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.

#drumpf lost

it hasn’t been officially announced yet, but biden won. however, as biden, himself, has said, “nothing, fundamentally, will change”… so, now, it’s “fascism light”, rather than “fascism extra-bold”, but, essentially, the same font. 😒

we’ve got a couple months of a lame duck session, wherein #drumpf has every occasion, opportunity and encouragement to screw things up even more badly than he already has, and then, naturally, when he finally steps down, the first thing to happen is that biden will pardon and absolve him of any crimes that he may have committed.

but at least he didn’t actually win… again… woo. 😒

tesla tequila
tesla tequila
in other news, tesla (the overpriced electric car, not the scientist) has come out with a branded tequila, which, in unbranded bottles, runs around $45 a bottle… but in their fancy, tesla lighting bolt bottle, it costs $250 a bottle, but you can’t get it, because it already sold out the entire run, within hours of its being announced.

if you ask me, it looks more like a bottle of cologne than a bottle of tequila. 😒

the end of an era…

Snake Suspenderz – Even Your Best Friends Won’t Tell You

Snake Suspenderz – Naughty Monkey

Snake Suspenderz – Misery Loves Company

Snake Suspenderz – Say Hello To Mr. Snake

sketch, the drummer for snake suspenderz, died in april of 2019, shortly after the moisture festival, which put an abrupt end to our performances as a band, but there was intense talk of finding another drummer for a few months. a couple of options were tossed about, and one got far enough that we ended up saying that we were going to contact her… but i’m not sure we ever did… i didn’t hear anything about it…

and then COVID happened, and, basically, everything got cancelled, and so nothing was done about it…

and now hobbit has decided that he has to move to kalamazoo, because that’s where his partner, lucifer, has to move, because she has to take care of her mother. lucifer and hobbit both worked at the market, for a large part of their income, and the market has, well… basically, been shut down, except for a VERY few day stall vendors, the high stall vendors, and the restaurants.

even bavarian meats, which has been in the market since before i was born, has closed up shop.

but, because of the fact that hobbit is moving away, there will be no more snake suspenderz, no more peanut envy, no more accidental rhino, and no more busking for me, at all, unless (until?) i can find someone else who plays a treble, chord instrument (strings, keyboard, accordion), who wants a solid bass line… or if i can find places to take my harmonic flute where they won’t chase me away after five minutes… 😢😒

i met hobbit in 1995, when i went to work for micro$lop. he and i were hired helpdesk geeks, and we got together because we also played music… and then it turned out that he and i knew a lot of the same people, and eventually we figured out that, about 15 years before that (1985 or thereabouts), we had been at the same party, at danny shadygrove’s place, and hobbit and my sister (who i didn’t know was there) shared a shower together… at the time we worked at micro$hit, we also played in a band called PropellerHeads (this was before the software called Reason, which was originally made by a company called “Propellerheads” came to be), and, using different instruments, the same people (me, hobbit, and malcolm “malcat” atterbury) were also in a band called Peanut Envy both bands were in existence, more or less, until around 1999, when we all went our separate ways. then hobbit and i met up again in 2004 or so, after my injury, when i started playing with snake suspenderz, an already existing band which was sketch, hobbit, thaddeus and a bass player whose name i don’t remember (because i never actually met him, he had moved away by the time i came on board). i started busking with them shortly afterward. and, when sketch died, hobbit and i resurrected Peanut Envy, and busked as a duo by that name until… march of this year.

i wonder what i will do next?

something, i hope. 😒

190828 salamandir & hobbit at the Oregon State Fair
190828 salamandir & hobbit at the Oregon State Fair

so…

the fence is (allegedly) being fixed on thursday, by the guy who is the friend of the neighbour who is (still) being a dick about paying for the fence, despite the fact that the dead tree which destroyed it was on his property. 😒

the guy who is (allegedly) fixing the fence has already run down a whole list of (bogus) complaints he had about the current fence — i get the impression that he’s not particularly impressed with the quality or consistency of the fence materials, despite the fact that we had the fence made by a different company than the one which made the gates, and that the whole thing was built during the peak of the first round of COVID…

but i get the very strong impression that the guy is going to do everything possible to get away with doing a halfway job and begging off, never to be heard from again, which is why i’m going to be keeping an eye on the work progress, when it happens. 😒

election day is (finally) tomorrow. in spite of the fact that he was impeached, we managed to survive (barely) four years of #drumpf, and i’m not sure, even now, that we’re going to vote him out tomorrow… and, even if we do, i’m even less sure that he’ll leave without making a BIG fuss, and/or flagrantly cheating… and even if we do manage to eject him into the sun, there’s going to be A LOT of #MAGA #chuds who will be stubbornly unwilling to accept it, and even if we are actually able to eject him into the sun, they’re not going to be so “easy” to deal with, nor will they just “go away”, once the solar ejecting has actually been accomplished.

i keep saying it’ll take us at least a hundred years to recover from #drumpf, and i’m not sure we have a hundred years left, even if we do, miraculously, make him and his cronies just vanish.

in other news, i made a new page for the Incense Of The Month Club, but i can’t figure out how to put the background image on it that i want, so it’s not linked anywhere, yet. i bought a 1½” diameter button press (because why not), and now i’ve got to round up some civic organisations which want buttons for some campaign or something.

also, i never heard back from kent.

good. 😒

1½" diameter buttons
1½” diameter buttons
pins & buttons
pins & buttons

actually, now that i come to think about it

i ended the last post with “i will never figure out these people”, and, after looking, half-heartedly, at the other options on the web for aparajita, i think part of what may be motivating people like kent is the box, and not the incense itself.

the old box is very distinctive, and it was used in, basically, the same form (they changed the colours, slightly, some time between the 1960s and the 1980s) pretty much ever since they started producing incense in boxes… the company has existed since the 1920s, so it’s a very distinctive and recognisable brand…

the new box is just a design change. the incense is exactly the same.

i had a customer a few years ago (who am i kidding, i haven’t heard from him in 15 years), who bought aparajita from me. he was a guitar player from new york, who had actually played with george harrison and ravi shankar, and he bought it from me because i was the only agarbathiwala who carried “the authentic” aparajita. it was through him that i learned about ALL the knock-off, “look-alike” brands of NOT aparajita that were out there. i learned a lot more, once i knew what to look for, and i’ve actually got a collection of “not aparajita” boxes. when mavana changed the box design, he was intensely frustrated, because he said the incense was different. as with everything from india, they have a very strict recipe that they follow to the letter… most of the time, ganesha willing… so the end product is 99.5% reliable… but that other .5% can be REALLY out there.

personally, i have NEVER noticed a big difference between the incense in the old box (yes, i still have several old boxes, and some of the “look-alike” boxes, for comparison) and the incense in the new box…

but, for some people, “aparajita” apparently stopped existing when they changed the box. i found at least two web sites where aparajita was listed, along with pictures of the old box, that said something along the lines of “out of stock, discontinued”…

but, look, people… i’ve got loads of it, right here! 😉

201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI

Ă,-PĂ,-RĀ’-JĬ,-TĀ, agarbathiwalas

i had to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for moe. the pharmacy was closed for lunch, so i went across the street to the safeway, to get food. as i was checking out, my phone rang. it was an “unknown caller”, which usually means that it’s a robot/scam call, and i am usually able to tell this within a VERY short period of time after answering the call…

so i answered it.

it was NOT an automated fraud call at all, but i had some considerable difficulty understanding the guy, because of the fact that his phone was cutting in and out like a crazy monkey, not to mention the ambient noise at the checkout stand in safeway, but eventually i worked out that it was kent, from laguna beach, who is an agarbathiwala (he didn’t use that word, but that’s what he is) and he is interested in purchasing wholesale quantities of aparajita, for resale in laguna beach.

wonderful… i think… but… 😒

he can’t figure out how to use my web site. apparently he’s accessing the web site on the same cell phone from which he’s calling me. that, combined with the fact that i don’t use my cell phone for web access most of the time, means that he can’t find the incense he wants, and i can’t direct him, because i don’t know what he’s seeing.

also, i tell him that, as far as wholesale orders go, i already put the word out to a number of agarbathiwalas that i know, who, either, didn’t respond at all, or responded by telling me that boxes of aparajita aren’t available in the US, and the only way to get it is to go to india, buy it in bulk, bring it back, and put it into your own packages.

which is patently false, according to my own, personal, recent experience…

so i get the very strong impression that this guy may be one of those people who want to use me and my years of experience and connections to stock their own stores with exotic incense.

which is only exacerbated by the fact that he says, if it can’t be a “wholesale” order, he’ll just mark up my price (which is really reasonable, given what i had to go through to get it), rather than buying at a “wholesale discount”… 😒

he wants to make an order over the phone — another typical ploy used by these people. i, patiently, tell him that i can’t process credit card payments any way other than the web site, and if he wants to order over the phone, it will involve him snail-mailing me a check or money order, which will have to clear before i will ship out anything.

oh, he says, sounding disappointed…

okay, he says, he’ll check out the web site, and make an order.

i go to the pharmacy, pick up moe’s prescription, and am on the way home, when the phone rings, again. it’s kent, again. he can’t find the incense he’s looking for. also, he wants to know how long it takes me to ship things out, and how i ship things. i explain it as succinctly as i can, and get off the phone, because, well, i’m driving… 😒 but the phone rings again,it’s kent, again and he STILL can’t figure out my web site. 😒

i expect that, by the time i get home, he will have made an order, and called me to ask why i haven’t shipped it out yet… 😒

but…

then he texts me. i’m back at the point i was at when i was checking out at the safeway, with all the ambient noise, but i’m at home, and there’s no ambient noise, there’s just this text message, which is a photo, and nothing else. i know it’s from kent, because it’s the same number that he has been calling me from, but there’s no text, just a photo. the photo is, from all appearances, a photo of a computer screen which has four overlapping photos of a VERY OLD box of aparajita.

by this time, i have gotten home. i text back that the manufacturers of aparajita changed the design on the box a few years ago, and text him a couple of photos, one of the new box, and one of the old box, with the reassurance that it’s exactly the same incense, only the box has changed.

and then…

nothing.

no order, no more phone calls, or texts… nothing.

i will never figure out these people. 😖

mump…

both our tests came back negative today, but moe sez that she’s not sure about her test, because she spent A LOT of time around the lady from texas who did test positive, so she’s still wearing a mask around the house, and especially when she’s interacting with me… but i get to sleep in the bed, again, rather than sleeping on the other end of the house, on the couch.

there are 6 english words that contain the letters “M”, “E”, “O”, and “W”. they are:

MEOW
MEOWS
MEOWED
MEOWING
HOMEOWNER
HOMEOWNERS

i learned that years ago, and every time i use the word “homeowner”, insinctively, i think “homeowner”…

honer’s meow…

there’s a title.

it just… keeps… getting… better! 🤬

our brand new fence, less than 4 months old, was completely destroyed, last week, when half of a dead tree on the neighbour’s property decided to fall on it, and then, when the neighbour decided to cut down the rest of the tree, and it, also, fell on it…

our homeowner’s insurance would have paid to get it fixed, if it had been a live tree on the neighbour’s property, but, because of the fact that it was a dead tree, the neighbour was “negligent”, so our homeowner’s insurance won’t pay. the fence originally cost $10,000, and the contractor said that he could SAFELY cut up the remainders of the tree and fix the fence for $4,000. the neighbour wants to “chip in” $500, but he’s refusing to pay any more than that.

AND… moe confirmed yesterday that she has, 100% been exposed to COVID, along with everyone else who works at the clinic. they are switching to a new clinic management software package, and they had someone from texas fly in to train all of them. they were fine the first day, the second day they started feeling sick, and went for a test, which was positive, and now the entire clinic has to close down. and, because of the fact that moe and i slept in the same bed, the probability is very high that i have been exposed, as well. she gets tested through her insurance, but i don’t know how — or even IF — i’m going to get tested, yet…

the 1918 pandemic took three years to go away, and they didn’t have to deal with a toxic government who wants everyone to die, and only the basic rudiments of germ theory.

and people wonder why i am depressed… 😒

sigh…

getting old sucks. 🤬

i got home this afternoon, and took the small doggie outside, and, as i was going down the stairs from the deck, my right foot hit a slippery spot on the third step from the bottom, and i fell, bruising my back and legs, and scraping my right arm, which reached out for support, but reached in the wrong direction, because of my brain injury. 😒

the dog experienced a rather rough landing, but she wandered off without more than an “oof” when she hit the ground. she’s fine.

i lay on the ground for a few minutes, deciding whether or not anything was broken (as far as i can tell, nothing was), and breathing hard, because my back REALLY hurt, while the doggie wandered, obliviously, around the yard.

fortunately, i had my phone, so i called moe, who called the neighbour, who came to help me, but all she actually did was pick up the doggie, because i couldn’t bend over.

at this point, i have taken ibuprophen and applied ice, and i can sit down without too much difficulty, although i can still REALLY feel my lower back, and i probably will be able to do so for the next few days.

in other news, i got my first order for 10 boxes of aparajita today. the guy actually wrote me while i was in the process of updating my web site, and wanted to make a “special order”. my guess is that i’ll have two or three more orders for 10 boxes, before the week is out… at $90 bucks a pop… 👍😉

also, i got a new monitor. the old one is an VGA 17″ flat screen from a few years ago. the new one is a HDMI 24″ flat screen from this year… it’s awesome, how much real estate is in the difference between 17″ and 24″

the end of (this) saga

okay, as i reported here, the HPOI arrived on friday, at 1730. i went to WFS, but was informed that i had to get the shipment cleared through US customs, before i could pick it up.

customs operates under “normal” business hours, i.e. 9-to-5, M thru F, so i figured i was going to have to wait until monday.

the “carrier certificate” that WFS gave me said that i had to pay an ISC fee, which worked out to $89 if i paid it online, or $125 if i paid it in person, so, while i was waiting — saturday and sunday — i took the opportunity to pay it online, so that i would have yet another impediment taken care of before monday.

the “carrier certificate” also, CLEARLY said that the date that storage charges started accruing was 201012, which was further impetus to get things rolling as quickly as possible.

note, that THIS ENTIRE TIME i have been getting EXTREMELY CONFLICTED messages about whether or not i would need a broker. at this point, everything i have heard leads me to believe that i would NOT need a broker to pick up my shipment of incense.

this morning, i contacted customs, got their new address (because they just moved, and nobody at WFS knew where), and went down to clear my shipment.

when i got there, i talked with a US customs agent, who told me that, because my MAWB said that the value of the shipment was more than $800, but less than $1,000, i would have to have a broker clear the shipment.

way back when i was arranging all of this, i specifically remember (backed up by email from 200824) arun giving me precise numbers: “USD 7.45 PER DOZENS”, which amounts to $357.60 for 48 dozen boxes. i also specifically remember (backed up by a different email from 200824), arun telling me “Please note Air freight is additional.”, so when he sent me a proforma invoice that said $986.40, i presumed that it meant “$357.60 for the incense, and $628.80 for shipping”… but it wasn’t itemised, and i overlooked that point.

i SHOULD HAVE gotten an itemised MAWB, but i didn’t.

so, i spent some time on the phone, talking with brokers, who quoted me around $400 just to get my foot in the door, and then i connected with lisa, from Frontier North America — a very nice, helpful lady who is going to get my business the next time around — who assured me that, because i was actually paying more for shipping than i was for the actual product, that she would clear my shipment, and provide a surety bond, for $182.22, so i said go for it, and half an hour later, my shipment was cleared through customs.

miracle. 😒

then, i went back to the airport, to WFS, who informed me, because i didn’t have a broker, who could clear my shipment on friday, after business hours (despite the fact that customs was CLOSED for “normal people” like me), that i had to pay a $110 storage fee — which was EXACTLY the thing that i was trying to AVOID by picking up the paperwork on friday, after normal business hours — and then they had a problem charging me the storage fee, because i had already paid the ISC fee, and they couldn’t charge me as a “guest” because the computer wouldn’t let them create two different accounts with the same MAWB number. finally, they told me that their web site wasn’t meant for people with iphones, which meant that i would have to go home to use my computer at home to “set up an account” so that they could charge me a storage fee, before i could pick up a shipment that i was already there to pick up… 😒

 

 

 

 

 

 

fortunately, after talking to two other managers, i finally talked the third manager into waiving the $110 storage fee, and, after scanning my drivers’ license (because my passport wouldn’t fit in their automatic scanning device 😒) they “gave me permission” to pick up my HPOI.

and i managed to get through the whole thing without swearing, losing my temper, or stomping out of various offices, as good as it would have felt.

201012 HPOI paperwork
201012 HPOI paperwork
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI
201012 HPOI

now i’ve got a web site to update. 😉

second to last HPOI post for 2020

the HPOI arrived yesterday.

according to the people at Worldwide Flight Services (which is the umbrella company that handles British Airways Cargo in seattle), i have to pick up documentation, take it to customs, so that it can be cleared, pay an ISC fee (Importer Service Charge, which is, basically, their way of “legally” taking a cut of my action), and then they can release the shipment to me.

customs is closed over the weekend. also, they just moved, and nobody at WFS knows what their new address is… 😒

and, because of the fact that WFS doesn’t accept credit cards, i would have had to pay $125 for the ISC fee, if it weren’t for the fact that i actually went down to the airport last night to pick up the documentation (so that i don’t have to go through that step on monday, when customs is open), the guy pointed out that i can pay the ISC fee online, and it will only cost $89… so i did that.

the “documentation” they gave me is, basically a “carrier certificate” which is a receipt for services rendered by the carrier (which is what i pay the ISC fee for), four copies (out of at least seven, total) of the MAWB, one for the destination airport, one for “my agent” (which is me), one for the consignee (which is also me), and one “extra copy”, a “MAWB/CBV Acceptance Statement”, which basically, says that the shipment isn’t anything vague or illegal, is being shipped by a legitimate shipper who is not a criminal, and is being received by a person who is not a criminal, and a MYSTERY ENVELOPE which is stapled shut, THREE TIMES ON BOTH ENDS, which, from indications of the writing on the outside, was stapled shut in india, when the shipment was loaded, and i have NO CLUE what it contains…

now, all that’s left is for me to wait until monday, contact customs, find out what their address is (i think it’s in burien, but i’m not sure), go down and get the documentation stamped, and then go back to the airport to…

PICK UP HPOI!!!‼‼‼😀😎👍👍👍

whew…

march -> october

we moved in to our new house in march.

in october, approximately eight months later, i saw my first deer in our front yard.

201010 deer in the front yard
201010 deer in the front yard

according to moe, there have been deer in our front yard, and our back yard, before now, but this is the first time i’ve seen them.

okay, this is an interesting development…

i got a phone call, yesterday, from suni, at CEVA Logistics, whose first language is english, and who doesn’t pepper her communications with bizarre, multi-letter acronyms that i don’t understand…

and, what she told me was, essentially, that arun has been right all along — which makes me VERY glad i didn’t send that email that i felt like sending him a few days ago…

basically, they’ve shipped out today, at 0700 bangalore time, on BA118, there’s a stop over at london heathrow, and then it’s on to seattle, on BA49, and i should have 31kg (68.34lb) of incense by friday at 1730. someone at the airline is supposed to contact me immediately upon arrival — although how is still somewhat of a question… they don’t have my phone number, and if they have my email address, it’s not on the MAWB. the only address that IS on the MAWB is my street address, so, theoretically, they could snail-mail me, but that would take longer than it took for the incense to get here, so i don’t think that’s a viable option… and i still don’t know exactly how they are supposed to contact me, but i suppose i’ll find that out on friday…

and a WHOLE BUNCH of my customers are going to be extremely happy. i guess this is probably as close to being a “drug dealer” as i will ever get… 😉

okay, that last bit is a lie… i actually was a drug dealer, for a while, about 30 years ago. i sold weed and acid to a few friends for about 6 months, until the supply dried up… but it’s that sort of feeling. 🤣

this

this is my imaginary response to the email that i got from arun’s customs clearing agent, melvyn.

obviously, since i’m posting it here, you can presume that it is because, if i actually sent it, i probably would NOT be receiving any incense from arun, any time soon.

On 03/10/2020 00:34, sspf wrote:
> Importer Security Filing (ISF)
>
> It is USA Govt Compliances. Hence consignee Clearing
> aware about this.

so, when you said, on 200930 that i wouldn’t need a customs clearing agent, you were… what?

wrong? 😒

On 30/09/2020 01:04, Arun Mysorein wrote:
> Hello, No need for any agent, you can talk to airline ,
> take delivery order
> and get the goods from the airport.

it should be fairly obvious, at this point, that this is NOT the way it’s going to happen… 😒

> It should filed
> online 72 Hrs before the last departure air/ seaport station.

meaning that, if you notify me when the shipment is loaded on the airplane, it’s already too late.

could you PLEASE notify me 72 hours BEFORE the shipment is loaded, so that i won’t have to pay more than i already do, for things that i won’t use?

> If we file from here the agent
> will take $ 100 for this service. It is better consignee
> Or their agents do at their end.

so, let me get this straight: $100 is too much for you to pay, but it’s perfectly okay for ME to be saddled with extra fees and fines because i don’t know these things, and, because YOU think it’s okay to tell me the EXACT OPPOSITE of what i should know in order to AVOID paying these extra fees and fines.

and, once again, MELVYN references an agent, which, you have assured me, i don’t need! 🤬

if i hadn’t already sunk more than $900 into this incense deal, i would cancel it right here and now. 🤬

this is NOT the way to do business and have me as a customer. 🤬

GAH!!! 😠

so i wrote to arun at mavana, concerning my impression that he had not given me all the information. he wrote to his customs clearing agent(!), melvyn — and copied me — who informed him (and me) that the consignee’s customs clearing agent(!) should have been aware of all this…

the immediately previous email i got from arun said that i would not need a customs clearing agent, or a single entry bond. now, his customs clearing agent tells me exactly the opposite! 😒

melvyn also said “If we file from here the agent will take $ 100 for this service. It is better consignee Or their agents do at their end.”

in other words, it’s better for the consignee (me) to pay this, rather than “us”, because “It is USA Govt Compliances.” and it costs “us” more money that the consignee could be paying.

the problem, if all of the web sites i’ve been reading are correct, is that, from the consignee’s (my) point of view, the customs clearing agent’s fee is $125, the single entry bond is a minimum of $75, and that’s before we start talking about fees for the ISF.

so, it’s an extra $100 from them for the ISF… which they are, apparently, unwilling to pay…

or it’s an extra $200 from me before we even get to the ISF… 😒

and i know, from past experience, that if the shipment gets loaded without the ISF being filed, then i have to pay $400 for a continuous bond, rather than $75 for a single entry bond, plus i get to pay another $400 (or more, the maximum is $10,000) for importing without an ISF. 😒

i’m guessing that i’m going to have to pay more money to get this HPOI into the united states. 😒

this had better be worth it. 😒

gah!

first the guy doesn’t know what ISF means, then he says i have to file an ISF, but doesn’t give me all the documentation to do so, and the only “resource” i have is a web site whose “toll free, 24/7” help line has a recording which says to leave a number, and they’ll call back (and they don’t), or leave a message that includes ALL of my contact information, including my social security number, on an un-secure (not https) web form — NO THANKS, FRANK! 😠

then, literally EVERYTHING i’ve read seems to indicate that, along with the ISF, i have to have either a “continuous bond” or a “single entry bond”, and a customs clearing agent, but the guy says neither of those things are necessary: “you can talk to airline , take delivery order and get the goods from the airport.” not only that, but i can’t even find where i’m SUPPOSED to file the ISF, except this, same “resource” that wants me to submit the information over an un-secure web form.

so i broke down and started up kmail, to retrieve the email addresses for the people i was in contact for the last HPOI go-around, two years ago, and contacted one of them, with the information i have… the last time i was in contact with them, they were USL Cargo Services, but i hit their web site, and it says that, as of a year ago, they’ve merged with another company, and are now CEVA Logistics… but their uslcargoservices.com web site and email addresses still appear to work, so we’ll see what happens… just to make sure, i also completed the easy-to-use form at cevalogistics.com as well.

grr… 😒

as i suspected…

the information that the guy has been giving me regarding the ISF is, substantially, wrong… which leads me to believe that the other information that he has been giving me is also wrong.

hopefully, the whole story about how he’s the CEO of mavana is not wrong, as well, otherwise i’m going to be REALLY pissed off!

the main concern, at this point, is the “continuous bond” — which only lasts for a year, so it’s not really “continuous”, but only in relation to a “single entry bond” which costs $10 for every $10,000 worth of product imported, with a minimum of $75 — and the “customs clearing agent” fee, which is $125. both of these “extra, add-on” fees were sprung on me at the last moment, last time, and ended up with me having to pay “extra, add-on” FINES before they would let me have my stuff.

all of this information is coming from TurboISF, a web site that i found after the last HPOI came in, when i was still seething about having to spend almost the same amount in “extra, add-ons” as i spent for the incense itself. hopefully, i have been alert enough to avoid the fines, this time. 😒

Ă,-PĂ,-RĀ’-JĬ,-TĂ,

part of what i am worried about is the ISF, which nobody told me about last time, which resulted in my having to pay a $400 fine for “importing without filing an ISF”… but, apparently, the ISF is only needed for ocean cargo… and, if it is needed for air freight, nobody has told me about it yet… but nobody told me about having a “broker” or a “continuous bond” last time, either, and i ended up having to get one at the last minute, at extra, added expense…

but, i paid the money this morning… i initiated an international wire transfer to india, so they’ve got my money, now, and if they don’t actually send me incese, at this point, i will be extremely pissed off.

aparajita! 👍

the latest is that i send them $1,000 and they send me 48 dozen boxes of aparajita, by air freight.

i have to wait until tomorrow to wire them the money. i tried today, but international money transfers have to be done on the same day, and, apparently, that day ends at 1300 hours, PDT, so i have to try again tomorrow.

this appears to be A LOT easier than the HPOI that i ordered two years ago… and a lot less expensive… but i seem to recall that a lot of the charges the last time around were ones that were added on by freight companies, intermediaries, and the federal government, so it’s not over yet. 😒

incense of the month club

this is the basic layout, so far:

people sign up in one of three two ways, either:

1) they pay $10, and get however many sticks of whatever the incense of the month is, that month. they can do this for as long as they like, up to $120, or 12 months. they don’t get anything extra.

not this… the “Incense Of The Month Club” is a subscription service. if people don’t want to “subscribe”, they can’t be a part of it.

also, it will make it SO much easier determining who gets what

21) they can pay $100 lump sum, all at once, for a “mundane” account, and get 12 months of however many sticks of whatever the incense of the month is, that month. that’s $10 a month, with 2 months free. they don’t get anything extra, but they do get 2 months free (woo hoo! free! 😒). this decreases in price by $10 a month, so in february, it costs $90, in march, it costs $80, in april, it costs $70, and so forth, until it costs $10 at which point it sticks at $10 and they can go month-to-month with the level 1 people. they get the first two months free, and after that, the price goes down $10 a month. basically, people who sign up in january get two months free, people who sign up in february get one month free, and after that, they pay $10 a month until december.

32) they can pay $8.50 a month, $102 total, lump sum, all at once, for a “VIP account”. they actually pay less per month, but, because of the fact that they’re actually paying more, overall, as well as getting however many sticks of whatever the incense of the month is, that month, they also get 🎉🎊EXTRA GOODIES🎊🎉, such as buttons, OM stuff, stickers, little good luck charms, random incense, and other bizarre stuff i have lying around. this offer is good for the first 3 months, and then it vanishes, leaving level 1 or level 2 for those people who want to sign up late, and as a motivation to sign up earlier.

i have 22 “limited edition, vintage” incenses, in packages ranging from 112 grams up to 750 grams, which means, theoretically, i could do this for two years (if i wanted to repeat two of them), but, for now, i’m a lot more interested in seeing how it works, and if anybody actually signs up, before i want to go making plans too far in advance. the incense i’ve got means that if, by some miracle, i actually get 25 people who sign up in january, i can send them anywhere between 5 and 15 sticks per month. if you count in the shipping, that comes out to almost exactly what they would pay for one pack of incense that you CAN find on the web.

this should be interesting. keep your eyes peeled for upcoming information about the Incense Of The Month Club‼‼😎👍

FUCK 2020!

our BRAND NEW, not even three months old yet, 6-foot security fence, has been destroyed by a falling tree.

200925 FUCK 2020!
200925 FUCK 2020!

200925 FUCK 2020!
200925 FUCK 2020!
200925 FUCK 2020!
200925 FUCK 2020!

it was a dead tree, on the neighbour’s yard, that fell… it didn’t even have the decency to fall all at once; it broke off about 20 feet up (remember, it was dead), and the broken part fell on our fence… it didn’t hit the shed, and nobody got hurt, which is a good thing, but still…

FUCK 2020‼‼

titles

Flimflam Phloem
Gunko
Ham Maze
VΓ squeeze
Wendy’s House of Pho
Self Hostage
Acceptable Bones
War To Salvation Church
Can I ask a state trailer park?
No Tw Eeze About It
AI Pastor At Your Door
Are you happy now?
Overachiever Acadamy
Of course I’ve had it in the ear before!
Blasphemy Attorney

WEAR EVERY HUGO THEIR YOUR

okay, here we go…

i have become more and more aware of the existence of “subscription services” (and have actually signed up for a few, myself), where you sign up, and pay a chunk of money, and then you get pins, or buttons, or stickers, or candy, or what-have-you, once a month for a year.

my impression is that they’re really “trendy”.

so, i have decided that i’m going to have a go at creating one myself.

mine is going to be the “incense of the month” club: you sign up and pay a chunk of money (i’m thinking between $75 and $100), and, in return, once a month, for a year, i’ll send you between 10 and 25 sticks of special, rare, unavailable anywhere else on line or off, incense… and maybe a little blurb about the incense, and a sticker or a button or something, if i want to add some extra zip to the whole thing.

at this point, i believe i’ve got enough “special, rare, unavailable anywhere else on line or off, incense” to fill 25 or so subscriptions for a year… honestly, i can’t imagine more than a handful of people subscribing, at all, but i’ve been wrong before…

i think, at this point, the hardest thing for me may be the fact that, in order for this to even come close to having a chance, i’m going to have to “talk it up” on “social media”, the whole idea of which turns my stomach.

so, anyway, look for the "incense of the month" club announcement coming in january.

emergency services must not have a lot to do today… 🤨

a fire truck, with all of its lights on (but no sirens, as this is a residential neighbourhood) just drove past our house.

we live almost at the end of a dead end street, so i went out to see if i could see what was happening.

what i saw, was the fire truck, with all of its lights on, turning around at the dead end, and then driving back up the street.

WTF, right?

then, about five minutes later, i saw an ambulance, with all of its lights on, drive past our house. when i went out, it, too, was turning around, and it, too, drove back up the street…

WTELF???

can i start murdering people yet?

200915 USPS misleading postcard
200915 USPS misleading postcard

the postmaster general, louis dejoy, the republican mega-donor to #drumpf, who has no actual experience with the post office, but who was, nevertheless, appointed to be postmaster general by #drumpf; who, in september, 2020 (yes, that means last week), was blocked, by a court ruling, from sending out false or misleading information about the election, and when secretaries of state requested that he show them examples of the mailing he was planning to send out, he refused to do so…

… has sent out false or misleading information about the election! SHOCKER!!! 😲

how many things can i count on this postcard that are false or misleading? 😠

1) it was sent to me, a voter in washington state, where we have had ALL MAIL-IN VOTING FOR AT LEAST TEN YEARS! and, yes, i am aware that it was actually sent to “Postal Customer”, and not directly to me, but the fact remains that i, and hundreds of thousands of my closest neighbours, LIVE IN WASHINGTON, WHERE WE HAVE MAIL-IN VOTING!! 🤬

in my opinion, the biggest “false or misleading” thing about this poscard is that it was sent to anyone in washington state! 😠

2) “start today…” go to this URI… but when you follow the link, all you find is MORE false and misleading information… especially if you live in a state (there are 10 of them) which has all mail-in voting…

3) “request your mail-in (often called “absentee ballot”)”… except that, in states where they have all mail-in voting (once again, there are 10 of them), they’re NOT called “absentee ballots”, which are, in fact, an entirely different sort of ballot, for a different purpose, altogether.

4) “Add postage…” my ballot is postage paid. does that mean i have to add MORE postage? the aforementioned web site doesn’t have anything to say about that.

5) “at least 7 days before election day.” does that mean that, even if i drop it in a ballot drop box 5 days before election day, that my ballot won’t be counted? as before, the aforementioned web site doesn’t have anything to say about that… 😒

and, as far as murdering people goes, if i can’t murder someone important, like #drumpf, pence, or dejoy (which, i admit, is pretty unlikely), or someone more local, like katie daviscourt (seriously, look her up… she’s a certified nut case with a dangerously wild imagination and a BIG audience), i’m perfectly happy to murder myself, so you other people don’t have anything to worry about. 😒

ETA 200921: HERE is a link from the secretary of state for washington, that has a lot more reliable information about the election than anything you can get from the federal government these days… 😒

😢

200911 wildfires
200911 wildfires

i’m where the blue dot is.

we’re further away from the wildfires at the new place than we were at the old place, which is futher to the left, and more towards the bottom, in between pacific and edgewood, just north of the puyallup fire.

200911 air quality index
200911 air quality index
200911 outside our house
200911 outside our house

moe sez we’re going to be okay, but the sky has changed from blue, to grey, to orange, within the last half hour, and there’s a fine layer of ash everywhere.

and there are STILL people who insist that “global warming is a hoax”…

200911 sunset
200911 sunset

😢

sigh… 😒

today, i got two letters(!) in the standard mail(!).

one of them was an official letter from the DOR, telling me that i had, recently, assigned myself “administrator” of my account…

except that it was addressed to the wrong name

the other one was an unofficial letter, in a hand-addressed envelope, from a rental company which now, apparently, owns the property that i lived in EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO(!), informing me that they had received a letter from the DOR at that address (seriously, i haven’t gotten mail there for EIGHTEEN YEARS 🤯), and that i should update my address with them.

they included the letter they received.

it was a letter, addressed TO THE WRONG NAME, informing me that my business account does not have an administrator, and gives instructions on how to apply for the position.

that’s not the bizarre part.

the bizarre part is that the return address on the hand-addressed envelope is “YDPAGES”, all in uppercase letters, with the address 12819 SE 38th St., Bellevue, WA 98006.

the letter is on the letterhead for RNR Property Investments, at the same address, and is signed by the CEO for RNR Property Investments, whose email address is at ydpages dot com.

is this starting to sound a little sketchy to you? it is to me…

that address is, now, a UPS store (which doubles as a post-office box location). that address is also, literally, RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from the place i used to work before i got my job at software.com (which became openwave)… according to my handy list of when things happened, i worked there from 1996 to 1998… at that time, there were no buildings there, just raw hillside, covered with second growth forest. i used to eat my lunch on that hillside. i found psychedelic mushrooms on that hillside…

this guy, who sounds REALLY sketchy, somehow got standard mail for my business, at an address i haven’t used in almost 20 years, and mails it to me, and it gets here at EXACTLY the same time as a message from “the government” about EXACTLY THE SAME THING

if i weren’t already paranoid enough, as it is… 🤬

that guy that sat in the SUV for 15 years…

while i was living at our old place, i used to walk through the neighbourhood, down to the park, through the park, and then back home, in a big, semi-circular, 4+ mile route.

something i have been unable to locate at the new place, despite the fact that we’re surrounded on three sides by the cedar river watershed, tiger mountain, taylor mountan, and a number of other places to hike, there is nothing within walking distance apart from the walsh lake overflow ditch road, which is just under a mile away from our house, and behind several layers of “NO TRESSPASSING” dire warning signs… 😒

but i digress.

fairly early on, after i discovered this route, i encountered a guy who would be sitting in a late-’90s-model SUV, probably a ford or a chevrolet, near the intersection of S. 380th and 42nd ave. s., in the unincorprorated area of king county just north of milton/edgewood (which is in pierce county). this guy would just sit in his car, engine off but listening to the radio. he was an “older” guy, probably between 60 and 80 or so, and someone — i don’t know if it was him, or someone else — moved the car from time to time. he was never sitting in the driver’s seat when i saw him…

and i saw him, in exactly the same place, in exactly the same car, doing exactly the same thing, day or night, winter or summer, rain or shine, for EASILY ten years, and, since we lived in the house for 17 years, there’s a good chance that it was fifteen years…

i was at the old house this afternoon, and i drove by the spot, and, sure enough, there he was, sitting in exactly the same spot… someone had moved the car, and the back hatch was open, but he was there, sitting in the passenger seat, listening to the radio…

i imagine that it could have been me, if i had been like 95% of the other people who survive having a brain injury… and i wonder why people like rick and sketch and simon are the ones who get to die, while i, who have had every opportunity to die, stubbornly defy all odds, and stay alive. 😒

aparajita update

i got prices from arun this morning. it looks like around $300.00 USD plus shipping for 40 dozen units (which works out to around $1.75 retail per unit, before shipping). why they didn’t send me the shipping charges is still a mystery, but it probably has something to do with COVID19, as that is the excuse for just about everything, these days.

at this point, i’m going to assume that the shipping (air freight from bangalore) is going to be TERRIFICALLY expensive, possibly amounting to more than the total cost of the incense itself. if that is the case, i may want to get more incense, to even things out a little.

i should also get in touch with the three or four other incense sellers that have contacted me, recently, and see if they’re willing to front some money for some rare, desirable incense, at which point i could, theoretically, purchase more than 40 dozen.

fascism has taken hold

we are no longer a democracy, or even a constitutional republic. we are, now, a fascist dictatorship, under the rule of donald john trump.

if donald john trump decides that the election is unfair, he will make such a decision once the election is complete. if he doesn’t win, that will mean that the election is unfair.

we no longer have a president.

we have a dictator.

this has been announced, today, by his mouthpiece, kayleigh mcenany:

also, today, nancy pelosi told postmaster general louis dejoy to put back the post office infrastructure that he, recently, ripped out, in an attempt to thwart people being able to vote by mail, something donald john trump has clearly admitted to wanting done.

his response was to say that he has no intention of doing that.

if he doesn’t win, the election is “rigged”, but even if there’s a democratic landslide, he’s making sure that he’s going to win anyway he can, even if it includes cheating.

if that’s not fascism, i don’t know what is.

former president barack obama says that we can still save the country by voting.

fascists don’t let you “vote” them out of power. that’s not the way fascism works. 😠

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Phishing Emails Used to Deploy KONNI Malware

if you are in the habit of using micro$not software, particularly the office varients (word, excell, power point, etc.), you should beware of the new “phishing” (specifically, “spear-phishing”) attack which uses an infected microsoft word document as the vector.

solution: don’t use micro$hit.

alternative solution: don’t use windoesn’t, or, if you do, don’t open ANY files that you receive in email, from ANYONE, if you weren’t expecting it, keep your antivirus software up to date, backup everything, and pray that something doesn’t happen anyway.

this is just the most recent extension of the exploder control controversy, started by my friend fred, back when W95 was current… except that, now, instead of calling it “OLE or “ActiveX” they’re calling it “VBA“, and it can do a lot more nefarious things to your computer than the exploder control could do — and the exploder control was relatively benign, in that it ONLY shut down your computer without your say so…

but micro$lop made a BIG OL’ fuss about it, when fred actually got it signed, because of the fact that it used ActiveX APIs in EXACTLY the way they were supposed to be used, and the automated process of signing didn’t take into account what the control actually DID, and whether doing that thing, at that time, was actually USEFUL… 😂🤣

by the way, the exploder control was SPECIFICALLY designed to work with W95 and IE3, so, unless you’re browsing on your grandfather’s computer, you’ve got nothing to worry about. 😉

this is more what i was thinking about

i’ve done some more work with this and now it seems to be going more in the direction i was intending… but it’s got a bunch more work done to it, so i would expect it to at least be different than it was before, and, apart from some more glaringly obvious differences, for the most part, it is the same piece of music… and i like that.

Seven Different Tracks, Manipulated and Combined (with a subliminal message)

as you can probably tell, instead of being five tracks, it is now seven, and it has had the addition of the subliminal message, which is somewhat more complex than i originally imagined. the seven tracks are “This is the day”, “The problem with growing boys”, “Sing to jeezis”, “WWJD radio”, “It ain’t over yet”, “Veggie tales – the selfish song”, and “I’m a little weenie”.

yes, i was trying to make a statement with the choice of tracks. no, that is not the subliminal message. keep guessing.

all of the tracks are heard forwards, and only once, with the exception of “It ain’t over yet” which is heard once reversed, and once forward, at the same time. all of them have had significant modifications to their pitch, speed, tempo, and/or a combination of those things, in order to fit them within the required parameters.

still more…

this is not finished, and it’s sort of not going where i intended, originally, but i like it anyway.

originally, i intended it to be A LOT more chaotic, and incorporate at least twice as many source tracks, and then i intended to put a “subliminal message” into it, which you could only hear if you sped the track up about 500 times, and muted all the other tracks…

and played it backwards…

of course, this would be impossible to do, because of the chaotic nature of sound, and the fact that i intended the subliminal message to be on its own track, and whispered, and then stretched 500 times, which would render it, for all intents and purposes, the same thing as silence…

homeopathic music…

which would, then, be completely and totally overwhelmed by the absolute chaos of the other tracks.

bounded chaotic mixing produces strange stability.

and what ended up happening, instead, is that the strange stability that is produced by bounded chaotic mixing appeared a lot sooner than i expected, and it sounds completely different than what i had envisioned.

as i said, i like it, but it’s not what i originally set out to create.

and, don’t worry… i haven’t put the subliminal message in yet, so you can relax. 😉

music is frustrating some times, but it never ceases to be fun…

or at least distracting…

anyway, what i’ve got so far is called
200811 Five Different Tracks, Manipulated and Combined

which is fine for a “contemporary classical” piece of music, but probably not what this is going to end up being called.

Honour is bestowed on those who deserve it

don’t “honour” anybody, even your parents, if they don’t respect your freedom to be unique. 🐉

more new music

Honour Is Bestowed On Those Who Deserve It

ETA 200811: it’s different today than it was yesterday. if you listened to it yesterday, but not today, flush your cache and listen to it again. it’s different.

at this point i’m going to have to start planning a release, eventually.

Blob Lardstone

ETA: bonus track also using bob larson sound sources: SATAN!

Pat Robertson’s Weird Way of Doing Sex

Emergency

171007 stairway

Θέληση

No Turning Back

heksenbotar!

the new house has a slime mold in the back yard!

200806 heksenbotar
200806 heksenbotar
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold
200806 slime-mold

apparently, it is triggered by “over-watering”, among other things… which makes sense, because i have run the sprinkler in or around that location for 4 days, now, including two days ago, when i “forgot” and ran the sprinkler for two or three hours… and last night it rained, so… 😉

200806 heksenbotar
200806 heksenbotar

in dutch it’s called “heksenbotar” which means “witches butter”. in scandanavian folklore, it is referred to as the “vomit of troll cats“. in english it’s called “dog’s vomit”. scientifically, it is called Fuligo septica. more information at Fuligo septica, the dog vomit slime mold.

AAAAAAHHH!!! NEW MUSIC!!!

so, i got a bunch of “christian” kiddie records on freecycle. they were actually CDs, but there were about 20 of them, and, usually, i collect these things off freecycle, to protect actual children from having to be brainwashed influenced by them. if they’re really awful, or if i think they have useful sound-source material, i rip them, and, then, usually, i shred and/or recycle them.

this is what happens when i think they might “have useful sound-source material”. 😈

it’s called No Turning Back and it makes me laugh… a lot

the new house

the new house has water that is supplied from a local artesian well.

this means that, for the first time in 40 years, i am drinking water from the tap, CONSENTUALLY.

for A LONG time now — probably closing in on 40 years — if there was artesian well water, i would prefer that to anything else. if it wasn’t available, for a while, i used a filtration sysem. it’s not that i’m freaked out about flouride in the tap water, it’s just that i know the pipes underneath my house.

i discovered well #5 through whispered hippie lore, shortly after i arrived in bellingham in 1979, but i didn’t actually learn its location until probably 10 years later, when i was hanging around with ruth, who took me there a number of times. it was during this time that i got my first 5 gallon bottle, one that i liberated from the advertising company i worked for.

then i got a second 5 gallon bottle… and a third… and a fourth… and a fifth… and a sixth… and a seventh, which came to me shortly before we moved.

i haven’t been to well #5 since we moved. 5 of the bottles are out in the shed. the other two went away with the old house garbage.

we knew about the water source before we moved in. that was one of the deciding factors. basically, it saves the gas money to get to lynnwood and back… which was one of the reasons for the sixth and seventh bottles in the first place.

we did NOT know that the house has central air conditioning. we knew that it had a heat pump/air conditioner upstairs, but not throughout the whole house. when we took possession, the heater was turned off, and when i turned it on, it came up in “heat” mode, and the air conditioner upstairs didn’t work at all… so, we fell back on the old reliable fans, that we had from the old place, and figured we’d deal with it later. when later came, about a month later, i called a HVAC specialist to come out and evaluate. he reset the computer and taught us how to use it, and now we have central AC throughout the whole house… it turns out that the previous owner (who had the system installed in 2018) hadn’t been using the air conditioner, and had only been using the system for heat. the air conditioner upstairs didn’t work because, if one of the controllers is set to cool and the other is set to heat, even if it is turned off, neither of them work, and you have to turn the whole system off to reset the computer before it works again.

i have NEVER lived in a house with central air conditioning. at best i have had one of those air conditioners that hang out a window, or ones that have a vent to a window. to me, a house with central air conditioning was “fancy”, and the only people i KNEW who lived in a house with central AC were my aunt and uncle, who were lanndowner/farmers in central illinois. even my grandparents, who all lived in central illinois, didn’t have central AC.

i suppose this may be the price we have to pay to live in the vicinity of DJ, who came into the kitchen — AGAIN — about a week ago — if i hadn’t been there, the dog would have followed him — and, according to moe who talked to the neighbours on the other side, they think DJ may have taken a shit in their fountain… it could be, he wanders the neighbourhood with no pants… 😒 we put a digital lock on the front door, that automatically locks when someone who has the digital key passes through, so that there will be no more unwanted kid or dog in the kitchen. we’ve had to put up a visual barrier (shade cloth) on the fence, to prevent their dogs from bothering our dogs.

but the more we do to isolate ourselves, and fend off their kid, the more it just enables them to slack off and be lousy pet owners and worse parents. i’m afraid it’s just a matter of time before we have to call CPS, the police, or both. i’m aware of the fact that “the subgenius needs slack”, but when it comes to neglecting your handicapped kid, it’s going too far.

whew?

the latest about aparajita:

no good news, i’m afraid. i’m down to my last two boxes of aparajita, and then i am COMPLETELY OUT… for retail sale.

(my “personal stash”, of around a kilo, is the exception, of course.) 😉

HOWEVER, i am cautiously optimistic. an email i sent on 12th april has JUST been responded to by mavana’s representative in india, a guy named arun, with whom i have dealt extensively, in the past… 15 to 20 years ago…

he didn’t respond to any of my direct questions regarding aparajita, he asked how i was getting along in these times of global pandemic…

the global pandemic is fine, and all that, but I WANT MY APARAJITA, GODDAMNIT!

and it’s not JUST for me: i’ve got two other retailers who are breathing down my neck for it, and, just a couple of months ago, i had to PREVENT some unknown miscreant person from swooping in and buying ALL my remaining stock, just prior to ravi shankar’s birthday celebration — the only reason he wasn’t successful is that the first of his two credit cards was declined, which gave me the chance to go in to the web site and make the changes necessary to prevent him from doing so again — so i KNOW the demand is out there.

comet NEOWISE

200719 comet NEOWISE
200719 comet NEOWISE

comet NEOWISE, as seen from approximately 47Β°18’16.5″N 121Β°06’07.4″W. the next time we’ll see it is in 6,700 years.

it was visible with the naked eye, but this photo was taken by my wife and her awesome camera which is controlled by her phone… the camera and the phone are separate objects, linked by bluetooth. she can make adjustments to the camera without actually touching the camera, which is essential when you’re talking about extended exposure times. this particular exposure was around 15 seconds…

also, the lack of having to develop the film and make prints before discovering how awesome (or shitty) the picture is, adds A LOT to the whole experience. 😉

which reminds me…

XKCD - Slide Trombone
XKCD – Slide Trombone

a long time ago — probably mid-1970s or thereabouts — i was at the Marrowstone Music Festival at Fort Flagler State Park (which should give those people who know about such things a much clearer idea of exactly when this occurred) for a two week “intensive”, where we learned, rehearsed, an at the end of the two weeks, performed a concert of orchestral works.

a lot of the trombone parts were mostly rests, with occasional blasts of fanfare, or glissandos, or other suchlike “trombone” things. trombones in a classical orchestra have a reputation for being lazy, and jokers, but that’s only because we have nothing else to do! nobody writes for trombones in a classical orchestra setting!

it’s true! beethoven, the quintessential classical composer, wrote NINE symphonies for “full orchestra”, but he only wrote one piece that had parts for trombones, the Three Equale for Four Trombones, which is one of the most beautiful pieces in existence.

for the most part, the classical period was before what we know as the modern “trombone” existed, and, at best, the “trombone” parts that exist are usually parts for serpent or ophecleide which have been transposed.

after one morning rehearsal — where the trombones had rests and didn’t play at all for the 4½ hours of the morning rehearsal — we were all feeling a little punchy as we went to lunch. for some time, i had been warning the other trombonists that, if they left their instruments out, on the stage, when we weren’t there, something bad could happen to their instruments… i was thinking something along the lines of “someone bumped into your horn and now the horn has a disabling slide injury that will cost several hundred dollars to repair” or something like that, and i always put MY horn away, when i was not actively holding it in my hand, but, despite my almost constant, annoying reminders, the other trombonists left their horns on the stage as we went to lunch.

so, i developed a plan…

while the other trombone players were eating lunch, i attacked their horns.

trombones that have “attachments” (i.e. every trombone that is LOWER THAN a “tenor” trombone) have at least one valve, which lowers the trombone’s pitch. when that valve is not activated (most of the time), the trombone plays in B-flat, but when the valve is activated, it plays in F (or some other key, depending on other things). most trombone players that have a valve, only use it occasionally, to play notes that they would, otherwise, be unable to play reliably. the valve section of tubing is like a separate little bit of the trombone, that is only used occasionally. it has its own tuning slide, and, when the horn is being played without the valve, the extra tubing is sealed off from the main part of the instrument.

what i did was remove the tuning slides for the valve sections of their horns, and filled the valve sections with water. then, turning the horns upside down, i replaced the valve section tuning slide, and placed the horn, right side up, on the stand, so that it looked like it hadn’t been touched.

when they came back from lunch, they picked up their horns, blew a few notes, and then cycled the valve, which released the water into the main part of their horns…

BLLLOOOOP!!!

then they “emptied their spit valves”, thinking that their horns just had water that accumulates when they went to lunch… after about 5 minutes of emptying their spit valves, they gave up, and took the slides off and dumped the rest of the water out of their instruments…

all the while i was busting a gut trying NOT to laugh, which, among other things, would have disturbed the rest of the people in the rehearsal, some of whom were actually rehearsing by this time…

and, you know what?

they never left their horns out on the stage after that… 🤣

pitchers

string ball
string ball

this is my current string ball. it’s about 5 years old, and it already looks different because i’ve added string to it. i use a very loose definition of “string”: there’s some metal cable and a fair amount of plastic in there as well… it’s a “string-like” ball, in that regard, but at this point nobody would know unless they actually unwound it… which, under the worst of circumstances, is very unlikely.

in the past, i have been the owner of a couple of string balls that were considerably bigger… one was big enough that, when i was holding it in my lap, you couldn’t see my head. i’m hoping that this one will reach that size, or bigger, eventually. 😉

outside our new house
outside our new house

our new house has a whole bunch of interesting things that were left behind by the previous owners. i get the impression that i would NOT have gotten along with them in the slightest (they were #drumpf-supporters), but this is one of the things they left behind. it’s better that way.

office
office

this is my office. it’s also the music room.

office
office

music & computers
music & computers

this is the music room part. i’ve got my piano and my sythesizer set up, for the first time since i got married (which was 22 years ago), and, because of the fact that i bought a mixer in the interim, i now have it set up so that i can use the synthesizer (a yamaha DX7) as a synthesizer AND as a MIDI-controller. as a MIDI-controller, i’ve got old, familiar Reason on my laptop, and i’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s MIDI-controllable on my tablet, which i haven’t played with at all, because i haven’t had room to set it up. i got the DX7 a SuperMAX+ upgrade a couple of years ago, which was also after the battery died, so i’m going to have to learn how to use it all over again from scratch, and i’ve got to reload all of the stock noises (which i’ve got, thanks to a MIDI-controlled patch library on my laptop), but that’s part of the “fun” of COVID19 lockdown… i’ve got the time to do that sort of thing…

this is the result of the “shakedown-cruise” of the audio studio, called The Diambola Mikado Fun Pack Mix #1*. it’s made from ONE of the samples in The Diambola Mikado Fun Pack by Ergo Phizmiz, which is taken from his work, called The Diambola Mikado.

200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA

last month i was going crazy, so monique took me to see the National Wild Horses Monument in quincy.

200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA

200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
it was on the top of a bluff overlooking the columbia river, in eastern washington.

milestones
milestones

milestones
milestones

i don’t know why this photo came out so fuzzy, compared to the other ones… but, unfortunately, it’s the only one i got of this particular milestone, so you might have to squint to see it…

200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA

the other day i had occasion to wander through Celebration Park in auburn. when i first lived in auburn, in the early 1970s, what is now celebration park was a huge, essentially vacant lot that had some abandoned businesses on it. nobody wanted it as residential property, because it was in the flight path for the airport. at some point, in the distant past (before 1960) i think the property had been an airfield, or something like that, but, by the time i got there, that was long gone, as well. in the ’90s, when i was in bellingham, the city bought the property and created celebration park, but it still has a lot of the same aspects that made it a vacant lot, including a lot of wooded areas where homeless people camp, and drug addicts shoot up…

which is where i found this… interesting… little tidbit.

200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA

200704 Ross Lake
200704 Ross Lake

on the 4th of july, we went on a road trip, so that the dogs wouldn’t freak out because of all the fireworks. we went through the Ross Lake National Recreation Area and saw this waterfall.
BOUNDED CHAOTIC MIXING PRODUCES STRANGE STABILITY!

i have been around the sun 60 times
i have been around the sun 60 times

my 60th time around the sun was celebrated on saturday. never, in my wildest imaginations did i ever think i was going to be 60 years old… in fact, my imaginings never exceeded age 40, which means that i’ve been living new and unimagined territory for 20 years now.

we celebrated by having a “gathering” in our back yard. kiki, sasha, stuart, d. barnes and jesse, his son, and hobbit and lucifer, his… partner? i’m not sure exactly what their status is, but they’ve been together for 1719 years or so… and they all brought musical instruments, and we had a “jam session” in the back yard. monique made the german chocolate cake (my favourite), and cupcakes with raspberry butter cream frosting, made with raspberries from our back yard…

it was good to see those folks, after such a long time, and it was really good to play music with them.

* i am MORTIFIED! i read the title as “The Diambola Mikado” and named my piece “The Diambola Mikado…” and then i find out that the name is actually “The Dimbola Mikado”… i’ve already released my mix, and even presented it to mr. phizmiz — who didn’t say anything, which makes me wonder whether he’s just being polite, or whether he didn’t notice… oh GAWD, whatever am i to do??? 😭

okay, i don’t usually do this, but…

i’ve never seen the movie “Soylent Green” (although i have read the book on which it was “loosely based”, called Make Room! Make Room!), but i’ve heard all the quotes, and seen a bunch of youtube excerpts…

so, when they first came out with a product called “soylent”, i was skeptical, to say the least.

but then, i had occasion to start drinking a “protein shake” on a regular basis, and i discovered that, while ALL the others had “sugar” as one of their first five ingredients, soylent contains NO sugar… yes, it has other sweeteners, but they are not within the first five ingredients.

and it tastes good.

then, they came out with soylent mint and chocolate, in a green bottle… “soylent green”…

i’m sure some executive, in some penthouse office somewhere, is chortling with evil glee at that one. 😼

and it tastes FANTASTIC!

seriously, i could get addicted to this stuff!

Soylent Green - chocolate & mint - YUM!
Soylent Green – chocolate & mint – YUM!

i realise it’s got a name that gives you nightmares, but it’s really good! you should try it… in part, BECAUSE of the fact that it’s name gives you nightmares! 😎👍

creativity… at last!

i finished a sculpture, yesterday.

i’m tempted to call it “Sweet Darling”, because that’s what the first, random person i didn’t know said when i showed it to her…

200625 sculpture
200625 sculpture

but it’s not particularly appropriate, and she was a high school music teacher for 30 years, so it may not be an entirely accurate critique…

200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up
200625 close-up

maybe “Bob”-o-phone, or Tele-“Bob”… 😉

the date of up

today is our 22nd wedding anniversary. i got monique a yellow rose tree to replace some of the cat-killing lillies that are in our front yard… or possibly to screen the (finally finished, two months late) fence from the outside dogs… who HATE the fact that, when they come to fence-fight, our dogs go inside, or don’t go inside, but don’t fence-fight, and get TREATS for not fence-fighting… i suppose i’ll let her decide where to put it, but those are the two spots i would choose.

as i said, the fence is finally finished… only two months later than it was supposed to be, but it makes SO! MUCH! DIFFERENCE! i actually watched DJ come up on the front porch (nobody was home but me), and when he got no response, he went around the side of the house, came across the 6-foot fence, and DID NOT come up on the back deck, or start hammering on the sliding glass door! 👍 seriously, i feel sorry for the kid, because his parents are totally overwhelmed, and have only the slightest clues how to deal with an autistic kid… and, apparently (i haven’t actually seen anything, but i’ve heard WAY more than enough to get a good idea), part of the way that they DO have of dealing with him, involves a fair amount of yelling and hitting… 🙁

i still haven’t found a place that i can walk, comfortably, when i’m on mushrooms, but, because of the fact that we’re, essentially, surrounded by state forests, watersheds and suchlike, i’m sure that i’ll find something, eventually. it’s been tough, though, particularly with the voluntary quarantining, social distancing, and constantly decreasing supply, i’ve been wanting to take mushrooms A LOT more than i have, recently.

i’m making a sculpture out of found objects, in a disused gohonzon that i’ve been carrying around for AT LEAST 20 years. so far i’ve used two 11 balls from two different sets of pool balls, a single, spike-heel, patent leather shoe that i found in the parking lot of the hospital where my father-in-law died, a grey ball from a track-ball-mouse-thing, several random pages from a gideon bible, a pair of reading glasses, a couple of old, but new-in-container antenna decorations from ivar’s fish and chips, a fishing lure, a couple of random vacuum tubes, a bunch of organ stops, a bright green, micro-fibre duster, and various parts of an old telephone… and liberal quantities of hot glue. it’s almost finished, but i still have to figure out what to make the “mouth” out of, and i’ve got to take apart the phone to get the cradle for the receiver out of it, because that’s the part that i’m using. i’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks now. it feels strange to be “creative” after such a long time. but it feels strangely like home. it’s really good to have a workshop that i know where everything is (even though i’m still unpacking stuff), and not have to move stuff out of the way, or figure out where to put the other unfinished projects before starting.

it’s taken almost four years, but i think the united states is beginning to realise that, possibly, electing drumpf may have been a mistake… although we didn’t ACTUALLY elect him, the electoral college did that, but that’s an entirely different story. and it’s taken the fact that drumpf WAS IMPEACHED, along with 150,000 needless deaths from COVID19 (and climbing hourly) because of his incompetence, constant, blatantly overt lying, corruption and crony-ism, and weeks of protest over dramatically increasing police brutality… and we’re still not getting rid of him and reversing course on everything he put in place, we’re just talking about the possibility that, maybe, it might have been a mistake to elect him. 😠

and it doesn’t look like, if he’s actually voted out of office in november (which there is still a signifiant probability that he won’t be, for one reason or another), it’s going to get significantly better any time soon, despite the fact that, IF he’s voted out of office, the replacement will be a democrat. joe biden is the presumptive democratic candidate, and the only reason why joe biden is looking AT ALL good, at this point, is because drumpf is looking so PHENOMENALLY awful. joe biden waffles too much on things like cannabis and “black lives matter”, is less than exemplary in his recollection of his personal contributions to history, has a tendency to get confused and/or forget what he’s saying which, some have said, is a precursor to dementia, and he has a creepy, huggy, kissy, fondling attitude towards, especially, younger women and girls, that makes my skin crawl. 😖 unfortunately, from my point of view, the only logical candidate is vermin supreme, and if this weren’t such an important election for drumpf to LOSE, i would vote for him without reservation.

incense

since monday, 200608, i have gotten SEVENTEEN new incense orders, which works out to 3.4 new orders a day, in 5 days. 🤨

under ordinary circumstances, i get 3 or 4 new orders A MONTH. 😖

someone must have mentioned my web site on their podcast, or something.

also, it may be that someone mentioned my web site on a podcast about ravi shankar or the beatles, because by far and away the most incense i have sold since 200608, has been aparajita. now there are approximately 35 boxes left before i run completely out. 😒

MUA

today is the third day of NOT using Kontact, the MUA that i have been using pretty much ever since i switched to linux, back in the dark ages.

i really liked kontact. it did EXACTLY what i wanted it to do: it handled all of my email addresses in a logical way, made it easy to switch from one email address to another, worked well with my business set-up, my installation of sigrot

but it had a fatal flaw which i have been trying (and, mostly, succeeding) to work around for quite some time now, and that is its use of akonadi, which is the interface between the MUA and the SQL database that lives behind it.

for the first few years i didn’t even notice a problem, but then i upgraded my operating system, and everything blew up. i ended up installing the new operating system from scratch, and summarily trashing three or four years worth of collected email. it was a difficult process, but i got through it.

through the years, i have tried installing a number of MUAs, in order to try and get away from kontact, but either they didn’t do what i wanted, or they simply didn’t work at all, so i gave up and went back to fighting with kontact…

“the devil you know”, right?

after that, there were a number of times, primarily during updates or upgrades, when i had to battle with kontact/akonadi/SQL, to get it to work, and i had to trash a number of years of collected email at least one more time before reaching the point at which i am, now.

four days ago, i ran the operating system updates, and, after i was done, i tried starting up kontact, and nothing happened. i tried starting it from the konsole (rather than “clicking” on the “icon”, which is how you start it in the GUI), got a vaguely worded, cryptic message about being unable to start “hebrew.wgz.sizes.sonnet.plugins.hspell”, and then it hung up.

which is very odd, because i have never even installed the hebrew language pack, and have no idea why it would even be attempting to start the hebrew spelling dictionary…

i tried asking Kubuntu Forums for solutions, and got the same answer that i have gotten every OTHER time i have asked about how to fix kontact, which is “kontact is broken, install thunderbird instead”.

so i tried installing thunderbird (AGAIN), and, after having some “words” with my operating system about whether this new piece of software actually worked (or not), i successfully installed and more-or-less correctly configured it, and started using it.

it’s a little different than kontact… or, at least, my perception is that it is a little different than kontact. after some futzing around, i learned how to configure it to use more than one email address — actually, i may have done it “the other way” first, because the terminology for “accounts” and “identities” is slightly different on kontact — and, as far as i can tell, there is no easy way to add an “X-” header line to outgoing email, like there is in kontact, but that may just be because i have yet to find the place where such a thing is configured.

and, then, yesterday (after i had, more or less, given up on kontact), i discovered that kontact actually worked… it had been a few days since i had given up trying to start it, because of “hebrew.wgz.sizes.sonnet.plugins.hspell” not working, and, without thinking about it, i “clicked” on the “icon” and kontact sprang back to life!

so, the first thing i did was transfer all of my contacts, and most of my RSS feeds (i got bored and antsy, so i’ll finish them later) to thunderbird.

for some time, now, when i “quit” kontact (select “quit” from the “file” menu), i have had to go to the konsole, and “kill” the process that kontact was running, so that it would actually quit. i also discovered that “kill”ing kontact STILL allows incoming mail to be downloaded, a process that i don’t completely understand (it may have something to do with akonadi interacting with the POP3 mailserver).

also, for even longer (i recall at least two kontact upgrades that have had this behaviour, prior to the one i am currently (not) using), when i first start kontact, after booting up my computer in the morning, about 98.9% of the time it gets to the point where it’s displaying correctly on the screen, but before i have the chance to do anything, it puts up a dialogue box that says that there has been a fatal error and kontact will quit now. the dialogue doesn’t say what the fatal error is, and it only has an “OK” button, which makes everything disappear when i click it. under this circumstance, when i run “ps -u salamandir | grep kontact” in the konsole, kontact is, actually, not running (unlike when i select “quit” from the “file” menu), and if i restart kontact, it works without any further problems…

except that, sometimes (usually at least once a day), it freezes for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, and when it does, there’s a very good chance (greater than half the time) that it will crash. usually this happens when i have just selected a message to reply to, and/or usually it happens when it is in the process of downloading new mail or RSS feeds. sometimes i can anticipate when it’s going to happen, when i have to reply to a message and it is in the process of downloading.

thunderbird doesn’t have these problem. when i select “quit” from the “file” menu, in thunderbird, it actually quits, and doesn’t keep downloading mail anyway. thunderbird doesn’t crash for no reason, or freeze and crash. it may not be kontact, but on the other hand, it’s not kontact.

my impression is that the operating system struggles when there is more than one MUA running, and, because of the difficulties i’ve been having getting kontact to quit, i don’t like to keep both of them running for long periods of time, especially since, apparently, kontact’s interface with the POP3 mailserver takes precedence, even after i “quit” and “kill” it, and even when i start up thunderbird first (which it shouldn’t, but it goes to support the fact that “kontact is broken”).

Rule #3

Rule #3 states “Spammers are stooOOpid.”

if you need an example of rule #3, i have one for you:

the spammer sent mail from a computer called… get this…

UCEBOX.CO.ZA

😝😂🤣🤪🤦😠🤬

for those of you who still don’t “get” it, not only is the computer in south africa, home to all things shady and illegal, but “UCE” stands for “Unsolicited Commercial Email”… in other words, “spam”.

it’s as though they’re saying, “fuck yeah, we’re so gawd-damned proud of the illegal spam we send, that we’re going to name our computer after it, and nobody will care, even if they do notice!”

people should have to take an intelligence test before being allowed into the human race.

seriously.

in response to the murder of George Floyd by police

200531 Serve and Protect sculpture, Salt Lake City
200531 Serve and Protect sculpture, Salt Lake City

increasingly violent protests have been escalating globally. if we had all listened to colin kaepernick, way back when, we might have avoided this.

meanwhile, drumpf has issued an executive order making antifa a “terrorist organisation” — meaningless, as antifa isn’t an “organisation”, but convenient, because now drumpf can claim anybody is antifa, and have them arrested — and inciting violence on twitter with rhetoric recycled from the republican side of the ’60s-era race riots.

and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” means the same thing 50 years ago as it does now.

COVID19 has facilitated increasing fascism. it’s just a matter of time before drumpf declares martial law, and/or someone assassinates him.

something that would be supremely ironic, in drumpf’s case: “assassinate” is a word that begins with not one, but two “ass”es…

ahhhh! now we find out…

my newly redesigned site uses the enfold theme, which has faulty (under certain circumstances) caching and optimisation routines, so we use lightspeed cache, which doesn’t have those (particular) faults, and works better (under certain circumstances).

except, last year, prior to my site being redesigned (when i was still using the avada theme), i was told (by SOMEONE) to disable lightspeed cache, because it had some sort of incompatibility with… something…

so, i went through the site redesign with a disabled lightspeed plugin. no problem, until i put in the enfold theme, and whatever circumstances that cause the caching and optimisation routines to fail, were happening, which was the cause of the first go-round.

turning on the lightspeed cache fixed the first go-round, but whatever incompatibility i was trying to avoid by having the lightspeed plugin disabled, took effect, which was the cause of the second go-round.

which was further confused by the fact that part of my routine for fixing the first go-round was good enough that it fixed the second go-round well enough that i didn’t find out about it until it was too late.

what i found out, today, via my web developer, is that the people who make the lightspeed cache and webhost python (my host provider) have their own battle going on: on webhost python’s servers (which include mine), the lightspeed plugin causes expired transients to multiply and duplicate. lightspeed says it’s python’s fault. python disagrees…

on the record…

OFF the record, python agrees that there is a bug in their system that they haven’t found yet… compounded by the fact that it was THEIR ERROR which caused the third go-round… 😠 but it’s not for me to say “i told you so”, especially with my already somewhat precarious position with this particular host provider…

and so, i’m caught in the middle. 😒

apparently, for the time being anyway, the plan is to disable the caching modules on both enfold AND lightspeed, keep an eye on the database (which hasn’t blown up since implementing this plan), clear the expired transients manually, and examine other options for a cache.

😒

oy! why won’t this just go away?

at midnight (which was 3:00 in the morning, florida time), i got a message saying that the database was blowing up again. they said it was 183 GIGABYTES

because of the fact that i was asleep (thankfully), i didn’t actually read the message until 7:00 my time (10:00 florida time). i immediately logged into my web server, and discovered that the MySQL disk usage was lower than i have ever seen it before, which is to say 253 MEGABYTES

what this tells me is that there’s something else going on besides this whole “enfold-theme-not-caching-correctly” horseshit.

which is bad.

it also tells me that, whatever it is, we haven’t actually found it… we may have found another problem, but not the one for which we’re looking… yet…

which is bad, but not as bad as it could be.

it also tells me that, whatever it is that is going wrong, the cronjob that we put in place to solve the problem, works, REGARDLESS of the actual problem.

which is good.

but, when it comes right down to it, it is not good for me to be so stressed out about something over which i have very little control.

which is bad.

something has to be done. this is ridiculous.

oh, but it couldn’t have ended there, now, could it?

and the answer is, a big, fat, OF COURSE NOT! 😒

i woke up this morning, and couldn’t log in to my web site… at, like, SEVEN in the fucking morning, i was wide awake because i couldn’t log in to my web site.

at NINE, the web designer gets back to me. he can’t login either. apparently the host provider has disabled the config file that makes everything work — i login using SSH, and there’s the file… everything LOOKS okay, but… the host provider apparently did SOMETHING to my web site. as far as i can tell, everything works, sort of, until you get one or two pages deep, at which point it gives me a “unable to connect to database” error.

😠

so, i file a ticket with the host provider. a couple hours later, (all the while, i’m sweating bullets) they get back to me, apparently, the database blew up AGAIN. they disabled the config file so that nobody could use the web site, because the database was growing by gigabytes A SECOND.

😠😠

eventually (seriously, they took most of the day to UN-disable the config file), the web designer went in and turned off everything having to do with the built-in, screwy, does-not-work, enfold caching and optimisation routines, turned OFF “store transients”, and set a cronfile to delete three rows of a table in the database, every hour.

😠😠😠😠‼‼‼

this better be the last of it for a while, because i’m just about ready to throw in the towel.

then, on the other hand, there’s moe…

moe has added the “famous author” rôle to her ever expanding list of hats, since her (groundbreaking) book on animal behaviour came out. she’s been travelling, on average, once a month, to various different conventions and conferences, plugging her book and her “new” way of treating animals… which is, basically, “do unto others as you would have them do to you”, with modern branding.

but this whole COVID19 pandemic has put a wrench into the works, and all of the conferences at which she was scheduled to speak for the next 6 months cancelled, which left her with a significant gap in her income. never one to be put down for long, she and a few friends (all of whom had never done this before) decided that they were going to put on a virtual veterinary conference.

seems logical, right?

and, literally, EVERYBODY she talked to about this idea was in favour of it, to the point where she has major corporations paying for top-level speakers so that they can get a plug in the program. and when i say “top-level”, i mean, for example, monique got a call, out of the blue, from Temple Grandin, who had heard about her idea and wanted to help.

all this happened around the middle of march.

the virtual veterinary conference started today. moe is giving 4 hours of talks, as well as handling IT problems — they had an app built for the conference. the developers said they could easily handle 10,000 end users. the conference currently has just over 700 users and systems are blowing up EVERYWHERE. they estimate that 25% of registered users can’t login to see the conference live (they’ll have access to recorded content, so it’s not an entire loss, but…). fortunately, moe says all the presenters can log in, so the stuff will get recorded, but she also says that the developers’ solution to this was to “reschedule for next week”, which IS NOT going to happen with a conference that is already in progress

so, it’s almost as though moe has gone away for the weekend, even though she’s right across the hall from me, at this very moment.

UPDATE: it’s now 2:30 pm, all the speakers have spoken for today (because they’re on eastern standard time), and they got off to a rocky start, but it got better, and they were able to do the second half of the show without a hitch.

tomorrow moe gets to be temple grandin’s “wing man”… 👍👍👍‼‼

database update

the database is fixed. 😌

what happened? that’s complex.

recently, i had my web site redesigned. the new design uses the “Enfold” theme, which uses a lot of what they call “transients” to maintain the look and feel of the site, regardless of the platform on which it’s being viewed. “transients” are sort of like cookies, except that you can’t opt out of them, and they don’t contain any personally identifying information. some of these “transients” expire immediately when a person leaves the web site, and others persist, for a few minutes to several days. they persist on your computer AND on my server… in the one of the tables in the database…

the “Enfold” theme has automatic caching and garbage collection routines that are supposed to handle these expired “transients”, but, because it’s a wordpress theme, it doesn’t do all the jobs very well… or, sometimes, at all… which is why i also use a caching plugin that actually, you know, works ALL the time, and not only some of the time… 😒

except that, for some reason, prior to my site upgrade, “someone” (and i have yet to identify who, but it was either my web designer or my host provider) recommended that i disable the caching plugin, because of some issue with the new version of wordpress… or something like that… as i said, i don’t remember. i distinctly remember disabling the plugin on someone’s recommendation, i just don’t remember exactly who, when or why. 😖

one way or the other, my caching plugin was disabled, which meant that, when i installed the new theme, it was relying on the not-working-the-way-it-should, internal cache… which, basically, didn’t work, causing the table in the database to expand beyond my disk space allocation. 🤯

it didn’t show up in my cPanel because i wasn’t looking at the SQL disk space, which is “below the fold” of my browser, and i just didn’t scroll down far enough to see it. 😕 during the nightly automatic backup, it was overwhelming the server for everybody, not just me. i had to pay my web designer for two days of poking through piles of arcane SQL code and deleting bits and pieces of it. it was not fun.

the solution was to enable the caching plugin(!), and to install a “transient manager” plugin, so that i can delete the expired transients from the wordpress dashboard, and not from the SQL database,… which requires A LOT more “knowing what to look for” and “knowing how to delete stuff without damaging other stuff” than i have on board, personally.

aparajita

ravi shankar’s 100th birthday was the 7th of april.

ravi shankar’s favourite incense was aparajita.

at this point, i believe i am responsible for THE ONLY retail store in the united states which sells aparajita, online.

i am aware of several local retail stores which sell aparajita in their store, but not online. i’m fairly sure that there are others, in other cities. i am also aware of at least two retail stores (i won’t give them the satisfaction of a link) who say that they sell aparajita online, but they’re either perennially “out of stock”, or flat out rip people off, and hope that nobody notices. i have no doubt that there are others of that sort out there, as well.

recently, i had to prevent a guy from los angeles from buying ALL of my aparajita. he said he was working with ravi shankar’s family and the ravi shankar foundation on a special 100th birthday celebration. problem was, his credit card failed stripe, and the order was automatically cancelled… and then i learned how to set an item limit, so that people like him can’t just swoop in and buy all of my stock…

i’ve actually had this happen before: a few years ago, i stocked an incense that was made for the theosophical society by shroff agarbathies, that shroff called “Adyar Meditation Incense”, but the theosophical people called it “Leadbeater Incense”, and it was fantastic, rose, agar, and sandalwood, and i was the ONLY agarbathiwala outside of the theosophical society that carried it… but then the government of india put some sort of restrictions on the export of sandalwood, and shroff stopped making it. i found out about it when someone from florida (i suspect a theosophist, actually) bought TWO KILOS of adyar meditation incense, in 100 gram packages, and when i tried to order more, i couldn’t.

fortunately, i held back some for my own, personal “stash”, but since then i have been very wary of people who buy a huge quantity of one particular incense.

and, the fact is, i’ve been having some trouble locating a supplier of aparajita… AGAIN… 😒

my contact at mavana stopped responding to my emails, the mavana web site died, both of the suppliers (one in florida, one in new york) that carried it have gone out of business, and all of the other suppliers i’ve talked to say that they won’t carry it because aparajita smells too “medicinal”, whatever that means… 😟

my only hope is the fact that, in india, it is still popular enough that it’s being “copied” by at least two incense manufacturers… they haven’t got the recipe for the incense, but their labeling and package artwork is a direct rip-off of the authentic aparajita.

so, i guess i may have to actually travel to india eventually… 😒

databases

my first direct experience with databases was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when i got a “job”, “working” for this… guy…

i don’t remember his name — possibly “henry” — but i remember his attitudes: he was always right, nothing he thought of had ever been thought of before, he was the richest, smartest, trendiest, most “on-top-of-it” dude that ever hit the face of the planet, and GAWD HELP YOU if you EVER got in his way.

needless to say, the “job” didn’t last long. it started with him demonstrating how generous he was, by buying me a disk caddy, so that i would have somewhere to keep all of the disks i was going to accumulate working for him. then he started asking me about computers. at the time, i was NOT a “computer geek”, nor did i want to be one (my father was one of the original “computer geeks” and i DID NOT want to be like my father), but i knew about computers because i had been working as a typesetter for a few years. he asked me what i didn’t know about computers, and one of the first things out of my mouth was “databases”, so he signed me up for a week of training with “FileMaker”…

what i learned was a bunch of recycled stuff from my already ample knowledge of microslut word and excel, with a bunch of “hypercard-like” stuff which i sort of vaguely understood (but nobody i knew used hypercard for anything, so i never really knew what i had missed until years later), and, at the same time i was doing this training, i was helping this… guy… clean out his house, because he was going through a divorce, or some awful shit like that, and he, basically, had to move EVERYTHING that was “his”, out of one house and into another, that was a few houses down the street…

which is where i learned that his “rich” persona was heavily financed by several HUNDRED overdrawn credit cards — he had been using one credit card to pay off another credit card, and when he ran out of credit cards, he would just start up a new one, and use it to pay off the previous ones… FOR YEARS… — at which point i decided that working for this guy might not be such a good idea, if i wanted to get paid.

quite apart from the fact that working for him was REALLY annoying…

so, ultimately, i spent a week learning really complex software that i never got to use for anything, and that was it, until i got my job at software.com, testing email servers, in 2001.

and, for all of my work with databases at software.com/openwave, i still don’t have a really solid grasp of what they are… where they “live”, what they do, how they work… anything… all i know is that, under the right set of circumstances, you can give “commands” to a database, and it will perform certain functions with a variety of different “objects”, the outcomes of which can be used in a multitude of different ways, depending on what is contained in your database.

i get the impression that databases are a lot like the world wide web, in that they both have a lot of objects (web sites) that are linked together in a somewhat-haphazard, but definitely organised way.

so, you can imagine that it was something of a surprise when, the other morning, i woke up, checked my email, and discovered two somewhat alarming notices. the first was warning me that i had used up 90% of my disk space on my server, and the other was warning me that a “table” on my main database was malfunctioning… or something… and collecting 251 GB worth of data… which, somehow, was NOT showing up in my cPanel, which says “Disk Usage 18.43 GB / 292.97 GB”…

and, of course, it happened on a sunday, when nobody’s in the office, and on mothers day, when even fewer people are in the office, and during a PANDEMIC… 😒

so, first thing this morning, after waking up to a broken heat pump, and a wife who wrenched her back, i wrote to my web designer, who said, oh yeah, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, it’ll cost between $200 and $500 to fix it…

and I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S WRONG… 😖

you’re probably wondering why i posted this…

मनोबुद्ध्यहङ्कारचित्तानि नाहं
न च श्रोत्रजिह्वे न च घ्राणनेत्रे ।
न च व्योमभूमिः न तेजो न वायुः
चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम् ॥ १॥

The processors
Manas, buddhi, ahaṅkāra and chitta are the qualitative differentiation within the mind. They are used interchangeably based on context, and yet they are different.

Manas is the faculty of perception, the instrument by which the objects of senses affect the Atman. It is the faculty of thought, desire, imagination. Buddhi is the intellect, by which one discerns, comprehends. Ahaṅkāra is the sense of identity, that which creates ‘I-ness’, ego. Chittam is the one that observes, is aware. All these are the faculties that process what comes from outside.

I am none of these processors.

The instruments
Shrotra is the ear, the organ of hearing. Jihvā is tongue, the organ of tasting. Ghrāṅa is nose, the sense of smelling. And netra is eye, the sense of seeing.

I am none of these instruments.

The building blocks of matter
Vyoma is the space, the gap between the matter. It is the space between planetary bodies as well as the space around Earth, and even the space inside anything. It is also one of the five basic elements.

Bhūmi is the Earth, or the solid matter.

Tejas is the heat or light (both interconnected) like the fire or the Sun.

Vāyu is the wind, the circulating forces, not just on Earth but also inside our bodies, responsible for circulating whether nutrition or blood etc.

I am none of these building blocks of which the material world is made.

The faculties get the information using the senses about the outside world.

I am none of them.

I am pure bliss form of consciousness.
I am Shiva, I am Shiva.

— Practical Sanskrit

—–

it is Adi Shankara‘s birthday, and, if i can be said to “follow” a “religion”, it would probably be the one espoused by adi shankara.

the reason for this is that adi shankara spoke of a “god” which exists beyond what we experience as “good” or “evil”. this “god” is neither (or, possibly, both) “good” and/or “evil”… which is, pretty much, EXACTLY the kind of “god” i feel, which “operates” this plane of existence. this “god” both “exists” and “does not exist”, at the same time, creating no contradictions. this “god” is both “illogical” and “logical” at the same time, creating no contradictions…

and if you don’t understand this, you probably think i’m crazy.

so be it.

this sanskrit shloka, part of Nirvanashatkam is, pretty much, exactly what i believe about myself: i may have all these things holding me back; depression, anhedonia, a brain injury, etc., but those are relics of 60 years of living in this plane of existence. in spite of how “real” these things are, in spite of how “real” these things seem to be TO ME, they are NOT “who i am”, in the “real” sense of the word. i am beyond all this: i “really” exist in a realm where “good” and “evil” are two sides of the same coin… and that “coin” is worth less than a penny.

maybe i was a bit hasty…

it’s definitely “not all bad” living here, but things are definitely NOT “normal”, by any stretch of the imagination.

we were supposed to have a fence installed… BEFORE we moved in… but COVID19 put an end to such frivolities, and we moved in anyway.

now we’ve got to leash the dogs when we let them out to go potty. not because our dogs would be irresponsible, but because the other dog owners on the street are being irresponsible… there are three dogs, from two separate houses, which “roam freely” on the street: no fence, no leash, no humans… three separate dogs. one of them (bentley) is friendly enough when he’s not startled, but the other two (hershey is one of them, i don’t know what the other one is called) are less amicable, and hershey likes to push his limits.

but if it were just the dogs, it would be tolerable… barely…

however, there’s also the issue of DJ, a seven-year-old autistic boy who lives at the end of the street, two doors down from us. this morning, i went out to the mailbox and discovered a partially clothed (he was wearing a shirt, but no pants) DJ, and the two aforementioned dogs, wandering aimlessly by the pond across from our house. i said hi, but DJ doesn’t speak. so i went back into MY house, only to have DJ try to follow me. and when he couldn’t get in the front door, he went around to the back, and climbed over three locked gates and x-pens we put on the deck to discourage the other dogs from coming up on the deck…

apparently, the previous owners thought DJ was cute, or something, and gave him cookies when he showed up on their porch.

and he is “cute” in the way that all children are “cute”… but when encountering him, sans adult, and sans pants, it is a bit unnerving… and when he tried to follow me into the house, and then climbed over the barriers in his way to get onto our back deck, it was more than a little disturbing.

particularly since moe “facebook-messaged” his parents, waited half an hour, got no response, went to his parents’ door, and woke up his father, before she could get help for him.

on one hand, it’s a really good thing we didn’t call the cops, but on the other hand… what parent, in their right mind, allows their non-verbal, autistic child to wander the neighbourhood WITHOUT PANTS, on a friday morning?? and if we hadn’t been warned, ahead of time (moe and her farcebook group saved the day), we probably would have called the cops… and it would have served them right, although it would, doubtless, have been incredibly traumatic for the kid.

it’s a REALLY GOOD THING that, when the fence is installed (we’re hoping for next week… really…), it will be a SIX FOOT fence. 😖

another failed experiment

200408 the end of twitter
200408 the end of twitter
i logged in to twitter today, and was immediately greeted with a notification that my “ability to control mobile app advertising measurements has been removed”.

it has gotten to be more and more depressing, reading twitter, and for some time now, the only things i have done is re-tweet @infinite_scream, and harrass @blarsonexorcist and other so-called “christians”, along with republicans, democrats, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, homeopathic advocates, and other mind-numbing idiots… none of which helps my anhedonia in the slightest. 😒

and, along with all this “social distancing” and “self-quarantining”, the fact is, we’re moving, and the movers cancelled, because of the “stay at home” order, which means that we’ve had to move all the stuff ourselves… we’re still holding out hope that we’re going to get professional movers to move the piano, the couch, the chair, and the bed, but it doesn’t look good at this point.

and things would be going a lot more quickly if there was a fence at the new place, but that has been put on indefinite hold, because of “supply chain problems”, i.e. sick people, closed businesses, stay-at-home order, etc., etc., et-fucking-c… 😠

and there’s no telling when it’s all going to change… and, if it does change, it’s very likely to get worse…

oh, and it HAS gotten worse: bernie sanders has dropped out of the race… AGAIN… which means that the only rational vote left is Vermin Supreme, and i’m still not sure whether or not i’m going to hold my nose and vote for joe biden or not, because he’s not even close to what i want as a replacement for drumpf, even if he was obama’s vice president.

so i decided that it would be best if i gave up twitter.

i already feel better.

also, i added a side-bar link to COVID19 information, updated every minute, to counteract the gawd-awful twitter/drumpf fake-news bullshit. it’s pretty bad. 😒

the chaos, the chaos

the chaos of moving is exacerbated by the chaos of the COVID19 pandemic, which is still on its way up. keeping track is pointless because it keeps getting worse by the hour, and our “leaders” are deliberately misleading us, much to the delight of 51% of the population… who have been consistently the first ones to die, as a result. 😒

i, on the other hand, am, apparently, immune, because of the fact that i already had it… and the fact that, in the past two weeks, i have interacted with exactly three other people, one of whom is my wife (the other two are my wife’s boss, and his wife, who have been helping us with painting, because their vacation to mexico got cancelled).

thanks to them, the master bedroom is no longer an awful green, surmounted with a repeating stamp of bears and trees.

we’re under an official “stay-at-home” order, from the governor, but… i’m moving… which “home” should i stay at: the mostly empty one that we’re painting, or the chaotic, half-in-boxes one that we’re moving out of? 😒

i’ve been making one run a day to the new house, with my car full of boxes. in the past 5 days, i haven’t even come CLOSE to filling the floor space OF THE GARAGE, and, once we’re done painting, the stuff that i’m currently putting in the garage will get distributed to its locations throughout the house… we’re going to need a dining table, and chairs, again, because we have a dining room that will be an empty space without it…

spam update

i have now, officially, blocked IP address ranges in the following countries:

afghanistan
albania
angola
argentina
aruba
australia
austria
bangladesh
belarus
belgium
bhutan
bolivia
bosnia & herzegovina
brazil
british virgin islands
bulgaria
cambodia
canada
chile
china
colombia
congo
cote d’ivoire
croatia
czech republic
denmark
ecuador
egypt
el salvador
estonia
finland
france
georgia
germany
ghana
greece
guatemala
honduras
hong kong
hungary
iceland
india
indonesia
iran
iraq
ireland
israel
italy
japan
jordan
kazakhstan
kenya
kyrgyzstan
latvia
lithuania
luxembourg
macao
malaysia
mexico
moldova
monaco
mongolia
morocco
myanmar
netherlands
new zealand
nigeria
norway
pakistan
panama
paraguay
peru
philippines
poland
romania
russia
serbia
seychelles
singapore
slovakia
south africa
south korea
spain
sweden
switzerland
taiwan
tajikistan
tanzania
thailand
Trinidad & tobago
turkey
UK
ukraine
uruguay
USA
uzbekistan
vietnam

the big winners are china, russia, and india, and the runners up are spain, uzbekistan and kazakhstan…

and the good ol’ united states of ‘merica makes an appearance, as well.

before i started blocking whole swaths of IP addresses, the CPU usage on my server was between 75% and 100%, pretty much always. since i started blocking IP address ranges, my CPU usage is between 2% and 5%… which means that my web sites respond more quickly.

a side benefit is that, often, the same IP address ranges that are used by spammers, are also used by crackers, skript-kiddies, and other miscreants, so by absolutely blocking them (using both the IP Blocker and the Global Email Filters) i kill two birds with one stone. 😉

the down side is that i’ve been catching a few false positives, which are messages from people within north america, but, through no fault of their own, sent their messages at EXACTLY the right time, so that the date in their message ID gets caught by the rule that’s supposed to catch IP addresses… 😖

but, honestly, there have been fewer than 10 false positives in the last 6 months (they tend to come in spurts: i’ve caught 3 today, but haven’t seen one for months), whereas, if left unfettered, i would have received, easily, 100 times that many spam messages PER DAY, so, in all, i’m almost ready to make my list available to anybody else who wants to cut down on the people who send you spam… 😉

COVID19 update

one of the people moe “manages” (one of the doctors who is not the owner of the clinic) got on an airplane yesterday.

shortly after she got on the airplane, word came down from the state that any healthcare provider who gets on an airplane has to voluntarily quarantine for two weeks. in this case, “healthcare provider” apparently applies to veterinarians, as well.

so, along with ramping up her side hustle (she’s already more than half-filled the webinar that she’s giving next sunday), moving into a new house, and managing a veterinary hospital (which is a job, under the best of circumstances), now she has to figure out how to cover for a doctor who potentially “has COVID19”. 😒

but here’s something that i never considered: during the first couple weeks of january, i was sick for two or three days. i got my (very first) flu shot (ever) in november (or it might have been october), and, at the time, i just thought it was a mild case of the flu… but moe says that the symptoms didn’t match the flu: there was minimal nausea, just coughing and fatigue… moe says that it’s possible that i have already had COVID19, and just didn’t realise it.

it’s not totally out of the question: i have spent, at least, the past year’s worth of weekends at the pike place market, which is the first place tourists from cruise ships, and other conveyances, go when they land in seattle…

and healthy people don’t get as sick to begin with…

one of the other doctors moe manages (still not the owner) got sick a few weeks ago, and got better almost immediately, but she still has a lingering cough, and moe thinks she may have gotten COVID19, as well.

COVID19 update

safeway has started designating the hours between 7:00 and 9:00 am as “senior hours”… they reset the store at night, then the first thing on tuesday and thursday, seniors get “first crack” at everything in the store. the first one was yesterday.

except that hoarders showed up at 6:00 and cleaned the store out.

i went to safeway this morning.

apparently, hoarders showed up at 6:00 am today, and cleaned the store out, as well. at 10:30 am, there was nothing in the pasta/rice/beans department, all of the paper products were gone, most of the fresh vegetables were gone.

this was AFTER going to costco and finding a line that stretched all the way across the costco, and most of the way across the hobby-lobby next door. they were only letting in a certain number of people at a time… since i only had one item i needed, i decided to go elsewhere, because waiting in a line for ≈45 minutes with other people, many of whom were wearing masks, is just asking to get exposed to the virus.

i’m not afraid of getting the virus, mind you, but i’m not stupid. and there have been rumours that getting the virus also puts one in danger of getting pulmonary fibrosis, which i definitely DO NOT WANT! 😠

i went to fred meyer this afternoon, because i didn’t know that moe needed stuff. fred meyer was a little better, but they didn’t have any paper products, or canned goods.

the thing is… there’s no shortage. there’s ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to panic-buy anything. this is a virus, it’s not a famine… it’s pretty much guaranteed that this panic-buying of stuff will absolutely NOT accomplish ANYTHING execpt to make life extremely difficult for people like me, who are trying to survive as best i can.

fortunately, the moisture festival has been cancelled, so i am pretty much hanging out at home, by myself. moe had a (virus-free) massage this morning, but i’ve even been socially isolated from her, because she is ramping up a new side hussle, now that her old side hussle cancelled on her. 😒

ok, it’s official…

moe and i are moving.

that’s right, with the coronavirus running rampant, people freaking out and buying the entire store because the world is, literally, COMING. TO. AN. END… moe and i are moving into a new house. 😒

we bought a bigger house. it’s about as far away from downtown seattle as we currently are, but the house is about twice as big as the house we’re currently in, and the yard is about twice as big as the yard we’ve currently got. the address is maple valley, but, in reality, it’s in between issaquah and hobart. it’s right around the corner from one set of friends, and about 10 minutes away from two other sets of friends. i’ll be living a lot closer to ian, for a change. 😉

how it happened is complex beyond imagination, and mostly happened before everybody started freaking out, but, basically, moe has been given the money to buy this house by her employer, who wants her to live “closer” to the clinic. where we live currently is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half commute to mercer island — where the clinic is located. the new house is only 30 minutes away, during rush hour.

the “good” part about this is that we don’t HAVE TO move right away, or on a certain date, and — for a short period of time, anyway — we will actually own TWO houses… maybe for a longer period of time, if things go a certain way.

my understanding is that we “close and take posession” on the 26th (next thursday).

thrill… 😒

COVID19 update

everybody has been “panic buying”… first it was toilet paper, now it’s pretty much everything…

but here in seattle, one of the “hot spots” for the virus in the US, it’s a different matter entirely: i went to costco yesterday, to buy bread and peanut butter. it was busier than usual, for a monday afternoon, but i’ve definitely seen longer lines at costco. all the shelves were comfortably stocked, although there were some items — like toilet paper and hand sanitiser — which had voluntary limits placed on them. everybody was calm, there was no fighting… i only saw three people with masks. there were standard precautions, people wiping down the carts and everything with clorox wipes (which, it turns out, are NOT on the CDCs list of things you can use to fight coronavirus)… i didn’t use a cart, anyway.

the word of the day is “social distancing”. i would say i have not been “social distancing” more than usual, but at this time of year i’m normally hanging around with huge crowds of people from all over the world — in the moisture festival, which has been “postponed indefinitely”. they also cancelled my circus classes, and pretty much everything else that isn’t essential: restaurants and bars are closed for “in-person” dining, although they’re still open for take-out and delivery service. all gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, including church services (although there are many “christian” churches which are ignoring this, at their peril). in four days we’ve gone from 1,000 cases to 5,000 cases.

at this point, i’m staying home and not interacting with people as much as possible. i went out to costco and the dispensary yesterday. today, i went to the compounding pharmacy in issaquah, and i went out for a walk. tomorrow, i’m getting together with hobbit and making a couple of videos.

i’m not really concerned for myself, but i’m terrified for everybody else, because they are, literally, freaking out to the point where i’m thinking, more and more, that this is, in fact, the “end of the world as we know it”.

deliberate misdirection

this weekend, at “some point” — which means for 30 minutes, some time between 0:00 saturday and 24:00 sunday — the Hybrid Elephant web site will be updated to a new, more “appropriate” design in which i had A LOT more say than the previous one…

see this post for as much of a reason as i ever got.

thanks to rick cano at DesignWorks NW

which means that, on monday, everyone should remember to flush your cache (all my browsers are set to zero cache, already) and buy some incense from my new web site, okay? 😉👍

COVID19 update

all public and private schools in king, pierce and snohomish counties have been closed for five weeks.

seattle has over 1,100 cases currently, and projects having over 25,000 cases by april 7th, unless more is done to contain the virus.

broadway has cancelled all performances indefinitely.

the NHL, MLS, NCAA, NBA and MLB sports organisations have cancelled the season.

the mormon LDS church has suspended all worship services, worldwide.

the CATHOLIC CHURCH has closed all churches in italy.

but our #SCROTUS — who has been in close contact with foreign leaders who are CONFIRMED COVID19 cases, and in close contact with several U.S. leaders who are currently “self-quarantining” over concerns that they have come in close contact with foreign leaders who are CONFIRMED COVID19 cases — is, resolutely REFUSING to be tested, and continues to shake hands with everybody as though he is immune to the virus…

he’s not, of course, but he doesn’t have anything to worry about, because he’s #SCROTUS, and we’re not… 🤬

COVID19 update

they’ve cancelled public school in seattle for the next two weeks. as a result, they’ve cancelled classes at SANCA for at least the next two weeks.

they’re recommending that the public not gather in groups larger than 250 people. they’re recommending that people “socially isolate” and “self-quarantine” because of lack of reliable testing. 😕

ETA: Under the Health Officer’s order in King County:

  • Events with more than 250 attendees are prohibited.
  • Public events with fewer than 250 attendees are prohibited, unless event organizers can take steps to minimize risk.

they’re saying that 80% of the population will probably contract COVID19. not 80% of americans, 80% of humans… on the planet.

they’re saying that a vaccine (which is the ONLY thing that will stop COVID19 from spreading) could take as long as a year and a half, and, that there probably WILL NOT be a vaccine sooner than a year from now. 🧟

the center for disease control recommends that people over 60 years of age not travel on airplanes… but the #SCROTUS said that they can’t recommend that, so they took it back… but they’re still, privately, recommending that people over age 60 don’t travel, regardless of what the #SCROTUS says. 😒

last week, #drumpf said that there were only 15 confirmed cases, and that by next week there would be zero cases. in reality, last week there were NINETEEN cases, and this week there are somewhere between 50 and 100 cases JUST IN WASHINGTON STATE.

ETA: “more than 1,000 cases in the U.S.”

#drumpf has placed pence in charge of this disaster PANDEMIC, a religious, science-denier who, when he was governor of indiana, and faced with the largest HIV outbreak in history, did, literally, nothing. 🤬

AND, i found out, today, that my great-aunt rosemary, who i went to warrensburg, missouri to meet in 2015, actually VOTED for #drumpf! 🤮

moisture?

due to the current almost-pandemic of the novel coronavirus COVID19, the moisture festival has been “postponed indefinitely”.

it’s probably a good idea, since washington state is one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak in the united states — as of the last time i checked, there have been between 12 and 14 deaths from coronavirus in washington over the past week — and we’ve got people travelling in from, literally, all over the world, so postponing the festival is definitely the right thing to do…

but panic and disinformation, both of which are running rampant, currently, are just as, if not more dangerous than the coronavirus itself. and, naturally, both have been massively exacerbated by the dimwitted orange buffoon who currently occupies the presidental office…

just more reasons why i wish i had died when i had the chance… 😒

snerk…

in other news, i just purchased YakBoy dot net, which was previously owned by some random person in japan, and before that, was owned by my younger (by 10 years) brother, the former co-author of the “Seattle Geekly” podcast, and a registered nurse…

i wonder how long it’s going to be before i receive a “cease and desist” order, or something like that, and have him demand that i return his “intellectual property”… 🤣🤪

🤬

#drumpf is still “winning”… demolishing sacred native burial grounds and tossing 70 million people off of SSI and SSDI so that he can build his ill-fated wall; dr. stabby, cruella devos, and a whole range of people who have never done anything in government being appointed to important positions of power in the government; endless war in the middle east; not taking a presidential salary, but taking more golf excursions than the past 4 presidents COMBINED, despite a campaign promise that he wasn’t going to play golf; muslim ban; climate-change; etc., etc., etc., etc., ETC…. 😒

but all we hear about, TODAY, is the fact that flerfer “Mad” Mike Hughes died in yet another attempt to take his home-made, steam-powered rocket up to 5000 feet so that he could photograph the “lack of curvature”…

as though the news that some crazy person dying while trying to prove the impossible is, somehow, more important news than the distaster immediately destroying the planet… 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

I have seen the future: Donald Trump is going to get worse

in 2003, i almost died.

i would have died, if it hadn’t been for my wife, and a team of doctors… and the fact that i have been a musician most of my life…

after my injury, when i regained “normal” consciousness, one of the first things they told me was that i had a brain injury, and that i would have to spend the rest of my life “getting used to it”.

since then — 17 years ago — i have been forced to watch, more or less helplessly, as a whole bunch of my friends have died, pretty much everything that i cared about, and fought for, politically and socially, throughout my entire life, has been totally ruined, or is in the process of being totally ruined, with no visible hope of recovery, and the world in general, environmentally, sociologically, and politically, is going down the tubes, rapidly. the very strong probability, at this point, is that we are experiencing the “end of the world as we know it”, but most of us are too stupid to realise it.

this is very definitely NOT what i signed up for, even before my injury — to be honest, i never signed up for it in the first place — and i’m really pissed off that i didn’t die when i had the chance. 🤬

I have seen the future: Donald Trump is going to get worse
February 8, 2020
By Lucian K. Truscott IV

The only thing Donald Trump didn’t do in his victory-lap appearance in the East Room on Thursday was announce the pending arrest of Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi. He did everything else. He told his roomful of hacks and sycophants that the impeachment trial β€œwas all bullshit.” They cheered. He called the Democrats and lone Republican who favored his impeachment and removal from office β€œthe crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I’ve ever known,” β€œlowlifes,” β€œstone-cold crazy,” β€œevil,” β€œsick,” β€œcorrupt,” β€œscum,” β€œbad,” β€œhorrible,” β€œvicious” and β€œleakers.” Stammering, wheezing, snorting and sniffling, he said those who impeached him were β€œmean.” His fans applauded. They screamed. They laughed: Fox host Laura Ingraham; Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, whom Trump called β€œso great, so tough, and so smart”; Rep. Devin Nunes of California, β€œthis congressman who kept going into basements, into files, he’ll find any document”; and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a β€œtop, top wrestler.” Every single one of them laughed and shouted their encouragement as the man who has told more than 15,000 lies since taking office called his Democratic enemies β€œliars.”

It was Donald Trump unbound. Having stomped on every single β€œnorm” that has been adhered to in Washington for more than 200 years, Trump taped up his bone spurs and stomped some more. Remember Richard Nixon’s β€œenemies list”? Amateur hour. Trump has an enemies binder, a whole fucking enemies database. He’s got people over at the IRS lining up audits. He’s got deputy attorney generals drawing up subpoenas and crafting indictments. He waited less than 24 hours before he had the Treasury Department release β€œevidence of questionable origin” about Hunter Biden to Republican senators seeking to open the investigation of the Bidens that was spurned by the Ukrainian government.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham and Senate Homeland Security chairman Ron Johnson have all issued letters requesting records from the State Department, Justice Department, FBI, Treasury Department, National Archives and Secret Service, seeking documents regarding Hunter Biden, his associates and their businesses. Having stonewalled every request for documents and testimony from House committees investigating the Russia and Ukraine scandals, Trump is opening the floodgates on Hunter Biden. Who’s next is anybody’s guess.

β€œRepublicans are turning the Senate into an arm of the president’s political campaign, pursuing an investigation designed to further President Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and smear Vice President Biden,” Ashley Schapitl told Yahoo News. Schapitl is a spokesperson for Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee.

It’s going to get worse. Trump made a point of mentioning former FBI Director James Comey and the β€œdirty cops” and β€œFBI lovers” who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. They are targets of the Department of Justice criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation being carried out by special counsel John Durham. Trump singled out Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother, who serve on the National Security Council. Both were fired from their positions on Friday afternoon. It’s only a matter of time before he targets the House impeachment managers, if only to harass them and make them waste campaign money on defense lawyers.

But it’s the people Trump didn’t specifically mention on Thursday who should be worried. We didn’t know he was trying to extort the Ukrainians into investigating the Bidens until it was exposed by the whistleblower last October. Trump’s secret campaign against the Bidens had been going on for six months by that time, and even longer if you include the machinations by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that had begun as far back as the fall of 2018. Who else has Trump been secretly investigating overseas? We don’t know, and we will remain in the dark unless another patriotic civil servant in the bowels of Trump’s government blows another whistle.

But Trump has gutted the State Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury Department and every other cabinet-level governmental office under his command. Gone are all the β€œadults in the room” like former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and even former White House chief of staff John Kelly and Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton. Down in the lower reaches of the bureaucracy, turnover has been record-breaking and there are so many vacancies, they’re holding garage sales to get rid of empty desks. There are numerous β€œacting” deputy and assistant secretaries in every single cabinet-level department of Trump’s government. He likes it that way. Everybody is either on their way out, planning to get out or frightened of being fired. The likelihood of new whistleblowers emerging from this chaotic governmental swamp is less and less the longer Trump remains in office.

What’s next? Well, we’ve already seen the capitulation and surrender at Helsinki, when Trump took Vladimir Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence services about Russia’s hacking of the 2016 elections. I think what we’ll get next is an Oval Office meeting with some dictator like Viktor OrbΓ‘n of Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or Putin himself, and Trump coming out and asking them in public, before television cameras and reporters, to help with his re-election campaign. He’s gotten away with it twice. Why wouldn’t he?

He’s equally likely to order more assassinations of people he’ll name as enemies of the United States. We may never have heard of them before, nor will we ever hear about them again once they’re gone, because who they are and what they allegedly did will not be as important as the fact that Trump can order their deaths. The recent assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Republican Guard, got only passing criticism from Democrats and was a huge hit with the Trump base. He got to blow up bad guys with smart bombs and show everyone he’s as tough as his idol, Putin. What’s not to love about that? If you carry an AK-47 and follow Muhammad, I’d keep my head down between now and the first Tuesday in November.

Every time we think Trump has gone about as far as he can go with demonizing the β€œenemies of the people” in the press, he cranks it up a notch. The recent dust-up between NPR and Lickspittle Von Pompeo proved to Trump and his minions that they can muzzle the press and get away with it. I’d look for them to start yanking White House press credentials and banning entire news organizations from covering the Trump campaign. MSNBC and CNN should start looking for cheap flights. They won’t be on Air Force One for long. I predict it’s only a matter of time before some Trumpaholic MAGA-hat-wearing militiaman takes a potshot at a reporter outside one of Trump’s rallies. Trump will promise to defend the Second Amendment and rant and rave against the β€œenemies of the people” at his next rally. His base will lap it up.

Donald Trump is like a kid who gets on an elevator full of people and pushes the button for every floor. He does stuff because it pisses off the Democrats. He does stuff because it β€œowns the libs” and delights his base. He does stuff because it makes his pathetic, pinched little life a tiny bit bigger. I would say that he does stuff because it makes him happy, but I don’t think he’s capable of even a scintilla of joy. Mostly he does stuff because he can, and the big question we face, now that we’ve had an impeachment but failed to remove him from office, is whether he’s going to break the great American elevator and bring this country crashing down with him. I hope not, but every day he’s been in office he’s gotten worse, and it’s working for him.

new regex stuff!

logical operators! thanks ian! 😉

+ () [] - |

(stuff that remains the same)+(stuff that changes) – otherwise known as “capture groups”

[89] = 8 or 9

[0-4] = 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4

| = logical OR

so…

\D(85\.157\.47\.)+(12[89]|1[3-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\D

means “capture everything in 85.157.47.128/25”

which, up until now, has meant “make a separate rule for every IP address between 85.157.47.128 and 85.157.47.255” — 128 SEPARATE RULES, which takes A LONG time, and slows down processing speed.

this is a BIG step forward!

WOO!!! 😎👍

ETA 200205: even more WOO!!! because ian directed me to a RegEx Numeric Range Generator, which means that i don’t have to figure them all out myself! WOO!!! 😎👍

okay, so not “phenomenally”, but still stupid

i am cautiously confident that my phenomally stupid actions over last weekend have not attracted the attention of law enforcement, but they definitely have, 100% guaranteed attracted the attention of fraud-meisters on twitter, who have been bombarding me with DM requests advertising various different — illegal — substances for sale… 😒

needless to say, i have not become their sucker. as they say, once bitten, twice shy. 🤬 which is to say that, every chance i get, i have been interjecting myself into @psychedelicbloc’s advertisements with an inquiry about when they’re going to refund my money. i don’t expect them to actually refund anything, but if i convince even one person to be cautious enough to avoid this guy, it will be worth it. 😒

on the other hand, this afternoon, i actually had a face-to-face talk with a good friend who is interested — and knowledgable — concerning psychedelic mushroom growing, who is currently in communication with a medical doctor(!) neighbour of his, who can get reliable spores and knows about the correct mediums in which to grow them… but neither of them have a place to grow… so i may, actually, have found myself the most reliable supplier of psychedelics possible, which is myself… 😇

okay, i may have done something PHENOMENALLY stupid

i bought 10 grams of cubensis over twitter.

this person @psychedelicbloc, otherwise known as Psychedelic home, is not somebody i know. his (her?) profile, and paypal indicate that they’re in colorado, but i don’t know this person. their twitter profile is a few months old. they’re shipping to me using a company i have never heard of before, “Mega Cargo Logistics” which hasn’t been updating their web site as often as i’d like…

mushrooms from @psychedelicbloc
mushrooms from @psychedelicbloc
  • i don’t know this person
  • i don’t know whether or not they truly know what they’re doing
  • i don’t know whether or not they’re going to send me truly psychedelic mushrooms, or poisonous mushrooms, or “inert” mushrooms, or NOTHING AT ALL
  • i don’t know whether or not the cops are going to be waiting for me when i pick them up

moe isn’t home, and i was feeling desperate… and this guy blatantly advertised on twitter, which is already a very shady sign…

so, if i get busted, it’s @psychedelicbloc’s fault.

200120 MegaCargoLogistics email
200120 MegaCargoLogistics email
ETA: 200120 okay, i knew it had to be too good to be true. the shipping company i’ve never heard of before, Mega Cargo Logistics, sent me a very poorly worded (like, the author’s native language is very definitely NOT english) email, with the entire message in the subject line, informing me that my package was “on hold” until i paid a “refundable $100 insurance” fee.

in bitcoin… 😒

@psychedelicbloc said “bro… you’ve got nothing to worry about.” and “bro… i assure you the insurance will be refundable to as you receive your package.” — but when i responded that i simply didn’t have any more money, he recommended that i “can do the agency web mail and chat with them so the can explain things more better to you.” SO, i went on their web chat, and they told me “sir, the insurance you are about to pay is refundable as you receive your package. And which of the payment method are you okay with.” when i responded that i didn’t have the money, they said “Sir we understand that this is too much on you but as you receive your package the insurance will be refundable to you”, at which point i said “if i had known about the extra $100 charge for insurance, i would not have made the order, because I DO NOT HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY… PERIOD.” whereupon their response was “Sir we have many clients to attend to and of you are not serious please wasting our time here”

so, i’m not getting mushrooms. 🤬

although, all things considered, it’s probably just as well…

and, when i asked @psychedelicbloc to refund my money, they, too, started spouting stuff that makes it sound VERY MUCH like their native language is not english — “i need to apply for the to refund the package back to me if the do do i will refund your package” — which makes me think that, since paypal says they won’t actually receive the funds until the 23rd, i might actually be able to file a dispute with them, so that they won’t get it… and when i suggested i file a dispute, @psychedelicbloc suddenly vanished…

which makes me doubtful that they’re a cop… but at the same time, i don’t know whether or not i’m actually going to see that $100 again…

moisture, but no festival

as i mentioned last week, our bedroom closet has inordinate amounts of moisture in the back, where nobody noticed it for a long time… like, years

we had a contractor out, who took the entire south wall of the house apart, and concluded that it was a combination culprit: we had

1) water leaking in through the nail-holes in the composite siding, which was sub-standard (having been built in the early 1970s).

2) water leaking in through a sub-standard (1970s construction) gap in the siding between the rectangular part of the house, and the triangular (roof) part — these days, they put in what they call “Z-flashing” between the two levels of siding. in the 1970s, not so much.

3) no house-wrap — once again, due to 1970s construction methods and the fact that tyvek hadn’t even been invented yet — but a layer of plain old plastic, which caused water to condense and run down the inside of the walls.

and, because of this, there is also the matter of

4) the “rim joist” — the 2″x6″ beam that runs under the floorboards and holds the whole house up — was the ultimate victim of all of this aforementioned water. it was rotten through, and the guy had to jack up the house to remove it.

end result: the entire south wall of the house has been wrecked and removed down to the studs, and the south end of the house has been jacked up.

what makes it worse is that we discovered this on the 9th, and it has rained, snowed, or some combination of the two, pretty much every day since. it’s warm enough that the snow hasn’t hung around for long, but it affects how much the guy wants to work…

not only that, but now that he’s got the wall in a more-or-less stable (i.e. no longer damp and rotting) condition, he’s got court-ordered visitation with his kids this weekend, so not only is moe gone, and i have to take care of the dogs on my own, but ALSO there’s the detritus of an ongoing construction project in the front yard, the entire south wall is covered in plastic, and the crawl-space (where the dogs ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO) is open and unguarded, AND the guy WON’T BE BACK TO FIX IT UNTIL MONDAY!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🖕

🤬

🖕

moisture + anhedonia

now there’s 18 and possibly 19 shares: Peanut Envy is going to be fluffing at least one night, and there’s a rumour that Snake Suspenders — as a trio, or, possibly with a fill-in drummer — is going to get at least one stage slot.

and, i never, in a million years, thought i would be able to say this, but i have been, essentially, commanded to take mushrooms, by what passes for a doctor in my life these days… except for the fact that it’s been snowy for the past couple of days, and more rain is forcast; my house is falling apart — currently everything that is usually in the closet in the master bedroom, is in the living room, while the closet is gutted down to the studs and rebuilt, to get rid of the mold and moisture problems; and, friday, moe is scheduled to leave for (ETA: 200117 – denver) orlando (or some gawdawful place like that) and won’t be back until wednesday.

which means that, taking my thursday unicycle class into account, it’s entirely likely that a week from friday is going to be the first day that i have to take mushrooms. 😒

moisture

2020, officially, 17 shares for the phil, plus whatever shares i get for fluffing…

we’re FINALLY getting the second week, instead of some other band…

and they still haven’t decided that ettinger’s band is just going to do all four weeks, which indicates that there’s still someone with their head screwed on straight who’s in charge, although who knows who that person(s) might be…

we’ll see what it all shakes out to once it’s over.

  • 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…
  • 2010, 13 shares, $520 — $27 a share
  • 2007, ?? shares, $820
  • 2006, ?? shares, $790

anhedonia… 😒

i’ve been “sick” for a week. i was actually SICK for two days, starting last thursday. friday i didn’t make it upright, except to vomit, but by saturday i was feeling well enough that i did the last weekend of the panto without too much difficulty. monique got sick on sunday, and she and i have been trading a low-level “sickness” back and forth ever since. one of monique’s co-workers got an especially virulent strain of pink-eye a couple days ago, so the probability is better than normal that all of the rest of us are going to get pink-eye eventually.

#drumpf assassinated the number three guy in iran, with no “approval” or prior warning, a couple days ago, which, once again, brings us to the brink of world war three. he’s been impeached, but not convicted of anything, and probably won’t be, because the body which is supposed to convict him is controlled by the republican’ts, all of whom think he’s doing a swell job. 😒 55% of americans think his actions put american lives in danger, but he’s using it as a campaign talking point, and there’s a good chance, at this point, that he will be re-“elected” for a second term. 😠👎

and that’s not to mention the millions of people who no longer have insurance, nor the disabled people (which includes me) who will no longer have SSDI when his schemes take effect… he’s asked for, and gotten more money for his wall, and even more money for “defense”, but we “don’t have enough money” for health care and education.

meanwhile, the wall in the back of our closet has sprung a leak, which means that a lot of our “formal” and “costume” clothes are now wet — possibly ruined — and we’ve had a contractor out to give us an estimate (and another one tomorrow, alledgedly), but it has been snowing, on and off, since last night, which means that whatever repairs HAVE TO BE made, will PROBABLY NOT be made until… i don’t know, spring, or some time… 😒

i’m sick.

i’m sick of life. 😒

i wish it would end. 👎

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬‼

ever since he was born, i have been afraid that i will be forced into the situation where i have to apologise to my son for bringing him into a world that, through no fault of his own, is going to end, for all intents and purposes, before his life will end. to me, it seems a large amount of irresponsible, to have brought a being into the world, who is faced with his own death, before his time, especially since i seem to be charmed when it comes to the potential of my life ending before my time.

and it’s even harder for me, because i have been fighting my entire adult life to change the things that i can, that would lead to my not having to offer that apology.

ezra, i’m sorry that the world is such a fucked up place. i’m sorry i brought you into this world, with no way to change it. i’m sorry you have to share this world with people who don’t care that it will end before your lifetime is complete.

A Grim New Definition of Generation X
by Ted Rall – 191231

People born in the 1960s may be the last human beings who will get to live out their full actuarial life expectancies. β€œClimate change now represents a near- to mid-term existential threat” to humanity, warns a recent policy paper by an Australian think tank. Civilization, scientists say, could collapse by 2050. Some people may survive. Not many.

Some dismiss such purveyors of apocalyptic prognoses as hysterics. To the contrary, they’re Pollyannas. Every previous β€œworst-case scenario” prediction for the climate has turned out to have understated the gravity of the situation. β€œPaleoclimatologists have shown that past warming episodes show that there are mechanisms which magnify its effects, not represented in current climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the Paris Accords,” reports The Independent. It’s probably too optimistic to assume that we’ll make it to 2050.

Gives new meaning to Generation X.

Millennials and the children we call Generation Z face the horrifying prospect that they will get stuck with the tab for humanity’s centuries-long rape of planet earth, the mass desecration of which radically accelerated after 1950. There is an intolerably high chance that today’s young people will starve to death, die of thirst, be killed by a superstorm, succumb to a new disease, boil to death, asphyxiate from air pollution, be murdered in a riot or shot or blown up in a war sparked by environmentally-related political instability long before they survive to old age.

Long threatened, never taken seriously, not even now that it’s staring us right in the face, human extinction is coming for the children and grandchildren we claim to love but won’t lift a finger to save.

Shelves sag under the weight of books that have been written arguing that we still have a chance to save ourselves. I wish I could believe that. Human population has tripled since the 1950s. More than a million species have gone extinct. Ninety percent of the fish in the ocean have vanished, replaced by one billion tons of plastic. Two-thirds of the trees have been cut down. The polar ice cap is gone; it’s never coming back.

We can’t stop global warming. An increase of four degrees Celsius over the baseline set at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution means game over. We’re well on our way there. It doesn’t make sense to think that we can avoid extinction.

What if we woke up and demanded action from our political leaders? Radical problems require radical solutions; only the most radical of solutions could resolve the most radical problem of ruining our planet’s ability to sustain us: revolution. We would have to rise up and abolish β€” immediately β€” consumer capitalism in all the major greenhouse gas-producing nations, prioritize cleaning the environment as the human race’s top concern, and pivot to an economic mindset in which we extract the bare minimum from the ecosystem that we need in order to survive and nothing more.

Voting might achieve some incremental reforms but reform falls far short of what we require. Saving our young people (and their children, should they be foolish enough to have any) would require global revolution, the violent overthrow of the ruling elites and replacing them with people who understand what must be done. It would need to happen today. Fifty years ago would be better. Got a time machine?

None of this is going to happen. We are going to sleepwalk to our doom in a haze of social media and corporate entertainment distraction.

So it’s time for people who are younger than I am to start thinking about how they want to spend the rest of their likely-to-be-truncated lives, and how they plan to face mass premature death.

Pending human extinction destroys the answers provided by religion and philosophy. Knowing that there won’t be anyone to know that we were ever here raises the question: why bother to do anything? This column, this year’s β€œimportant” presidential election, love, hate, everything will lose its meaning when the last member of our species draws her last breath. Earth is unlikely to be visited by an alien archaeologist, much less uncover everything we’ve made and created (assuming any of it survives), much less figure out what any of it meant, before the sun expands into a red giant and ends it all.

Much is to be said for hedonism: eat, drink, have sex, and don’t bother to sort your recycling, for tomorrow we die. Stoicism has its advantages too; go out with dignity rather than weeping and gnashing your teeth and making your fellow survivors miserable.

Nihilism is about to become the best worst possible life strategy. Life is meaningless. That will soon become obvious. Moral principles, relics of a time with a future, will blow away like the irradiated dust we leave behind.

None of this will have mattered.

🎉 woo… 🎊

yep, these are for the year 2018

and people hope 2020 is going to be better… i’m still waiting for 2019 to be better, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen… 😒

yeah, woo… 😒

so, #SCROTUS has well and truly been impeached, but pelosi now says she’s not even going to send the articles of impeachment over to the house, because the house has said that they’re not going to follow through…

so we’re sitting here with an impeached president and nothing is being done about it, even from the people who impeached him.

meanwhile, he’s requested and been granted even MORE money for the wall, and for the “space force”, and he’s paying for it with massive CUTS in food stamps, SSI, and SSDI (which includes me), and there has been precisely no response from the people who impeached him, apart from mildly harsh words…

and there has been some protest, in a limited sort of way, but no mass uprising, which means that they are probably not even going to try…

and people wonder why i want to die. 😒

woo…

#SCROTUS #drumpf has been impeached, but the republican’ts in the senate have already said that they’re not going to remove him from office, so it’s not having the kind of effect everybody said it would have. 😒

i lost my sunglasses a couple weeks ago, and i lost my faraday pouch with all my credit cards, my medical permit, my AAA card and my passport, along with $30 or so in cash. it disappeared somewhere in between the time that i walked out of total wine (i watched myself on the security video leaving the store with the pouch in my hand), and the time that i got home. the receipt from total wine was in the recycle bin, so i’m fairly sure the pouch is somewhere at home, but i don’t know where, which PISSES ME OFF!!!

ETA: somebody found it in the parking lot of total wine, and turned it in with everything, including the cash, intact. maybe there’s hope for humanity after all… 🙃 but tulsi gabbard, the democratic representative from hawaii, who is also a candidate for the 2020 presidential election, voted “present” rather than voting for (preferably) or against impeachment… which means that, unless she’s the ONLY candidate running against #drumpf next year, i will not be voting for her. 😒

the meat play

i don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was the last year i participated in Drunk Puppet Night, which, i think, was in 2007 or thereabouts (the earliest link i could find was 070111, but that was after at least one successful performance in 2006). the place was the Columbia City Theatre, the other voice was Josh Okrent, the MC was Noah Mickens, and the video was shot by some nameless, but highly inebriated person from the audience, and stabilised by Rob D’Arc:

the original version, They’re Made Out Of Meat, by Terry Bisson, was published in Omni magazine, in 1990.

calm, still no storm… weird…

still calm, still a few “false positives” which are easily dealt with, and forwardable almost immediately… ‼👍 but no “bitcoin sextortion” spam since 191202… and the record is currently held by 1LfYcbCsssB2niF3VWRBTVZFExzsweyPGQ, who i last heard from on 191127, who spammed me four hundred eighty-seven times

spam assassin has, apparently, figured out a regex (or something) for capturing bitcoin addresses, so after 191127, there have been no bitcoin sextortion spams that have NOT been labeled as ***SPAM*** by spam assassin, which makes them a lot easier to filter out.

but it’s weird, because, even though it has been almost a week now, waking up in the morning and NOT having two or three DOZEN spam messages to process makes me nervous that something else may be happening to all of those messages, and, potentially, legitimate messages, as well, and i have no clue what may be happening to them, because nobody other than me is even aware of the fact that they’re not there any longer. 😕

we started the panto. it’s Jack and The Beanstalk… i don’t remember whether this is the first panto we did, or the second panto we did, way back when we first started doing pantos, 17 years or so ago… but it’s largely the same script: different actors but the same characters… and no simon, but he hasn’t been involved since he got drunk, did something which he wasn’t supposed to (sexual harrassment? stealing stuff? something that only drunk people do… 😒), and was banned from the palladium, a few years ago. we did the first four of 20 performances, last weekend, and only missed one music cue: half the band started a half a measure before the other half of the band, and none of the singers came in at the right point, but we recognised it almost immediately, and kiki said “wait, can we start that again?” and everybody came in on cue when we tried it again… and there was one place at the end of the panto, where the giant chops down the beanstalk, and the ogress (represented by a puppet) falls from the castle in the sky, along a zip-line, to the back of the palladium. but, this time, the doors to the castle opened, but no ogress came out… so we just continued, where the ogress (this time, the real actor) then “falls” back up to the front of the stage, and has a few lines… and then the puppet ogress decided it was time to fall… 🤣

but, all in all, the panto is going well.

calm… i hope no storm…

the past three full days now, i have gotten SIGNIFICANTLY less spam than normal… like, normally i’ll get anywhere from two to six DOZEN spam messages a day, and, since saturday, i have gotten, maybe two dozen total

i’ve been blocking ranges of IP addresses in argentina and peru and china and india and denmark and kazakhstan and iran and lithuania and brazil and germany and LOTS of ranges for russia, and luxembourg and vietnam and turkey and indonesia and romania and the UK and georgia (the country, not the state in the united states), and nigeria and egypt and cambodia and myanmar (and that’s only up to the 45.0.0.0/8 range) like a mad fiend, for about two months prior to saturday… and all of those places are places from which i have never received email that was not spam…

literally, i’ve been blocking JUST ranges connected with the 1LfYcbCsssB2niF3VWRBTVZFExzsweyPGQ “bitcoin porn sextortion” scam since october 4th. 🤬

maybe i’ve finally caught up with the script. i’ve got 1,043 filter rules, and a fair portion of them are IP ranges…

but it feels weird… nobody has complained that they’re not getting important emails, and the false positives that have been coming through are usually either dealt with by changing “contains” to “matches regex”, or by deleting rules that i don’t need any longer… like the one for the .mp TLD, which was giving me false positives all the time because of mailchi.mp, which, while spammy, is not universally spammy, and, as far as i can tell, is the only NON-spammy use of the .mp TLD… but i decided that, instead of figuring out how to rule out legitimate use of a spammy TLD, i just started banning the countries that the spam was coming from…

but it feels weird… i’ve been on edge for a couple of days now, and i’m pretty sure it’s directly related to my relationship with the computer and the ‘net… 😒

but not entirely related… i had a pair of blue sunglasses that i got before i went to oregon to busk, a few months ago, and i lost them about a week ago. since then i’ve been losing a whole bunch of other things — keys, tools, credit cards, that sort of thing — and i’ve been finding them again, usually in the same day, sometimes within the same 15 minutes or so… but i haven’t been able to find my sunglasses, and it PISSES ME OFF because the reason i got them, primarily, was to help aleviate some of my depression, and they have worked ADMIRABLY for that purpose… and i remember thinking, if i put them… wherever it was that i put them… 😕 and left them there for too long, i would probably not remember where they were, the next time i looked for them… 😒

it’s possible that they’re somewhere around the house, but i’ve looked at least three times in every place i can think of, and quite a few that i couldn’t have thought of in a long time, and have nothing to show for it except a much cleaner house. they’re not in the car, as far as i can tell, nor are they in my tuba case, or my tuba bag.

moe is going away for a few days — travelling for stuff related to her book — starting friday, which means that i won’t be able to go busking. and then panto starts (shudder) saturday: two shows, and two shows on sunday, which means that i won’t even be here to take care of the pets for significant portions of both days… fortunately, i’m picking her up at the airport after sunday’s shows are over.

and, on the unicycle side of things, i think i am actually learning to ride the unicycle… i have been consistently riding, in a “more-or-less” controlled fashion, in a marginally straight line, without falling over, half to three-quarters of the way across the gym, for two weeks now. and, i just got “certified” to come in and use the gym for practicing unicycle on days that we’re not having class, so i actually have a place to practice.

blog birthday

oh yeah… this is my blog-birthday. on this day, twelve years ago, i retired from LiveJournal and began my tenure on my own, personal server:

The Last Post on LiveJournal
The First Post on my own server

now would also be a good time to mention the reason behind my blog, on my own server, Bacchus’ First Law Of Internet, which is “Anything worth doing on internet, is worth doing at your own domain, on your own server, which you control.”

music

there’s this guy who makes music that i really like. he goes by Dominic Robertson, or Ergo Phizmiz, and he’s REALLY prolific: he’s got AT LEAST 40 CD-length albums, plus a whole bunch of soundscape/radio-theatre-like stuff, including a 12 hour 45 minute piece called The Faust Cycle which i haven’t listened to in its entirety because… well, it’s 12 hours long

he wrote me to say that he is “running this radio station at the moment” at Wolverton FM, and wondered if he could broadcast my CD from 2015, I Breathe At It, which i put up on bandcamp and promptly forgot about… 🤩

i didn’t really forget about it, because i always carry a few copies of the physical CD with me, especially when i’m busking, but i forgot i put it on bandcamp, which is, sort of, the way bandcamp is supposed to work… sort of…

the only thing better than writing music and playing it on the radio yourself, is writing music and having it played on the radio by an artist you respect, because he really likes it… 🤩

.org TLD

originally, the .org TLD was intended for non-profit entities, although it was never enforced, and it has been operated by the Public Interest Registry since 2003.

on november 13, 2019, it was announced that the PIR had agreed to be acquired by Ethos Capital, a for-profit investment group, as their first “investment”.

so, basically, what this means is that the .org TLD, which was originally intended for use by non-profit organisations, is now owned and controlled by a for-profit organisation.

also, i’ve heard that some of the executives for ethos capital are also connected with ICANN, and have sneakily maneuvered around so that ICANN has eliminated the cap restricting the registration fees for domains under the .org TLD, which means that registration costs for .org domains are going to go up, MASSIVELY, in the next couple of years…

because that’s what for-profit organisations do with newly acquired resources…

i mean, they made this “investment”, and now they have to make sure that it pays off for them, otherwise why make the investment in the first place? 😒

i currently own 5 domains under the .org TLD.

i am, at this very moment, determining whether it’s possible for me to register all of them for the maximum of 10 years, all at once, rather than having to do it one at a time… because, one way or the other, i’m going to register them for as long as i can at the current price, rather than waiting to be gouged out of business, later on. 😒

🤬👎‼

/8 blocks

i now have three /8 blocks in my email filters.

25.0.0.0/8 in the UK, 53.0.0.0/8 in germany, and 133.0.0.0/8 in japan.

the “standard” email filters, built on “and/or” and “contains/does not contain”, break down when you’re dealing with 16.75 MILLION addresses.

they break down because you can’t just filter on 25. which appears in the middle and end of IP addresses, in message ID numbers, and, occaisionally, in the body of the message.

the result is A LOT of false positives: email which i can’t forward to the correct recipient, because it will get filtered AGAIN

which is quite annoying. 😒

so, with the help of my friend robert, i built a regular expression to handle it:

\D25\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\D

finds non-digit character followed by “25.”, followed by three repititions of one to three digits, interspersed by periods, followed by another non-digit character.

technically, this regex could be adapted to accomodate any IP address, which means that, theoretically, i have a whole new, easier, and faster method of processing spam. 😈

the next step is to learn how to search for a specific range of digits… 😈

ETA 191127 i discovered that you can’t specify a range of digits with a regex. for that, you need a script, which is too much work. also, i determined that i DON’T need the white space character at the beginning and end of the regular expression, because, sometimes, the IP address is surrounded by parentheses, square brackets, or both.

ETA 191128 i changed it from white space character — \s — to non-digit character — \D — because some IP addresses are surrounded by parentheses or square brackets, but some are surrounded by white space characters. the only thing \D doesn’t capture is an empty string, so the IP address can’t be the first thing in the line of text.

and, even with the \D, this regex, modified to capture 27.16.0.0/12 in china, captures 2.2019.11.27.23.41.02, which is part of the message ID on a LEGITIMATE message. 😖😒😠🤬

this is why i’m rerouting these messages, rather than summarily deleting them, which is my inclination… summarily deleting what i think is spam has come back to bite me in the ass often enough that i don’t do it any longer. 😒

tibetan incense

i ordered a bunch of tibetan incense from Dakpa Tamdin, in India, this afternoon. it should be here in a couple months or less… it’s coming from india and i don’t even have the shipping details, yet. it may be sooner, but a couple of months sounds about right. keep an eye out here for further details as they become available.

oy 😒

this morning i added a second /8 block to my email filters.

for those of you wondering what i’m talking about, a /8 block is the largest block of IP addresses allocated by the IANA.

16,777,216 individual IP addresses.

my first filtered /8 block was in japan. my second one was in germany.

and i STILL get spam from japan and from germany. 😒

it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that spam was something in a monty python skit, and before that, it was a canned meat byproduct.

it’s not even UCE any longer, because most of it is devoted to scams of one kind or another. actual, commercial email is a tiny fraction of the volumes of script-generated spam, these days.

spam times 16,777,216²… which is a number so large my scientific calculator chokes on it… which is to say, it says 2.81474976711e+14 rather than giving me a number i can understand. 😒

chops

no, not Chopp’s, chops… the signature stamps that are traditionally used on chinese artwork.

i got some.

chops
chops – one says “SHALEMENDUO” and the other one says “RONG”

the one on the left says 沙了門多 which is prounounced SHĀ-LE-MÉN-DUŌ which is the closest the guy could get to “SALAMANDIR”.

SHĀ-LE-MÉN-DUŌ means “SAND-UP-DOOR-MANY”, which is, essentially, meaningless. it’s just a name chop.

"WRONG" or "DIFFERENT"
“WRONG” or “DIFFERENT”
the one on the right says 蝾 which is pronounced RÓNG, and it means “SALAMANDER”.

and i think it’s kind of interesting that the word for “SALAMANDER” is RÓNG

i made a chop several years ago, that says “CHIGAU” which means “DIFFERENT” or “WRONG”… but it’s backwards.

knock wood…

for the first time in a VERY long time, i booted up my computer, checked my email, and did NOT have at least 10 “bitcoin-porn-scam-spam” messages in my spam folder…

in fact, i had NO “bitcoin-porn-scam-spam” messages in my spam folder… or anywhere else…

there was spam in my spam folder, but no “bitcoin-porn-scam-spam” messages.

maybe this is a good sign.

ETA: not as good a sign as i would have hoped, but on the plus side, i now have blocks on more of uzbekistan, kazakhstan, bangladesh, and south africa than i did before.

oh well… 🤷

spammers spamming spam! 🤬

just as a reminder, this has been posted at the Hybrid Elephant Contact Us form:

PLEASE NOTE: This contact form is solely for the use of Hybrid Elephant customers who need to get in contact with us. Every message that is sent with this form includes a unique IP address in the header, which identifies the computer from which the message was sent. If you use this form to spam us, all you will accomplish is to put your IP address on the list of IP addresses which are PERMANENTLY BANNED from accessing Hybrid Elephant for any reason. Please DO NOT USE THIS FORM to send us advertisements or solicitations. It WILL NOT WORK! You have been warned!

this morning, i got spam from my response form (big surprise).

the difference, this time, is that the following message was included at the end of the spam:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This message has been posted via a Contact Us form on your site. Contact forms are publicly accessible and they can be used for posting messages by anyone. We don’t use, hold or archive your e-mail addresses.

yes, contact forms can be used by anyone, but, particularly when an anti-spam message like the one previously posted is present, a concientious user of internet won’t use it unless that person is also a “Hybrid Elephant customers who need to get in contact with us”.

the message that you sent me was definitely NOT because of a need to contact me about something having to do with my business. 😒

and the fact that you say you “don’t use, hold or archive your e-mail addresses” is a moot point, because you ALREADY HAVE used my email address, and the fact that you have already used it means that, very likely, it is stored somewhere on your system, and probably gets backed up with everything else on your computer, which, for all intents and purposes, is “using, holding and archiving”… 🤬

so, the IP address from which this spam was sent is 85.203.22.215, which is part of the 85.203.22.208/28 range, located in monaco.

as of now, 85.203.22.208/28 (16 individual IP addresses) is no longer able to access my domains for any reason whatsoever.

thanks, spammer.

the message also contained references to wexxluxurycars dot com, which also goes on my block list.

thanks, spammer.

the IP address to which that domain name corresponds is 198.46.134.35, which is located in new york. because of the fact that it’s in new york, that IP address goes on my email block list, with today’s date, so that, in case i get an inquiry regarding it at some future point, i can state, unequivocally, that it was added to the list on that date, in case the person inquiring wants me to remove it…

which i will do ONLY if they can convince me that they are no longer associated with spam.

thanks, spammer.

and, of course, nobody is going to be seriously affected by all of this falderal (except, possibly, me), because the message was, doubtlessly, sent by a script that scans for “Contact Us” forms, and dumps meaningless spam into them automatically, without any one person having to do anything other than launch the script, which is why i’ve taken to blocking CIDR ranges outside of north america with no further warning. if people are going to be that careless with their own security, it’s up to people like me to take their security seriously, for them.

thanks, spammer. 🤬

before the mushrooms kick in…

#drumpf is in the midst of impeachment, but it doesn’t appear to be making a whole lot of difference (thus, the mushrooms), but there have been some good things happening.

i have been getting A LOT of incense orders: 13 since the first of october, compared to 5 or fewer per month from january to september. also, i’ve gotten more orders from england and germany, since the first of october, than i have in the entire year previous. i still don’t entirely know what’s happening, but the end result is that i’ve now got more than $4,000 in my hybrid elephant account… which is somewhat startling…

191102 moe
191102 moe
last weekend, moe and i took a mini-vacation to san diego, for one night. ostensibly, moe had to rack up enough airline miles to qualify for “gold status”, because she has been travelling A LOT recently — mostly because of her newfound notariety as the author of a revolutionary book on animal behaviour — which, naturally, means that i have to stay at home and look after the pets.

seriously, folks… i’m married to a famous author! this week, she’s staying at a hotel in times square! it’s probably about as close to famous as i’m ever going to be! 😎

so moe decided that she would find a pet sitter and we would go off on our own (which i really appreciate). she chose san diego because she has been there before, and i haven’t, but i realised that san diego is the home of not one, but two outlets of the Village Hat Shop, which is where i bought my red fedora, and it is also home to the naval amphibious base coronado, which is a building shaped like a swastika.

i saw where it was when we were flying in, but i didn’t actually see the building because we were at too shallow an angle, and you pretty much have to be directly overhead to actually see that it’s shaped like a swastika…

so we flew to san diego to go hat shopping. i bought a pork pie made out of paper (a paper pork pie), and exhibited a great deal of self restraint becauuse i really wanted to take home about half the shop.

we actually stayed on coronado island

Hotel del Coronado - you see that large, famous, historic hotel over there? where we stayed is right behind it, in the Glorietta Bay Inn.
Hotel del Coronado – you see that large, famous, historic hotel over there? where we stayed is right behind it, in the Glorietta Bay Inn.

we stayed in a hotel room that is so “far above our station” that i almost got a nosebleed. 😉

and we flew home the next day, which was sunday.

i went busking yesterday, which was good, despite the fact that we only made about $20 a piece for 2 hours of busking. today i took two packages to the post office to ship out, and went to the dispensary, where i spent it all on weed and weed-related products.

and no w m y jmushrooms have kikckedk in ahd i heeed to be g oijn go ut for a wal,,k oris oemething lll…. 😁

random reminder

great swaths of the internet from the following countries have been permanently banned from viewing my web sites and sending me email, due to ongoing, egregious spamming activity:

albania
angola
argentina
aruba
australia
bangladesh
belarus
belgium
bosnia
brazil
british virgin islands
bulgaria
canada
chile
china
colombia
congo
denmark
denmark
egypt
finland
france
germany
guatemala
herzegovina
hong kong
iceland
india
indonesia
ireland
israel
italy
japan
kenya
latvia
lithuania
macau
malasia
mexico
moldova
netherlands
nigeria
norway
pakistan
panama
philippines
poland
romania
russia
serbia
seychelles
singapore
slovakia
south africa
spain
sweden
switzerland
taiwan
thailand
turkey
UK
ukraine
uruguay
viet nam

and more than a few from the united states, for good measure. 😒

spam is bad. stop spam on internet.

2019 panto banner

5’x7.5′ 2019 panto banner, normal-sized cat, for scale.

i got the green light to print the banners on tuesday. this is thursday…

i’m REALLY impressed: they took our artwork (me, norma, and mimi) and printed it at 300dpi on a 60″x90″ banner, and they did a GOOD job of it in a VERY short period of time: i sent them the artwork on tuesday, and, according to their web site, they had everything done and it was shipped by wednesday evening… it didn’t actually get to me until thursday morning, but even that is a lot faster than i was expecting… and two 5’x7½’ banners for $155 is astounding… seriously, i was expecting them to be at least $155 A PIECE… 👍‼‼

update to the update.

chris came over to talk about printing.

he actually convinced me to make some minor changes to the back of the postcard: i changed one typeface to bold, and increased it by one point.

it was more than i should have done, but i wanted to seem like i was giving in to at least one of his demands.

and the only reason i didn’t tell him to take the finished files and make the changes himself is because i’ve worked with him for a long time, and, allegedly, he’s my friend.

but, honestly, it seems like he has drunk the kool-aid a little bit on this one.

however, one way or the other, the postcards are currently at the printer, so no further changes can be made. and, as they’re getting 5,000 of them, there’s a good chance that there won’t be a second run.

still don’t know about the poster. leah has already printed some — who knows how many — so there might not be any more. 😒

i should update this thing again…

the most recent thing is that i have “volunteered” to help make the artwork that is going to be used for this year’s panto: the program cover, poster, postcard and banner. i put “volunteered” in quotation marks because it was presented as a fairly straightforward job that has turned into a nightmare of emails between me and norma, on one side, and leah and the steering committee — who pretty much don’t know what they’re talking about — on the other side… which i would very definitely NOT have “volunteered” for, if i had known about it ahead of time.

it started with me and norma. we, plus mimi, produced the artwork for last year’s panto (to great success, i might add), and we started out to make it largely the same…

then leah got involved. leah is the “publicity manager” this year, and she has very specific — if not outrageously wrong — ideas about how the artwork should appear. leah also set a deadline of october 3rd for all of this to be done, so that i could send it to the printer so that we could have posters and postcards by the first week of october.

on the first round of feedback in which leah was involved (third week of september), one of her “suggestions” was

Remove the Fremont Players website and keep the brown paper tickets (if people google us, they will find our web site)

⁉⁉⁉⁉⁉🤨🤦

she also wanted me to remove the fremont players’ graphic logo, remove the year, reduce the amount of text, and “integrate other stylistic suggestions from the steering committee”, who, like i said before, have NO CLUE what they’re talking about.

so, norma and i ignored about 90% of their suggestions, did what we could to placate leah (including taking the graphic logo off the front of the postcard and putting it on the back, faded behind the text so it’s “not noticible”, and, after a few more “back-and-forths” which didn’t include leah, we came up with what we thought was finished artwork.

meanwhile, on october 1st, leah wrote to me, asking how much it would cost — PER POSTER — to print them. this is a very complex question, which has a different answer based on whether you are using a small, local print shop (like the kind i worked in for 20+ years) or a large, nation wide printing house (like the kind i use these days), and if you are using a large, nation wide printing house, how much posters cost depends on whether you want a small number or a large number.

i tried to explain this to leah, but she was more concerned with the fact that

If I’m reading this correctly, 150 posters cost $210 but 250 posters cost only $40 more and ordering 4000 postcards is $465 but 5000 is $125 cheaper??

to which i responded “that’s right.”

i know, it’s weird, but it’s how large, nation wide printing houses do business, and it appears to work for them. you can’t get different specific-size jobs unless you’re willing to pay more than you would if you get an amount that the printers produce, which is usually more than you want, but “per poster” it comes in WAY cheaper than if you get a different, specific-size job.

so, she approved the artwork on october 2nd, and on october 3rd, she said that i should hold off on contacting the printer, because she wanted to see if it was possible to get an exact size job for a cheaper price.

to which i responded

yes, you can probably get cheaper prices from somewhere else, but keep in mind the quality of the printing i provided last year: posters on 100lb gloss stock, and postcards on 16pt gloss stock with UV coating. i’m pretty sure you’re not going to get anywhere close to the same quality anywhere else, for anything close to the prices i have quoted.

which was ignored… 🤦

a couple of days later, she wrote asking for the high res files, because she had found a “digital printer” (read “photocopy shop”) who would do EXACTLY the size job she wanted for half the price (on much lower quality paper, but she doesn’t know the difference).

so i uploaded them to dropbox, and washed my hands of the whole deal. 😒

it turns out that she had something printed — i still don’t know whether or not she used the correct files (if i had actually been there, and she had shown up with printing from the wrong files, i would have walked out and never gone back… 😒), but my guess is that either she didn’t use the correct files, or she whipped something together in microsoft publisher (or something like that) and used that instead.

then, on october 9th, i get a request for more changes to the postcard. apparently, now, they actually want the date on the front of the card.

i respond by telling maque that they have the high res versions of the artwork, and that they are welcome to make whatever changes they like to the card, BY THEMSELVES, because i am done with this job, and there is a very good likelyhood that i will not be available to “help” again next year, or going forward, because i felt like it was too much work for too little actual gain.

then, yesterday, i get a call from chris huson. he wants to meet me to discuss why i am so upset with the printing process. actually, he SAYS he wants to “discuss further changes” to the postcard, but i nip that in the bud right away.

i explain exactly what i (and mimi and norma) did, and exactly what leah did. i show him emails from leah. i show him the finished artwork — which he says doesn’t look like what leah had printed. i explain about the confusing pricing, and the quality differences, and how none of this seemed to make a difference to leah.

it turns out that leah actually asked chris to take over managing the artwork portion of the job. given what chris already knew about leah, and about the fact that i was upset about the way this whole thing was working out — AND because chris is on the steering committee AND the board of directors, he made the executive decision to take over managing the production of the artwork.

he’s coming over tomorrow to finalise the “already finalised” artwork, to talk about run amounts, and the schedule of when we might have things.

——

from the time i was born until the time i finally escaped my parents’ house, when i was 20 or so, the primary message i received, over and over, was that i was not good enough, that i would never BE good enough, and that, unless i worked VERY hard at “being normal”, nobody would ever like me.

it wasn’t always very subtle, but that was the underlying message, regardless of what i did: they said they were “proud of me” when i won awards, but they refused to do anything to help me win more awards, and shot me down every time i thought i might be able to succeed at doing… pretty much anything…

and when i wasn’t winning awards for playing trombone, or doing magic shows, i didn’t even have a name: i was “the crummy child”. oldest by 6 years of four children, the other three of whom were born two years apart, starting when i was 6, then 8, then 10, when they got old enough to realise what was happening, my siblings called me “the crummy child” as well. when my first younger sister was born, i quickly faded into the background. after that, the only times anybody noticed me was when i was winning awards or when i was getting into trouble.

——

this whole business of working with leah brought all that back in one fell swoop: regardless of how good the art was, it wasn’t good enough. 😠

it has begun to be worked out, now that chris is more involved than he was before, but i’m still quite shaken, and stirred up (at the same time) by this whole fiasco.

tee…

i’ve recently taken to blocking great swaths of IP addresses in foreign countries, which only send me spam.

she has HUGE… tracts of land…

i have undertaken this policy because using a utility that automatically blocks IP addresses from foreign countries costs money (😒) and using a utility would only work on hybridelephant dot com, and nowhere else.

so, i learned about CIDR, learned how to identify host countries based on IP addresses, and learned how to block IP addresses based on CIDR numbers…

now, instead of blocking a single IP address — which is pointless, because spammers know that a single IP address only works until the spamees figure it out and block it, so they move on to the next one — i block entire swaths of IP addresses: the most common are the /24 range, which blocks 256 (28) IP addresses, and the /16 range, which blocks 65,536 (216) addresses.

and i can block spam from those IP addresses on ALL of my domains, not just hybridelephant dot com. 😉

which brings me to the point of this post: i recently blocked the third IN A SERIES of IP addresses from bangladesh: now i have 185.222.56.0/24, 185.222.57.0/24, AND 185.222.58.0/24 blocked.

which, technically, means that i could block 185.222.56.0/23 and 185.222.58.0/24 with the same effect, because 185.222.56.0/24 plus 185.222.57.0/24 equals 185.222.56.0/23

i love that i am able to do this.

i also love that i am able to understand this as much as i do… which is not very much, but enough that i have been successful in reducing the amount of spam i get by a SIGNIFICANT amount, and not affected my legitimate mail in the slightest degree. 😈

art coming…

i’ve had this bizarre feeling… like i’m about to create something.

i’m not sure what it’s going to be yet.

i’ve put together some outrageous beads that are begging to be made into something exotic and elaborate.

i’ve also got the feeling that, perhaps, i’m going to do something in the workshop… where i’ve already got at least two art projects that are in the process, but haven’t been actively worked on in a year or more. i also keep feeling like i should be carving something, possibly wood or stone, but, again, i’m not sure exactly what it’s going to be.

i don’t get this feeling often.

it’s like an itch on my back that i can’t quite reach: the more i scratch around it, the more intense it gets.

and…

and, like magic, the final decision has been made that we are, in fact, NOT going to yakima.

100% guaranteed, no changing our minds this time, no going back, it’s finished, done, over, the decision has been made.

the guy sent us the contract. it doesn’t have any of the changes that we discussed when we were in salem, and he hasn’t even tried to answer any of the questions we had, or addressed any of the demands we made after coming back from salem.

so, we’re not doing the yakima gig.

period.

PHEW!!!‼‼‼

meanwhile, my compact mic stand arrived, which means that now i can take my tuba, and my rolling tote, and busk, amplified, ANYWHERE, with AC power not required. i can also take my harmonic flute and busk, amplified, ANYWHERE…

my 8’x8′ bright red pop-up canopy arrives tomorrow, and that, combined with the massive quantities of aluminet shade cloth that monique just acquired for me, means that i can set up a rudimentary stage with some protection from the wind and rain.

on the other paw, we had an okay set, and an OUTSTANDING set at the pike place market today. the okay set brought in $9 a piece, and the OUTSTANDING set brought in $29 a piece.

we only did one day’s worth of performing, for twice as much time, when we were in salem, where we brought in over twenty dollars.

i agree with hobbit, that performing for the casino, where deni actually works, would be an outstanding gig, but he’s SO FUCKING DISORGANISED that i doubt it’s ever going to happen in reality.

arf! 🤬

the word that i just got is that we are, indeed, going to yakima.

i don’t have any more details, yet, however:

1) the guy who complained about us not being colourful enough is eric. eric is the guy we were supposed to contact when we got to salem, but when we got there, and called his number, we were informed that he no longer works for the oregon state fair, and we should call someone else.

2) eric is also the guy who was supposed to be responsible for procuring the signs that didn’t exist at the oregon state fair, a fact which cost us a fair amount in tips that didn’t come in because (as was clearly demonstrated) people didn’t know that we were NOT being paid a substantial amount by the fair to be there and entertain them. to counteract this for yakima, we demanded to be paid $2,000 if yakima had signs, $2,200 if they didn’t have signs, and $2,500 if they said they would put up signs, but don’t actually do it.

3) deni apparently “went to bat” for us, and got us hired in spite of eric’s complaints that we weren’t colourful enough. whether or not this means that the issue of the signs (see item 2) that we put into our list of demands (or, for that matter, ANY of our list of demands) has been met remains to be seen.

part of this is because hobbit is so broke that busking to bring in some money NOW is more important to him than clearing up questions such as this. i trust hobbit — more or less — so i’m fairly sure that he wouldn’t deliberately put me into a situation which, ultimately, would leave me screwed, but, because of the fact that he’s so broke, i can’t be 100% sure, and even if i was 100% sure that hobbit won’t screw me, i still have significant reservations about deni, and i’m actually fairly sure that eric would deliberately do things to fuck with me, knowingly or not, simply because he has done so in the recent past. 🤬

so… whee… we’re going to busk for 10 days in yakima. woo. 😒

hopefully it will be more “productive” than salem was.

woooof…

so the feedback that we got from deni, regarding the oregon fair was that we “weren’t colourful enough”…

190902 not colourful enough
190902 not colourful enough

this is a selfie i took on the last day of the fair.

i was wearing my red hat, blue sunglasses, a rainbow tie-dyed hawaiian shirt, a multicoloured tibetan vest, a kilt with a bright purple band, PLAYING A TUBA AND SITTING ON THE GROUND‼‼‼

if this isn’t “colourful” enough for him, i’m sorry, but that’s all i can do… 😒

we’ve emailed deni with our “list of demands” for the yakima fair. he hasn’t responded.

he has until thursday, which is a week before we would have to leave for the yakima fair.

if he doesn’t respond before then, we’re not going, which would be 100% fine with me.

if he does, we’ll have to see what he has to say about our list of demands before we’re going to decide.

i’m not holding my breath.

woof!

i got back from the oregon state fair yesterday. things went as follows:

we left at approximately 10:00 am, the morning of thursday, august 22nd, on our way to salem, oregon. on our way, before we got to the I5-I205 split, just north of vancouver, washington, we stopped to meet deni, the guy who hired us to busk. we picked up a preliminary check for $500, and got some advice concerning our appearances — “shave yer scruff, this is a family-oriented show”, and “be colourful”, were the gist of it. there was no inkling of how absolutely pointless this would be, but we were blissfully ignorant, and pressed on.

we got to the fairgrounds and almost immediately discovered that the guy we had been told (by deni) to contact, was no longer working for the fair, and we should contact another guy, who turned out to be joe, but he wasn’t available, so we proceded to our hotel.

the hotel had two criteria: it had to be “convenient”, and it had to be “cheap”. it was both of those things. we were, literally, less than a mile and a half from the fairgrounds — i walked almost the entire distance the first morning we were there, and didn’t realise it because i decided to go back before the road curved around so that i could see the fairground. it was also “cheap” in that it cost less than $900 for an 11-night stay with two beds… but it wasn’t particularly clean: the kitchenette and the refrigerator had mysteriously consistent yellow stains, the shower-curtain rod looked like someone had tried, and failed, to do pull-ups on it, the shower curtain itself was infested with black mold, the sheets and towels were stained, and the staff that i interacted with, with the exception of the lady who checked us in, and a different lady who checked us out, were surly and inconsistent, yelling at us for smoking on the breezeway outside our room, but smoking, herself, in an area that has a sign designating it as a “no smoking” area. for a hotel that had two criteria, however, it fit the bill adequately, and we didn’t spend much time there, apart from sleeping, anyway.

we were supposed to show up at 10:30 am, friday, for indoctrination an important meeting with joe, where we were going to be shown the fairgrounds, the “green room”, get our ID badges and parking permit, and other important stuff. the GPS told us to take 17th ave. to the “red gate”, but 17th ave. was blocked off with a sign that said “vendors exempt”, and we had been told that we were “vendors”, so i pulled around the barricades and was immediately confronted by a harried woman with blonde hair, who said i couldn’t go that way. i said “we’re vendors”, to which she responded, “you can’t go this way” and proceded to give us directions that took us, essentially “around the block”, so that we were approaching from the other direction. we thought it was a little odd, but we didn’t have our ID badges or parking permit, so i said “fuck it” and drove around the block… and, it turned out, that it was, in fact, to the other end of 17th street, and we encountered the “red gate” almost immediately… but we didn’t have a parking permit, so the drone wouldn’t let us park in the VIP lot, which was where we had been told to park. we parked along the street, and inquired at the “red gate information booth” — it said so, with a big sign that could be seen from the other end of 17th street, which caused similar sorts of confusion for two more days, until i decided not to deal with the situation any longer, and drove around the block without even stopping to discuss the matter with the harried looking woman any longer. eventually, we were told, that 17th street is only one way, during the fair, but there weren’t any signs indicating that, and there were other vehicles travelling the “wrong direction” on 17th, but, apparently, WE were “not supposed to”… which is one of the reasons i gave up trying to get a reason out of anybody…

anyway, we parked, and, eventually, met up with joe and brian, a magician, who had also been hired by deni. there was supposed to be a third guy, pug, but his car had broken down somewhere outside of salem, and he was still trying to get there, so we did the orientation without him. joe piled all of us onto a “gator” — basically a large, motorised, all-terrain tractor/cart thingy — and showed us some places we could, potentially, busk. he also showed us the “green room” which was an unlocked and unguarded room at the back of the stadium, where he said we could store our instruments…

fat chance…

dole whip
and then he took us back to the red gate, and gave us our parking permit and our ID badges, and set us free to decide where we were going to busk for 4 hours. we decided on the last place we looked at, which was across from a dole whip booth, in a place where, we figured, we would get A LOT of traffic, and we were not disappointed… however it was also right behind the big stadium, and about 50 yards away from another stage — the Spirit of Oregon Stage — both of which had EXTREMELY loud bands at what seemed like random times, sometimes overlapping, and, while we COULD busk there, we, literally, couldn’t be heard most of the time…
JIGGLE FOOT!!!
and that’s not to mention the “Jiggle Foot” devices — enormous, brightly coloured feet, barrels, or logs, in which one puts quarters in order to cause a platform attached to a “magic-fingers”-like thing to jiggle, allegedly “rejuvanating” your feet. we had to do some creative re-imagining of how the jiggle-foot devices were plugged in, in order to have enough power for our amps, and for the jiggle-feet. and then one of them broke: first it jiggled REALLY LOUDLY, and then it stopped working at all, which caused many people to complain about it, which caused the fair security guards to come around, discover our creative re-imagining, and summarily unplug our amps, so that, even when there weren’t bands playing, we couldn’t be heard above the crowd noise.

and then, joe disappeared, and was replaced by britanny, until saturday the 31st, when he showed up again.

Howlin Hobbit and Washboard Willie
Howlin Hobbit and Washboard Willie
somewhere in the chaos, hobbit heard some music that he found familiar, which, it turned out, was being made by a fellow named washboard willie, who hobbit busked with at the pike place market, 30 years ago. every day after that, we were visited by washboard willy and his rig, as they wandered by.

we put up with the noise until sunday the 25th, when we requested a different place to play, as we were pushing what we thought was an 8:30 closing time (which turned out to be incorrect, yet another screw-up), and we had only JUST completed our “contractual obligation” of 4 hours of busking. we were given the opportunity to busk under a tree, in the vicinity of a “dippin’ dots” booth and the booth of a hmong fabric artist, and right under the uphill slope of the northwest terminus for the “fair lift”, the oregon state fair’s answer to the “sky ride” from the washington state fair. there wasn’t quite as large a crowd of people constantly going by, but at least we could play without getting blasted away by disco turned up to 11…

Peanut Envy on the Fair Lift
Peanut Envy on the Fair Lift
monday the 26th was a lot more relaxed. we had the pop-up, but we didn’t need it, because of the shade from the tree. i asked, and was informed that they “would allow” us to take our instruments on the fair lift, so, tuesday, we did our first set on the fair lift, which was kind of amusing, although it was more than a little cramped.

Peanut Envy on the fair lift
Peanut Envy on the fair lift
Peanut Envy on the fair lift
Peanut Envy on the fair lift
Peanut Envy on the fair lift
Peanut Envy on the fair lift

by wednesday the 28th, it was pretty clear that we weren’t making ANYWHERE NEAR as much in tips as we could have been making at home, at the market, so we made some signs to encourage people. that was when we found out that, in spite of the fact that we had been assured otherwise, and we had actually submitted a “publicity photo” for them, there actually WERE NOT signs at the gates, indicating our presence, and suggesting that people who encountered us give us money in exchange for us entertaining them. the signs that we made, made the difference between $17 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance — which is worse than the worst day i have EVER had at the market, by a long shot — and $97 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance, which is an adequate day at the market for 2 hours of performance… but it still wasn’t a lot, which was really discouraging.

apart from not making very much in tips (a little more than $500 total, for 11 days, which works out to about $5.96 per hour, per person), the rest of the fair was pretty uneventful. we settled into a routine of doing a half hour set, with a half hour break, and then four 45-minute sets separated by half hour breaks, and then finishing with a half hour set around 6:00 pm… except for sunday, the 1st, when we were feeling rested enough that we had decided to play a 7th set, because joe (remember him) had said that we were okay until 8:45, when all the entertainment crew would be required for a fire show… but we had just started the 7th set, at 7:15 pm, when a different guy showed up and said that if we didn’t pack up and load out RIGHT THEN, that we wouldn’t be able to load out until 11:30, because of the fire show…

and, after that, we never saw joe again, so we don’t know why it happened that way… but it was just another frustration that made me VERY glad to get back home.

and then, on monday the 2nd, hobbit started losing it. i am sure he was tired, and fact that he has the worst case of sleep-apnea i have ever heard, AND his diet (which consisted largely of whiskey and cigarettes) probably didn’t help matters, but, during our first set, hobbit started out playing his ukulele and singing, and then sort of faded out, started singing gibberish, and then went to sleep… THREE TIMES!!! the first time, i thought it was kind of an odd thing that i had never seen from hobbit before, but by the third time, i was seriously concerned that he was having a stroke or something, so i flagged down a roving EMT, who put hobbit through his paces, and tested his blood pressure, which was 180/90. there wasn’t much he could do, and by that time, hobbit was complaining he was really okay, so he went away, and came back a couple hours later to check. hobbit really was okay, but i’ve kind of got a short fuse when it comes to potential brain injuries.

by the time tuesday came around, i was really glad to leave our sleazy hotel and get back to my own bed.

and, if everything goes the way i think it will, we (meaning hobbit and i) will do it all again, in yakima, in a couple of weeks…

whee…

fump

anhedonia has made me ambivalent about the fact that i am leaving on thursday for 11 days of PAID busking(‼) at the Oregon State Fair in Salem.

then i’m returning home for a couple of weeks, and then i’m going to Yakima for 10 days of PAID busking(‼) at the Central Washington State Fair.

i’m getting PAID(‼) $825 for oregon and $750 for yakima, plus half of whatever we make passing the hat (because real buskers can actually do that), which we have been recommended to do about every 15 or 20 minutes. we’re working (in oregon) from 11:30 am to 8:30 pm, but they only want 4 to 5 hours of busking in that time period. we have to pay for a hotel room in oregon, but a hotel room is included in yakima.

i got some more mushrooms from macque, and i got a whole bunch of encouragement regarding growing mushrooms from macque (who is, apparently, an expert. who knew?) and from rossi, who is an art cartist and the friend of ranger’s, who i got the mushrooms from last year. i’m taking some to salem. who knows whether or not i will be motivated to use them during the time i’m gone…

in other news, i got a pair of blue sunglasses, because looking at the world through 💩-coloured glasses was making me REALLY depressed, despite how much i liked them — and how many of my clothes matched the 💩-coloured sunglasses… but i really like the blue sunglasses even more, despite the fact that they’re not polarised, which makes driving in the bright sunlight a little difficult.

Tina Chopp is God! Praise Her OR DIE!!

Tina Chopp is God! Praise Her OR DIE!!*
June 6, 2019
by Paul Krugman
nytimes.com

Tina Chopp claims that she can β€œfix anything!” I don’t know about the results of any business big or small, but I certainly know about the results of electing a God.

Citizens of the United States were tired of political campaigns in which voters were supposed to make an informed choice, and come November they chose not to do so. Perhaps that was because political campaigns are often tedious, or because, in 2018, the choices were so severe, or perhaps, as I argued yesterday, because the traditional definition of democracy, which involves an informed choice by voters, had been rendered absurd by the rise of special-interest money in politics. Voters may understand politics in idiosyncratic ways, but they are not rational. They can’t know everything; the information they have is too incomplete and cluttered for anyone to take proper stock of the candidates.

But citizens have not been irrationally inert in general, either. There are times when an informed opinion is just as right as the next one, and there are times when an informed opinion is just as bad as the next one. It is sometimes not even possible to know the difference between them β€” in recent days, for example, a number of the #MeToo protesters spent all day in the public square, insisting that they knew a lot more than they seemed to, and finally decided that the house was haunted.

The election of a God enables one to ignore the matter altogether, and the designation of such a God, apparently, is self-explanatory. This should not be any kind of problem, because the Bible is faith. And faith does not need to be backed up by anything, and certainly not by objective knowledge, so Chopp can rewrite the Bible as she likes, just as she will rewrite your favorite movie, or your favorite TV show, as she wants, without a single backward glance toward theological detail.

People who mock the idea of electing a God often find themselves apologizing when, like Chopp, they refuse to back up the idea, insisting that a deity is just not necessary. (Especially when a deity so obviously favors Israel!) But it is necessary; this is not a joking matter, in my view. The natural condition of people is self-referential, and we not only judge other people’s quality, but we judge ourselves. Many of us would naturally opt for a God who is on our side.

And the sad truth is that Chopp and her kind seem to be, if not quite an entirely new threat, then a near-complete one. They have replaced democracy, which is now generally pretty awful (but which gives us some rare gains in some areas β€” civic organizing, campaigning, electoral infrastructure, resistance) with religion, which, while superficially attractive, is also pretty distasteful. Christianity, of course, has always been toxic, but churches even in countries with relatively strong traditions of democracy β€” Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Holland, Finland, Iceland, Iceland again β€” have been susceptible to corrupting tendencies. So too, it seems, has the idea of electing a God.

Some combination of middlebrow and educated parents will remain ready to do their children the honor of having them baptized into a god whose politics are unclear, and who tells her followers to β€œimmediate action!” And if anyone even remotely similar surfaces, but even a relatively uneducated or educated churchgoer won’t mind telling an unbeliever to β€œplease pray.” The fundamental question is this: Are we really serious about denying Chopp her God, or are we just sending a message to those who might β€” and the decline of political parties makes this more and more certain β€” become moderates by necessity?

Continue reading Tina Chopp is God! Praise Her OR DIE!!

seriously…

i put a notice on hybrid elephant’s contact form, a few months ago:

PLEASE NOTE: This contact form is solely for the use of Hybrid Elephant customers who need to get in contact with us. Every message that is sent with this form includes a unique IP address in the header, which identifies the computer from which the message was sent. If you use this form to spam us, all you will accomplish is to put your IP address on the list of IP addresses which are PERMANENTLY BANNED from accessing Hybrid Elephant for any reason. Please DO NOT USE THIS FORM to send us advertisements or solicitations. It WILL NOT WORK! You have been warned!

this morning i received spam from the contact form, which said “my apologies for reaching out cold like this, just trying to see who I can help.”

if you’re really interested in helping, there’s a snail-mail address, AND a phone number posted on the same page as the contact form — which contains the warning mentioned previously. there’s absolutely no reason why you could not have called me on the phone, or written me a snail-mail message, instead of using our contact form SPECIFICALLY for something that i have warned you NOT to use it for.

not only that, but the header indicates that you’re one of those suckers who bought into the spam that has been going around recently, which says that you can send your spam through contact forms, because they’re already approved. i know this because your return address is to a server in scottsdale, arizona, but the message was sent through 105.235.192.0/21, which is located in nigeria. not only that, but the domain name you registered is hosted by microsoft, and registered at godaddy, both of which are known, notorious spam havens, despite what they may say in their advertisements… so your domain name also goes into my spam filter.

congratulations, spammer: you have successfully participated in BLOCKING yourself, your domain, and a /21 range (2,048 individual IP addresses) in nigeria. you will never again be able to access any of my domains, for any reason, any email that you send to me will go unread, and there is absolutely NO WAY i will ever use your “instagram marketing” service… primarily because i do not now, and never have had an instagram account, and i do not intend to open one in the future.

which you could have found out just as easily over the telephone, and you wouldn’t have blocked yourself. spam doesn’t work. give it up.

🤬

Mother People


(it’s an .ogg file. if you don’t have the proper codec for it by this time, fuck you.)

We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you…

Do you think that I’m crazy?
Out of my mind?
Do you think that I creep in the night
And sleep in a phone booth?

Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
If it doesn’t show,
Think you better know
I’m another person

Do you think that my pants are too tight?
Do you think that I’m creepy?

Better look around before you say you don’t care
Shut your fuckin’ mouth about the length of my hair
How would you survive
If you were alive
Shitty little person?

We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you

We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you

Do you think that I love you…
Stupid & blind?
Do you think that I dream through the night
Of holding you near me?

Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
If it doesn’t show
Think you better know
I’m another person

TITTlES

Toad Finder of Renton (there’s a recurring theme around toads that i find interesting)
Smurf Academy
I Brainwash Cats
Mexican Junk Food
Smarmy Pants
YART
Made In Vagina
Antique Fitness
Retina & Macula – Attorneys at Law
Swank and Brumbles
Baby Jell-O
All You Can Eat Tobacco Bar
Free Flu Shot – 10% Off
Buy 8 Gallons Of Subway Diesel
Now Hiring Deep Fried Turkey
Toads Schmoads
Toad Mop (see what i mean?)
On Site Manatee
16-Foot Walls And Tape
Orgasmic String Cheese
Slims Pie Meeting
Yard Onion
  PUN
  CHA
  COP
NOHEGGERS
Vanilla Quicksand
Why Waste Good Garbage
Kids’ Smoke Shop
Now Hiring Topsoil Mulch Truck Drivers
Shite The Road
Scum Ball
Hey Look! Toxic!
இது ஒரு மாட்டின் பின் புறத்திலிருந்து வருகிறது.
Meaty Produce
We Rent Small Toads (more toads)
Ginger Snoop
Bleach For The Moon

spam update

as of 190729, the following IP addresses, and top-level domains are BLOCKED from my web sites, for egregious spamming behaviour:

5.104.108.0/24 – germany
5.188.210.0/24 – russia
5.226.136.0/21 – UK
23.19.0.0/19 – russia
23.82.128.0/22 – VIRGINIA, USA
31.13.191.0/24 – sweden
37.120.135.0/24 – italy
37.120.159.0/24 – UK
45.12.176.0/22 – india
45.81.0.0/22 – UK
51.15.0.0/18 – france/belgium
51.38.157.0/26 – poland
51.89.30.128/26 – denmark
77.81.105.0/24 – romania
77.81.106.0/24 – romania
80.211.253.0/24 – aruba/italy
85.25.236.0/22 – germany
85.204.49.0/24 – romania
85.204.50.0/24 – romania
85.206.165.8/29 – lithuania/canada
85.254.72.0/24 – latvia
86.109.170.0/24 – spain
88.201.208.0/20 – russia
88.247.0.0/18 – turkey
88.247.64.0/20 – turkey
89.36.224.0/25 – romania
89.44.138.0/23 – romania
89.238.128.0/18 – UK
92.101.192.0/22 – russia
93.125.99.0/24 – belarus/canada
95.37.128.0/17 – russia
95.216.0.0/15 – finland
103.39.132.0/22 – india
103.62.92.0/22 – india
103.76.22.0/23 – indonesia
103.113.3.0/24 – indonesia
103.138.238.0/24 – india
104.245.144.0/22 – canada
105.174.0.0/15 – angola
109.93.128.0/17 – serbia
109.158.0.0/16 – UK
109.175.96.0/19 – bosnia and herzegovina
109.245.80.0/21 – serbia
118.107.180.0/24 – hong kong
133.0.0.0/8 – japan (this represents 16,777,216 individual IP addresses, the largest block allocated by the IANA 🤬)
134.90.149.176/29 – norway
139.99.0.0/17 – singapore
142.59.228.0/22 – canada
150.95.104.0/21 – vietnam
151.106.10.154/31 – china/france
151.106.12.240/28 – romania
157.157.87.0/24 – iceland
168.196.0.0/22 – argentina
176.9.0.0/16 – bulgaria
177.36.246.0/24 brazil
178.17.160.0/21 – moldova
178.17.168.0/21 – moldova
178.162.208.0/21 – germany
178.162.220.0/22 – germany
178.175.128.0/18 – moldova
181.214.60.0/22 – brazil
181.215.96.0/19 – brazil (london, columbia, chicago)
182.50.128.0/19 – singapore
182.52.0.0/15 – japan/thailand
182.56.0.0/14 – india
183.80.144.0/20 – vietnam
183.89.0.0/16 – thailand
185.9.147.0/24 – russia
185.93.3.0/24 – UK
185.94.189.128/27 – romania
185.103.110.0/24 – finland
185.125.32.0/22 – turkey
185.128.27.0/24 – italy
185.156.173.0/24 – france
185.206.224.0/24 – denmark
185.220.101.0/25 – germany
185.222.58.0/24 – bangladesh
185.230.127.0/24 – germany
185.234.0.0/22 – ireland/UK
188.209.52.0/24 – macau
193.56.28.0/24 – UK
193.201.224.0/22 – ukraine
195.181.166.0/24 – UK
199.249.230.0/24 – TEXAS, USA
200.40.96.0/24 – uruguay
201.138.46.0/24 – mexico
203.113.160.0/19 – vietnam

.bid – auctions
.br – brazil
.casa – “house”
.cf – central african republic
.club – groups, organizations, assemblies, communities, general
.cn – china
.date – online dating
.direct – general
.do – dominican republic
.download – technology
.es – spain
.faith – religion and churches
.fun
.gq – equatorial guinea
.hk – hong kong
.host – network companies
.icu – entrepreneurs and business owners
.life
.live
.loan – banks and lenders
.md – moldova
.moda – “fashion”
.mp – northern mariana islands (and anyone using mailchi.mp)
.ms – montserrat
.ooo
.online
.party – nightclubs and social gatherings
.pro – professions/professionals
.racing – racing
.review – public reviews
.ru – russia
.site
.space – as a creative space
.store – stores
.stream
.top
.trade – businesses
.webcam – web cam shows and video sharing
.website
.win – games, micro$oft windoesn’t
.world
.xyz
.za – south africa

if you recognise your IP address, or if you are one of the unfortunates whose web sites have one of the preceding TLDs, i’m sorry, but it had to be done… maybe if you contacted your ISP and complained, they might do something about it. 😒

i did it

i finally went through all of my photos and found a “some random hippie” photo for every year from 2004 until the present, with the exception (for some, as-yet unknown reason) of 2010. the current trend of a picture in the mirror began in 2009.

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

some random hippie, 2019

fair was fair:

i didn’t camp where i wanted to (right next to the stage), because my tent was too large, so i camped where i was last year, which was down in the gully behind the stage; i connected with people i only see once a year, including the bearded guy from the mighty tiny puppet theatre, whose name i don’t remember; we didn’t play at the ritz (again), however i took three saunas and got 4 tokens, one from the hat after the show (i now have 35 tokens);

2019 OCF 50th anniversary
2019 OCF 50th anniversary
i connected with the hat-lady, who said that her life had fallen apart, and then she wasn’t sure i would like my (wonderful, amazing, outrageous) hat, which is why it took her eight months to send it to me… i told her she doesn’t know me very well, and gave her many hugs to reassure her that i do, indeed, love THE HELL out of my WONDERFUL, AMAZING, OUTRAGEOUS HAT — 😍 — i stayed up way later than i should have, multiple days in a row, and i only slept through one cue, i didn’t take any pictures, because, for the most part, they would be the same pictures i have taken since i first started going to the fair, i gave away 60 “Step Into Panto-Land” buttons, mostly to people who have no idea what it meant, the electronics for my harmonic flute decided to malfunction in a way that i have to be at home to fix, so i didn’t play my harmonic flute more than a little bit, although i learned how to play another style of end-blown flute, and i’m really excited to try new stuff with PVC as a result, i was part of the group that was disinvited to the memorial service for dead fair family (the whole Fremont Players troupe was disinvited, after having exchanged numerous emails with the people organising it, which indicated that we would, indeed, be a part of the program, prior to the fair), and i don’t know why, nor will i ever, probably…

nobody knows what happened to the totem pole, that i talked to, and one person told me not to bring it up. 😒

however, barring other, cooler things happening at the same time, i’ll more than likely go back again next year. i’m still open to other suggestions, however. 😉

some random hippie, 2019
some random hippie, 2019
some random hippie, 2019
some random hippie, 2019

Some Random Hippie, 2018
Some Random Hippie, 2017
Some Random Hippie, 2016
Some Random Hippie, 2013
Some Random Hippie, 2012
Some Random Hippie, 2011

bleah…

i’ve been under the attack of anhedonia and depression. my mushrooms have lost their potency: the last time i tried, i took 6 of them and they had, essentially, no effect at all. i connected with a person at SACBO — ranger’s connection — but she is only one step closer to the source… although she did mention that starter kits are available on ebay, and that they practically grow themselves, so that’s worth looking into.

part of the reason i have been so depressed is because of what i call the “political situation”: that is, drumpf and his latest atrocities. it just keeps on getting worse, and, when i think there’s no way he can get any worse, he blows the world away with the magnitude of his atrocities… and his republicon base of supporters get upset about a black disney princess and a pair of nike sneakers, but totally ignore the concentration camps and the gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, not to mention the totally inept people, including his own children, he’s put in charge of such things as education, housing, healthcare and the environment. it’s literally going to take us 100 years JUST to fix his fuckups, and that’s not taking into account the fact that the world is already in a crisis mode. it’s almost as though everything i’ve ever fought for throughout my entire life has been eliminated by this orange babboon in less than 3 years, and replaced with climate-change deniers, corporate stooges, forced-birth and anti-vax controversies, and so-called “christian” love, which is only for the so-called “christians”.

drumpf spent $92 million, which he appropriated from the national parks department (🤬), on a “military parade” in washington DC, complete with tanks and a flyover by the blue angels and “airforce one” — which, of course, wasn’t “airforce one” because the #SCROTUS was on the ground, observing the flyover… and the tanks were stationary, because, apparently, if they had moving tanks, they would have destroyed the streets and damaged the lincoln memorial… but the only people who could view this were his donors, because everyone else had to pay to get in… and then it rained, HARD and everything was postponed. the photos and videos i’ve seen show a very few thoroughly wet people and drumpf giving a long, boring, confusing speech that one writer i read compared to having been written by artificial intelligence, and a retired admiral said that it was on the level of an 8th grade history lesson… and the live video feeds from the top of the washington memorial, and the lincoln memorial were inexplicably shut down and removed from the whitehouse dot gov address, apparently to cover up how few people actually attended this debacle.

so, basically, we, the american people, threw away $92,000,000,000 on an egotistical, childish, boorish, dictator-emulating orange rapist with the IQ of half a rock, instead of addressing the concentration camps, or the homeless issue, or the healthcare issue, or… 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

as can be well imagined, despite my love for exploding things, i take little interest in such activities in celebration of this country, this year… which is, also, at least partially, because of the fact that we now have a dog who is totally terrified of fireworks, AND a next-door neighbour who is prone to setting off a ton of fireworks which ignite their lawn, and other suchlike wonderful things. 😒

OCF is 5 days away, and i’m hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. by this time, we’ve usually had one run through, and have some rough idea of how long the show will be. this year, we’re nowhere close to that, despite the fact that we started out with a working script, which we created 15 years ago, when we did this show (Jack And The Beanstalk) the last time. and we’re still missing two songs, one of which is probably not going to make it into the show for OCF.

and, on top of everything else, MAD magazine is shutting down! PBLFLLT!! 😠

art? jewelry?

i made a necklace that i’m particularly proud of:

190618 gauri shankar sivalingam necklace

190618 gauri shankar sivalingam necklace
190618 gauri shankar sivalingam necklace

i can’t decide whether it’s art, or jewelry… or possibly both… and spiritually oriented, as well: the “penis” is a sivalingam, and the “testicles” are a gauri shankar, which is two naturally-joined rudrakshas.

it doesn’t have any real “traditional” meaning, at least not as far as i know, so it may represent what they call “cultural appropriation”, but, if it does, i don’t care, because it doesn’t represent that to me. to me it represents all of the best that can be represented by Ṣíva and Ganeṣa… and it looks awesome, and, perhaps, a little bit silly. 🤪 there is more about gauri shankar and sivalingam available for those who may be interested.

i might be convinced to sell it — maybe, at some undefined future time — but i think i would charge at least $500 for it… maybe more. 😉

Continue reading art? jewelry?

interesting? unusual?

approximately 6:30 pm — so far it’s been interesting? unusual?

i have been, and continue to be high, in certain ways (clumsy typing among them), and i continue to “see things” that are there, perhaps in ways that i might not if i were not “altered”, but…

190605 i’m not looking directly at the sun, my camera is! 😜

(also, the previous one was taken yesterday, so it may not count)

190606 three faces

what, you don’t see three faces? they’ve been looking out of my neighbour’s fence for a few years, now…

190606 imagine…

imagine a torso on that pair of legs… 😉

then, when i got home from my walk, i got a letter in the mail from the pike place market foundation…

190606 TINA CHOPP IS GOD!

it’s as “official” as it can be, at this point. they say “This stainless steel Charm will dance and shine on the new MarketFront Plaza for generations”, but they said the same thing about my tile, back in the ’80s, and look what happened there…

i’m “high”, but it’s different. instead of being euphoric, i’m depressed… but high. things “feel” okay, but i know that, when i am not “high”, they’re actually going to be a lot worse than i have allowed myself to imagine, because i am “high”…

it’s not an unpleasant sensation, but i’m not sure a repeat of it would be entirely welcome.

once again

🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄🍄

approximately 2:00 pm – it’s been a few months, and i stopped because i was running low and didn’t have any resources for more… i still have, essentially, no resources apart from one guy at the market who said he was waiting for his connection, and another, possible resource who is a friend of the last guy i got them from, who, allegedly, grows them on a more or less “commercial” basis.

at this point, i just swallowed them about 5 minutes ago. nothing has happened, yet, but i don’t really expect them to kick in for 20 to 30 minutes.

spam

this kind of thing REALLY annoys me! 🤬

Hi! hybridelephant.com

We make available

Sending your message through the feedback form which can be found on the sites in the Communication section. Contact form are filled in by our software and the captcha is solved. The superiority of this method is that messages sent through feedback forms are whitelisted. This method increases the odds that your message will be read.

Our database contains more than 25 million sites around the world to which we can send your message.

The cost of one million messages 99 USD

FREE TEST mailing of 50,000 messages to any country of your choice.

i put this up on my contact form, but it doesn’t seem to have done any good… in fact, i think it may have encouraged them:

PLEASE NOTE: This contact form is solely for the use of Hybrid Elephant customers who need to get in contact with us. Every message that is sent with this form includes a unique IP address in the header, which identifies the computer from which the message was sent. If you use this form to spam us, all you will accomplish is to put your IP address on the list of IP addresses (789 as of 190601) which are PERMANENTLY BANNED from accessing Hybrid Elephant for any reason. Please DO NOT USE THIS FORM to send us advertisements or solicitations. It WILL NOT WORK! You have been warned!

add new

it’s june.

when it changes to july, we’re going to have to go to OCF and put on something resembling a show for the folks.

usually, by this time, we’ve got a finished script that the cast has been rehearsing for a few weeks, and most of the music, which the band has been rehearsing for a couple of weeks.

this year, they JUST got the script finished a few days ago, they just got their characters a few days ago, they still have to make all of their costumes and props, and the band has NO music — which has to be completely rewritten from scratch, even though we’re doing a panto that we have done in the past, Jack And The Beanstalk.

and, as far as the band goes, as far as i know, we don’t have enough people to make the band more than a rhythm section, and, MAYBE a saxophone, or a bassoon… or, possibly, both…

the only thing i know, for sure, that is already planned and in the works, is a memorial parade for simon… thrill… walking over uneven ground (not even going to try marching) with a tuba, slung from an over-the-shoulder strap while trying to manage music on a lyre… 😒 😟

OCF is going to be interesting, this year…

The PHBFH 😱

so, i asked liz, who has been connected with the management for folklife for decades, if she could tell me who to contact regarding the lady in the yellow dress.

it turns out that she knows her, vaguely… she (the lady in the yellow dress) is connected to a group of balkan dancers in the seattle area, and she might be married to a balkan accordion player. liz said that she might have even gone to the place of residence for the lady in the yellow dress.

i showed her a picture of the face of the PHBFH, and she confirmed that it was definitely the same person as the lady in the yellow dress.

she’s discretely going to find out more information and get back to me.

on the one hand, it will be good, particularly for ezra, to find out exactly what happened to his mother: the last time he heard anything was at least 3 and possibly more than 5 years ago, when she was being discharged from the state mental institution (she refused to take the medications that made her remotely sane). the doctors called him to find out if he wanted to take care of her. when he said he couldn’t, that was the last time anyone that i know of heard from her.

on the other hand… it’s the PHBFH… 😱

Margaret McKibben
Margaret McKibben
ETA: it turns out the lady liz knows is someone named margaret mckibben, and not the PHBFH… although they look and behave DISTURBINGLY… ALARMINGLY similar. 😕

the PHBFH

i saw someone who i believe to be the PHBFH today, at 11:41 am at the folklife festival, at the seattle centergrounds.

190526 The PHBFH
190526 The PHBFH

i’m not 100% sure it’s her, but i’m about 98% sure. i walked past her, on my way to play at the mural amphitheatre, and recognised her immediately. i’m not sure if she recognised me immediately, but when i tried to work my way around to a point where i could take a better picture, she recognised me and ran away, which adds to the probability that it was her. also she did a little ballet pose before she disappeared around a corner, which further adds to the probability that it was her.

when i texted the photo to ezra, he said that he wasn’t able to tell for sure, but that it looked “like her style”. he also said that it is unusual for her to be in the city without showing up at ezra’s home… or in bellingham… i also noticed that she was wearing what looked like leather boots, which is uncharacteristic for the PHBFH that i know, but not entirely out of the question, since it has been almost 30 years since i’ve actually seen her.

it was creepy seeing her… 😱

but she looked healthy, strong, and happy, which makes me glad.

glurdge…

  • 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…

once again, i am encouraged to “donate” my shares to the continuation of the moisture festival.

not likely. 😒

buskingniksub

190511 salamandir, by jon leach
190511 salamandir, by jon leach
when you hang around the pike place market enough, particularly if you don’t look exactly like pretty much everybody else, you will eventually end up having your photo taken by one of the multitude of street photographers who descend in droves on the market thinking that they will get “that shot” which will propell them into the realm of famous photographers like ansel adams or robert mapplethorpe. in this case, it was a chap called jon leach, who has been doing street photography for about 5 years — no clue what he did before that — and he took a photo of me that i like, because when you look at the whole, reduced photo, i look serious, almost frowning, but if you look at the photo up close, i’m actually smiling.
190511 salamandir, up close
190511 salamandir, up close

busking this week has been a mass of contradictions: yesterday, we played two sets, after having been displaced at 11:00 from the place where i had added us to the list at 8:00 because an amplified band (which is “banned from busking at the market”) was setting up to play in a “flower festival” which the market managers had neglected to tell us buskers about until we actually got there — and they posted a new notice regarding the closure in exactly the same place where the “get your new buskers’ permit” notice had been, so the people (including me) who signed up on the list didn’t notice it until it was too late… so we went up the alley, behind the iron stairs, and busked for an hour, took an hour break (because “the official rules” say you have to), and played most of a second set before we got fed up — in the middle of a song — and said fuck it.

the reason we got fed up is because there were probably 20 people, from people taking pictures with their cell phones all the way up to people who had professional camera equipment, taking our photos, which includes a sign in a very prominent, central location, which says, in large letters “TIP FOR PHOTOS”, but NOT TIPPING FOR PHOTOS! 😠🤬

seriously! some of these people came in pairs, one of them standing next to, or behind us, and the other person, with the camera, lining up the shot so that we were both in the frame, with the sign that says “TIP FOR PHOTOS” in the frame as well, and when they were done mugging for the camera, they just turned around and walked off as though we were plastic manequins… and not starving musicians who have a combined total of more than a century of experience playing music.

my understanding is that the problem is partially because of the cruise ship companies which offer fares that “include all gratuities”, and partially because of the common myth that buskers are paid by the market. both are WRONG!! and it make life particularly awful for folks that have to make their living busking when people act like buskers are free.

on the other end of the scale are days like today, when we played 3 sets and made almost $50 a piece, which works out to around $16 an hour… which is not outstanding, but it’s enough that it makes you want to come back out and try it again tomorrow.

and then there’s the pike place market foundation. back in the ’80s, when the market was being renovated for the first time, i bought an inscribed tile, which was originally placed outside of the athenian tavern…

i had a picture of it, at one time, but i can’t locate it currently. 😒

anyway, they had to replace the floor in front of the athenian, in the ’90s, because it was unstable, and they tore out the section of floor that had my tile in it, and replaced it with somebody else’s tile.

when i bought that tile, i was in the tech school, and the price of the tile was in lieu of half a week’s groceries, but when i asked the market foundation about it when i discovered it was missing, in 2016, their response was to say that if it was not there, then it was not going to be replaced, and my money meant nothing. they offered me a “market charm” to be installed in the new section of the market (which they hadn’t even built yet) as a replacement, to which i agreed.

but it was, apparently, never installed. yesterday, i asked the lady custodian of the market charm database to check, and she couldn’t find it. so i filled out another market charm request, and she said it should be installed this fall, and i can check at their database at PikeUp dot org. while i was at the market foundation booth, i also bought a “pig pin” which came with this interesting printed card:

Pig Pin card
Pig Pin card

i noticed a design detail on the card, which caused this conversation between me and the lady at the booth:
ME: this card has swastikas on it! cool!
Lady At The Booth: those aren’t swastikas.
ME: they’re swastikas, they’re just not what you expected to see when i said “swastika”… they’re not nazi swastikas, they’re ORIGINAL swastikas, from before the nazis got hold of it: they’re “little good luck charms”, which is what the word “swastika” means, in sanskrit.
Lady At The Booth: yeah, but they’re not swastikas, there’s another name for it.
ME: the german word for a swastika is “hakenkreuz”. the reason english-speaking people use the word “swastika” is because nobody could figure out how to say “hakenkreuz”.
Lady At The Booth: but there’s another name for them.
ME: the word “swastika” is a sanskrit word that means “little good luck charm”. it’s the perfect symbol to put on the pike place market “good luck token”, and most people probably wouldn’t even realise that it’s a swastika, because it’s not a nazi swastika. the swastika is one of the world’s oldest symbols, and it was around, as a symbol of good luck for, literally, thousands of years before the nazis got hold of it! it’s about time we started taking it back, and making it into a symbol of good luck again!
Lady At The Booth: really? cool! 😊

allegedly, they’re going to snail-mail me when the charm is installed, but they said they were going to install it in 2016, and they didn’t, so it remains to be seen what they’re really going to do.

dead people

andrew “sketch” hare 190404
kenyth freeman 190429
simon neale 190509

in the past 5 weeks, i’ve lost 3 friends. 😢

the next person to die should be me.

really.

i have a condition that kills half of the people who have it, and leaves half of the remainder SEVERELY brain damaged, but, for some reason, i’m doing okay. 😕

i need it. i deserve it. i’ve already cheated death once. i’m so totally fed up with being alive at this point… WHY is it them, and not me? 🤬

I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.
     — Aleister Crowley, October 12, 1875 – December 1, 1947

my wonderful pet, frank zappa the cat

my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa, the cat, innocently playing with a cat toy in a patch of sunlight, like a good kitty...
my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa, the cat, innocently playing with a cat toy in a patch of sunlight, like a good kitty…
my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa, the cat, honoured my presence (and the fact that i had just fed him) yesterday, by waiting until i had a full bottle of beer on my desk, and then jumping into my lap and doing the happy-cat-dance, which involves swirling around and waving his tail in such a way that it impacts the bottle of beer on the desk, spilling the contents into my keyboard.

😒

because of the fact that i have worked in several companies that actually, physically MADE keyboards — they really do wash partially finished keyboards in a household dishwasher before assembly — i wasn’t as upset as i could have been, but, nevertheless, i spent the entire rest of the evening taking my keyboard apart, cleaning the beer (and assorted dust, feathers, cat hair and other detritus) out of it, and re-assembling it…

only to discover that only half of the keys actually work. and not in a normal “right half works, left half doesn’t” way, but in a more random “half the keys in this line sometimes work and sometimes don’t” way, which indicates that some moisture probably got inside the four or five layers of waterproof linings — seriously, keyboards, these days, are practically impervious to spills… not like when i was a kid… — either that, or there was something that didn’t want to get bent, that got bent in the process of disassembling the keyboard: i tried to be careful and not bend any of the parts that looked like they might be upset if they got bent, but i may have bent them, anyway, without meaning to.

in any event, i have an alternate keyboard, just for such emergencies, which is the same model, but different colour keys. i have occasionally ransacked the alternate keyboard for spare parts, like when my “B” key’s spring broke, and the F2 and F3 keys died, so it doesn’t get used for anything, anyway… so i decided to make a frankenkeyboard…

in honour of my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa the cat.

frankenkeyboard
frankenkeyboard

this guy looks like me…

Young O and salamandir, 040619
Young O and salamandir, 040619
i’ve known about this guy for a while: his name is Howard Tayler, he is the author of the web-comic Schlock Mercenary, and he looks like me… or i look like him, or something like that.

originally, it was pointed out that i looked like him when i posted a (now deleted, but reproduced here) photo here, in january, 2006, and when i sent the same photo to howard, he said that it looked similar enough to him that he started going through his photos, trying to figure out where it was taken.

Howard Tayler
Howard Tayler
170307 burlesque show at the substation in ballard
170307 burlesque show at the substation in ballard

eventually he shaved his beard, and we didn’t look so similar any longer.

but, recently, he’s either grown a beard again, or has a very accomplished makeup artist that has fashioned an appliance for him, because, once again, we look similar — except now he looks even more like me… in fact, i get the impression that he may be trying to look like me!

it is very creepy…

Howard Tayler
Howard Tayler
salamandir, 180502
salamandir, 180502

here’s a pingback to his blog. maybe, he will have something to say about this odd coincidence.

No Revolution

No Revolution
by JosΓ© Tirado

There will be no revolution so long as Netflix remains cheap,
No revolution while the Super Bowl continues,
And the bombs killing kids in Yemen get yawns.
There will be no revolution today,
Or tomorrow, since there is a big sale up the street,
And people are camping out the night before.
There will be no revolution because people are weary
And besides, Game of Thrones is ending
And Avengers: Endgame has taken all my hope quotient for this year.
There will be no revolution while people work 2 jobs
But canΒ΄t afford homes in their cities
And the countryside is too poisoned, too addled with meth
To worry about that stuff.
There will be no revolution so long as Teen Vogue has better articles
Than the New York Times.

There will be no revolution that poses for selfies.
There will be no revolution with kitten pictures.
There will be no revolution on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday as those are β€œholy” days.
There will be no revolution on Mondays because that would be asking too much.
There will be no revolution on Wednesdays because thatΒ΄s hump day and people are
Getting excited for the weekend.
There will be no revolution while the Earth cooks since
If the β€œearth dying is not inspiration enough”
WeΒ΄re fucked anyway.

There will be no revolution since guillotine makers are out of fashion
And nobody is angry enough to hold hands.
There will be no revolution now since Biden jumped in the race
And will probably take the word with him
Leaving Bernie fuming.
There will be no revolution because paying bills takes more of our time than reading.
There will be no revolution because Coachella with Bey is more riveting than
Talking to our neighbors.
There will be no revolution because no one has neighbors anymore.

There will be no revolution because the stars arenΒ΄t aligned for it.
There will be no revolution because Fox canΒ΄t say the word.
There will be no revolution at night because most people are too tired to drive.
There will be no revolution at noon because the days are getting hotter.
There will be no revolution since apparently β€œAmerica is great again.”
There will be no revolution since no one saw the preview or billboards
Or heard anything on their morning drive to work.
There will be no revolution because the pamphlets aren’t printed in Spanish.
There will be no revolution while our guns are turned on each other.
There will be no revolution since β€œthey” have bigger guns.
There will be no revolution since getting hurt would be too expensive
And my co-pay doesnΒ΄t cover β€œwounds inflicted in liberation struggles. β€œ

There will be no revolution since many are too busy looking for 80% work.
There will be no revolution once we get 15$ an hour.
There will be no revolution since the rich tell us there is no need for one.
There will be no revolution because the economy is booming.
There will be no revolution since the only boom in our economy
Are bomb makers and bunker builders.

There will be no revolution since Jesus is coming anyway so it wonΒ΄t matter.
There will be no revolution on Christmas, Hanukah, Eid or any other big holiday
Since people will be buying bullet-proof vests and hiring security
So they can pray safely to a compassionate God
To please, take away the need for a revolution.

ouch!!! 😣

i’m learning to ride a unicycle.

there’s a guy in portland — The Unipiper — who rides around portland on a unicycle, playing a flaming bagpipe.

i’ve wanted to make a flaming tuba for YEARS. i’ve got all the necessary equipment to make a flaming tuba. the ONLY reason i have not made a flaming tuba before now is that i don’t want to set myself on fire. fortunately, i have a few friends who can alleviate that problem for me (i’ll set them on fire instead… 😉), so it’s just a matter of building it…

and learning to ride a unicycle.

so, i’m taking a unicycle class at SANCA.

i’m actually doing really well, considering that i’ve never done it before, and i deliberately signed up for a “Level 1/2” class instead of a “Level 1” class (so that i could combine the class with my already existing “Basic Circus Skills for Handicapped Adults” class, which occurs on the same day), and i’m keeping up…

although, to be honest, there’s a BIG motivation behind being in a class with two 8- to 10-year-old girls who are “Level 2” riders, and who, literally, ride circles around me. 😉 i REALLY want to ride as well as they do!! and they’re not even free-mounting, or riding around turns, or any of the “fancy” stuff that the unipiper does…

i’ve taken my third class, and i’m almost to the point where i can, honestly, say that i can actually “ride” the unicycle without holding on to anything: i can ride between two bars, only one of which i am holding on to, and ride beyond the end of the bars without holding on to anything… for about two cycles of the pedals, before i have to “dismount”… or fall…

the falling part is the part that i have been trying to avoid, and, for the most part, i have. however, i came home, last week, with a fancy bruise on my right knee, which was the first actual bruise i have gotten since i started the class, and, this week, i fell hard enough that, today, i strained to put my left knee in a brace, because it is hurting A LOT when i do relatively normal things like bending it, or lifting it… or doing pretty much anything except holding it straight with my leg elevated.

so, now, the question is, will i actually learn to ride a unicycle, or will i blow out my knees and end up in a wheelchair?

“courage is knowing it might hurt, but doing it anyway. stupidity is the same thing, which is why life is so hard.” — jeremy goldberg

i’m hoping it is the former, and not the latter.

although, either way, i can play the flaming tuba, so it’s all good… 😉

warum?

why do the words “FLAMMABLE” and “INFLAMMABLE” mean the same thing?

why?
pourquoi?

ETA: it has to do with some idiot in the 18th century trying to “improve” the english language, and someone taking them seriously around the 1930s. first there was “inflammable”, but then, in the mid-18th century, someone came up with “flammable”, which meant something very similar, but not exactly the same thing, and it died out, fairly quickly, because people were more sensible back then. but then, about the time of world war 2, someone decided that “inflammable” had the same connotation as “invisible” — i.e. “not” flammable — so they came up with “flammable” to convince stupid people that it really was capable of being set on fire. 😒

hell is other people.

420 update

i’m getting closer and closer to divesting myself of all of my web hosting clients. i’m hoping that my last day of hosting anybody except me, and people directly related to me (i.e. my wife and son) will be 190430. i’m still trying to get two domains off my server, and then there will be one, which i don’t know whether they are going to find a new server, or whether they are just going to let it die. either way, it’s SEP and i don’t have to worry about it…

although i am… 😒

we came back from the beach. it rained a lot. i planned on taking mushrooms, but it rained, so i didn’t. i did spent a lot of time sleeping… and other passtimes:

190408 drawing
190408 drawing

like drawing…

190408 picture
190408 picture

although the dog moved by the time i took the picture…

and, given that it’s the first time that i’ve drawn anything other than doodles since my injury, i kinda like it…

then, we came home, and went to a concert by The University of Washington Harry Partch Ensemble, with authentic Harry Partch instruments:

190413 Harry Partch Instruments
190413 Harry Partch Instruments

the instruments are the Cloud Chamber Bowls, the Adapted Viola, the Adapted Guitar III, The Kithara II, the Spoils Of War, the Bass Marimba the Harmonic Canon, the Surrogate Kithara, the Diamond Marimba, the Marimba Eroica, the Koto, and the Chromelodeons I and II

190413 Spoils Of War
190413 Spoils Of War

a close-up of the Spoils Of War, with the Cloud Chamber Bowls in the background, and the Diamond Marimba in the foreground

190413 Modified Viola music
190413 Modified Viola music

it’s STANDARD NOTATION!!! just sub-scripts and super-scripts to define the microtones and the rythmn… i never would have guessed… but, at the same time, when you’re already working with music that is THAT DIFFERENT from what we, in the west, think of as “normal”, i suppose it’s a lot easier to not have to learn a new way of notating that “abnormal” music, as well…

it turns out that the current Harry Partch Foundation is located at the UW, and all of his instruments are housed there. again, i never would have guessed, but… wow.

i told monique, when we walked into the concert hall, that they had not played a note and i was already ecstatic.

i started my third session of my circus class. it’s a “basic circus skills for handicapped adults” class — mostly people with parkinson’s — but, because of the fact that i took to unicycle, i started a unicycle class, as well:

190419 my very own unicycle!
190419 my very own unicycle!
at first, i borrowed a unicycle from one of monique’s co-workers, but it was too short, so i went on craigslist and bought an almost-new, used unicycle, that was exactly the same size wheel but a longer seatpost, that is now my very own, personal unicycle.

i have this vision — my training from the flybottle class would say “fantasy” — of what i want to do with the unicycle: there’s this guy, in portland, who is known as “The Unipiper”. he rides around portland, on a unicycle, playing a flaming bagpipe.

i’ve wanted to make a flaming tuba for a long time. i’ve got all the necessary materials to make a flaming tuba. all i have to do is learn to ride a unicycle, and i can be “The Tubacyclist”.

i hope to be relatively stable on the unicycle by OCF this year. i’m GOING to do this! 🐉

victory… sort of…

once again, the most recent instance of the battle of the computer has come to a close, and, once again, i am victorious… sort of…

i just transferred ownership of the fremontplayers.com and fremontphilharmonic.com domains to someone else. i still host fremontphilharmonic, fremonstor.org and cirquedeflambe.org for the moment, but i hope to have them gone by may 1st.

they are, now, officially, SEP. 👍

of course i strongly suspect that they are going to try to wheedle me back into working with their site again, especially since it’s pretty clear that they don’t know what they’re doing, which is why it is now hosted by wix…

which, in my opinion, is probably several steps backward… but it is, officially, SEP, and i’m done with being actively involved in the administration of web hosting clients.

i also bit the bullet and opened yet another ticket with the VPN provider, which took the form of an extended chat session in which the technician claimed that they responded when they didn’t… which is, apparently, the reason they ignored my SIX EMAILS from 190405 (two weeks ago) until 190415 (today)… 😒

but, in the end, i got that fixed, as well, so now i can send email from my local computer, using SMTP, instead of having to login to a web site and send mail using IMAP, which i DO NOT LIKE!

but now it’s better, and i don’t have the added stress of a mailing list whose members send email to the wrong address and get MY PERSONAL EMAIL blacklisted and threatened with having to move.

oy! 😖

the continuing saga of the mailing list fiasco has reached a new plateau:

so, it started out that one of the subscribers to the list sent a message to the list that didn’t go through, for some unknown reason (demons).

when his message didn’t go through IMMEDIATELY — as he was used to them doing — he started looking around for other addresses, and he found two of them. one goes to the list owner, and one is a “machine only” address that sends bounce notices to the owner. it is not for sending email TO, and it is definitely not for sending mail to when your message doesn’t go through, because that triggers the MTA on the user end to blacklist your message.

i found out about this whole fiasco about 6 hours into it, when he sent mail to my personal address, asking me if there was something wrong. i noticed that he had sent mail to the machine-only address, and got blacklisted by micro$awful, so i wrote to the host provider to see if there was something that could be done to reverse the problem.

the host provider’s response was to accuse me (and my mailing list) of sending spam, and they have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sending spam. 😒

they generously offered to set me up with a new IP address instead of arbitrarily closing my account, but the new IP address they gave me didn’t have a PTR (pointer) record, or a RDNS (Reverse DNS) record, which only made the machine that controls the email list mad, because usual mailing lists have a PTR and a RDNS record, and the end result was that i was blacklisted by a number of services with which i have been exchanging emails without a problem for years.

fortunately, these other services were ones for which i could submit delisting requests myself, which takes the host provider and their sensitivity about spam and spammers out of the loop.

nevertheless, i started losing patience, and i might have said some things in my communications with the host provider which ended up making things a whole lot worse, ending up with yesterday, when they asked me to move my web sites to a different host provider immediately.

at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME, the PTR and RDNS records that they installed on my new IP address took effect, which meant that i can no longer send email from my local email client, because it’s not the same server that my VPN has been talking to for more than a year, and i lost it. i didn’t actually curse at them, but i did everything but that.

while i was in the process of figuring out that it was my VPN that was my primary problem, i had, simultaneously, to explain the mistake to the guy who sent the original message, re-assure the members of the mailing list who were trying — and failing — to send messages to the list that they weren’t actually the problem, despite the fact that their email addresses were not interacting correctly with the mailing list, and fend off the more and more insistent demands that i leave, immediately, from the host provider.

long story short, i didn’t sleep very well last night. 😠

at about 3:30 this morning, i finally wrote a letter to macque, saying that i was no longer able to host the web sites he has me hosting, i was no longer able to maintain the mailing list, and that i was retiring from the hosting business.

then i checked, once again, with micro$awful, and determined that I HADN’T ACTUALLY BEEN BLACKLISTED AT ALL!

the WHOLE THING had been caused by “demons” in the machine! 😖

and, to top things all off, we’re scheduled to go to the beach for a week, starting monday, which meant that, if i was going to move, i would have to find a new host and give them the information they need to move my web sites in 3 days, or wait a week, and do the same thing when i got back from vacation. both of these options made going on vacation TO BEGIN WITH not a very exciting prospect, and i was getting severely depressed about it.

and, to put the cherry on top, it turns out that sketch, the drummer for Snake Suspenderz, died yesterday, which made me even more depressed… primarily because he, being dead, didn’t have to worry about all the CRAP that has been going on in the world, while i, being not dead, had to deal with seven times MORE CRAP and had no say in the matter, whatsoever.

then, things started to get better… kind of…

the first thing that happened is that, when i told them that i would be moving my web site in two weeks, that micro$awful hadn’t really blacklisted my IP address, and that i had dumped the client that had caused the whole fiasco, they let up a little bit, and allowed that, since i had paid access until july, that i could stay until then. with a bit more discussion back and forth, they relented even further, and allowed me to keep my web sites where they are.

but i’m still giving up being a host provider for people who don’t know how it works, because it’s WAY too stressful.

so, in the end, i can go on vacation without having to worry about internet SHIT, either while i am on vacation, or after i get home; i will no longer have to deal with people who don’t know doing things that they shouldn’t do and feeling awful about it afterwards, and i won’t ACTUALLY have to move my web sites that aren’t going away anyway (which is an entirely different ball of wax)…

but sketch is still dead, which means that, either, Snake Suspenderz will break up, or that we will find a new drummer… neither of which are very attractive alternatives at this point.

hrmph!

i am done with the moisture festival for another year: 13 shares. we’ll see what a share costs in about a month, but i’m not holding my breath.

during the fremont phil part of the run, i broke my tuba: the mouthpiece receiver came loose, which made playing the instrument sort of interesting, but not absolutely impossible, which is why i took it to the repair shop today, instead of when it happened.

i’m still recovering from the flu. i’ve got a persistent cough which, according to what i’ve read recently, may never go away, although it seems to be, so i don’t know yet.

and, while i was busy with the moisture festival, a subscriber to one of the mailing lists i maintain, who has an email address at micro$awful, unknowingly sent email to the wrong address, and got the mailing list blacklisted from sending to addresses at micro$awful. the host provider’s response to this was to believe micro$awful, and to say that if i don’t move the mailing list to a third-party, commercial SMTP provider, that they were going to refuse to provide service to me any longer. i don’t want to do that, but i am running out of other choices very quickly, and informing micro$awful that their automated blacklister made a mistake is almost impossible. i’m getting really tired of dealing with other peoples’ screw-ups, and, once again, am debating whether or not to just toss all of my “web clients” except for my wife, and just deal with my own domains. it would be so much easier than explaining stuff to people who don’t understand, who don’t pay attention, and who do continue to do the stuff that makes problems happen which i can’t fix.

now that the moisture festival is over, i’ve got a band-mate’s saxophone to work on for a couple days, and moe and i are going to the beach in a week or so. hopefully that will give me the chance to get back to normal for a while. 😒

snarl!!! 🤬

one of the down sides to vaping, as compared to smoking, is that, every now and then (even under the best of circumstances), i have to charge my battery. the “newer” battery models (and quite a few of the older ones, as well) have a micro-USB connector that you plug into a micro-USB charging cable — which are ubiquitous — and then plug the cable into a USB outlet, in your computer, in an outlet strip, in a USB charger, or in a brick in the wall.

i don’t have one of that variety.

the variety of battery i have takes a special type of charger. i suspect that it’s just a matter of swiching out the micro-USB connector (which frequently fails anyway) for a “screw-on” charger, but i haven’t taken apart a micro-USB charger (yet) to find out. it looks like this:

screw-on charger
screw-on charger

the problem is that, after a while — usually somewhere between 3 days and 3 weeks — they just quit working. when you screw them on to the battery, the light turns green and nothing happens.

i finally got tired of having to go and buy a new charger every couple of weeks, so, in desperation, i took one of the no-longer-functioning ones (of which i have MANY) apart, to see what makes it tick. what i found makes me want to spit!

what i found was cheap, probably chinese electronics, with two wires coming out of the charging end, which i expected. what i did not expect was that the wires WEREN’T EVEN SOLDERED to the screw-on attachment, which had a hexagonal piece on the end, which locked into the plastic case to prevent it from spinning.

not soldered wires! >8(
not soldered wires! >8(
the black wire was just layed down, flat, and the screw-on connector was laid on top of it, and the red wire was completely disconnected from the connector, which — naturally — prevented the charger from doing anything other than sitting there with a green light, looking pretty.

THIS IS PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE!!! 🤬

they build these things, EXPECTING them to fail, so that people will have to go out and buy a new one! 😠

i don’t have time, right now, but i am fairly good at soldering wires, and you can bet that, when i have the time, i am going to jigger up one of these gadgets that has BOTH wires correctly soldered in place, and take them to local vape shops and see if i can sell them.

’cause this is RIDICULOUS! 😠🤬😠🤬😠🤬

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

thursday, i had a rehearsal. i got home, felt normal, and went to bed.

friday, i woke up and didn’t feel so hot. by friday afternoon, i was flat on my back, except for when i had to rush to the bathroom to vomit, have diarrhɶa, or both, which continued until sunday, when i went to the emergency clinic to find out what was wrong: Influenza-A. 🤮

they prescribed two medications: an anti-emetic, and an anti-diarrhɶal medication. when moe went to the pharmacy to pick it up, because of the fact that my primary insurance is medicare, they wanted to charge $350.00, but they said that both medications were available, over the counter, at safeway for $17.50…

so moe went to safeway.

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬… etc…

monday was even worse: i had to have 2 liters of intravenous fluids pumped into me, because i was not getting better, and nothing i did would make the vomiting and diarrhɶa go away. at that point, i hadn’t even EATEN anything for 4 days, and i was starting to wonder if i was ever going to get better. the IV line did it, i made a “miraculous” recovery — meaning that, tuesday, i was well enough to hobble short distances without passing out, and the vomiting and diarrhɶa had mostly vanished.

wednesday (today) i am doing better, but i still have to take things in stages, and i have to rest A LOT… i have to rest A LOT because, tomorrow, i have to be a fluffer at the moisture festival, and, also, if i don’t rest A LOT i pass out… seriously, i can’t walk more than a few dozen steps before i am panting and out of breath.

two things to take away from this experience are:

1) ALWAYS get a flu shot!!! from now on, every year, i’m getting a flu shot. this is not something i want to experience more than once!

along the same lines, i really should get a shingles vaccination, as well: i had chicken-pox when i was 16, and thought i’d never have to worry about it again, but moe got shingles a few years ago, and she was miserable. a shingles vaccination is a really easy way to prevent that sort of thing from happening to me…

and, 2)… this is important:

WE ABSOLUTELY MUST GET CRIMINAL DRUMPF AND HIS CRIMINAL CRONIES OUT OF OFFICE, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE AND THE WORLD IS DESTROYED!!!

my impression is that America is on it’s way to being the worst it has ever been. America won’t even start to be remotely considered for “greatness” again until he and his whole cadre of criminals are impeached… and, America can take the first tentative steps towards applying for greatness by indicting, convicting, and imprisoning drumpf for the rest of his life, and longer! 🤬

i would rant more, but that is exhausting, and now i have to go lie down.

🤬

annual moisture festival rant

the 16th annual moisture festival starts tomorrow. i am playing in the following performances:

ETA: i have been offered another fluffing spot, thursday, march 21st, at 6:30 pm. thanks, stuart! 😉👍

  • thursday, march 14th, 6:30pm to 7:15pm – fluffing
  • thursday, march 21st, 6:30pm to 7:15pm – fluffing
  • friday, march 22nd, 10:30pm – snake suspenderz
  • saturday, march 23rd, 10:30pm – snake suspenderz
  • wednesday, march 27th, 7:30pm – fremont philharmonic
  • thursday, march 28th, 7:30 pm – fremont philharmonic
  • friday, march 29th, 7:30pm & 10:30pm – fremont philharmonic
  • saturday, march 30th, 3:00pm, 7:30pm & 10:30pm – fremont philharmonic
  • sunday, march 31st, 3:00pm & 7:30pm – fremont philharmonic

which amounts to:

  • 2019, 13 shares…
  • 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…

this year, the SANCApators get two weeks… they didn’t even ask us, AGAIN (fuckers), which makes me wonder, once again, if they’re trying to edge us out. last year, and the year before that, it was the naked truth that had two weeks… what, do they not even remember that it was The Fremont Philharmonic Orchestra, AND NOBODY ELSE the first year of the moisture festival? do they not even remember that, if it hadn’t been for the fact that we just happened to be “hanging around” back stage when they discovered — AT THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT — that they didn’t have a band, the second night of the first moisture festival, that they WOULDN’T have had a band, the second night of the moisture festival!?!?!? 😠

but if someone were to mention it, then the likelyhood is VERY high that we wouldn’t have ANY performances in the next moisture festival… 😒

(fuckers) 😠

before & after

before
before

before = three notebooks and a file folder full of music, weighing approximately 40 to 50 pounds.

after
after

after = one 8½"x11½" tablet, weighing approximately 2 pounds.

and ALL of that music takes up only a tiny fraction of my local storage… 292.5MB out of 256GB, so there’s plenty of room for more, as well! 😎

when going places with my tuba and/or my trombone, this is definitely several steps in the right direction! 👍😎

although i’m probably still going to take the big purple notebook (on the bottom of the stack) with me, when i go busking, because when i’m playing for nickels and dimes, i don’t want to have a $1,500 tablet on my music stand where anyone can grab it and run off… 😉

i knew it was going to happen eventually…

16 years ago, in 2003, hybrid elephant requested, and was granted a paypal “business” account.

i never trusted paypal to do what they claimed to be so good at, so i didn’t keep any balance in my account. i had it there so that people — even people without paypal accounts — could pay me with a credit card, and i didn’t have to worry about checking whether they actually, you know… had a credit card, and that sort of thing.

i had the paypal account as a convenience, and, at first, because there wasn’t anything else like it available for “small” businesses like hybrid elephant.

a few years ago, when i had my web site “professionally” re-designed (my skills with HTML went out the window once i had my brain injury), i switched from using paypal for payments to me, to using stripe for payments, primarily because i hated paypal so much. stripe is only slightly better than paypal, but, significantly, they’re not paypal, which, for me, made all the difference.

since then, i’ve only used my business paypal account for payments to host providers, registrars and web designers, and for a few purchases of tools and materials… and nothing else.

—–

this morning, i woke up to email that said “Your account has been limited”.

immediately, i figured it was spam, but then i looked at it. the last time paypal posted such things online, they posted a few pointers for distinguishing real paypal email from fake paypal email. they included things like “real paypal email will address you by your full name, and not by “member” or something like that”. this email addressed me by my full name, and informed me that i had violated their acceptable use policy, and because of that, they were permanently closing my account.

😒

i contacted my current web designer, who was of the opinion that it was spam/phishing, and recommended that i log in to my paypal account and call them. i logged in to my paypal account, and was immediately transported to a new page that said

You can’t use PayPal anymore

At PayPal, we value a safe community for our customers to do business. We noticed activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement and we no longer offer you PayPal services.

Any bank or credit card information linked to your PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be used to create a new account. You can still log in and see your account information but you can’t send or receive money. Any money in your balance will be held for 180 days, after which we’ll send you an email with instructions about transferring your money.

😒

so, i called them, and, after waiting on hold FOR TWO FUCKING HOURS an “agent” told me that i had been found guilty of violating paypal’s appropriate use policy and there was nothing i could do to change their decision to ban me from their service. the “agent” also informed me that i would be unable to use that credit card number, or email address, to establish a new account in the future. when i asked them to give me some idea of what i had done to deserve such a punishment, they told me that in order to find out what i did, i would have to “seek legal counsel, and file a subpoena.”

at that point, i yelled “FUCK YOU” and hung up.

😠

they said they’ll send me any balance after 180 days (because they want to get all the money they can from your account before they close it), but, because my account had zero balance, the next thing i did was to contact my bank, have them put a hold on any further money going from my account to paypal, disconnect the card that paypal hasd, and issue a new card, with a different number.

at this point, i feel like i deserve this: i only yelled “fuck you” one time, and it was appropriately directed… and i handled the rest of it a lot better than i would have 15 or 20 years ago…

adulting award
adulting award

Pat Robertson’s Weird Way of Doing Sex

pat robertson should not be allowed to broadcast his hate on national television. it astounds me that he still has a platform… although it astounds me that people still go to church, so maybe i’m the crazy one here… although i would much rather be considered “crazy” than i would to convert to that sex-crazed mainiac’s way of thinking. seriously, i don’t understand why HOMOSEXUALS having sex the way they do threatens anybody, and certainly not to the depths of the fabric of society. the fact is, whether pat robertson likes it or not, people have been “doing sex” the “weird way” since long before pat robertson was around, and they’re not likely to go away just because pat robertson and his ilk somehow get a law passed. people like him would do well to pay attention when someone like, oh, i don’t know, Jesus Christ, maybe, says “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

it makes me wonder about the beam in pat robertson’s eye, particularly since he seems to be obsessed with “weird” ways of having sex. it makes me think that he might not be getting enough, himself. 😒

Pat Robertson’s Weird Way of Doing Sex
by Rev. Dr. Guido Super DeLuxe, 190226
download here

what?

i’m reading pantagruel, which was written in 1532.

in the introduction, after he addresses the translator, there is a refrence to tobacco:

To drink he was a furious enemy
Contented with a six-penny --
(with diamond hatband, silver spurs, six horses.) pie --

And for tobacco's pate-rounding smoke,
Much had he said, and much more spoke,
But 'twas not then found out, so the design was broke.

according to wikipedia, “tobacco”, as a word, was introduced to europeans around 1552, twenty years AFTER pantagruel was written, and Hernández de Boncalo, Spanish chronicler of the Indies, was the first European to bring tobacco seeds to the Old World in 1559 following orders of King Philip II of Spain.

before that, especially in europe, one would assume, tobacco was quite rare, and usually not available to “ordinary” people.

i’ve never read pantagruel before, and the 16th century, in general, was kind of a weird, amorphous time, during which what we take as “knowledge” now, was a lot more fluid and undecided, so i think i can overlook this inconsistency, but it’ll be interesting.

FLONG!

a while ago, i came across this word in a web-comic that i read all the time. it was in a joke about librarians who were in the process of being stereotypical stoners, and i thought it was just a joke — and, as “just a joke”, it was a pretty good one — but little did i know…

flong

apparently there is an item called “flong” — sometimes called an “ad-mat” or “advertising matrix” in the newspaper business — which is a paper mould used to make stereotypes… which are called “clichés” in French, because it’s onomotapoetic for the sound produced when they’re made. 🤣

pieces of flong
pieces of flong

i should have known that, even in web comics (possibly, especially in web comics) when librarians make jokes, they make jokes by which even the professionals are impressed. 😎 😉 👍

also, i think i want a refund on this life. i’m almost 60 years old, i have been a typesetter for almost 40 of those years, and i have only recently discovered flongs: this is UNACCEPTABLE! 😠

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 🤪🤣

last year i switched away from my then-new host provider after a very short period of time because it turned out that they were a spam-haven.

before i switched, it got so bad that i set up a monitor at MXToolbox to check whether or not my IP address had been listed at any blacklists.

the host provider was incensed at this, and swore up and down that they had robust anti-spam policies that were enforced with an iron fist, but i switched away from them shortly afterwards, anyway.

today i got a notice from the monitor. apparently 69.162.87.36 is running an open relay and has a poor reputation

so much for “robust anti-spam policies enforced with an iron fist”. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

a step forward

new ipad
new ipad
the fedex package finally arrived, which, of c(o)urse, meant that i went to the fedex distribution centre and forced them to let me have it there, rather than waiting for them to pull their head out of their ass and hire a full time driver who learns where my address is, instead of using a different contractor who doesn’t have the first clue — EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! 😠

anyway, i’ve got it more or less set up. i set it up as a new ipad, rather than transfering all of my old apps to it, which meant that i had — and still have — some finishing touches to add, most notably, the noisepad app, which requires a hard link to itunes in order to upload new sounds, but the version of itunes i have on my ancient macbook pro is several versions out of date and won’t recognise my new equipment, and even if it did, the ipad only has a USB-C plug, and my macbook only has USB-A plugs… so i’m probably going to have to use moe’s machine to get around that.

the big benefit is that i can display full-size, 8½”x11″ pages, which is 90% of my music, and the other 10%, which is more than one 8½”x11″ page, i can get a bluetooth foot-pedal page-turning gadget for about $50.

new ipad
new ipad

AND i’ve already got a fairly substantial portion of my music already “on the cloud” — i.e. either dropbox or my own, personal cloud-server — which means that, under the best of circumstances, i won’t even have to load my 256GB disk down with music files… although i might want to keep files on the ipad anyway, just in case i don’t have network connectivity, as i would (not) at the oregon country fair… 😉

and, after all, loading it down with music is the principle reason i bought a huge-ass tablet anyway… 😉

@fedex #SUCKS!! 😠‼

monday, i got a text message that said i should expect a fedex delivery on tuesday that required a signature.

tuesday i waited at home ALL DAY, and my package never arrived…

which didn’t surprise me an awful lot, since half the state was at a standstill because of the weather, but that, to the contrary, notwithstanding…

i called and requested that the package be held at the distribution centre, because, even under the best of circumstances, fedex delivery drivers have a less-than-exemplary record when it comes to deliveries to my address… they told me to call again tomorrow.

wednesday i called, again, to request that my package be held at the distribution centre. the helpdesk moron told me that it wasn’t even in my state yet — it was in troutdale, oregon (BIG surprise 😒) — but that my request for the package to be held was in the system, and that i would get a phone call or text message when the package had arrived at the distribution centre.

thursday (today), i got a text message AT FIVE THIRTY IN THE MORNING informing me that my package had been put on a delivery truck, and was going to be delivered to my address by the end of the day.

fedex drivers have EXTREME DIFFICULTY finding my address, under the best of circumstances. but today, there is enough ice, snow and slush — despite the fact that it hasn’t snowed since tuesday — that, even if they COULD find my address, they couldn’t drive their truck to my house, and would, very likely, have to park two or three blocks away and deliver it on foot.

which they won’t do. 😠

so, i called AGAIN, to find out why this had been done, in spite of the fact that i had requested it not be done this way. i was informed that the shipper had “put restrictions” on the package, which didn’t allow fedex to do anything but deliver it to my address.

i asked them why i wasn’t informed of these restrictions the first time i called, on tuesday, but they couldn’t answer that.

i asked them why the shipper is allowed to put restrictions on a package that the recipient can’t change, in spite of the fact that it is the recipient’s property, for which he paid, but they didn’t have an answer for that, either.

they said that if i show up at the distribution center between 5:30 and 9:00 pm this afternoon, the distribution center MIGHT let me have the package. if not, they’ll try to deliver it again tomorrow.

they won’t leave the package (and if it’s what i think it is, i don’t blame them), but i have things to do today, and can’t sit around all day like i was able to on tuesday. if i go to the distribution center this afternoon, they don’t have to let me have the package, in spite of the fact that it IS MINE, AND I PAID FOR IT! if they try to deliver it tomorrow, they’ll very likely run into the same snow, ice and slush that they’ll run into today.

so, in the past five minutes, i have gotten another text message, informing me that a “delivery exception” has taken place, and that they will try again tomorrow. i called AGAIN and informed them that nobody had been to our house, but the delivery had been delayed AGAIN. they called to “get authorisation” for me to pick up the package, and they were able to obtain it.

now, my package will be available, at the distribution centre

AFTER EIGHT PM THIS EVENING!!!

i don’t know about anybody else, but if i’m not performing, or have some other obligations, i like to end my day around 6:30 or 7:00, and by 8:00 i’m pretty much done for the night…

it would be SO much easier if we weren’t so reliant on “modern technology”… 😒

@fedex #SUCKS!! 😠😠😠😠😠😠

ETA: it was what i thought it was: my new 12.9″ ipad pro, which is going to take the place of my 3 music notebooks weighing a total of 40 pounds, which i am forced to carry with me when i go anywhere with my tuba or trombone. this is definitely going to lighten the load a substantial amount…

BUT… i picked it up by going to the distribution center around 5:30 and waiting. they searched for it, and had it to me by 6:30.

now, i say @fedex #SUCKS for not having their shit together AND having their head up their ass! 😠😠‼‼

over it!

friday, 190209, it started snowing:

jovita park, 190209
jovita park, 190209

i was feeling adventurous, and it hasn’t snowed for a couple of years… and i recently bought a bunny suit and a set of steel-toed logging boots, and i have been joking with moe about going freight-hopping for a while… so i figured i’d go out for a walk. it was pretty easy, because there was only about 4 inches of new snow, and it was really pretty, because there wasn’t anybody else out in the park, in the middle of the day.

but the birds were not prepared for snow. the birds have been gearing up for spring early this year, because the weather has been so warm, and once it started dumping snow, particularly the hummingbirds were having a really rough time.

moe took this video of one of the local hummingbirds pecking away at the suet on saturday morning. pretty sad… we’ve been making sure to have enough bird food on hand, and our feeders have been flocked the past few days…

it snowed again today. i’m so over it. 😒 it’s time for more normal weather to come back.

190211 snow
190211 snow

thanks, drumpf. 😠

invisible formatting

190208 XKCD Invisible Formatting
190208 XKCD Invisible Formatting

when i was working at the print shop in issaquah, prior to my injury, i had a customer who always provided their own “artwork” for the print jobs they wanted. the problem was that this customer used Quark eXpress (which all the GOOD customers used) but he used the “faux” formatting from the toolbar — which is okay if you are printing from a local, computer-printer, but not if you’re sending it out to a print service — rather than using the “correct” formatting, by selecting the proper typeface from the menu.

what this meant, was that, inevitably, i would, either, have to reset the entire piece, or go through the artwork — sometimes character by character — to reset all of the faux formatting he had done.

i was really impressed that this guy was actually able to use the proper program for this, but it irritated THE HELL out of me that he couldn’t learn to do this one, TEDIOUS, TIME-CONSUMING, job correctly, so that i wouldn’t have to second-guess him all the time.

finally, i had enough.

i copied the entire piece, and pasted it just outside the page, on what they call the “pasteboard”. it’s usually not a place for permanent storage, but a place that it’s convenient to store blocks of type during formatting (so that you don’t have to type them more than once). if you do it correctly, it effectively doubles the size of the document, but there is no obvious flag which indicates the location of “the rest” of the document. if you “zoom out”, it’s obvious, but most people don’t “zoom out” larger than the page size, so it’s effectively hidden.

the first couple of times i did this, he didn’t notice, because he already had a relatively old, slow computer… but after a while of my doing this on the same document, he started noticing that this particular document took FOREVER to load, and it took EVEN LONGER to save, once he had made changes.

the last time i saw him, which was just before my injury, he was complaining about “his computer”. he said that he would double click the document, and then go away for an hour and do other stuff, and when he came back, sometimes the document would be loaded… 😈

CIDR

CIDR notation is used when you’re talking about blocks of IP addresses. it’s the part of the IPv4 address — the “dotted quad” — where there’s a slash, followed by a number between 0 and 32, which represents a block of IPv4 addresses that are all related to each other. the common ones that i see all the time are /24 — which is 256 addresses, from A.B.C.0 to A.B.C.255 — and /16, which is A.B.0.0 to A.B.255.255 or 216 addresses. i’ve also seen references to /18, which is 214 addresses, but i don’t completely understand what delineates them in the /18 case — or many other cases, for that matter, it’s just that /24 and /16 have relatively visible end-points for people who don’t really understand… 😉

following that subject, i just recently encountered a block — /23 or 2562 (512) addresses — and i wondered what it was, so i looked it up, and while i was reading about it, moe came up behind me and commented that CIDR plugs are used to synchronize the œstrus of livestock animals

ETA 190208: i have, since, encountered /11, /19, /21, and /28, which is beginning to bring about my understaning where the delineations are.

🤯🤪

The PHBFH again

i thought i had a picture of the PHBFH somewhere else in this blog, but apparently i don’t, or, at least, i don’t any longer, since i moved all of my photos out of livejournal, and out of flickr, a while ago, and if it were there, it isn’t any longer… and, to be honest, i did find this picture of the PHBFH in my old flickr folder, with a bunch of other photos that i took on 070515, when ezra graduated from college. ETA: it was here, and i haven’t looked at it for at least 10 years, which is why i didn’t notice when i removed the pictures from flickr and they disappeared.

070515 The PHBFH
070515 The PHBFH

i put these pictures of her on internet, despite her wishes for me not to do so, because nobody has heard from her in at least five years. the last time i know of anyone hearing from her was about 5 years ago, when ezra got a call from the doctors who had been “taking care of her” at the state mental institution in steilacoom, asking if he was in a position to take care of her. when he said no, that was the last anyone i know of heard anything about her. she was never too keen on taking “medication” of any kind apart from “flower remedies” and herbs that she bought from a local herb tea shop, so my presumption is that she refused to take her medications, and thus was ejected from state care.

who knows where she is now? 😕

The Trash Issue

as i mentioned the other day, i found a whole pile of black and white negatives that are between 25 and 35 years old, quite a few of which were taken by my friend randy, for inclusion in an issue of Tina Magazine that never got published. we first started talking about “The Trash Issue” when we both were living in bellingham between 1990 and 1993. it gets sort of fuzzy after that, but my recollection is that randy moved away from bellingham in the middle of 1993 and took all of the writings for The Trash Issue with him.

90s COTC publications
90s COTC publications

i also have a picture of a whole pile of Tina literature that now, strangely, seems to be for sale at Alta-Glamour… in fact, i have narrowed it down to, either randy’s collection (which is more likely), or less likely it is jim’s collection… but, one collection or another, they somehow went from being in a photo that i took with my camera, with very few changes (none of the tracts, and the addition of The War On Drugs Issue, which is the reason i think it is randy’s… and if they have a ritual object, it is one of the bronze ones, because i have the silver one with the mystic emblems on the reverse side), some time between 1990 and 1993 to being for sale (at OUTRAGEOUS prices) at some rare bookseller, a fact which makes me angrier every time i think about it… 😠

but i digress…

anyway, i have a contact sheet which was marked up with indications of which pictures were to be used in The Trash Issue, and if i could think of some words to put with it, i would publish the posthumous Trash Issue on the church’s web site… because the internet was MADE for The Trash Issue.

The PHBFH

salamandir, the phbfh, ezra, 1989ish
salamandir, the phbfh, ezra, 1989ish

i don’t know who took this, or when it was taken, but my impression is that it was taken while i was working at evergreen station organic farm (pulling weeds), which would make ezra about 6. i really enjoy the look on ezra’s face. it’s clear that his parents may not realise it yet, but he knows what’s coming down, and it’s not good. 🤣

by the way, here’s a photo of the PHBFH on internet about which she can do nothing… 🤣

Blob Lardstone

Blob Lardstone – 190119, by Ralph Ewggleigh

this is my interpretation of the introduction to a cassette by Bob Larson, a toxically obnoxious evangelical so-called “christian” radio preacher who bills himself as “the real exorcist”, with whom i have been interacting, on and off, for the better part of 40 years. he, too, is likely a member of my karass, because, despite my repeated attempts to get him out of my life, he keeps popping up, and i keep responding to him.

समाधि पीठ

sivaite samadhi peetham
sivaite samadhi peetham

i found a whole pile of black and white negatives that are between 25 and 35 years old. possibly older, as i don’t have a great memory for these things, so i keep a list of when things happened. according to that list, the picture above was taken in 1991 or 1992. it was taken to honour the fact that i had just experienced sabikalpasamadhi (सविकल्पसमाधि) for the first (and only) time, on the banks of the skagit river.

jim robertson
jim robertson

i just got back from picking up 182 4″x6″ prints. there are a bunch of pictures of ezra, the PHBFH, randy, and ruth. there are a few pictures of other people, including me, and jim robertson.

there are also a lot of pictures for the legendary “Trash” issue of “Tina Magazine”, which was never published, as well as several pictures of the Tina literature which is now, suspiciously, for sale at Alta-Glamour.

now i gotta get started scanning them. 😉

boink

i wrote about my soon-to-be search for a vaping/dabbing device a couple months ago, and i think i have reached “the first plateau” in that search.

first try
first try

my first try was a “vape pen” from “Ganesh Vapes” (yes, i bought it because of the name) called the “Silver Lamp”, which is a “dual purpose” pen, that takes oil cartridges or concentrates. the oil cartridges last longer, but i have noticed that they’re not as potent as the concentrates. so i tried that, but i had some problems with the battery not holding a charge, so i sent away for my second try, and wangled around with The Gallery (where i bought it) and the manufacturer, Ganesh Vapes — they had a web site when i bought the thing, but now all they’ve got is a “we’re working on the site” message, which is why i haven’t linked to them… 😕

second try
second try

my second try was an “EVOD” pen that i got off amazon. it is a 3-way pen, that takes dry flower, oil cartridges or concentrates. i didn’t like the look of the coils on the concentrate attachment, and the dry flower attachment simply didn’t work as advertised, not to mention the fact that the EVOD battery also didn’t hold a charge for more than a couple of hours, meaning i had to have a charger ready pretty much all the time if i wanted to get as stoned as i usually do… but i started to notice things about the pens, the more attachments i got… and that was that they all fit together.

by that time i had received another battery for the silver lamp, and so i started putting parts together in ways that they didn’t come, originally. i also ordered a couple of other things that i saw on amazon, that i thought were different than they turned out to be.

third try
third try

one result was a “Mystica” palm-sized gadget that held a charge a lot longer than any of the pens, but i didn’t like the coils as well… and reloading it was a pain in the ass, with multiple little parts that all had to be lined up precisely or be ruined… which is made more difficult because of the fact that half of the parts with threads are plastic, and get coated with vapor goo which makes them sticky and even more difficult to handle.

by that point, i was almost ready to go back to the Vaporium (the place where they sold vape stuff for tobacco, and the guy said he vaped cannabis, but couldn’t talk with me about it for legal reasons) when i realised that there’s a place not too far from where i live, which i had actually looked at before (when they weren’t open), called The Green Box (no web site, or i’d link to them).

the first plateau
the first plateau

The Green Box has all kinds of nifty vape gadgets — apparently they’re called “mods” — that all have compatible threads and compatible sizes so that i was, basically, able to build my own, custom “dab rig”, with a battery that holds a charge for two days, the coils from the Silver Lamp, and the vapour globe from the EVOD.

the first plateau, assembled
the first plateau, assembled

now all i gotta do is get taps and dies for the thread sizes — they’re definitely NOT “standard musical instrument” sizes — and i can start making my own “mods”… 😉

it should be fairly obvious…

it should be fairly obvious, given my ongoing obsession with The Church of Tina Chopp, that i am impressed by web sites where the person or people involved in creating it did a lot of detailed work over a long period of time in making their part of the web into their own little fantasy world.

one of those places, where the people have put so much work into their site that i’m not sure whether it’s a “for real” site or (like The Church of Tina Chopp) an elaborate joke that took on a life of its own, is the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group

seriously… if you have any clue, i would appreciate any input i can get. 😕

more tina chopp

Alta-Glamour Inc. (Seattle, WA, U.S.A.) apparently has a whole pile of vintage Tina literature (which i do not have, which makes me kind of wonder exactly where they got it), including two by me, for vastly inflated prices… i wrote to the seller, saying that i was the original publisher of these items, and what did they think trying to sell my stuff for so much. their response was:

Our zine pricing often indicates the importance we ascribe to a certain item. People often look to our website to establish values of their collection items, and we want to demonstrate, through pricing, that we think these zines are culturally significant.

The price is therefore not necessarily what we can sell the item for, at least now. Our zines are priced to sell — in 15 years, when zines are even more significant and scarce representations of the creativity emanating into the world.

i guess i sort of understand where they’re coming from, but, as the original publisher of those items, i think it’s ridiculous to imagine that they’re ever going to get so much for them. especially as they make no effort whatsoever to acknowledge my work in all of this. i guess i would feel differently if they offered me a cut, and i would definitely feel differently if randy were alive… my guess is that randy would have already raised hell with them over the prices… but, then again, since their collection appears to include a ritual object, there’s an outside chance that they actually acquired them from randy’s father, after his death.

also, i am somewhat alarmed to learn that they have jim robertson’s publication mixed in, as though he was as prominent a Tinite as randy, ian or i. they say “A bullying joke gone too long, these guys are proto-alt-right trolls.” which indicates that they believe jim was connected with the Church of Tina, even though, by the time he published “A Snake!” he had been excommunicated for two years, primarily because of his hateful, politics-obsessed rantings, which is why his publication is “The Journal of the Last Rhythmic Tantrist Church of Tina Chopp (Heretic)”… can’t they tell that it’s an entirely different cult? 😒

#WTELF?????

okay, i’m confused… it was my impression that, when police are called because person A has shot person B, that, by definition, we are talking about what is called a “crime”.

there’s this item at Raw Story, Three killed, four wounded in California bowling alley shooting about the police being called to a bowling alley, where they discovered multiple shooting victims, including three who are dead, and no suspect available.

to me, that sounds like it is definitely what they would call a “crime scene”.

but, here’s the thing:

The Torrance Police Department said officers responded to a shot-fired call at the location found multiple gunshot victims. Two men were taken to hospital, two opted to seek their own medical attention, and three were pronounced dead at the scene.

if they were part of a crime, and shot at the crime scene, why were they allowed to “seek their own medical attention”? wouldn’t the fact that they were part of a crime scene necessitate the police wanting to know everything possible about their gunshot wounds?

… which includes records that a doctor at a hospital could easily, efficiently, and accurately provide them, but which usually aren’t accepted by the person, about themselves, after the fact…?

especially if people, you know, actually DIED as a result of this “crime”…?

😕

it is as though the police are, essentially, saying “oh, yeah… some guy shot and killed three people and wounded four others, but don’t worry, it’s not a serious crime that we’re talking about here.”

😒

THIS is why nobody respects cops

anti-spam

the following is a list of the TLD names that i have blocked from sending email to any email address at Hybrid Elephant:

.bid
.br – Brazil
.cf – Central African Republic
.club
.cn – China
.date
.direct
.do – Dominican Republic
.download
.es – Spain
.faith
.fun
.gq – Equatorial Guinea
.hk – Hong Kong
.host
.icu
.live
.loan
.ooo
.online
.party
.pro
.racing
.review
.ru – Russia
.space
.store
.stream
.top
.trade
.webcam
.win
.world
.xyz
.za – South Africa

if you are from any of these TLDs, you might as well give up on the idea of sending email to me.

related post

BUY MORE STUFF!

BUY MORE STUFF!
BUY MORE STUFF!

for a long time, i was one of the people that they came to when they wanted to organise music for the community “Solstice Grand Dance” ritual in bellingham. it’s likely that i did this, pretty much every year, from the early 1980s until i moved back to seattle in 1998. it ended about 5 years after i left bellingham, because the person who motivated the whole thing, my very good friend and mentor, Kenyth Freeman, decided that he was tired of being the motivating force behind it, and tried to give the responsibility to someone else, which didn’t work out so well. it was a “synthetic” ritual, in that it took elements from a number of disparate spiritual traditions. it was not presented, specifically, as a spiritual ritual, but it very definitely had very spiritual overtones, which got louder if you were actually aware of the spiritual traditions out of which they were taken. the music was usually improvised, with various flutes, guitars and percussion being the main instruments. for people who “knew”, it was a spiritual ritual of the highest order, but for most of the people who attended, it was a community dance, with sort of ritual elements… and the stated goal (at the start of the ritual) that, after the dance was over, the participants were to get together with whomever they were sexually attracted to, and fuck like crazy bunnies.

actually, that was a big part of the solstice grand dance for everyone that i knew, whether or not they were “in the know” about the “secret origins” of the grand dance.

and, it may be that the command to “go out and fuck like crazy bunnies” was one of the attractions for “the community” — 90% of whom were completely unknown to me — but that may be just conjecture on my part. there may have been more people than me, who were doing it for the ritual part, and not for “other reasons”…

anyway, there’s this:

Before There Was Christmas, There Was the Solstice, and Hope
By William Rivers Pitt
December 25, 2018

The kindergarten teachers I know each tell the same story: Roundabout the middle of December, all the kids who celebrate Christmas transform into voracious little three-foot monsters bereft of morality or self-control. All the behaviors parents worked so diligently to instill in them collapse under the long duress of waiting for Santa.

Alas, my own daughter fell victim to the phenomenon this year. It was a jarring revelation to watch my sweet, caring, sharing, loving little girl decompensate into this ruthless feral capitalist, a frothing cauldron of I want who sees herself as the only being in all of existence. Matters did not improve at school; as it turned out, putting 15 feral capitalists in a room where they could spend all day rubbing their I want woes together exacerbated the situation dramatically.

My wife and I eventually got her past this crisis of materialism, but it was remarkable nonetheless. It was as if a virus got passed from kid to kid to kid until they were all infected with an insatiable lust for more stuff.

Neither of us blamed our daughter for her behavior. In retrospect, it was thoroughly unsurprising: Here is this wee child, possessed of a moral code still in formation, gripping the live wire of Maximum Capitalism that was engineered specifically for people in her age group. It was an extension of the Consumerist Boot Camp that begins the day after Thanksgiving, her first real lesson in what is expected of her in the hollow, soulless economy she was born into.

Many of her adult contemporaries did not seem to be faring much better as the season ground to a conclusion. My wife works retail and came home every night with tales of wrath and fury spewed by customers ostensibly seeking to purchase items intended to make someone happy. Instead, their exposure to Maximum Capitalism, with its attendant insipid music score played on an endless loop, brought out the werewolf in almost all of them.

It would require a crackerjack team of sociologists, historians and economists to properly explain how the dominant methods for celebrating this holiday came to be the pluperfect mess it is today, so here’s the short version:

The Roman Emperor Constantine co-opted a wide variety of ancient pagan holidays in the name of Christianity in order to cement his rule, and the winter solstice celebration was foremost among them. Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations β€” his treatise on free-trade capitalism β€” in 1776, the same year a bunch of wealthy businessmen decided they wanted to plunder the North American continent free from British interference (read: taxes). By then, Constantine’s solstice-inspired Christmas was the biggest day on the Christian calendar, and once it was stapled to US-style free-trade capitalism, door-busters and Walmart riots were all but inevitable in the fullness of time.

Like I said, it’s the short version.

The wanton garishness at the heart of the modern consumerist Christmas season serves to vividly underscore the emptiness of soul and spirit felt by so many today. Like the holiday itself, mere life has become an exhausting, overwhelming grind bereft of meaning beyond immediate, inert gratification. Trust in longstanding institutions is collapsing, the climate itself is collapsing, the specter of actual doom hangs low over us all, and the proffered solution – Buy more stuff! – is a lie as vast as the problems themselves. “Buy more stuff” is, in point of fact, a massive part of what has gone so starkly wrong in the first place.

It is difficult to imagine a more important time than right now to refocus our spiritual energy toward the vast clockwork of the natural world.

For many, myself included, there is refuge and profound meaning found in a celebration of the winter solstice that Constantine absconded with 17 centuries ago. Celebration of the solstice is as old as the stones; Stonehenge and Newgrange, the Bronze Age monuments in England and Ireland, are both aligned with the winter solstice sunrise. Stone arrangements left by the Anasazi people in New Mexico around 200 BC are likewise attuned to the movement of the sun.

Celebration of the longest night of the year is everywhere. The Hopi descendants of the Anasazi celebrate Soyal at the setting of the solstice sun with a ceremony of fires and dancing that lasts all night. In Iran, the winter solstice is celebrated as Shab-e Yalda, which means “Night of Birth,” in which families and friends gather to read poems and feast. It is called Dong Zhi in China and Inti Raymi in Peru, and these celebrations are striking in their similarities.

Wiccans and other practitioners of ancient witchcraft (a word they proudly own) celebrate the winter solstice as an affirmation of life itself as being sacred and interconnected. People celebrate solstice individually and collectively by dancing, feeding animals to help them through the winter, or by communing with nature in an act of deliberate release, spending negative energy into the darkness of the longest night on the promise of the sunrise to come.

It is difficult to imagine a more important time than right now to refocus our spiritual energy toward the vast clockwork of the natural world. The bill for generations of pollution and greed has finally come due, in the guise of rising seas, murderous storms, permanent droughts and towering fires, and this is merely the beginning.

“In this age of ecological collapse,” counsels Truthout journalist Dahr Jamail, “I believe an Earth-based spirituality with roots as strong as the deepest keel is as necessary as water and food, if not even more so. Nothing less than a practice based on remaining attuned to the wisdom of the Earth herself will provide the daily grounding each of us needs to stay balanced and centered as portions of the biosphere collapse around us.”

Life, renewal, rejuvenation: These lay at the beating heart of every winter solstice celebration. Though they differ in root and practice, they all respond to the same reality: The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. Its passing means the days will grow longer, and the Earth will soon give birth to itself once again in a spectacle of warmth, splendor and bounty. The winter solstice is the first step toward the healing light.

In the beginning and at the end, it is about hope.

Amid the consumerist Christmas that corporations are pushing upon us, we can still reach for the spiritual renewal at the center of the ancient solstice holiday.

Today is Christmas and the solstice has passed, but amid the consumerist Christmas that corporations are pushing upon us, we can still step back and reach for the spiritual renewal at the center of the ancient solstice holiday. The wonder of the turning Earth and the life-giving sun is still with us today. Christmas consumerism may have paved it over and smothered it in advertisements, but it is still there, bright green and gold, waiting to be bathed in the coming dawn.

“The solstice is an astronomical fact we can all agree upon,” my friend Alexandra is wont to say. “We are all subject to the seasons and dependent on the Earth and the other living things. This is a better basis for a belief system, and worthy of reverence. There can be no arguing about it. Peace on Earth could be the result.”

“I say this,” she declares, “every year.”

"holiday" season

dont fuck with santa claus
dont fuck with santa claus
this would be a good time to re-read the VEWPRF rant that i posted in 2008, because… well, it just is. that’s all.

the panto started last weekend, and it was good. it wasn’t great, but, for the first shows, it was better than average by a few steps, and it definitely has the potential for being great… especially after a couple more weeks of actual “rehearsal” 😉 i actually played most of the notes correctly, played a few notes that i have never been able to play before (low F, E and E♭), and they were audible and (most importantly) in tune, and i only got lost/confused/missed cues a couple of times, and it wasn’t because i wasn’t paying attention, like it usually is… which is good. there are a few physical sound effects: the ratchet, siren whistle, thunder sheet, bar chimes, slide whistle, that sort of thing, and there are a few electronic sound effects: horse whinney, squeak-stomp-splat for the donkey stepping on the ogress/mouse… and i’m thinking that i can probably come up with a better sword fight sound than the one i’ve got currently, which is bashing two metal spatulas together.

pike place market

181120 salamandir & howlin' hobbit
181120 salamandir & howlin’ hobbit

this picture was taken by a guy people know as “kurt vonnegut” — because he looks a lot like kurt vonnegut, apparently. i don’t know, because i barely remember the guy who took the picture, i was concentrating on the music so intently. i think his real name is davey, but i’m not sure.

Joe Desimone Bridge
Joe Desimone Bridge

this is the joe desimone bridge at 7:30 in the morning, before anybody gets there. at noon there are, literally, thousands of people passing through this space… and only a tiny fraction of them seem to notice the buskers… 😕

the "original" starbucks at 7:30 in the morning
the “original” starbucks at 7:30 in the morning

this is what they call the “original” starbucks. it’s not really the original, because the real original is about two blocks away, on western avenue, below and to the south of the joe desimone bridge… but it’s not there any longer, having moved up to pike place in the early ’80s (i think). but they still have the “original” signage and store livery… and, at 7:30 in the morning they have a crowd of 20 or so people inside: the rest of the pike place market, more or less, looks like the previous picture of the joe desimone bridge, but at 7:30 in the morning, the “original” starbucks (which isn’t even the original one) has a crowd. at noon there is a line that stretches down pike place, of people waiting to get into the “original” starbucks…

and they don’t even have that good coffee… 😒

tourists are WEIRD. 😕

ding dong – bush senior is dead!

george bush pin
I knew George Bush was lying from the beginning. Now we’re all stuck with him! READ MY LIPS!
i remember when bushy george was elected. after 8 years of reagan, i was beginning to develop a frightened “i don’t care” attitude about politics in general, but i knew at the time that this was a definite step in the WRONG direction, and several orders of magnitude worse than reagan.

i wasn’t wrong.

I Will Not Speak Kindly of the Dead. Bush Was Detestable.

George H.W. Bush Hagiography is the Elites’ Finest Accomplishment

George H.W. Bush Empowered Atrocity Abroad and Fascists at Home

driving under the influence of succotash

so, here’s the deal: i really like vaping compared to smoking, but, so far, in seven days, i have gone through three fairly expensive vape pens (fortunately i haven’t had to pay for two of them), and, while they have all worked sometimes, i have yet to find one that works consistently, a majority of the time. i have a fourth pen on order, a relatively inexpensive one that was recommended by the proprietor of “the vaporium” in fife, who, for legal reasons, wouldn’t talk to me about vapourising cannabis (even though he said he does). he also recommended a place in tacoma that might have what i am looking for: an electronic vapouriser that can take dry herb, concentrate, or liquid cartridges, and doesn’t have to be plugged into a charger more than once in 24 hours. significantly — apparently — it does not have to be “pen-shaped”, although small enough to fit in a shirt pocket would be nice.

does anyone have any recommendations? 😉

🍄🕉🍄🕉

i started an experiment a few days ago: i bought a vape-pen and, for the past three days, i have been vaping instead of smoking pot. i noticed a couple of things right off the top, which are that i get SIGNIFICANTLY higher from vaping than i do from smoking — although i knew that already, from vaping using darol’s pipette-and-lighter method. the second is that i haven’t been wheezing as much, particularly at night… which is a good thing. it’s bizarre, though, because i’ve got a few buds and my bong sitting on my desk next to me, and they haven’t been being used, and i don’t know when i am going to be motivated to use them, or do something with them… another thing that is kind of strange is that i bought a gram of “wax” (for under $35) that looks like it’s going to last me at least a week, and possibly two.

i went for a walk today, and, while in jovita park, i encountered a random, ambient smell that was kind of minty, that immediately reminded me of music, trombones, and my 4th grade school music locker. it’s possible that whatever made that smell is used in a cleaning product that was used in the music locker, or on the instruments, i have no clue. also, the smell was quite random: i smelled it, and then it was gone, and i stopped when i smelled it because the recollection was so powerful… and then, on the way back, i smelled it again, and stopped, and the smell was gone in just a couple of seconds. it was a musty, minty, trombone-y smell. 👃

eeeenteresting! 😉

i got this email message today. it’s not from somebody i know, which usually indicates that it is spam, but in this case, i was, initially, lead to a different conclusion. on the surface, the message looked like this:

I would like to buy your arts
Date: Friday 181116 09:02AM
From: Piper Dover <Marcel at thermaclick dot biz>
To: (my email address)
Good morning! I found your projects in the internet and I need to make a gift for my father.
If it is not hard for you please, help me with the order.
Write me back when you will be on your workplace, please..
Kind regards, I expect your reply, I will send all details that I am interested in.

this is… okay, the person doesn’t speak english too well, but they’re able to convey, which is the important part. but “found your projects in the internet” is a little troubling, because, as far as i know, these days, “my projects” are all on my domains — przxqgl.info, puggryduckling.com, hybridelephant.com and friendlyswastika.art — which, admittedly, are “in the internet” and would even probably be referred to as such by people who don’t understand “the internet”, but it’s still something that makes me wonder. another thing that caught my attention right away is that it is “From:” Piper Dover, whose email address is “Marcel at thermaclick dot biz”. i don’t know about you, but i don’t know ANY “real” person whose email address contains a name that is not their real name… which means that, either, this person’s name is not “piper”, or this person’s name is not “marcel”, and, very likely, both of them. NOT a good sign. “make a gift for my father” also makes me wonder, because the “gifts” that i have are not ones that i would think of as ones that i would give to my father, but it takes all kinds, and it’s possible that they were actually referring to my pipes, or bongs… or, maybe, they want me to make something in the style of something else that they’ve seen “in the internet”. also troubling are the “help me with the order” and “when you will be on your workplace” statements, as both of them are irrelevant.

but where the message started to get strange was when i looked at the headers…

yes, i ALWAYS look at the headers for “suspicious” emails, before i do anything else. don’t you? if not, WHY NOT?? 😕

… where i discovered that, if i had “replied” to this message, it would not have gone to “Marcel at thermaclick dot biz”, but, instead, would have gone to “isabellayehudit28 at gmail dot com”, because of a header called “Reply-To:” which nobody knows about these days, but has been a standard part of email for as long as email has been around… and who is “isabella yehudit 28”??? why is she getting in the way of my communicating with “piper” or “marcel” or whoever he is?

at this point, i reached the conclusion that it was, in fact, spam, and proceeded to report it as such. it turned out that the message was sent from the russian federation, thermaclick dot biz is blocked by URIBL, and the message is Base64-Encoded, all of which are STRONG indicators of spammy activity.

the point being that even experts can get confused sometimes, so don’t rely on what they say, but do the extra steps necessary to prove it for yourself. 👍

niaga gniksub

i’ve been sort of worried about busking with my tuba at the pike place market, because — in the distant past — they have had “problems” with people who were not actual musicians playing trumpets and other loud brass instruments, indiscriminately, with very little skill, and taking no regard for their neighbours. this unfortunate occurrence caused the people in charge (the “Pike Place Development Association” otherwise known as the “PDA”) to completely ban all “brass instruments and horns”…

what they mean, of course, is all brass instruments “with a cup mouthpiece”, because brass instruments with a reed mouthpiece (i.e. saxophones) have been allowed all along… which is REALLY STUPID, because you can make a lot louder, and more unpleasant sounds with a reed than you can with a cup mouthpiece…

which, of course, leads us to the real reason brass instruments are banned, which is because, in the distant past (i.e. before any of the current PDA staff were born), one or two individual people were being SO obnoxious (with their brass, cup-mouthpieced instruments) that the PDA had to do something, but it had to be something that didn’t look like they were targeting one or two individuals, so that they wouldn’t get sued by those individuals when they found out.

it’s kind of like that story about the scientists who were studying group behaviour in monkeys, where they put a monkey in a room with a ladder, and at the top of the ladder was a banana… it turns out that the story is an urban legend, but the concept comes across: now, the 2nd (or 3rd, or 54th, who knows) generation of PDA staff is convinced that any brass cup-mouthpiece instrument, played by anyone is going to be the equivalant of a marshall stack cranked up to eleven, and totally blow everyone away for half a mile in any direction.

and, it’s my impression that, ever since then, there have been “whingers” among the vendors at the market, particularly on the “Joe Desimone Bridge” section, who — encouraged by the attitude of the 54th (or whatever) generation PDA staff who have never, actually, experienced a loud “brass” instrument — complain to the PDA if someone has an instrument that looks like it’s going to be too loud… which has resulted in the PDA deciding that you simply can’t busk at the bridge spot on saturday — which is the best day for busking — even with instruments which are not banned… 😒

i’ve been busking at the market a few times since i got my permit, but i haven’t busked at the bridge spot, because i’m worried that, despite the fact that the PDA assured me that they are “experimenting” with allowing tubas (no trombones, baritones, or trumpets, though), and they did, actually, sell me a permit despite the fact that i told them i didn’t play anything else that is allowed, one of the whingers on the bridge will take offense at my tuba and i’ll go back to being on the “banned instruments” list again.

that all changed today.

i busked with hobbit for an hour at the bridge this morning. we made $9.50 each (which is not very good), and then we went up to the clock spot and joined jack and dave for another hour, which netted us $35 a piece, which is a lot better.

then, because it was REALLY cold, i decided that i was going to go home. as i was going back to my car, i had to cross the joe desimone bridge, and TWO vendors asked me if i was done playing music. when i said i was, they asked me when i was going to come back…

they want me back! 😎

they don’t like any buskers (particularly the bad ones, which, according to them, are most of them), but they want me back!

and i wasn’t even playing the melody!!

maybe i shouldn’t worry about the whingers on the joe desimone bridge so much any more… 😉

interesting

the past few weeks (maybe as much as a couple months) i have been getting anywhere from 4 to 24 “porn spam scam” emails per day — you know the ones, where the guy claims to be a “hacker” who has “taken over” your computer, is emailing you “from your own email address”, doesn’t speak english too well, and demands some random amount in bitcoin to prevent him from revealing your “pornographic indiscretions” to “everyone on your contact list” (😒) — and i have been reporting EVERY! SINGLE! ONE! to their upstream provider, and to the bitcoin abuse web site… but for the past couple of days, i have noticed that the constant stream has dropped off considerably: two days ago, i received two messages, yesterday i only received one, and, so far, today, i haven’t received any.

i also noticed that, a few days ago, i started seeing specific SpamAssassin rules that are targeted towards the porn-spam-scam racket (bitcoin address recognition and “from:” address spoofing are the two big ones), but considering the massive influx of porn-spam-scam messages over the past couple of months, i would have expected a much more gradual drop-off.

aaaannd…

tomorrow is the sousa bash, in the evening. i may go busking in the morning, but i haven’t decided yet… in a way, i really want to get out there and make myself more known to people who might call me for sets later on, but another part of me says that it rained most of the day today, and it’s probably going to rain tomorrow, which can be aleviated by rain-gear, but it also means that there will be fewer suckers paying audience members out there… and tomorrow is the return to standard time, which means that 9:00 am comes at 8:00 tomorrow… or is the other way around… i can never remember, and it always takes me a week or so to adjust, every time. 😕

only a white man could come up with the idea of cutting two inches off of one end of a blanket, sewing it onto the other end, and selling it as a bigger blanket.
     — some Native American wise guy

🍄 one mushroom today: 14 total. running low. need more…

this “microdosing” is starting to really bug me, in a way. i REALLY want to take 100 mushrooms or more, but i don’t have 100 mushrooms to begin with, and even if i did, i don’t have the time or the setting to be able to take that many without freaking out… i was talking with norma at trolloween about mushrooms, and she was saying that she really doesn’t like feeling “altered”… and i realised that i do, REALLY like feeling “altered”. microdosing does what it’s supposed to do, which has made my life a lot more tolerable recently, but it also reminds me, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! i do it, that i’m not really doing what i would like to be doing. a trip to the mushroom fields outside of mount vernon may be in order. i literally know where they grow ’em… 😉

workshop workshop workshop

the title is an imitation of stanley, who enjoys saying “workshop” with no context.

this, however, has context, so it’s not as amusing.

i fixed an alto saxophone for a colleague this afternoon. i started on it on monday, prepared the neck for a new mouthpiece cork, and then discovered that 3 of the 4 pads it needed were ones that i didn’t have… 😒

so i ordered pads, which arrived today.

three of the four pads were also on the left-hand side keys. the high F key is normally activated by the palm of the left hand, but it has a rocker underneath it, which is activated by the high F auxiliary lever, which is part of the left-hand stack, and activated by the left index finger… and the high F rocker was bent WAY out of whack, so that you couldn’t actually activate the high F key with the high F auxiliary lever.

so, as well as having to replace the pad on the high F key, i had to completely remove the left-hand stack, and the side E key, which is activated by the palm of the left hand, in order to adjust the high F rocker.

that was easy enough, but, because of the fact that i don’t actually work on as many saxophones as i used to, i had to assemble, and disassemble the left-hand stack no less than three times, in order to get the jigsaw-puzzle of keys to get to fit together in the right way…

saxophone
saxophone

i had to get the B♭ bridge under the F# bridge, which is part of the right-hand stack, and i had to get the C key, which has an actuator that goes behind and above the other keys of the left-hand stack, installed correctly, and i had to get the side E key under the top of the left-hand stack, but above everything else, which meant that i had to carefully install the side E key with the left-hand stack in place — minus the top two keys — but not held in place by the long steel that goes through the hinge-tubes of all the keys.

i ended up not having a problem, once i figured out how to proceed, but it was a hassle, putting it most of the way together, and then remembering that something had to go underneath the keys that i had just installed, and having to take all the keys off again to fix the problem.

it was definitely worth the $100 that i’m going to charge him.

bleh 11

#drumpf. 🖕 the less said about him, the better.

🍄 one mushroom yesterday. i went out for a walk and had pretty much the entire “trip” while i was out, which wasn’t very much. depression sneaking back in, but not in unmanagable amounts… yet… fewer mushrooms every time this happens, and eventually i’ll run out. hopefully i will have either wildcrafted, or obtained some more by then, but who knows… they are illegal, after all, even though my doctor counsellor recommended them… 😒

trolloween on wednesday. i’m doing sound effects, which means bullroarer “pre-show” and thunder for the first part of the show. nothing else, which means that i’ll be able to actually haunt fremont, for the first time ever… i’ve been a part of the show at the troll, and the dance afterwards many, many times, but i’ve never gotten to go on the haunt… mushrooms? it’s possible… but i think i’d have to find a place to crash in town, if so. i’ll ask macque…

so, in the realm of the computer, i’ve decided that, if i tiptoe around this version of kubuntu, it works 95% of the time. i have, literally, changed the way i interact with the computer interface, in order to prevent it from crashing on a more regular basis: kontact/kmail/akregator — which used to be a relatively stable part of the distribution — has become something which works if i DON’T do things like try to open links in akregator using the middle mouse button (right click and choose “open in external browser” works, though, which is annoying), or forward a message, about half of the time (which is something i do on a regular basis when i’m reporting spam). and kubuntu, itself, has got some annoying bugs which i don’t know to whom to report… which, in itself, is annoying… when i boot the computer, the desktop wallpaper appears to be set to “blur” around the background, even though when i look at the configure panel, it’s set to “solid color”, and when i set it to “blur”, nothing happens, but if i, then, set it back to “solid color”, lo-and-behold, it suddenly displays with a solid colour background. and, because of the fact that it’s part of the system settings, i don’t have the first clue who should get the bug report.

and i’ve, basically, given up on amarok. i love the interface, but the fact is, my music is on a disk that isn’t mounted at startup — because it is a NAS, mounted via WIFI — and amarok refuses to see it. i haven’t figured out how to get it to mount at startup, and it appears that the amarok user list is, for all intents and purposes, dead… which is really annoying.

on the other hand, i’ve figured out a way to play the music on my NAS from my phone, my tablet, and from the linux box, at the same time, using the same application, which is VLC media player. i don’t love the interface, but it’s definitely better than nothing, and the fact that i can play my music, basically, anywhere, without having to make copies of it, should make the copyright drones happy.

and i found the disks containing approximately 10,000 fonts, left over from when i worked in a print shop… and i can get around 90% to 95% of them to work on both my mac and my linux box, also from my NAS, which makes sharing documents a lot more reliable.

mushroom 🍄 adventures

🍄 so far, i have taken eleven mushrooms… yep, only eleven: 🍄 🍄 two on 181007, 🍄 one 🍄 each on 181008 and 09, 🍄 two 🍄 on 181011, 🍄 three🍄 🍄 on 181015 and two 🍄 🍄 today.

which is pretty phenomenal, considering that the average dose for me during my 20s was anywhere from 100 to 500, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

well, it was actually in bellingham, but that’s another story…

and that’s not to say that the thought of taking that many isn’t appealing, because it is — very much so, in fact — but i don’t need that many… one or two at a time is more than enough. 🍄

gniksub

busking at the pike place market(!) today. in two hours of playing, i made $55… in ones, fives and quarters. it was a fairly good couple of hours, considering that i only knew three or four of the songs that we played, and was improvising/faking it for the rest of them. i gave my phone number to three “band leaders”, so there’s a pretty good chance i’ll get called again some time soon.

before today, i have never busked with my tuba at the pike place market, because their official policy is “No devices for electronic amplification of any sound are allowed. No horns, brass instruments, or drums are permitted…” which pretty much makes it impossible for me to even think about busking there… but, apparently, they’re “trying out” tubas, because there are a lot of tuba players who objected to their policy. i was one of two tuba players at the market today, and the other guy (conn 15J, 3-valve, B♭, i think his name is jim) was, according to one of the other buskers (he played soprano sax, tap-danced and sang) looking at my tuba like it was a woman… damn right he was looking at my tuba with lust. it’s an instrument to be lusted after, and i’m glad that someone else recognised it for what it is. 😉

and, by the way, soprano sax is not only a “horn” but it is also made of “brass”, and it has been allowed all along. it’s only “horns with cup mouthpieces” that are banned, and it’s ACTUALLY “horns that are played “inconsiderately”, and make problems for the neighbours”… which has come to mean anything that anybody THINKS is too loud, regardless of what the instrument actually sounds like… although, these days, strings and “woodwind” instruments get a pass, and brass instruments (with the exception of tubas, as noted before) are completely banned.

the last time i was permitted to busk at the market was 1982, which was before the current market manager (the one who sold me my current permit) was born. back then, you didn’t have to buy the permit, and there was only one market manager. now there are a bunch of them, and talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing… 🤦 i’m glad i got my permit, but i’m going to leave dealing with the authorities (meaning the market manager(s)) to someone else, because i already don’t like it at all…

if it’s not already obvious…

Trump’s Attack on Medicare for All Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It

Trump’s Attack on Medicare for All Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It
By Wendell Potter
19 October, 2018

Recently, the president decided to take a break from tweeting conspiracy theories to write an op-ed attacking supporters of Medicare for All. While engaging in what psychologists would probably call “projection,” he accused the Medicare for All movement of putting seniors at risk, rationing health care and trying to destroy the Medicare system.

I’m a former executive at two of the country’s largest insurance companies. I spent 20 years working in PR for Humana and then Cigna, rising to the level of vice president before I had a crisis of conscience. As a result, I know exactly how this op-ed came to be. The process doesn’t start at the White House. It didn’t include a careful review of policy, and it wasn’t an idea his staff came up with.

I can see the industry’s fingerprints on this op-ed from a mile away, because I was the ghost writer for many pieces just like it. During my two-decade tenure in the industry, every time an idea that would threaten shareholder profits started gaining momentum, my employer would decide we’d need to find a friendly and influential politician to carry water for the industry. I’d sit down with my communications team, create talking points, or even write a complete op-ed or speech, and then make sure our well-connected lobbyists got it to the right people.

And the industry won’t just go to Republicans. For instance, Ed Rendell, a Democrat who was formerly a governor of my home state of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, recently wrote an op-ed promoting several half-measures he claimed would be stronger reforms than single-payer health care, none of which posed a serious threat to private insurance. Currently, Rendell is affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has regularly hosted organizations like America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Meanwhile, so-called think tanks like the Pacific Research Institute regularly write Medicare for All hit pieces for Forbes and other outlets.

The purpose of these op-eds was always to mislead and scare people, because when the facts aren’t on your side, you have to find a politician who’s willing to obfuscate, misdirect and outright lie. It’s no surprise that the industry went right to the White House.

Many people were quick to challenge the president’s claims. Medicare for All would actually expand coverage for seniors currently on Medicare by covering dental and vision care and lowering drug prices. And contrary to Trump’s claim about rationing, the truth is that real rationing occurs in the US when people don’t seek treatment due to cost. It happens every day because millions of Americans are either uninsured or have such high deductibles they can’t afford to actually get the care they need. Medicare for All would eliminate that barrier.

Others have pointed out the hypocrisy. Since taking control of Congress and the White House, President Trump and his party have been engaged in a non-stop assault on Medicare, threatened patients with pre-existing conditions and tried to force through a plan that would have kicked tens of millions of people off their insurance.

Here’s the thing: I’m fairly confident that the president and his staff don’t actually believe that Medicare for All would threaten seniors. I can tell because Trump doesn’t use the national platform as an opportunity to lay out a vision to expand coverage, or protect people with pre-existing conditions, or manage drug prices or lower health care costs.

What the president does know is that a Medicare for All system is the worst nightmare of insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Right now, they have a virtually limitless ability to charge American patients, families, workers and businesses exorbitant prices, and they want to keep it that way. That’s why they have spent decades abusing our campaign finance system, pumping money into campaigns, hiring armies of lobbyists, and using a combination of political incentives and threats to push through legislation they like, making sure that any legislation that threatens to limit their profits never sees the light of day.

Now that the American people are starting to wake up to their scam, the entrenched special interests have decided to cash in their favors. And so, the president decided to parrot the talking points of his donors and their shareholders, no matter how much harm it will cause the American people.

Trump Tower board seeks nearly $90,000 from estate of art collector who died in 50th-floor fire

Trump Tower board seeks nearly $90,000 from estate of art collector who died in 50th-floor fire
By Meagan Flynn
18 October 2018

Six months after a fire in Trump Tower killed 50th-floor resident Todd Brassner, the building’s residential board is coming after Brassner’s estate for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid common charges stemming from a lien on his apartment, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the Supreme Court in New York County.

Brassner, a longtime Trump Tower resident who lived alone with hundreds of vintage instruments and an elaborate multimillion-dollar art collection, died April 7 after an electrical fire engulfed his apartment, which had no working smoke alarms. He was 67.

Now, with backing from a Trump Organization attorney, the Residential Board of Trump Tower Condominium is suing Brassner’s estate for more than $64,600 in unpaid common charges, an amount that includes fees accrued in the months after Brassner died. The residential board is also seeking a judgment of at least $25,000, bringing the total amount sought to nearly $90,000. Common charges are condo fees that typically include maintenance, utilities or other services. Brassner defaulted on common charge payments in June 2015, according to the complaint.

Brassner’s family members and executors of his estate, Heather and Aaron Brassner, could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could the attorney representing the board.

The fire at Trump Tower, where the president’s penthouse and the Trump Organization headquarters are located, captured wide attention in April both for Trump’s silence on Brassner’s death and for the lack of sprinklers in the building, a feature that Trump had lobbied against installing in the condos in the late 1990s.

Brassner moved into Trump Tower in 1996, according to property records. The son of a wealthy New York art collector, Brassner was described by friends as an “utter expert on Pop Art” who was “constantly swapping, buying and selling” and at the center of the action in the art world, as his friend, Stuart Pivar, told the Art Newspaper. Brassner ran with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd in the 1970s as he built his impressive art collection, including a 1975 portrait Warhol made of Brassner, which the Trump Tower resident valued at $850,000 in 2015.

He kept the portrait in his Trump Tower condo, along with a collection of more than 100 vintage guitars, $25,000 worth of banjos, about 150 ukuleles from the early 20th century, an organ, a Robert Indiana sculpture and artwork by Jack Kerouac β€” just to name a few items.

But over the years, he appeared to have trouble keeping up with the condo payments. Trump Tower’s residential board filed multiple liens against him between 2003 and 2013 for unpaid common charges, New York court records show. And in 2015 he filed for bankruptcy, which included listing all of the assets kept in his apartment. The condo was valued at $2.5 million.

At the time of Brassner’s death, friends told the New York Times he was in declining health and that he had been trying unsuccessfully to sell the apartment. Once Trump became president, resulting in omnipresent armed security outside Trump Tower, Brassner couldn’t seem to find a buyer, one friend told the Times.

“It haunts me,” Brassner’s friend Stephen Dwire, a musician and producer, told the paper. “He said, β€˜This is getting untenable.’ It was like living in an armed camp. But when people heard it was a Trump building, he couldn’t give it away.”

Trump built the tower in 1983, when installing sprinklers was not required. In 1998, when two tragic New York City high-rise fires left several people dead, the city moved to begin requiring sprinklers in high-rises. But Trump opposed retrofitting his building with the sprinklers and lobbied to persuade city officials to drop a proposal that would have required them in older apartment buildings, as The Washington Post previously reported.

Some speculated that the April fire could have been mitigated had they been installed.

The New York City Fire Department ultimately found that the fire was caused by an overloaded electrical board. The Times reported that the building was equipped with smoke sensors, which is what alerted firefighters to the blaze.

In a statement on Twitter in April, Trump did not offer condolences for Brassner’s family but did brag about the construction of the building.

“Fire at Trump Tower is out,” he tweeted, before the fire had been put out. “Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”

A month after Brassner died, a Trump Organization attorney filed a lien against the deceased man on behalf of the Residential Board of the Trump Tower Condominium, seeking at that time $52,000 in unpaid common charges since July 2016, according to New York City Department of Finance records.

this is scary dangerous!

i got a very alarming email today, from lara trump. it said:

President Trump will keep cutting through the fake news filter, and deliver our message straight to YOU — the American people. Now he wants to be sure that you’re all signed up to get REAL NEWS UPDATES straight to your phone.

SIGN UP NOW
The more we can bypass the fake news media, the less power they have to manipulate the news, distort our message, and unleash a flurry of attacks aimed at distracting us from our agenda.

It’s time to take power into our own hands. So please, sign up for texts today to get REAL NEWS straight to your phone.

Lara Trump
Senior Advisor
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

so, drumpf is encouraging people to get the news straight from him, so they won’t be “distracted” by the truth…

and she’s the senior advisor for "donald j. drumpf for president, INCORPORATED"…

i sure won’t be signing up for it, but i get the distinct impression that a whole bunch of american citizens will. 😒😓

is it that obvious???

181015 — 4:20 pm: sitting next to 5 mile lake, high on mushrooms. (i could get to like this… 😉)

an early-20-ish, young female jogger approaches.

YFJ: excuse me, sir… do you know what is in this lake?

ME: um… water?

YFJ: i mean, is it, like, safe to swim in? there’s no sharks?

ME: (trying hard not to laugh), no, there are no sharks in this fresh-water lake…

YFJ: thanks! 😃

ME: 😕😕😕😕😕⁇⁇🤯

bullroarer!

181014 bullroarer
181014 bullroarer

finished, working prototype bullroarer.

it “cycles” the way it’s supposed to: it spins as far as it can one direction, and then spins back the other direction automatically, while i spin the whole thing one direction all the time, thus making the characteristic “bull roar” noise. i made it out of plywood, to test the theory. i’ve got a chunk of really dense hardwood that should make a better, louder noise.

SUCCESS! 👍😎

okay, so…

moe and i went to see VOLTA yesterday, and it was AWESOME!!! i haven’t enjoyed a show that much in a LONG time! it was colourful and exciting and funny and outrageous and awe-inspiring and inspiring in general… the guy who was sitting to my left shouting “woo!” over and over again didn’t even distract me from how amazing it was.

but i didn’t take mushrooms yesterday, because i had to drive to volta, and because i was still feeling pretty good from the day before.

when i woke up this morning, however, something was different. moe is going to boston (for one night, she’ll be back tomorrow, which is bizarre enough, by itself), and i had to drive her and ross to the airport at 7:30, which is earlier than i like to get up. after i had got up and dressed, i noticed that i felt REALLY depressed. i mentioned to moe that i said i didn’t know what it was like to feel depressed any longer, a few days ago, but i felt depressed now. she said that it’s not too surprising, when you understand the brain chemistry. i don’t completely understand the meaning of her comment, but after i dropped them off at the airport, i went for a long drive, which made me feel a lot better. i’ve been really cold the past couple of days, so i turned the seat-warmer on high, and when i got home i didn’t do much except sit at my computer all day, and i feel significantly better. smoking pot helped a lot more than it usually does, too, which is encouraging. i thought i would try another mushroom, earlier, but going for a long drive helped so much that, by the time i got home, i had decided to see what else happened first.

i’m sure this is what kate was talking about, expecting more of a change in perception, but not so much actual lack of depression, as one might expect from a truly antidepressive drug… very much like what i experienced when i started taking 5HTP: i didn’t notice a lack of depression, what i noticed was a new awareness of when i was depressed, and more motivation to do stuff in spite of it.

weird

i took two mushrooms on sunday, and determined that two is too many if i’m “microdosing”. i took one on monday, and didn’t feel anything… but, to be honest, the relaxed “okay with whatever happens” attitude that i experienced on sunday was having an extended effect, so it didn’t really matter that much. i took one on tuesday and had almost as high a trip as i had on sunday, with two… plus i got all domestic, and went out grocery shopping, which turned into me being as efficient as i could be and getting out of the costco crowds… and having to drive while “altered” — even a little bit — was a little more stress that i could do without. so i decided that i’d only take mushrooms on days when i don’t have anything else on the schedule.

which was a good thing, because wednesday (yesterday) started with my circus class — in which the instructor, amber, said that i “looked different” — and then finished up with a snake suspenderz gig in the skyview observatory in the columbia tower in downtown seattle, which started, for me, at 2:30, when i left to pick up hobbit at 3:30 to be at the columbia tower at 5:00, play for 2 hours and 45 minutes…

and being told that i was not allowed to drink alcohol in the bar, by the bartender, despite having been told specifically by the guy that hired us that it was okay for us to eat food and drink beverages on our breaks… 🤨

pack up and finally leave the building — after being abandoned by the guy who hired us, who took a “secret” elevator that was different from the one we got on, and when the elevator we got on finally arrived, it was inhabited by a hispanic guy who didn’t speak that much english, and took us from the 78th floor (or the 84th, or whatever floor we were on) to the 4th floor, then to the loading dock, then to the 3rd floor, then to the 4th floor, then to the 3rd floor again, while assiduously AVOIDING pressing the button that would take us to the 1st floor, which is WHERE WE SAID — REPEATEDLY — THAT WE WANTED TO GO… (damn it)… and having been paid $15 extra, specifically to cover parking, only to discover that parking for 5 hours and 47 minutes at the columbia tower costs $31… and then i had to take hobbit to lynnwood, and i didn’t get home until after midnight, because of three lanes of the freeway being closed through downtown seattle.

🤦

so i decided that i would start over again today. at first i was going to throw caution to the wind, and take five, but i chickened out at the last moment, and only took two. it’s a good thing i didn’t have anything else scheduled for today, although it isn’t as profound as sunday’s trip.

i’ve also got to conserve, until i have a better supply lined up. probably not going to do any more until next week… although, at this point, i would say that, overall, it has been a success, because, quite honestly, i don’t even remember what it was like to feel depressed any longer.

i wonder how long it will last?

then, today, i went out for a walk, like i usually do. while i was out, five random people waved at me, from their cars, from their front yards, from their lawn mowers… one of them said “how ya’ doin’?”… plus, the mail delivery lady, who i know, also waved at me. what is it about me that is, all of a sudden, causing people to acknowledge my existence? what is it about me — that isn’t a direct result of consuming a socially inappropriate substance — is different from the guy who wears a burnous and freaks people out? it makes me feel like i’ve gained some sort of notariety that i haven’t found out about yet.

also, this whole thing of being recommended to take psychedelic mushrooms by my counsellor goes right along with the unreal-ness of being able to walk into a local dispensary and walk out with an ounce of medical-grade weed without being busted… and the unreal-ness of #drumpf in the white house, and his unrelenting battle against plain ordinary folks who didn’t do harm to anybody… i’ve fallen through the cracks and ended up in bizarro-world, for sure. 😕

Can’t Hit the Snooze Button No More

my impression is that the democratic malaise goes back at least as far as George McGovern, in 1972, but you’ve got to start somewhere…

Can’t Hit the Snooze Button No More
October 9, 2018
by Marc Salomon

In 1980, when I turned 18 and first voted, John Anderson sounded the alarm about the duopoly rot. The Democrats hit the snooze button and Reagan won.

In 1984, Gary Hart sounded the alarm and the Democrats slapped him down, again in 1988, and hit the snooze button, nominated the execrable Mondale and Reagan won.

In 1988, Jesse Jackson sounded the rainbow alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button, nominated the hapless Dukakis who ran with the odious Bentsen and Bush I won.

In 1992, Jerry Brown v1.5 sounded the alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and nominated Bill “Rapey Bubba” Clinton who won but rammed NAFTA through and forfeited the Congress to the Republicans.

In 1996, Nader sounded the alarm. the Democrats hit the snooze button. The Republicans impeached Rapey Bubba.   As a parting shot of gratitude, Clinton I deregulated Wall Street.

In 2000, Ralph Nader sounded the alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and lost to Bush II (the previous Hitler on the Potomac) and instead of taking stock of their failure, raged at Nader.

In 2004, Howard Dean sounded a weak alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and nominated the patrician Kerry who lost to Bush II, blaming the Greens again.

In 2008, Obama sounded the alarm as a trojan horse, got in running center-left and governed center-right, throwing away historic strong majorities  in the Congress to the Republicans.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders sounded the alarm and the Democrats hit the snooze button so hard that they broke the alarm clock and nominated a neoliberal warmonger candidate who was as unpopular with the electorate as she held them in contempt ushering in Obama’s true legacy: Donald Trump. And here we are.

Do you want to know why there is a Justice Kavanaugh? That’s why.

These Democrats are not stupid. They claim that they represent the meritocracy. Yet in what meritocracy do losers like this rise to the top and stay there after losing election after election?

This “meritocracy” selects for those able to appeal to and manipulate the elites into being allowed to be temporary custodians of power on their behalf.

Their reward is a lifetime of sinecure and wealth.

The only way that these Republicans can win is when these Democrats willfully and maliciously manipulate the electorate into acting against their best interests.

None of those Democrats who sounded the alarm had any real intention of making the kind of structural change needed to put us on a different course, they were playing the angle.

Nader who would have followed through, Sanders, less so, were the exceptions.

But they all did tap into an increasing resentment amongst the voters as to the failure of the duopoly to be responsive to popular sentiment.

When Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party arose, the Republicans welcomed the Tea Party into their midst while the Democrat big city mayors, coordinated by the Obama Department of Justice brutally and violently repressed the encampments.

Politics in this model is not symmetric.

If politics is warfare by other means, the Republicans have torn up any treaties that might have been in place and adopted a policy of total war.

These Democrats still do not know what hit them and they have proven themselves strategically incompetent of ever getting out from behind the eight ball.

The only way to work our way out from under this mess is by creating independent grassroots democratic organizations that can mobilize mass movements to make the elites offers they cannot refuse.

If people with access to many fewer resources than we, facing death squad governments and apartheid, can organize to win, then we have no excuses.

Our primary impediment in this task has been the Democrat Party which views its base, not the Republicans, as its opponent, and leverages its patronage network against independent popular organizing.

The veil of delusion is strong with the Democrat base, they are at a point where they have been made as impervious by MSNBC to logical arguments as any Fox [sic] News addict.

We are going to need to pierce that veil to shake some sense into them and more importantly organize outside of our usual comfort zones where the Democrat spell is weak, where people are wise to their bait and switch and have voted with their feet by staying home.

None of this will be easy, but it is not rocket science, others who have come before us have made these heavy lifts.

We have no excuses.

anti-spam, anti-fraud information

the past couple of months i have been getting an inordinate amount of spam that goes something like this:

Hello!
I’m a member of an international hacker group.

As you could probably have guessed, your account X was hacked, because I sent message you from it.

Now I have access to you accounts!
For example, your password for X is X

Within a period from July 17, 2018 to October 3, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited.
So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers.
Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data.

We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..

But the key thing is that sometimes we recorded you with your webcam, syncing the recordings with what you watched!
I think you are not interested show this video to your friends, relatives, and your intimate one…

Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w
If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.

I guarantee that after that, we’ll erase all your “data” ?

A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.

Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.

You should always think about your security.
We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets.
Take care of yourself.

please note: THIS IS FAKE NEWS!

whoever it is that sent it DOES NOT have access to my, or anyone else’s email account, despite what they may want you to think.

how do i know this? i have received at least 10 messages which are almost exactly identical to this one, down to the inconsistent english, carriage returns, and even the supposedly unique bitcoin wallet ID. the only significant difference in all of these messages is in the headers, which most people never see.

i want to go through this message, statement by statement, and show you exactly WHY it is fake news, and you shouldn’t buy into their scam.

first,

I’m a member of an international hacker group.

no you are not a member of an international hacker group. if you were, you wouldn’t have to tell me so. you are, in fact, a skript-kiddie who thinks he can make money by using other peoples’ code to mess up my internet: you are a vandal and a criminal, and i WILL track you down and turn you in, because it’s easy-peasy. 😠

As you could probably have guessed, your account X was hacked, because I sent message you from it.

any real hacker can tell you that you don’t actually have to have access to the account that’s on the “FROM:” line in your email, in order to make it look like you have access to that account. the fact is, i can send email to anybody i like, put whatever email address i like on the “FROM:” line, and 98% of the time, it will go through to the recipient without any difficulty. this is because the “FROM:” line is one of the easiest parts of the email to spoof. i have sent email that looks like it was coming from Bill Gates, and, if you didn’t know that i was sending it, and you have no way of looking at the email headers, you would think it was Bill Gates, and not me.

but you would be wrong.

then:

Now I have access to you accounts!
For example, your password for X is X

this password (which i have “X”ed out) is an authentic password from me, but because i have kept a list of every password i used, and where i used it, i KNOW that it is AT LEAST five years old, and has been superceded many times by more potent passwords. nevertheless, i also KNOW EXACTLY where i used this password last, so the first thing on my list is to write to the administrators of that place, and let them know that they’ve experienced a security breach.

then, just to make sure, i CHANGE MY PASSWORD AGAIN!!! just because they don’t really know anything is no reason not to be cautious times five… 👍

once again:

Within a period from July 17, 2018 to October 3, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited. So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers. Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data.

surprise! i KNOW that this is fake news, because i KNOW that i have not visited adult web sites. EVER! this may be a little more difficult for some other people, but for me, it’s a no-brainer: you are much less likely to be infected with a virus if you don’t visit adult web sites. the “full damps” of these data are imaginary.

not only that, but starting on 10 july — which is before the alleged “infection” — i was not even near my computer, much less using it, for at least a week, and i haven’t even had any social media accounts or messengers since about a week later. FAIL!

and, just as an aside… what are “full damps” anyway? i would have called them “downloads”… i have never heard the word “damps” used to mean “downloads”… do these people even speak english???

if you actually do visit adult web sites, you may be taken aback by this claim, but keep in mind the first part of the message, where they claimed to have access to my email account: they were wrong then, so the probability is quite high that they are wrong now, as well.

We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..

i admit that my tastes are quite weird, but the fact that you “saw and recorded” me doing those things is a lie: i don’t even have a webcam, or any kind of device that could record me doing stuff that i don’t even do in front of my computer anyway.

once again, if you have a webcam on your computer, it may be a good idea to cover it with a piece of tape when you’re not using it, but the fact is, people who write you out of the blue and claim to have access to your computer, are lying, more likely than not.

now we come to the real reason people send out spam like this:

Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w
If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.

yeah, bitcoin is really easy to hide your transactions and make them more anonymous, but if the person who is asking you to send them bitcoin for stuff that they have been lying about, then it is also harder for you to get your money back when you figure out that you have been lied to… which is why it’s always a good idea to make sure that the information you have been given is NOT a lie before you make your transaction.

in this case, they’re lying about the virus, the adult web site, the visual and audio recording, and the amount of data they claim to have collected, so i am confident that, if i were to look up their bitcoin wallet address, there’s a good chance that it, too, will have been shut down for fraudulent activity. yes, it is possible for that to happen, and in cases like this, it is fairly frequent.

ETA: i’m wrong about this one. the bitcoin wallet at 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w is active, showing 17 transactions (at this time) worth 1.95616527 BTC, or, $12,949.81 USD at this time… all the more reason to realise that THIS IS A SCAM!!! if you’re interested in reporting scam bitcoin wallets, you can do so here, as i have.

A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.

this “timer” is more impetus for you to act immediately, without checking any of the above mentioned information for inconsistencies. i know that it’s not true because i have received several messages like this, over the past two months, and nothing has ever happened to me, my “data” has not been mailed to my contacts (as will be seen in the next statement), simply because 1) they don’t have any of my contact information, and 2) they don’t have any data.

they’re just trying to scare me, and it’s not working.

Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.

see? they’re threatening to send “all your messages and videos” — which they don’t have — “to all your contacts” — which they also don’t have — unless you send $800 to a bitcoin wallet which no longer exists.

by this time, you are EITHER freaking out and reading up on converting regular money to bitcoin, or you, like me, are laughing out loud, and wondering why other people are so stupid.

because, if you think about it, $800 is a fairly small amount of money to extort from someone who is willing to give it to you without doing their homework… so what is preventing them from saying your data has been erased, but, actually has been put into a separate category of data that can be used to extort more money from you, at a later time?

of course, if they don’t have any of that data (as in my case) i have nothing to worry about, but for people who might have data like that, who knows what they may do, even if everything else is a lie?

finally, a LEEEETLE TINY BIT of common sense, to finish things up:

You should always think about your security. We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets. Take care of yourself.

basically, if it’s on internet, it’s not a secret. if your computer is on internet, there’s a remote chance that something like this really may happen to you at some point, if you also keep your secrets on your computer. thus, the logical conclusion is that if you keep your secrets somewhere other than on your computer (or your tablet, or your cell phone), you won’t have any problems deleting the message when you get spam like this.

for those of you who may remember the screed i wrote about how to report spam: if you receive a message like this, that would be a good place to start. 😉

mushroom adventure has started

i have started my investigation of mushrooms as an antidepressant.

so far it appears to be working:

2 smallish baeocystis at 5:00 pm 181007

5:30 two mushrooms is above conscious awareness: they have kicked in. i am relaxed, life is better than it has been in a long time, and it doesn’t even matter that i am out on a walk and it’s starting to rain.

7:00 after peak – it’s not an astonishingly high trip, but considering that i only took two smallish mushrooms, i think that “microdosing” may involved fractions of one. i wonder how long it will last.

8:15 one shot of single-grain malt whiskey and one beer.

ETA 181008: these mushrooms are DEFINITELY more potent than semilanceata or pelliculosa. i was still high at 10:30, when we went to sleep. i feel better today than i have for months.

Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100

180925 odd bodkins
180925 Odd Bodkins by Dan O’Neill

Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100
By Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney
September 28, 2018

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century.

A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

The document projects that global temperature will rise by nearly 3.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature between 1986 and 2005 regardless of whether Obama-era tailpipe standards take effect or are frozen for six years, as the Trump administration has proposed. The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986, so the analysis assumes a roughly 4 degree Celsius or 7 degree Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial levels.

The world would have to make deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming,the analysis states. And that “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

World leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, and agreed to try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the current greenhouse gas cuts pledged under the 2015 Paris climate agreement are not steep enough to meet either goal. Scientists predict a 4 degree Celsius rise by the century’s end if countries take no meaningful actions to curb their carbon output.

Trump has vowed to exit the Paris accord and called climate change a hoax. In the past two months, the White House has pushed to dismantle nearly half a dozen major rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, deregulatory moves intended to save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

If enacted, the administration’s proposals would give new life to aging coal plants; allow oil and gas operations to release more methane into the atmosphere; and prevent new curbs on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioning units. The vehicle rule alone would put 8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, more than a year’s worth of total U.S. emissions, according to the government’s own analysis.

Administration estimates acknowledge that the policies would release far more greenhouse gas emissions from America’s energy and transportation sectors than otherwise would have been allowed.

David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who testified against Trump’s freeze of fuel efficiency standards this week in Fresno, Calif., said his organization is prepared to use the administration’s own numbers to challenge their regulatory rollbacks. He noted that the NHTSA document projects that if the world takes no action to curb emissions, current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would rise from 410 parts per million to 789 ppm by 2100.

“I was shocked when I saw it,” Pettit said in a phone interview. “These are their numbers. They aren’t our numbers.”

Conservatives who condemned Obama’s climate initiatives as regulatory overreach have defended the Trump administration’s approach, calling it a more reasonable course.

Obama’s climate policies were costly to industry and yet “mostly symbolic,” because they would have made barely a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions, said Heritage Foundation research fellow Nick Loris, adding: “Frivolous is a good way to describe it.”

NHTSA commissioned ICF International Inc., a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va., to help prepare the impact statement. An agency spokeswoman said the Environmental Protection Agency “and NHTSA welcome comments on all aspects of the environmental analysis” but declined to provide additional information about the agency’s long-term temperature forecast.

Federal agencies typically do not include century-long climate projections in their environmental impact statements. Instead, they tend to assess a regulation’s impact during the life of the program β€” the years a coal plant would run, for example, or the amount of time certain vehicles would be on the road.

Using the no-action scenario “is a textbook example of how to lie with statistics,” said MIT Sloan School of Management professor John Sterman. “First, the administration proposes vehicle efficiency policies that would do almost nothing [to fight climate change]. Then [the administration] makes their impact seem even smaller by comparing their proposals to what would happen if the entire world does nothing.”

This week, U.N. Secretary-General AntΓ³nio Guterres warned leaders gathered in New York, “If we do not change course in the next two years, we risk runaway climate change… Our future is at stake.”

Federal and independent research β€” including projections included in last month’s analysis of the revised fuel-efficiency standards β€” echoes that theme. The environmental impact statement cites “evidence of climate-induced changes,” such as more frequent droughts, floods, severe storms and heat waves, and estimates that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease its carbon output.

Two articles published in the journal Science since late July β€” both co-authored by federal scientists β€” predicted that the global landscape could be transformed “without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and declared that soaring temperatures worldwide bore humans’ “fingerprint.”

“With this administration, it’s almost as if this science is happening in another galaxy,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “That feedback isn’t informing the policy.”

Administration officials say they take federal scientific findings into account when crafting energy policy β€” along with their interpretation of the law and President Trump’s agenda. The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has been among the Trump officials who have noted that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants have fallen over time.

But the debate comes after a troubling summer of devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat and a catastrophic hurricane β€” each of which, federal scientists say, signals a warming world.

Some Democratic elected officials, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said Americans are starting to recognize these events as evidence of climate change. On Feb. 25, Inslee met privately with several Cabinet officials, including then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and Western state governors. Inslee accused them of engaging in “morally reprehensible” behavior that threatened his children and grandchildren, according to four meeting participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the private conversation.

In an interview, Inslee said that the ash from wildfires that covered Washington residents’ car hoods this summer, and the acrid smoke that filled their air, has made more voters of both parties grasp the real-world implications of climate change.

“There is anger in my state about the administration’s failure to protect us,” he said. “When you taste it on your tongue, it’s a reality.”

wyoming

moe left for a week in wyoming this morning. she’s getting back monday, then, tuesday, she’s flying to las vegas and won’t be home until next friday. then she’ll be home for a couple of weeks, and then she’s flying to boston… for ONE NIGHT… 😕

anhedonia… i’m just going through the motions. nothing matters, nothing makes any difference, nobody cares about anything…

moe says she cares, but then she leaves for a week in wyoming, and asks me to ferry her mom around while she’s gone. 🙁 not that i begrudge her going: this is national chapionships, her dog qualified in january and she’s been planning it pretty much ever since, but it is just another thing where nothing seems to matter.

i learned the secret code to getting kontact working when it pulls its “getting folder contents. please wait…” error, which is “akonadictl restart”. i still don’t understand why they put a defective version of kontact in the LTS version of the system, and i wonder when they’ll get around to releasing the fixed version in the backports repository, but as with all things related to the software bug industry, what makes the most sense is often the last thing that the people who can actually do anything about it, think about. 😕

dolphin continues to work, and i continue to be confused about how it worked before the “username@drive” convention became obvious. i still have to re-adjust my desktop wallpaper EVERY FUCKING TIME i boot the machine. there’s no telling when — or if — it will piss me off enough that i leave it where it is. amarok continues to work, as long as i want to move things to my local drive. i don’t, so i’m listening to iTunes on my phone and waiting for someone from the amarok users list to respond to my question about running from a NAS. i don’t expect an answer.

i sold two 16GB iPhone 5s phones for $120 on ebay today, and paypal wants to hold onto the money used to pay for them until three days after they are delivered to the buyer. how i HATE paypal. 😠

grr update 2

akregator has taken up the task of crashing about half the time, again. i guess it just needed some time to settle, after having the debug packages installed.

i reported the bug. it was a duplicate of bug #382575, which is actually a bug with Qt (which i always thought stood for “QuickTime”, but, apparently, i’m wrong), and it was originally reported in july of 2017. it will be fixed… eventually… 😒

grr update

i installed the debugging packages for both kontact and dolphin, thinking that would help me get a better idea of what’s going on.

it’s a little difficult with dolphin, because it doesn’t actually crash, it just gives me an “unknown error” message.

with kontact/akregator, it made a considerable difference, but i’m not sure how much it helps: now, instead of crashing about half the time when i middle-click on a link (which would produce the backtrace for which i installed the debugging packages), it doesn’t crash at all… it still does nothing when i middle-click on a link — now 100% of the time — and it still works exactly as advertised when i right-click and choose “open link in external browser”… 😠

ETA: this is the primary reason why, if there was ANY other alternative, i would use that instead of linux: i looked at the URI in dolphin, after it gave me the weird “unknown error”, and it said “smb://@/” which i thought looked kind of odd… so i put the username for the drive to the left of the @ sign, and the name of the drive to the right of the @ sign…

and it worked. 😕

no clue how it got that way, no clue why it worked before, with no username in the picture, and doesn’t now, no clue what the error messages mean, i have absolutely NO CLUE why it works now and didn’t before…

but it does. 😕

grr…

i’m still having random annoying problems with bionic beaver:

when i start it up in the morning, it loads my desktop wallpaper image with a “blur” in the background, which is not what i want. i have to right-click, choose “Configure desktop”, choose “blur”, hit “apply”, choose “Solid color” and hit “apply” before it correctly shows a solid colour background around my wallpaper images. 😕

sometimes, randomly, the “Device Notifier” shows me the three USB hard disks i have inserted, and mounted, even when i am doing nothing that involves any of them. i don’t know why.

akregator randomly crashes when i try to open a link with the middle mouse button (which is normally set to “open in external browser”). it works okay if i right-click and choose “open in external browser” from the context menu, but if i middle-click, sometimes nothing happens, and sometimes akregator crashes. also, it doesn’t give me enough information in the trace to make the bug reports any good. i wrote to the KDE-PIM users list, but not with this problem, because i hadn’t figured out exacly what happened at that time. now i get the very strong impression that the response will be to upgrade to a more recent version, but that version hasn’t been added to the upgrades for bionic yet, so i’m kinda stuck.

dolphin allows me to make icons for places i go to regularly, and organise them in the left hand side of the window. i set up some network folders, by selecting “Network”, then selecting “Add Network Folder” and setting up a micro$not windows folder at smb://salamandircloud.local. it worked fine for about 3 days, but now, when i select any of the network folders at salamandircloud.local, it tells me

Internal Error
Please send a full bug report at http://bugs.kde.org
Unknown error condition in stat: Unknown error 8216

only sometimes, instead of “Unknown error 8216” it says “Unknown error” or “File exists” or “Software caused connection abort”. i went to http://bugs.kde.org and discovered a duplicate bug that says it’s “solved”, but it doesn’t give any clear indication of how it was solved. the end result is that now i no longer have access to my cloud drive from my linux machine. 👎

because of the fact that i can’t access salamandirCloud, i can’t access my music from my linux machine, but even when i could access salamandirCloud, amarok couldn’t access my music files. apparently it wants them on a local drive… and, because of the fact that, when i could access my cloud drive, it was through a SMB connection, i can’t use the standard NFS to automatically mount the drive at startup. i wrote to the amarok users list, but nobody’s home there, and i don’t expect an answer any time soon. 😠

i keep going back to the advice i was offered by Ralf Mardorf on the debian users list, back in 2012, when i was playing around with (and failing to install) a debian live disk. he said

Because I needed new hardware I couldn’t keep a stable Linux install that satisfied my needs.

Never change a winning team!

If there’s no need to update, keep a stable install, make backups and to test newer Linux versions at least have a dual-boot.

If I could use my old stable install, I still would use it. In your case I would reinstall the old Ubuntu that fit to your needs and I would install a second Linux and try to get it working, when ever I would have time to do it.

You know it yourself, I don’t need to write this words to you ;).

which, to me, means “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT!”

except, of course, trusty was broke, it was just broke in different ways than bionic is. now all i gotta do is figure out what the fixes are. 😖

No, I Will Not Debate You

No, I Will Not Debate You
Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks.
19 September, 2018
by Laurie Penny

There are some stupid mistakes that only very smart people make, and one of them is the notion that a sensible argument seriously presented can compete with a really good piece of theatre.

Every day, people on the internet ask why I won’t “debate” some self-actualizing gig-economy fascist or other, as if formal, public debate were the only way to steer public conversation. If you won’t debate, the argument goes, you’re an enemy of free speech. You’re basically no better than a Nazi, and certainly far worse than any of the actual Nazis muttering about not being allowed to preach racism from prestigious pulpits. Well-meaning liberals insist that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” anti-fascists disagree, the far right orders more popcorn, and round and round we go on the haunted carousel of western liberal thought until we’re all queasy.

This bad-faith argument is a repeating refrain of this low, dishonest decade, and this month it built to another crescendo. In the U.S., The New Yorker bowed to public pressure and disinvited Steve Bannon, Trump’s neo-nationalist former chief strategist, from its literary festival. And in the U.K., The Economist chose to do the opposite.

I’m accidentally responsible for a very small amount of the fuss here. I was due to speak at the Economist’s Open Future festival, where Bannon was scheduled to be interviewed by the editor in chief directly after the “future of MeToo” panel I’d be on with journalists Laura Bates and Ally Fogg. My note to The Economist, in part:

To speak personally, my opposition to Bannon’s place at this conference has nothing to do with wishing to see him silenced — that would be infeasible as well as illiberal.

I’ve spent much of the past five years hearing out and attempting to debate people like Bannon, and in my experience it only emboldens and legitimizes them. As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in hearing those arguments again.

Bates agreed, writing that “there is a very small minority of cases in which it is justified to refuse to participate on a platform alongside a person because they explicitly and deliberately advocate hatred and harm to groups of people on the basis of their race, sex, religion or other characteristics. It is my belief that Steve Bannon meets this high standard, that his deeply racist, misogynistic, white nationalist views pose real threat and harm to a large number of people, and that it is therefore irresponsible and damaging to provide him with the legitimacy of such a highly respected mainstream platform as The Economist.” Fogg said that “to invite contributions from Steve Bannon, and furthermore to schedule his appearance immediately after a discussion about what happens after #MeToo, directly contradicts the very essence and message of the #MeToo movement. This schedule honors a man whose primary claims to fame are establishing an online magazine that specialized in inciting misogynistic and racial hatred and then maneuvering a self-confessed sexual abuser into place as the most powerful politician on earth.”

To me, refusing to appear alongside Bannon was an obvious choice, as obvious as the protest against Donald Trump’s visit to Britain earlier this year, when millions of people made my country inhospitable to a president who has done nothing to deserve our deference. Bannon, unsurprisingly, disagreed, calling New Yorker editor David Remnick a coward for rescinding his invitation.

We probably should have anticipated the disingenuous firestorm that followed. We should have anticipated the accusations of being the real fascists for refusing to make nice with white supremacists, the harassment and YouTube hobgoblining from self-appointed defenders of free speech, who seem to have forgotten that for Bates, for me, and for any other woman who flashes the merest inch of independent thought online, harassment is nothing terribly new. It’s just Tuesday.

There’s a term for this sort of bad-faith argument: it’s called the justification-suppression model. The theory is that bigots refrain from directly defending their own bigotry but get hugely riled up justifying the abstract right to express bigotry. So instead of saying, for example, “I don’t like foreigners,” they’ll fight hard for someone else’s right to get up on stage and yell that foreigners are coming to convert your children and seduce your household pets.

Focusing the conversation on the ethics of disseminating speech rather than the actual content of that speech is hugely useful for the far right for three reasons. Firstly, it allows them to paint themselves as the wronged party β€” the martyrs and victims. Secondly, it stops people from talking about the actual wronged parties, the real lives at risk. And thirdly, of course, it’s an enormous diversion tactic, a shout of “Fire!” in the crowded theatre of politics. But Liberals don’t want to feel like bad people, so this impossible choice — betray the letter of your principles, or betray the spirit — leaves everyone feeling filthy.

There’s no way to come out of this convinced of your own political purity. The thing is, though, that establishing your own political purity isn’t what progressive politics are supposed to be about. As Ms. Marvel says: Good is not a thing you are. It’s a thing you do. This is not about censorship. It never was. It’s about consequences, about drawing a line in the sand.

That can be harder in practice than it sounds. The problem with taking a stand within and against respectable organizations is that however righteous you may feel, you create a lot of work for people in that organization β€” especially people lower down the chain of command who don’t get to make the big ethical decisions. And it takes rather a lot of courage to defy the customs of polite society, especially if it means compromising social capital you yourself have worked hard for. Some people speaking at the Open Future festival are female activists of color whose positions and profile deserve the same institutional recognition that Bannon doesn’t.

The Economist defended its decision to keep Bannon on the program:

The future of open societies will not be secured by like-minded people speaking to each other in an echo chamber, but by subjecting ideas and individuals from all sides to rigorous questioning and debate. This will expose bigotry and prejudice, just as it will reaffirm and refresh liberalism. That is the premise The Economist was founded on. When James Wilson launched this newspaper in 1843, he said its mission was to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”

I don’t believe that holding this position makes anyone evil or stupid. I understand why people cling to it like shipwreck survivors on a floating door. The problem is that it relies on two pieces of magical thinking: number one, that intellectual ideas are the same as moral ones, and number two, that the sucking ethical vacuum at the center of public life can be replaced with a commitment to the polite forms of a free society.

There’s a good case to be made for what anarchists call “prefigurative politics” — the idea that part of the way you build a better world is by creating a version of the world you want to see. The Occupy movement did this, creating microcosms of sharing societies based on mutual aid and consensus… before the camps were summarily squashed by police. The culture of “debate” operates on similar lines but at a much higher budget: it’s live-action roleplaying of a Classical fever-dream of a society where pedigreed intellectuals freely exchange ideas in front of a respectful audience, the sort of society that would have made certain ancient Greek philosophers drop their hemlock in excitement.

Personally, I prefer an exchange of ideas that is less hierarchical and performative, because I’ve found that a lot of the people whose voices matter most are people who don’t put themselves forward as spokespeople, if they are invited at all. Or written dialogue, because it gives all parties more time to think and reflect. Or any format where good ideas are what count, not how good you are at showboating and humiliating the other guy.

Remember the U.S. presidential debates of 2016? Remember how the entire liberal establishment thought Hillary Clinton had won, mainly because she made actual points, rather than shambling around the stage shouting about Muslims? What’s the one line from those debates that everyone remembers now? It’s “Nasty Woman.” What’s the visual? It’s Trump literally skulking around Hillary, dominating her with his body. It’s theatre. And right now the bad actors are winning.

* * *

The far right does not respect the free and liberal exchange of ideas. It is not open to compromise, and it does not want a debate. It wants power. Last week, when I was on the evening news discussing my refusal to attend The Economist‘s event, the showrunners sat us in front of a big screen with Bannon’s face on it β€” twice. And that, of course, is the problem.

Steve Bannon, like the howling monster from the id he ushered into the White House, exploits the values of the liberal establishment by offering an impossible choice: betray their stated principles (free, open debate) or dignify fascism and white supremacy. This weaponizes tolerance to legitimize intolerance. If we deny racists a platform, they feed off the appearance of censorship, but if we give them a platform, they’ve also won by being respectfully invited into the penumbra of mainstream legitimacy. Either way, what matters to them is not debate, but airtime and attention. They have no interest in winning on the issues. Their image of a better world is one with their face on every television screen.

The marketplace of ideas is just as full of con artists, scammers, and Ponzi schemes as any other marketplace, and as always, when the whole thing comes crashing down, it’s ordinary marks who lose everything. Bannon is that rare thing: a true Gordon Gekko in the attention economy, a man who is both troll and true believer, a man whose lack of integrity is part of the ideology: win at all costs and screw the other guy, because fools and their morals are easily parted. There is no deeper truth to be divined from “holding him to account,” no point at which his racism and xenophobia will somehow become unacceptable to a public that has already bought its penny stocks in neo-nationalism.

Mere weeks ago he told a gathering of the far-right National Front in France to be proud β€œwhen people call you racist, when people call you xenophobic… wear it as a badge of honor.” Too many well-meaning liberals are clinging with ten fingernails to the idea that their institutions are robust enough to withstand fascism. They believe, because the belief is soothing, that the marketplace of ideas cares about the value, durability, and quality of its wares rather than how shiny the packaging is, how catchy the jingle, how many times it shows up in your peripheral brand awareness until it’s the one you reach for on the shelf. They’re the equivalent of the people who tried to sell cars in the 1920s by taking out full-page ads solemnly explaining how unlikely their machines were to break down rather than trying to sell you a dream of freedom and potency on four wheels.

The left is catastrophically losing the PR battle in the marketplace of ideas. Inviting someone like Steve Bannon to your conference about how to build a free and open society is a little like inviting Ronald McDonald to your convention on solving world hunger.

I’m not saying that there’s no point in talking to the far right at all. I have interviewed members of the far right in my capacity as a journalist. But academic research and investigative journalism are very different from formal public debate. Public debate — at least the way I was taught to do it at my posh school — is not about the free exchange of ideas at all. You only listen to the other guy so you can work out how to beat him, and ideally, humiliate him. I’m choosing my pronouns deliberately here. The format is fundamentally an intellectual dick-smacking contest dressed up in institutional lingerie, and while there are plenty of women out there who can unzip their enormous brains and thwack them on the table with the best of them, the formula is catastrophically macho.

People rarely change their minds in the course of formal public debate. Not the people on stage, and very few of those in the audience. Years of robust debate in my capacity as a commentator and journalist have taught me that you don’t change minds simply by pointing out where someone is wrong. As a dear friend once told me, trying to bring someone over to your side by publicly demonstrating that their ideas are bad and that they should feel bad is like trying to teach a goat how to dance: the goat will not learn to dance, and you will make him angry. The ways people actually change their minds is by reading the mood of those around them and then going away and thinking about it, by being given permission to think what they were already thinking, or by being shamed into realizing how ignoble their assumptions always were.

Plus, being better at debating does not make you right. It just makes you better at debating. Any prep school debate champion can tell you that a bad story well told can beat a sober litany of facts, though it helps if you also have facts on your side.

Curating debate participants is itself a political choice, because the terms of a debate inform public opinion as much as its content. I’ve lost count of the number of evenings I’ve spent in the role of “shouty leftist” juxtaposed with a set of Tory talking points in a suit, with ten or fifteen minutes (if we’re lucky, a whole hour) to decide whether poor children should be allowed to eat during school holidays or whether migrants deserve human rights. What matters is not who wins on the merits. What matters are the terms: who gets to speak, and who must be silent.

The idea of the public sphere has always been elitist in practice, if not in principle. The people most likely to lose out are some of the least likely to have been trained in the art of public speaking or to have spent the past decade building a career in the media. They were too busy holding down four jobs, or trying to escape a civil war, or practicing medicine in a different language in a country they fled to with their family, or raising and then mourning their children. These are the people whose voices are truly being silenced, whose place in the lofty theatre of formal political debate is not subject to public discussion because they were never invited in the first place.

* * *

The far right are not themselves committed to the principle of free speech. Far from it. In my encounters with neo-nationalists and professional alt-right trolls I have found them remarkably litigious — more than willing to use money and legal threats to silence their more serious critics. I’ve been legally prohibited from describing racists as racists. That’s why you’ll see so many news outlets use phrases like “alleged white supremacist” or “the deportation policy, which critics have described as xenophobic.” It’s not because there’s serious doubt over where these people stand, it’s because journalists are silenced by threats from speech “defenders” who have the money and spite to shut down their critics. I will not be bullied by bad-faith actors trying to rules-lawyer my own principles against me into treating neo-Nazis with respect they don’t deserve.

They are unscrupulous. They incite violence. It’s not my place to tell anyone else who to host at their events, but I can make a choice as a free individual about who I choose to associate with in a professional context, and the more of us who make that choice, the stronger the message it sends.

Sunlight is neither literally nor figuratively the best disinfectant. Modern white supremacy does not grow like bacteria β€” it grows like a weed, aggressively, crowding out everything else that stretches towards the light. Nor is sunlight what the ritual of formal debate offers. What it offers is a chance to build one’s brand.

Curation is a political choice, and so is the choice of who we allow to take lead roles in the theatre of public discourse. I say: If Bannon has to have a public platform, make him work for it. Have him stand on a stage and play the audio footage of the toddlers at the Mexican border screaming for their parents as they’re dragged away to detention. Have him answer to the mothers of children who were gunned down by police because of the color of their skin, or to the friends and family of migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean. That’s not a polite thing to say. It wouldn’t be a polite thing to do. But the idea that politeness and civility is owed to anyone in a position of power is one of the great gotchas of liberal thought.

Moderate liberalism cherishes the idea of “civility” because it allows it to believe in its own goodness and relevance. To refuse to debate someone is an act of discourtesy. It is rude. It implies that you do not consider that person’s ideas or behavior worthy of basic respect. You would be amazed at the contortions people yank themselves into to avoid being rude, especially to people in positions of authority, or simply people whose faces they’ve seen on the television. Television interviewers have repeatedly failed to hold far-right leaders properly to account because one simply does not call someone a liar and a bigot on a respectable news program.

I’ve come to think of this as the deference trap. It’s a huge part of why I refuse to formally debate fascists. It is staggeringly clear that formal debate is failing to stop white supremacy. This is not an abstract philosophical issue. White supremacy is here, at the heart of world governments. The discussion about whether free speech can stop fascism is not actually about free speech; it’s a proxy for a rolling identity crisis among the political mainstream. About whether the mechanisms of state power can withstand fascist takeover. About whether good people with good ideas can stop bad people with worse ones.

Which, right now, they cannot. The arguments about what freedom of speech actually means are endlessly reheated because they’re the last piece of real philosophical meat moderate conservatives have in their cupboard. It’s a mistake to think that the far right cares about the free speech debate as anything other than a way of confusing the enemy. The far right doesn’t have a profound philosophy, it has a media strategy.

The first time that white supremacists are denied a formal public platform, they get to plead martyrdom, to call the opposition cowards. And the second time. And the third time. But there’s only so many times you can whine that people aren’t paying you enough attention before those same people get bored and lose interest. Milo Yiannopoulos, who spent much of 2017 thrashing around in a self-ordained orgy of far-right martyrdom, recently complained on Facebook:

My events almost never happen. It’s protests, or sabotage from Republican competitors or social media outcries. Every time, it costs me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when I get dumped from conferences, BARELY ANYONE makes a sound about it — not my fellow conservative media figures and not even, in many cases, you guys. When was the last time any of you protested in the street at the treatment meted out to me or Pamela Gellar or Mike Cernovich or Alex Jones?… For my trouble, I have lost everything standing up for the truth in America, spent all my savings, destroyed all my friendships, and ruined my whole life.

Cry me a river of blood. What stopped Yiannopoulos was neither formal debate nor the dubious disinfectant of a spotlight. What stopped him was progressives collectively refusing to put up with his horseshit.

If we deny racists a platform, they feed off the appearance of censorship, but if we give them a platform, they’ve won by being respectfully invited into the mainstream. Either way, what matters to them is not debate, but attention. There is no perfect choice.

But there is a choice, and this, to my mind, is the sensible one: To refuse to dignify these people with prestigious public platforms, or to share them. To refuse to offer them airtime or engage them in public debate.

Fortunately, we live in a brave new world where real censorship is something that is almost infeasible unless you are extremely rich and venal and have an army of lawyers. If you want to hear what Bannon thinks, you can. Extensively, at many, many websites and forums. If you want to try to tease out and challenge the deeper truth behind far-right ideas, you’re free to do so, although be prepared to be disappointed. You see, the deeper truth is that there is no deeper truth. No hidden nuance. The new right have already shown us exactly who they are. Now the rest of us get to choose who we want to be.

As for me, I can’t dictate who should and should not be allowed to speak, and I wouldn’t want to. But I can make my own choice as a free citizen. So I choose not to debate them. I choose not to treat them with deference they don’t deserve. I am not interested in hearing out the ideas of the far right, because there are no new ideas on the far right. There are only new recruits. And every time progressives sacrifice the public good on the altar of personal purity, there will be more.

HAT!!! 😍

HAT!!!
HAT!!!

now THAT’S what i’m talkin’ ’bout!!! 😍👍

it may be just my imagination, but it’s my impression that when i was walking past her house, at 7:55 this evening, that i heard a “thump”, like a window closing, shortly followed by a woman, speaking in a loud voice, muffled by the now-closed window, something along the lines of “i take command over all evil spirits…” before she faded out of hearing…

i can’t WAIT to get this hat!! 😈

wow!

well, it’s done… and, so far, i think i like it…

i reformatted the USB drive, made a startup disk out of it with “Startup Disk Creator”, actually INSTALLED kubuntu bionic on my computer, without remembering to back up the last few items on my list (which were desktop settings that i probably would have immediately changed anyway), and finished up yesterday with the search for how to get my cloud drive to show up. today, it started with the search for how to get my cloud drive to show up, and, with a few false starts — i had to search for the correct file system, install autofs and cifs-utils, and then discover that i didn’t need them — i managed to get my cloud drive to show up, which meant that i could restore the backup of my email and the backup of my browser bookmarks…

and now it’s more or less finished.

i still have to figure out why the new OS isn’t finding my mailserver all the time — sometimes it finds it without any problems, and other times it can’t find it, and says the socket operation has timed out — but i think that may just be new shit getting it’s shit together, so i’m not going to sweat it until later in the week…

and i still haven’t installed the new hard disk i bought, specifically for the task of upgrading the OS, because i discovered that i could do it with a USB stick instead… so now i have to figure out whether i want to install the new SSD and have another terabyte of goodness hanging around, or whether i want to return it and have an extra $300 in my pocket.

ETA: there is now a problem with kontact: i sent a message, but i apparently moved it from the “sent mail” folder too quickly, because, now, when i start kontact, it loads two windows: the kontact window, and the message composer window, with the message in it… and then it hangs up, and when i try to do anything more than move windows around, it crashes… and it eventually crashes anyway. ☹ NOT GOOD!

ETA: it may just be everything settling into its new places… i started kmail separately from kontact (yes, you can do that, no, i did not know that), and resolved the conflict with the sent mail message, which hadn’t actually been sent. who knows what happened to it the first time around, but when i processed it with just kmail, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. then, i started kontact and it had a tizzy, but instead of killing it and starting over, i went for a walk, and when i came back, it was in the middle of a totally unrelated process that looked like the aggregator synching its database… which is a totally normal thing to do, and i wish kontact would have put up a status bar or something to indicate that it was, actually, doing stuff and not just hanging up. 😐

um… some new, interesting developments…

so i talked to my web developer guru, and he talked with his web developer guru (who is a guy at godaddy… which, in my impression, means either that he knows a lot and doesn’t get the chance to actually touch any of the machines, or he knows practically nothing and has his hands inside a lot of machines), and they both agreed that the evidence pointed towards me having a spammer in my email system. the primary reason for this was that, despite the fact that i have email with chinese characters automatically sent to /dev/null, i’m still getting spam with chinese characters in the subject line.

at the bottom of the global email filters window, there is a place where you can test email filters, to see what they do. after the first few, i just assumed that they worked, because they always did, so i didn’t pay much attention to the filter tester. it turns out that you can run mail that has already been delivered through the filter tester, to determine which filters caused it to end up in the wrong place.

what i discovered is that the chinese email filters work fine, but if the filter encounters an element that has a different rule than sending it to /dev/null, then it will do that, instead. once i resolved the conflict over which rule to use, the emails that are supposed to be getting delivered, are getting delivered, and the mail that is supposed to be deleted, goes to /dev/null

i still have a whole bunch of directories that have the name of my old host provider in my email system, that i really want removed, if it is possible, but the fact that it now looks like i DO NOT have a spammer/cracker nesting in my system is a great weight off my mind… and it means that i can put switching to gsuites on the back burner for the time being. 👍

ETA: i also discovered, using the same reverse-filter-testing procedure described above, why some random emails that don’t have any obvious reasons to be filtered, were getting filtered anyway. it turns out that i’ve got a whole bunch of filters that look for TLDs, such as .bid, .host, .win and so forth. except that the filter doesn’t care whether it’s a TLD, somewhere in the middle of the URI, or in some javacript code that is in the body of the email. so a MTA named “mailpod.hostingplatform.com” was getting filtered because it contained “.host”, and another mail was filtered because it had a javascript variable named “character.bidirectional”, which contains “.bid”…

i changed all of the TLD filters to look for an extra character that differentiates it from things that aren’t TLDs: the “dot letters” combination, followed by a forward slash — / — is what MAKES IT a TLD. why i didn’t think of that when i originally made the first filter is a gross act of stupidity on my part. 😕

start — stop — start — stop…

so according to two different experts, there’s a good chance that i’ve got a spammer that has cracked my email server. if that is the case, then changing my IP address will only be a temporary solution, and what everybody is recommending is the third party “gsuites” which is, basically, a google relay to my email service. i continue hosting the web sites, but the MX records for every domain i have gets changed to google’s IP addresses, and they basically take over managing all of my email services for me…

except i still don’t know how much it will cost: potentially $10 per user per month, and i’ve got 5 or 6 email addresses, just for myself… and i WILL NOT pay more for email services alone than i am for the entire hosting package i currently have.

apparently there’s another alternative, which also costs more money, which is a virtual private server, which would allow me to do things like summarily block all email from a country — brazil, china and russia immediatey come to mind…

and then, on the other hand, i’ve also been seriously considering giving up being an internet “reseller”; giving up my hosting clients, and focusing on MY web site (and my wife’s web site) without all this extra stuff adding chaos to the whole scene.

and then there’s the local computer upgrade, which was put on hold while i figure out the whole email fiasco. it turns out KDE has this nifty “Startup Disk Creator” application, which installs a bootable copy of the operating system on a removable USB flash drive… except that it doesn’t work if the USB flash drive is formatted FAT32, and they don’t tell you in the user interface that the beginning of the process is changing the BIOS of the computer to boot from the USB drive… which i had to find out the hard way… 😕 i actually succeeded in wresting control of my computer back from the jaws of certain disaster before that disaster actually happened, and i actually figured out how to reformat the flash drive to EXT4 so that the startup disk creator is more likely to work this time, but with the whole email fiasco, plus the screen door installation tomorrow, plus time for me to settle down and quit panicking over the computer that wouldn’t boot when the BIOS had been changed and i didn’t realise it…

means i’m probably not going to try again for a couple of days.

seriously, this is ridiculous, and there’s no way it’s going to get any less complicated any time soon. it would be just as well for me to get out of the business of providing internet services to other people before i truly get myself in trouble. 😕

September 11, Puerto Rico and the Racism of Callous Indifference

September 11, Puerto Rico and the Racism of Callous Indifference
September 11, 2018
by William Rivers Pitt

It’s been 17 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks and one year since Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico. The death tolls from the two crises are nearly equivalent, but the official US responses to these calamities have been starkly different.

After 9/11, the US government memorialized the victims while pouring trillions of dollars into the process of making millions of new victims by way of permanent war. In the case of Hurricane Maria, the US government has all but washed its hands of the Puerto Ricans — US citizens, all β€” who still struggle to recover from the storm. Taken together, the aftermath of these two tragedies opens a window on some grim truths the country has yet to face.

Everyone has their own 9/11 story. Mine is tamer than most. Seventeen years ago today I was a teacher on the first day of school. I happened to be grazing through the morning newspapers online before classes started when Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

An hour later, students who had gathered around televisions in the library were wall-eyed with fear when the towers finally fell. It was all over, I soothed them … but as I heard the low growl of fighter jets flying racetrack patterns over the city of Boston, I realized I was lying to children. It had only just begun.

Seventeen years.

High school seniors today have never known anything but a country at war, at several wars up front and by proxy. Those wars have eaten their future. I wonder if they know it yet.

I would like to think we’ve learned something in that wrenching, blood-soaked span of time, but that clearly isn’t the case. The last presidential election saw a Democratic nominee who had voted in favor of the calamitous Iraq war and the total surveillance of the PATRIOT Act. Her opponent, the Republican nominee, was for the war before he was against and then later for it again. Along the way he was also a bombastic liar, proud racist and sexual predator whose only credentials were five bankruptcies and a TV show.

The historical record states 2,996 people perished on September 11, 2001, hijackers included. There remains a lingering doubt as to the final accuracy of that number, as there were reportedly scores of undocumented immigrant workers in the building at the time of the attack, but their families did not inform the authorities they were missing for fear of being deported themselves.

Seventeen years later, and that fear is as present now as it was then, thanks to a president whose policies are grounded and founded in xenophobia and racism. We haven’t learned a damn thing.

One year ago this month, Hurricane Maria tore the island of Puerto Rico to shreds. On September 6, 2017, as the monster storm approached, Donald Trump spoke to the media during a meeting with members of Congress. Addressing the potential dangers represented by the oncoming storm, he said, “Hopefully we can solve them in a rational way, and maybe we won’t be able to.”

The latter half of that sentence has proven prophetic. Puerto Rico has yet to recover from the aftermath of Maria, due in no small part to the barking negligence of the administration and the man who pretends to lead it on TV.

Trump visited Puerto Rico in the immediate, catastrophic wake of the storm, telling Puerto Ricans who were complaining bitterly about wildly insufficient assistance that they “have to give us more help.” This was after he called them “politically motivated ingrates.” During the visit, he threw paper towels at storm victims and fished for compliments wherever he could find them. “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” he said. “But that’s fine, because we’ve saved a lot of lives.”

Odd comment, that. The Trump administration put the death toll in Puerto Rico at 64 people, and that number stayed put as the bodies piled up. Finally, in July of 2018, nearly a year after Maria, the official death toll was revised up to 2,975 people. A scant 21 fewer than September 11. Subtract the terrorists from the equation and the margin drops to two … and, like September 11, that final number is far from firm.

One day after Puerto Rico’s governor added 2,911 names to the victim’s list, Donald Trump praised his administration’s response to Maria in glowing terms. “I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico,” he said. “I think most of the people in Puerto Rico really appreciate what we’ve done.”

Splinter News collected letters from people directly affected by the storm. “I remember seeing the Mayor of San Juan,” wrote one survivor, “trying to help her city and those in desperate need all over the island. The help never came and when it did sometimes it was too late, some had died. My God how can we let this happen.” There are many such letters.

The difference in the US responses to the 9/11 attacks and to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is stark. While the death count was the same in both cases, the responses were dramatically different. That difference cannot be chalked up simply to the fact that the former tragedy was an act of will, while the second was an act of nature.

After September 11, the US unleashed two ill-conceived wars that killed, maimed or displaced millions of innocent people, all in the names of those killed in New York and DC. In the 17 years this country has spent bombing the rubble in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, few here bother to spare a thought for those suffering the immediate consequences of our incoherent wrath.

After Hurricane Maria, in contrast, the US dragged its feet and hesitated to take the most minimal actions for the people of Puerto Rico as thousands perished. Given Trump’s calling-card disdain for those who aren’t a whiter shade of pale, the government’s lack of response to the yearlong disaster in Puerto Rico should come as no shock.

The core calamity, however, goes far beyond one man. In every way that matters, the victims of Hurricane Maria suffer from the US government’s negligence in much the same way the victims of the 9/11 vengeance tour do: Both are targets of indifference born of a strain of racism that goes bone deep and all the way, in both cases, to the White House.

It is all the same carcass to the carrion crows: The war profiteers redoubled their fortunes in Iraq and Afghanistan after September 11, and Wall Street hedge fund pillagers feast on Puerto Rico’s post-Maria debt. George W. Bush, like Donald Trump, walked away from the debacle virtually untouched.

Seventeen years since September 11. One year since Maria and Puerto Rico. We haven’t learned a damn thing.

the scary part

i’ve reached the scary part of computer upgrades: that part in between the point where i’ve got everything backed up (except for the invisible directories in ~/home which are waiting until the last possible moment), i’m reading up on what i should do if the worst happens, i’ve downloaded the operating system, but i still haven’t bought the drive, or actually done anything to move the project forwards.

apart from backing up all my data, for the first time EVER… which is a big thing, i suppose…

tomorrow i am going to refill my water bottles, hopefully with my mother-in-law, nancy, in attendence. then, if there is time, i’m going to buy the drive. if there isn’t time tomorrow, then it happens tuesday. this means that some time between tuesday and friday, or so, next week, i should have a new operating system, and, hopefully, working email addresses and an existent contact list.

so far, i don’t have any reason to believe that it won’t happen exactly the way i have stated.

if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

a wise old linux guru told me this, a few years ago, and i’ve found myself smack in the middle of what happens when you follow that maxim… and it doesn’t feel entirely comfortable, at this point.

i have been happily running kubuntu trusty since 2014, which means that, now, there are TWO LTS releases to bring me up to date… Bionic Beaver, and the interim release, Xenial Xerus, which had some notable problems that were notable enough that i decided that… IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT.

now, i’ve actually heard some good things about the new LTS release, and, strangely enough, Amarok broke about two weeks ago (and the amarok user list has gone quiet the past few months, which makes me wonder who to contact), so i’ve been having to resort to qmmp to play music… so i decided to upgrade.

i’ve had some AWFUL experiences upgrading operating systems, and linux is no exception. the last time i upgraded linux, it took me three days to get my computer back. in an attempt to avoid that possibility this time, i have finished uploading my ENTIRE /home directory to the cloud, and am in the process of uploading my ENTIRE music collection to the cloud.

then, on the advice of the linux gurus over at Kubuntu Forums (who have saved my ass more than once), i’m going to go out and get a 2TB SSD on which to install bionic.

the only problem is that i still am not completely sure that my email is going to transfer, because i know that kontact was one of the notable problems i read about with xenial that made me want to avoid upgrading… and i’m not sure the standard “back up everything including the hidden directories from /home” is going to work this time, because i’ve heard that bionic uses something other than akonadi, which was, apparently, the source of the problems with xenial… which would mean that potentially i could lose 7 years worth of email and contact information. 😒

so, we’ll just have to see how it goes… 😐

george

i met george today.

i was getting gas in my car, and this tall, weedy, semi-suspicious looking guy came up to me and said “tell me about your bumper.”

inevitably, this means that he’s a “christian” who is offended by the message of my bumper sticker, which says JESUS IS A GATEWAY DRUG, but i feigned ignorance, partially because there was a HUGE line of people waiting behind me. but then he left no doubt, by pointing at it and reading it out loud. i responded by saying that it was a pretty simple message, and what more did he want to know.

so he started to say “i’m a christian, and…”, at which point i interrupted him, saying “i’m a christian, too”, at which point he asked me if i was jewish “because of your license plate” — i guess he hadn’t seen, or hadn’t been able to identify the huge picture of panchamukhi ganesha on the hood — but i said, no. i learned about jesus, and that gave me the opportunity to learn about all of the world’s religions, and i learned that they are all the same, and all point towards the same God.

at that point, i was done pumping gas, and, as i was taking the hose back to the pump, he said something that i didn’t hear, but it started with “no…” so i probably didn’t miss much…

180905 gonowtogeorge
180905 gonowtogeorge
then he handed me a card, and said “this is my web site”. so i handed him one of my own cards — the one that says “Bounded Chaotic Mixing Produces Strange Stability” — which he stood and stared at until i got in my car and drove off.

check out his web site… it’s hillariously “old school” (complete with dark-coloured background and rainbow-coloured font) and is, literally, “George’s Links To The World” in that, if it’s on internet, and george has read it and agrees with it, it’s on his site, somewhere. it’s not quite as single-focused as Time Cube, but it’s just as entertaining.

a few years ago, i was driving through south-of-seattle afternoon traffic, and i saw, on the car ahead of me, a bumper sticker that said “TRY JESUS”, and, immediately, i thought “that guy’s a ‘pusher'”.

then i thought about my own experiences with jesus, jeezis and “christians”, and i thought, if that guy is a “pusher”, then, in my experience, at least, jesus is a gateway drug: i learned about jesus, then i learned about other religions, then i learned that they are all the same… but my initial exposure to all of this was jesus.

thus, the bumper sticker.

i wish i hadn’t been so flustered, because i would have really liked to explain that to george. it is my impression that it would have blown his mind even more than it already was. 😈

idea

thurible
thurible
recently, i’ve been incensing the neighbourhood.

i’ve been taking my thurible outside (because, realistically, that’s the only place i can use it without setting off my smoke alarm), drinking beer, smoking pot, listening to frank zappa, and burning frankincense, benzoin and copal resin — rather like the ethiopian family that lived next door to us, where we used to live, in renton, did…

although i’m reasonably sure that the ethiopian family didn’t smoke pot, drink beer, and listen to frank zappa… πŸ˜‰

but, basically, i really like burning incense, i really like burning frankincense, because it has the scientifically-proven ability to calm my anxiousness, and i really like “sharing” the good smells with my neighbours… whether they like it or not… 😈

which got me to thinking, yesterday…

i also REALLY like playing music for people. particularly, i really like playing my overtone flute at the oregon country fair, where people passing by have the possibility of hearing my music, but not knowing exactly from where it may be coming.

so, i thought, why not combine the two, and put together a “performance” or a “concert”, or something like that, where i set up somewhere, incense the whole place, and play my overtone flute?

it would have to be an outside venue, because nobody would want “concert” like this inside, where it would be extremely likely to set off smoke alarms, but that’s okay, because if it’s outside, there’s more of a possibility that people will experience the scent and not even be able to tell from where it’s coming… possible places are greenlake, volunteer park and gasworks park.

i would probably also want to set up a sign, or something, letting people know what i’m doing… but it would also be interesting to do that sort of thing without any clues, just to see how people might respond…

Wheel Of Dystopia

180821 sorenson wheel of dystopia
180821 sorenson wheel of dystopia

Wheel Of Dystopia

I’m writing this after spending the day hunkered down indoors next to an air purifier, as I have the good fortune of being in Washington state while it’s home to some of the world’s worst air pollution. For the second year in a row, smoke from wildfires has rendered the normally refreshing air practically unbreathable. My primary source of entertainment these days is checking air quality monitoring websites for signs of ominous red and purple bulges making their way down from Canada. Fires in other parts of Washington aren’t helping.

As if things didn’t already feel apocalyptic enough, there’s something about these wildfire episodes, with their sickly grayish-orange skies and sense of entrapment, that truly give one the sense that the end of the Anthropocene is nigh. Scientists say that warming temperatures plus population growth in burn-prone areas are causing the surge in wildfires; meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is, of course, blaming environmentalists. Hard to see how we come back from this brink, since we’re already so far over it.

reprieve… i guess…

apparently, the way the 911 operator responded was something along the lines of “hide under your bed for an hour, about the same time you see this dangerous terrorist”, because there were no signs of frightened-looking ladies, and people out, doing things like watering lawns, and getting things out of cars, at just about every place that she could live, based on my two experiences with her.

which, of course, means that now, instead of having a relaxing walk in the evening, i’m going to have a paranoid, record-everyone, keep-one-eye-to-the-rear, skulk around the neighbourhood for the next six months. 😕

oh boy, here it comes…

you remember the neighbour lady i creeped out back in march?

🎵 she’s ba-ack… 🎶

😕

soon to be my hat
soon to be my hat

today, i was walking up the street, minding my own business, when i heard the distinct sound of someone trying to be sneaky, and failing miserably, behind me on the other side of the street. i turned around, and saw a very frightened looking lady in a blue dress, with a cell phone; i couldn’t tell whether she was using it to call 911, or as a camera, to document the dangerous terrorist in the black burnous that was walking through her neighbourhood. then i walked behind a commercial vehicle that was parked by the side of the road, and when i emerged on the other side, the lady was nowhere to be seen.

i can just imagine what she must have said to the 911 operator. i can also imagine several ways the 911 operator may have responded to her… 😕

it’s going to creep her out even more when my hat is finished. 😈

god understands

while i was searching for rubber bands this afternoon — seriously, there used to be five local places i could go to purchase any imaginable art or office supply. now, there are three chain stores, and none of them carry bigger than #64 rubber bands, which are about two inches long when contracted, and expand to about 17 inches… and the next largest that i can find ANYWHERE, including online, are 12″ rubber bands which are too big! WHO STOLE MY ART SUPPLY STORES? 😠

but i digress…

while i was searching for rubber bands this afternoon, i had another idea for a bumper sticker that would cause some definite confusion. it would simply say:

GOD UNDERSTANDS

of course! God understands the motives of good people regardless of their religion, or lack thereof. God understands love, life, positiveness, auspiciousness, and everything good, without question.

but what about war, child molestation, political corruption, and that sort of thing? god surely doesn’t understand that!

what does “HE” do about it? nothing. god doesn’t have to do anything about it, because god understands the motives of the warriors, child molesters, corrupt politicians and those sorts of people. why should “HE” do anything about it? that’s not his job. his job is to understand.

most people don’t like to think about it, and would probably disagree vehemently, but God understands that, too, as evidenced by the fact that “HE” does nothing to change it.

truly, GOD UNDERSTANDS… πŸ˜‰

ETA: i’m not sure whether this makes my idea better, or worse, but apparently GodUnderstands dot com is already taken by the American Bible Society, in collaboration with the Armed Services Ministry and Veteran Affairs (VA) chaplain consultants… that means that, if i make a bumper sticker, it could very easily be confused with something that already exists, and only gives half the message about which i was thinking. the fact that it’s already taken by “the enemy” (so to speak) makes the whole idea somewhat less appealing… 😐

MA⸘G‽A

MAGA — or Make America Great Again — has become the rallying cry of the right wing, these days, but i have a few questions about whether america was that great to begin with, compared to other countries.

first, i have to consider how we determine what “great” actually means? how is america more “great” than france, or india, or estonia? what measures do we use to determine how “great” a country is, compared to another country, especially when there are countries that have more than a million citizens, and, at the same time, there are countries that have only a few thousand citizens. presumably, they’re not saying that a country is “more great” because it covers more of the surface of the earth, or that it has more occupants than another country.

it has always been my impression — and this was the case WAY before #drumpf was president — that a country is sort of like a football team, or a soccer team: you root for the people who are the closest to where you are. in the same way, barring any other difference, a person who was born in germany thinks that germany is the “greatest” country, and a person who was born in ethiopia thinks that ethiopia is the “greatest” country, regardless of ANYTHING ELSE that may be different about those two countries, compared to each other.

to continue, my impression has also been that, pretty much regardless of what the german, or ethiopian, may say about what the “greatest” country is, a person who was born in america would, very likely, disagree with them, which makes me wonder what a person from another planet — let’s say “jupiter”, for conversation’s sake — would think about these earthlings and their petty squabbles over whose piece of earth is “greater” than anywhere else on earth.

from a person from jupiter’s point of view, ALL places on earth probably have good points and bad points, some places on earth are probably more scenic than others, more crowds, or more serenity, but, from the point of view of someone from jupiter, they’re all just places on earth: nice places to visit, but why would anyone want to live somewhere other than jupiter?

forget “Make AMERICA Great Again”, lets “Make EARTH Great Again”! earth is the only planet we’ve got, and if we ruin it, we don’t have another planet upon which we can fall back…

but that brings up my next point: how can we say that earth is the greatest planet in the solar system? if ANY of the other planets weren’t there, or some other planet WAS there, life as we know it on earth would, very likely, be considerably different. and, of course, if the sun wasn’t there, or was in a different place, or a different size, life as we know it on earth may not have come into existence at all, in the first place. so how can we be so egotistical as to say that “earth is the greatest planet in the solar system”? all it would take would be for one thing to be slightly different, and the world that we know would be unrecognisable.

personally, my belief is that we would all do a lot better if we were to give up the notion that america ever has been “great”, if for no other reason than it would necessarily make every other place on earth “less great”.

america is the place where i was born, but i don’t hold some attraction to america that i don’t hold for every other place, even though i haven’t even been to those other places. for me, america is not, and never has been “great”, it just “is”… in the same way that jamaica or ethiopia or denmark just “is”. nowhere and nobody is “greater” than any other place or person, just as nowhere and nobody is “lesser” than any other place or person: they all have value.

the sooner we realise that, the more likely it is that we will be able to do away with #drumpf and his ilk.

Why the Pledge of Allegiance Is Un-American

Why the Pledge of Allegiance Is Un-American
August 15, 2018
by Tom Mullen

An Atlanta, Georgia, charter school announced last week its intention to discontinue the practice of having students stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance during its school wide morning meetings at the beginning of each school day, opting to allow students to recite the pledge in their classrooms instead. Predictably, conservatives were immediately triggered by this "anti-American" decision, prompting the school to reverse its decision shortly after.

The uproar over periodic resistance to reciting the pledge typically originates with Constitution-waving, Tea Party conservatives. Ironically, the pledge itself is not only un-American but antithetical to the most important principle underpinning the Constitution as originally ratified.

Admittedly, the superficial criticism that no independent, free-thinking individual would pledge allegiance to a flag isn’t the strongest argument, although the precise words of the pledge are β€œand to the republic for which it stands.” So, taking the pledge at its word, one is pledging allegiance both to the flag and the republic. And let’s face it, standing and pledging allegiance to anything is a little creepy. But, then again, it was written by a socialist.

But why nitpick?

"One Nation"
It’s really what comes next that contradicts both of the republic’s founding documents. "One nation, indivisible" is the precise opposite of the spirit of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution ("under God" wasn’t added until the 1950s).

The government in Washington, D.C., is called "the federal government." A federal government governs a federation, not a nation. And the one persistent point of contention throughout the constitutional convention of 1787 and the ratifying conventions which followed it was fear the government created by the Constitution would become a national government rather than a federal one. Both the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights were written primarily to address this concern of the people of New York and the states in general, respectively.

Moreover, the whole reason for delegating specific powers to the federal government and reserving the rest to the states or people was to ensure there would not be "one nation," but rather a federation of self-governing republics which delegated a few powers to the federal government and otherwise reserved the rest for themselves.

By the way, the Bill of Rights as originally written applied only to the federal government and not to the states. Sorry, liberals, but the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee a "separation of church and state" within the states. It was written for the opposite reason, to protect the existing state religions of the time from the federal government establishing a national one and thereby invalidating them.

And sorry, conservatives, the Second Amendment wasn’t written to keep states from banning guns. Quite the opposite. It was written to reserve the power to ban guns to the states. That’s why most states, even those established after the Bill of Rights was ratified, have clauses in their own constitutions protecting the right to keep and bear arms. They understood the Second Amendment applied only to the federal government, not the states.

If there is one thing that is clear from all of the above, the Constitution did not establish "one nation." In fact, the states only agreed to ratify it after being repeatedly promised the United States would be no such thing, allowing the states to govern themselves in radically different ways, at their discretion.

"Indivisible"
Then, there’s "indivisible." One would think a federation born by its constituent states seceding from the nation to which they formerly belonged would make the point obvious enough. But the Declaration makes it explicit:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It would be impossible to exercise that right β€” that duty, as the Declaration later calls it β€” if the republic were indivisible. The strictest constructionists of the time didn’t consider the nation indivisible. Thomas Jefferson didn’t threaten to send troops to New England when some of its states considered seceding upon his election. Quite the opposite. And in an 1804 letter to Joseph Priestly, he deemed a potential split in the union between "Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies" not only possible but "not very important to the happiness of either part."

The people advocating "one nation, indivisible" in those days were big government Federalists like Hamilton, whose proposals to remake the United States into precisely that were flatly rejected in 1787.

Proponents of absolute, national rule like to quip this question was "settled" by the American Civil War. That’s like saying Polish independence was "settled" by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.

In fact, it is precisely the trend towards "one nation" that has caused American politics to become so rancorous, to the point of boiling over into violence, over the course of the last several decades. This continent is inhabited by a multitude of very different cultures, which can coexist peacefully if left to govern themselves. But as the "federal" government increasingly seeks to impose a one-size-fits-all legal framework over people who never agreed to give it that power, the resistance is going to get more and more strident. If there is any chance to achieve peace among America’s warring factions, a return to a more truly federal system is likely the only way.

Getting rid of the un-American pledge to the imaginary nation would be a good, symbolic start.

DEAD

we put Lucy to sleep on friday.

she was an old dog — 14 years — and had a somewhat stressful life before coming to us: she was a working sheep dog, never came inside, had a broken leg and her front teeth kicked by a horse in the three years between her birth and when she came to live with us. then, before she was actually “given” to us, but after she came to live with us, she was sent away for 6 months or so, for more training… and she came home pregnant, unbeknownst to anyone. monique wanted to have her spayed, but not until after she gave birth to mutts that were half border collie and half “something else” (we suspect cattle dog, but we don’t know). then the lady that owned her wanted a litter of “purebred” puppies, so, against monique’s better judgement, she was bred again, which resulted in the litter of which rye and sagan are part. after that, lucy was spayed, and, while she remained a working sheep dog for most of the rest of her life, she had it a lot easier, in terms of sleeping inside and no more injuries.

but she was deaf, and mostly blind, and mostly senile, and more-or-less incontinent, and she spent most of her time sleeping, and when she wasn’t sleeping, she was either eating, or barking at where she thought the bird was… which was where the bird actually was only about half of the time… she didn’t recognise us except on the rare occasion…

it was definitely time, but it still sucks.

the only thing is, i hope, when my time comes, there’s someone around who will do the same for me. somehow, i don’t think it’s going to happen. 😕

rⒾⓅoff…?

i present, for your musical enjoyment, Mexican Dance, by George Gershwin:

written in 1923, it is subtitled “Tomale o I’m Hot For You”.

it is suspiciously similar to Golliwogg’s Cakewalk, by Claude Debussy:

which was written in 1913… 😉

WTELF

which stands for “What The Ever Loving Fuck”…

it’s a good acronym. i’m going to use it more frequently.

in the mean time…

—–
RE: payment?
From: Sales <[email protected]>
To: salamandir <[email protected]>
Date: 180806 08:13 am

We do not accept payment over the website.

Once your order is processed we will contact you with any questions, your total, and to collect payment.

We do not utilize PayPal, however we can do your Master Card.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns.
—–

they don’t accept payment over the web site, AND they don’t accept paypal?

it takes a little longer to fulfill my order — which i made on sunday, they haven’t “processed” it yet, although they have “confirmed” it…

but this seems to be my kind of business! 😉 👍

how to report spam

i use this spam policy, along with maintaining robust global email filters, running SpamAssassin, and blocking IP addresses that are used for abuse. the result of using these procedures has resulted in my having to get this far MAYBE as many as 10 times in a day, and some days i don’t have any spam at all. YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY! and, remember… the more you do it NOW, the fewer spam messages everyone gets down the road!

this is written from the perspective of a person who uses an email client and a web browser. if you ONLY use a browser (if you use webmail), there may be extra, intermediary steps that are not written down here.

the first thing you need to know is how to extract headers from your email messages, which is different depending on how you get your email.

  1. once you’ve extracted the headers, go to this URI:

    https://www.iptrackeronline.com/email-header-analysis.php

    leave wherever you have extracted the headers — the “message source” — open, because you’re going to need to copy more of the message, later.

  2. for now, paste only the headers into the form, and click “Submit header for analysis”.

    the analysis is WAY more information than you need, but the information you DO need is right near the top: under the header “Email header analysis report” will be a table that contains “All valid IP Addresses found in the header”, and usually the top one (or, possibly, two) will have an asterisk (*) next to them, which is the “Probable originating IP address”.

  3. copy that address. if it’s two, copy the first one, do the next steps, and then come back and copy the second one and do the next steps for that number, as well.
  4. now, go to this URI:

    https://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx

    paste the IP address in the “domain or IP address” field, check the following three boxes:

    domain whois record
    network whois record
    DNS record

    and hit the “Go” button.

    then, i find that it’s easiest to use the “Edit” -> “Find In This Page” function of my browser, to search for every instance of the commercial at symbol – @ – which is used in email addresses.

  5. now, go back to the message source, where you extracted the headers (remember that?)

    select and copy the entire message, including the headers. now you can close the message source.

  6. select the message in your inbox, and choose “Forward”.
  7. this will open a new message, with the message you’re complaining about inside a forwarding header. select everything EXCEPT the forwarding header, and delete it. then paste the message source that you copied in where the other stuff used to be.
  8. then, go back to the web browser, and find every email address for the IP address you’re complaining about, and put them into the “To:” line of your new, forwarded message.

    SOMETIMES the information will tell you something like “Report abuse only to…” or something like that. you can do that, if you want to, but frequently the “abuse” address is disabled, and the other addresses aren’t, so i’ve found that it’s a good idea to send email to EVERY address, whether or not it says to.

    if your search at iptrackeronline.com came up with two “Probable originating IP addresses”, now is the time to go back to step 3), copy the second IP address, and continue from there.

    you’ll end up with a forwarded message that contains the raw, text-only message, which is addressed to at least two, and sometimes as many as 9 or 10 email addresses.

  9. if you’re REALLY hung up on privacy, at this point, you can search for YOUR email address using the “Edit” -> “Find” feature of your email client. if you do this, replace every instance of your email address with an X to make it obvious that you haven’t done anything except remove your address from the header. seriously, if you do this, and mess around with the headers too much, eventually someone will complain about it, and YOU’RE supposed to be the one who is complaining, here.

FINISHING TOUCHES:
i usually like to mark my new message “Urgent”, and i also like to get a “Return Receipt” (which is not available on all email clients). i also like to insert the words “ABUSE VIOLATION” in the subject line, prior to the original, forwarded header, so that they know that you’re complaining, and not just sending more spam.

if you (like me) run your email through SpamAssassin, or something like it, you may have a special header section that gives you reasons why this particular message is (or is not) spam. sometimes this will include things like URIBL_BLOCKED information, which gives you the URIs that are used in the message, which are blocked by various spam lists. if you get an identifiable URI, you can use the “Edit” -> “Replace…” feature in your email client to replace these URIs with human-readable, but machine-invisible equivalents, which will further attest to the fact that you’re complaining, and not just sending more spam.

——

it is important to remember that all of this information is time sensitive: if you don’t get around to reporting spam until two or three days later, it has considerably less effect than a report that is made as soon as the spam message is received. generally, if more than 12 hours has passed, i just trash the spam and continue with my life.

about half of the reports i send produce some kind of response. about half of the responses i get are automated, either telling me that the message has been received, or telling me that it has not been received for one reason or another. a few of them are, actually, human responses, usually saying that they’ve forwarded the message to their client (the spammer), or saying that there’s nothing they can do about it. this is where requesting a return receipt is helpful: if you get a return receipt, there’s a good chance that someone at least saw your message. even if the return receipt says “not read”, you know that it’s a good address, and that someone saw your complaint, even if they didn’t do anything about it.

step 9) is important if they say they have forwarded your message to the spammer, because if you have not replaced all of the instances of your email address with an X, then the spammer now has your email address, surprise! they can do whatever they like with it, which usually means sending you more spam. in extreme cases, they send a SHIT-TON of spam (like, 500,000 messages) or try to send you viruses or malware, so it’s really important to do ALL nine steps.

believe me, speaking from personal experience, cleaning up after a 500k message bomb is no fun. 😕

in the case of someone who says there’s nothing they can do about it, that’s the point where i go back to the IP address that i complained about originally, and put the /16 or /24 into my IP blocker (depending on how egregious the abuse has been).

also, i put commonly used words and phrases that typify abuse (things like “ALMIGHTY GOD” and “flight simulator” and “Pílula” and “电子邮“) into my global email filters, and update them with new information frequently.

occasionaly — VERY occasionaly — i get a response such as this one, which makes all of this rigamarole worth while.

also, why i only accept plaintext email (and why you should, as well)

update

it has now been two weeks i haven’t been on fecesbook. i logged in once to alert a vendor from OCF, and i logged in once to clean up my ad settings (which i do regularly, regardless of whether or not i logged in). i discovered that, in spite of my not logging in for two weeks, and clearing out my “interests” before i left, i had collected 15 or 20 new “interests”, which included “protest”, “activism”, “guns”, “law enforcement” (specifically “law enforcement in stockton, california”), and a number of other things that make me seriously wonder about my compatibility with fecesbook’s “algorythm”. i’m on the verge of deleting my account, all together.

the lack of fecesbook still leaves a void in my life, which has yet to be filled, but i am confident that it will be filled, very likely with multiple things that i enjoy a HELL of a lot more than being chained to fecesbook.

i have a sousa band gig at deception pass on saturday, and a snake suspenderz gig next wednesday at “lake city mini-park”, which is an intersection on lake city way that used to be full of shopping-basket-homeless people… well, the homeless people are still there, but now they have a “mini-park” that the city put in to encourage them to go elsewhere… and, apparently, the city has also hired snake suspenderz (and another klezmer group with whom thaddeus plays) in order to make it look like the homeless people are a smaller proportion of the city population than they really are. seriously, this place has been a gathering place for homeless people since i was a cab driver, in the mid-’80s. it’s going to take a lot more than a “mini-park” and outdoor concerts to make them disappear.

moe and the dogs may accompany me to deception pass, on saturday. the plan (whether or not moe and the dogs go along) is to make it a day trip, and drive up the peninsula to port townsend, and take the ferry, then come home through mount vernon. i have to be in deception pass by 5:30, the concert starts at 7:00 and should be over by 9:00. we’re having dinner with friends ross and leanna, and leanna’s brother and his wife, on friday.

official news

i spent a week without connectivity, at the oregon country fair, last week.

when i returned, i had no desire, whatsoever, to reconnect to fecesbook.

tomorrow, i will have been home exactly one week. during that time, i have actually logged into fecesbook once, and that was to alert a vendor i met at OCF that i was no longer on fecesbook, and that she should contact me using email.

i have connected with a few people on fecesbook messanger, but that has diminished considerably over the past couple of days.

the longer i am resolute in my decision not to reconnect to fecesbook, the longer it has been since i connected, the more convinced i am that i have definitely made the right decision.

and, when i went back and looked at my first ‘post-farcebook‘ post, i find that, not only can i do without those connections, i am actually somewhat put out that the people listed in that post don’t do the same, and join me in abandoning fecesbook, but if they’re not going to join me, the fact that they’re not has no effect on my life, so i don’t really care. it just means that they won’t be able to contact me as often.

new madness from veneta

in sanskrit (the ancient language of india), छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेल मेल (“chela mela”, TWO WORDS) is “a festival of devotees”.

the band of north american kalapuya “indians” (otherwise known as “native americans”) called chelamela is ONE WORD

the following pictures illustrate the fact that, at the oregon country fair, “CHELA MELA MEADOW” is TWO words… well, three, if you count the word “MEADOW”… 😕

chela mela
chela mela
chela mela
chela mela
chela mela
chela mela

i wonder if anyone else knows this. according to their own definition, this is CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!

oh no… 😕

sombunall of the not-“native-american” artwork at the ritz is back in place, but the totem pole is nowhere to be found, and nobody knows what’s going to happen to it. the “archaeology” group (which was behind the lady who raised all the fuss last year) is still there, and still thinks we shouldn’t even have an oregon country fair, because it’s on “indian ground” (seriously, they’ve excavated a 10,000 year old camas oven from the bank of the long tom river, so there have been humans around that area for a LONG time) but the lady behind all the fuss last year was nowhere to be seen, as far as i could tell, and nobody was talking about indians feeling put out by the fair.

we didn’t play at the ritz. they didn’t make new tokens this year, so i only got one — last year’s design — in lieu of hat money, on saturday.

the fair was fun, and i’m not giving up on it, but it’s definitely time to find another therapeutic gathering in which i can get involved.

this year i took four pictures to make up for the fact that i missed a few years previously:

some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018
some random hippie, 2018

these were taken in order, on thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday. i also wore a djellaba and a red kufi (to piss off the cultural appropriation crowd), but i didn’t take pictures of that

Some Random Hippie, 2011
Some Random Hippie, 2012
Some Random Hippie, 2013
Some Random Hippie, 2016
Some Random Hippie, 2017

the mac
the mac
there is a new “pirate ship” next door to the morningwood odditorium, called “The Mac”, which produces macaroni and cheese in ENORMOUS bowls. i ate there four times. they also had smoked salmon mac&cheese, and bacon brocolli mac&cheese. yum.

tiny frog with a big attitude
tiny frog with a big attitude
tiny frog with a big attitude
tiny frog with a big attitude
tiny frog with a big attitude
tiny frog with a big attitude

sunday afternoon, i found a tiny frog trying to get into my tent.

on the way home, i drove up highway 101, and stopped in newport, where i got the business card for the company that made moe’s kite that broke. now all i have to do is find the stay that broke, measure it, and send them the measurements, and they’ll make a new one for it.

when i left the fair, i ran “off the map” with my GPS, almost immediately. i tried using waze, as well, but i didn’t have reception or connectivity until i got to lincoln city. then, when i got to astoria, i turned left, instead of following the default GPS and turning right, and i got the “return to the route” message no less than TEN TIMES, before it figured out where i was going… it’s a good thing one of us knew where they were going. 😉 on the other hand, waze looked at where i was going, and figured out a new route almost immediately.

it’s weird that this post is allegedly about OCF, and the parts that i get the most amusement out of are the parts where i have left the fair. oh well… 😕

i was forced into a fecesbook moratorium, because of the lack of connectivity. it was partially deliberate — i didn’t take my tablet, and couldn’t use my phone for anything except a camera, pretty much all week — and i’m thinking very strongly that this is a good excuse to abandon fecesbook all together. it’s awful, it doesn’t do anything to improve my mood, and the only reason i was there, to begin with, was because it’s the only way to get booked at the ritz… but now that job has been foisted off on someone else (or not, i don’t care), and there’s no obvious reason to continue wasting my time with it.

OCF… woo…

i leave for OCF in seven days.

we’re probably not going to do a show at the ritz this year. it is primarily because we haven’t rehearsed any of the music that is not directly related to the show (Puss In Boots) with this iteration of the philharmonic, which includes two members that haven’t played with us for a couple of years (naoyuki on cavaquiño and flute, and brandi on vibraphone), and one completely new member (harlan on bandoneon, concertina and toy piano). once again, kiki has decided to be a cast member, which means that she’s not available to be the conductor, which falls to stuart, who has, in the past, said that he doesn’t want to be the band leader any longer. the result is that we have had NO rehearsals, which means that we’re basically going to be sight reading any preshow and intermission music, and, basically, we’ve decided that we would be, essentially, doing the same thing with a ritz show, and the ritz is definitely NOT a show that we want to do a halfway job of playing.

so, we’re not playing the ritz for the second time in three years…

i’ve become a lot more ambivalent about the oregon country fair the past few years. it seems as though there has been a lot of politics and negativity introduced in the past few years, that, with the already heavily persistent “hippie-mall” vibe, has turned the oregon country fair into a totally different beast than it was 10 years ago… of course, 10 years ago, i was still a relative “newbie” to OCF, and there were, no doubt, a lot of things happening that totally went over my head because i was still focusing on the hippy-love, twinkly lights, and the “hippy-potamus”…

i remember, distinctly, “cutting out” without checking with people, before everyone had finished breaking down the stage, last year, because i was so tired of the hippy-griping and general bad feelings that had been going on pretty much all weekend. not from my group, specifically, but from the fair, in general. a lot of it had to do with the ridiculous accusations of “cultural appropriation” that were flying around. if that happens again, this year, it may be my last year of going to the fair for a while.

which, of course, means that, along with everything else, i have to find something new to replace the medicinal high that i used to get from going to the fair. 😕

american’t

things that have been happening recently, that are reasons why i don’t want to be here any more:

#drumpf has finally got his “muslim travel ban” to stick. apparently, third time’s a charm.

“zero tolerance” and “family separation” for brown people, but, apparently, not for white people who show up at our borders “illegally”, whatever that means. criminal charges for the parents, regardless of why they’re really showing up, and separation from their children, simply because they thought that american’t would be better than wherever they’re from.

rumours of between 2,000 and 3,500 children who have already been separated from their parents, with no obvious way to reunite them with their parents. rumours of toddlers being forced into courtrooms to defend themselves.

and it’s all “the democrats’ fault”, but it would go away immediately if the democrats would agree to taxpayer funding of the wall on the mexican border… which mexico was supposed to pay for, but which mexico has flatly refused to pay for…

drumpf has announced a tariff on imported solar panels, and is encouraging the coal and oil industries, while saying that human-caused climate change is a myth.

they’re in the final process of more than decimating medicare, food stamps and welfare, while giving massive tax-cuts to the one percent, who have been buying up stocks rather than letting the wealth “trickle down”, like it failed to do the last time we tried it.

net neutrality bit the dust last month, and the only reason why things haven’t gotten worse IMMEDIATELY, is because washington, and a couple other states, went against federal mandate and imposed their own net neutrality legislation, which is bound to cause problems (drumpf has specifically said it will) when washington needs help from the federal government at some point in the future.

drumpf has announced the creation of a “space force” to augment an already heavily bloated military, while cutting things we actually need, like health care, education and housing.

anthony kennedy just announced that he will be retiring from the supreme court next month: drumpf is going to get to appoint ANOTHER supreme court justice… which means that we’re going to be battling against his repressive policies (specifically, abortion rights and same-sex marriage) for at least another 20 years beyond whenever we finally get him out of office.

yet another mass shooting by a white, american guy, who was taken alive, unlike what would have happened if he were brown. drumpf offers “thoughts and prayers”, but no actual action to bring these white, american guys into check. meanwhile, another unarmed black guy who was minding his own business, but “matched the profile”, is killed by white cops who won’t face any consequences for their actions, because they were afraid for their lives.

americans, generally, encouraged by SCROTUS drumpf’s very blatant actions since he weasled his way into office, have gotten more blatantly racist than i have seen since i was little. sure, there are more cell phone photos and video recordings of these things for me to see, but i don’t remember seeing blatant racism like this, even during the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

seriously, drumpf is systematically destroying everything that made this society even remotely worth living in. this is why i wish i had died when i had the chance.

The Man Who Walked on Water

A conventionally-minded dervish, from an austerely pious school, was walking one day along a river bank. He was absorbed in concentration upon moralistic and scholastic problems, for that was the form which Sufi teaching had taken in the community to which he belonged. He equated emotional religion with the search for ultimate Truth.

Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a loud shout: someone was repeating the dervish call. ‘There is no point in that,’ he said to himself, ‘because the man is mispronouncing the syllables. Instead of intoning YA HU, he is saying U YA HU.’

Then he realised that he had a duty, as a more careful student, to correct this unfortunate person, who might have had no opportunity of being rightly guided, and was therefore probably only doing his best to attune himself with the idea behind the sounds.

So he hired a boat and made his way to the island in midstream, from which the sound appeared to come.

Sitting in a reed hut, he found a man, dressed in a dervish robe, moving in time to his own repetition of the initiatory phrase. ‘My friend,’ said the first dervish, ‘you are mispronouncing the phrase. It is incumbent upon me to tell you this, because there is merit for him who gives and him who takes advise. This is the way you speak it.’ And he told him.

‘Thank you,’ said the other dervish, humbly.

The first dervish entered his boat again, full of satisfaction at having done a good deed. After all, it was said that a man who could repeat the sacred formula correctly could even walk upon the waves: something he had never seen, but always hoped — for some reason — to be able to achieve.

Now he could hear nothing from the reed hut, but he was sure that his lesson had been well taken.

Then he heard a faltering U YA as the second dervish started to repeat the phrase in his old way…

While the first dervish was thinking about this, reflecting upon the perversity of humanity and its persistence in error, he suddenly saw a strange sight. From the island the other dervish was coming towards him, walking on the surface of the water…

Amazed, he stopped rowing. The second dervish walked up to him and said: ‘Brother, I am sorry to trouble you, but I have to come out to ask you again the standard method of making the repetion you were telling me, because I find it difficult to remember it.’

Continue reading The Man Who Walked on Water

comings and goings

we got back from hawaii on friday, the 22nd. this morning, at 9:00 am, i took moe to the airport so she could fly out to las vegas, where she will be until wednesday. i think the dogs may have an inkling that she will not be returning today, but when they know for sure, they’re going to be PISSED OFF!!

we got to o’ahu on the 13th:

180613 first honolulu sunset
180613 first honolulu sunset

our plane landed, we were met by micah at the airport and whisked away to dinner, which was poke and pork chops. then we proceded to the Diamond Head Beach Hotel & Residences, on Waikiki. the next day we went to the honolulu zoo and were given a private tour of their veterinary facilities, and went to kaimana beach, which was on the same block as the hotel, which is where monique took a picture of me on the beach:

180614 salamandir on kaimana beach
180614 salamandir on kaimana beach

the bright green rash guard would come in handy in the next few days. we went snorkling at kaimana on friday, and i was still getting my feet under me (figuratively speaking), which meant that i was pretty exhausted when we went in, and wasn’t particularly ready to take on an activity that was guaranteed to exhaust me even further. i didn’t do too badly, but i was glad to have a piece of clothing that differentiated me in the water, so that i could be rescued more easily, if necessary.

after we went snorkling, we went on a dolphin swim at dolphin quest, which was exciting, but kind of sad at the same time. i’m sure that if i (and, by that, i mean moe) weren’t so educated about animal behaviour (and dolphin behaviour, specifically), it would have been a lot better, but, as it was, there were a lot of cues that weren’t followed through on, and the dolphins were basically offering behaviours that weren’t getting rewareded enough that they were getting confused. we did get pictures, though, and most of the other people didn’t even notice.

180615 salamandir and dolphin
180615 salamandir and dolphin

also, friday was my friend, and long-time band-mate Howlin’ Hobbit‘s birthday, so i went out and bought a postcard, and sent it to him.

180616 kahalu'u
180616 kahalu’u

180616 waiahole poi factory
180616 waiahole poi factory
on saturday (which, coincidentally, was International Sea Turtle Day) we went to the “north shore” to see “the property”, which, if everything goes the way micah has planned (which is still quite questionable), we may actually be living there one day in a few years. it’s all pretty much a secret, now, though, so i may have to take this photo down. we also visited the waiahole poi factory on king kamehameha highway, just north of “the property”.

we, then, proceded to drive around the north shore, where we saw the coincidental sea turtle. the photo tag says that it was at wahiawa, but i don’t think it was there, and i’m not sure where it was, because i was totally lost at that point.

180616 sea turtle
180616 sea turtle

on sunday, moe and micah took off to do some veterinary-slash-“property”-related stuff and i was left on my own to wander through downtown honolulu, and buy an authentic hawaiian aloha shirt:

180618 salamandir aloha shirt
180618 salamandir aloha shirt

naturally, i bought the most seizure-inducing colour pattern i could find. 😉 so, on tuesday, moe made me go out and buy shirts that weren’t so seizure-inducing. but before then, on monday, while i was wandering around in honolulu, a valet from some fancy hotel, out of the blue, asked me if i knew where he could get dimethyltryptamine, which, he said, was because i looked like a hare krishna devotee…
180619 salamandir waikiki
180619 salamandir waikiki

180618 diamond head hotel from kapiolani park
180618 diamond head hotel from kapiolani park
180618 kapiolani park from diamond head hotel
180618 kapiolani park from diamond head hotel

i wanted to mark up the following pictures with “we stayed here” and “here is where i took the picture from” circles and arrows, but, once i looked at them, it seems pretty obvious. this is the diamond head hotel & residences from kapiolani park, and the park from our hotel room.

figure it out for yourself. 😉

on tuesday, i went out and bought four other aloha shirts that were not so seizure-inducing. i paid $65 for the seizure-inducing shirt, which, apparently, was a pattern that they don’t produce any longer (big surprise), which increased its value. on the other hand, i bought four shirts for $35 from a thrift store (savers, also known as value village), including three “vintage” shirts that were actually made in hawaii (one was an original “Hilo Hattie” shirt with coconut shell buttons), which should have increased their value, and one that was made in korea.

on wednesday, we tried to go snorkeling at hanauma bay, but, even at 9:00 in the morning, it was so crowded with tourists that we were turned away even before we were able to drive into the park, so we went down the road a few miles to waimanalo beach, which was totally deserted…

180620 waimanalo beach
180620 waimanalo beach
because of the stinging jellyfish
180620 waimanalo beach
180620 waimanalo beach
but there were a few kids who had ignored the signs and were going in the water anyway. we were too smart for that kind of jazz, though, so we went back up the road a couple miles, not quite to hanauma bay, to the HURL facility at the Makai Research Pier, where we actually were able to get in the water and snorkle around for a couple of hours. i did a lot better, this time, and didn’t scare moe so much. 😉

although we did have an unfortunate incident at the end, involving a pile of shit that was not-very-deeply buried in the sand in the same vicinity that we left our non-snorkeling clothes which disturbed us a fair amount when we discovered it… 😠

thursday was our 20th wedding anniversary. we checked out of the hotel, and went to micah and shaya’s place, hung around for a while, and then went to the Honolulu Museum of Art, had a beer at the BeerLab on university street, had dinner at the sunrise restaurant, and came home.

i didn’t sleep very well on the red-eye that we took (approximately 5½ hours, with approximately 1 hour of actual sleep). we arrived home on friday, had a “recovery day” on saturday, and then, this morning, i drove moe to the airport so that she can fly out to las vegas.

yup

Why Does Chocolate Make Some People Sneeze?

honestly, i did not know this… but i have sneezed when i eat chocolate pretty much my entire life.

who knew?

i know the photic sneeze reflex (apparently referred to by the medical term ACHOO Syndrome) has a genetic basis, and, according to 23andme, i have the photic sneezing gene… something which i have also been aware of pretty much my entire life. although, my impression is that the chocolate thing may have gotten worse over the years…
Continue reading yup

travellingnillevart

on wednesday, 180613, one week from today, moe and i are leaving for 10 days in hawai’i, in celebration of 20 years of wedded bliss.

in other words, we have been together twice as long as was predicted by my mother-in-law on our wedding day. we’re now looking for a new place for her to live, since she is in the process of being kicked out of the home that she’s lived in ever since moe was 16. i hope she remembers her prediction, some day. 😕

it will be the first time i have travelled away from the continental united states, my first trip to honolulu, and only the second time moe and i have flown together. fortunately, we’re not going to the same island that is currently spewing vog and laze everywhere, but we are going to visit micah and shaya, whose wedding was the first time moe and i had ever flown together.

i contributed to the building of the kadavul temple on kauai, but the first public tour of the temple is the day we return, 22 june, so i won’t get a chance to see it, which is sort of a disappointment.

on the other hand, micah has connections in the marine mammal world, and has arranged for us to swim with dolphins, and get a private tour of the honolulu zoo, while we’re there… and, rumour has it that he’s tracking down a half ounce of hawaii’s finest for me, because of the fact that, despite the fact that both washington and hawaii are medicinal cannabis states, for some reason they don’t have a permit-sharing plan that would allow me to bring my own cannabis with me.

i guess i’m supposed to be excited about this… maybe i am. who knows.

spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam MALLET!

i never get tired of this… 😎

[#RNZ-396-23469]: ABUSE VIOLATION: RE: PAYMENT INVOICE
From: Namecheap Legal & Abuse Team <[email protected]>
To: you know who
Date: 180520 12:37 am
Spam Status: Spamassassin
Hello,

Thank you for your report.

While the gaushmedical.us domain name is registered with Namecheap, it is hosted with another company. That is why we cannot check the logs for the domain and confirm if it is involved in sending unsolicited emails.

However, it seems the domain name is blacklisted by SURBL. Since we consider SURBL to be a trusted organization, we opened a case regarding the domain name. Please allow about 48 hours for our further investigation.

Thank you for letting us know about the issue.


[#RNZ-396-23469]: ABUSE VIOLATION: RE: PAYMENT INVOICE
From: Namecheap Legal & Abuse Team <[email protected]>
To: you know who
Date: 180521 08:19 pm
Spam Status: Spamassassin
Hello,

Please be informed that as a result of the investigation, the domain gaushmedical.us was suspended. It was null-routed and locked in our system, so the spamming activity should end once the propagation is over.

Thank you for letting us know about the issue.


whois gaushmedical.us
Domain Name: gaushmedical.us
Registry Domain ID: DC3FBD2D4DC1743DE92E082A91D15BEDE-NSR
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.namecheap.com
Registrar URL: http://www.namecheap.com
Updated Date: 2018-05-22T03:18:40Z
Creation Date: 2018-05-15T06:56:45Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2019-05-15T06:56:45Z
Registrar: NameCheap, Inc.
Registrar IANA ID: 1068
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.6613102107
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: C29C72D760FD14C7FAD8D886E1C016E55-NSR
Registrant Name: New Oru
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: Hertzstr. 4
Registrant Street:
Registrant Street:
Registrant City: Heidelberg
Registrant State/Province: Heidelberg
Registrant Postal Code: 69126
Registrant Country: DE
Registrant Phone: +49.8635999192
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]
Registrant Application Purpose: P1
Registrant Nexus Category: C11
Registry Admin ID: CBBCDFB2B18654CFC972C6274C0858A93-NSR
Admin Name: New Oru
Admin Organization:
Admin Street: Hertzstr. 4
Admin Street:
Admin Street:
Admin City: Heidelberg
Admin State/Province: Heidelberg
Admin Postal Code: 69126
Admin Country: DE
Admin Phone: +49.8635999192
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: [email protected]
Registry Tech ID: C3200FE79814B420EB1FA838AEBEF9060-NSR
Tech Name: New Oru
Tech Organization:
Tech Street: Hertzstr. 4
Tech Street:
Tech Street:
Tech City: Heidelberg
Tech State/Province: Heidelberg
Tech Postal Code: 69126
Tech Country: DE
Tech Phone: +49.8635999192
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: [email protected]
Name Server: blockedduetospam.pleasecontactsupport.com
Name Server: dummysecondary.pleasecontactsupport.com
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2018-05-22T04:57:32Z <<<

😂

spam

as of today, these are the TLDs i have blocked from sending email to my server, because of spam:

  • .bid
  • .date
  • .faith
  • .fun
  • .live
  • .online
  • .party
  • .stream
  • .trade
  • .website
  • .win

if your web site is under any one of these TLDs, you’re not going to be able to communicate with me over email, so you might as well give up now. it’s not going to work.

ETA: 180520 add to the previous list:

  • .club
  • .top

… give it up, folks. 😐

moisture festival ?

4 fewer shares than 2 years ago.

½ as many dollars as 2 years ago.

😕

according to the producers:

None of us producing this annual event ever wants to reduce the share amounts, in fact, we have done our best to try to increase the amount we pay you and some years we have been fortunate to be able to pay more for shares.

yeah, right…

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…

but, once again, according to the producers:

Please don’t approach this as a paid gig or a money making booking because there is no financial guarantee… You are likely to get a token amount of money, but it will be more of an honorarium than a fee

at one time, not too many years ago, the moisture festival was the single highest paying gig i had all year. 😕

bleh – Friday, 130517
on the other hand… – Friday, 120511

why i only accept plaintext email (and why you should, as well)

a couple days ago, a friend mentioned the fact that i only accept plaintext email, and asked if HTML email was against my religion. i said “yes”, and this is why i don’t accept rendered, HTML-formatted email. it is a story with a moral at the end, so pay attention.

today, i got an email that said it was from “DHL Customer Support <[email protected]>” and the subject line was “DHL Shipment Notification”…

keep in mind that the “From:” address is one of the easiest things about any email message to forge. among the other easy things to forge are the “Subject:” line, the “To:” line, and the body of the message, which is one of the reasons it’s not uncommon to get spam from “yourself”.

the spam i got contained the following message:

Notification for shipment event group “Delivery Exception” for &email&;
Dear Customer,

This is a notification that your package has experienced an exception, kindly follow the link to update your address: https://www.dhl.com/address_update

however, because of the fact that i only accept plaintext email, this is what i saw:

<p align=”LEFT”><span style=”font-size:12px;”><span style=”font-family:times new roman,times,serif;”>This is a notification that your package has experienced an exception, kindly follow the link to update your address:</span> <strong> </strong><font color=”#0000ee”><strong> <a href=”https://chicagoturfpros.com/wp-includes/css/dhl/[email protected]”><span style=”font-family:times new roman,times,serif;”>https://www.dhl.com/address_update</span></a></strong><span style=”font-family:times new roman,times,serif;”> </span></font></span></p>

for those who look carefully, particularly at the bigger sections of the text, you will discover that there’s a link — a href= — and the target of that link is chicagoturfpros.com…

BUT the apparent target of the link is actually dhl.com. this is compounded by the fact that SOMEONE has taken a lot of time and care to make it look like the dhl.com web site, even though it isn’t.

180513 badware
180513 badware

if i accepted rendered HTML-formatted email, i, very likely, would not have seen the fact that, instead of going to dhl.com, i was actually going to chicagoturfpros.com — WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SPAMMERS WANT TO HAPPEN!

because of the fact that the link also includes my email address, there is also the very strong probability that: 1) i would have clicked the “update address” button without noticing that i’m giving my personal information to “chicagoturfpros.com” or whoever is controlling their web site, and 2) even if i didn’t click the “update address” button, my email address is now a part of the web log for “chicagoturfpros.com” (or whoever is controlling their web site), which means that, even if they didn’t get my personal information, they have what is now a “valid” email address, with which they can, then, send me more spam.

because of the fact that i DO NOT ALLOW rendered, HTML-formatted email on my computer, they (whoever “they” is) don’t get ANY information from me.

which is precisely why you should NEVER allow your email client to render HTML-formatted email.

if you have a regular email client, not accepting rendered HTML-formatted email should be as simple as going to the settings and deselecting “Use HTML by default” or whatever your email client has (this is one of the differences in all email clients). if you use IMAP (web mail) you may or may not have that capability, so your mileage may vary. i very strongly recommend that you use an email client which is compatible with IMAP, and reply from that, even if you do use web mail. it makes things a hell of a lot easier, especially when you’re dealing with spam and identity theft.

i realise this is a lost cause, and that pretty much everyone sends, and receives HTML-formatted email by default, these days, but identity theft is still a MASSIVE problem, and it’s only being made worse by the default preponderance of HTML-formatted email. if you don’t want to have your identity stolen, ONLY ACCEPT PLAINTEXT EMAIL. it won’t guarantee that your identity won’t get stolen, but it will go a long way to make it a lot more difficult to do so.

this has been a public service announcement.

ETA: wordpress is concerned enough about my security that, yesterday, it sent me three notices concerning the fact that the link i provided above, which isn’t even a link, but just a text representation of what the link looks like, is a security risk, and offered to delete the page for me. THAT’S why i only accept plaintext mail. 👍

for further information, read In Apple Mail, There’s No Protecting PGP-Encrypted Messages which gives a contemporary example of why HTML-formatted email is evil.

maque asked me to build a bullroarer

maque asked me to build a bullroarer. i may have gone a little bit overboard…

i built a 30″ bullroarer. it’s big enough that i had to order special rubber bands to finish it. then, when i realised that i had to wait for the rubber bands to be delivered, i went crazy and spent two days going various places searching for a suitable alternative.

180506 30 inch bullroarer
180506 30 inch bullroarer

it’s a lot quieter than i expected. i’m going to have to build a smaller one, like this:

to see if smaller helps it be noisier.

केत्छुप्

i got new glasses about 2 months ago. they’re round, for the first time since the 1990s. they also came with polarised brown “clip-on” sunglasses. i thought they looked really cool, and they matched the brown cap that i had been wearing…

but i quickly noticed that i was feeling REALLY depressed… like last year, when the smoke from the forest fires was so prevalent. i looked up and the sky was the same colour brown, and it felt like i was being opressed and couldn’t get away.

i did some research, and talked to a few people, and came to the conclusion that there is a modicum of truth to the old aphorism about “looking at the world through rose coloured glasses”… only these were crap coloured glasses.

so i ordered a set of grey clip-on sunglasses, and when i first put them on, i noticed a PROFOUND difference, almost immediately.

i moved stuff around in my office, in an attempt to make things easier to access. i’ve now got my main desktop computer, my amplifier and my printer on shelves, right next to the monitor, and i moved the speakers so that i’m more in the “sweet spot” when i’m sitting at my desk than i was before. i still have to figure out where my laptop is going to live, because it had been on the desk where the desktop computer is, now. for the moment, it’s folded up and sitting in one of the shelves, to my left. it’s okay there, for now, but i’m fairly sure that, when i actually have to use it for more than a few minutes, like a couple of days in a row, i’m going to have to figure out a new spot for it, because where it is now is not good in the long term. i have been thinking of going to ikea and seeing if there are some half-shelf inserts for the expidit (now called “kallax”) bookshelves, because i could probably make better use of some of the shelves if there were half-shelf increments in a couple of places.

i celebrated moving stuff around in my office by spending a few days digitising vinyl records. the turntable fits a lot better on the right side of my desk than it did on the left side, and it is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE easier to connect to the amplifier and computer. however, for some, unknown, reason, my internal CD/DVD ROM is not working correctly, so i can’t archive anything, once i have digitised it.

i sent out three emails to different agarbathiwalas that i know, who had expressed interest in the HPOI when i got it, but now that i actually have it in hand, i haven’t heard anything from them for a couple of weeks. i figure i can wholesale them for $25 a dozen and still make a profit, but if i haven’t heard anything from my email contacts soon, i’m going to try places like the Pike Place Pipe Palace, Tenzing Momo, and Zenith Supplies.

the weather has gotten nicer, and i am walking more, but i like to walk at sunset, and sunset is getting later and later as spring progresses. i like walking at sunset in my burnoose and djellaba, and being invisible. i’m also taking a basic circus skills for handicapped adults class, at SANCA, which is really cool, but i’m getting worn out by it really quickly. i really want to start going to the gym again, but i haven’t done it yet. 😕

politically, things continue to get worse, on a minute-by-minute basis. the probability is very high that congress will flip in november, which will mean that #drumpf will, in all likelyhood, be impeached, which will mean that mike pence will become president, which is an even worse proposition than #drumpf, in terms of human rights and the environment. whatever happens, we’re screwed, and will continue to be screwed for the forseeable future. when they said “emanentise the eschaton” i didn’t think it meant “by any means possible”. 😠

Rule 3

an example of Rule 3, spammers are stooOOpid…

at 3:24 pm, today, this happened:

180501 stupid crack attempt
180501 stupid crack attempt

at 3:26 pm, today, i blocked 88.99.0.0/16 from accessing my web site.

you may not fit the definition of a spammer, but you are definitely stooOOpid. is it possible that you are a machine? you have not done your owner a favour, you know.

HPOI have arrived!

and there was much rejoicing…

180423 75kg of incense
180423 75kg of incense

it actually doesn’t look like that much incense, but remember… 75kg = 165.3467lb — these boxes are dense

180423 package numbers
180423 package numbers

they have weird packing in india… all of them are labeled “CNT:NO1/3” but each of them have a different CNT:NO… i would have thought that CNT:NO1 would be labeled CNT:NO1/3, and CNT:NO2 would be labeled CNT:NO2/3… but i have never shipped anything from india before, so who knows. what i do know is that i had to pay ANOTHER fee before i was able to pick them up, which brings the grand total cost to $1,815.75, or $1.12 per package…

which is still pretty respectable, considering that, as far as i have been able to tell, nobody else in the united states sells these incenses online, and i can probably retail them for $4.00 a piece, or wholesale them for $25 a dozen. 😉

180423 contents
180423 contents

i haven’t opened them all, yet, but i opened this one because it’s one of my favourite incenses. they used to make 999 Lord Krishna Puja Dhoop, but they don’t any longer. fortunately they use the same recipe to make sticks, so i’ve got my supply. 😉

i understand why mr. joy wanted to send me more incense. the three boxes didn’t even fill up one pallet, and it would cost pretty much the same to ship three boxes or thirty boxes. i can see that, now… of the $1,815.75 that i paid for it, only $771.00 went to MSDF, and $1,044.75 went to various different freight companies. it would have been much better for me to order twice or three times as much incense, because i would have had to pay the same amount to ship it…

next time…

or not… 😕

the continuing saga of the huge piles of incense

on 180329, i finally got some reliable information from the person i had been calling to find out about where the huge piles of incense were. they told me that i had to get in touch with the people who “owned the shipment”, which is a place called USL Cargo Services, in new jersey. the lady i finally reached at USL (a very pleasant, but intensely rushed lady named Roselyn Ramos) said that they had to have a copy of the OBL, and a payment of $221.50 before they could tell me where to pick it up.

great, i thought… it’ll be here soon. i had only called the shipping terminal people in kent (where the Sea Freight LCL Arrival Notice said it would be), THREE TIMES before he gave me that information. i contacted USL, sent the payment and the copy of the OBL, and figured that would be it.

then, on 180411, i got an email from Mr. Joy, the guy from whom i actually bought the huge piles of incense. i was not the direct recipient of said email, i had just been copied on it, because it was from somebody at the shipping port in india named “Parab”, complaining to Mr. Joy that the ISF had not been filed. Mr. Joy responded by saying “Hope the importer is doing the needful.”

so, i contacted roselyn, and she said that the ISF was supposed to be filed (i didn’t get exactly who is supposed to file it, but i gather that one of the options is me, and another option is Mr. Joy) before the shipment leaves the port of origin, and, because of the fact that it hadn’t been filed, i would be charged an extra $400 “fine”, for importing stuff without an ISF. she suggested that i contact Mr. Joy and see if he couldn’t work something out.

which, naturally, Mr. Joy was unwilling to do… 😑

so, with the broker’s fees, plus the $500 “fee” for a “continuous bond” (which, in spite of the name, only lasts for a year), i owe a further $685.55…

AND I STILL don’t know when or where i’m supposed to pick up the huge piles of incense.

presumably, the “where” part of it is at the shipping terminal in kent. the guy at the shipping terminal said that the shipment had arrived and was being “devanned”(?) today… he also said that, once it has been “devanned”(?), and the customs had been worked out, they would send an email to the shipper (Mr. Joy?) informing them of the fact. i’m assuming that the “when” part is going to be some time this week… but i’ve been assuming that for three weeks now, and it hasn’t happened yet.

today, 180416, i got email from “Ravi”, who is also known as “import4”. “import4” is the address i have been instructed to send to, when i am writing to roselyn, so that, when roselyn isn’t available, i can still get up to date information. it contained what i hope is the final “Sea Freight LCL Arrival Charge Sheet”, which totals $907.05… of which, i have already paid $221.50. it also contained a note that said “also we are pending OBL to release your shipment kindly send asap.”

in my communication with roselyn, last week, i was informed that i had to send the ORIGINAL OBL, and not a copy, as i had been told previously. i sent it, and it arrived 180413. i wrote back to “import4”, informing him of this, and he said, yes, they had recieved it… but, if that’s the case, why did he say that it was “pending”? 😐

one way or the other, it looks, at this point, like i’m still going to get 1,632 packages of incense for a little more than $1.05 per package… and NOBODY in the united states sells these incenses on line…

ETA: i sent what i hope is the last payment to people concerning the HPOI. now all i gotta do is wait for them to tell me when and where to pick it up. 😎

meta spam

i got spam the other day.

big surprise…

i reported it to the upstream provider, as i usually do. one of the upstream addresses to which i sent a report was [email protected].

today i got a return receipt from that address. it said “Не прочтено” which means “not read”.

seriously, i wonder why a company as big as Rostieliekom would maintain an “abuse@” address and not have it respond to an abuse report. 😕

the residents

180409 The Residents
180409 The Residents

i saw the residents a few years ago, at neumo’s on capitol hill. at the time, randy (the lead singer) said that carlos, the drummer, had decided that, after 40 years, the “rock-and-roll” lifestyle wasn’t doing it for him, and he quit, which was why there was only three of them.

they seem to have found a new drummer, as well as a mysterious figure dressed in a cthulhu mask who sat there for the entire show and didn’t do anything.

they did a lot of their “Elvis” and “Two American Composers” songs to the tune of a lot of their “Train Wreck” and “The Ghost of Hope” songs, and there was some weird stuff about dreams with fabulous animated graphics displayed on a huge ball, so that they were even more distorted.

The Dream, part 1
The Dream, part 1

it was REALLY loud, but, unlike most of the other “rock” concerts i have attended, it wasn’t so loud that i couldn’t hear the lyrics (except when they didn’t want me to), and my ears weren’t ringing after the show, which impressed me.

Enlightenment

ENLIGHTENMENT
180406 by Om Swami

“How do I gain enlightenment?” someone said to me the other day. “Can you not grant me some deep experience? I want a radical change in my life.”

I get this asked frequently by many enthusiastic seekers. They are in search of a panacea, some mystical reality that will solve all their problems (spiritual and emotional) forever. While many aspirants understand the importance of persistence and individual effort, most others are looking for a quick fix. Here’s a beautiful quote by Adya Shanti that mirrors my own thoughts in ways more than one:

Many seekers do not take full responsibility for their own liberation, but wait for one big, final spiritual experience which will catapult them fully into it. It is this search for the final liberating experience which gives rise to a rampant form of spiritual consumerism in which seekers go from one teacher to another, shopping for enlightenment as if shopping for sweets in a candy store. This spiritual promiscuity is rapidly turning the search for enlightenment into a cult of experience seekers. And, while many people indeed have powerful experiences, in most cases these do not lead to the profound transformation of the individual, which is the expression of enlightenment.

One of the greatest misconceptions about enlightenment is that it will just happen. Not so. It has to be earned, it has to be lived. Sometimes I find it challenging to explain to seekers that true enlightenment is not a one-off special moment, but more a culmination of lifelong experiences and practices that result in the dawning of a great insight. I don’t blame them for thinking that by the magical touch of some guru or maybe by being struck by lightning, they will arrive at a moment of enlightenment. Partly because we have plenty of spiritual books out there that give that impression. Even I may have inadvertently conveyed the same by sharing one of my most defining spiritual experiences in my memoir. For that matter, Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree is often construed as an isolated event of extraordinary significance. It was anything but that.

In comprehending and highlighting such experiences, we tend to overlook the tremendous amount of effort that goes in realizing that state. For a moment, think of enlightenment as winning the Nobel Prize. We can’t have it just by visiting other Nobel Laureates and we certainly can’t be awarded it just because we want it. After a lifetime of commitment to a cause or producing a phenomenal body of work, and assuming the circumstances are favorable, the committee might consider your nomination and grant you one. No doubt winning the Nobel Prize will bring about a change in your life and lifestyle to a degree, you will inspire more people and so on. But, beyond that, there’s not much. It’s not going to improve your relationships, it’s not going to fix your physical health etc. Those challenges will remain.

Without preparation and readiness, any spiritual experience is hardly transformational. And if an experience doesn’t trigger some kind of lasting transformation in you, however subtle, it holds little meaning ultimately. When you continue to walk the path sincerely, diligently, many learnings, lessons and experiences give you the wisdom to lead your life differently. Differently so in a manner that it’s more conducive to retaining a state of bliss. Having said that, even if you are enlightened, it doesn’t mean that you won’t experience pain or that you will always find joy in everything that goes on in your life.

R.K. Laxman (1921 – 2015), one of India’s most famous cartoonists ever, writes a lovely passage in his travelogue The Distorted Mirror.

People are curious about my profession and try to clear their doubts by putting all sorts of questions. Recently a lady asked me, “Do you do the drawings for your cartoons yourself?” I answered, “Yes, I do.” Then she questioned, “And the captions to the cartoons, do you write them too?” “Of course,” I said. And, finally, she asked, “The ideas for the cartoons, don’t say you think them up too?”

There is one [question] that is rather rarely asked but which makes me go into deep introspection. This is: “When you look around, does everything appear funny to you?”

A cartoonist does not lead a charmed life of perpetual fun out of the reach of the cares and worries that bedevil his fellow men. The fluctuating prices of onions affect me in the same way as they delight or outrage a primary schoolteacher. Likewise, taxes depress my spirit. Bores at the mike, and traffic jams drive me crazy. Surely a doctor does not always look at life in terms of coughs, colds, allergies and bronchial inflammations. A star of the silver screen, I am sure, has enough sense to know that beyond the range of the camera life does not continue to be full of idyllic scenes, sex, songs and ketchup-blood. Why, then, should a cartoonist see living caricatures and hear rib-tickling dialogue all around him? So I comfort myself with the self-assurance that my view of life is normally as banal as that of the next man in the queue for sugar or kerosene.

Enlightenment is something like that. It does not mean that you don’t feel the pain or remain eternally unaffected by everything that goes around you. All of that we must go through based on our karma, temperament and attitude towards life. The only thing that changes is that you grow into a more spiritual being, you become increasingly resilient and kind. What life hurls at you doesn’t change, how you catch it or dodge it, does. When it builds to a tipping point, you become kind of independent, very independent. Less worried about what the world thinks of you, how it perceives you and so on. In other words, you draw your own cartoons, write your own captions and, much to the fascination or disbelief of others, come up with the ideas too.

As the famous Zen saying goes, “Before enlightenment: chop wood, fetch water. After enlightenment: chop wood, fetch water.”

Being a jivan-mukta, a liberated soul, or an enlightened person does not relieve one of his/her duties. Self-realization is not, as Eknath Easwaran put it, a compensation for one’s good deeds. It is but simply an outlook towards life that you gain from experiential understanding. If you really wish to get a grip on the notion of enlightenment then look upon it as a way of life, a commitment to virtues, as a promise to carry yourself a certain way and leading your life in a manner that befits you.

Liberation is not plonking a glorious flag on top of Mount Everest, it is but a mindful and diligent journey meandering through many treks and hikes, stopping and camping along the way, meeting and greeting fellow travelers, absorbing the breathtaking views, appreciating the challenges, rejoicing in where you are already. All this while you remain inward focused but goal-oriented.

When you realize this, a better sense of wellbeing and happiness shrouds you. You understand that there are no dark moments, that you are already enlightened. You just need to live a certain way to experience it. Then you laugh at the discovery that how unnecessarily seriously you’ve been taking yourself. As Thích Nhất Hạnh said:

I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat.

A religious man called a monk and invited him to bless his new home. The monk politely turned down the request saying he’s busy.
“But, what are you doing?” the man insisted.
“Nothing.”
Thinking that the monk was perhaps not in a mood to visit that day, he let it be and phoned again the next day. “Can you come today to bless my home?”
“Sorry,” said the monk, “I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m doing nothing,” replied the monk.
“But that was what you were doing yesterday!” said the man.
“Right,” the monk replied. “I’m not finished yet!”

Enlightenment too is an ongoing affair. No doubt, there can be a transformational moment that changes something in you forever. Living that change, however, is a matter of mindfulness and more. True enlightenment, that.

This is it. This life. It’s beautiful. Live it. Love it. For yourself, for others. Laugh it away. That’s all there is to know. Most of the rest, life can do without.

the saga of the huge piles of incense

i am collecting quite an admirable pile of documents related to my purchase and import of huge piles of incense into the country, and i keep finding out new things which were NOT related to me when i originally made the decision to start the ball rolling, back in january.

i got a “Sea Freight LCL* Arrival Notice” a couple of weeks or so ago, which listed a freight terminal in kent, under the heading “GOODS AVAILABLE AT:”, and an “upgraded” notice about a week ago, which contained the IT number — which, apparently, means “Inbond Transit”… i would have thought it meant “InboUnd Transit” but apparently not. the IT number is the one that the people at the terminal where i pick it up from, ultimately, have been asking for… however, now that they have it, they’re just as clueless as they were before, and they recommend that i contact the people who actually have the cargo, at this point.

i had to call them THREE TIMES before i learned that the people who have the cargo are USL Cargo Services, in east rutherford, new jersey, and when i called them, they were closing down for the (holiday 😑 ) weekend, and won’t be able to figure it out until monday, at the earliest.

they did, however, ask me if i had a “broker”, which i thought about, and then said no — because, technically, i am a “print broker”, but i figured that was not what they were asking about. apparently, one needs a “broker” to “clear” the shipment, at the terminal, before it can be picked up. not only that, but there was another page, labeled “Sea Freight LCL Arrival Charge Sheet” which added up a total of $231.20 worth of extra charges invoiced to me, which had to be paid before i could pick it up, once the “broker” is done “clearing” it. 😕 on top of everything else, apparently i have to mail them an original copy of the bill of lading, two copies of which were mailed to me from india, about a week into the whole process (i.e. about a month and a half ago). if someone had actually told me that i was supposed to do all of this crap ahead of time, it wouldn’t have taken me by surprise when i found out about it now. fortunately, i found out about it before the point where i went down to the terminal in kent to pick it up.

at this point, i have paid a total of $1,037.20 for 1,632 individual packages of incense, which STILL only amounts to 64¢ per package…

once i actually have it in my posession…

all of this meaningless (to me) fol-de-rol to import three huge cartons of incense from india… my guess is that i will actually have the incense some time next week, but i’m not going to hold my breath.

* LCL stands for “Less Cargo Load”, which means “less than a shipping container”. the other term is FCL, which stands for “Full Cargo Load” which means “a shipping container”. the people at MSDF REALLY want to send me FCL freight, but it’s simply too much product… 😕

take-away from the 2018 moisture festival

here’s what i want:

i want a tablet that has a USB interface (or not, depending on its disk size) that is approximately 9″x12″ or thereabouts, on which i can store ALL of my music (and, potentially, music for everyone else in the band, as well). if it has a USB interface, then i can have different bands on different flash drives. if not, different bands go in different directories or suchlike. my understanding is that there is an “automatic page-turning” app that one operates with a remote using their feet, but my impression is that most PDF readers switch pages with a swipe, which is pretty much what i do already, anyway…

that way i won’t have to carry around 40 pounds of music, as well as my tuba, music stand and chair…

180325 tom noddy and the littlest gymnast
180325 tom noddy and the littlest gymnast
the second week of the moisture festival — the one that i played in, with the fremont philharmonic — is over. it went really well, i played a majority of the right notes, didn’t drop my music, or lose tunes, made a majority of my cues, kept ALL of my music in alphabetical order, except for the tunes that were “officially” part of the show, so i could find things instantaneously when things changed abruptly without warning…

which they INEVITABLY do at the moisture festival.

hacki and möppi were there, tom noddy was there, sandy was there, frank olivier was there, peewee and joanne (barry and yvonne, couple #69) were there… i saw people that i only see once a year, at the moisture festival… it was the 15th anniversary of the longest running comedy/varieté showcase IN THE WORLD (and my 15th year as a performer in the moisture festival), and hardly anybody mentioned the fact that the palladium is up for sale, and there’s a possibility that whoever buys it will not honour the contracts that events like the moisture festival (and the panto) have with mike hale… but, at least for now, things are happening in a more or less normal, for the moisture festival, way. who knows what’s going to happen next year… apparently somebody does, but it’s not me, and whoever it is, isn’t saying anything.

you’re creeping me out

you are the lady who lives on the west side of 37th Ave. S., between S. 378th and S.376th, who came out of her house after i walked past this evening, and yelled “you’re creeping me out!”

i am the guy who walked past your house in a cloak and hood (it’s actually called a burnous), like this:

180319 you're creeping me out
180319 you’re creeping me out

without looking back, i yelled “i’m sorry”, but i wanted to give you a more complete explanation.

i’m sorry you’re “creeped out” by me, but when you yell at me like that, i want to come back and reassure you that it’s just me, and i’m not dangerous. in fact, i am a human being, with feelings, and it hurts me that you would think of me in that way. i also think that, perhaps, you should critically examine the things that “creep you out”, because they may be steering your life in the wrong direction. i’m not hurting anybody, and the fact that i don’t dress like “normal people” shouldn’t be an issue, as long as i’m not hurting anybody. it’s reactions like yours that make me afraid to walk in our neighbourhood, despite the fact that i’m not dangerous, and i never hurt anyone.

at the same time, you should not expect me to change my habit of dressing strangely and walking through our neighbourhood at dusk, because it’s my right, regardless of how much it creeps you out. 😑

Le Boudin

Le Boudin, otherwise known as the Marche de la Légion Étrangère, by Guillaume-Louis Bocquillon, otherwise known as Wilhelm, is the official march of the french foreign legion.

it is played at 88 beats per minute, instead of the more standard 120 beats per minute. this is because they’re the french foreign legion, and THEY CAN. the result is that, in the bastille day parade, the foreign legion appears last, because they march so much more slowly than all those other military organisations… i’m tempted to call them slackers, but the words to the tune actually call the belgians “slackers”, so i’m not sure if it’s entirely appropriate.

however, the sheet music for this piece of music is proving surprisingly difficult to find. the composer, Guillaume-Louis Bocquillon, otherwise known as Wilhelm, is, apparently, unknown to most people. the french foreign legion, itself, only mentions him in passing. the place i discovered the composer’s name was actually Flute Tunes dot com, where the only part available is a transcribed flute “solo” part.

i’m trying to find the music, because it would be a fantastic march to be played by the ballard sedentary sousa band. i have experienced no joy at the places i have checked, so far, which include j.w.pepper, the petrucci music library and bandmusicpdfs dot com.

rick

rick is a guy that i’ve known since college… 40-some years ago. approximately five years ago, rick almost died because his body quit working. but then, for some reason, it started working again, just as they were giving up and pulling the plug. it was somewhat miraculous that he recovered, but he did.

i met rick at fairhaven, in 1979 or 1980. he was tolerably obnoxious — he was convinced that he was god’s gift to women, and was always trying really hard to put the moves on just about any person of the female persuasion with whom he came in contact, but, not being female, i only heard about it, second-hand, from other people who were female — and he smoked cigarettes, which meant that i didn’t hang around with him an awful lot, but i knew who he was, and he knew who i was. we had a lot of friends in common.

i moved to seattle, and rick moved to eugene, oregon, along with another person i knew from college, josh hirschstein. sasha frequented eugene for a while, as well, and rick, josh and sasha maintained the college friendship, while i went back and forth from seattle to bellingham, had a kid, went to the tech school, and a bunch of other stuff.

sasha, who is the drummer for the fremont philharmonic, said that i might be interested in reconnecting with rick in 2011 or thereabouts, and i helped him move the last of his parents’ stuff out of their storage unit when they died, and drove him to the hospital the first time he tried dying.

rick has never lost the opinion that he is god’s gift to women, despite the fact that he is now a greasy, fat, lecherous old man who last had sex with someone(s?) he met at “The Wet Spot”, a sex-positive “swingers” club in seattle, where he was the librarian. his constant, insistent babbling about all of the sex he was (or wasn’t) having, plus his VERY STRONG opinions about politics, not all of which i agree with, were the reasons i put a limit on how long i can hang around with him, but, never the less, i was rick’s transportation when he had medical appointments in seattle, or had to go shopping or that sort of thing.

rick is back in hospice care again, this time at evergreen, in kirkland. people who know more about this kind of stuff than me, have decided that rick is experiencing the final stages of kidney failure, and, pretty much the only thing that is keeping him alive is an intravenous drip. he is badgering his “staff” to disconnect the drip, so the probability is reasonably high that rick is going to die sometime fairly soon.

it’s official

i got email this morning. this is the official word:

The shipment of 3 Cartons Incense Sticks has been arranged per vessel CORINTHIAKOS Voy. E091, sailing on 28/02/2018.

The delivery is expected by end of March.

i am, officially, getting three cartons of MSDF incense. it’s actually a lot less than they wanted to send me, but what they are sending me is making me a little concerned about where i will store it. it’s 33 dozen 999 Lord Krishna Puja, 63 dozen 7 African Powers and 40 dozen 909 Three Roses. in total, 136 dozen packages of incense, or 1,632 individual packages… which is a little bit less than half of the total incense that i CURRENTLY have.

there’s a chance that i can sell some of it, wholesale, to other agarbathiwalas (i’ve already been in contact with one, who said that she has a friend who might be interested, as well), but it’s still going to stretch my storage ability to the maximum.

i’ve got two print orders that total almost $350 that (supposedly) they’re going to pay around the end of the month… but the end of the month is in two days, so hopefully it’ll be soon.

inventory

new and replenished dhoop selections, a new nag champa, and a couple of new things to play around with: black copal resin and palo santo, which set off my new smoke alarm before i had the chance to adequately evaluate it. πŸ˜‰

inventory
inventory
coming soon, A LOT of incense from MSDF: 33 dozen 999 Lord Krishna Puja (the sticks, not the dhoop. apparently they don’t make the dhoop any longer), 63 dozen 7 African Powers and 40 dozen 909 Three Roses. πŸ™‚

wononskopomuc

Thonotossasa, FL 160530
Thonotossasa, FL 160530
i got an incense order, today, from lakeville, connecticut. lakeville is in the vicinity of two lakes which rival puyallup for odd native american place names: wononskopomuc, and wononpakook.

for a long time i was under the impression that puyallup was about as strange a native american place name as you could find anywhere… then i encountered thonotosassa, florida, and now this

wononskopomuc
wononskopomuc

now that it’s over…

i discovered that the reason i, and, significantly, my clients, including the fremont players, were getting our emails “randomly” blocked by places like @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com and so forth, was because my host provider’s data center was a known spam haven. my impression is that everybody knows to avoid Limestone Networks — the one admin i was able to convince to talk to me, said the following:

To give you an idea of the problem Limestone is we escalated the /18 your IP is in more than 6 years ago (March, 2011 to be exact), and despite rejecting several thousand emails a day since then in all that time I am aware of exactly one legitimate sender this has affected: You.

Limestone is not the worst spam haven on the Internet, but it’s not for lack of trying.

so they do business, or, more likely, have someone else do business for them, as IonBlade. i was desperate when they stepped in and assured me that they could fix everything — it turns out that my problem was my VPN provider all along, but i didn’t know that at the time — and i was already 6 months in before anything started to seem wrong.

so, i started looking for a new host provider in january, did my homework this time, and settled on WebHostPython, which actually offers me about 5 times what anyone else has offered, for a little bit less money… a definite step in the right direction.

however, i still had to notify the VPN provider of the change in my IP address, and while they dragged their feet getting it straightened out, i went for a couple of weeks not being able to send SMTP mail. of course i could use IMAP, but i don’t like keeping potentially incriminating evidence on someone else’s computer, and, these days, you just never know what they’ll decide is incriminating evidence… my SMTP started working yesterday, which brings to a close the battle of (someone else’s) computer, once again.

webhostpython has already helped me clear up a lot of IP and DNS cruft left over from 10 years of switching web hosts and not knowing what to clean up. i’m hoping that they’re still going to be my host provider 10 years from now, because, honestly, i’m FED UP with switching host providers. 😐

bleh/catsup

same old bleh: government shut down because democrats won’t agree to fund the wall, or some such horseshit. it’s going to take a generation to fix all the things #drumpf has screwed up. although, it appears, that, with the government shut down, it’s actually impeding #SCROTUS’s ability to vacation in mar-a-lago, AGAIN, and it may also affect betsy devos’ trip to sweden, so it may not be all bad.

got into an accident with monique’s car a week ago. i pulled out of a parking lot into what i thought was a clear street, only to discover that there were two cars on a collision course with my left side. i sped up, to try to avoid colliding with them and succeeded in having only one of them clip my left rear corner, but speeding up caused me to go out of control, and i zipped across the street and ran into a rock in the driveway across the street… and, of course, it’s more than likely 100% my fault.

the weird part is what happened afterwards. the collision didn’t injure anybody, a cop came and took a statement from everyone, but issued no tickets. monique’s car is pretty banged up, it may or may not be a total write off, but they may be able to fix it… but because of the fact that we’ve got insurance, our total out-of-pocket will be $500, plus $4 a day for the rental car, which showed up less than 24 hours after the accident. and, if the car, which is a few months away from the end of its warrantee anyway, is a total write-off, we can use the settlement to buy a new car from monique’s best friend lora’s husband, who owns a car dealership.

there are a number of things that would have happened if i had this kind of accident and were still living in bellingham, which DID NOT happen this time. these things are REALLY freaking me out: significantly, nobody got upset with me, including monique, whose car got munched. she said that’s why we have insurance. then, we went to the beach for 4 days, three days after the accident. if things were as they were when i lived in bellingham, we WOULD NOT have been able to go on “vacation” after an accident as serious as that, even though nobody got injured. and there are a few other things: i’m having my trombone slide rebuilt(!), and it’s costing me around $800. that project would have suddenly been put on hold. also, we’re planning on going to hawai’i(!) for our 20th anniversary, in june, and, after the accident, that would have been out of the question, if this were bellingham.

on the other hand, when i lived in bellingham, most of the time i didn’t actually own a car, and when i did, i only had minimal insurance, and that only part of the time… and in all the time i lived in bellingham, i don’t think i took what i now consider to be a “vacation” even once, despite the fact that i “camped out” in various places a number of times.

upshot of the whole thing is that i’m still thinking i should be in orders of magnitude more trouble than i, apparently, am, currently… and i’m waiting for the axe, which may not actually be there, to fall… which is seriously affecting my ability to enjoy anything else that may be enjoyable. 😕

bleh

new year blah. had dinner at the akers’, went to bed at 10, and listened to the neighbours blowing stuff up and frightening the animals until two in the morning.

#SCROTUS #drumpf threatening to blow up the world… again… among other, somewhat less horrendous alternatives… blah, blah, blah.

panto blah, sickness blah… i’m actually just starting to feel relatively normal, after having the season’s cold compounded by being around panto people who all have similar colds, for about a month. the panto, itself, is as good a show as we’ve ever done, considering that we’re doing the same show, cinderella, with essentially the same script as the one we did 10 years ago. however, they’ve sold the palladium and nobody’s told me what they’re going to do with the moisture festival, for which they’ve already scheduled the bands: the philharmonic is one of them, snake suspenderz is not. 😕 blah… everybody’s acting as though the moisture festival is happening, but nobody seems to care where it’s theoretically going to happen. it would be great if we could continue using the palladium, but if we’re not, presumably someone has started making arrangements to have it somewhere else.

bleh.

otamatone! オタマトーン 😊

i’ve wanted one for a long time: pretty much ever since i first read about them on internet, a few years ago. but i’ve never bought one, because it seemed too frivolous… and i’ve read some really negative reviews of them, that made me think they are not very well built, and so forth.

but this a gift, and it is from my lovely wife, so, of course i want it… and, actually, it plays pretty well — for a “novelty” “toy” that doesn’t have notes marked on it… it will definitely be an honoured member of my sound-effects collection, if nothing else… 😊

otamatone オタマトーン
otamatone オタマトーン

not only that, but the guy on the package (who, i assume, is Novmichi Tosa, the inventor of the otamatone), is wearing a wrist watch with an old-school telephone dial on it:

wrist watch with a telephone dial... what does it do?
wrist watch with a telephone dial… what does it do?

bleugh…

i’ve been sick for the past couple of days. i hope i’m going to be well enough to perform in cinderella on saturday, because that’s when it starts. dress rehearsal is tomorrow, and i haven’t even marked all of the sound effects or where to use them, so it’s going to be touch and go. i should be well enough to make rehearsal tomorrow, but i’ve already loaded the first batch of sound effects into my car. i’ve still got a huge box, plus the bell, which has it’s own stand…

i’ve volunteered to play trombone for a SANCApators performance at Teatro ZinZanni in redmond, in february. reheasals start during the run of cinderella, but the sancapators rehearse during the week, and cinderella is on the weekend, so there won’t be any conflict.

#SCROTUS #drumpf just reduced the size of two national monuments, Bear’s Ears, and Escalante, in utah, to about half of their original size. he wants to eliminate all national monuments, completely, and open the areas for oil drilling and mineral exploration. it’s probably illegal, and there’s already at least one lawsuit filed over it, but that won’t stop him from running rough-shod over it while he has the chance. DAPL has already sprung a couple of leaks, and there are lawsuits over that, as well, but you can’t put oil back in the ground, once it has been extracted… and spilled. meanwhile, there’s a rumour that democrats are going to force a vote to impeach him soon, but as long as the republicretins are in the majority, it’s not going to go anywhere. there’s eventually going to be action from special prosecutor mueller – he just subpoenad Deutsche Bank’s records concerning #drumpf’s accounts, and those of his family (although faux/fake news/jay sekulow (of the ACLJ, a “christian” hate-group) says that he hasn’t), which, allegedly, was the line across which, if he stepped, #drumpf had vowed to fire mueller, but it just happened this morning, so there’s no news on whether he will actually follow through. my personal opinion is that, if he fires mueller, i’m going to start fomenting revolution, and i’m not alone. on the other hand, if he doesn’t fire mueller, then he can definitely be more easily impeached, because his criminal activities, not to mention his treason, will be much more obvious… but once #drumpf is impeached, we’re going to have to impeach pence, and ryan, and the whole list of “republicans all the way down” before anything is going to change… and the only other option is for mueller to declare the 2016 election null-and-void, because of #drumpf’s treason and collusion, but, by then, it’ll be too late to do it over… and it’s never been done before, so nobody’s really sure whether or not it even CAN be done…

i want to be the person he shoots

woo

today is the 10th anniversary of the commencement of this blog, on this server.

or, rather, the commencement of this blog on any OTHER server than LiveJournal.

this was the first post made on this blog. prior to this post, the blog was part of LiveJournal. i moved all of my content from LiveJournal to here (“here” has actually changed several times since then, but you know what i mean), so previous posts to this one are also on LJ, but it’s no longer being updated… except for that one time…

today, in more recent history, moe flew to las vegas, where she will be until sunday. i’ve got all four dogs, and they’re already going crazy. and i’ve got a snake suspenderz gig on saturday. 😕

Mysore Sughandi Dhoop Factory

i got an incense order from martinique, but the guy wanted me to ship it to indiana, and gave me a phone number that i should call before i shipped the order.

i called the number and had a very pleasant conversation with amanda, from Incense Incense, which inspired me to try, once again, to contact someone from MSDF. amanda gave me a phone number for someone named manoj, but i have some difficulty using the telephone to places on the other side of the world, primarily because of the time difference, so i went to MSDF dot com and clicked on their “contact us” button (because their web site has NO prices and looks like it hasn’t been updated in 20 years), just like i have done many times in the past with no response…

but, surprise! this time someone answered my email… and it just happened to be someone named manoj… coincidence? “manoj” is sort of like “jim” in the united states: every third guy, or thereabouts, has that name… but one way or the other, i had a contact at MSDF, who confirmed that they have NO US representatives, currently, and offered to send me cartons of incense, rather than shipping containers of incense, at OUTRAGEOUSLY GOOD prices… like 27Β’ a pouch for 7 African Powers, and 35Β’ a box for Lord Krishna Puja 999…

upshot of the whole thing is that i’m going in with amanda and buying around $500 worth of incense… and we’ll be THE ONLY ONLINE RETAILERS IN THE COUNTRY to sell it! 😎

in other news, the theosophical society has, apparently, discontinued their characteristic “Leadbeater” incense, otherwise known as Adyar Meditation Incense, by Shroff Channabassappa and Sons, and i have been trying to find shroff on the web, as well, to clarify why this is happening, but, so far, all i have found are people who are selling their incense, but no indication that Shroff Channabassappa & Sons are even still in business… which would explain why the theosophical society has discontinued their incense… but if that’s the case, i’m certain that the recipe for leadbeater incense has to exist on line somewhere, and that’s my next goal.

people suck! 😠

when you’re out for a walk, and you see someone walking a dog on a leash, and it’s OBVIOUS that the dog is in pain, and it’s OBVIOUS that the person on the other end of the leash is TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS about the condition of their dog… how do you respond?

according to my wife, the veterinary technician and veterinary hospital manager, whose specialty is animal behaviour, there’s not an awful lot you can do about a situation like this.

so, anyway, i was out on a walk, and i saw two ladies with dogs on leashes. one of them, the lady in front, had a smaller, black dog that was acting more or less normally, ahead of its human, sniffing the ground, doing normal dog things.

then there came the lady behind. when i first noticed her, she smiled pleasantly, as she was pulling the dog leash over her shoulder, and leaning into it, to get the dog to go faster. it was plain, from her behaviour, that the dog wasn’t pleased at all with the idea of going any faster, because she had to maintain constant pressure on the leash to get him to go as fast as he was.

then i noticed the dog…

i have never felt so sorry for a creature so quickly… the dog was OBVIOUSLY in pain…

he was a medium-sized yellow lab, or a lab-mix of some kind. he was panting, heavily, and drooling almost to the point of foaming. he was an older dog, who used to be a lot fatter than he is now, because he had a lot of loose, flabby skin around his belly. there was something seriously wrong with his hips: his lower abdomen looked distended, and he was walking stiff-legged, taking tiny steps and doing most of the motivating work with his front legs… and it looked like he’d been doing it for a while, because his front legs were a lot more muscular.

as they were passing me, once again, the woman put her shoulder into dragging the dog faster than he, clearly, was able to go. he whimpered, and attempted to waddle faster, which he was clearly not able to do.

never have i wanted, more, to deck someone. 😑 i had to hurry away before i did something stupid, because, if i had hung around any longer, i WOULD HAVE done something stupid.

genealogy

i got my DNA analysed a few years ago.

a couple months ago, i got rosemary’s DNA (my paternal great aunt) analysed. she has the same father as my great grandfather, but her mother is different than my great grandmother.

i figured that we would have some DNA in common, that we could both use to help determine who is part of our family.

apparently, we have ZERO DNA in common:

no DNA in common?
no DNA in common?

what the fuck?

ETA: it’s because the DNA analysis was done on our mitochondrial DNA, which, while easier to analyse, is passed through our mothers’ side. she had a different mother than my great grandmother, so there’s no overlap.

mystery solved.

reunion

the fairhaven college 50th anniversary reunion was friday, saturday, and today. i went to perform a ritual vegetable sacrifice, which happened this morning.

i just want to say that i am SO glad i married monique. i spent a couple of days with a lot of old, crazy people, talking about other old, crazy people and the crazy things they did, and continued to do… and i could have an up-close-and-personal part in all those crazy things, except i NO LONGER LIVE IN BELLINGHAM, and the crazy people in monique’s circle of friends do stuff that DOESN’T AFFECT ME! 😁

darol isn’t growing any longer. it was decided that his mental instability(!) made the fact that he was growing a danger to the community at large, so somebody distracted him, and other people went in and cleaned out the entire operation. then pot became legal. now darol is getting old and fat and doesn’t have anything to do any longer.

crazy people i haven’t thought about in 30 years: julie, collette, katharyn, almitra, jim… i heard about the crazy, stoned antics of calvin, the youngest son of alana, who i haven’t seen since 1992…

friday, i went to an undisco in the fairhaven auditorium — the first one that has been held in the auditorium in 25 years… the music was way too loud, and 95% of it hadn’t even been written the last time there was an undisco in the auditorium… it was really weird: i visited the classroom where my first flybottle class was held, but there were computers everywhere… even in the hallways, there were “publically accessible” computers — you still need to be a student to use them, but they were there… and the auditorium is completely different: it’s been turned into two rooms that have a temporary divider between them. the stage and the light booth are still the same, but the sloped floor and the carpeting have been removed… and there are two computers, one in each “room”, that control huge video screens, which had “meditationHD” videos — 😒 — in them for the undisco. kenyth was supposed to be there, but, because of the fact that his care-givers(!) screwed up, he wasn’t there.

saturday, i played my overtone flute in the back stairway at fairhaven. it sounded FANTASTIC! i realised that the reason it’s not in tune with other instruments is because it was specifically made for that stairway. it sounds good by itself, whereas, in most other places (including, significantly, fort worden), it needs electronic help (in the form of an amplifier and a delay box) to sound HALF AS GOOD… i decided that it sounded so good that i had to record some, so i set up my H2 (which, conveniently, was in the suitcase with the amplifier and the delay box), and recorded about half an hour, before i realised that the batteries in the H2 had died shortly after i first started playing, so i had to change the batteries and do it all again. that was interrupted by ken yanik, who i spent a couple of hours after that, talking to, catching up after 36 years…

kenyth showed up for a “special ceremony” in his honour, which was, apparently, people who were, marginally, his students, giving him mementos and other random tchatchkes, for which he has no need, and, for the most part, he doesn’t remember his students anyway. i saw him. he had to be reminded who i was. i gave him an announcement for the vegetable sacrifice. he didn’t show up. when we went to his care-facility(!), later in the evening, for what passes for “the jam” these days, he had to be reminded, again, who i was. the jam was cut short by his care-givers, who were concerned that the music(!) was keeping the other residents awake. he seemed happy to see everyone, and, once he had been reminded who i was, it was okay, but it’s really sad to see him losing his mind, and it’s really sad knowing that the fact that he’s losing his mind is the reason he’s being subjected to this.

the campus has changed a lot. there are a whole bunch of new buildings, new sculputres, and new athletic facilities. there is also a lot of other changes that i only heard about: the cube sculpture that used to be near the library is now in the fairhaven courtyard. rock rings and the steam scupture are now in a forgotten corner, behind a new, huge building, which has a massive new sculpture, “the stairs to nowhere”, in front of it… the old sculptures haven’t moved, the campus has just been built up around them. it’s nice for the campus, i guess, but there’s a lot of brick, glass and concrete where there used to be apple orchards and pine trees.

i made 100 vegetable sacrifice announcements. i handed out a bunch of them at the undisco, and a bunch more to various people at fairhaven, and elsewhere on campus. it was scheduled for 9:00 am, which was RIDICULOUSLY early compared to the “traditional” sacrifice (which is always held at noon), but what else could i do? that was what they offered me. still, i handed out about 75 announcements, and quite a few people said that they were going to come: tarzan said he was going to bring some vegetable sacrifice virgins; sasha and jeff also indicated that they would be there, and i sort of half expected ian to show up as well. i got to the tower(!) at 8:30 in the morning, and prepared. at 9:03, ken and kamalla (with whom i had been staying) showed up, followed shortly thereafter by ken yanik and a guy called “morf” — a former fairhaven student who, apparently, knows a lot more about me than i do about him (which isn’t that surprising). about 15 minutes later, after we had already finished the random circular reading, jamie jedinak and her doggie, pepper, showed up… there were also two innocent bystanders at the top of the tower, and (unbeknownst to me, until i decended, after sacrificing my vegatables) another innocent bystander at the bottom. ken whitley was very concerned that the person at the bottom had “witnessed something illegal” and started cleaning up the sacrifical remains almost immediately, which i found somewhat disappointing.

there’s a really long, 1.5GB video of the vegetable sacrifice ceremony, which was recorded on the holy camera of video by morf. i can’t figure out how to turn it into something that i can post on the COTC web site, but i’ll figure it out eventually. i figured it out. i also reduced the size to a much more realistic size of 113.2MB… now i have to figure out where to stick it.

it was enjoyable, driving through the skagit valley, on my way south, but once i hit stanwood, i hit the freeway. it’s REALLY good to be home.

WOL!

i went for a walk. when i returned, he was sitting on our gate post as i walked up. he flew up into a tree…

170922 WOL
170922 WOL
170922 WOL
170922 WOL

monique sez that either it’s a dumb baby bird (possible), or he’s not feeling well (also possible). if the latter, he’s chosen the right place to do it… although i don’t know how we’d go about catching him to give him whatever care he might need…

170922 WOL
170922 WOL

ETA: it’s probably just a dumb baby owl, ’cause it caught a rat and was eating it in the tree, about an hour later. nice owl. we’ll feed you lots of rats if you stay here… πŸ™‚

depression and drumpf

it’s been raining for a couple of days, which is good, because it hasn’t rained for months. it went from deathly hot and dry to raining and cloudy in one day… but nobody’s allowed to say climate change any longer.

the republicretins are trying to ruin healthcare, AGAIN! 😑

drumpf wants a military parade in front of the white house. he also wants to “totally destroy north korea”, in those very words. he made a fool of himself in front of the UN. he wants to deport all of the people who are currently eligible for DACA. he wants to ban muslim immigrants and refugees. he won’t repudiate white supremacist terrorists. when people protest, they get run over and killed by white supremacist terrorists who get caught by the police, and are, then, set free with no charges.

i’d complain, but that’s just the way it is these days. 😕

smoke

that’s right, smoke. as in “from a forest fire”, not “smoking pot”.

the air quality is as bad as it was last week when i wrote about being depressed because of climate change, only then it was from fires in canada, and this time it’s fires in cle elum. because #drumpf is so enamoured of screwing things up, i’m guessing that climate change is going to become a more-or-less permanent feature of life on earth, and i’d better get used to it… but DAMN it’s hard. 😑 πŸ™

i don’t even know where to start… he’s said that there were “two sides” to the story about the woman who was killed by a so-called “white supremacist” who drove his car into a crowd of protesters, and he’s emboldened the KKK and the nazis to be even more blatantly horrendous than they have ever been in my lifetime, he’s repeatedly ranted at south korea for doing things that south korea has been doing for years, and he’s got us on the brink of world war 3, he cancelled the infrastructure projects that would have at least partially saved texas from the results of hurricane harvey, and once it was over, he hustled down to houston with his (third) wife who was wearing stilletos, and congratulated people for turning out for his “rally”, he’s gone through three communications directors, he’s fired most of his advisors, which is good because most of them were blatantly obvious nazis, but it’s bad because it leaves him without advisors, and more likely to pull some blatantly horrendous horseshit out of his ass, like his recent attempt to ban transgendered troops from the military, or his attempts (plural) to ban muslim immigrants, which is one of his campaign promises, or his attempts (plural) to build a wall between the US and mexico, and have mexico pay for it, another one of his campaign promises, which mexico has repeatedly and emphatically refused to do, so he’s trying to get the US to pay for it…

i’m generally a pacifist, but i’ve been siding more and more with the antifa, these days. 😑

salamandir update

i haven’t been writing much because i’m severely depressed, and have been for some time.

the primary reason is #SCROTUS, who has, once again, alerted the world that, at his leisure, he’s going to dump the entire nuclear arsenal of the united states — his exact words were “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen” — on a country about 0.013 the size of the united states (north korea), because their “crackpot leader” has been spouting off again. personally, i’d put #drumpf and kim jong-il in the same boat, in terms of being totally insane. and, of course, kim jong-il responded by saying drumpf’s proclamation was a “load of rubbish” and announced a missile test that is going to end 30 to 40 miles off guam. as much as i disliked the gentleman (an alert reader will notice that i don’t refer to drumpf using that term), when obama was president, i could sleep through the night knowing that, when i woke, world war 3 would not have started. 😑

this whole mess was compounded by the fact that i went off 5HTP while i was at OCF, and, apparently, it’s a medicine that you have to take for a while before it starts working. it’s been a month, and i’ve been taking it again for about 3 weeks, so i’m assuming that it’s taking effect — as before, i’m aware of the fact that i’m depressed, but i can function, more-or-less, anyway — but the whole thing with drumpf, ending the world, messing with my (lack of) health insurance, being an ignorant, racist asshole who golfs while the world — which he set on fire — is burning, really doesn’t inspire me to do an awful lot. 😕

this has also been compounded by the fact that climate change has gone from the wettest winter on record, to the longest period without rain on record, and, because of the fact that there have been massive forest fires in british columbia, the weather has been hot and smoky for about a week. i was in tacoma the other day, and i haven’t seen that much smoke there since the infamous “aroma” days. i was in seattle, yesterday, and it was so smoky that i couldn’t see west seattle from I5. the air-quality rating has been “unhealty” for two days… in SEATTLE!! it’s the worst i have EVER seen it, and it’s just going to get worse… and they’re not predicting rain until — MAYBE — sunday. 😑

but because of the fact that drumpf appointed one of his oil-company cronies to the head of the EPA, they are no longer allowed to use the words climate change, which, to them, means that it doesn’t exist. 😑

update

story pole update –according to what george braddock says, they didn’t have any native assistance during the design part. i think that’s horse-shit, but george is one of the people who would know, so i’m torn… although i’m leaning heavily in the direction of horse-shit. also, david lewis, the cultural anthropoligist from the confederated tribes of the grande ronde, obviously doesn’t know that there actually were haida people involved, and that they’ve got the blessing of both haida and kalapuya elders. not only that, but the kalapuya, who are native to the area, didn’t have permanent art, because they were nomads, so it’s not really any kind of cultural appropriation. it sounds very much like this guy is in the camp of the lady who is behind this whole thing. 😐

and so, once again…

and so, once again, the battle of (someone else’s) computer has come to an inconclusive end.

i still have one open ticket with the VPN folks: they updated the VPN software for the tablet, which means that now it’ll connect after i reboot it, but if it comes disconnected for some reason, the only way to get it to reconnect is to reboot the entire tablet… which, while better than not being able to connect at all, is still a major hassle. i’m not holding my breath that it’s going to get fixed soon, as my current tablet can’t be upgraded beyond a version that is three full versions behind the current one… 😐

my email works — or, rather, isn’t giving me timeout errors every time i send email. monique’s email is working again, although she’s lost her address book and her signature files, and the two mailing lists of which i am in charge, seem to be working, with third-party verification. i’m also paying about twice as much as i was with the old host provider, but, with the new host provider, i’m actually an “official” reseller, which means that, now, i have access to WHM, which i never have before… but i’m not sure, at this point, whether or not it’s a “good” thing. at this point, i have updated all of my domains’ MX records to the new host provider (something i was never able to do before), without knowing for sure whether or not i have done the right thing. at this point, two days later, it still works as far as i have been able to tell, nothing has broken as far as i can tell, and nobody has complained to me that their shit isn’t working, so i’m nominally calling it complete, but i wish there were some way that i could be sure…

the battle…

the battle of other peoples’ computer started before i left for the fair.

about a week before the fair, my (now former) host provider decided to move the machine on which all of my web sites live from californa to florida. in the move, they somehow freaked out my VPN, because it started giving me an error that said “socket operation timed out” whenever i tried to send email. i could receive email just fine, but no sending.

and, because of the fact that the VPN isn’t SUPPOSED to interfere with normal network functions, i didn’t suspect that was the cause.

then my clients started reporting intermittent email failures. so i contacted my (now former) host provider and inquired about answers to what you would expect to be their problem (since they are, now “were”, my host provider).

as the week progressed, there was also concern that my scheduled web maintenance (which i wanted to have happen before the fair) was not possible, because of the ongoing problems with the web server, combined with the host-provider-support-drones who couldn’t speak english, answered (or not) only one question at a time, and who persisted in giving me scripted instructions for how (not) to fix the problem on a windoesn’t machine.

fortunately, most of my clients were also at the fair, and couldn’t access their email anyway. i gave up after being there one day, and only getting spotty WIFI coverage on my personal hotspot.

when i got home, much to my surprise, the ticket i had opened to fix the problem had been closed, but there had been no “fixing”… they closed the ticket because i hadn’t responded to it in three days, not because they had fixed the problem. almost as though they thought, if i wasn’t there to harrass them, there wasn’t a problem that they needed to work on.

i reprimanded them, and proceded to deal with my, now worsening, email problem. macque couldn’t access the list, monique’s email was spotty at best, a number of people said they had “given up” on getting messages to the list, and i STILL could only receive email, but not send.

i tried to deal with the now former web host for another week, getting less and less actual information, and more and more frustrated with my inability to communicate in anything like english (which strikes me as somewhat odd, given that it’s a british company, located in london). finally i had enough, and switched host providers…

AGAIN… 8/

it’s been about five years since i switched to EZPZ and ended my spree of switching host providers about every 6 months for a couple of years, and, at first, they were cheap AND excellent host providers… but in the past couple of years, i guess they must have outsourced their support, or something, because suddenly their tech support got CONSIDERABLY worse, and their language skills steadily decreased to the point where i would have to, DELIBERATELY avoid asking more than one question per ticket, in order to get anything close to a complete answer…

so, i switched host providers about a week ago. they quickly diagnosed my VPN problem, and got monique’s email working, sort of… but i forgot that i don’t have complete control over all my domains (Rev. Guido DeLuxe is actually the owner of two of them), and, instead of getting better, monique’s email problem actually got worse…

and the new host provider — ionblade — had conveniently forgotten to add “mailing lists” to my cpanel, so the two mailing lists i manage were completely offline…

and, meanwhile, i had to explain to macque that sending to “official-list-owner” sent mail to me, while sending to “official-list” sent mail to the list, and, because of the fact that i couldn’t send email, i couldn’t actually do something sensible, like forward his message… and even if i had been able to forward his message, i would have gotten a bounce also, because the FUCKING EMAIL LIST WAS DOWN!!

i actually helped them diagnose the VPN problem: i learned that i could access webmail at hybridelephant, but that it forwarded me to their server, and i could send from that, which i did for about a week. then the VPN updated, and quit working all together on my tablet, which meant that i had to do the “run-around” on my linux box when i absolutely HAD to respond to someone. basically, i took the message to which i had to respond, responded in my email client, copied the message, switched to a browser with webmail open, hit “compose new message” and pasted the message into that, in order to be able to send. when i couldn’t do that, either because my computer was down for the night, or i didn’t have access to it, i would use the browser on my tablet to respond. at some point within the past few days, it dawned on me that if i could send from webmail from port 80, even though my VPN was up, maybe the VPN was getting in the way, so i tried disabling it, and — lo and behold — the message went through. i enabled the VPN again, tried sending a message, and “socket operation timed out”. disabling the VPN made the message go through almost immediately.

so, i opened TWO tickets at the VPN provider, one about my tablet, and one to find out if there is some way to un-block my SMTP service on port 465. i (FINALLY) convinced the (new) host provider to re-add “mailing lists” to my cpanel, and, like magic, i suddenly had email lists that work (i think) again.

i (still) have two open tickets with the VPN provider, but my impression is that if they’ve got a bug that affects the connection of my tablet, it has probably struck a lot of people with similar tablets, so they’ve got a lot to deal with.

and i’ve still got web updates to get to, but the web update guy says that they can wait for a month or so, at which point there will probably be more anyway…

so, anyway…

i got back from OCF, which, apart from the fact that my email was screwed up when i left, and nothing had been done about it by the time i came back, was excellent. i left on tuesday the 4th, and returned on monday the 10th, got bit by at least 50 different mosquitoes. they were huge and ravenous this year, pretty much the same as always, but they definitely dissappeared by thursday. i don’t know whether or not it had to do with the incoming throngs of people, but there was a definite difference between the clouds of mosquitoes surrounding me on wednesday, and their dissappearance on thursday.

chela mela
chela mela
the big conversation this year was around “cultural appropriation”, specifically the “cultural appropriation” perceived by a few, very vocal, “native american” (or not) people who aren’t even associated with the fair, when The Ritz (one of my favourite places about the fair) after 5 years of carving this EXQUISITE “story pole” outside the ritz, in a very public way, decided to raise the pole.

that’s it…

the “native americans” (or not) decided, after 5 years of public carving, without saying a SINGLE WORD, that the ritz raising their “story pole” is “cultural appropriation”.

first of all, i don’t actually know anything (which is the way 90% of the fair is run, from the beginning). all i pretend to know is what other, very passionate, people, some of whom actually do “know”, have told me. but what they say is:

the lady that’s behind the cry of “cultural appropriation” is a “troublemaker” and has been for many years. she may or may not be native herself and she has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fair, but she has made an “anti-story-pole” web site and invited other “native american” groups to rally behind her standard. a small number have actually done so.

the ritz, in response to this lady’s blandishments, have COMPLETELY REMOVED ALL of the “native american” art from the premises, taken down the boiler that had native american artwork on it, that was prominently placed at the entrance, flipped over a fence that had native american style carvings, and replaced it with “vanilla” art, taken away 90% of the T-shirts, tote bags, bandanas and other merchandise that had “inappropriate” artwork, and minted new tokens this year, as well as taking the story pole off site for the fair.

at the same time, elders from a variety of northwest tribes, including the native kalapuya tribe, and elders from standing rock, have blessed the ritz, said that the artwork, and the ritz itself, HONOURS native traditions, and that this whole “cultural appropriation” fiasco is totally unimportant, considering how many actual issues of grave importance there are facing native americans, and society at large, these days.

finally, my own opinion is that ART IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION. people like picasso (or was it banksy?) have said “IMMATURE ARTISTS IMMITATE. MATURE ARTISTS STEAL.” ever listen to “jazz”?

not only that, but having studied, and tried to imitate, northwest native artwork, i can tell you, from personal experience, that it’s not easy at all. the guy who carved the story pole wasn’t native, himself, but he obviously had experienced and expert native assistance, as well as YEARS of personal experience, to make a story pole that looked as authentic as it did, despite having elements that would NEVER HAVE APPEARED on an authentic native pole…

which it was never presented as being in the first place! 😕

so i was intrigued when i read a blurb that was posted in “Xavanadu” (what used to be called “The Craft Lot”, outside Morningwood Odditorium), concerning why the fair decided not to raise the story pole this year. it said, among other things, that there were a band of the kalapuya tribe called “chelamela”.

i haven’t yet met anyone who knows for sure, but it was always my impression (and the sign above supports the idea) that “chelamela” was a sanskrit compound word: छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेलमेल (chelamela) is “a festival of devotees”.

the idea that there may have been a band of kalapuya indians called “chelamela” is intriguing to me — suspicious, but intriguing — especially considering all of this “cultural appropriation” furor that is currently going on.

apparently, it’s true… who knew? 😉 so, the next question is, who “culturally appropriated” who, here?

there wasn’t a single day in the week that i was there, when i wasn’t involved in a PASSIONATE discussion about this issue, with MANY people. it made for a REALLY INTERESTING fair…

😕

north trotter's
north trotter’s
above, is “north trotter’s” on wednesday. it’s about a mile from Morningwood Odditorium: to get there, i had to walk through fields called “Xavanadu”, “Miss Piggy”, “North Piggy” and “Kermit” to get to the “Cabal Crossing”, which is where i signed in. by friday, this ENTIRE FIELD was filled with cars. near the center of the photo, in the background, you can see a structure that marks the beginning of the exit road. on the other side of that structure is another, similar sized field, “The Dead Lot” (named for a Grateful Dead performance that happened in 1989(?) in the lot), and beyond that is another similar sized field called “Outta Site”… which is where i parked my car this year. there is a shuttle, called “F.A.R.T.S.” (Fair Area Rapid Transit System) which i had to ride if i didn’t want to walk.

bird
bird
this was the bird that was over the dead lot, one of the times i decided to walk.

anagrams of Oregon Country Fair
anagrams of Oregon Country Fair

a huge load of hippie crap
a huge load of hippie crap
on wednesday, someone delivered a huge load of “hippie crap” to “xavanadu”. they eventually assembled it all into this. at night, the “roots” lit up with rainbow crawling LEDs.

Godfrey Daniels
Godfrey Daniels
he was my next door neighbour. 😎

more huge loads of hippie crap
more huge loads of hippie crap
more huge loads of hippie crap. at night it lit up with rainbow colour-changing LEDs.

some random hippie, 2017
some random hippie, 2017
what’s wrong with this picture? 😉

Some Random Hippie, 2011
Some Random Hippie, 2012
Some Random Hippie, 2013
Some Random Hippie, 2016

raghr! 😠

i got back from OCF to discover that the email problem i had when i left was still there, and EZPZ had closed the ticket, because i wasn’t there to egg them on.

it’s still broken, so i decided to switch host providers… AGAIN! 😑

some day, everything will just WORK, and there won’t have to be providers that don’t know how to fix things… 😐

😠

do you remember when #drumpf said that he could stand out in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone, and not lose any votes?

i want to be the person he shoots.

March 26, 2000

March 26, 2000 - Kingdome implosion
March 26, 2000 – this took place right down the street from where we were living, at the time. i went, set up my (still) camera, and a tripod, and took 30 photos, in rapid succession, with the intent of making an animated .gif of the process… now, 17 years later, i have actually completed that task. go me.

SACBO 2017

hmm… F11 seems to put firefox into full-screen mode and back again… interesting…

so, SACBO was last weekend. there were no snake suspenderz, but thaddeus and i had some fun with electronic devices for most of saturday.

Thaddeus & salamandir at the Hybrid Elephant Pavilion
Thaddeus & salamandir at the Hybrid Elephant Pavilion

the most amusing (to me, anyway) part was that, as you can probably see in the picture, thaddeus was playing a guitar-like object. it is, in fact, a guitar, but it had some substantial modifications that included a wireless pickup and a MIDI-actuated sound-producing device that could make any sound you might imagine. there were obvious things, like a sitar-sound, and somewhat less obvious things, like a saxophone and a flute. when the inevitable tourists came, and thaddeus was playing a “normal” guitar-like sound, they would walk on by without even looking up from their screens (really, i don’t understand why people go to festivals like this and spend all day poking through farcebook rather than experiencing life), but when he was playing the saxophone-sound, people would look around to figure out where the sound was coming from, since it was clear — to them, anyway — that there was nobody actually playing a saxophone… and, frequently, they would keep looking for several minutes, looking behind other peoples’ cars, behind the pavilion, and such-like… 😂

sunday, i was the only snake there (there were other musicians, like ranger and annie-bannannie, but i didn’t actually play with them), so i didn’t set up the canopy, but i did play music (sold a few CDs as well), and was joined by this marvelous little girl and her slide whistle…

click here to see movie

which may or may not be upside down on your device… my impression was that the lady who took the video may or may not have been fully clued in on the operation of her “smart” phone…

apart from that, there were the expected, and the new art-cars and art-cartists, and, with the exception of the sunday morning security-guard who was being a DICK and not letting me into the fair (i went a block down the street and got in without a problem. 8P ), a reasonably good time was had by… well, me anyway…

SACBO 2017
SACBO 2017
SACBO 2017
SACBO 2017
SACBO 2017
SACBO 2017

yawn

nothing except #drumpf and depression happening for the past couple of weeks.

moe stepped on zorah and dislocated her hip (zorah’s, not moe’s), which, naturally, mortified moe, and made it so that zorah has to undergo at least eight weeks of crate-rest before we will discover whether or not she has to have surgery.

the two ounces of space queen that i was gushing about is either not space queen, or, if it is, it lacks the characteristic flavour of space queen, which is one of the reasons i like it. on the other hand, it was cheap enough that i’m not going to complain. 😐

SACBO next weekend. 19th wedding anniversary on the 21st. OCF in three weeks.

space queen

one of my favourite strains of medical cannabis is space queen.

a year ago, i declined to pay $420 an ounce for space queen at a dispensary in auburn. in fact, after they told me how much it was, i walked out without saying another word. $420 an ounce is WAY too expensive! 😑

six months ago, i was able to buy space queen at another dispensary, in tacoma, for between $280 and $320 an ounce… the upper end of which is verging on too expensive.

i’ve been going to commencement bay cannabis for about three months now. at first, they didn’t have space queen at all. then, when they got it in, i was paying $180 an ounce — with a 10% discount, because i am over 55 years old… *(BONUS!)*

two days ago, i went to commencement bay cannabis, and bought TWO ounces, for $90 a piece, with a 10% discount, making them $81 a piece…

THIS is how competitive pricing works!

space queen
space queen

a ray of hope, snuffed out…

to continue the post started here, it appears that #drumpf “leaked” code-word-protected intelligence about the current US fight against #daesh to russians, and the media is all up in arms about it. the washington post (a decidedly UN-“fake news” source) reported about it in detail yesterday…

but drumpf and his surrogates have stated that this is 100% false — however, after saying that it’s 100% false, drumpf actually tweeted an admission that he had, indeed leaked classified information — but they are bolstering this claim by saying that he has the right to do so, because he’s the president.

Trump Says He Divulged Intelligence to Russians Because He’s Such a Great Guy

furthermore, there have been several other “legitimate” news sources that say that drumpf is a “shoe-in” for the 2020 election, in spite of the democretins gearing up to regain the majority in the 2018 election.

i’m not sure how the world is going to survive eight years of oprobrious orange “leadership”, but if this goes on much longer, it’s looking as though I won’t survive that long. 😑

a ray of hope…

a ray of hope that could very well be the headlight of an oncoming train…

turns out comrade drumpf is under investigation by the FBI. so, like the legendary nixon before him, he fired the director of the FBI this morning.

yeah, that’s not the same as admitting that he’s done something wrong, but if it walks like a duck…

it’s just a matter of time before he’s EX-president drumpf, and it can’t come too quickly for my liking.

the only problem is that when comrade drumpf gets arrested and/or impeached, the next toadie in line is pence, and, while i hate drumpf with a white-hot passion, pence would be 10,000 times worse.

groan

it just keeps getting worse…

republicons, with the encouragement of hair furor, #drumpf, have managed to shove through a repeal of obamacare, and the “trumpcare” that they’ve proposed to replace it only serves to move a fair portion of the country’s remaining wealth from the poorer 99% to the richer 1%, and provides the opposite of health care, or health insurance for everybody except republicon representatives and their families.

#drumpf has also signed an executive order “restoring” religious liberty by making it okay for “christians” to deny services to gay couples and anybody else that they don’t like, and gutting the law that prevents religious leaders from making political recommendations.

will somebody kill me now? i’m really tired of living in this nightmare-hell… 😩 😧 😠

squeeeeeee!!

okay, whenever i get personal email from a “famous artist” who i really admire, i get a little verklempt.

a few years ago, i discovered this really weird, really prolific artist, who called himself Ergo Phizmiz, and, since then, i have accumulated approximately 40 individual downloads from him, all of which i really enjoy.

recently — within the last 6 months or so — he decided that the “Ergo Phizmiz” persona had run its course, and started releasing music under a much more “normal” sounding name, Dominic Robertson. i bought his most recent release, and he wrote me to thank me:

Just a quick note to say thanks very much for buying my recent releases on Bandcamp, most appreciated indeed.

feeling encouraged, i wrote back:

i have 40 downloaded albums by Ergo Phizmiz and/or Dominic Robertson, and i enjoy all of them. 8)

i am a musician as well, and play a variety of different instruments:

https://salamandir.bandcamp.com/ – by myself
https://saintfred.bandcamp.com/ – mostly by myself, but different instruments
https://and-more.bandcamp.com/ – with a friend, since the early 1980s
https://snakesuspenderz.bandcamp.com/ – with three friends, and totally different instruments

i also play with the Fremont Philharmonic, a 9-piece wind band that started out as a circus band, many years ago… but they don’t have anything recorded…

keep making music. it’s the only “real” thing there is! 8)

this was his reply:

Thanks a lot Salamandir. Lovely to meet you, going to put my feet up later and tune into you and your hybrid elephants.

squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! 😁

although, to be honest, i probably wouldn’t have paid as much attention to him at first, if he had been dominic robertson… a lot of my initial attraction to him was that he made wonderfully weird music AND was called “Ergo Phizmiz”…

blue moon

this is the second time i’ve played at the blue moon, and the third time i’ve actually been in the blue moon… the first time i was in there, in the early 1990s, which was before i played there the first time, i went there to meet an old friend, who proceded to borrow $20 from me, and then i never saw her again.

Snake Suspenderz at The Blue Moon tavern in the University District
Snake Suspenderz at The Blue Moon tavern in the University District

i figured that if it cost me $20 to make sure that i never see her again, it was probably worth it.

depression

A Blood Test May Help Pinpoint the Right Antidepressant for You… but why do i need "the right anti-depressant" when my depression is caused by other people? why should I medicate myself when i wouldn’t be depressed if everybody else would just act in a more sane manner?

is it, really not a medication to treat my depression, but, rather, a medication to make me like everybody else? what is the point of not being depressed if i have to deliberately, chemically alter my state of consciousness to achieve it? if "finding the right anti-depressant" will be the solution to my problem of depression, then why wasn’t it decided for me when i was born, that this is the solution, and start me on anti-depressants at that time? once again, i ask: why should I medicate myself when i wouldn’t be depressed if everybody else would just act in a more sane manner?

😠

it seems incredible, as in “un-believable”, but #drumpf keeps on getting worse… and, at this point, it’s a lot more likely that we will experience nuclear armageddon within the next six months than it has ever been in my life… and, as noah mickens says, it’s difficult to get motivated to do anything when the news is that there’s going to be nuclear war within the week. 😠

and it’s going to be at least 2018 before we can legally vote the crap out. at this point, it’s my very strong impression that we will either annihilate ourselves, or experience a violent revolution before then, and, while i hope that neither one happens, it appears that either option may be better than allowing #drumpf to run roughshod over what is left of america until november of next year.

the only thing that keeps me going, at this point, is the vague realisation that what i hear in the news is deliberately made to sound as dire as possible, in order to provide that extra “thrill” required to make people want to know more, for as many people as possible, and that, in reality, things aren’t anywhere near as bad as they’re making it out to be…

but when they’re talking in serious tones about nuclear war between donald trump and kim jong-un — the two most childish leaders on the face of the planet — there’s an awful lot of leeway that still includes a large swath of the entire population of the world before we get anywhere close to “reasonable”. 😐

in other news, snake suspenderz has two gigs coming up this weekend. an hour at the opening of a new winery in woodinville, on saturday, and at the blue moon on sunday. woo… if #drumpf doesn’t blow us up before then…

i’m really glad…

the computer industry has been a-twitter for the past few days, concerning a zero-day “bug” in micro$lop word, which gives an attacker full execution control of the victim’s machine — a Very Bad Thing®.

this reminds me of a couple of things that i experienced, more-or-less first-hand, while i was working at micro$lop, and is the PRIMARY REASON why i’m really glad i don’t run machines with their software on them.

there’s this, which outlines what the “bug” is, and how it allows an attacker to take control of a victim’s machine (i put the word “bug” in quotation marks because bugs are usually things that appear in the code by mistake, but it is my impression that micro$lop put this in deliberately, without realising the potential damage it could do)… which brings up the fact that they have known, particularly, about security problems with OLE (which went through a stage where they were referring to it as “ActiveX”), at least since my friend, and computer-god fred debuted The Exploder Control in 1995, which did a clean shut-down of any machine unfortunate enough to be running Windows95 — PLEASE NOTE: the Exploder Control is not harmful, and will not run correctly unless you’re running Windows95 and Internet Explorer version 3, which, by this time, presumably, you’re not. fred’s premise was, and still is, that if you have a method of excersising THAT MUCH control over a machine, it better well be FULLY AND COMPLETELY SECURE, otherwise people WILL take advantage of it.

i worked at micro$lop when the first Word Concept Virus was discovered. it was unique (at the time) because it allowed an attacker to infect a victim’s machine over email, without actually having to have physical contact with the target machine. it worked by utilising micro$lop word’s “normal.dot” template, and required the victim to have macros enabled by default. the new, most recent word problem doesn’t require macros to be enabled, and doesn’t work if the application is running in “Protected View”. so, the solution micro$lop has come up with is to recommend that you run word in “Protected View” in order to avoid this particular vulnerability.

it is significant, to me, that the primary reason we have things like active antivirus software on our computers today is because of actions taken by the micro$lop corporation when i worked there. when i was working there, they were the largest manufacturer of computer software in the world.

and it reminds me of the solution micro$lop came up with to avoid another “bug” in another one of their “excellent” programs, internet explorer: version 3 exhibited a flaw in the way that it displays URIs in the address bar, and by opening a specially crafted URI an attacker could open a page that appears to be from a different domain from the current location. the solution? “Do not click any hyperlinks that you do not trust. Type them into the address bar yourself“… despite the fact that one of the features of all web browsers is that you can get from one source of information to the next, easily, without having to type in long, unintelligible strings of code.

Rule of thumb — Every time Microsoft uses the word “smart,” be on the lookout for something dumb.
     — John Walker

A little detective work revealed that, as is usually the case when you encounter something shoddy in the vicinity of a computer, Microsoft incompetence and gratuitous incompatibility were to blame.
     — John Walker

grr…

i was going over some updates with the new web site designer. because of a couple of component updates, some of my templates were deprecated and needed to be updated. i figured i could probably update them, since all that was needed was for me to determine which templates needed to be updated, download the updates, FTP to the site and replace the old ones with the new ones. in the process of finding out which of the templates needed to be updated, i came across a random, and somewhat unexpected error with my SSL certificate. the web designer said the host provider needed to fix it. the host provider said that the web designer needed to fix it.

😑 ‽‽‽‽

it was getting really late last night, when the host provider said that the web designer needed to fix it, and he wasn’t going to be available until tomorrow. i told the geek at the host provider that it sounded to me like it was a problem that the host provider was supposed to fix, and the geek proceded to break it even more. i was blocked out of my own site, temporarily, and when i was able to log in again, instead of being able to log out, i was redirected to a page that told me i was temporarily blocked from access… regardless of which browser, or which platform i used, i was able to login successfully, but was unable to log out.

😑 ‽ 😑 ‽ 😑 ‽ 😑 ‽

today, i contacted the web site designer. i agreed to give him $150, and he agreed to fix my site, and update it with the right templates.

grr… 😕

sigh, i guess i’d better update this thing again…

not much has been happening, except for the world slowly blowing up because of the inanity of #drumpf.

i’ve finished one week of moisture festival performances, with the phil, and snake suspenderz actually has a rehearsal (our first one in more than a year), on wednesday, three days prior to us going on stage on saturday, for two more moisture festival shows. the moisture festival is over on sunday. i keep wondering why i do this, and i am still wondering why i do this, unlike my previous predicition.

there are a few more snake suspenderz gigs coming up, for a change…

apart from that, it’s pretty much rehearsal season.

i found a new dispensary, fairly close to my house — commencement bay cannabis — which appears to have high quality material for insanely low prices… like, for the price of an ounce in a number of other places i have been to, i can get TWO ounces at CBC. current fave is Cinex.

blast from the past…

Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills - Teachers' Edition
Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills – Teachers’ Edition

where do i start?

quite a number of years ago… maybe 35 or 40… i used to entertain myself by calling radio preachers and saying bizarre stuff. after a while, i started recording these conversations arguments, particularly with one specific radio preacher, Bob Larson, and playing them for my friends. i also sent a copy to a friendly person named Matt Jasper, who ran a little company called Tray Full Of Lab Mice Publications, who combined it with other sound sources and released his own tape, which was called “Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson”… in spite of the fact that “Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson” was only a small part of that tape, which included other people interacting with bob in a similarly strange way.

at some point, someone at Bananafish Magazine got hold of matt’s tape, and combined it with a bunch of other, nominally musical, sources, and, in 1992, released a 7" EP vinyl album, called “Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills – Teachers’ Edition” which was released, as a pressing of 1,500, with issue #7.

and i FINALLY had to BUY my copy, a couple of weeks ago, from the River Street Beats Shop, because i didn’t even know the album existed until a couple of weeks ago… 😎

π day

approximations of π include

  • Integers: 3
  • Fractions: Approximate fractions include (in order of increasing accuracy) 227, 333106, 355113, 5216316604, 10399333102, and 24585092278256779. (List is selected terms from OEISA063674 and OEISA063673.)
  • Decimal: The first 50 decimal digits are 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510… (see OEISA000796)
  • Binary: The base 2 approximation to 48 digits is 11.001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011… (see OEISA004601)
  • Hexadecimal: The base 16 approximation to 20 digits is 3.243F6A8885A308D31319… (see OEISA062964)
  • Sexagesimal: A base 60 approximation to five sexagesimal digits is 3;8,29,44,0,47 (see OEISA060707)

rehearsal season

we’re gearing up for the moisture festival in a couple of weeks. the ballard sedentary sousa band starts rehearsals for the 2017 season tomorrow. we start the season may 28th at the folklife festival. and snake suspenderz has gigs at the moisture festival, a winery in woodinville, and the blue moon in april.

things continue to get orders of magnitude worse in drumpf-land. at this point, if he were to disappear today, we would have approximately 10 years of cleanup to do before the society got back to “normal”… and there’s no way he’s going to “disappear” until at least next year. at this point, there’s an equal chance that he will destroy the world, or i will die before then. 😑

#drumpf

#drumpf is not “presidential”.

#drumpf is a 3-year-old child who has been kept up far beyond his normal bed time, in an adult body, and that body is president of the united states.

things need to change… NOW! 😠

sickness and depression

i’ve been “sick or not” for a week now, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. i don’t “feel” sick, but if i don’t take immune boosters and/or if i work too hard i get a sore throat and really congested. it never really comes on strong and takes hold, but it also doesn’t seem to want to go away any time soon. i’ve been taking immune boosters along with my 5HTP, and i can feel it helping, but it’s apparently not enough to make the “sickness or not” go away completely. combine that with depression that has been increasing or decreasing in intensity, but never actually going away, ever since #drumpf was elected, and it makes for a really difficult time merely existing in the world.

i’m playing for a burlesque show at the substation in ballard on march 7th, and then a week of moisture festival performances with the fremont philharmonic starting on march 22nd, plus 2 moisture festival performances by snake suspenderz on april 8th, and a gig with snake suspenderz on march 22nd in woodinville that pays $125 an hour, cash…

but i would still prefer it if i died, or, even better, if everybody else died, except for moe, the fremont philharmonic, snake suspenderz, the people with whom i’m doing the burlesque show, the significant others of the aforementioned people… and, MAYBE a few audience members…

weird

i’m “sick”…

i don’t “feel sick”, in fact, i feel largely the same way i do pretty much all the time: no abnormal aches or pains, clear sinuses, i’m able to breathe without difficulty, no headache or plugged ears… my throat is slightly swollen and even more slightly sore — which is something i started noticing a couple of nights ago… but i’m not coughing (except when i smoke pot, which is relatively normal), and it’s hardly even noticible most of the time.

but i’m REALLY cold most of the time, even though the temperature outside has been between 45° and 50° and inside has been more like 65°. i spent pretty much all day yesterday on the recliner, alternately watching TV and sleeping, in spite of the fact that i could have been more active, and, today, i’m thinking that i may go out and check my mailbox, but i’m also inclined to waste another day in front of the TV.

wow…

i actually got my first “paypal donation” from the button on the left… $1.11 from someone who i don’t know named zach edminster. whoever you are, if you’re reading this, zach edminster is appreciated… 👍 😎

i got some more training on the web site. i also got an order for $130 worth of incense and bric-a-brac from someone in north carolina.

変危険

変危険 = Strange Danger

we got a new puppy on saturday. it’s a 7-week-old border collie puppy named Kestrel. we were kept awake most of saturday night by the puppy’s crying, which made me feel like the most horrible person in the world. the puppy hasn’t cried (in fact it has slept almost all the way through the night) ever since, but i still feel really depressed. i’ve started walking again, which has helped — i quit around october or so of last year, shortly after moe’s father died — and i’ve decided to subscribe to soylent — because it’s better quality nutrition than boost, or ensure, or muscle milk, or two or three other commercially available “nutrition shakes” i investigated — so i may actually be getting more regular nutrition than i have… well… basically, forever…

but waking up every day and realising that #drumpf is president (“So-Called Ruler Of The United States” or #SCROTUS) is a lot like being waterboarded. 😨

snooo

it snowed pretty hard sunday night, so yesterday was a “snow day” for most of western washington. my personal opinion is that snow should stay up in the mountains, where it belongs, but that is, very likely, influenced very heavily by the fact that we lived in buffalo, new york, for five years, when i was a kid, where we experienced an average of 5 FEET of snow from approximately october to approximately may, EVERY, SINGLE, YEAR… 😕 today it was snowing and melting at the same time for a while, and it’s been really warm, but there has been very little disappearance of snow, in spite of everything. according to my weather gadget, it’s supposed to be rainy and even warmer tomorrow, so maybe it’ll go away. it’s extremely rare for snow to hang around more than a few days, around here, but the longer it does, the more annoyed i am with it.

moe went to orlando on saturday. she’ll be back tomorrow evening. rye has been a very good dog, but it’s evident that he’s annoyed that monique isn’t here. i’m going to bet that he’s also going to be annoyed when the puppy shows up, but only until he realises that it’ll want to play with him ALL THE TIME.

plotz

drumpf continues to be a gold-plated asshole. his “muslim/immigrant ban” has been halted, temporarily, but he’s still building a wall, continuing with construction of two major oil pipelines, removing restrictions on coal companies dumping waste into streams, removing the affordable care act, blatantly censoring publically funded government entities like the parks department, the department of agriculture, NASA, and the environmental protection agency, firing people who resist him, and filling all available government positions with his cronies, who he has been encouraging to do similar things. he has gone on record opposing environmental restrictions by saying that his “friends” have businesses and they can’t borrow… 😠

i am getting an upgrade on the hybrid elephant web site. should be ready monday, with no down time. i’m wondering how long i can do this before i have to go out of business. reluctantly, i’ve spent about $1,000 on my web site in around a year, and i am pretty sure the web site hasn’t provided me with a commensurate amount of income. 😒

panto check came in. $100 less than last year. i’m not sure why, but it’s still the single greatest source of income i have for the entire year. next up is moisture festival. i know of at least a week’s worth of performances with the phil, for sure, and i know that snake suspenderz is “in”, but there’s still no clue how many shows, and/or whether or not we’re going to be a “show band”. i really need to find a new band and/or get us playing more frequently. 😐

puppies are still alive. mother (sis) is also still alive. the puppies have turned into alligators, so when they’re not actually feeding, sis has to wear a t-shirt or something to prevent the puppies from biting her tits off. we’re going to either visit, or to pick up a puppy (depending on as yet unknown other circumstances) on the 11th, and if we don’t pick up a puppy at that time, presumably we’re going to pick it up on the 17th… and then moe is going to some conference, somewhere, and i’m going to be left by myself to take care of three adult dogs and one 8-week-old puppy… thrill…

pictures

the

moclips

so, i’ve had this idea for a bumper sticker:

it says “‘ana last earbia. ‘ana last arhabia. tawaqqaf ean aizeaji.”, which means “I am not an Arab. I am not a terrorist. Stop harrassing me.”

if i made it, would anybody buy it?

thimg

we spent a week at the beach, for moe’s birthday. instead of going to the house that we usually rent, which was down the street, we rented a different house, because we thought that more people were going to show up. at the last minute, one of the people bailed (she had the flu, so it was probably just as well), so it was just me and moe, and micah and shaya (moe’s friends). also, on the web where moe first found it, the place we rented claimed to have WIFI, but, in reality, it doesn’t. this wasn’t very much of a problem for me, moe and micah, but shaya had a lot of work to do that involved people in hawaii and africa, and the lack of connectivity was a real problem for her. the beach was the beach: calm, relaxed… the weather was typical for january, meaning that it was windy and rainy, but not that cold. there were a couple of days where there were very strong winds and rain pretty much all day, there were a couple of days where the weather was windy and rainy for part of the day, and there was at least one day where the weather was sunny and cloudless. i got to fly my kite a few times, moe took the drone out a couple of times, the doggles got thoroughly worn out running on the beach…

but then we came back to “reality”… EEEeeeewwwww!! 😑

the political situation continues to get orders of magnitude worse, on an hourly basis. the most recent things are #drumpf signing executive orders starting construction on “the wall” — which he continues to insist will be paid for by the mexicans, although he admits it “will probably be a complicated process”, and has, meanwhile, begun petitioning an all-republican congress to start eliminating things like medicare and social security so that he can fund building the wall anyway — and starting the deportation process for millions of migrants who are undocumented and/or muslim. of course, there is a lot of protesting going on, on a daily basis, but it doesn’t appear to be making a lot of difference. meanwhile, Resident Chump (as kiki calls him) is putting gag orders on the public parks department, and various different scientific and environmental departments, all of which are publically funded, saying that they are no longer “allowed” to state their findings to the public. there’s a lot of me that wants to give up and move elsewhere, and a good deal of the rest of me that would love to see a revolution. unfortunately, i don’t think i’m ever going to have the resources to leave this country, even for a short period of time, and i’m not sure how effective i would be as a part of a revolution, in spite of how much i would like to see one… and, to be honest, there’s no guarantee that what would happen after a revolution would be any better than what we’ve already got.

in other news, people are still trying to break into my site using the old web developer’s username, and they continue to get blocked from ever being able to access the site. at this point, once or twice a day, i’ll log in and block anywhere from 10 to 50 unauthorised login attempts. it’s getting annoying, but i’m sure having my web site cracked would be even more annoying.

also interesting is the fact that i have had an inbox that is, for the most part, empty, for closing in on a month now… i get two or three emails that i have to hold onto in my inbox for a few days, every now and then, and i usually keep emails for orders that i’ve made, or orders that i have to fill, in my inbox, but i file them when they’re complete. it has been five years or so since i had a completely empty inbox for any significant period of time, and this time is appearing to be quite a bit longer than any time since i started using email on a regular basis… probably 30 years…

twerk

the third of four weeks of panto performances finished today. i’m confident that Rapunzel Stiltskin is the best panto we have done in the fifteen years that we have been doing pantos. we’ve got one more week, four more performances, and it can only get better from here.

i got a kurt weill songbook yesterday, and i intend to write arrangements for the phil, which, hopefully, we can work into moisture festival performances in some way or another. unofficially, we have been offered the second week of performances. once again, unofficially, the “old boy network” is still trying to replace the phil with their buddies, but they still haven’t done more than replace the last two weeks of bands with people who are part of the network, which, strangely enough (because the phil has played every moisture festival since the beginning) doesn’t include the phil. snake suspenderz hasn’t been offered anything, as far as i have heard, which is odd, because the guy who supposedly books music for the festival said that he had more gigs for us… two years ago… needless to say, i am less than enthusiastic about participating in the moisture festival this year.

moe is going to visit the puppies again on friday. at this point, 9 puppies are doing great, and the health of the mother, Sis, is improving massively, although there are still some mysterious deficiencies that are still eluding everyone. at this point, everyone agrees that everyone is going to survive, which is considerably different than the opinion a week and a half ago.

puppy new year

puppies are still alive, for the moment, although now they have come down with diarrhea, which the mother had two or three days ago, and it was suspected that the antibiotics were the culprit… now, it’s kind of suspicious that the puppies have it, because, either they got it from nursing off the mother, and/or it indicates that it might also be contagious… either way, i’m guessing, at this point, that the dog and 9 puppies are going to make it, and will all survive.

as expected, moe did not teach her classes new years’ day, and got home at around 4:00, after spending two days rescuing the puppies. no new years celebrations apart from steak night at akers’ acres which was over at about 8:00. i took a walk down to jovita park and back after that, which got me home about 9:30, and then it was just me and the old, deaf dogs who weren’t even scared of the copious fireworks that, predictably, went off more or less all night.

wonderful x2… ?

so the dog that was supposed to arrive by airplane this morning did not arrive, because it was too cold in boise, by one degree farenheit…

so moe drove to salem, leaving at 7:00 this morning, and won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. she says that she’s got to teach at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, but, unless they can arrange for the bitch in salem that moe found out about last night, to fill in, i’m going to bet that moe’s 2:00 tomorrow afternoon obligation may slide.

😕 😞

wonderful

so, we’re getting a new puppy, which was born about a week ago. in the intervening week, the mother has gotten really sick, and moe has come to the rescue, because the woman whose dog it is was not prepared for anything so dramatic. it ends up that she is picking up another dog at the airport, who will have flown in from idaho, and going down to salem to deliver it. the dog that moe is picking up will “wet nurse” the puppies while the mother is recovering.

so, apart from tonight, which has a Bobs concert that has been planned for months, all other plans for NYE are out the window. i’m staying home with the older dogs, and moe is taking rye and this other dog and going to salem and who knows when they’re going to be back. tomorrow or sunday at the earliest. 😕

my phone and incense

my phone is back in working order again.

the story they gave me, combined with what i suspected, is that the battery “gets used” to having a certain level of charge. the other day, when we were travelling, i didn’t actually plug my phone into the charger for a couple of days, and almost drained the battery before i finally plugged it in. apparently, in cases like that, it’s a good idea, when the phone is finally plugged in, to shut the phone down and restart it, otherwise the battery flips out and causes problems. when it caused problems on my phone, it restarted automatically, and failed to restart, probably because it was lacking power at the time (it was in my pocket). the story they gave me is that, when it fails to restart, it can drain the battery trying to “rescue” the operating system.

now i know: if it fails to restart, plug the phone in to power and hold down the “home” key and the “turn off the screen” key for 30 seconds or so. doing that will, frequently, save a trip to the real technicians.

i’ve gotten 4 incense orders in the past week. one of them i had to refund, because all of what they ordered hasn’t even been in stock for a bunch of years… like, at least two that i can recall, and possibly more than that. i HATE it when that happens. 😑

also, my new credit card service (YAY, NO MORE PAYPAL!) charges a fee, which i have been forgetting to subtract from the totals i have been writing down, which means that where i really am is about $10 less than where i think i am… which is confounded even further by the fact that i lost my tax spreadsheets a few months ago, and, while the electronic version i replaced it with is WAY easier to use, it missed a fair portion of the year because i was getting switched over, combined with the switch in web sites and general forgetfulness.

hairy crispness

we’re getting a new puppy, which was born last night. we’re going to see him tomorrow, and spending the night in a hotel in portland, so that we can visit moe’s mom, as well. i truly understand what the people were talking about when they said that they’re spending the weekend with their in-laws, so they have to stock up on booze.

things continue to get orders of magnitude worse, on a daily basis, politically. drumpf continues to appoint utter moronic idiots to posts for which they are no more qualified for than a slug, and at this point, there’s no solid guarantee that drumpf won’t be the last president, because there will be a nuclear war or the planet will suffer irreparable climate change before the next election. if we do actually survive, it will be decades before we make up the losses that we will have suffered during the next four years. no kidding, it’s going to be a blood bath of biblical proportions.

illegal cops

the time-stamp is wrong. this didn’t happen in january, this happened this afternoon: a state patrol whizzed past me with no emergency lights, siren, or any clue that he was coming up behind me — i was going about 60 mph, he was going around 80 mph or so when he passed me, and sped up to around 100 mph by the time i lost sight of him…

SHINY BADGES DO NOT GRANT EXTRA RIGHTS! 😠

more odd WTF…

there’s been some BIZARRE things going on with my old web-site designer… there was this thing, which resulted in this thing, and i thought that was the end of it…

but then, after installing a new web-site security plugin that actually logs IP addresses and usernames, i discovered that there are HORDES of cracker/script-kiddies who are trying to use my erstwhile web-designer’s username (which, of course, i deleted months ago) to try to break my site…

literally, HORDES

like, in the past two weeks, i have probably blocked at least 200 different IP addresses who tried to login using her user name, everywhere from the united states to nepal, iran, the philippines, australia, russia, israel, brazil, saudi arabia, india, greece, indonesia, italy, france, canada, britain, korea, belgium, barbados, malaysia, madagascar, pakistan, romania… moldova?!?

so, this is my working hypothesis:

i finished my initial work with her, originally, in july, when the web site had been finished.

some time between july and november, she was cracked (which is very definitely NOT a good thing, especially when the product you are selling is web design).

because of the fact that she recently finished working on my web site, she automatically assumed that the people who cracked her were related to me in some way or another (this is a prime example of the “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” logical fallacy).

i don’t actually know people who crack web sites (any longer), but that won’t make an awful lot of difference to a person who has just been cracked… they have to calm down and think logically, which a person who has just been cracked is not inclined to do.

and, of course, since i am no longer even allowed to work with her any longer, there’s no way of my finding out whether or not this is true… πŸ™

moe’s father and his piano

moe’s father died, suddenly, in late october. his funeral was last saturday. some would say “fortunately”, i had two panto performances that day, so i couldn’t go. however, one of the things that was an upshot of moe’s father dying was that moe inherited his piano. so, we now have a fairly decent spinnet piano in our house… or, rather, it will be a fairly decent spinnet piano when we get somebody in to fix the dead keys and clean out the bird-seed and spider-webs. in order to fit it in our house, we had to completely clear out the “office/guest-bedroom” which hasn’t been used as either for a couple of years. the office had a double bed, and a reclining chair that turns into a single bed, along with all of my inventory from hybrid elephant, most of my sound effects (i.e. the ones that i don’t have at the panto currently), a trombone, three trumpets, two soprano clarinets, an alto clarinet, a guitar, a whole bunch of home-made instruments, two huge bags of air-pillow packing materials, a cosco-sized bundle of paper towel rolls, three sleeping bags, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. we got up fairly early yesterday, cleaned out the room and the hallway leading to it, and then we, along with moe’s step-brother, took delivery of a piano. also, because of the fact that it was superfluous, we freecycled the bed… and then we loaded up the back of moe’s step-brother’s truck and made a dump run with a bunch of brush and old lumber.

initially, i was hesitant about bringing the piano into our house, because i was under the impression that it was one of those upright pianos that you see in old western movies, that people stand, lean on, and put their glasses of beer on top of. this piano is actually about half that size. it’s about 3 feet tall, and 24 inches deep.

so, now, instead of an “office/guest-bedroom”, we have a “music room/guest-bedroom”. i’ve already moved in my bach trombone, my fender-rhodes piano, my DX-7, my E♭ tuba, my Sandviker’s Stradivarius musical saw, and my didjeriflute. the theory is that, eventually, that will be a place where we (meaning moe, too, whether she likes it or not! 😈) can go and IMMEDIATELY play music on a variety of instrumets, and the most preparation we might have to do is take an instrument out of its case. it will also be very beneficial for me, when i am transcribing music and need a keyboard. and, because my laptop is portable, i can easily use it to do all kinds of recording and editing and, using my DX-7 as a MIDI controller, i can even use my laptop as an instrument… 😎

woaaah!!! 😲

salamandir@horseradish:~$ iconv
^C
salamandir@horseradish:~$ iconv –help
Usage: iconv [OPTION…] [FILE…]
Convert encoding of given files from one encoding to another.

Input/Output format specification:
-f, –from-code=NAME encoding of original text
-t, –to-code=NAME encoding for output

Information:
-l, –list list all known coded character sets

Output control:
-c omit invalid characters from output
-o, –output=FILE output file
-s, –silent suppress warnings
–verbose print progress information

-?, –help Give this help list
–usage Give a short usage message
-V, –version Print program version

Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are also mandatory or optional
for any corresponding short options.

For bug reporting instructions, please see:
.
salamandir@horseradish:~$ iconv -l
The following list contains all the coded character sets known. This does
not necessarily mean that all combinations of these names can be used for
the FROM and TO command line parameters. One coded character set can be
listed with several different names (aliases).

437, 500, 500V1, 850, 851, 852, 855, 856, 857, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865,
866, 866NAV, 869, 874, 904, 1026, 1046, 1047, 8859_1, 8859_2, 8859_3, 8859_4,
8859_5, 8859_6, 8859_7, 8859_8, 8859_9, 10646-1:1993, 10646-1:1993/UCS4,
ANSI_X3.4-1968, ANSI_X3.4-1986, ANSI_X3.4, ANSI_X3.110-1983, ANSI_X3.110,
ARABIC, ARABIC7, ARMSCII-8, ASCII, ASMO-708, ASMO_449, BALTIC, BIG-5,
BIG-FIVE, BIG5-HKSCS, BIG5, BIG5HKSCS, BIGFIVE, BRF, BS_4730, CA, CN-BIG5,
CN-GB, CN, CP-AR, CP-GR, CP-HU, CP037, CP038, CP273, CP274, CP275, CP278,
CP280, CP281, CP282, CP284, CP285, CP290, CP297, CP367, CP420, CP423, CP424,
CP437, CP500, CP737, CP770, CP771, CP772, CP773, CP774, CP775, CP803, CP813,
CP819, CP850, CP851, CP852, CP855, CP856, CP857, CP860, CP861, CP862, CP863,
CP864, CP865, CP866, CP866NAV, CP868, CP869, CP870, CP871, CP874, CP875,
CP880, CP891, CP901, CP902, CP903, CP904, CP905, CP912, CP915, CP916, CP918,
CP920, CP921, CP922, CP930, CP932, CP933, CP935, CP936, CP937, CP939, CP949,
CP950, CP1004, CP1008, CP1025, CP1026, CP1046, CP1047, CP1070, CP1079,
CP1081, CP1084, CP1089, CP1097, CP1112, CP1122, CP1123, CP1124, CP1125,
CP1129, CP1130, CP1132, CP1133, CP1137, CP1140, CP1141, CP1142, CP1143,
CP1144, CP1145, CP1146, CP1147, CP1148, CP1149, CP1153, CP1154, CP1155,
CP1156, CP1157, CP1158, CP1160, CP1161, CP1162, CP1163, CP1164, CP1166,
CP1167, CP1250, CP1251, CP1252, CP1253, CP1254, CP1255, CP1256, CP1257,
CP1258, CP1282, CP1361, CP1364, CP1371, CP1388, CP1390, CP1399, CP4517,
CP4899, CP4909, CP4971, CP5347, CP9030, CP9066, CP9448, CP10007, CP12712,
CP16804, CPIBM861, CSA7-1, CSA7-2, CSASCII, CSA_T500-1983, CSA_T500,
CSA_Z243.4-1985-1, CSA_Z243.4-1985-2, CSA_Z243.419851, CSA_Z243.419852,
CSDECMCS, CSEBCDICATDE, CSEBCDICATDEA, CSEBCDICCAFR, CSEBCDICDKNO,
CSEBCDICDKNOA, CSEBCDICES, CSEBCDICESA, CSEBCDICESS, CSEBCDICFISE,
CSEBCDICFISEA, CSEBCDICFR, CSEBCDICIT, CSEBCDICPT, CSEBCDICUK, CSEBCDICUS,
CSEUCKR, CSEUCPKDFMTJAPANESE, CSGB2312, CSHPROMAN8, CSIBM037, CSIBM038,
CSIBM273, CSIBM274, CSIBM275, CSIBM277, CSIBM278, CSIBM280, CSIBM281,
CSIBM284, CSIBM285, CSIBM290, CSIBM297, CSIBM420, CSIBM423, CSIBM424,
CSIBM500, CSIBM803, CSIBM851, CSIBM855, CSIBM856, CSIBM857, CSIBM860,
CSIBM863, CSIBM864, CSIBM865, CSIBM866, CSIBM868, CSIBM869, CSIBM870,
CSIBM871, CSIBM880, CSIBM891, CSIBM901, CSIBM902, CSIBM903, CSIBM904,
CSIBM905, CSIBM918, CSIBM921, CSIBM922, CSIBM930, CSIBM932, CSIBM933,
CSIBM935, CSIBM937, CSIBM939, CSIBM943, CSIBM1008, CSIBM1025, CSIBM1026,
CSIBM1097, CSIBM1112, CSIBM1122, CSIBM1123, CSIBM1124, CSIBM1129, CSIBM1130,
CSIBM1132, CSIBM1133, CSIBM1137, CSIBM1140, CSIBM1141, CSIBM1142, CSIBM1143,
CSIBM1144, CSIBM1145, CSIBM1146, CSIBM1147, CSIBM1148, CSIBM1149, CSIBM1153,
CSIBM1154, CSIBM1155, CSIBM1156, CSIBM1157, CSIBM1158, CSIBM1160, CSIBM1161,
CSIBM1163, CSIBM1164, CSIBM1166, CSIBM1167, CSIBM1364, CSIBM1371, CSIBM1388,
CSIBM1390, CSIBM1399, CSIBM4517, CSIBM4899, CSIBM4909, CSIBM4971, CSIBM5347,
CSIBM9030, CSIBM9066, CSIBM9448, CSIBM12712, CSIBM16804, CSIBM11621162,
CSISO4UNITEDKINGDOM, CSISO10SWEDISH, CSISO11SWEDISHFORNAMES,
CSISO14JISC6220RO, CSISO15ITALIAN, CSISO16PORTUGESE, CSISO17SPANISH,
CSISO18GREEK7OLD, CSISO19LATINGREEK, CSISO21GERMAN, CSISO25FRENCH,
CSISO27LATINGREEK1, CSISO49INIS, CSISO50INIS8, CSISO51INISCYRILLIC,
CSISO58GB1988, CSISO60DANISHNORWEGIAN, CSISO60NORWEGIAN1, CSISO61NORWEGIAN2,
CSISO69FRENCH, CSISO84PORTUGUESE2, CSISO85SPANISH2, CSISO86HUNGARIAN,
CSISO88GREEK7, CSISO89ASMO449, CSISO90, CSISO92JISC62991984B, CSISO99NAPLPS,
CSISO103T618BIT, CSISO111ECMACYRILLIC, CSISO121CANADIAN1, CSISO122CANADIAN2,
CSISO139CSN369103, CSISO141JUSIB1002, CSISO143IECP271, CSISO150,
CSISO150GREEKCCITT, CSISO151CUBA, CSISO153GOST1976874, CSISO646DANISH,
CSISO2022CN, CSISO2022JP, CSISO2022JP2, CSISO2022KR, CSISO2033,
CSISO5427CYRILLIC, CSISO5427CYRILLIC1981, CSISO5428GREEK, CSISO10367BOX,
CSISOLATIN1, CSISOLATIN2, CSISOLATIN3, CSISOLATIN4, CSISOLATIN5, CSISOLATIN6,
CSISOLATINARABIC, CSISOLATINCYRILLIC, CSISOLATINGREEK, CSISOLATINHEBREW,
CSKOI8R, CSKSC5636, CSMACINTOSH, CSNATSDANO, CSNATSSEFI, CSN_369103,
CSPC8CODEPAGE437, CSPC775BALTIC, CSPC850MULTILINGUAL, CSPC862LATINHEBREW,
CSPCP852, CSSHIFTJIS, CSUCS4, CSUNICODE, CSWINDOWS31J, CUBA, CWI-2, CWI,
CYRILLIC, DE, DEC-MCS, DEC, DECMCS, DIN_66003, DK, DS2089, DS_2089, E13B,
EBCDIC-AT-DE-A, EBCDIC-AT-DE, EBCDIC-BE, EBCDIC-BR, EBCDIC-CA-FR,
EBCDIC-CP-AR1, EBCDIC-CP-AR2, EBCDIC-CP-BE, EBCDIC-CP-CA, EBCDIC-CP-CH,
EBCDIC-CP-DK, EBCDIC-CP-ES, EBCDIC-CP-FI, EBCDIC-CP-FR, EBCDIC-CP-GB,
EBCDIC-CP-GR, EBCDIC-CP-HE, EBCDIC-CP-IS, EBCDIC-CP-IT, EBCDIC-CP-NL,
EBCDIC-CP-NO, EBCDIC-CP-ROECE, EBCDIC-CP-SE, EBCDIC-CP-TR, EBCDIC-CP-US,
EBCDIC-CP-WT, EBCDIC-CP-YU, EBCDIC-CYRILLIC, EBCDIC-DK-NO-A, EBCDIC-DK-NO,
EBCDIC-ES-A, EBCDIC-ES-S, EBCDIC-ES, EBCDIC-FI-SE-A, EBCDIC-FI-SE, EBCDIC-FR,
EBCDIC-GREEK, EBCDIC-INT, EBCDIC-INT1, EBCDIC-IS-FRISS, EBCDIC-IT,
EBCDIC-JP-E, EBCDIC-JP-KANA, EBCDIC-PT, EBCDIC-UK, EBCDIC-US, EBCDICATDE,
EBCDICATDEA, EBCDICCAFR, EBCDICDKNO, EBCDICDKNOA, EBCDICES, EBCDICESA,
EBCDICESS, EBCDICFISE, EBCDICFISEA, EBCDICFR, EBCDICISFRISS, EBCDICIT,
EBCDICPT, EBCDICUK, EBCDICUS, ECMA-114, ECMA-118, ECMA-128, ECMA-CYRILLIC,
ECMACYRILLIC, ELOT_928, ES, ES2, EUC-CN, EUC-JISX0213, EUC-JP-MS, EUC-JP,
EUC-KR, EUC-TW, EUCCN, EUCJP-MS, EUCJP-OPEN, EUCJP-WIN, EUCJP, EUCKR, EUCTW,
FI, FR, GB, GB2312, GB13000, GB18030, GBK, GB_1988-80, GB_198880,
GEORGIAN-ACADEMY, GEORGIAN-PS, GOST_19768-74, GOST_19768, GOST_1976874,
GREEK-CCITT, GREEK, GREEK7-OLD, GREEK7, GREEK7OLD, GREEK8, GREEKCCITT,
HEBREW, HP-GREEK8, HP-ROMAN8, HP-ROMAN9, HP-THAI8, HP-TURKISH8, HPGREEK8,
HPROMAN8, HPROMAN9, HPTHAI8, HPTURKISH8, HU, IBM-803, IBM-856, IBM-901,
IBM-902, IBM-921, IBM-922, IBM-930, IBM-932, IBM-933, IBM-935, IBM-937,
IBM-939, IBM-943, IBM-1008, IBM-1025, IBM-1046, IBM-1047, IBM-1097, IBM-1112,
IBM-1122, IBM-1123, IBM-1124, IBM-1129, IBM-1130, IBM-1132, IBM-1133,
IBM-1137, IBM-1140, IBM-1141, IBM-1142, IBM-1143, IBM-1144, IBM-1145,
IBM-1146, IBM-1147, IBM-1148, IBM-1149, IBM-1153, IBM-1154, IBM-1155,
IBM-1156, IBM-1157, IBM-1158, IBM-1160, IBM-1161, IBM-1162, IBM-1163,
IBM-1164, IBM-1166, IBM-1167, IBM-1364, IBM-1371, IBM-1388, IBM-1390,
IBM-1399, IBM-4517, IBM-4899, IBM-4909, IBM-4971, IBM-5347, IBM-9030,
IBM-9066, IBM-9448, IBM-12712, IBM-16804, IBM037, IBM038, IBM256, IBM273,
IBM274, IBM275, IBM277, IBM278, IBM280, IBM281, IBM284, IBM285, IBM290,
IBM297, IBM367, IBM420, IBM423, IBM424, IBM437, IBM500, IBM775, IBM803,
IBM813, IBM819, IBM848, IBM850, IBM851, IBM852, IBM855, IBM856, IBM857,
IBM860, IBM861, IBM862, IBM863, IBM864, IBM865, IBM866, IBM866NAV, IBM868,
IBM869, IBM870, IBM871, IBM874, IBM875, IBM880, IBM891, IBM901, IBM902,
IBM903, IBM904, IBM905, IBM912, IBM915, IBM916, IBM918, IBM920, IBM921,
IBM922, IBM930, IBM932, IBM933, IBM935, IBM937, IBM939, IBM943, IBM1004,
IBM1008, IBM1025, IBM1026, IBM1046, IBM1047, IBM1089, IBM1097, IBM1112,
IBM1122, IBM1123, IBM1124, IBM1129, IBM1130, IBM1132, IBM1133, IBM1137,
IBM1140, IBM1141, IBM1142, IBM1143, IBM1144, IBM1145, IBM1146, IBM1147,
IBM1148, IBM1149, IBM1153, IBM1154, IBM1155, IBM1156, IBM1157, IBM1158,
IBM1160, IBM1161, IBM1162, IBM1163, IBM1164, IBM1166, IBM1167, IBM1364,
IBM1371, IBM1388, IBM1390, IBM1399, IBM4517, IBM4899, IBM4909, IBM4971,
IBM5347, IBM9030, IBM9066, IBM9448, IBM12712, IBM16804, IEC_P27-1, IEC_P271,
INIS-8, INIS-CYRILLIC, INIS, INIS8, INISCYRILLIC, ISIRI-3342, ISIRI3342,
ISO-2022-CN-EXT, ISO-2022-CN, ISO-2022-JP-2, ISO-2022-JP-3, ISO-2022-JP,
ISO-2022-KR, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-3, ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5,
ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7, ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-9E, ISO-8859-10,
ISO-8859-11, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-14, ISO-8859-15, ISO-8859-16, ISO-10646,
ISO-10646/UCS2, ISO-10646/UCS4, ISO-10646/UTF-8, ISO-10646/UTF8, ISO-CELTIC,
ISO-IR-4, ISO-IR-6, ISO-IR-8-1, ISO-IR-9-1, ISO-IR-10, ISO-IR-11, ISO-IR-14,
ISO-IR-15, ISO-IR-16, ISO-IR-17, ISO-IR-18, ISO-IR-19, ISO-IR-21, ISO-IR-25,
ISO-IR-27, ISO-IR-37, ISO-IR-49, ISO-IR-50, ISO-IR-51, ISO-IR-54, ISO-IR-55,
ISO-IR-57, ISO-IR-60, ISO-IR-61, ISO-IR-69, ISO-IR-84, ISO-IR-85, ISO-IR-86,
ISO-IR-88, ISO-IR-89, ISO-IR-90, ISO-IR-92, ISO-IR-98, ISO-IR-99, ISO-IR-100,
ISO-IR-101, ISO-IR-103, ISO-IR-109, ISO-IR-110, ISO-IR-111, ISO-IR-121,
ISO-IR-122, ISO-IR-126, ISO-IR-127, ISO-IR-138, ISO-IR-139, ISO-IR-141,
ISO-IR-143, ISO-IR-144, ISO-IR-148, ISO-IR-150, ISO-IR-151, ISO-IR-153,
ISO-IR-155, ISO-IR-156, ISO-IR-157, ISO-IR-166, ISO-IR-179, ISO-IR-193,
ISO-IR-197, ISO-IR-199, ISO-IR-203, ISO-IR-209, ISO-IR-226, ISO/TR_11548-1,
ISO646-CA, ISO646-CA2, ISO646-CN, ISO646-CU, ISO646-DE, ISO646-DK, ISO646-ES,
ISO646-ES2, ISO646-FI, ISO646-FR, ISO646-FR1, ISO646-GB, ISO646-HU,
ISO646-IT, ISO646-JP-OCR-B, ISO646-JP, ISO646-KR, ISO646-NO, ISO646-NO2,
ISO646-PT, ISO646-PT2, ISO646-SE, ISO646-SE2, ISO646-US, ISO646-YU,
ISO2022CN, ISO2022CNEXT, ISO2022JP, ISO2022JP2, ISO2022KR, ISO6937,
ISO8859-1, ISO8859-2, ISO8859-3, ISO8859-4, ISO8859-5, ISO8859-6, ISO8859-7,
ISO8859-8, ISO8859-9, ISO8859-9E, ISO8859-10, ISO8859-11, ISO8859-13,
ISO8859-14, ISO8859-15, ISO8859-16, ISO11548-1, ISO88591, ISO88592, ISO88593,
ISO88594, ISO88595, ISO88596, ISO88597, ISO88598, ISO88599, ISO88599E,
ISO885910, ISO885911, ISO885913, ISO885914, ISO885915, ISO885916,
ISO_646.IRV:1991, ISO_2033-1983, ISO_2033, ISO_5427-EXT, ISO_5427,
ISO_5427:1981, ISO_5427EXT, ISO_5428, ISO_5428:1980, ISO_6937-2,
ISO_6937-2:1983, ISO_6937, ISO_6937:1992, ISO_8859-1, ISO_8859-1:1987,
ISO_8859-2, ISO_8859-2:1987, ISO_8859-3, ISO_8859-3:1988, ISO_8859-4,
ISO_8859-4:1988, ISO_8859-5, ISO_8859-5:1988, ISO_8859-6, ISO_8859-6:1987,
ISO_8859-7, ISO_8859-7:1987, ISO_8859-7:2003, ISO_8859-8, ISO_8859-8:1988,
ISO_8859-9, ISO_8859-9:1989, ISO_8859-9E, ISO_8859-10, ISO_8859-10:1992,
ISO_8859-14, ISO_8859-14:1998, ISO_8859-15, ISO_8859-15:1998, ISO_8859-16,
ISO_8859-16:2001, ISO_9036, ISO_10367-BOX, ISO_10367BOX, ISO_11548-1,
ISO_69372, IT, JIS_C6220-1969-RO, JIS_C6229-1984-B, JIS_C62201969RO,
JIS_C62291984B, JOHAB, JP-OCR-B, JP, JS, JUS_I.B1.002, KOI-7, KOI-8, KOI8-R,
KOI8-RU, KOI8-T, KOI8-U, KOI8, KOI8R, KOI8U, KSC5636, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6,
L7, L8, L10, LATIN-9, LATIN-GREEK-1, LATIN-GREEK, LATIN1, LATIN2, LATIN3,
LATIN4, LATIN5, LATIN6, LATIN7, LATIN8, LATIN9, LATIN10, LATINGREEK,
LATINGREEK1, MAC-CENTRALEUROPE, MAC-CYRILLIC, MAC-IS, MAC-SAMI, MAC-UK, MAC,
MACCYRILLIC, MACINTOSH, MACIS, MACUK, MACUKRAINIAN, MIK, MS-ANSI, MS-ARAB,
MS-CYRL, MS-EE, MS-GREEK, MS-HEBR, MS-MAC-CYRILLIC, MS-TURK, MS932, MS936,
MSCP949, MSCP1361, MSMACCYRILLIC, MSZ_7795.3, MS_KANJI, NAPLPS, NATS-DANO,
NATS-SEFI, NATSDANO, NATSSEFI, NC_NC0010, NC_NC00-10, NC_NC00-10:81,
NF_Z_62-010, NF_Z_62-010_(1973), NF_Z_62-010_1973, NF_Z_62010,
NF_Z_62010_1973, NO, NO2, NS_4551-1, NS_4551-2, NS_45511, NS_45512,
OS2LATIN1, OSF00010001, OSF00010002, OSF00010003, OSF00010004, OSF00010005,
OSF00010006, OSF00010007, OSF00010008, OSF00010009, OSF0001000A, OSF00010020,
OSF00010100, OSF00010101, OSF00010102, OSF00010104, OSF00010105, OSF00010106,
OSF00030010, OSF0004000A, OSF0005000A, OSF05010001, OSF100201A4, OSF100201A8,
OSF100201B5, OSF100201F4, OSF100203B5, OSF1002011C, OSF1002011D, OSF1002035D,
OSF1002035E, OSF1002035F, OSF1002036B, OSF1002037B, OSF10010001, OSF10010004,
OSF10010006, OSF10020025, OSF10020111, OSF10020115, OSF10020116, OSF10020118,
OSF10020122, OSF10020129, OSF10020352, OSF10020354, OSF10020357, OSF10020359,
OSF10020360, OSF10020364, OSF10020365, OSF10020366, OSF10020367, OSF10020370,
OSF10020387, OSF10020388, OSF10020396, OSF10020402, OSF10020417, PT, PT2,
PT154, R8, R9, RK1048, ROMAN8, ROMAN9, RUSCII, SE, SE2, SEN_850200_B,
SEN_850200_C, SHIFT-JIS, SHIFT_JIS, SHIFT_JISX0213, SJIS-OPEN, SJIS-WIN,
SJIS, SS636127, STRK1048-2002, ST_SEV_358-88, T.61-8BIT, T.61, T.618BIT,
TCVN-5712, TCVN, TCVN5712-1, TCVN5712-1:1993, THAI8, TIS-620, TIS620-0,
TIS620.2529-1, TIS620.2533-0, TIS620, TS-5881, TSCII, TURKISH8, UCS-2,
UCS-2BE, UCS-2LE, UCS-4, UCS-4BE, UCS-4LE, UCS2, UCS4, UHC, UJIS, UK,
UNICODE, UNICODEBIG, UNICODELITTLE, US-ASCII, US, UTF-7, UTF-8, UTF-16,
UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE, UTF-32, UTF-32BE, UTF-32LE, UTF7, UTF8, UTF16, UTF16BE,
UTF16LE, UTF32, UTF32BE, UTF32LE, VISCII, WCHAR_T, WIN-SAMI-2, WINBALTRIM,
WINDOWS-31J, WINDOWS-874, WINDOWS-936, WINDOWS-1250, WINDOWS-1251,
WINDOWS-1252, WINDOWS-1253, WINDOWS-1254, WINDOWS-1255, WINDOWS-1256,
WINDOWS-1257, WINDOWS-1258, WINSAMI2, WS2, YU
salamandir@horseradish:~$

so it’s that season again…

the panto starts next weekend. we’re actually starting with a real audience on wednesday, which is actually our dress rehearsal, but we’ve invited a select few actual audience members to attend as well, so we can gauge our new bits.

it’s probably one of the most changed pantos, compared to the oregon country fair version… we haven’t actually changed the order of when things happen, like we did a few years ago, but we’ve added a whole bunch of new stuff, including two entirely new characters with their own sub-story.

we may also be adding new music — which we haven’t actually gotten yet — which should be interesting.

(ETA 161206) yep, we got a new song during last night’s tech rehearsal… 😕

politically, it keeps getting worse, almost by the hour. drumpf broke several decades of protocol and talked with the president of taiwan, had a twitter tirade over alec baldwin’s impressions of him on saturday night live (alec baldwin responded “release your tax returns and i’ll stop”), has gotten into a dick-measuring contest with china that threatens world war three, and he has appointed clearly and overwhelmingly unqualified people to positions of power which they are going to hold on to far longer than drumpf is going to be president… and that’s not to mention the fact that he has recently settled a lawsuit involving his fraudulent “trump university” for $25 million, still hasn’t released his tax returns (although it is rumoured that he hasn’t paid taxes in almost 30 years), STILL hasn’t said anything nasty about the ignorant, racist, bigoted, xenophobic people who are behind a rising wave of hate crime, that have been supporting him, and is already accepting financial favours from various different kings and potentates in violation of several well-established statutes prohibiting the president from making money by being president. i don’t see how it’s going to get better at all, in the short term, and, over the long term, i don’t anticipate my life getting significantly better than it is today, and i can forsee the distinct possibility of it getting considerably worse before there’s even a hint of it getting better… and i am a “priveledged” straight, white male. 😐

and i haven’t even started complaining about the dakota access pipeline and the surrounding furor involving that, or the “christians'” predictable and boring response to the “war on xmas” this year… although i have been putting OM AC cards in bell-ringers buckets.

back to the grind

i got a big order the other day, and it wasn’t aparajita. somebody ordered about half of my remaining kala loban, and, in the process of discovering whether or not i had enough, i also discovered that the erstwhile re-designer of the web site didn’t do as good a job of transferring the old web site to the new one as i had initially suspected, which meant that, while i did have enough kala loban to satisfy this particular customer’s bizarre needs, there were many products that were listed as “In Stock” but they didn’t have correct quantity information… and there were also products listed as “In Stock” that didn’t have any quantity information at all… which meant that, theoretically, someone could order more incense than i have available to sell them…

and i HATE IT when that happens…

because i have to email the customer, apologise, explain the situation, etc., etc., et cetera… WAY more actual contact with the actual customers than i am comfortable having, especially when it would appear that it is because of my screw-up.

so, i’m taking inventory again.

one of the things that i realised, is that, this time, i can actually use the back end of the web site to help me keep track of inventory, so that, when i go to the FSM (for example), i won’t have to “wing it”. the new web site also means that i can, actually accept credit cards at the FSM, which is definitely an added benefit.

i’ll be glad when it’s over, though… it’s really a hassle keeping track of everything and trying to move around when you’re surrounded by stacks of boxes.

M&Ms

i’m not particularly concerned about whether or not my food contains GMOs… i’d rather that they not, but it doesn’t concern me an awful lot if they do, it’s just one of those things…

so, i was intrigued when i saw, on the back of the costco-sized package of peanut M&Ms that i bought recently, when i saw a notice on the back of the package that said “PARTIALLY PRODUCED WITH GENETIC ENGINEERING”…

GMO M&Ms?
GMO M&Ms?

so, i called the customer inquiry line that they posted on the back of the package, and this is the story i got:

they are required, by law, to label potentially GMO products. however, suppliers of some of the ingredients — i.e. NOT associated with the M&M/Mars factory — may OR MAY NOT use genetically modified organisms to produce the raw material that gets sold to M&M/Mars, AND

get this…

THEY DON’T HAVE TO TELL M&M/Mars whether they do or not.

because of the fact that M&M/Mars DOESN’T KNOW whether or not their suppliers use GMOs, they HAVE TO label their products, whether they contain GMOs or not.

in other words, by law, M&M HAS TO notify us, even though they DON’T KNOW THEMSELVES!

THIS IS WHY I AM VERY SUSPICIOUS OF FOOD LABELING! 😑

it gets worse and worse…

drumpf has appointed ben carson — otherwise known as dr. stabby — to the department of education: great, a guy who believes the world was created in six literal days, and has compared evolution to satan will now be in charge of what our nation’s kids will learn.

not only that, but he has appointed sarah palin secretary of the interior… no more worries about fracking and DAPL. forget alternative energy, drill, baby, drill. πŸ™

and, he has appointed white supremacist stephen bannon to be his chief of staff and bridgegate governor chris cristie as attorney general.

he’s notified 3 million “illegal” aliens to be ready for deportation… 😑

i’m a white man, and i’m worried about the future of the world. 😐

😲

every four years i post about how i voted for the guy that didn’t win, and, for the most part, i’ve been disappointed more than not.

this year, the worst of all possible people got elected: donald drumpf… worse than nixon, worse than reagan, worse than george bush, worse than george bush jr., even worse than hillary clinton. and less than half as smart as any of ’em.

seriously, if we don’t have a revolution soon, we’re going to end up EXACTLY like germany in the mid-1930s.

we’ve gone WAAAY beyond the very big stupid, this time… 😠

still very odd…

so i contacted a guy who was willing to help me with my web site. $200 later, i’ve got everything fixed that needed to be fixed, and had an hour’s worth of training on how to actually use it… which turns out to be WAY simpler than i imagined, although there are multiple, duplicate functionalities that, basically, i can’t remove despite the fact that i don’t use them, because they’re simply a part of the core functionality of the web site. if it were my own code, i would find some way to remove them so that they couldn’t be co-opted by evil crackers, and, if i were persistent, i could probably do it anyway, but i’m not.

i was only not able to resolve, immediately, one issue, which is figuring international shipping, and that is only because of the fact that it would cost me an extra $100 for a plugin that i don’t want to spend.

i still don’t know what offended the previous designer to the point that she didn’t want to do business with me any longer, but she’s been a good sport and “allowed” me to take her link off of my site (which i probably would have found a way to do, eventually, anyway), and i will, probably, never know how i offended her so deeply… which is too bad, because i might have been inclined to see if there was some way i could make it up to her…

the upshot of the whole miasma, apart from being $200 poorer, is that i’ve got a relatively modern version of skype on my tablet, so if you’ve got skype and can convince me that you’re someone i should talk to, now’s your chance… 😉

odd… very odd…

i finally reached the point where i have a modern version of skype that works installed on my tablet, and have enough money in my bank account to afford a consultation with the web designer who redesigned my web site back in july. so i hit up her calendly and made an appointment, which was immediately cancelled, because, and i quote:

I’m sorry, but we can not take on work from this account. We do not approve of talking down to anyone doing work on any site, especially women, in the manner which has been done.

um…

W. T. F.?!?!?!?!?

i wrote back to her and got essentially the same response… 😕

i still don’t know what kind of insect got into her bonnet, but pretty much regardless of what i say, at this point, she’s not going to listen, and i would be wasting my time trying to figure it out.

it’s pretty discouraging, though, because i still don’t know how to do basic things like create a new product page, and i’ve got a plugin that won’t update correctly… and there are some things on the back end that need to be changed, and i’m not 100% sure how to change them, and i’ve still got 4 sliders installed and none of them seem to work, and i only really need one… and this lady who very nicely redesigned my site for me, and received payment from me, now, no longer wants to work with me, and won’t even offer an explanations why…

i’ve contacted another designer, who might work out, but i haven’t heard back from him, either, despite the fact that he said he was going to send an estimate “right over”, when i talked to him six hours ago…

bleh

i got really, REALLY fed up with the largely political (both actual politics and the politics involved with things like the bundy acquittal and standing rock) CRAP that is filling farcebook a couple of days ago, and i’ve been slowly weaning myself off that toxic sludge. i get the very distinct impression that if i don’t do it slowly, i won’t be able to do it at all, and i’m getting disturbed at how upset it makes me. the way i feel about it, at this point, is if i can’t do anything about it, i’d rather not hear about it AT ALL! 😠

so…

i have been avoiding posting my likeness on farcebook, in part because their facial recognition algorythms correlate my face with my posts, which makes using a contrived name rather pointless, but i was just thinking…

if i deliberately tagged other people with my likeness, and if enough other people did the same, it would completely bugger their facial recognition algorythms, wouldn’t it?

unfortunately, the only way to figure it out, at this point, would be to try it, which would not have the correct response if it were to fail…

neighbours

i’ve had some difficulty with some of our neighbours… not the ones that live around us, but ones that live further away. one lady was kicking her dog, and when i scolded her for kicking the dog, she suggested that i should kick her, so i did… poor impulse control is common for people with brain injuries, but i didn’t kick her anywhere near as hard as she was kicking her dog, and she had no reason to kick the dog to begin with… but that’s not the point…

the other neighbour is the guy a few blocks away, who i wrote about earlier, who i didn’t kick, but i felt like it, and i was left wondering how i should deal with this guy who was being a dick.

i figured it out…

this evening, as i was walking past their houses, i performed The Turkey Curse. i will continue to perform The Turkey Curse every time i walk past their houses until i am satisfied that they have been properly cursed.

Your Gold Teeth II

Your Gold Teeth II

Who are these children
Who scheme and run wild
Who speak with their wings
And the way that they smile
What are the secrets
They trace in the sky
And why do you tremble
Each time they ride by

Throw out your gold teeth
And see how they roll
The answer they reveal
Life is unreal

Who are these strangers
Who pass through the door
Who cover your action
And go you one more
If you’re feeling lucky
You best not refuse
It’s your game the rules
Are your own win or lose

Throw out your gold teeth
And see how they roll
The answer they reveal
Life is unreal

people suck! 😠

i ran into another stray dog down by the park. this time i had my phone (but still no treats, DAMNIT!) but i couldn’t get the dog to come to me… if i had had treats with me, i’m sure he would have come to me, but without, he stayed JUST out of reach, and when i stood up, he walked off in the other direction. i’m fairly sure i’ve seen him before, but on the other side of the main thoroughfare, and fairly far from where he was at the time…

so, i got in my car (i was just returning home from a run to the post office), and tried to catch up to him. i found him in the front yard of the place i’ve noticed in the past, because of the fact that their car has a “HILLARY FOR PRISON” bumper sticker – i went by there again this evening to confirm that the address is, in fact, 11224 S. 384th St., Auburn, WA, 98001. i parked the car out of the road, and crouched down to call the dog to me again, and he looked like he was going to come to me, but then a guy who i hadn’t seen before asked me if that was my dog. i said no, it’s not my dog, but he appears to be lost and i want to capture him and call the number on his tag. at that point, the guy asked me if i was law enforcement. i said no, and he asked me what interest i had in the dog. i said that i was concerned because he was running loose in the intersection, and almost got hit by at least two cars. then the guy said that, if i wasn’t law enforcement that i should “get the hell out of my driveway, we don’t need your kind around here”…

i said “if you say so…”, got in my car, and spun out as i was leaving his driveway. 😠

first, i wonder if something can’t be done about dogs wandering loose in the south part of king county. this is the second time in two weeks that i have run into stray dogs that i’ve tried to rescue. the other time, i actually succeeded in rescuing two dogs, whose owner apparently lives on the same street as my new “friend”, and, if nothing else, i think i should probably warn him that his neighbour is a supreme dick…

second, i wonder what i can do about this guy. i’ve had my share of negative interactions with the local constabulary, otherwise i would call and report him for harboring a stray dog and “intimidation”. there’s not a lot that the cops could do about it, under the best of circumstances, but they could go and tell the guy not to be such a dick, and he’d probably listen to them, for a while anyway… it’s times like these that i’m sorry i don’t live closer to my friend gordy, because i have used gordy as an “intimidation shield” a couple of times, to great effect, and my impression is that this guy would have thought twice about being such a dick if i were accompanied by someone like gordy.

WTF?

some back-story: a sheriff’s department in tenesee was arrogantly posting on farcebook about how they’ve gotten new stickers for their (publically owned) vehicles that say “IN GOD WE TRUST”. i wrote the following response to their boastful bragging.

161005 sheriff farcebook comment
161005 sheriff farcebook comment

my comment received several likes, and a number of supportive comments, despite the sheriff’s complaints, but, eventually, he deleted the entire thread, along with several other comments from other people.

i was somewhat taken aback, as it was my understanding that deletion of comments on a page that is intended to represent a governmental entity such as a sheriff was, at the very least, discouraged, and could potentially be taken as a blatant violation of the laws concerning such things.

so, i upped the ante, and left a review on their page:

161005 sheriff farcebook review
161005 sheriff farcebook review

after i left the review, i was promptly banned from leaving any comments on the henderson county sheriff’s department farcebook page… which means that i am immortalised on their page, and can’t do anything to change the settings, or respond to any comments.

at the same time, i left the review yesterday, and despite everything, i’ve still got four likes, which i consider to be pretty good, considering everything.

however, when people like Nathan N Angela Reeves posts an absolutely ignorant, idiotic comment, i can’t respond to how stupid they are… so i’m posting it here, because WTF?!?!?!? seriously…

We love God here and we also love Trump. Once he is elected, your voice will truly be less effective.

so… you think that, once #drumpf is elected, people like me will just vanish? you think that we’re going to just let drumpf and his ignorant, ass-backwards policies just run roughshod over the country without making any attempts to stop him. you think BLM is annoying now, just you wait… people like me are going to be making your life orders of magnitude more difficult, and that will just be the beginning.

You are a secular

where did you get that idea? certainly not from me, or anything i wrote… i disagree with you 100%, but the idea that my life is not governed by “anything other than what i want to do” is way out of line.

The bible “which you will not believe I’m sure”

what do you want to bet i know more about the bible than you do?

the bible also says “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

I hope you’re right about “no God”

again, i wonder where you got the idea that i’m saying there’s no God… if you do your research, you’ll discover that i say BOTH that there is no God, and that God exists, at the same time, without contradiction, but i certainly never said that there is no God in any place where you have looked… did you actually read my comments, or did you just knee-jerk respond without even looking up?

I’m a preacher

i’ll just bet you are… i am too, and i guarantee you, i can preach circles around you, buddy… 😉

I’ve been called to the bed of 5-6 dying Atheist

oh, so now you know everything there is to know about every single atheist on the planet… do you realise how mind-bogglingly STUPID that sounds?

obviously, you don’t. 😕

and, once again, i never said anything about being an atheist. in fact, i said, very clearly, at the beginning of my post, that i am a hindu, which leads me to suspect that you don’t know the difference between hindus and atheists. i’m not sure how you got the impression that i am an atheist, but you’re entirely, 100% wrong.

You to sir, will call on the Name of Jesus as you slip into eternity.

fat chance. 😛

the actual review can be seen here.

zoinks!

so i “gave up” on my indoor grow project a few months ago, because of recurring issues with pests. i planted my four weedy, pathetic remainders outside and left them to fend for themselves.

they’re doing fantastically well outdoors… 😕

160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants
160925 plants

so, here’s a question

i wonder to whom i am related. i’ve done a fair amount of genealogical research, and i have a database with a few thousand people to whom i am related in some way or another… and there’s this piece of information, which i figured out when i was just starting out, about 15 years ago:

1             – self
2             – parents – 1 generation ≅ 25 years
4             – grandparents – 2 generations ≅ 50 years
8             – great grandparents           – 3 generations ≅ 75 years
16          – 2x great grandparents    – 4 generations ≅ 100 years
32          – 3x great grandparents    – 5 generations ≅ 125 years
64          – 4x great grandparents    – 6 generations ≅ 150 years
128       – 5x great grandparents    – 7 generations ≅ 175 years
256       – 6x great grandparents    – 8 generations ≅ 200 years
512       – 7x great grandparents    – 9 generations ≅ 225 years
1024    – 8x great grandparents    – 10 generations ≅ 250 years
2048    – 9x great grandparents    – 11 generations ≅ 275 years
4096    – 10x great grandparents – 12 generations ≅ 300 years
8192    – 11x great grandparents – 13 generations ≅ 325 years
16384 – 12x great grandparents – 14 generations ≅ 350 years
32768 – 13x great grandparents – 15 generations ≅ 375 years
65536 – 14x great grandparents – 16 generations ≅ 400 years

according to the research i have done, i’ve traced one thread of my family fabric back to the 1620s, but i’ve only tracked 11 generations, which indicates to me that there was a shorter time between generations, the further back you go, but it’s an accurate number of relatives, even if the number of years isn’t exactly accurate…

but, i think about 65,536 people who had an active part in my creation, despite the fact that they never knew who i am, and probably never knew anybody other than the people two or three generations to either side of them… and i also think about the approximately 7,000,000,000 individuals that currently inhabit the planet, all of whom have the same 65,536 relatives, some of whom are the same people… and 65,536 only goes into 7,000,000,000 approximately 106,812 times…

so the probability is pretty high that you, and i, and everyone else, are related to pretty much everybody, if you go back far enough…

happy international talk like a pirate day

when they used the word “ye” meaning “you”, that is because the modern eye doesn’t recognise that the antique informal “you”, is spelled “thee” or, more correctly, “ΓΎe”. the letter “thorn” – ΓΎ – is left over from when everybody spoke anglo-saxon, and when it became less common, printers replaced it with the letter y, which was still getting figured out where it was supposed to go in the alphabet at that time. there are two forms of the letter “thorn”, a capital – Þ – and a “lower case” – ΓΎ – and, these days, you need extra help to type them, because, while they’re probably part of your computer’s character set, it’s no longer something that you can access from the keyboard. the numeric character entity for capital letter THORN is is &#222; and the small letter thorn is &#254; so you can put them on the web.

also, in middle english, the second person singlar pronoun “ΓΎe” and the second person plural pronoun “ȝe” (the letter “yogh” actually morphed into the modern letter “y”) were both printed as “ye” by middle-english printers who didn’t have the right type. that, along with the fact that americans didn’t particularly care for the informal “thee” meant that they started using the more formal “you” for both the second person singular and plural pronouns.

the english language has a whole bunch of letters that regularly get left out of alphabets, ΓΎ (thorn), Γ° (eth), ſ (medial s), and ʃ (esh) are a few examples…

yeah, i know, i’m a typography nerd…

RUM - FENCING - Make America Pirate Again!

hat-tip to ken whitley for the idea. 😉

whoosh

tomorrow i’m flying to santa rosa for a friends’ wedding. we’ll be back sunday. this will be the first time that both me and moe have travelled together on an airplane. moe has travelled by herself quite a bit, and i have travelled some, but we haven’t done so together until this weekend, when we are flying home from santa rosa, by way of portland.

before may of this year, i haven’t flown anywhere since i went to san francisco with the big bois with poise in 2012. before that, it was in 1998, when i flew to boston for training at software dot com, pre-openwave. it’s been a matter of choice, as well as the fact that i couldn’t have afforded it, even if i had wanted to travel somewhere.

so, since may, i have spent more time flying places than i have in almost 20 years.

i still can’t afford it, mostly. in spite of that, it’s kinda cool and kinda scary, especially since, this time, i will be transporting 500 corsage pins (in my checked luggage) for my "fellow travellers"… 😉

okay

i got the third order from the web site, which is very good. the lady ordered three rolls of tibetan simpoi, and paid $6.50 shipping, which i thought i had fixed, but when i looked through the settings, i discovered one place, on a deprecated page, that said $6.50, which was, apparently, where she was going through… so i fixed it, and then deactivated the page (because it is deprecated, and not going to be included in future versions anyway), so now, presumably, shipping will be charged correctly.

and i’m REALLY jazzed that people are ordering from the new web site. it gives me hope for the future.

wump

i got the second order from the new web site. somebody ordered $2.00 worth of incense. the minimum shipping charge was set to $5.00, and the total for shipping was $7.20.

so i updated the flat-rate shipping fee to be a minimum of $8.00, instead of $5.00. i also updated the minimum international shipping fee to $25.00 from $10.00. this will, hopefully, prevent people from ordering stuff that costs less than the amount that it costs to ship the order to those people.

i think, with a bit of fine tuning, the new web site will work out just fine, even if i don’t get to hire the web designer to teach me the things i need to know right away.

greep

so i finally got in touch with the web designer. i took care of the most urgent issue myself, and after going back and forth with her a couple of times, she offered to skype with me, so that i could share my screen with her so that i won’t have to re-create an admin account for her… except for the fact that 1) i don’t want her to fix the problems, i want her to tell me how to fix them, because, ultimately, that is what i originally hired her to do in the first place, and 2) i don’t have a computer that can run skype AND on which i can access the back-end of the web site: i have a four-year-old MacBook Pro that’s running Lion (because i don’t want to have to buy all new software AGAIN) which won’t run the current version of skype, and a linux machine, which won’t run ANY version of skype… i can run skype on my tablet, but it would take a good deal of kluging to get into the back-end of the site with any facility, and, while i could do it, it’s definitely not worth it.

she wants to charge me and i can’t afford it. the last time i had her do anything for me was right after the site went live and i mistakenly deleted all of the content (i was deleting the extraneous admin accounts that she had created and i deleted all of the content they created instead of re-assigning it to me). she had a working copy of the site, and she uploaded it and had the site up and running again in half an hour, and she charged me $126… and, to be honest, that cleaned out my bank account and i’m going to have to wait until next year before i’m going to be able to afford to hire her again.

i’m sure that, if i try, i can probably figure out the remaining issues on my own, but it’s going to take a while.

so…

i got the first order from the new web site the other day, and everything works exactly the way it is supposed to work, EXCEPT…

the customer made the order, and was presented with a payment option, which he chose, and made the payment, but it doesn’t show up on my new dashboard… it’s supposed to show up, but it doesn’t. instead, what shows up is a 404 error, and the suggestion that i might have it in “Test Mode”… except that the toggle at the top of the dashboard definitely says “Live” and NOT “Test”.

i wrote to the web site designer on sunday. it’s now after business hours on monday and i haven’t heard anything from them. they have a “commercial presence” and more than one employee, so i don’t think they won’t respond, but at the same time, the presence of more than one employee makes me suspect that they probably could have at least responded to me by this point… i’ve gotten an automated “we got your message” message, but nothing else. if i don’t hear anything by this time tomorrow, i think it’s going to be time for me to start calling and making an annoyance of myself until i get some answers.

ETA: i figured out how to change it from “Test” mode into “Live” mode by using google, but i still haven’t been able to figure out where my money is.

i’ve got a few questions about the inner workings of the web site, too… i get this customer who is in australia, and he orders $16 worth of incense. the standard shipping is to charge him $10, but when i get to the post office, it turns out that it costs $22 to ship his package. i’ll let it go this time, but that’s something that i definitely want to change.

also, i’ve got a “slider” on the front page. on the back end, there are settings for several different “sliders”, but none of them seem to have any effect on the front page “slider”. how do i add products to it, and make it actually move?

also, i’ve got a number of new products, but no clear way to add them to the catalogue. i’d like to know how to add products to my catalogue, and make them available to customers. as well, there are a few products in my catalogue that are, clearly, “default, generic” products that i don’t carry, will never carry, and don’t want in my catalogue. i’d like to know how to permanently remove them.

केच्छुप्

our “three weekends in a row of performances” with the sousa band is over. snake suspenderz played a moisture festival gig in redmond last week…

redmond was a trip. i haven’t been there in a long time… probably not since stlabs moved from redmond to factoria, which (according to my handy-dandy chart of when things happened) was approximately 1998… i may have been there once since then, but… wow, things have changed A LOT since the last time i hung around there. the obvious thing i noticed right away was the overwhelming number of indian and asian families i saw. definitely different than 1998, that’s for sure.

and that’s not to mention the huge mall that has suddenly appeared where there used to be woods…

i’ve been more than ordinarily depressed for about a week. i’m convinced, at this point, that the only reason i’m able to recognise it is because of the 5-HTP i’ve been taking. it doesn’t stop the depression from happening, but it gives me a degree of separation from it, so instead of being bogged down with depression, i can say “oh, i’m depressed” and continue living my life, more or less. i’ve met (finally) with a person who may become the replacement for ned. she’s REALLY young (like, possibly, still in her 20s) but it seems like things will work out, which will probably help the bouts of depression when they happen in the future. it’s likely, however, that the lack of such a person is only exacerbating the depression this time.

one of the three-weekends-of-performances-in-a-row was at deception pass, a place i haven’t been to since approximately 1991. it’s really surprising to me how much i can remember just by going to a place, when i hardly remember anything without actually seeing the place.

160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass

the picture above is the underpinings of the deception pass bridge. i climbed across the bridge, beneath the road surface, a whole bunch of years ago, before they put up the sign that says “Climing on bridge is prohibited”. unfortunately, when i got to the other side, the only place to get down from the bridge is on the top of a concrete pylon that’s about 25 feet above the ground… which, of course, meant that i had to climb back across the bridge to the place where i could get off without breaking my neck.

160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass

Enter Title Here

i’m up later than my normal bedtime because moe is getting home from phoenix at midnight, and i’ve got to pick her up at the airport.

snake suspenderz(!) has got a gig(!) at the “So Bazaar” event in redmond next thursday, which is connected with the moisture festival. we’ve got another gig in october at the château in renton.

the sousa band has a gig at the ballard locks on sunday. i’ve got an appointment to renew my medical cannabis card next thursday, i’ve got an appointment with the ophthalmologist next friday, and i’ve got an appointment with a lady who may be the replacement for ned next saturday, along with a party at the fremont acupuncture clinic.

श्रीभगवानुवाच

स्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुण: परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात । स्वधर्मे निधनं स्रेय: परधर्मो भयावह: ।।

This is better, that one do his own task as he may, even though he fail, than to take tasks not his own, though they seem good. To die performing duty is no ill, but who seeks other roads shall wander still.

— Bhagavad Gita, 3.35

news

fairly soon, within the next 24 hours or so, the current Hybrid Elephant web site will go away, and will be replaced by the new Hybrid Elephant web site.

don’t be shocked, it’s actually a good thing. the old web site is made using technology that has reached its “Functional End Of Life” (as they put it when i was a tester), and, because of the fact that i’m a lazy bastard, i didn’t bother to even think about updating it until it was far too late to do any updating, from a practical point of view.

this will be the first web site i have on my server which was not “home designed”. i figured that it would take me a lot less time getting the bugs worked out of the site if i wasn’t already trying to learn the technology at the same time. it turns out that a lot of the new technology is stuff i already know anyway, which is a good thing from the “keeping the web site updated” point of view.

it also features a bunch of technologies that should have been implimented a long time ago (HTTPS, and stripe replacing paypal are the big ones), but, once again, because i am a lazy bastard, i simply never got around to it.

if previous experience is any indication, there may be some intermittent browser confusion, but that should all work itself out within 48 hours or so.

i’m excited! see you on the flip side! 😎

ho hum, default new entry title…

returned from OCF yesterday. logged into farcebook this morning and was immediately confronted with political stupidity and people making fun of human failure. we weren’t able to play at the ritz this year, despite my being in contact with the booker through farcebook for two years now. i’m seriously wondering whether or not this experiment with “social media” is worth the hassle.

however, interestingly, i only went to the ritz twice, because it rained on saturday, but, in spite of not getting booked to play this year, i ended up with three ritz tokens, and actually got to play one song with stuart’s band, choro loco. i played cuica:

cuica
cuica
cuica
cuica

i went to OCF last tuesday. the mosquitos were ravenous, and numerous… and HUGE! i got bit a lot tuesday and wednesday. thursday they calmed down a bit, and by friday they were all concentrating on the tens of thousands of other people who had just arrived. wednesday i slept for most of the day, which was luxurious, but somehow i wish there had been more activity.

there weren’t as many pictures, but they were memorable.

there were also a few pictures, not included, of daylight, close-up shots of the pedal-powered scroll saw i want to make.

2016 some random hippie
2016 some random hippie

other years:

2011 some random hippie
2011 some random hippie
2012 some random hippie
2012 some random hippie
2013 some random hippie
2013 some random hippie
Morningwood Odditorium, with the back of David Barnes' and Julia Kingrey's heads
Morningwood Odditorium, with the back of David Barnes’ and Julia Kingrey’s heads
my tuba, at Morningwood Odditorium
my tuba, at Morningwood Odditorium
Strangely stole my phone
Strangely stole my phone
found on monday
found on monday
found on monday
found on monday

it’s time to get that negative horseshit off the top of my blog… 8/

OCF is fast approaching. today is the 26th of june, and i leave for OCF on the 5th of july. instead of driving, this year i’m getting a ride with michael marconi. the fremont philharmonic has several changes in personnel, and hasn’t had a single rehearsal. allegedly, we’re going to have two rehearsals with the cast members who haven’t already gone to the fair to set things up, and allegedly we’re going to have one or two rehearsals without the cast, presumably to rehearse for the ritz, which we haven’t heard from yet… in fact, i’m going to write to matt now…

i’m really trying not to stress too much about not having any rehearsal, but i guess what i’m saying is that, despite the fact that i know it won’t do any good, i’m stressing about it anyway. i’ve got two new pieces of music out of who knows how many more, and there’s a good chance that we won’t be able to rehearse this, even once, with the entire crew, until thursday evening, before we have to start performing on friday morning. it must be worse for kiki, since she is actually writing the new music. fortunately, it’s for the oregon country fair, so even if we totally screw up, it’s highly likely that nobody will notice.

i’m having the hybrid elephant web site re-designed. i decided that it would take a lot less time for someone who already knows how to use all of the new technology do it than it would for me to learn how to use the technology, and do it myself. it’s still not exactly what i want, but we’ve already put a method of payment in place that doesn’t involve paypal, so that’s a really good trade-off… and, while it is not exactly what i wanted, it largely has all of the things that i want, more or less where i want them, it’s got some really cool new features that i didn’t have in the old site (starting with a SSL certificate, so no more doing business over an unsecure network), it uses wordpress and woo commerce, so it will be really easy to add on to, and it’s going to be A LOT easier to keep up to date, so i won’t have to do this whole thing again in 5 years…

grumph

i emailed the band (snake suspenderz) a month ago regarding playing for the party after SACBO was over. all of the band members except hobbit said that they could do it. hobbit wanted to get paid. the people putting on the party said they couldn’t pay, in fact the party was supposed to be a fund raiser (i.e. NOBODY was getting paid).

after going through three weeks of increasingly tense back-and-forth action, we finally agreed, tentatively, to perform at the party, which i announced to the organiser a week ago.

SACBO came around, and the first day (saturday, two days ago) was intermittently rainy and overcast. hobbit showed up for about an hour (long enough to get stoned) and then took off, before the fair was open, without playing anything. sketch didn’t show up at all. thaddeus and i busked, alternately playing swing music a la snake suspenderz, and “experimental” music, with me playing the didjeriflute, and thaddeus playing his guitar with interesting effects pedals. we made around $30 each, which wasn’t that bad.

yesterday was sunny and beautiful. hobbit showed up again, but sketch didn’t show up until almost 2:00. we played, first without sketch and then with him, but not very energetically or enthusiastically, and with considerable breaks between the music. at the end of the day, we had made about $10 each. i donated mine to hobbit, because, three or four years ago, i said that if the “take” from busking was $10 or less, i would donate it all to hobbit, because he needs it more than i do.

and then, hobbit said that he wasn’t going to the party, because he wanted to play with his new video-editing software (which he had been ranting about all day), and sketch said that he wasn’t going to the party, partially because hobbit wasn’t going, and partially because, simply, he “didn’t feel like it”…

which, of course, means that, now, the people who organised the SACBO after-party are pissed off at me, because i promised them a band and then backed out at the last possible moment.

alledgedly, snake suspenderz has another one-hour performance at the château in renton in september, but it was my impression that we have already done all of the château performances, and despite the fact that somebody said they would confirm the dates for me, nobody has yet.

it used to be that snake suspenderz would play, somewhere, even if it was the ballard sunday market, at least twice a month. however, it seems to me as though, ever since hobbit moved to lynnwood (about 10 miles to the north of downtown seattle), it has become more and more difficult to convince him to do anything other than busk at the pike place market, which, of course, i can’t do, because the market doesn’t allow my tuba, because it’s made of brass. i find this odd behaviour for hobbit, primarily because i live 25 to 30 minutes south of downtown seattle, and i’m up there all the time for various different rehearsals and performances, but i’m getting the idea that it’s one of the things that makes hobbit what he is.

it is my distinct impression, at this point, that snake suspenderz may not be a band any longer, and that i should be looking for other people with whom to play music.

thaddeus wants to form an electronic/experimental group with me, which is definitely an interresting concept (i keep thinking that it would also be a good way to entice ken to come down from bellingham and jam with us), but that’s more of a fantasy than anything else at this point, especially since thaddeus is preparing to go on a road-trip to play in Oberon Zell‘s emporium in california (among other places) in a couple weeks.

i am aware of the fact that there are more musicians than the ones that i know, even in seattle… i mean, i know a lot of musicians, but i don’t know all of them, by any stretch of the imagination. what i really need to do is to find a bunch of musicians who all like to play the kind of music i like to play, who also have a desire to play music for other people in exchange for money, and who don’t have the mental/emotional/social difficulties which are way-too-typical of the current batch of musicians i know.

fInaLLy! but 😠 about it anyway… not very enlightened of me, is it?

i ordered a book on december 26, 2014. it was supposed to be delivered in june of 2015. in may of 2015, the publication date was delayed until december of 2015, and in november, it was delayed again, until some unknown point in the future.

i started getting notifications that it was being printed around the end of may, 2016, and it was actually delivered on june 10, 2016.

because there was no place to leave seller feedback, i posted the following as a product review:

i waited from December 26, 2014 to June 10, 2016 for this book to arrive. yes, that’s right, it was on order for a year and a half, and was delayed by amazon twice.

it’s a good thing this is as great a book as it is, that’s all i have to say.

their response, which i just received by email, was as follows:

Your review could not be posted.

Thanks for submitting a customer review on Amazon. Your review could not be posted to the website in its current form. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines:

http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines/ref=cm_rv_rej_eml

We encourage you to revise your review and submit it again.

but, the problem is, that when i follow their instructions for leaving seller feedback, as listed here, i get to step 3 and THERE IS NO FUCKING “LEAVE SELLER FEEDBACK” BUTTON!!!!!!! 😑

160610 amazon fuck up
160610 amazon fuck up

finally…

so, i made it to orlando and warrensburg and i got back without too much difficulty.

i got to orlando, and went to Wonder India, which is, truly, an international warehouse of all things india. not just incense, but packaged food products, housewares, clothing… if there is a local indian shop in the united states, it is probably supplied by Wonder India. the guy who i have been working with, one Karan Manglani, apparently quit his job without telling anyone, and i don’t know what’s going on with their “info@” address, but i got the name and phone number of the guy who i’m supposed to call. i haven’t yet called him, but i will soon, ’cause i’m running low on aparajita.

then i went to joe’s house, but joe wasn’t there and his partner looked like he had just woken up (it was fairly early in the morning), so i went to the beach, which, for orlando, means “out of town”. i headed east, and saw signs pointing to cocoa beach, which i’ve heard of, so i headed that way, but i took the wrong exit and ended up in titusville, instead of cocoa. titusville is the home of the world-famous canaveral national seashore, and, as it was still fairly early, nobody except a few naked people were present on Playa Linda, where i meditated for a few hours.

canaveral national seashore 160524
canaveral national seashore 160524

then i had dinner at the world-famous “Dixie Crossroads” in titusville, which was okay seafood, but it didn’t hold a candle to west-coast seafood. even ivar’s has approximately equivalent food. makes me wonder, a lot…

dixie crossroads 160524
dixie crossroads 160524

i went to epcot with joe the next day. joe is an old man, which is saying a lot, because joe and i are the same age. it’s kind of like rick: i keep on thinking that they are the same people i knew a long time ago. they are, but they’re both a lot older now, and that means that they’re not in the best of health. i am also not in the best of health, because i have experienced a brain injury, but apart from that, i haven’t suffered the ravages of old age like my friends rick and joe have.

EPCOT, actually an acronym that stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow – which i didn’t know, previously, was laughably outdated. the exhibits looked almost exactly like they were made in and for the late ’70s or early ’80s, and the geodesic dome wasn’t anywhere near as big as i had envisioned.

EPCOT 160525
EPCOT 160525 — with faux “northwest native” decor
EPCOT 160525
EPCOT 160525 — with a minimum of tourists
EPCOT 160525
EPCOT 160525 — “german” village
EPCOT 160525
EPCOT 160525 — “chinese” village

it was really good to see joe again, and we made arrangements to have dinner before i left.

Joe Zimmer 160525
Joe Zimmer 160525
joe and salamandir 160525
joe and salamandir 160525

i had planned on spending a week in orlando, but with joe not being as available as i had first assumed, i was left with a few days that were, essentially unacounted for, so i spent the next day traveling to saint petersburg to visit a friend of monique’s, and her husband, who live in a hippie paradise, and had the cannabis that i was, by this time, severely lacking to make my trip tolerable. we also went to the dalí museum, which was OUTRAGEOUS!!! i saw the originals of the following artwork, and A LOT more. 8)

Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which, at 20 Metres Becomes A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln - Homage to Rothko (1976)
Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which, at 20 Metres Becomes A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (1976)
Lobster Telephone
Lobster Telephone
160526
160526

the tourist map that was provided by the hotel was printed upside down, i.e. “north” on the map was printed at the bottom of the map, as you held it upright, which i didn’t figure out until the day before i left. it was terrifically confusing, because i drove what i thought to be “south” on the map, for most of the day, before i ended up in Eustice, which is north of orlando, and i could not, for the life of me, figure out why until after i had returned to the hotel. joe informed me that this is because “tourists don’t want to go north from orlando”, but my impression is that orlando, generally, is a city that is one, big, enormous strip mall, from one end to the other, and anywhere would be preferable. seriously, i only found one indian restaurant, a hare-krsna related joint that was vegetarian, and closed. i’m relatively sure that there are other indian restaurants, but… come on, orlando… really??

on the other hand, orlando has some really cool stuff, which includes lizards (which i was unable to get photos of, despite the fact that they are endemic), trees that look like this:

160530 orlando
160530 orlando

and plants that grow in peoples’ front yards which look like this:

what is this plant? 160530
what is this plant? 160530

and wild birds that look like this:

what are these birds? 160530
what are these birds? 160530

all of which was very interesting, and would have been moreso if i had remembered to bring, or buy once i was there, sunscreen… unfortunately, i didn’t think to do so until the day before i left, which meant that a lot of my meanderings were at night, which means fewer photos.

puyallup” is no longer the most confusing place name i have ever experienced:

Thonotossasa, FL 160530
Thonotossasa, FL 160530

then, i flew from orlando to kansas city, missouri, where i rented a car and travelled to warrensburg, missouri. the first thing i noticed was the traffic lights in the middle of what would, ordinarily, be a freeway… and what appear to be “state highways” that, apparently, have names like “AA”, “BB”, “OO”, “X”, “Y” and “PCA” with no logical progression.

i met rosemary, my great-aunt, who i have never met “IRL” before, which was an interesting experience, essentially being included in her extended family, simply because we are related.

salamandir & rosemary 160531
salamandir & rosemary 160531

we actually had the time to go to Tightwad

Tightwad, Missouri - 160601
Tightwad, Missouri – 160601

and Racket

Racket, Missouri - 160601
Racket, Missouri – 160601

and we went to the (abandoned) Marshall Cemetary outside Knob Noster, to visit my great-great-grandparents’ graves

Marshall Cemetary, Knob Noster, Missouri 160601
Marshall Cemetary, Knob Noster, Missouri 160601
Charles Walter Hammond, died June 9, 1862
my great-great-grandfather, Charles Walter Hammond, died June 9, 1862

i also went to visit John William “Blind” Boone Park, in warrensburg

John William "Blind" Boone Park, Warrensburg, MO - 160602
John William “Blind” Boone Park, Warrensburg, MO – 160602

and i also visited the Johnson County Historical Society, where i got even more information about my great-grandparents and my great-great-grandparents.

then i flew home

Mount Rainier, from Kennewick - 160603
Mount Rainier, from Kennewick – 160603

i returned

i returned yesterday. yesterday was mostly sleep, because of the fact that the previous three days didn’t have enough of that particular commodity.

tonight we are hosting game night, so today has been, thus far, filled with laundry, weed whacking and mowing the front and back yard, and cleaning the parrot cage. then i’m going to take a shower.

the trip was a lot more fun than i had been expecting, once i worked out what was actually going wrong.

more soon. probably tomorrow.

on the verge

i leave for orlando tomorrow. shuttle express is picking me up between 5:30 and 5:50. my plane leaves at 9:10 pm. presumably, the rest of that will be taken up waiting in the security-theatre line and not allowing them to force me to go through the electromagnetic detector that will rip the clips out of my brain… because that would make my trip a lot shorter and less enjoyable.

i’m dreading it a little bit less than i was earlier in the week, because i have figured out some things to do in the case that joe decides that i am persona-non-grata, which is a remote possibility. we’ve argued a couple of times, on farcebook, about political things, which, i suspect, are really not that important to anyone, and joe has never been that “wordy” in his posts to begin with, so i don’t know if he’s just being short because that’s the way he is, or he’s being short because he doesn’t really want to talk to me. i suppose i won’t learn which one until i see him in person, and if it’s for the latter reason, i want to have some other things to do, to take up time while i am on the other side of the continent from home.

i want to drop in to Wonder India, which has a branch office in orlando, because the people in the new york branch have suddenly stopped responding to my emails, and i want to be sure that they’re still in business, because they are the only purveyors of bulk quantities of aparajita that i have found in the US.

also, i want to go to kissimmee, because it has a cool name, and because it is (or, at least, was) the home of Dave Gannett, who is one of my tuba mentors. i also want to go to eustis, which is where friends of mine from the moisture festival a couple years ago are living now… and, if it turns ugly really fast, i also have the option of going to miami and seeing micah’s father, curtis’ “world famous warehouses of treasure”, or, possibly, travelling further south to the keys for a few days, or something like that… but if that happens, i’ll have to drive back to orlando for the next part of my trip

i’m going to be in orlando, or something like that, for a week, then i am travelling to kansas city, missouri, and, from there, i’m driving to warrensburg, missouri, for two days visiting my great-aunt rosemary. i’m also hoping to get to knob noster, because, once again, it has a cool name, and because it’s where my paternal great-grandfather and relatives are buried. if there’s time (which i don’t think there will be) it would be nice to get to Racket and Tightwad…

i’m returning from kansas city to seattle on the one after the red-eye, and arriving in seattle at 9:00 in the morning on friday, june 3rd.

that’s more like it!

160519 new Ganesha
160519 new Ganesha

mouse tail not wrinkled…

160519 new Ganesha
160519 new Ganesha

less white background…

160519 new Ganesha
160519 new Ganesha

smooth graphics, not anywhere near as pixellated…

160519 new Ganesha
160519 new Ganesha

more accurate swastika, unlike the previous one which was (i suspect, deliberately) off center and inconsistent.

ready to start a new season of art-car shows, as soon as i get back from my trip… which i’m dreading… 😨 (which is U+1F628 FEARFUL FACE, if the emoticon doesn’t give it justice) (the trip, not the art-car shows)

woo

when it rains…

i have nobody ordering incense for months, and then, when i’m on vacation, i get two incense orders which i can’t fill, because i’m on vacation… and besides which, one of them somehow ordered more than i have in stock AND he’s an international order for which paypal 😑 never figures the shipping, so yesterday i filled the order i could, and wrote the guy in england with further instructions…

this morning i got another incense order… for two dozen different kinds of incense… 👍 so i put together that order, and shipped them out this morning.

then, i got home and i had another incense order, so i put that together and shipped it out, as well.

👍

fleeb

last week we went to the beach at moclips. next week i’m going to orlando and warrensburg to see people that i haven’t seen for 40 years (in orlando) and people to whom i am related, but have never met in person before (in warrensburg). it’s also going to be the first time i have flown cross-country and been on the east coast this century, and the first time since my injury… which was 13 years ago, if my memory serves…

it’s also what my handy-dandy chart of when things happen says, so my memory does serve for once.

i’m having the hybrid elephant web site re-designed. instead of using OSCommerce, i’m using wordpress and woocommerce, which will make it a lot easier to keep up to date. i’m fairly sure that it will also provide me a much needed alternative to paypal in the payment department. it’s alledgedly going to be going live, soon… as soon as a few final details are worked out…

spiritual rant

good or evil, black or white, up or down, in or out… it’s all dualism.

and dualism is fine for everyday living. some might say that dualism is essential for everyday living. but i’ve been discovering more and more, recently, that the dual state is not the way to advance much beyond the everyday world.

and why would anyone want to advance beyond the everyday world? in my case, i want to advance beyond the everyday because the everyday world is BORING when it is not, actively, out to make my life difficult.

and, ultimately, dualism isn’t real anyway. everybody from zarathustra to jesus to yoda says, essentially, that dualism is the second stage, and there is one above that transcends dualism. the problem is that there is so much about religion that is adversarial, to the non-believer, to different sects of believers, and to different religions. in that regard, religion is also dualistic in nature. the problem is that, when one accepts one religion and rejects all others, basically, one is saying that they are not quite as atheist as the people who are wholely atheist, and when one is entirely atheist in their thinking, there are a lot of “mysterious” things that happen, more-or-less regularly, which they are totally incapable of explaining. both leave me wanting something more.

what it comes down to is that these “pairs of opposites” (to use the hindu term) are both exactly the same thing. good isn’t the opposite of evil, good IS evil. black is not the opposite of white, black IS white. there are always two sides to every coin, but it is the same coin… you can’t separate heads from tails.

this extends to people, as well. there are not 7 billion people on this planet, there is 1 person with 7 billion different manifestations. that is why people like jesus said “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25.40)

we aren’t all different people, we are all the same person. it doesn’t matter that you perceive a difference, when you slight someone, you’re doing it to yourself… which, i suppose, is one of the reasons why it is customary to be polite to people, regardless of which people-group you’re talking about, rather than running rough-shod over anyone who happens to get in your way. it is also one of the reasons why we feel sad or angry when something bad happens to us: that part of me which is also a part of you, is grieving that we would choose to do that to ourselves.

it’s the definition of the word namasté that puts it all together for me: namasté — there is a part of me, and there is a part of you, where, when you are there, in you, and i am there, in me, we are one being with no differentiation. i salute that place.

ASIDE this would make a GREAT magic trick: you show the audience a big coin (a silver dollar, or something similar), show them that it has both a “heads” and a “tails”. you invite a volunteer to put their initials on the “heads” side of the coin. then you procede to “do your magic” and separate heads from tails. you show the audience the coin, with the volunteer’s initials on BOTH SIDES. you then show the audience an entirely different coin, which has two “tails” sides, and no initials. then, with a little more “magic” you put the heads and tails back together, and show the audience one coin, with the volunteer’s initials on one side and “tails” on the other. talk to joe about making this happen.

knob not noster

i decided that i wanted an 8-ball knob on my shift-lever, replacing the boring, ordinary one that has the shift pattern engraved on the top.

i looked around a number of different places, locally, and discovered that the only place i could get a “regulation” 8-ball-sized shift-knob was a place where i had to order it, and then wait a few weeks until it came in — none of this “order on amazon and have it in four days” crap, this is an OLD SCHOOL customising shop which offers real 8-ball shift-knobs, not those dinky, small 8-ball-wannabe shift knobs that look cool for about 6 months and then wear out, here.

i knew i was probably going to have to match the threads on my car, so i went and measured them, and bought the proper size tap, while i waited for the 8-ball itself to arrive. it came in about a week ago, and, immediately i noticed that there was a big problem: the knob came with two plastic “inserts” and three set-screws that were supposed to hold it in place, but my car (which is a hyundai, with metric everything) not only wouldn’t fit, but i actually destroyed the proper sized plastic insert trying to get it to work.

i discovered that, to work with my shift-lever, with its metric threads, i would have to make a “shim”: i would need to get a brass rod the same diameter as the hole in the 8-ball (½"), and drill it out to the correct dimensions to accept a tap (10×1.25 metric thread), at which point i would drive the rod up into the hole in the 8-ball, drive in the set screws, and screw it in place.

first step, finding a ½" diameter brass rod. i figured i would go down to the local home depot and pick one up… but home depot doesn’t have ½" brass rod, and hasn’t had ½" brass rod for at least a year. no problem, i surmise… i’ll just go to mcclendon’s, they’ll be sure to have it. WRONG… they knew what i was looking for, but said that they stopped carring ½" brass rod when it became “too expensive”… 😕 i’m reasonably sure that i could have bought ½" brass rod at hardwick’s, but i would have had to drive into seattle for that, and i didn’t feel like driving that day… not only that, but with the information that brass rod had suddenly got “expensive” i wasn’t sure that hardwick’s would have it, and i didn’t want to drive all that way for nothing…

160422 brass shim
160422 brass shim
so, i ended up buying 8″-to-9″ (random length) of ½" brass rod online for about $5.00 (which is what i expected to pay anyway, so i don’t know what they were talking about at mcclendon’s… too expensive??), and proceded to start to drill it out, but very quickly discovered that it was going to take a REALLY long time to do it manually, if i wanted it to be anything like the quality that i would expect to have on my car… but i know a guy who owns a machine shop in the south end of downtown seattle! πŸ™‚

so, this morning, i went down to his shop and made a shim of the proper size, with the proper machinery, and it, literally, took five minutes (and most of that time was setting up the machine), and now i have a beautiful, new, authentic 8-ball gear-shift-knob on my car! 😎

160422 8-ball shift-knob
160422 8-ball shift-knob

i would be doing a lot more of this kind of stuff if i didn’t have to wait around so long for materials to be delivered, that i used to be able to go down to the local hardware store and buy…

160422 8-ball gear-shift-knob
160422 8-ball gear-shift-knob

nope!

when i logged into my email this morning, one of my messages was from salamandir.bandcamp.com, from a guy named zach lincoln, who was, alledgedly, a “booking representative” from afton. this was the message he sent me:

> I wanted to reach out and see if you’re up to talk about some shows I’m
> putting together. Who’se the best person to contact about booking your
> act? I have a few dates every month around washington, my next open
> date is May 21st.

exciting, right? i have only had this music on bandcamp for a few months, and already i’m getting inquiries from someone who wants to book my act… i should be fired up…

but i’m also suspicious.

so, i wrote him back with a couple of alternate dates (i’m going to orlando on the 23rd, which is cutting it a bit close for my tastes), and i texted thaddeus, who has quite a bit more experience in the business of booking gigs than i do, and asked if he had ever heard of this guy. he said no, but sent me a link that might be appropriate.

zach wrote me back almost immediately with instructions on how to get started with afton, but i read the link that thad texted me first — http://www.wicasta.com/blogs/is-afton-live-a-scam-any-worse-than-venues/ — which, basically, says that if afton isn’t a scam, it is doing a lot of the things real scammers do, and the only way i should sign up for it is if it’s more important to me to play than it is to get paid.

it’s pretty important to me to play music, don’t get me wrong. and, given the choice, i would rather be playing music than just about anything else, pretty much any time, but it really disturbs me to be playing music for free when everybody else around me is getting paid for my playing music. in fact, that is one instance where i would, probably, NOT prefer to be playing music. i know a whole bunch of people, and at least two or three of them would probably come to see me play at a real venue, but if i have to do all of the marketing as well as playing music, then i would much rather do it on my own, than provide money for bookers and venue-owners but not myself, especially when i would be surrounded by other musicians who are in the same boat i am in.

so i wrote back to zach, asking if what i read in the article is true or not. the first response i got, when i was responding to his initial inquiry, came back within 5 minutes of my sending it, but i have now been waiting 4 hours for a response, and it hasn’t come yet… and i get the very strong feeling that it won’t come at all, which is an indication to me that what i read in the article was, in fact, spot on, and zach was hoping that i didn’t know that because it is so exciting to be contacted by someone who wants to book your act…

THEN i started actively poking around to see if i could find out anything more about this guy. conveniently, bandcamp gave me his IP address, so i plugged that in and discovered that zach wrote to me about booking gigs in washington from an IP address that’s located in Maspeth, New York… 😑

afton may or may not be an actual scam, but if it’s not, it sure isn’t trying very hard to differentiate itself from things that are, actually, scams.

that got me wondering… i’m pretty sure he never, actually, listened to any of the music at salamandir.bandcamp.com… i wonder what he would do if i actually showed up for one of his performances and played what i usually play on the didjeriflute…

miscellaneous ketchup

160418 selfie with swastika
160418 selfie with swastika

i’ve been reading about how micro-dosing with LSD or mushrooms helps to overcome farcebook addiction. i really need to give it a try, because my farcebook addiction is almost overwhelming.

moisture festival is over for another year. as with last year, i’m torn over whether or not i’m actually going to be performing in next year’s moisture festival. great people, with a few exceptions, but those few exceptions make life miserable for the period of time that i have to deal with them, and everybody else either ignores it or doesn’t know it’s happening. more details should occur around the time that MF decides to issue my check. i know for a fact that it’s going to be considerably less than last year. how much less will play a pivotal role in what’s going to happen next year.

we’re spending a week at the beach, in may. then i’m going to orlando and warrensburg. tomorrow is bicycle day, and the day after that is 4/20… unfortunately, i won’t have any of my own weed on 4/20, because of the blasted spider mites, but i’ll have plenty of mean green, because i can. 8)

my trip to orlando and warrensburg is slowly developing into a deep sense of foreboding and dread. i have absolutely no idea what to expect — seriously, i go from being really excited, to deciding that i’m going to cancel the whole thing as an expensive mistake — and, for sure, i’m going to be, either, in the presence of people who possibly don’t like me, don’t have time to deal with me, or i will be completely, 100% alone in a city halfway across the continent from anything like “safety” and “home”… the only reason i haven’t cancelled it is because i found out that Wonder India (the U.S. supplier of aparajita) has a branch in orlando, and, if nothing else, it’s only going to be a little bit more than a week, and i’m 51% certain that i can hold out for that long on my own, if it comes to that.

better

today was better. there wasn’t so much pain and emptyness, and i didn’t screw myself up finishing the stuff on my list. tomorrow is the last day i perform in the moisture festival… sunday is the last day of the moisture festival for 2016. it’s also the last day of emerald city comicon. i know one of the vendors in the comicon, and he’s offered me a pass to go see it. i’d think about it if seeing his booth wasn’t the only reason i’d be going…

broken

i’m pretty severely broken today.

i think that, possibly, the only reason i even noticed is because of the 5HTP that i’ve been taking for the past 6 months or so, but it hasn’t done anything to relieve the symptoms, which are: to start with, i wasn’t even motivated to get out of bed until well after noon, despite the fact that i woke up around 5:00, when moe left for a 5-day trip to alberta… in fact, it’s 7:00 pm now, and it feels as though it should be around 1:00, based on when i normally get out of bed.

and, sad to say, a majority of the time i spent in bed this morning was poking through farcebook, and checking email. then i got up, turned on the computer and started poking through my RSS feed, when farcebook got boring.

i’ve been reading a lot about micro-dosing with LSD, and the effects of mushrooms on PTSD survivors, and how LSD apparently cures farcebook addiction, and all of these things have driven me to the inescapable conclusion that i really should take those 100 dried mushrooms that i found a couple years ago… except that i don’t know whether they retain their potency, and i really need to do some more research before i actually do it, for my own comfort.

anyway, all but two of my plants have died, and, when i was kneeling on the floor scrubbing the toilet, it made my right knee hurt so much, when i got up, that it’s a miracle i didn’t fall. i hobbled over to the bed and it was 45 minutes of heavy breathing on my back before the pain had subsided enough that i could get up and hobble around again. then, after my knee had more or less recovered, i went to deposit one of moe’s $3,500 checks for all of the travelling that she’s been doing recently, and then i went down to auburn to the post office, where i hoped to ask them if they’ve seen the package for which i payed $35, which was shipped from italy on march 4th, and still hasn’t shown up at my house yet… but by the time i got there, it was closed. 😐

oh, and i haven’t even remotely been motivated to eat anything. i forced myself to eat at jack-in-the-box while i was out, and i’ve had a couple of protein bars. i really need to find out where i can get less than a dozen bottles of soylent, because i really like the idea, it’s probably 10 times more healthy than jack-in-the-box… and it’s named after a movie that gives most people the squicks. on the other hand, the smallest number you can buy on their web site is 12, and if i don’t like it, it probably wouldn’t do to try to foist them off on other people.

i’m having the hybrid elephant site redesigned. since i’m not doing it myself, i’m switching “platforms” from oscommerce to wordpress/woo-commerce. i don’t know if i like it so far, but i remember when i was working on oscommerce, at first it really looked horrible, but the closer i got to what i wanted, the more i liked it. an advantage to switching platforms is that i will have a way to process credit cards that is not paypal, about which i am REALLY jazzed, and, even if the site doesn’t come out exactly the way i like, it will be worth it, just for that.

so far…

i’m done playing moisture festival shows with the “show band” for this year. i still have a few other moisture festival related shows coming up as “artists” this year, with snake suspenderz: we’re playing the volunteer party, three “on stage” appearances, and at least one “fluffing” (where we entertain the audience waiting outside the theatre, before the performances start) that are still upcoming.

i’m waiting to see whether or not the band that is taken up the last two weeks of shows as the “show band” is any good before i make a firm decision, but there’s a good chance that i will be bowing out of next year’s moisture festival performances all together, if things don’t work out. i’m just getting way to tired of watching other people become part of the “old boy network” with a fraction of the input that i have made to the festival, when i am not even considered for that network, in spite of the fact that i’ve been in it since the beginning. it’s getting to be the same way with the oregon country fair, as well. i’ve never been a person that appreciates “old boy networks”, and these two things have been grating against that dislike for quite some time now. there are definite advantages to both, but, if not soon, definitely eventually, i’m going to have to bow out of both, because, fundamentally, i dislike the way they take advantage of me without offering sufficient benefits.

at the same time, i want to create a new act for next year’s moisture festival, that is a sextet (or larger group) that plays bach or mozart or something like that, on nose-flutes. so my feelings are definitely conflicted.

FYI

podium lectern

a podium is the thing you stand on, from the greek πόδι – foot. it is also the thing the lectern stands on. the lectern is the thing you read from, from the latin lectus – to read. when you know even a little bit of a language other than american, things like this are a lot less confusing. 😕

dear OVH

dear OVH,

i have been reporting, and blocking spam from your network for at least 5 years. i have at least 500 different addresses that you have used to hide behind, so that when the spam-reporting gets too extreme, you just start a new, incomprehensible email address… yes, i’m talking about [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] and EVERY FUCKING thing in between…

through my moderate poking around, i have discovered that most of these addresses are for Florent Demuynck, Stephane LeSimple, Falco Schmutz, Grillion Alexis, Tarik Benammar, Edouard Vanbelle, Benjamin Ficheland, Laurent Allard, and others (some of whom may or may not still be employees of OVH), and/or their boss, Octave Klaba.

today, for the first time, i have actually blocked someone from OVH for trying to login to this blog… YES, MY BLOG has been probed by 158.69.223.8.

this is a warning: if i EVER catch you or any of your minions poking around my web again, i will block you so fast that it’ll make your head spin.

i’m on to you OVH. don’t push me, or you’ll feel my mallet! 😠

then there’s this…

5 types of swastika buttons
5 types of swastika buttons

i think i may have found a way to market these online so that people will be able to get what they want without having it be a random selection chosen by me. it’s difficult, because no two buttons are exactly the same, but i discovered, quite by accident, that there are five different general categories that they fall into. i suppose, if i wanted to get really technical, i could separate them even further into a predominant colour, but i think that may be a bit more complex, because then it would be possible, theoretically, for someone to come up with a colour and category that doesn’t exist, and that would be embarrassing.

they are all swastikas: category 1 buttons have more of an abstract swastika, because you can’t actually see it, but if you can look beyond the borders of the button, you might be able to imagine where it would be. category 2 buttons are a little less abstract, but it’s still not a visible swastika, although it might be easier for some people to figure out where it is. category 3 buttons have at least one definite swastika. category 4 buttons have at least three definite swastikas, and category 5 buttons have EITHER no less than 6 swastikas, OR at least one swastika, and a significant area where there are no swastikas.

they’re all $1.00 or more a piece… i say “or more” because if people want to pay more for them, i won’t complain. 😉

notuchup

every now and then i actually listen to the “christian” AM radio that i frequently have on in the car, and today was one of them. this time it featured “doctor” robert jefferess of Pathway To “Victory” (although they never state over what, exactly, you will have victory if you listen to their broadcast), and i got to thinking:

fundamentally, the things that “doctor” robert jefferess was talking about, for the most part, are either demonstrably false, or not supported by the preponderance of evidence, at the very least… so why is it that he has the priveledge of being addressed as “doctor”, which carries the added reputation of being extremely studied in your chosen field. but, the thing is, in this case, being “extremely studied in your chosen field” means studying the works of people whose study is of a single book which is demonstrably false, or not supported by the preponderance of evidence, at the very least…

which, essentially, is saying that “doctor” robert jefferess, and all of the “doctors” on whose study his “doctorate” is based, and all of the “doctors” on whose study their “doctorates” are based, and all of the “doctors” on whose study their “doctorates” are based, and so forth, are, essentially, “doctors” of lies and falsehood.

which makes me wonder how they got into positions of authority. somewhere along the line, somebody must have said “i know this is not true, but i’m going to teach it as though it is, anyway, because if i do, these suckers will give me money”. it may even be that the person who said that was long enough ago in history that nobody remembers who he was.

it also makes me wonder how many other people in positions of authority are there because nobody bothered to check to make sure their “authority” is not, also, based on lies and falsehood.

arf…

i’m well and truly into the midst of rehearsal season: we’ve been rehearsing the fremont philharmonic for 3 weeks for a week of shows at the moisture farcetival, we’ve been rehearsing snake suspenderz for a week for a gig at the château, a recording session with deb seymour(!), three moisture farcetival shows, and a moisture farcetival volunteer party, and next week rehearsals for the sousa band, whose first gig will be while i am in orlando.

and, speaking of orlando, this evening, i made, and paid for, the reservations for my trip from seattle, to orlando, to warrensburg, to seattle between may 23 and june 3. this is the first trip i’ve taken where i’ve had to fly, by myself, for my own enjoyment, in my entire life. i haven’t flown anywhere since the big bois with poise went to san francisco in 2012, and i haven’t been on the east coast since i went to boston when i started at software dot com in 1998… and then i was working (actually, i slept through most of the training classes, because i had stayed up until 4:00 in the morning drinking beer with spods), so i didn’t get the chance to see that much… and this is sort of the opposite corner of the continent…

i guess i’m officially starting to get “excited” about going on this trip…

but the visa signature conceirge service, in the process of giving me options for the trip, gave me the option of flying from orlando to kansas city, by way of… wait for it… seattle. yes, they tried to make what would ordinarily be a 3 hour non-stop flight into an 18 hour trip back home, with a 9 hour layover. really! 😕

flight weirdness
flight weirdness
flight weirdness
flight weirdness

bleh

two days ago, i drove moe to the airport, so that she can go on a business trip to austin and las vegas.

yesterday started with my almost losing zorah… well, i didn’t really “almost lose” her, because she was perfectly safe and fine all the time, but there were about 15 minutes, yesterday morning, when i wasn’t so sure of that.

today the cat decided that he was going to go walkabout, and door-dashed when i opened it to let the dogs in. of course he didn’t go that far, because he hadn’t thought that far ahead, but it was complicated by the fact that the dogs wanted to go inside and were confused when there was a complication with their desires.

i had a rehearsal for the moisture festival yesterday. i’ve got another one today.

moe gets home on thursday.

i’m planning an actual, long-distance, several-day trip at the end of may. it’s somewhat exciting, but it’s also terrifying, and something that i am ready to give up on, several times a day. i’ll be going to see joe, who i haven’t seen since 1973 (according to the handy-dandy chart of when things happened) in orlando, and rosemary, who is my great-grandfather’s daughter, in warrensburg. the last time i flew anywhere was when i went to san francisco in 2012, with the big bois with poise. the last time i was on the east cost was when i went to boston in 1999… but i have never actually planned a cross-country trip where i was both planning the trip, and the only one going on the trip. and, to be honest, i haven’t seen joe for 40 years, and, while we are farcebook friends, i really don’t know that much about him or his life, and i do NOT want to be stuck on the east coast with a friend who is pissed at me for saying the wrong thing, or looking bizarre. and i really don’t want to be stuck in Knob Noster with a relative who, like most of my other living relatives, can’t stand me.

oh gawd… i was distractedly perusing the map, and i discovered small towns to the south of Knob Noster, called Tightwad and Racket… yes, folks… this is where my ancestors came from. 😕

why

it’s called “depression art” because i make it when i’m depressed, and, despite the fact that i’ve made 40 completely unique buttons and have the potential for making, literally, hundreds more, i haven’t been able to sell any of them, despite the fact that i’ve advertised them on at least three different communities on farcebook where i thought they were going to sell like they were going out of style…

which is depressing.

hey, check it out…

so i got another 2,500 spam messages starting this morning, but i FINALLY figured out where the settings are on my server that let me do things like filter spam that all has the same subject line, but different senders, and how to block all messages that have a sender from a certain IP-address-range, or from a certain country…

no help from my host provider, naturally… i’m seriously getting the impression that, despite the fact that they’re home office is in great britain, they hire people from india, russia or south america to do tech support, and english is NOT their primary language… and if i have more than one question per response, they only answer the last one, and totally ignore all of the others. it took me four days and a great deal of consternation to get them to delist my IP address from hotmail, which is something, if i were to do it myself, would take about half an hour. 😒

spam spammers spamming

i am digging my way out from under an inundation of spam messages which arrived between around 1:00 am and around 4:00 pm yesterday. all told there were around 10,000 messages, but they were arriving in 10 to 12 message batches, about 500 every five minutes or so, and only started to decrease around 3:30.

but, at the same time, i sent two LARTs to the spammer’s upstream provider, yesterday, and today i got confirmation(!) that they had disabled their Luser’s email capabilities. i realise that they may just be blowing me off, and the gap will very quickly be filled with another spammer, but it’s good to know that my mallet is still quick and strong… 😎

tee… 😊

so, i got Roxy, The Movie on DVD for xmas. i finally got around to watching it this afternoon. during the last song, The Bebop Tango, i recognised this audience member, erstwhile named “Carl”…

"Carl", Chester Thompson, Tom Fowler, Frank Zappa - Roxy, The Movie
“Carl”, Chester Thompson, Tom Fowler, Frank Zappa – Roxy, The Movie

this is the person i now know as Thaddeus, a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago (8, 9, 10 December, 1973). here’s the whole performance:

trichomes

160209 trichomes
160209 trichomes – field of view approximately 5mm

i took this with my cell phone and a clip-on macro lens… it’s not exactly in focus because it has a really narrow field where the focus is absolutely spot-on, and it changes pretty dramatically when you breathe, or move slightly, or that sort of thing… but considering that it’s a hand-held device with no way to fine-tune the focus, i’d say that it’s a pretty good picture over all… πŸ˜‰

i might have known…

this morning, i logged into farcebook, did a few things, and was abrubly logged out of facebook with a message that said my session expired, and to login again.

which i could not do…

when i tried, it said that it appeared that i was using a “Profile” when i should be using a “Page”, however when i went through the process of changing my “Profile” to a “Page” it said that “Creating content with that name is not allowed”. so, i tried to change the name to “Frank Zappa The Cat” which gave me the message that “Our automated system has determined that the name “Frank Zappa The Cat” is not same or similar to (sic) the name “Frank Zappa”… and encouraged me to create the page with “same or similar to” the name which is not allowed.

after going back and forth (and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and…) a WHOLE BUNCH of times, i finally figured out that it WOULD allow me to create content with the name “Frak Zappa”, however once i figured that out, it wanted me to name another account that could administrate it, and the only other farcebook account that i know of is moe’s…

which, of course, now means that the ONLY way to do ANYTHING with frank zappa’s farcebook account is to log in as moe… which doesn’t help if moe is already logged in…

furthermore, when the “Profile” was being “migrated” to the “Page”, it somehow LOST all of my “friends” (about 150 people)… of course i downloaded an “archive” of my page, which gives me the names of those 150 people, but no way to contact them.

😑

i’m not sure if i’m ever going to calm down enough to create a new farcebook account or not. at this point, i’m leaning very heavily towards NOT.

ETA: so i started a new account as Ralph Ewggleigh, which they accepted, and i’m fairly sure WON’T be shut down for trivial reasons… they wouldn’t let me make an account for “Guido DeLuxe” or “Tina Chopp” (how Tina Chopp manages it i’ll probably never know). now all i have to do is ping the 150-or-so friends i had and convince them to switch accounts. 8P

catchup

moe is better. she didn’t have norovirus, just a bad case of food poisoning. but she is under a lot of stress, which is not good. she doesn’t have enough people working for her, and she has to travel in march, which means that she’s either got to find enough, qualified people to work for her really quickly, and bring them up to speed, or the clinic will have to cut back hours and/or close during the time she’s travelling, which, basically, isn’t an option, and even if it was, it’s not hers to make anyway. also, the place that was going to do the body work on her car screwed up their appointment with her to have an estimate made on the car, and didn’t call her back like they said they were going to, which means that we’re probably not going to be able to get the body work done on her car while she’s travelling in march.

and, of course, i’m doing what i can to help, but it’s not enough, and i don’t want her to break, because i’m going to have problems dealing with a broken person when i’m already pretty broken myself… 8/

plants doing well — how could they not be, actually — 3 under flowering light, 9 clones under vegetative light. probably another month and a half or so before harvest. maybe more…

planties
planties
planties
planties
planties
planties

allegedly, there are space queen starts that i can access, but i don’t know for sure yet. 8)

i’m thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to add another loft in the workshop. it would only take four 2×6 beams and some plywood, and then i’d have a whole bunch more storage space that would clear out a lot of space on the floor of the workshop, and in the spare bedroom. moe keeps saying that, eventually, i’ll move the plants to the floor of the workshop, but i don’t see that happening any time soon. however i do see the extra loft being built. it’s going to have to wait until we get nicer weather, though, because building something that large in the workshop is going to mean moving a whole bunch of stuff out and storing it somewhere else for two or three days.

moe is sick… probably as sick as i have ever seen her… which is not to say that she gets sick very often, or very seriously, but still… 😨 (which is to say, U+1F628 FEARFUL FACE, if it doesn’t come through correctly). she’s going to get better… at least she SAYS she’s going to get better, but still…

the bewlay brothers

in the mid-1980s, i lived in an apartment with randy, who was a david bowie fanatic. i was not, at the time, because i had been brought up listening to jazz, classical, and contemporary classical music, had been heavily involved with jazz, marching and concert bands and orchestras, and, basically, “didn’t have time” to listen to “inferior” music made by “talentless” artists.

but, at the same time, i was also beginning to suspect that everything i had learned about “christianity” was not only false, but that there HAD to be another alternative to what the “christians” were ranting about. i had read some of the works of Aliester Crowley, and been able to make exactly zero sense of it, and started heading for other religions to fill the gaps.

then i heard this song, and a few others like it, and they helped me to realise that sometimes, in order to comprehend the deeper meanings of things, one had to read more than what was on the surface…

All Smoke Is Not Created Equal

All Smoke Is Not Created Equal
by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
January 7, 2016

Long-term exposure to tobacco smoke is demonstrably harmful to health. According to the United States Center for Disease Control, tobacco smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and chronic exposure to tobacco smoke is linked to increased incidences of cancer as well as vascular disease. Inhaling tobacco smoke is also associated with a variety of adverse pulmonary effects, such as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

Does smoking cannabis pose similar dangers to lung health? According to a number of recent scientific findings, marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke vary considerably in their health effects. So then why are lawmakers in various states, such a Minnesota and New York, imposing new restrictions explicitly prohibiting the inhalation of herbal preparations of cannabis?

Marijuana Smoke vs. Tobacco Smoke
Writing in the Harm Reduction Journal in 2005, noted cannabis researcher Robert Melamede explained that although tobacco smoke and marijuana smoke have some similar chemical properties, the two substances possess different pharmacological activities and are not equally carcinogenic. Specifically, he affirmed that marijuana smoke contains multiple cannabinoids – many of which possess anti-cancer activity – and therefore likely exerts β€œa protective effect against pro-carcinogens that require activation.” Melamede concluded, β€œComponents of cannabis smoke minimize some carcinogenic pathways whereas tobacco smoke enhances some.”

Marijuana Smoke and Cancer
Consequently, studies have so far failed to identify an association between cannabis smoke exposure and elevated risks of smoking-related cancers, such as cancers of the lung and neck. In fact, the largest case-controlled study ever to investigate the respiratory effects of marijuana smoking reported that cannabis use was not associated with lung-related cancers, even among subjects who reported smoking more than 22,000 joints over their lifetime. Summarizing the study’s findings in The Washington Post, pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, Professor Emeritus at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, concluded: β€œWe hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use. What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

A meta-analysis of additional case-control studies, published in the International Journal of Cancer in 2014, similarly reported, β€œResults from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers,” while a 2009 Brown University study determined that those who had a history of marijuana smoking possessed a significantly decreased risk of head and neck cancers as compared to those subjects who did not.

Marijuana Smoke and Pulmonary Function
According to a 2015 study conducted at Emory University in Atlanta, the inhalation of cannabis smoke, even over extended periods of time, is not associated with detrimental effects on pulmonary function, such as forced expiratory volume (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FCV). Assessing marijuana smoke exposure and lung health in a large representative sample of U.S. adults, age 18 to 59, they maintained, β€œThe pattern of marijuana’s effects seems to be distinctly different when compared to that of tobacco use.” Subjects had inhaled the equivalent of one marijuana cigarette per day for 20 years, yet did not experience FEV1 decline or deleterious change in spirometric values of small airways disease.

Marijuana Smoke and COPD
While tobacco smoking is recognized as a major risk factor for the development of COPD – a chronic inflammation of the airways that may ultimately result in premature death – marijuana smoke exposure (absent concurrent tobacco smoke exposure) appears to present little COPD risk. In 2013, McGill University professor and physician Mark Ware wrote in the journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society: β€œCannabis smoking does not seem to increase risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or airway cancers… Efforts to develop cleaner cannabinoid delivery systems can and should continue, but at least for now, (those) who smoke small amounts of cannabis for medical or recreational purposes can breathe a little bit easier.”

Mitigating Marijuana Smoke Exposure
The use of a water-pipe filtration system primarily cools cannabis smoke, which may reduce throat irritation and cough. However, this technology is not particularly efficient at eliminating the potentially toxic byproducts of combustion or other potential lung irritants.

By contrast, vaporization heats herbal cannabis to a point where cannabinoid vapors form, but below the point of combustion – thereby reducing the intake of combustive smoke or other pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and tar. Observational studies show that vaporization allows consumers to experience the rapid onset of effect while avoiding many of the associated respiratory hazards associated with smoking – such as coughing, wheezing, or chronic bronchitis. Clinical trials also report that vaporization results in the delivery of higher plasma concentrations of THC (and likely other cannabinoids) compared to smoked cannabis. As a result, the authors affiliated with the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research and elsewhere now acknowledge that vaporizers provide a β€œsafe and effective” way to for consumers to inhale herbal cannabis.

The Bottom Line
Based on this scientific record, it makes little sense for lawmakers to impose legislative bans on herbal cannabis products, such as those that presently exist for patients in Minnesota and New York and which are now being proposed in several other states (e.g., Georgia and Pennsylvania). Oral cannabis preparations, such as capsules and edibles, possess delayed onset compared to inhaled herbal cannabis, making these options less suitable for patients desiring rapid symptomatic relief. Further, oral administration of cannabis-infused products is associated with significantly greater bioavailability than is inhalation – resulting in more pronounced variation in drug effect from dose to dose (even in cases where the dose is standardized). These restrictions unnecessarily limit patients’ choices and deny them the ability to obtain rapid relief from whole-plant cannabis in a manner that has long proven to be relatively safe and effective.

story

a long time ago… after i got married, but before my injury, when ezra was living with the PHBFH on capitol hill, and i was living on beacon hill, somebody (i always suspected that ezra knew who, but he never admitted to it) lobbed a fist-sized rock through the PHBFH’s front window, which struck ezra in the face and broke his nose. shortly after that, the PHBFH moved everything to an even rougher part of town in an attempt to get away from the roughness that she perceived surrounding her, pretty much everywhere.

i retrieved the rock, wrote the words “I BROKE EZRA’S NOSE” on it, put it into storage, and promptly forgot it, because i was up to my eyeballs in other stuff, including dealing with the PHBFH and her erstwhile lawyer.

i found the rock the other day:

151223 rock before
151223 rock before

i texted ezra, to see if he wanted it. he didn’t, but he suggested that i carve the words into the rock and then “let it back out into nature :)” which sounded like an admirable idea to me, so i did:

151223 rock during
151223 rock during

151223 rock during
151223 rock during
151223 rock during
151223 rock during
151223 rock after
151223 rock after

the next step is to paint the letters with some durable, shiny paint in some bright colour, i’m thinking neon green, or yellow or something. i’m also debating whether or not to “enhance” the blood stains that are still on the rock, for dramatic effect.

then, to release it back to nature… possibly at double bluff park, since we have a tradition of going there every year. or at fort worden… i’m seeing ezra on sunday, so i’ll get a chance to talk with him about it, as well…

november 1st

november 1st is the date i started my new project:

151101 plants
151101 plants

it is now december 22nd, i.e. approximately 2 months later…

151222 plants
151222 plants

i’ve created 7 clones…

151214 clones
151214 clones

and a space for the plants to go in once they’re ready to flower…

151222
151222

which will be in another week or so. the light that the plants are under currently is the cooler, bluer light that is for vegetative growth, and the flowering lights are the warmer, redder light, but my impression is that the difference doesn’t show in photos so much.

and it’s legal! 😁

my guess is that it will be a couple more months or so, and i won’t have to pay for cannabis any longer, and i will also have a steady source of income. 😉

pantoo

panto started yesterday. 4 shows in and it’s already the best show we’ve ever done, despite the fact that the two fairy tales that we mashed up (Hansel & Gretel and Goldilocks & The Three Bears) are not very strong stories in and of themselves. i ordered a metal slide whistle because my PVC one has finally bit the big one. i also sold a single LP album for $200 at discogs.

mump-3

i got up early because i was supposed to give a friend a ride to seattle, but when i got there, he told me that he had rescheduled for january, but that he could use a ride to the post office. so i took him to the post office, and checked my box, which was empty. 😒

i got an order for 13 boxes of incense, but when i looked at my active stock, i only had 5. because of the fact that i had to leave to go to seattle, i couldn’t figure out why. when i got back home, after not having to go to seattle, i was able to determine that, while i only had 5 boxes in my active stock, i actually had 30 stashed away in cold storage. so i packed up 13 boxes and made another run to the post office. kaching! $90… 😊

not only do i not have to figure out what’s wrong with the web site, i’ve got another example of how the web site is smarter than i am, despite the fact that it’s 6 years old. 😒

because of the fact that i don’t have to go to seattle, i don’t have anything else to do until my rehearsal this evening, but i also don’t have an excuse to go visit ezra and give him the last vestiges of his living in my house (a few posters, a couple CDs and a folder full of ancient stuff)… which means that i may go into seattle anyway, to deliver the stuff for ezra. 😊

oh yeah, todays the blog-birthday. happy birthday, blog. 😊

updated

nothing much has happened since the last update:

i got an app for my tablet that will do what i want it to: it’s a drum-pad-sequencer gadget that has a built-in sampler, so i’ll be able to sample a service bell, and a whip, and whatever else i need and have them electronically reproducible on demand. it will do a number of things, including decreasing the amount of crap i’m going to have to haul, be volume-controllable, be fail-safe, and that sort of thing. it probably won’t work so well for the oregon country fair, but that’s a ways down the road yet. it’s kind of amusing to me, primarily because this is very definitely NOT the purpose for which it was intended to be used… but, to quote frank zappa, i, truly, don’t care.

two weeks until the panto starts. get your tickets now, because they’re going fast.

monday, this week (151123) was Church/State Separatation Day, and also Fibonacci Day.

i’ve been listing a lot of old vinyl for sale on discogs recently, and i’ve been selling a surprising amount of it. i’ve even gotten an inquiry about the album whose “recommended price” is close to $250, which surprised me a lot.

i’ve been taking 5HTP as a mood controller for a couple of months, and it seems to be having some effect. it doesn’t decrease the amount of depression, but it does put me in a space where i can observe the depression, rather than being affected by it… as much… i’m not sure whether this is an improvement or not, but it’s something… interesting, perhaps…

thanksgiving was yesterday. the world is fucked: climate change is upon us, there have been shootings and bombings all over the world (including a new one, today, when a 40ish-year-old, white male shot up a planned parenthood branch), people are getting stupider and they’ve got stellar education in how to do it, because the stupidest ones of all are the ones that they want to elect as the next president… humanity, as a species, is killing itself off in astounding numbers, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. i have never wanted to do it, but i’m afraid i’m going to have to apologise to my son for bringing him into a world that is dead set on destroying itself. yeah, i’ve got good health, good friends, and good eats, but hitler had them too, and so does donald trump. but instead of assuring that everyone can have them, we’re more interested in keeping syrian refugees out of our country and giving people who are truly insane, the power to start the next world war. it’s time for some more realistic holidays that aren’t based on religion, coercion and genocide.

so i’ve got good reason to be depressed.

and, now that “thanksgiving” is past, there’s going to be a headlong dash into the pile of crap that is the most materialistic portion of the entire year, which decreases the probability of my getting any less depressed any time soon a lot more.

151115 update, with pictures

ManWomanDay was friday. i planned on getting tattooed, but i forgot my ID. then, moe and i went to the science cener, because they had a display up that hasn’t been up since the science center first opened in 1962… and i saw it in 1962.

151113 illusion ramp
151113 illusion ramp
151113 illusion ramp
151113 illusion ramp
151113 illusion ramp down
151113 illusion ramp down
151113 illusion ramp up
151113 illusion ramp up

i rescheduled my tattoo for today, because i forgot my ID. here’s my new tattoo:

151115 new tattoo
151115 new tattoo

so, i guess i should update this thing, again…

let me see…

sousa bash yesterday. parked across the street from the apartment building i used to live in, played in Town Hall, which used to be the christian science church when i lived there. and, if it weren’t for the wife, and the dogs, and the workshop, and a whole bunch of other stuff, i would live there again. in fact, there’s a good chance that if i were given the choice between an apartment on capitol hill, or an apartment in bellingham, i would choose an apartment on capitol hill.

speaking of bellingham, ken and kamala have officially moved out of serendipity, and it has officially changed hands and is now, no longer, serendipity. ken and kamala have moved into a house-sharing situation on south lake samish, which is several steps up for them, and, if it works out, will be much more satisfactory than serendipity ever was…

but it’s still not enough to make me want to live there.

i went up there on wednesday/thursday to help them with getting new tires for their truck.

panto rehearsals start tomorrow. i’ve still got to procure a hinge for a “whip-crack” sound effect that i’m making, and i’ve got to remember to bring my tuning forks.

no perceivable change with the moisture festival, except for the rumour that mr. poopy-pants may have been, in fact, severely talking out of his ass, which would make me laugh, but it’s only a rumour at this point.

egbert

i’ve calmed down a little, but mr. moisture-festival-poopy-pants is still on my list of bad people.

i’m in the process of doing something which i haven’t done since i lived in mount vernon, which, according to the handy chart of when things happened, was in 1993. twenty-two years ago, and this time i’m going to be doing it with my own set-up, rather than using a set-up borrowed from a friend… and it’s legal now… 😉

the sousa band is playing on saturday. it’s john philip sousa’s 161st birthday, and it’s also the 30th anniversary of the sousa band, so instead of having the sousa bash at the traditional place, which is kenyon hall (also known as hokum hall), we’re having it at town hall in seattle, which is the old christian science church that’s two blocks away from where i used to live.

😠

okay, i am so pissed off at one particular person at the moisture festival that i can’t even think straight, and i haven’t been able to think straight for 3 days, but if i say what i really feel, then the probability is very high that i, at least, will not be invited back to play the moisture festival ever again, and while that seems like a good thing now, i would undoubtedly regret that decision eventually, so i’m going to keep my mouth shut…

with this one exception: the person who i am pissed off at, is the most inconsiderate, short-sighted, no-talent, "good-ol’-boy" ass that ever existed, and i am REALLY glad that, apart from the moisture festival, i have no contact with him, because if i did, it would undoubtedly get very unpleasant for both of us.

etc.

snake suspenderz gig tonight at the georgetown stables.

going to bellingharm tomorrow to say farewell to serendipity. it’ll probably be the last time for a while, although i’ll probably attend a memorial service for kenyth, if one happens.

there’s currently some spammer/script-kiddie at 185.82.201.17 who thinks s/he can break my shit by repeatedly trying to login — 245 times as of this writing — to a directory that s/he’s been banned from since 2:30 am this morning. i can’t imagine that they’re doing it manually, but they keep knocking and i keep saying go away. i suppose they’ll get the idea eventually.

god damn it!!!

i have an ipad, so i can keep farcebook off of my real computers.

i don’t know whether it’s the ipad itself, or whether it is farcebook, but i’m getting really pissed off at the behaviour i’m seeing:

1) it randomly crashes: the screen freezes, then goes black, and then it gives me the “desktop” screen, and then, when i restart the farcebook application, it automatically goes to my “News Feed” rather than to the “Most Recent” page, where i normally read stuff. this happens a lot more frequently when i am reading a “link” that someone posted, but it also happens when i am simply reading farcebook.

2) it takes FOR-FUCKING-EVER to load a “link” from the farcebook application, and even when it says it’s finished loading, frequently it freezes until the entire page actually loads, which is sometimes as much as two or three minutes later. this is a lot more common on links which contain videos, although YouTube links usually load fairly quickly, which makes me suspect that there’s something else that is gobbling up bandwidth.

3) in the farcebook application itself, it frequently freezes for a couple of minutes, and then goes back to “normal” behaviour.

4) frequently, when i go to a “link” in the farcebook application, it loads completely, and then the screen gets a grey tinge to it, and the entire page is overlayed with an advertisement of some kind, and unless i touch EXACTLY the right place, which changes semi-regularly, instead of getting to read the page that i intended to, i have to wait for farcebook to put another, complete, entirely unrelated page, the advertisement, on the screen, which frequently takes up to five minutes, before i can go “back” to the page i was intending to read.

4½) a related problem is that, frequently, when i touch a place that should be a link of some kind (like a URI) it doesn’t do anything at all, and other times, when i am “scrolling”, it interprets my “touch” as a “click” and loads something in which i wasn’t interested, and then gives me a lot of difficulties (involving one or more of the previously enumerated items) getting back to where i was.

to make matters worse, the specific problems outlined above don’t happen individually: they frequently come in batches of two, or three, and, frequently all four of them at the same time.

as i said, i’m not sure whether it is due to bugs in the farcebook application, or bugs in the hardware, but it’s getting to the point where i feel like throwing the device against a wall, or out the window or something.

i’m fairly sure that this is NOT the way it is supposed to work. 😠

pichers

Amitabha Buddhist Society of Seattle
151010 Amitabha Buddhist Society of Seattle
151012 what for schools?
151012 okay, how does one pronounce this name? i see a number of options, none of which make for a particularly memorable campaign slogan… “shit” for schools? “shite” for schools? “skit” for schools? i wonder why nobody thought of this before the campaign got this far…
151014 glass blowing
151014 glass blowing

sigh…

so, it has been a couple days since my computer fell back into place, and i can definitely say that the past couple of weeks have been among the most stressful battles of the computer i have ever experienced… and it still isn’t back to 100%. 😠

my external, backup drive mounts when i first turn the machine on in the morning, but if i have to restart it for any reason — security upgrades, for example — i have to completely shut down the machine and start it up from power-off, rather than “restarting” it, because the disk only mounts if it starts up from power-off… if the machine restarts, it doesn’t power-off, and it loses the backup drive when it has restarted.

i am fairly sure that this can be taken care of relatively easily, by adding a line of text to a particular settings file somewhere, but i don’t remember where, and, at this point, i am so relieved to have a computer that actually works at all, that i’m willing to overlook this relatively minor inconvenience for the moment.

wrap up

i got my email working late friday. when i booted the machine yesterday, i still didn’t have my backup disk, and, while i futzed around and rebooted a couple of times, i couldn’t get it to mount. also, in spite of the fact that i had the cable plugged into the right hole, the sound still didn’t work, but i was going to bellingharm, so i figured i would save it until later.

i went to bellingham yesterday. ken and kamala have found a new place to live, but serentipity is going away, after 40 years that i know of. i got home at 11:00 last night, and was too tired to mess around with the computer.

this morning i got up, and booted up the computer, and, for some unknown reason, the backup disk mounted. i shut it down and started it up several times, and i still have a backup disk. it fixed itself. weird… so then i pulled the audio cable and plugged it into the front, where i can see what it’s doing. it worked. i plugged it into the back, and it still worked. so, the sound fixed itself as well. double weird… 8/

also, i screwed around with cron for about 5 minutes total (it actually took about 20 minutes, but it was screw with cron for a few seconds and then wait 5 minutes for the changes to take effect, or not), and got sigrot to work the way it’s supposed to.

so, basically, i got through the whole battle of the computer, and i only lost my fonts and my email filters… and i didn’t lose ALL of the email filters, only the “actions” for the filters… and i didn’t really lose the fonts, but i think they’re actually living on the other computer, which i haven’t booted up since the new computer made its appearance, so i’m still hoping that’ll fix itself as well…

i don’t know why, but i’m not arguing. this is the best outcome i have ever experienced in the battle of the computer, although it took quite a bit longer to come to this resolution than it has in the past.

told ya so… 8P

told ya so… 8P

it doesn’t completely work the way i want it to, yet, but it was 2% working yesterday, and today it’s back to 95%

while i’ve got my email back, it’s not completely working yet, and i’m still having to deal with peculiarities with which i’m not exactly familiar. they’re peculiar enough that, it’s my professional opinion that they may be caused by demons, and may work themself out on their own eventually… one of my email accounts apparently uses a password i don’t remember. gramps works, but it still thinks the media is on the non-existent disk… i still don’t have the fonts straightened out…

but it’s one hell of a lot closer than it was yesterday, when i didn’t have the task bar icons that i usually have, and the K-menu icons that i usually have, and my email didn’t work… and i didn’t even have to convince it to mount the big hard disk, which wasn’t even showing up as being capable of mounting until i jumped through a 3-step hoop in order to mount it, yesterday…

it’s fixed enough that i am not even worried about going to bellingharm tomorrow, but i probably won’t spend the night.

UPDATE 10:30 pm i got email working. it was a combination of trying things in a new way, and demons in the pipes. i’ve even got my sigrot working, although i don’t know whether cron is taking care of running it every 5 minutes. also i got dropbox working again. now all i gotta do is figure out where my fonts went to…

sigh…

i’m giving up, copying the data back on to the 3TB hard disk (which has now been reformatted as a 3TB disk), wiping the machine and starting over. this is ridiculous.

basically, over the past three days, i’ve been trying this thing, and that thing, and not being able to get my email back. i’ve been getting more and more anxious and more and more frustrated, and making more and more anxious decisions which turn out to be the wrong ones, which makes figuring out what went wrong more difficult…

and, the fact is, i’ve got this backup, which is all i really need apart from the data.

today i learned that you need to restore more than just the ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail directory, if you want to restore kmail. there’s a long list of directories and files, but what it comes down to is that if i restore ~/.config, ~/.kde, and ~/.local i’ll get not only all of my mail and contacts, but also all of my desktop settings.

also, i discovered that, for gawd-knows-what reason, the default for a new installation instance of Ark, the archiving program for KDE, is to “Extract Selected Files” rather than to “Extract All Files”… which is part of the reason i haven’t been able to extract all of the files i thought i was dealing with.

the end result is that, even if i could figure out what i need to replace, and what needs to stay to get things more or less back to normal, without a great deal of help, it would take a lot longer than it will to give up and start over.

significantly, i also learned that i’ve got all my shit, and now that i know what to do with it, if i start over, there’s a good chance that i will have everything back up and running, and have it a lot closer to the way i want it, as early as tomorrow.

computer, you’ve won this round, but watch out, because i will defeat you. πŸ‘Ώ

every time i think i see light at the end of the tunnel, it turns out to be the headlight of an oncoming train…

the host provider moved my hosting services, and gave me a new IP address, the ramifications of which started on the 21st, and are still going on. literally. i tried to SEND email at 5:30 this morning, only to get an error message from my email client that the RECIPIENT “[email protected]” was rejected by the server… and this is on MY server… for some unknown reason, if i send from webmail, it doesn’t happen, but i despise webmail and will do anything to avoid it, because it’s too easy to spam and get away with it if you use the web for mail, rather than for web-related stuff. also, if i use IMAP (webmail), the mail is retained on a server over which i have no control, which means that anyone who can crack into the server potentially has access to my mail… and this is, for some unknown reason, not an issue for the technicians (if i can call them that) from the host service.

add to this nightmare, the fact that i’m still working on getting my new computer set up… it’s taken 3 days to figure out where my two USB drives are, move the data off of them, and reformat them, because, unbeknownst to me, they were formatted FAT32, which can’t see files that are more than 4GB, and i had been storing files on one of the disks that are >7GB, for quite some time. so, once i’d figured out how to mount them (because they had screwed up partition tables) i had to move all the data off of the disk (fortunately i have a new 1TB internal hard disk that was just aching to have ¾ of it taken up with old data), and reformat the drive EXT4… which means NO interaction with windoesn’t is possible — who cares about micro$lop anyway — but it will now see files that are as big as i want to make them…

AND, because of the fact that, apparently, i don’t know how to correctly backup my email files, i’m STILL having to battle with kmail/kontact/KDE-PIM to get things back in line — they still AREN’T, and — you guessed it — i’m having to use webmail to straighten things out, because Mail (on my ipad) gives me this weird error message, and kmail isn’t working…

FURTHERMORE, i don’t have things set up the way i want them on the new machine yet… i still have to figure out why gucharmap doesn’t have emoticons, even though they’re supposed to be part of the unicode standard at this point; now that i’ve got the disk reformatted to EXT4, i’ve got to figure out how to mount it at startup, so that it will be able to use the new backup software i installed; and, undoubtedly, there are a myriad of other, less important things that i have neglected to mention, simply because they haven’t happened yet, which are making my life unbelievably difficult, and leaving no end in sight. 😑

oy… 😠

all i had to do was mention the fact that i am getting a new computer, and it automatically triggered one of the worst battles of the computer that i have ever seen.

they moved my hosting accounts from us10.la.thewebhostserver.com, which is being retired, to a new server, mars-la.thewebhostserver.com. it had an IP address assigned to it that was ALREADY LISTED in four different spam-filtering services (that i know about), so they gave me a new IP address, which doesn’t have a rDNS record, and also doesn’t have a DNS PTR record (which is, apparently, different from an rDNS record), which means that i can only send email to about a third of the people to whom i need to send email, and the rest of them generate bounce notices.

this has been going on ever since the 21st, which is the last time i posted here, and, while it has definitely been on its way to getting fixed, they have been taking their bloody time about it, and i have been getting more and more convinced that, once again, i should probably think about finding a new host provider. 😑

and, while i have it sitting on my desk next to me, the new computer still is not hooked up or working yet, because i want to be sure that everything is working the way it is supposed to work BEFORE i do something that i know to be destructive to my system.

the battle is joined

i’m getting a new computer. the primary hard disk on the current computer says this:

salamandir@Gingko:~$ sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.13.0-63-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 29056 323066047
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 29025 323066047

salamandir@Gingko:~$ sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.13.0-63-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 38197 -

which means, basically, that the primary hard disk – /dev/sda – has a read failure, and the secondary hard disk is okay… but i just copied all of the data off the secondary hard disk today anyway… and they’re 180gb and 200gb respectively, which means i can replace both of them with a brand new 1TB disk for about the same price that i could search out two used drives of the same size, and for a little bit more, i can replace the whole machine, with 4 times the RAM.

which sounds like a very good idea to me. so, i’m doing that. i’ll probably be offline for a day or so, within the next few days, but i don’t anticipate a major ordeal.

bellingharm

bellingham, and a majority of the remaining people i care about there, have changed so dramatically during the past few years that i no longer want to live there.

i’m not even sure how much i’m going to want to go back to visit, after a few more attempts…

seriously.

people are lying to each other, plotting behind the backs of people who used to be friends, peoples’ lives are deteriorating and the people who care are being rebuffed… households that have been solid for 35 years are breaking up… all the good people are dying or have already left, and the people who remain are getting drunk, messing up their friends’ lives, and not caring…

i’m really glad that moe rescued me from all that, and i’m hoping that the remaining friends i have who currently live there, get out and move to some place where people actually care about each other. 😒

stuff & nonsense

i brought home the glass bong that i made in the previous post, and now have two glasses in the annealer, waiting for me to pick them up. 8)

the fremont phil has a gig on friday, which is tomorrow. i’m probably going up to b’ham to visit with kenyth on saturday. maybe coming back saturday, maybe sunday… haven’t decided yet.

saturday is also frank zappa day, and international talk-like-a-pirate day. a week from saturday is festa italiana for the BSSB. the thursday after that (which is the first of october), snake suspenderz has a gig at the chateau retirement center. maybe they’ll remember to pay us this time.

there’s a video that goes here, but it’s taking forever to upload, so i’ll put it in later.

https://youtu.be/9hu2th6-TNE

new news

for the past few weeks i’ve been learning to blow glass.

it takes time to anneal the glass, so i can’t take home pieces right away. this week i got the piece that i worked on last week. it’s a little wobbly, because it’s my first actual piece, but it turned out quite well…

150904 hand blown glass bong
150904 hand blown glass bong

next time i have a lesson (in 2 weeks) i will get to take home my second piece, which is orders of magnitude better than my first piece… 😎

W. T. F??

so, i’ve got a new customer.

he’s from india. he’s a doctor. he wants me to ship him $100 worth of incense that, it is my understanding, is VERY easy to find in india, but which is practically impossible to find in the united states… in fact, as far as i can tell, mine is the only on-line, retail store in the united states which sells it…

here is a guy, who is 150 kilometers away from the manufacturer of this incense, who wants me to ship $100 worth of this exact, same incense to him, from half way around the planet

W.T.F??!? 😕

blaine, 2015

in 2009 i uploaded a picture that was taken in 1981 of me and a bunch of guys juggling on the lawn in front of old main, at western:

jugglers

one of those guys, barry alexander, was a friend of mine who was also a jeweler, and made the silver Ritual Object that has been used in countless Ritual Vegetable Sacrifices by The Church of Tina Chopp throughout the intervening years.

on sunday, the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band played a concert at the Peace Arch in blaine. after the concert, as i was putting my instrument away, i was approached by barry alexander, who i haven’t seen in probably 35 years. this is what he looks like now:

150823 Barry Alexander, Blaine, WA

apparently, he knows a lot more about what’s going on with me than i do about him, because he knows about things like Hybrid Elephant, whereas what i know about him ceased to be updated when i lost contact with him, some time in the early 1980s…

Harmonic Flute

the following is the rant that i’m going to put in the liner notes of the CD… which is why it will probably change at some point in the future.


the harmonic flute is a very simple instrument that makes very, very complex sounds. it was made from a piece of 1-inch PVC tubing that i rescued from a construction site dumpster. i have been playing it for about 35 years. i have taken to calling it a “didjeri-flute” because when people see me playing it, one of the comments i hear most frequently is “didjeridu”… which is not correct (and, at this point, i find it somewhat annoying): it’s a harmonic or “overtone” flute, hornbostel-sachs number 421.111.11:

4 – aerophones
42 – non-free aerophones
421 – edge-blown aerophones
421.1 – flutes without a fipple
421.11 – end-blown flutes
421.111 – individual end-blown flutes
421.111.1 – open, single, end-blown flutes
421.111.11 – without fingerholes

a didjeridu is another very simple instrument, but to make a sound on a didjeridu, you use your lips to buzz into the open end, which causes the vibration in the tube, and use your breath, tongue and voice to modify the vibration. on a harmonic flute, you blow into the open end, which is modified by having a notch carved in it, with a leading edge that has been sharpened, to make the tube vibrate. without question, it is an instrument that requires very precise breath control, but that’s it: there’s no buzzing, and no tongue or voice involved at all. in this recording, the sound of the harmonic flute was fed through a boss digital delay, and a roland cube amplifier. the recording also features a brass temple bell.

the harmonic flute makes different notes based on the harmonic sequence: the first note, or “fundamental” is quiet enough, and hard enough to produce, that i don’t use it on this recording, but i can play it. sometimes it i can play it loud enough that other people can hear it as well. the second note, or “second partial” is an octave higher than the fundamental, and it is heard fairly frequently in this recording. the “third partial” is a perfect fifth above the second partial, the fourth partial is an octave above the second partial, or a perfect fourth above the third partial, and it continues along a known and predictable path from there. there are no holes in the walls of the flute, or “finger holes”, the harmonic flute has two holes, one at either end. the only way to control what note you are playing is to be able to control your breath.

other, similar flutes include the fujara, which is a fipple flute with an air-pipe and fingerholes, the quena, which is shorter, and has fingerholes, and the shakuhachi, which also is shorter, and has fingerholes.

the recording was made in an empty room with solid concrete walls about 1 foot thick, about 20 feet wide by 50 feet long by 15 feet high, with an open door at either end. the entire room, and the surrounding hallways on either end, are completely underground, and buried by 25 feet or so of earth, with bushes and trees on top. the room was one of the gunpowder storage rooms for one of the mortar bunkers at fort worden — (insert historical information about ft. worden here) — now that it is no longer being used for destructive purposes, it has absolutely fantastic accoustics, and i have wanted to record there for many years.

that’s more like it…

this is an “incomplete” track: it has the front and rear stereo pairs from my recording device, which was right in front of me, but it doesn’t have the front and rear stereo pairs from thaddeus’ device, which was about 10 feet away from me, facing the wall of the room…

however, this is pretty much exactly what i was looking for, and there’s around an hour’s worth of new tracks with which i can play around… 😎

ketchup

i isolated 10 “good enough” tracks from the raw files, but none of them were more than 6 minutes, and i wanted at least one that was 10 minutes or more, so i’m going back to fort worden next tuesday to try it all again. i’ve also bought a recording device of my own, which should make things more interesting, if nothing else.

i woke up the other day and tried to log in to my email account and discovered that everything was offline, and when i went to the host provider to determine why, i discovered that my account had been suspended because they received a spam complaint about me… except that, when i looked at the complaint they received, i recognised it immediately as one that i had sent to an upstream provider a couple of days before, and what they had done was forward it to the upstream provider on the “From:” line, instead of reading the headers to determine that they were, in fact, the people responsible… and, because of the fact that i NEVER receive spam complaints, they arbitrarily suspended my accounts, instead of reading the headers to determine who was actually responsible. 😕 since then i have received about 10,000 spam messages, in 1000 message increments, from people whose php servers have been compromised such that, simply by reading the headers and knowing where to click, i can actually see the spammers online interface on the compromised server…

but I was the one whose account was suspended for spamming. if it weren’t for the fact that i’m still recovering from my bout of changing host servers every few months, a few years ago, i would seriously consider switching, but… in spite of everything, the host server i currently use has been better than any of the others that i have found, for the price.

by the way, here is the place to get your email headers analysed, and here is the place to get information about the IP numbers you’ll get from analysing your email headers. basically it’s the same thing that spamcop used to do. i suppose there’s a way to automate it so that i don’t have to go through all the steps to figure out who gets the LARTs, but i like getting my hands dirty, because i know it’s being done correctly this way. 😏

i have a gig next saturday with the fremont philharmonic at “dudefest” and another gig on sunday at the peace arch in blaine with the sousa band. i’m probably going to spend sunday night in bellingham… depending…

exciting new thing

i’m really excited about my new project, tentatively called “I Breathe At It”, which is me playing my PVC long-flute/didgeri-flute/harmonic-flute in the bunkers at fort worden. here is a sample track:

we’ll see if that works… if not i’ll figure out something else… 😐

whaddaya know… it works. 8)

listen for the bird sounds… there were barn swallows nesting in the passageway outside of where we were recording.

150804 fort worden barn-swallow nest
150804 fort worden barn-swallow nest

Congress quietly ends federal government’s ban on medical cannabis

now all we’ve got to do is convince the media that it’s really called “cannabis”…

—–

Congress quietly ends federal government’s ban on medical cannabis
By Evan Halper at The LA Times

Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana CANNABIS and signals a major shift in drug policy.

The bill’s passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana CANNABIS.

Under the provision, states where medical pot CANNABIS is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations. Agents would be prohibited from doing so.

Should the U.S. legalize marijuana CANNABIS?
Bloomberg’s Olivia Sterns reports on the New York Times’ advocacy of the legalization of marijuana.

The Obama administration has largely followed that rule since last year as a matter of policy. But the measure approved as part of the spending bill, which President Obama plans to sign this week, will codify it as a matter of law.

Pot CANNABIS advocates had lobbied Congress to embrace the administration’s policy, which they warned was vulnerable to revision under a less tolerant future administration.

More important, from the standpoint of activists, Congress’ action marked the emergence of a new alliance in marijuana CANNABIS politics: Republicans are taking a prominent role in backing states’ right to allow use of a drug the federal government still officially classifies as more dangerous than cocaine.

“This is a victory for so many,” said the measure’s coauthor, Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa. The measure’s approval, he said, represents “the first time in decades that the federal government has curtailed its oppressive prohibition of marijuana CANNABIS.”

By now, 32 states and the District of Columbia have legalized pot CANNABIS or its ingredients to treat ailments, a movement that began in the 1990s. Even back then, some states had been approving broader decriminalization measures for two decades.

The medical marijuana CANNABIS movement has picked up considerable momentum in recent years. The Drug Enforcement Administration, however, continues to place marijuana CANNABIS in the most dangerous category of narcotics, with no accepted medical use.

Congress for years had resisted calls to allow states to chart their own path on pot CANNABIS. The marijuana CANNABIS measure, which forbids the federal government from using any of its resources to impede state medical marijuana CANNABIS laws, was previously rejected half a dozen times. When Washington, D.C., voters approved medical marijuana CANNABIS in 1998, Congress used its authority over the city’s affairs to block the law from taking effect for 11 years.

Even as Congress has shifted ground on medical marijuana CANNABIS, lawmakers remain uneasy about full legalization. A separate amendment to the spending package, tacked on at the behest of anti-marijuana crusader Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), will jeopardize the legalization of recreational pot in Washington, D.C., which voters approved last month.

Marijuana CANNABIS proponents nonetheless said they felt more confident than ever that Congress was drifting toward their point of view.

“The war on medical marijuana CANNABIS is over,” said Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance, who called the move historic.

“Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana CANNABIS,” he said. “This is the strongest signal we have received from Congress [that] the politics have really shifted. … Congress has been slow to catch up with the states and American people, but it is catching up.”

The measure, which Rohrabacher championed with Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from Carmel, had the support of large numbers of Democrats for years. Enough Republicans joined them this year to put it over the top. When the House first passed the measure earlier this year, 49 Republicans voted aye.

Some Republicans are pivoting off their traditional anti-drug platform at a time when most voters live in states where medical marijuana CANNABIS is legal, in many cases as a result of ballot measures.

Polls show that while Republican voters are far less likely than the broader public to support outright legalization, they favor allowing marijuana CANNABIS for medical use by a commanding majority. Legalization also has great appeal to millennials, a demographic group with which Republicans are aggressively trying to make inroads.

Approval of the pot CANNABIS measure comes after the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors last year to stop enforcing drug laws that contradict state marijuana policies. Since then, federal raids of marijuana merchants and growers who are operating legally in their states have been limited to those accused of other violations, such as money laundering.

“The federal government should never get in between patients and their medicine,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

this is so cool!

i’ve knowingly been around this building for 45 years, but i’ve never actually been inside the Women’s University Club in seattle, until yesterday, when the ballard sedentary sousa band played there. it’s been there for 90 years, or thereabouts, and has been the venue for many a ‘hoity-toity’ event presented by the rich, upper-class women of seattle… and now it has also been the venue in which the BSSB has played, which either means that their standards are slipping, or that the BSSB has moved up the ladder, in our social circles, by several rungs… πŸ˜‰

but the photo below is not that… it is about 3 blocks away, right next door to the building i lived in (according to the handy-dandy chart of when things happened) between 1996 and 1997, at terry and east union

seriously, this is one of my favourite places in the entire city, and i would live there again in a cold second, given the opportunity… there’s nothing like waking up in the morning, walking a few blocks, and being able to eat breakfast at the pike place market before starting your day… 😎

when i got to the women’s university club, i played, as i was expected to do, but i then learned about the fact that, in 1927, John Philip Sousa had actually been a guest of the women’s university club, and they had his signature in their guest book! so, of course, i had to take a picture of it…

150729 John Philip Sousa autograph

of course, because of the fact that i took it with my cell-phone, it’s kind of blurry, but hey… it’s a real piece of history, that i’m a part of, because we actually got to sign the very same guest book! πŸ˜€

sad

a while ago, i posted about a new cannabis dispensary that had opened up just down the street from my house.

due to “new regulations”, which i don’t completely understand, that dispensary, along with 14 others in this area, was summarily shut down by the county prosecutor last week.

it’s not as though i don’t have two other dispensaries just down the street from my house, and since they opened up, recreational cannabis has become legal in the state of washington, so i don’t really understand why they were shut down to begin with, but it’s sad…

rick and i were the first two customers of a dispensary that is now shut down… 😒

by the way…

just because i no longer have an address @spamcop.net DOES NOT indicate that i am any less than totally annoyed by spam messages that get sent my way.

an example could be found this morning, when i woke up, logged into my email client and discovered that i had over 1500 individual messages “From:” myself which were HTML formatted messages in brazilian portugese (indicating that, in reality, they were not “From:” myself), and, as i sat there and watched, another 500 messages appeared and were downloaded within the space of 5 minutes…

they all appear to have originated on cloudapp.net, which is owned by microsoft. it was set up on a “host” that is called zpx09.cloudapp.net, but it doesn’t have a whois or mx entry, which doesn’t surprise me a great deal, but what does surprise me is that there appears to be a script interface at http://zpx09.cloudapp.net/caminho-ranger-32.php which looks like this:

150722 spam script interface

great… now i can send my own spam. unfortunately, but not surprisingly, there is no indication to who the script belongs, but my guess is that if i write to microsoft, they will, eventually, take the script down and ban zpx09.cloudapp.net, if nothing else…

and while i was writing this, another 700 messages came in… time to block brazil, again. 😕

ETA: as of 6:00 pm there are 1500 more messages, for a grand total of over 3000 in a 12 hour period… and microsoft doesn’t even seem to care… 😐

hot cat

👉 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT 👈

150719 hot cat
DANGER — HOT CAT

i’ve posted copies of this photo in various places, and the responses i have gotten have all been along the lines of “i want to rub his belly”…

👉 NO YOU DON’T! 👈

this is very much a situation like in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where five of his six ends are pointy… maybe you can’t see them right now, but i assure you that if you were to reach down to rub his belly, the five of those six ends that are pointy would converge on your wrist and not let go.

now that things are…

now that things are in a state which could be referred to as “normal”, if such a concept existed (which it doesn’t, but that’s a discussion for another time), i actually have the time to update this thing…

so, OCF happened: six shows in three days, with the completely predictable “no complete rehearsal, with everybody present, until the opening show”, which went surprisingly well despite everything, and worked out, once again, to be universally applauded as “the best show we’ve ever done”. the saturday that was my “birthday” included playing at the open mike and a show for naked hippies at the ritz, which has some really cool “added extras” this year, including the ability to record our set on professional level equipment, which dramatically increases the probability that there’s actually going to be a CD later in the year… 😉

there are pictures, but they’re still on my phone… and the only real disadvantage this year was the fact that i didn’t get to spend my “birthday” with my sweetie… 😕

immediately upon getting home, however, things took a turn to the chaotic side and that’s what i’m recovering from more than anything… although the fact that i’m coming off a week of unreality at OCF may, at the same time, contribute to my ability to get through the following week of chaos, and, basically, leave me with absolutely no spoons to spare, and in a really, really strange mental state.

i played a gig with snake suspenderz at ida culver house in ravenna, which is right across the street from the former home of a woman i used to work with (which has now been turned into condominiums) who was my supervisor before mike cummings, and i believe her name was laura culver… but i’m not sure, and i’m no longer in contact with anyone who might know… and it’s pointless anyway, because the real point is that the company who engaged us, ERA Living, has, once again, stiffed us in a way that i AM NOT going to allow to happen again: basically, they had me fill out the necessay paperwork back in may, and they STILL haven’t presented a check to me for the performance that happened on thursday… and it’s now saturday… not only that, but when i got there, i was told that we would also be fed, however when we approached the guy who was laying out the food, we were told that we “had to wait until the rest of the guests were served”… and when we finally got done playing, there was no more food. 😠

and that’s not to mention that there were actually two separate groups engaged — “snake suspenderz” and “hobbit and hare” — and they paid us for one hour, in spite of the fact that some of us actually performed for two hours…

and when i approached the lady that had hired us, and said “we didn’t get fed, and we didn’t get paid”, i had to hound her every step, while she tried to sidestep the issue and blame it on everyone else for an extra 30 minutes, before she agreed to go to an ATM and withdraw the money from her personal account.

once again, this is an upscale retirement home in a trendy, gentrified area north of the university district, where the residents have gold-plated nametags, which is run by a corporation that regularly deals in hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least), and they appear to have no regard for the musicians they “hire” to entertain their high-paying residents… they wouldn’t treat a caterer like this… hell, they have a caterer on staff (which didn’t improve his attitude when we wanted to eat, however), but they feel perfectly justified in STIFFING THE BAND, because anybody can blow through a heavy collection of plumbing and make sounds that are acceptable to old people… 😠

and even if (as i was repeatedly assured would happen) the check does arrive on monday, the fact is, i filled out their fecking paperwork IN MAY so that they would be able to present me a check on THE DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE, and it DIDN’T HAPPEN… AGAIN!! 😠

which leaves us in a difficult position indeed, because the people for whom we are playing both LOVE us, and, decidedly, AREN’T the ones who are (or, apparently, aren’t) paying us. if we refuse to play, the old people suffer… 😕

anyway, the day after, i had my “annual wellness check” with dr. wacka-loon, which went more-or-less as expected, and then we had eleven friends over for “game night”, which, by the time it started i was already out of spoons, and was able to hold on only through liberal application of various mind-altering substances… all of which, surprisingly, are now legal, in spite of everything. 😉

post OCF…

and despite the fact that the “real” world expects me to hit the ground running, i still haven’t quite managed it… i’ve already tackled, more or less, an erroneous water shut-off notice and ⅔ of a confirmation for a snake suspenderz gig that’s happening on thursday…

more later, but for now: two major advantages to being at home, rather than camping out at the oregon country fair: flush toilets that are mere steps away from my current location, instead of significantly used porta-pottys that are two blocks away, and refrigerated, artesian well water instead of warm, chlorinated tap water that has seen the inside of a tanker truck. πŸ˜›

damn, that’s supposed to be a disgusted face with its tongue stuck out… i’m going to have to work on that… 😐

and that’s not to mention driving for 5 hours, and unpacking from a weeks worth of camping… i still have to do several loads of laundry, put my camping gear away, and take a shower…

another advantage: cold beer. that is all.

OCF and heat

this is my official pre-OCF post for 2015, among other things.

it has been SO FUCKING HOT for the past couple of days that i haven’t been able to run either of my real “computers” except for a couple of brief periods when i had to set up a trial wordpress instance for AVBT, and then produce some simple graphics for the site. it’s been hot enough that, if i keep my computers running for more than a couple of hours, they start acting funny… and, to be honest, i don’t blame them. it’s a good thing this is a holiday weekend, and even better that we don’t have to go on a one-day road-trip to portland — the mother-in-law and her housemate are not throwing a party this year because the housemate has had another stroke recently, and isn’t in any shape to do anything but smoke cigarettes (which is what caused the first stroke), and convalesce in her air-conditioned house…

on the up side, i’m almost ready to go to OCF again this year. there have been the standard rumours of intense heat, bugs, tight camping, changes in the layout of the fair, and other stuff that may or may not actually be things that affect me… this year, for the first time since i actually started going to the fair (2004), simon will not have to put up the stage (the stage was made into a “permanent structure”, like the ritz and the main stage, last year) which means that he’ll have more time to hang around and get drunk, which may or may not be a good thing, especially since he actually has a speaking part (The Ringmaster of The Ding-A-Ling Brothers Circus) this year.

amazingly enough, i may actually post on this blog from the fair this year, because i have several technological “helpers” that i have never had before: i have a solar charger for my phone and tablet, i have access to a secure cloud storage device, and i am definitely going to take my phone, and probably going to take my tablet to the fair this year… i can just imagine sitting out in the woods and updating my blog… all i need is a wifi password, which i know they have, i just don’t know what it is… yet… and, actually, i don’t even need that, because my phone is also a wifi hotspot… it’s amazing, scary and incomprehensible, all at the same time…

until then, i’m hunkering down in my hole beside the fan, not having access to either of my “real” computers, reassuring the dogs that it will all be over soon (they don’t believe me) and hoping that by next week things will be somewhat cooler. πŸ˜›

and while i have been typing this, i got a text-message from that same mother-in-law, who informs me that she’s getting some cannabis plants tomorrow… and, yes, she lives in a place where it is currently legal on the state level… this is another thing that’s amazing, scary and totally incomprehensible, at the same time… 😐