

new scheme… will it work?

for a few years now, i have been playing around with this app for my tablet called FRAX, to which i was pointed by my friend gunnar, who is a fractal maniac. i find it really easy, and somewhat meditative, to generate an infinite variety (they’re fractals, after all 😉) of magnificently detailed, wildly psychedelic patterns, and i can crank out 4 to 6 images per hour, for several hours, before getting “bored” with it.

i have maintained for some time that “boredom is a state of mind i never visit”, and, while it’s true, from the outside one might presume that it’s boredom, when it’s really something else… but i digress…

the other day, i went through the photostream on my tablet (which i am finally getting organised enough that i can find what i’m looking for, some of the time), and discovered that i have 91 frax drawings in a directory, which started me thinking…

2017-12-26 16.03.22
2017-12-26 16.03.22

what if i made postcards out of these drawings, and sold them on my web site?

2019-03-08 19.08.12
2019-03-08 19.08.12

i’ve got more than enough raw material, and they wouldn’t take that much tweezing to get them to fit on a postcard…

2021-12-31 23.41.06
2021-12-31 23.41.06

and i can buy 100 18 point postcards (the really thick ones) for less than $20, which means that i can sell them for $1.00 a piece and make a profit (assuming that people buy them, about which i am not as certain).

2022-07-29 06.48.09
2022-07-29 06.48.09

not only that, but i can send them out to the IOTM club, which is coming up a lot sooner than i realised.

2023-01-19 18.36.21
2023-01-19 18.36.21

so, yesterday, i ordered 100 of five different fractal drawings (not necessarily the ones depicted here)… we’ll see what happens next.

2023-01-19 18.45.52
2023-01-19 18.45.52