Category Archives: tina chopp

dead people, pictures, tina chopp

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

somebody, recently (i would say probably within the last 2 or 3 days, at most), left flowers on his grave… the only possibilities that ian and i could think of is 1) his father, which, considering his father, isn’t particularly likely, 2) some cousin or relative that ian and i don’t know about, which is somewhat more likely, but, considering the location (finn hill cemetery is in a REMOTE corner of central, western washington, not close to ANYBODY’S house, with the exception of — possibly — his grandparents’ house, but as his grandparents are also buried in the cemetery, not particularly likely), or 3) some random church-goer who regularly goes around to the cemeteries in the area and leaves flowers at random graves, to make it look like someone remembers these people… which, considering the remote, out-of-the-way location, we figure, is the most likely possibility.

and, now, there are cucumbers planted there, as well. see ya’, randy. 😉

tina chopp

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ian and i are going to visit randy’s grave tomorrow. i plan on planting cucumbers, in the Tinite tradition, because randy, in his Osiris RaNebo persona, was one of the original high priests of the church of tina… although i am also aware that, in the Tinite tradition, planting cucumbers is to bring the dead back to life, and, of all the people i know who are dead, i’m pretty sure randy is happier being dead, so it’s more “in the Tinite tradition” than it is in the hope that it will, actually, bring randy back to life… in fact, in reality, i’m hoping that it DOESN’T bring him back to life, because, given the political and social climate these days, i’m going to bet that randy would NOT be pleased that he has been brought back to life.

nevertheless, i’m going to plant cucumbers on Osiris’ grave, because that’s what a Tinite would do. it doesn’t have to make sense.

The World Wide Weird, tina chopp, weird

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 “fix 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 — 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 — 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 — Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Holland, Finland, Iceland, Iceland again — 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 “immediate action!” And if anyone even remotely similar surfaces, but even a relatively uneducated or educated churchgoer won’t mind telling an unbeliever to “please 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 — and the decline of political parties makes this more and more certain — become moderates by necessity?

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

pictures, tina chopp

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.

karass, my music, tina chopp

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.

forward into the past, jim robertson, pictures, tina chopp

समाधि पीठ

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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. 😉

jim robertson, tina chopp

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? 😒

prvs

trolloween afterglow

that was, probably, one of the best trolloween celebrations i have ever attended… and i think it was primarily because of the fact that i wasn’t trying to do two things at once (i.e. playing in the band and being in charge of a vegetable sacrifice). not only that, but when i pulled up, yesterday — after having delivered our non-functional TV to the place where Bowling For Computers was taking place — the first person i ran into was a guy named michael, who was my assistant for the vegetable sacrifice! 😎

I HAVE NEVER BEEN IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE GIVEN AN ASSISTANT!!

121031 pumpkin by john cornicello
photo by john cornicello

of course, michael was multi-tasking (much like i would have been under circumstances like have existed in the past), and had a prominent rôle as one of the “clowns doing The Hustle“, later on in the performance, but his presence and help was much appreciated.

the vegetable sacrifice went off more-or-less as planned. it was a fair amount more chaotic than it has been in the past, despite the fact that macque didn’t have to coordinate the band into the mix. i was the 3rd performance in the show: the 1st performance went off without a hitch, and the 2nd performance, while a bit long and significantly confusing (at least from my point of view), went off without significant (i.e. “noticable from the audience”) glitches. between the performances, there was, apparently “somebody” (remedios rapoport? i know she was there…) singing the introductions in a pseudo-“Wagnerian-Opera” style, who, also, took a bit longer with the introduction than i would have liked.

and i forgot to mention that, under normal circumstances, the public would have been encouraged to join in the sacrifice with their own vegetables, but, so be it…

i read the last quarter of TBOT 11.1.1.1, ending with the phrase “and death to jocks”, whereupon i passed the paper that i was reading from to michael, and drew my sword.

in spite of all of the practice that i put in, when it came down to actually hacking into the pumpkin, the sword broke (the pommel broke off of the tang, just below the hilt) and i had to shove the pumpkin off of the stage to reveal the halloween candy, which, much as i suspected, was immediately pounced upon by a hoard of costumed, ravening pre-doodlehums. 😎

also, for the first time (i believe, ever) i managed to persuade hobbit to attend, and he ended up with the safety vest and radio that wouldn’t have shown if i wore them (because my cape would have covered them), and we all went to the red door for beer afterward.

i woke up this morning, extra early (7:30), and took moe’s car to les schwab, where they said they were going to fix the brakes, but when i got there, they told me that they can’t scan the ABS system unless the ABS warning light is on — despite the fact that, when they were talking with moe on the phone yesterday, they said that it wouldn’t be a problem, even if the ABS light wasn’t on — so they said they couldn’t fix anything and that i should take it to the dealer. 😐 so, while i was taking it to the dealer, i stopped to get coffee and discovered that my wallet was not in my vest, where it normally is, which, very quickly, put a damper on pretty much anything else i was planning on doing away from home today…

but despite all of the furor this morning, the afterglow from a successful vegetable sacrifice meant that the customer service people at les schwab didn’t have to deal with my rage over the fact that they said “there is nothing wrong with the car” when i know that there is…

i’ll catch up with them later. 👿

pictures, prvs, tina chopp

Public Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice for Trolloween!

Sacrificial Pumpkin

this is the first Public Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice i’ve held for a while, and because of the fact that it’s going to be part of the Trolloween celebration (the Fremont Troll was unveiled on halloween in 1990), it will be an abbreviated form of the ritual, in which the public will not be given the opportunity to sacrifice their own vegetables… until later…

i’m going to have to make sure to remember to mention that when i am doing the public reading, before the actual sacrifice… that’s a really good point…

this year i’m making a slight change in the sacrificial victim, as well. because of the fact that i am going to be sacrificing it with a sword, instead of the more regular gravity and ground, and because of the fact that i will be surrounded by people, i have actually filled the pumpkin with halloween candy, rather like a piñata, which i intend to spread as far as it will go. beforehand, i’m going to read a passage from The Book of Randy, which is Book 11 of the Books of Tina Chopp, in honour of Rev. Osiris Ranebo, although i doubt too many other people will recognise that fact.

they’re really desperate for people to help with crowd control – last year the parade included 150 to 200 members of the public, and the parade crosses two major thoroughfares, and according to the most recent email that was sent out, they’re still short 6 people. i tried to get ian interested, but he’s doing something else that involves a family that is staying at his house while they try to get into emergency housing.

THE PUBLIC IS ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND!

ETA: i just found a sermon that i delivered at a vegetable sacrifice in 2001 which i totally don’t remember giving at all… it’s too bad, too, because i would really like to remember having that dream… 😐

bizarre, fun with the post office, tina chopp

uh oh…

And More – Do We Give A Shit? – listen to this music while reading this post. 8)

so i went to check The Church of Tina Chopp‘s mailbox today, and i got this, extremely curious letter, which is very difficult to read:

The Church of Tina Chopp received another letter from this guyL.J.M. Steijn
Juliana van StolBergstraat 30
2805 CN Gouda
The Netherlands

CHURCH OF TINA CHOPP
P.O. Box 1864
Milton
WA 98354
USA

Gouda, 2 Augustus 2012

Dear Sir/Madam,

At 19 Januar 2010 I have wrote you a letter
And i have seen on Internet, the site: PRZXqGl.HYBRiDElEPHANT.
COM, my letter was on it.
I don’t have never give permission to insert it on Internet.
I also won’t it to see my letter on Internet.

Because I am a Christian and I don’t stay any longer after the pur-
port of this letter, and I reject it.
Sexuality is a holy thing, and is only permit between married couples.

Therefore, I will ask you; please remove my letter from Internet,
and destroy my letter they I have send YOU, at 19 Januar 2010,

Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely,

Leo Steijn

😮

ordinarily, i would remove the letter and say no more about it, but this guy is, either, really crazy, or has just converted to “christianity” and doesn’t want is “sin” to be known. if he is really crazy, then i don’t have a problem with posting his insanity online, especially since it was addressed to me, and regardless of whether or not he gives permission for it to be posted on internet, i have no problem with it. if he just converted to “christianity” and is trying to cover up his previous indiscretions, then i feel i have an obligation to post it, just to show the “christians” that they are just as “sinful” as everyone else, regardless of how “holy” they may now feel…

and either way, i think it’s really amusing that he would randomly send me snailmail almost three years ago, and just be taking offense at what i did with it now, almost three years later. it reminds me very much of Morena Cobbs‘ lame attempt to get her name removed from internet…

not to mention the fact that, apparently, leo steijn also sent mail to The Church of Moo (apparently the voice behind the usenet newsgroup alt.cows.moo.moo.moo), AND The Church of Virus. apparently, at one point, leo steijn was in search of bizarre churches, but now he has apparently decided that “christianity” is the only one, and all of those other “bizarre” churches have to be condemned… sorry, it doesn’t work that way… 😐

rants, tina chopp, web design

also…

i found out what is wanted with BSSB web site… it turns out that she likes the “fold-up navigation menus” and wants them on the BSSB site… and, when the BSSB site has enough content to permit “fold-up navigation menus”, that’s what she’ll get. of course, i’m in charge of web design… the actual content has to be someone else’s responsibility…

otherwise the site may well end up looking like The Church of Tina Chopp… 8)

rants, tina chopp, videos

xtranormal


if the video doesn’t load

so a while ago i got the idea to make animations that were reciting the books of tina chopp…

i actually went so far as to create the first 6 cantos of the book of children… before xtranormal changed how things are done… i had to buy “xtranormal points” in december, so that i could finish an unfinished animation. but now it turns out that i will make no more animations at xtranormal after i run out of “points”, because they have now made it so that you have to pay to make animations.

previously, they had a few scenarios that were free, and you had to pay to make more elaborate movies – which was just fine with me – but now you have to “pay” what they’re calling “xtranormal points” in order to make any animations. it would be fine if you were able to accumulate these “xtranormal points” in less offensive ways than “convincing your friends to sign up” and that sort of thing, but they’ve actually got a way to “buy xtranormal points” with actual money, and that goes against my grain…

especially when they originally offered the service for free… 😐

not only that, but i guess they assume that people don’t really care what their animated characters look like, because they now have a bunch of “new” characters, like “chuchus” and “luchadors” and “dummies” and “presidents” and “historical figures” and “fútbol” that are very definitely not appropriate vehicles for the dissemination of profound spiritual knowledge… or something like that…

in any event, i will not be using xtranormal in the future, unless they change things again. i’m not ruling anything out, but i don’t want to have to pay for things like this.

i suppose that if i had thought about it a little bit, i could have anticipated this, but it’s still anoying. 😐

rants, tina chopp

the book of children


since geico made their xtranormal commercial, things have changed: apparently the characters and sets that used to be free are no longer free, which includes the character and the set in chapter 6. i don’t know if this is because they have introduced new free characters, or if it is because they changed their business model (which they didn’t tell me about). one way or the other, i had to spend actual money to get this published, and if i’m going to have to spend more money to get future books published, i’m probably not going to do so… fortunately i made hi-res downloads of all the books…

#fezfriday, tina chopp

progress… sort of…

The Book of Children, chapter 4, cantos 1 through 5. this time, if the embed doesn’t work, your only option is xtranormal, because for some reason it has stopped uploading to my youtube channel… 😐

ETA: i’ve wangled around a way to upload the video to youtube, but it’s still giving me weird, intermittent, “unknown error” problems…

also, i almost forgot, today is #fezfriday and i forgot to post my fez picture, so…fez friday foto

tina chopp

more


as before, if the embed doesn’t work, you can also see it at XtraNormal or YouTube.

this is fun. i’m going to have to re-do the third canto, though. for some reason, it’s still “shooting this video” in spite of the fact that it’s been 12 hours since i sent it to “production”…

tina chopp

tee hee…

if the embed doesn’t work, you can try YouTube or XtraNormal which should work just fine. this was a proof of concept project. because of the fact that it came out so well (i only had to adjust one word, because of “mispronounciation” of the word “LIVE” which can be pronounced either /liv/ or /laiv/ and there’s no way to distinguish between the two), there will doubtless be more like it in the near future. now you are one step closer to having your own Vegetable Sacrifice ceremonies of your own, without any knowledge of The Books of Tina Chopp! 🙂

oh, yeah… the URI for the correct book is http://www.ebeneezer.net/doctrine/tbot/1/1.html… somehow the one on XtraNormal got duplicated, and i don’t want to go back and fix it.

bizarre, corruption, existential negation, geek links, i am a terrorist, malfunctioning computers, rants, tina chopp

interesting/amusing/annoying

so in restoring the Church of Tina, i discovered that, for some (obvious now, but then it was a) mysterious reason, the entire site worked the way it was supposed to, except for this page, which is part of the church of tina’s elaborate disclaimer. instead of getting the page, i was getting a “403 – Forbidden” error (similar to the much more common “404 – File Not Found” error, which you have undoubtedly seen before). i didn’t remember it being forbidden before, and so i renamed the file, and re-uploaded it in an attempt to straighten out the problem, but it was still showing up as forbidden. then i looked at the page with my linux terminal and discovered that the reason why it wasn’t working was because the permissions had been reset to 600 – which means the owner of the file (presumably me) can read and modify the file, but if you’re not me, then you can’t even see the file. when i reset the permissions to 644 (i can modify the file, and everyone else can read it), it reappeared on the web site like magic – no more 403 error!

except for the fact that I would not have reset the permissions so that nobody could see it, and the only people who administrative permissions on the file (which would supercede my permissions) are the host providers – drizzle!

i don’t know this for sure, and i can guarantee that if they did do something strange like change the permissions on the file without telling me, that they wouldn’t admit to it, but i would bet that the subject of the file in question contacted drizzle and complained, and drizzle arbitrarily changed the permissions on the file in order to get her to shut up and go away.

they were sneaky enough to not just delete the file (because then i would know that they had been up to no good), but they did something to the file that wouldn’t be perceived by someone who is using windoesn’t, and only perceived by someone using mac or *ix by looking at it with the terminal, which nobody uses these days…

goddamn drizzle anyway… i can’t wait to get another ISP… 8P

depression, i am a terrorist, links, malfunctioning computers, rants, the very big stupid, tina chopp

DRIZZLE!!!!

here is yet another reason why drizzle.com is not going to be my ISP much longer: they assumed that when i requested a change of host providers for hybridelephant.com, they automatically assumed that it also meant cancelling my internet service – which was wrong, and i took care of it last week. what i didn’t realise is that they also cancelled The Church of Tina Chopp, resulting in an interruption of service for several days. it’s on its way to being fixed at this point (i still have to wait the requisite 24 to 48 hours for the DNS changes to propagate), but that is yet another reason to get away from them as quickly as possible.

i should have listened more carefully when i was told last march that drizzle was incompetent. now it’s come back to bite me in the ass… 8/

cannabis, corruption, i am a terrorist, imaginary pooperty, links, spiritual, the very big stupid, tina chopp, torture

Black Light Trap

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one step closer to having my ipod be able to play .FLAC and .OGG files, as well as .MP3s.

is it just me, or is this country getting more and more dysfunctional on a daily basis?

Feds admit waterboarding illegal

John McCain Sells His Soul: Backs Off on Torture Ban

U.S. Soldiers Kill Unarmed Iraqis and Afghanis

Bush Won’t Let Facts Stand in the Way of Regime Change in Iran

Surveillance Editorial Roundup

Detention camps at undisclosed locations in the US? Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?

but there are some good things… precious few of them, but here are some that are worth mentioning:

The Air Car -Coming Your Way

Supporting Research into the Therapeutic Role of Marijuana

Legal herb for Rastas?

ACLU, Rick Steves launch marijuana campaign – i played music for a party given by rick steves last year… 8)

articles, bizarre, drugs, i am a terrorist, links, rants, tina chopp, videos

weird

Few From Obama’s Youth Remember His Drug Use – a couple of things strike me about this article. first, my high school girlfriend went to occidental starting in 1979. i wonder if she knew barry obama. the other thing that strikes me is that it really wasn’t that long ago that bill clinton came under intense scrutiny over whether or not the fact that he “didn’t inhale” made him enough of a druggie to impeach him. it’s astounding enough that a black man has a possibility of becoming president, but a black man who lets it be publically known that he did inhale. and yet cannabis is still illegal. i really wonder about people… 8/

Continue reading weird →