Category Archives: shameless self promotion

my music, shameless self promotion

blowing my own horn

now that i’ve got a functional cloud drive, i am going through and replacing what i can of my lost music collection, including music that i produced myself.

i have four St. Fred albums on bandcamp, and the only one of those four that were lost on the old cloud drive has not been replaced locally, and that album is The Church of The Pleistocene, which, naturally, means that it has been a few months since i heard it last…

i downloaded it today, and listened to it… and it has held up pretty damn well, considering that it was released in 2018… and i REALLY liked this track, number 14, called “Lamentations”…

in the same way, there are also nine albums of music by And More on bandcamp, which i haven’t heard for even longer (why listen to music i made 30 years ago? i just have it because i made it 30 years ago) and that, too, has stood the test of time admirably. the track is called Pfisteria:

i still laugh when i listen to this… 🤣

(that’s how i know it’s finished music, if it makes me laugh… 😉)

shameless self promotion

i’m famous?

a few weeks ago, there was a 35mm camera posted on freecycle, to which i responded. i didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks, and i didn’t see the corresponding “taken” notice, so i responded again, and still didn’t hear anything, so i gave up on it and went on to other endeavours.

today, i got email from an anonymous, unknown person. the email address was “false <pigslock@_____.com>” (i have deleted xes mail carrier) – although the return path was to “tfts35@_____.com” – informing me that the 35mm camera was still available, if i wanted it, although it came along with a couple of pre-conditions:

if you are the Seattle musician who sells incense, you will have to allow me to take your photo and buy a pack of your Tibetan incense.

things that make me go hmmmmm…

this has me wondering… in the past, i would think that this person is likely a cop, or some form of “law enforcement professional” who is looking for a way to get me to voluntarily connect my physical appearence with one or more email addresses, as a part of some unknowable investigation… it may well be exactly that, even now, although the probability is somewhat less than it would have been in the past.

however, i also have to keep in mind that i am not completely unknown in this community, and xe has pretty much nailed several defining characteristics of me, which are known by people who know who i am: seattle, musician, and incense… so xe could be one of those people who has stopped and talked to me at the fremont sunday market, or any of a number of different art car shows where i’ve sold incense… it could also be someone who has seen snake suspenderz, or, possibly, the fremont phil… and there have been literally tens of thousands of those kind of folks.

one way or the other, i imagine that this is what really famous people have to deal with all the time. which makes me think that it’s probably a good thing that i’m not that famous, because i’m too paranoid for that kind of shit. 👿

And More, shameless self promotion

wow…

3 Comments

i went to bellingham for the first time in a while, yesterday. i didn’t stay as long as i would have liked, but it’s okay because it still gets dark really early at those northern latitudes, and besides which i was really tired and if i had stayed any longer i would have had to spend the night – which was do-able, but i hadn’t made arrangements, so i just came home last night…

but, the important part…

i visited a couple of friends yesterday, one of whom is my friend ken, with whom i have been playing music on and off for 30+ years, and while i was there, he gave me 7+ gigabytes of the 20+ gigabytes of music that we have made over the past 30+ years, most of which i haven’t heard for a long time, due to the fact that it was recorded on cassette, and i haven’t actually owned a cassette player since before i got married…

DAMN we’re good!

i’ve now got 7 complete “albums” and around 200 individual tracks which are, for all intents and purposes, ready to be put on CDs and distributed… and that’s only a small fraction of what’s there (we only had a flash drive and a limited amount of time to move files from his computer to mine). the current fantasy is that we’ll put the whole lot up on the web somewhere and offer low-quality mp3s for download for free, OR high-quality ogg files (or something like that) for a small quantity of money, OR a “generic” CD with “generic” art for a bit more money, OR a custom, one-of-a-kind CD with tracks that you choose, and custom, one-of-a-kind artwork for a bit more money.

i just realised, however, that ALL of the files that i got yesterday are Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) files, which won’t play reliably on any of the “standard” music players for the two “major” platforms, so it’ll probably be a couple of days until i get representative samples converted to a format that you windows and mac people will be able to play… click on the title to hear the song… for now i’ll give you some sample titles to whet your appetite:

Acetylene – this is even more astonishing when you realise that we were improvising.
Satisfaction Factory Satisfactory, Dissatisfaction Factory Dissatisfactory
Yes! Ugly Sillymusic
Bach Whomp – this is the Bach Two Part Invention in C… really… 🙂
The Very Big Godot
Grump & Bind – another “improvisation” with very little added.
Tenor Leak Fellatio
Wraith Ugly – a pseudonym of mine, and a really funny piece of music. 🙂
Jazzbo Proctoscopy Parts I through IV – which is too long to post, but you get the idea…
Blind Green August
Encrusticated Preachment
The Word
Cholinesterase Inhibition

it’s my opinion that the titles are almost as good as the music itself… 8)

enlightenment, important things to remember, shameless self promotion, spiritual

aha! … ‽ … !!

2 Comments

the unauthorised “authorisation dialogue” dialogue went away. i didn’t change anything locally (i did use NoScript to automatically block flash, but that was after i noticed that it was gone), or on the blog, which means that somebody must have noticed that something was wrong at the twitter end of things.

i’m not exactly sure how to approach this subject, but since i already have the reputation of being a little weird, i’ll start with an explanation of where i’m coming from:

POINT 1) for some time now, i’ve been under the distinct impression that my view of “reality” differs pretty significantly from just about everyone else’s view of reality. the most recent example of that is this public display, sponsored by a musem in california, which contained a tapestry house from a hindu family, that contained a swastika. the museum got complaints from the general public, so they posted a sign that basically said “this is an ancient hindu symbol, not the relatively recent nazi symbol that everyone seems to think it is, and we’re not going to remove it, thank you”, and even went so far as to get the local rabbi to say that he didn’t object to it, because it was a hindu symbol, and not a nazi symbol, but the museum continued to get complaints from people who were probably not even born when the swastika was actually used as a nazi symbol, and the museum finally caved in and removed the tapestry. when i pointed this out to a friend, he said “people are dumb”, but i think it’s more than that. philip k. dick said “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” and that’s the kind of shift in reality that i am seeing here: i “believe” that reality is one way, most of the rest of the world “believes” that reality is something completely different, and people who i would expect to not only know the difference, but who are supposedly expert in teaching dumb people how to be smart, actually go along with the “dumb” people and remove something that is decidedly not nazi, simply because these “dumb” people thought it was.

what⁈⁉

but it goes back a lot further than that. i pretty regularly find myself totally at a loss to determine why someone who was faced with an eminently apparent and logical choice to do one thing, deliberately and blatantly chose to do the exact opposite, and was cheered by society for doing so.

POINT 2) ever since i first started learning about spirituality, i’ve heard one basic message from every single bona fide spiritual teacher i’ve ever met (there are a number of scam artists who people think are spiritual teachers that don’t teach this message, and they’re not the ones i’m talking about), which is that you don’t “pretend” to to something, you don’t “try” to do something. it’s like yoda said: you either do, or do not. there is no “try”. you don’t “pretend” to be an artist, or an engineer, or a truck driver: you either are, or you’re not. in the same way, you don’t “pretend” to be enlightened: you either are, or you’re not. and (a very important point to remember) nobody can say conclusively whether a person is, or is not enlightened: they generally have to rely on what the person claims for themselves. my experience, in general, is that you don’t often get people going around saying that they’re enlightened, and in general, i would be extremely suspicious of anybody who was doing so (so don’t expect me to make a big thing out of this), but you have to start somewhere, and this as good a time as any (rabbi hillel said that).

POINT 3) for a long time (upwards of 35 years now) i have been learning a lot about spirituality and have developed what i believe to be a unique path. i’m not interested in finding other people who agree with me spiritually, much as i’m not particularly interested in what people think of me when i walk into home depot wearing a kilt, a pink long sleeve shirt, and a fez (and, believe me, there were definitely some eyes cast askance in my direction when it happened, but at the time i was totally oblivious to everything except the project that i was working on). i’m firmly convinced that the path i have discovered is exactly the right path for me, in spite of the fact that, when it comes to explaining that path, many have come to the conclusion that i am totally crazy. i don’t let opinions like that dissuade me from pursuing that path, however, and so far (again, for me) i haven’t been wrong.

POINT 4) i experienced what i can only describe as a “shaktipat” moment (specifically, तीव्रमध्यशक्तिपात tīvra-madhya-śaktipāta) while i was driving in the car this afternoon. i was thinking about the fact that my perception of “reality” appears to be so skewed and i realised that either there is something “wrong” with society, or something “wrong” with me. as i find no compelling reason to think i’m crazy, seeing as how my perceptions tend to be more “what people should do” than what they, themselves, do, i was forced to this conclusion:

i get the distinct impression that i am “enlightened”.

!

this was such a profound revelation to me that, in spite of the fact that, during the time when i was experiencing shaktipat, traffic in my lane (and only my lane) suddenly went from 65 miles per hour to a dead stop in two seconds, and the guy behind me layed on his horn when we didn’t move forwards quickly enough to suit him, i was really enjoying myself, turned up the radio (which was playing classical music) and laughed out loud.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

there is a famous zen saying, which goes: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

what i take this to mean is, that it doesn’t matter whether or not you have enlightenment. you get no special powers or priveledges from being enlightened: it is a purely spiritual experience, and can only be appreciated on a spiritual level. anything having to do with my body, or my physical surroundings will not be affected by my enlightenment in the least, and very likely nobody else will notice…

but the way i perceive “reality” will be drastically altered forever.

instead of wondering why society is so screwed up, and why i’m so different, i have an entirely different view: one where it’s okay for people to do screwed up things that don’t affect me, because people are going to do screwed up things whether i am here or not. of course, i will do my part to make sure that people don’t do screwed up things, and to help people see the screwed-up-ness of what they have been doing, if they ask, but if they don’t, i won’t worry about it.

you don’t have to be a monk to be enlightened: Shyama Charan Lahiri was an enlightened householder, and one of his main messages was that anyone could become enlightened. i feel it is quite an honour to follow in the footsteps of Lahiri Mahasaya, which i have been doing for 25 years…

my impression, based on the behaviour of people i suspect to be enlightened, i would guess that i will develop ways to “trick” people into doing things that i know will be more beneficial to them than the things they were going to do, but my guess is that it will take a while and i’ll probably face abject failure more than once before i get the knack of it.

i’ll probably get frustrated and angry about injustice, but i got frustrated and angry before i was enlightened: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. nothing has changed on the physical level.

other than that, i don’t know how being enlightened will affect me, because i have never been enlightened before. if anything interesting comes up, i’ll be sure to clue you in. 8)

important things to remember, links, people, shameless self promotion, web design

wow…

i was just thinking about it today, and in terms of relationships, i am fairly close to some really famous people. i had breakfast with R. Buckminster Fuller when i was in high school (and he is still one of the people whom i aspire to be like), and Joseph P. Faddlefum, who was on the edge of the circle that timothy leary was in the center of, was my first college advisor and still remains a good friend, but i also know, for example, two people who know the president-elect in some way or another: one of my friends went to occidental college, and was in several discussion groups with him, and the other got a personal, printed invitation to the inauguration (although, at this point, i don’t know why). i’ve rubbed shoulders with people like artis the spoonman, baby gramps, hacki (the famous german clown), fyodor karamazov, and rev. chumleigh, although i get the impression that the first two would probably not remember my name if it came right down to it (even though i’ve appeared on the same stage, at the same time as both of them for 5 years in a row, now). and that’s not to mention the fact that my wife is the “Nuclear FOB” (which stands for “Friends Of the Bobs”), having been a fan for about 20 years or so, and the fact that i personally know matthew bob and amy bob. i know St. Fred, the inventor (among other things) of the exploder control that took microsoft by surprise when they had just released their supposedly “more secure” platform for browser plugins (which was really OLE in a shiny new package), and i worked for a couple of years with the son of Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

i’m not that famous, and i’m not sure i want to be, but i guess i’m just as happy being in the background of all these famous people, even if nobody else notices.

in other news, i’ve decided to move my personal web site to it’s own domain (and away from drizzle), so i’ve registered puggry duckling dot com (which isn’t there yet). i’ll move my pages over to there and place a server-push to the new domain… probably tomorrow. who knows how long the server-push is going to remain there, considering that drizzle updates their DNS tables manually whenever they feel like it… 8/

brain injury, important things to remember, moe, music, shameless self promotion

music

moe is in new orleans, being honoured for being elected president of SVBT. whee! 8)

i, on the other hand, am playing for the white center festival (i don’t remember what it’s called) with a friend of a friend, named thaddeus, who is also someone who knows Rev. Chumleigh. i’m finding that, despite my injury and all of the difficulties that i’ve had surrounding it for the past few years, it hasn’t detracted from my spreading reputation as the outstanding musician who comes in at more or less the last minute and saves the show, and this is yet another example: i was contacted by thaddeus before fair, had the music delivered to me during fair (and most of it i’ve played before anyway), and rehearsed with the “rest of the band” today – and by the “rest of the band” i mean thaddeus, who is playing trombone, baritone, guitar, ukelele and other stuff, a drummer named andrew, and a “ringer” keyboard player (who is blind and knows every song ever written) named julie (i think vickie – brain injury)… and the festival is tomorrow and sunday… and i’m getting paid for it.

so i’ll be busy enough that i won’t even notice moe’s absence until she returns on monday.

geek links, hybrid elephant, malfunctioning computers, shameless self promotion

help for those addicted to microsoft

2 Comments

i have decided that i’m going to become a community distributor for OpenOffice.org, as a way of making it easier for the computer illiterate to get things accomplished without having to resort to using microsoft products. OpenOffice is definitely preferable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that most computer virii in existence these days are made to take advantage of “features” in microsoft office that leave the affected computer open to all sorts of nasties. others are, of course, that it is cross-platform compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux/UNIX, it is 100% compatible with microsoft office, and that it is completely free of cost. to that end, i have added a page to the Hybrid Elephant web site containing FREE downloading information, and i am downloading ISOs of the three disks required, so that i can start out by giving copies of them to my (computer illiterate) clients.

clampers, corruption, ganesha the car, shameless self promotion

1085

4 Comments

the clamper meeting was last night. i apparently did a naughty no-no and wore red. apparently you aren’t allowed to wear red to a clamper meeting unless you’re an official clamper, but the widders i hung out with last night were saying that i was probably a clamper and didn’t realise it. after all, they adopted Doc Maynard as their patriarch and named their chapter after him, and he wasn’t a clamper. anyway, i’m probably going to go to their labor day parade in black diamond and be a “sweeper” (which doesn’t sound good), and if they like me, there’s a “Poor Blind Candidate Interrogation Meeting” on september 7th, and then the initiation at the “Doins” on whidbey island on the 14th.

i must admit, however, that i’m not sure i’m going to fit in with these people. my first clue was that most of them are also eagles, and the meeting was held in the eagles hall. i had quite an experience sitting and listening, and being respectfully quiet, while this 70-year-old guy with no teeth and what appeared to be a middle finger joint that was missing (bitten off? i didn’t get the whole story), ranted and raved about his ex-wife, the bitch-whore-drug-addict, the “horrors of drugs” and what the combination had done to his now-adult kids (and me wearing my ‘IT’S JUST A PLANT” t-shirt), causing him to lose two houses, and so on, where everything was “fuckin’ this” and “fuckin’ that”, for 45 minutes… if that’s what it means to be a part of their fraternal organisation, i could give it a miss without too much difficulty. it could be that the reason i have never heard of them before is because they’re rabid republicans. i suppose my experience as a “sweeper” will confirm or reject that possibility.

meanwhile, i got this from the snoqualmie valley record, by way of “bottlehound”, the “Noble Grand Humbug”. apparently he was quite impressed that i got my article on page 1 of the print edition, which is one of the reasons, apparently, why my wearing red was overlooked by the assembled clampers.

Swastika is banned in parade
Symbol deemed too offensive for Snoqualmie Railroad Days event
August 08, 2007
By Leif Nesheim, Editor

Ganesha Guy
Displaying the symbol that got his car evicted from the Snoqualmie Railroad Days parade, Bruce Salamandir-Feyrecilde of Milton said he was disappointed he couldn’t be in the parade.

Bruce Salamandir-Feyrecilde’s white 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse is adorned with black Sanskrit characters and a colorful Hindu symbol on the roof. The problem? The symbol includes a swastika. The art car was nixed from the Snoqualmie Railroad Days’ grand parade. Salamandir-Feyrecilde was incensed. “It really bothers me that while I am trying to educate people, the people who need educating the most are the ones in charge,” he said. Salamandir-Feyrecilde is Hindu. He painted his car in honor of Ganesha, the Hindu god of removing obstacles. The roof symbol, known as Ganesha Yantra, is similar in meaning to the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, he said.

The swastika symbol has been used for thousands of years in many different cultures. The name derives from the Sanskrit term for “well-being”.

Tove Warmerdam, the festival’s volunteer organizer, said the chose to remove Salamandir-Feyrecilde’s car from the parade to prevent people from being offended by the swastika. She said she understood Salamandir-Feyrecilde’s point about the Hindu meaning of the symbol, but that its use by Adolph Hitler’s Nazis is the first association known to most Americans.

“This is a small-town festival,” she said. Warmerdam said she felt the unintended offense likely to be caused by the car wasn’t in line with the parade’s guidelines and spirit. She said several people who had seen the car came to her with concerns about it.

In several e-mails, Warmerdam explained to Salamandir-Feyrecilde her reasons for excluding his car and said she was sorry he felt offended.

Salamandir-Feyrecilde said he felt singled out for discrimination because his wasn’t the only parade entry with a swastika, but was the only one prohibited from participating.

The Falun Dafa float, which took first place in the parade, also contained a swastika. However, Falun Dafa members covered the symbol during the parade and explained its meaning at their festival booth, Warmerdam said. Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a Chinese system of belief that uses meditation and exercise to achieve spiritual harmony.

Salamandir-Feyrecilde said he felt intimidated when a “burly” police officer told him he couldn’t be in the parade. Snoqualmie Police Officer Robert Keaton asked Salamandir-Feyrecilde to leave the parade at Warmerdam’s request.

Warmerdam said she was glad Keaton was present because she and the other festival volunteers began to feel threatened when Salamandir-Feyrecild’s became agitated.

Salamandir-Feyrecilde lives in Milton. He and his wife sell incense, jewelry and other goods from India and are computer consultants. He initially planned to come to the festival to see the E Clampus Vitus (a fraternal Western Heritage organization) parade entry, but decided to enter his car in the parade a few days before the festival when he learned entries were still being accepted.

For more information on his car, visit www.HybridElephant.com

my rebuttal, such as it is:

you got some details wrong. although you never asked me, it’s a 1996 Mazda Protegé, not a Mitsubishi Eclipse. i know, it’s details, but still… you could have asked me.

the point of your article is a bit vague: it could be in support of me, because i was discriminated against, but it could also be a fact-filled article proclaiming that “if you’ve got a swastika, you’d better not try to be in a parade in our town”. i wonder what you would think if i entered next year and put a big sheet over the “offending” symbols with a sign saying “CENSORED”, so that you couldn’t see it? you haven’t made that absolutely clear in your article, and that concerns me.

also, that bit about warmerdam feeling “threatened” when i “became agitated”? that is completely the opposite of what happened. i’ve never even met warmerdam before, unless she was the woman who was taking my registration at the parade – which i admit she might have been, but she wasn’t giving her name when i talked to her before the parade or after i was being kicked out – which was after the “burly” policeman had been involved twice. as far as “becoming agitated”, i speak differently since my injury: i speak with a lot of hesitation, stammering, and one-word-at-a-time, especially with people i don’t know, and that might have been interpreted as “becoming agitated”, but it was just my brain injury showing. not only that, but i was becoming agitated: i was originally encouraged to come to the parade by someone on the phone (who i later found out was warmerdam herself), and welcomed, only to be kicked out at the last moment, with only the vaguest and lamest of explanations. who wouldn’t become a little agitated under those circumstances? but to say that she felt “threatened” by me is totally asinine, especially because the “burly” police officer was at least twice my size. i felt threatened by the fact that there was this huge police officer, who “wasn’t speaking as a police officer”, telling me that someone i had never met was kicking me out of their parade.

but apart from that, you got all of the talking points correct. i’ll give it a C+