another neuropsychological evaluation is completed. last week was the psycological tests, this week was the neurological tests, so they were doing things like blindfolding me and then giving me different shaped blocks and watching me fumble around trying to find the correct holes for them to fit into, or holding my hand behind a screen and drawing on my fingertips and then asking me to identify what they drew. they had a list of four numbers, 1 through 4, and a stack of 60 cards which had one to four different coloured shapes, and they asked me to categorise them, but they kept changing the rules about how they were categorised, so that when i categorised them incorrectly they could evaluate my ability to figure out that the rules had changed and how long it took me to figure out what the new rules were. it wasn’t anywhere near as mentally taxing as the last time, and it was also two hours less time than the first one. now i have to wait until my "counsellor" from DVR (who i have never met) gets around to scheduling a feedback appointment, at which point i get to go and meet him and the neuropsychologist to figure out what to do next.

meanwhile, i’ve been scheduled for yet another "random" job search log review, which i gather will be exactly like the last time. i find it rather odd, and somewhat suspicious that in all the times i’ve applied for unemployment in the past, i have never been subjected to these "random" occurrences, and now, for some reason, i’ve managed to get 2 of them in three months. it makes me wonder who is saying what that is negative about my job search, and why they are saying it… because nothing is going on, except for the fact that i am looking for work and not finding any, like 10% of the rest of the population of this state… and it’s the reason why i’m having a neuropsychological evaluation for the DVR, and that sort of thing. i suppose it’s probably typical, and i’ll probably come to expect this kind of thing eventually, but at this point it’s more bizarre than anything else.

and speaking of bizarre, somebody did a college-level project on MIDI-hamster control, which is about as bizarre as they come. i suppose it’s useful in that the guy learned about different ways to control a synthesizer, and i’m sure nobody else has done a project like this, but still… weird!

and then there’s the medicare toad test (thanks to and the annals of improbable research) which is even more bizarre, but only because the toad actually scored higher than the medicare customer service representatives… they’d probably come up with some reason to pay the toad less, as well.

10 things that i have done that you probably haven’t:

1. climbed a 150 foot sheer “sea-stack” on the water side, with no equipment
2. performed in the kennedy center and on the white house steps in 1976
3. rode, as a passenger, through the longest freight (not passenger) train tunnel in the world, three times in a two-week period
5. crossed the deception pass bridge below the street level, twice
6. made several months worth of long distance calls using william f. buckley’s credit card
7. passed myself off (successfully) as a “witch” in front a group of over 300 “christians” who would have killed a witch, given the chance
8. been “initiated” in four of the world’s major religions (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam)
9. survived a medical conditon which results in death or severe brain damage 75% of the time
10. had an 8th hole cut in my skull

here’s what i looked like on july 21, after having the big clot seen in yesterday’s animation removed.

i made this animation half the size, but i extended the display time on the last 4 frames, so you can see my craniotomy and the swastika-shaped plate in my skull.

i learn something new every day. today it was that the CD that they gave me at the hospital that has all the pictures of my brain has even more pictures of my brain than i imagined possible… there are movies of my brain in varying stages of repair… this, for example, which is what i looked like on july 14th, 2003…

tomorrow i’m going to put together one from later on, when i have the pins and clips in place… that is really interesting!

thanks to :

a lot of new stuff on hybrid elephant, but not much of it is visible… the main thing is the ability to accept credit cards and the shopping cart, which is thanks to paypal. there’s actually less content, but only until i get the buddhist and egyptian statues scanned and written up.

hunter s. thompson died yesterday. admittedly, i’m not as familiar with his work as i could be, i haven’t read any of his books and i’ve only read a few of his articles, but i get the very strong impression that if it weren’t for hunter thompson, i would be a very different person today, so i’ve got a lot of respect for the man, in spite of the fact that i don’t know that much about him. i’ve complained in comments in other people’s journals about this, but now it’s time for me to complain in my own journal about the fact that all the cool people have been dying recently – jimmy smith, shirley chisholm, HST – and none of the people who deserve to die have been dying for a long time. it’s time we did something to change this. any suggestions?

okay, drunk puppet night was invited to invade portland saturday night, and it was REALLY cool. it took place in the portland center for the performing arts, winningstad stage, which unlike the rebar, the jewelbox and new city theatres, and other places where i’ve been performing recently, is a real theatre, complete with 300 hanging lights, 100 more lights that are in storage in back (just in case), a computerised lighting board, and enough microphones that each act had their own mic, which had it’s level set before the theatre opened and then was simply muted until it was needed. there was only one major screwup, when i couldn’t get the CD for one of the acts, a shadow puppet show called "Eat", to start (it would play for the first couple of seconds and then stop automatically), and when i finally got it running i realised that the volume was turned down, so i had to start it all over again, but it was relatively minor compared to some of the things that went wrong at the rebar. not only that, but i got my name on the program as the "lighting and sound designer", so it’s going to look really good on my resume. after the show we went to dinner at bistro montage, which was nice, although rather crowded which surprised me given that we got there about 1:00 in the morning. the food was good and i got an aluminium foil snail in which my leftovers were wrapped.

i’m kind of disappointed though, because i’ve put a lot of energy into coming up with ideas for the puppet show based on a frank zappa song, and when i mentioned it to josh, without any further discussion, he said "not in my puppet show production". it makes me think that i probably should confirm that i can actually do the show before i get involved any further in planning. it also makes me feel like, if i can’t do the show based on frank zappa music, then i might just as well not do any puppet show at all for drunk puppet night, and at that point i would also think about not doing lights for it as well… so i guess maybe i should talk with josh about the potential reality of the show before going any further.

on my way out of portland yesterday, i was requested by moe to "drop by" her mother’s house, because she had something for her, but they didn’t (or wouldn’t, i was never able to tell exactly which) tell me what it was that i’d be picking up. so i got marginal directions for how to get to monique’s mother’s house from where i was staying, and actually made it to monique’s mother’s house after only getting lost once… because they changed the freeway signs on the I205 offramp near clackamas town center (they don’t say that any more, which is what threw me). however, i only got lost once, and it was only for about 15 blocks, until i realised that i actually knew where i was anyway. in fact, there was a moment, before i got on the freeway, where i was travelling away from downtown on hawthorne, and i could have turned right on 39th, instead of left, and i think i would have been able to get there anyway, even without the marginal directions. i know that, before my injury, i wouldn’t have had any problems with this, and i’m glad to see that this ability has been retained afterwards, even if it is more instinctive than conscious at this point. it makes me feel as though i’ve probably got a lot of knowledge that is more instinctive than anything else at this point, and i’ve just got to trigger the instincts for it to come out.

one of ezra’s friends from cornish bought a building in old fairhaven (don’t ask me how a college student buys an entire building in a historic business district… i am not even sure i want to know), and renovated it as a performance space and "dance club" – which is something i think bellingham has needed for a while now. ezra was in charge of the first performance in the space, which happened last night, and actually performed himself, as well.

i’m off to portland. see you tomorrow.

i worked all day yesterday and succeeded in putting a "shopping cart" that works on the incense portion of Hybrid Elephant. i’m probably going to do the same thing, eventually, to the other parts of the site as well, but it was a lot of work, i want to make sure that it’s done correctly, and i’m going to portland for a knock-off "drunk puppet night" tomorrow so i don’t have enough time to spend 14 hours straight on it (like i did yesterday). depending on how it works i will probably add it next week some time.

in fact, "drunk puppet night" is interfering with my ability to attend the crazylands ten year reunion… i finally get reconnected after at least 3 years of being in a splatted state and not being able to get anyone’s attention because so few people log in these days, just in time for the 10 year reunion, and it turns out to be on the same day, at the same time as DPN. according to nexus, who should know since it’s his machine, the last time i logged in was in august of 2003, which is impossible for me to have done, because i was in the hospital in august of 2003… nevertheless, nexus said that i was logged in, idling, not responding to says and being automatically logged back in when i timed out (which, in spite of everything else, doesn’t sound like me), and had been that way for a couple of months, so he splatted me. of course, i didn’t know anything about this, because i was in the hospital, and by the time i actually tried to login again, i had already been splatted. according to what i recall, which is hazy at best, about the time i quit openwave, greg and i were having a disagreement about something relatively trivial, like idling in my locked room, or something like that, and he dragged me (which is not a "permanent" condition) and i never went back until i tried to login after my injury and couldn’t. you can tell that i’m a true SPOD (Superior People Online Daily) because even after my injury this kind of thing concernes me: somebody guessed my crazylands password? well, it wasn’t too difficult, but the first thing i did when i was un-splatted was to change it to something more secure.

here’s an oral history by phil ager, who was the dean of fairhaven college when i was a student there.

i would guess that i am the biggest defect in this tux… there are a few other defects, but they can be fixed or ignored fairly easily…

i got my "dealer’s package" from the label company, so now i have to figure out how to add stickers to the Hybrid Elephant web site. it’s pretty competitive (500 stickers retail 8.5 cents per 2" diameter sticker, plus whatever i charge for the artwork, or submit your own artwork for a "discount", and that’s just for 2" diameter circles… there are a lot more different shapes and sizes) but i’m not sure how i can advertise them on the site… it’s clear that i can’t sell individual stickers…

i went and got fitted for a tuxedo yesterday, and i should be able to pick it up today. one of the clowns in the cirque de flambe worked out a deal with the tux shop where he was able to order a whole pile of "defective" tuxedos and sell them to us for around $50 each… now all i have to do is figure out what i do that requires a tuxedo. the "defect" in mine is a teensy pulled thread in the right arm of the jacket, that i would never have even noticed if there weren’t a circle around it drawn with chalk, so for $50, there’s a good chance that i’ll be able to figure out something.

we’re gearing up for the moisture festival already, which is at the end of next month. kim still hasn’t figured out whether she wants to do tech stuff or not, but i got email last night that seems to indicate that i could do the entire show if i wanted to… but i’m not sure how i’d be able to manage actually performing on stage and doing sound and lights at the same time, so i don’t think i’ll be doing that. apart from that, however, i’m open to doing any or all of the rest of the shows.

if this guy is able to make money, then there’s bound to be a way for me to make money… there just has to be… maybe i could make t-shirts and sell them to unsuspecting japanese people…

by the way… this is a great song. it has been ever since it first came out, and i’ve never heard it on the radio… which is, perhaps, one of the reasons why it’s so great.

now that i’ve actually found a mirror that works…

there aren’t that many of you, but that’s the way i like it anyway…

~przxqgl~

whoo boy… it’s been a tough day. i got up at my normal “work” time, i.e. when moe got up, around 6:30 am or so, and took the bus downtown, to avoid having to pay for for 5 hours of parking, because i had an appointment for a neuropsychological examination… except that as the bus was pulling into downtown, i realised that i had neglected to print out the address of where i was supposed to be. so i called moe at work, but she couldn’t find a phonebook listing for the doctor, and i wasn’t even sure of the doctor’s name anyway. i was vaguely remembering that it was somewhere near broadway and madison, but there are all different kinds of medical offices in that neighborhood, and i didn’t know the correct address… but i managed to figure it out, with the help of the old lady information person at swedish hospital.

then, i actually had one half of my neuropsychological evaluation (the other half is going to be another 5 hours on friday next week), which literally wore me out mentally. they had me listening to lists of letters and numbers and then telling how many numbers in the list, or listing them back, with the numbers in numerical order and the letters in alphabetical order… or repeating them back, only in reverse order… they had me read a list of nonsense words like zoop and prefqua… they told me three short, and relatively meaningless stories (one about a woman named thompson from south boston who reported to the police that she was robbed of $56, that she has 4 children, and the rent was due, one about a guy named joe garcia from san francisco, who was getting dressed to go out when the TV program he was watching was interrupted by a weather bulletin concerning a storm, and the third was meaningless enough that i don’t remember what it was about at all), and then asked me to repeat them back, as close as i could get to verbatim, 2 hours later… which didn’t happen… and the math questions! i’m not very good at math anyway, even before my injury… but they asked me questions that i wouldn’t have known before my injury: probability questions, the area of an irregular polygon and that sort of thing. there were also questions for which i knew the answers, like “what does the aphorism ‘shallow streams are noisy’ actually mean?”, and questions which i new the answers to, but i didn’t know how to describe them… aphasia questions, like what is the definition of “fortitude”, and questions which i don’t really know the answers to anyway, like “why do we have to pay taxes?” they had me duplicate designs with 9 blocks, including the final design which didn’t actually show the individual blocks, so i had to figure out which way the entire 9-block set as a whole was oriented, as well as figuring out how to duplicate the design… but i did that one, unlike the exact same test that they gave me when i was in the hospital.

then i had an hour-long interview with the phd neruropsychologist (he’s a doctor, but not an MD), where i had to tell him all of the ways i felt my injury had changed me, and also went into my relationship with my parents, and the fact that i spent 15 years in counselling. i thought about mentioning what i’ve heard about AS, but i know that would just complicate things even more, and i’m also aware of the fact that a professional (who it’s not happening to) has a vastly different opinion than a person who actually has a "qualitative" impairment about what, exactly, is a "qualitative" impairment, so i decided to keep my mouth shut for the moment.

so, after 5 hours of tests and an interview, i was spit out of the medical system again, and left to find my way home on the bus. before i left downtown seattle, i checked my seattle PO box (two pieces of actual junk mail and two pieces of mail addressed to others, one to box 368, and one for the architect who hasn’t had that box for 10 years). naturally i was a quarter short on both the bus from downtown seattle to renton, and the bus from renton to home, in spite of the fact that i bought coffee (that and a cookie were all i’ve had to eat today) on the way. when i got home, i turned around and went out again, this time in my car, to check my renton PO box (one piece of junk mail that was a duplicate of the two i got in seattle, plus a catalogue for stuff that i never have ordered (and probably never will), and a CD backup copy of WinRAR). also i went and bought my sweetie ob-flowers and ob-chocolates. obviously, i celebrate valentines day, but then again, i’m not culturally hindu. maybe things would be different if i were culturally hindu, but then i wouldn’t be who i am, so i can’t really say what would happen. also, there’s this article about pornography not having it’s beginnings at the same time as the photographic process, but it’s not really news to me, because i am hindu, and familiar with things like angkor wat.

i found another possibility for a Drunk Puppet Night performance, that’s not based on a frank zappa song! it’s called "They’re Made of Meat" and unlike my idea for the frank zappa song (which hasn’t yet been codified), this should be really easy.

uh oh… dude, where’s my country?

i went to the post office yesterday, and to my surprise, i received two huge boxes. when i got them home, i discovered that you can, indeed, order huge quantities of priority mail flat rate boxes for no charge… i.e. free. now all i have to do is figure out what the priority mail flat rate fee is, and i’ll be in business, so to speak.

at the same time, somebody has to make those boxes. if they’re free, they can’t be getting paid too much, which makes me wonder why there is a waiting list for DVR. if they’re willing to pay the people who manufacture the postal service boxes nothing, then why can’t the also pay the DVR people nothing as well, and make them do their jobs anyway? or is it because the DVR people are smart enough to not work when there isn’t enough money, and the people who manufacture boxes are… what? prisoners? slaves?

there’s something severely wrong with the whole system.

take "christians" for example… not being content to rouse rabble in their own country regarding same-sex marriage, there are an increasing number of right-wing "christian" americans who have been calling the canadian government, petitioning against the civil marriage act… and, to their credit, for the most part the canadian government has been telling them to shut up. you’d think that any intelligent life-form (i’m not sure they’re actually human) would get the idea.

okay, it has come to my attention that i haven’t explained my "handle" here, . let’s change that, shall we? in the book The Magic of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, one of the characters, a boy named Kiki Aru discovered a "magic word" that would transform anything into anything else. according to the book, the word was "pyrzqxgl". unfortunately, this word was outlawed by royal edict, and thus, even though we have a transliteration of the letters in the word, nobody now knows how to pronounce it… i’ve been working on a few theories, but i get the very strong impression that it’s actually transliterated incorrectly: the word isn’t "pyrzqxgl" or "peerz-kwux-gull", it’s more like , or "pirzix-quiggle"… but, obviously, that’s not exactly right either. i’ve been told that "pruh-zuks-ka-gull" is also not correct. i’ve been through a number of handles in various places on internet, including mahiswaradas on crazylands, tesla on batcave, resort, and a few others, and MrBlint on several other talkers, MUDs and MOOs. i’m not as likely to interact with people in live situations on internet as much these days, because my injury has made it difficult to type anything like fast enough to keep up, even taking frobulation into account.

The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra is very definitely interesting. i’d have bought their CDs already, but i’ve got to figure out the conversion rate for euros. along the same lines, there’s Odd Music, a gallery of weird instruments, including one of my favourites, the contrabass sax.

finally, this could be just the beginning of more worse things to come. "collapse in blood circulation" huh… what makes a person experience that? well, getting shot or tortured, having a heart attack, experiencing a head trauma…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2005
Contact: Nancy Aldrich, Artistic Director
(503) 284-7562

* *
Tears of Joy Theatre /SATURDAY NIGHT SHOWCASE /presents:
*/Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab/*
*NOT FOR KIDS!*
*Strong language-Adult Content*
*Saturday February 19, at 8:00pm*
* *

*WINNINGSTAD THEATRE, 1111 SW BROADWAY, PORTLAND, OR*
Individual tickets: $12 – $15 plus service charges
Box Office: (503) 248-0557 or (360) 695-0477
www.tojt.com

Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab* brings some of the best of “Drunk Puppet Nite” from Seattle. It is subversive, ugly, ridiculous, sublime, controversial,
lovely, righteously political, literary and definitely NOT FOR KIDS.

Tears of Joy Theatre’s SATURDAY NIGHT SHOWCASE presents*/ Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab/*, for one night only, Saturday, February 19 at 8:00pm at the Dolores Winningstad Theatre in Downtown Portland. Tickets are $12 – $15 and can be purchased by calling the box office at (503) 248-0557.

The members of the*/ Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab/* are the originators of the annual /Drunk Puppet Nite/ in Seattle and are pleased to bring their special blend of puppet lunacy to Portland this February. */Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab/* will present a collection of their best professional pieces of puppet theatre. These performances are sometimes dark, crude, lewd, occasionally silly, and will haunt and entertain adult audiences who are brave enough to attend.

Monkey Wrench will descend upon Portland’s Winningstad Theatre, hot on the heels of a sold out run of Drunk Puppet Nite in Seattle’s Re-Bar. Among the selections they will bring are: “Henry Box Brown,” the true story of an American slave who mails himself to freedom, “Barney and Betty Hill,” the story of an alien abduction from the 1950’s, “Eat,” a love story with a horrific ending, “Homage a Lola Flores,” an exquisite flamenco performance, “The Sexual Life of Plants,” “We all Fall Down” and “Primitive Instincts.”

———————————————————————-

*/Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab/*, a cluster of Seattle area puppeteers, are working to expand the public definition of puppetry and performance by joining artistic excellence with a special blend of the surprising and the bizarre. The Lab uses live music, experienced actors, and puppets of all kinds to re-invent performance in their daring productions. These productions include _Frankenocchio_, _Halfpenny Opera_ and _The Mermaid Who Broke My F***ing Heart_.

Photographs available by request

Kris Bluett Woolen
[email protected]
Tears of Joy Theatre
PO Box 1029 Vancouver WA 98666
www.tojt.com (503) 248-0557 or (360) 695-0477

something is wonky with spam assassin and spamcop. for years, i’ve been subscribed to the disinformation newsletter, and it’s been getting delivered to my disinformation mailbox on my computer without problems… until about a month or so ago. apparently they’re putting something, i’m still baffled as to exactly what, that spam assassin is identifying as "disguised porn". i figured that if i whitelisted it, it would solve the problem, but it still goes to my spam mailbox instead of where it’s supposed to go. i’m about ready to chalk another one up to demons, because i can’t think of anything else that i could do to fix the problem.

i found a message on alt.brain that was someone raving about deaf children who spontaneously developed a sign language, which could have been very interesting… but then i looked at the place which hosts the article, world science, and i realised that i’d seen this before… someone else used an article from this source to "prove" some point or another, whereupon another person warned him against believing anyone that says that alien TV is a reality… just goes to show you: don’t believe everything you read on internet.

After reviewing your application for vocational rehabilitation services and information about your disability, I have determined that you are eligible for services. Your eligibility is based on a determination that:

1. You have a physical or mental impairment;
2. The imairment hinders your ability to prepare for, get, or keep a job that matches your abilities and capabilities; and
3. You require vocational rehabilitation services to prepare for, get, or keep a job.

Due to limited funds, there is currently a waiting list for services. By law, when DVR cannot serve everyone who is eligible, it must establish an order for selecting individuals from the waiting list. The order must give priority to individuals with the most significant disabilities first, individuals with significant disablilities second, and individuals with disabilities third.

By reviewing records about your disability, I have established your priority category. You will be placed on the waiting list for this category by the date you signed the applicatiojn for DVR services. The results of this review are as follows:

Priority Category #3 – Individual with a disability
Date of Application: 12/03/2004

…

Your priority classification is provisional pending more current medical information. A neuropsychological examination will be arranged for you.

—–

so, "president" shrub junior has proposed a new budget for the coming year that includes cutting back on health care for poorer and middle-class americans, and a huge increase in military spending that doesn’t even include the "operations" in iraq and afganistan (which will be addressed in a separate, special budget request), erases scores of programs, slices medicaid and disabled housing but still worsens the federal deficits by $42 billion over the next five years, and scientists now working on a whole new generation of nuclear weapons… their way of thinking totally escapes me: a "safe" nuclear weapon?? but at the same time, they don’t have enough money to help me, a person whose brain exploded, because i’m "not disabled enough" to suit the guy who made the determination… i’d like to see him live through the same brain injury…

i suppose that if i were more affected by my injury, i’d have a greater chance of getting assistance, but if i were more affected by my injury, the possibility of getting meaningful, creative work would be significantly reduced… i’ve worked in "sheltered workshops" before, which primarily employ severely handicapped adults, and i would rather be a vegetable or outright dead than i would to work in a place like that as anything other than a "normal" person.

moe has to teach for 9 hours today, without a break… she’s got her four regular classes, plus she’s taking over for another teacher this week. she left the house at 6:30 this morning, and today’s sunday… she really needs a break.

despite the fact that it comes from another blog, and has no actual basis in any reality that i’m familiar with, i like the idea of Tao Shielding. it’s definitly worth thinking about, if nothing else, and may actually work its way into my own mythology in some way or another.

hey… check this out… the state of new york may actually allow same-sex marriages, despite complaints from "christians" and other republicans. it’s a good idea that has waited too long to come out of hiding… and who knows? it may actually have some effect nationally as well.

and the next time you enjoy a piece of chocolate, remember that it very likely came from here.

i updated my journal’s style yesterday. it’s different, and i’m not sure how to get it more like i want, but it’s close enough that i’ll let it be for a while.

i was just accosted by a spider. apparently it dropped from the ceiling, but i didn’t see it until it landed on the edge of my glasses… just within my range of vision, but too close for me to actually see. fortunately i didn’t freak out and squish it, but it took me a minute or so to locate it and transport it safely to the cat tree, where i’m sure one of the cats will squish it if they bother to wake up.

pliny’s birthday was yesterday, and the fleamont thrillharmonic played a lot more time than we originally arranged for when we first made the engagement… pliny’s two other bands didn’t show, and it turns out that at least two other phil members are vaguely assocaiated with various people who it turns out (not too surprisingly) are also friends of pliny’s, so we stayed and played two extra sets, plus we got a potential gig playing for pliny’s cousin ben’s wedding, and another potential gig playing for fricker’s follies at the rendezvous. it turns out that i know both of the owners of the rendezvous, so the probability that we are going to get more gigs from this is relatively high. also, i spoke with "professor" don ehlen, who promised to hook me up with someone who can give me some advice about painting my car (you thought i’d forgotten about that, didn’t you).

along the same lines, the phil is playing at the late night cabaret this evening. i’d invite you all to come, but most of you are out of state, and i don’t think i’ve got enough extra space to put you all up for the night.

you would think that people who run linux would be aware of the fact that most computer virii are directed towards windoesn’t, but apparently there are people who actually attempt, with a certain amount of success, to get windows virii to run on linux, just to see what they will do. it doesn’t seem to have much of a point to me. what they will do is obvious: you will get infected, and potentially infect others, which is Not A Good Thing™.

and speaking of "Not A Good Thing™", you would think that she would be safe from accusations of pirating music, but no… just another example of why the whole system needs to be defenestrated.

i had to include this link because it’s not only someone doing interesting artistic things with macintosh computers, but it’s someone doing interesting artistic things with antique macintosh computers! i’d like to see someone do the same thing with windoesn’t computers that are that old… wait… windoesn’t didn’t even exist in those days. ahhh, those really were the days…

a few days ago i commented about how "doctor" james dobson was ranting about spongebob squarepants’ attempts to make people more accepting of homosexuals. it appears that he and his ilk are at it again… only this time it’s a lot more apparent that they’re lying about just about everything in order to raise a stink. maybe if we ignore them, they really will go away.

and finally, i leave you with The Cuddly Menace… good night, sleep tight… don’t let the bedbugs… um…

today is pliny’s 40th birthday. it’s strange to think that i have known pliny since he was 14. he really hasn’t changed, except that his ideas are more mature. the fremont phil is playing at his birthday party at the rendezvous grotto this evening. tomorrow, the fremont phil is playing at the new city theatre for the late night cabaret. it’s also presumably when i am going to collect whatever money (at least $20.50, for the buttons) i am owed for drunk puppet night.

i was recently contacted by aaron c, who had a potential job for me at schemalogic, which is the place i contracted for last year. they are still privately funded, and going from one handout to the next, but this year they no longer have fred-the-netgod working for them, so i was initially a good deal more skeptical about them than i was the last time around. i went and interviewed with andrew, who remembered me from the last time, and everything sounded like i was supposed to start last week… but last week came and went with no word about it, so i called aaron last friday to find out if he had heard anything. he said he hadn’t, and he would get back to me. well, i called him again today, and there’s apparently no more job, because the guy who interviewed me wasn’t clear about exactly how the testing should be done initially. so, there’s no job any more. it’s not like it surprises me that much, and, as i said before, i’m a good deal more skeptical about them than i was in december of 2003, right after my injury and getting fired from minuteman press… and it is exactly the reason why i’m not really sure that i want to be a professional computer geek anyway, unless it’s working for myself, and doing other things as well.

speaking of which, i used to work for micro$haft, and i still have friends who work in the macintosh business unit, so i was a little (emphasis on little) amused when i saw this thing in wired about how ipods are a “career-limiting move”… when i worked there, it was common knowledge that billg had a mac on his desktop, so i have no doubt that he’s currently got an ipod. whether he is discreet about it or not, i assume, is for other people to determine…

and if this guy was in a “christian” church, he would have been arrested for sexual abuse of a child with no further warning, but because he’s jewish… ??? there is definitely something wrong with the world.

eminentise the eschaton.

i bought a colour printer yesterday. nothing fancy, just a deskjet 3845, but it’s pretty much exactly what i needed for making colour buttons, and it does an awesome job. unlike “jobs” i’ve had in the past, where one printer is replaced by another one, i’ve actually got both printers on the network at this point… which is to say, mac os 9 sees one printer, mac os 10 sees two printers, linux sees two printers but can only print to one of them (the local one, i don’t know why), and windoesn’t sees… do you have to guess?

that’s right, windoesn’t see any printers at all… ✻✼✽✾✿ windoesn’t anyway.

Pokemon causes cancer… What I Heard about Iraq… ☹

drunk puppet night ended last night. we had a "cast party" at the six arms, on capitol hill, but i spent 40 minutes driving around looking for a parking place before i found one, which made it almost midnight by the time i got there, so i basically just showed up for long enough to give the CDs of peoples’ music back to josh and then went home. today i went to a housewarming party/rehearsal for the fremont phil at john’s new house, where i learned that i’ve been recruited to run lights and sound for the moisture festival, which is actually a paying gig. according to what i now understand, there are actually a fair number of “lights-and-sound” gigs out there, if you just know who to ask, and one of the people i talked to last night knows one of the people to ask, so things are not looking as dismal as before.

Microsoft dominance poses security risk is not a joke, despite it’s similarity to the other link i posted last time. it’s enough of not-a-joke that the report’s appearance cost the author of the report, dan geer, his job – not because of the fact that it’s not true, but because of the fact that it “wasn’t approved” by his employer, a microsoft affiliate called @stake. it’s exactly this kind of thing that is one of the primary reasons why i do not want a job as a computer geek.

i just installed a bit torrent client on windows, because of a deal at kiddierecords.com in which they’re posting mp3s of a new kiddie record a week for the year of 2005. i may actually get all of them, but for sure i’m going to get the tales of uncle remus, which i actually had as a kid, and gerald mcboing-boing, which is next week’s bit torrent. let’s hear it for sound-scavangers, which is how i learned about all of this stuff. if nothing else, the kiddie records are going to make outrageous sound sources.

here is an article about the things you can’t say, why you can’t say them, and why there are several good ideas about why to say them anyway, one of which is humour. along those lines, the news from central ohio is that a "Hebron pastor is charged with abuse"… i suppose the fact that he was the associate pastor of the "Licking Baptist Church" wasn’t warning enough. of course, this has absolutely no bearing on myself, as i live in washington, but i couldn’t resist posting the thing about the "Licking Baptist Church" associate pastor.

drunk puppet night is going amazingly well, and this is it’s final week of production. i sold 31 buttons since last week. ezra is supposedly coming to tonight’s performance, which reminds me, i need to call annette. the next thing is pliny’s 40th birthday at the rendezvous, followed by the late night cabaret at the new city theatre, then the art sharing in bellingham (possibly), followed by winningstad theatre in portland. i’m not sure how much, if anything, these things will pay, but moe sez if they don’t pay anything, then we’re going to have about $200 until she gets paid again… typical wage slavery.

there’s a new(?) meme out there, which is "What Hindu God or Goddess are you like?" i’m not going to post my response, because it’s entirely predictable (in fact, all of the answers are pretty predictable, although i doubt that it includes deities like balaji, jagannath or nagaraj), but here it is for any of you who might be interested. there’s also this:

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

and this:

Who’s been commenting in your journal?

1			66 comments	27.16% of total
2			19 comments	7.82% of total
3			16 comments	6.58% of total
4			11 comments	4.53% of total
5			10 comments	4.12% of total
6			5 comments	2.06% of total
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8			3 comments	1.23% of total
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10			2 comments	0.82% of total
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13			1 comments	0.41% of total
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19			1 comments	0.41% of total

These statistics were generated using the LJ Stats Web Interface by . Original idea from ‘s LJ Comment Stats Wizard.

it’s no wonder i’m suspicious of these things… there is NO … 8/

here is a place in the netherlands that makes 3 dimentional models of subjects which were once the subjects of historical painters like hieronymous bosch, salvador dali, and m.c. escher.

Maneki Neku

i’ve been playing around with the idea that the tanuki (an animal similar to the maneki neku) is one of my "totem animals", and i’ve made an icon out of one, for those of you who haven’t noticed.

Tanuki

a tanuki is a real animal, Canis Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus, or "japanese raccoon dog", but it is also an animal from japanese folklore which has magical powers of transformation, likes to fuck, and is perpetually broke, which isn’t that desireable, but it describes me fairly well. along the same lines, scientists have recently succeeded in creating the first animal human hybrids, or chimeras. the first question that springs to mind is where are the "christians"? they’re usually all over things like this, trying to get them banned or something. the second question is, of course, should things like this be banned? interesting as it may be, it’s just a matter of time before someone rampaging through the human genome like a bull in a china shop will permanently break something and then where will we be?

Microsoft’s AntiSpyware Tool Removes Internet Explorer – i saw this and my first response was to burst out laughing… but then i realised that this is internet, and there’s a good chance that it’s a joke (particularly since this is posted on the same server)… but even if it is, it’s a good joke!

here’s a DVD that i want. anyone want to buy it for me?

Tuesday January 25, 09:52 AM
British Hindus fight to reclaim swastika
By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) – Hindus have launched a campaign to “reclaim” the swastika from its Nazi past and reinstate the 5,000-year-old emblem as a symbol of good luck.

They were stung into action when European parliamentarians called for a Europe-wide ban on Nazi insignia after Prince Harry provoked international outrage by wearing a swastika armband and Nazi costume at a party.

“What we have decided to do is to reclaim the swastika,” said Ramesh Kallidai, secretary-general of the Hindu Forum representing 700,000 Hindus in Britain.
He said of the Hindu religious symbol purloined by Adolf Hitler for his National Socialist Party: “It has been used for 5,000 years to promote life. It brings good luck and wards off evil.”

Ever sensitive to the concerns of millions of Jews who suffered the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, he told Reuters: “For Hindus, the misuse of the swastika is as repulsive as it is to everyone else.

“It’s like saying the Ku Klux Klan is burning crosses so let’s ban the use of crosses worldwide.”

Pictures beamed worldwide of the queen’s grandson wearing the Nazi uniform at a costume party prompted deputies in the European parliament to call for a ban on Nazi insignia, an idea that the European Commission said was worth considering.

“The Hindu Forum was inundated with calls over the proposed ban,” said Kallidai. “If it came into force, that would mean if Hindus use the swastika for religious purposes as they have done for 5,000 years, they risk breaking the law.”

First came a media campaign to put their case. Then Hindus pressed parliament to debate the issue and lobbied deputies both in London and Strasbourg to support them.

Next comes a major conference in London and public awareness workshops across Britain.

“We have already spoken to the Board of Deputies of British Jews and want to have a dialogue with them. Everyone must understand that the swastika has nothing to do with hatred and is purely for worship.”

A spokesman for the Jewish Board told Reuters: “We respect the Hindu Forum’s desire to take back the Swastika but our line of caution is that Neo-Nazis and racists continue to use the Swastika as a potent symbol of hatred.”

To the millions who suffered in World War Two, the swastika is a loathed emblem of hatred, racism and xenophobia.

But to Hindus, it is a revered symbol, derived from the Sanskrit “svastika” and meaning “Good to be.”

“In Gujarat, when a baby has its first haircut, a swastika is painted on the top of its head to ward off evil. You find it on the door of the house as a good luck charm. It appears on wedding cards and holy paintings,” Kallidai said.

But he fears it will be a tough battle eradicating the swastika’s nightmare image.

“It is a very uphill climb because a 5,000-year-old symbol became associated 65 years ago with hatred, destruction and xenophobia,” said Kallidai. “This could take a number of years.”

don’t forget: tomorrow is Rabbit Hole Day… now all we have to do is create a day for the rest of the rabbit.

i have to file for unenjoyment “benefits” every week, on sunday. during the week, i keep a record of all of the places i’ve looked for work (which averages around 7 or 8 places a week), and then, on sunday, i call and answer a bunch of questions for an automated machine which then dispenses my meager check in the mail each week… except that this week, it quit working. so i called the “telecenter” early this morning, which is where you call when you’re having a problem, and talked to the guy who said that apparently two weeks ago the machine didn’t accept my claim for some unknown reason… which is odd, because i got no indication from this machine that anything was different than any of the other hundreds of times i’ve called and successfully filed my claim. because of this foul up my claim was cancelled as of thursday last week, and has to be re-opened, which means that both this week and next week i’ve got to be out there looking for work, but i don’t get benefits… and this is because of nothing i have done wrong, but because there was a screwup somewhere in olympia. the guy said that they can’t even tell what went wrong, because they deleted my answers for that week on saturday. they hold on to the answers for 2 weeks, and then they’re purged from the system… but if that’s the case, how could they tell that i had been overpayed one week, back in october, and actually sent me a computer printout of my responses to the computerised questions, back when my check was almost $400, over a year ago?

grumble, mutter, bomb, george w. bush, mutter, republicrats, democretins, grumble…

week two of drunk puppet night ended last night. it went surprisingly well considering that the producer and director of the show was in washington DC with his giant puppets. the house was packed, which is very good, and i sold 14 buttons, which isn’t outstanding, but it’s something. reminder for all you people in the seattle area: only one more week of drunk puppet night, then you’ll have to wait until next year.

"doctor" james dobson speaks out against spongebob squarepants, even when he’s wrong. this strikes me as being very similar to when bob larson spoke out against boy george… if he wants to discourage people from being influenced by spongebob, the worst thing he could do is to speak out against him. any attempt to "speak out" is just as good as saying "here’s something at which i think you should take a closer look". and what is he talking about? "doctor" dobson is concerned that spongebob is "being exploited by an organization that’s determined to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among our nation’s youth." in other words, spongebob is a terrorist. why don’t these "christians" learn from history? it’s as though they don’t really care about "christianity" as much as they care about getting their own name out there, and making a few bucks.

along the same lines, but in a completely different direction, there’s a web site that encourages people to make their dog’s pile of shit into a political statement. not only is it warning about the dangers of "bush-think," it’s a biohazard warning label, so people will be more aware of where they’re stepping. it’s especially good when you’re out collecting dog shit you’ve run out of little pooper-scooper bags. as an aside, it’s instructive to realise that The Book of Dog Shit is number six on the google results page when you search for Dog Shit… just goes to show that the religion of Tina Chopp has more influence than you realise.

guess what? yesterday was “inauguration day” and i didn’t do anything except go to the first performance of the second weeks run of DPN, which went very well indeed, despite the fact that the producer and director of the show is in washington DC with his giant puppets this week. i mean, really… i didn’t vote for the man, and in general, i think that he’s the most innately stupid president that this country has ever had, so why bother celebrating his inauguration, or even protesting it? all of the other people who did protest it (i heard that there were around 400,000 protesters downtown yesterday) just end up making the stupid people who voted for him think that they’re having another party, so why bother? “The most efficacious method of dealing with deviancy is to ignore, to the furthest point of our tolerance, those items which we find offensive.” — Ilbert Geis. if enough americans ignore the president, maybe he’ll go away… and maybe he’ll go away more quickly than the 4 years it would ordinarily take… and if not, then the fact that i have ignored him will make it that much better when we actually elect a president with two brain cells to rub together.

i found this site, which goes a long way towards describing what’s going on here, but that still doesn’t make it any less amusing… and i still think these japanese are crazy.

today is moe’s birthday, but i don’t think her birthday present is going to arrive in time, so i’ll just have to wait. as it is, i’ve got her three presents, one of which she asked for, one of which isn’t actually good until 5th february, and one of which hasn’t arrived yet. if i’m lucky, the postman should deliver it today, but if not… well, her official “birthday party” isn’t until sunday, so i may have a reprieve until then. she’s off getting her drivers’ license renewed at the moment.

hey look… they’re starting to take this whole phenomenon seriously. maybe now they’ll develop the idea that ethics are for everyone… at the same time, it makes me wonder what’s next. thanks to Bunger Mulkin! i now know what happens when you drive a truck under an overpass that is slightly lower than the truck’s maximum height… you wake up the neighbors, but apparently, you don’t notice yourself… i bet this guy had a bunch of explaining to do when he got back to the budget rent-a-truck office. also, again, thanks to Bunger Mulkin!, i know where to go to get a tinfoil hat for my entire house… oy!

i got this really outrageous recording the other day from Toast And Jam. according to the liner notes, the artists used “music you dislike to create music you like”. it’s an interesting method, and one which i am going to have to try myself, but that doesn’t make the music on this recording less outstanding. if i were still a radio broadcaster, i would recommend that everyone go out and buy this recording. excellent!

nicked from …

scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you.
i’ll explain it to the best of my ability, since i will be the first to admit that some of my interests are, indeed, quite odd.
then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests. … then we can all be one big happy family with nobody like this hanging around screwing things up for the rest of us.

here’s an article i rather liked about audio luddites and their effects on seattle, and (thanks to ) i don’t know what this is, but i think i want one… babelfish translates the text as “Luxurious edition desk-top type of interior accessory “suicide bombing button”. Installing in the reception table, and on etc. the foot warmer please enjoy. As for function this as a switch completely being not to be, please note.”

i finally got buttons updated (my prices were 20 years old!) and added to the hybrid elephant site, and i’ve got about 150 left to make for (at the old price). i also had an interview at snowdogs, which was rather interesting. the guy said that he had a resume for me from 2001 and wanted “up to date” information, in spite of the fact that i have communicated with people at snowdogs as recently as april of 2004. he didn’t actually have anything for me, but if the information they’ve got in their database is from 2001, i wonder what they’re actually doing in their big fancy office in belltown anyway… sitting on their thumbs? i told him that i’m still available, but in the long run i’m not available for positions in the computer industry. he said he would look for testing positions for me, and we left it at that.

i know, more-or-less, what’s going on here and here, but it still leaves me wondering what the hell is going on. these japanese are crazy…

an interview with the bobs on dr. demento last week (part 1 and part 2), which isn’t as good sound quality as all that, but most of it is just words with no actual singing, so it’s bearable, and amusing.

i made a new icon, since somebody stole my old one.

an opera about Moammar Gadhafi, contraband fruit flies, and “christianity” taken to it’s logical extreme are definitely things to think about.

drunk puppet night just finished it’s first week’s run, and it’s shaping up to be an excellent show. josh was saying last night that i am the number one best tech person he’s ever worked with. i suspect that it’s because i’m also an artist and i understand what it’s like to be up on stage performing with tech people who just want a list of cues and don’t even bother to follow the script. i’m responsible for providing music for pre- and post-show, but josh has stipulated that there will be no frank zappa (which i don’t really understand, but he’s the boss), so i’ve developed an idea for next year’s DPN, which is a puppet show based on the zappa song called “Mr. Green Genes”… magnificent! i told josh about my idea, and he encouraged me, saying that he’s really looking for puppet shows that push his buttons. jill and her new boyfriend, rick, came up to see the show, and stayed overnight at my house. among other things, jill told me that she’s going through the legal steps to have “officer” lee’s adoption annulled, which is definitely several steps in the right direction.

i’ve recently realised that my button making machine is a good way to suppliment my income, so i’ve been making buttons for the past few days. hybrid elephant is really wonderful that way… i come up with a new money making scheme, and all i have to do is post it on hybrid elephant to see if it will really work. i haven’t posted the buttons on the site yet, because i’ve been too busy making buttons, but as soon as i have a free half-hour or so, it’s going up there. along the same lines, i got a call from aaron c. on friday that he has a potential “job” for which they’re interested in interviewing me… and it’s at schemalogic… i don’t really know what to expect, though, because in the little more than a year since my last contract there, they have laid off or fired almost the entire crew and hired new people. at the same time, aaron said that my name was the only one that came up while they were discussing how to procede with the project that they would have me working on, so it probably won’t be that bad.

i’m starting to get really fed up with the cirque web team. this woman named Q has taken it upon herself to take over just about everything from macque, which could be a good thing except that she seems to think that this makes her in charge of everything, which it doesn’t. i put up a trial site based on what we already had on the web, just to get the ball rolling, and her response was to say that she would prefer a “more modern” design… in spite of the fact that the web as it exists now has only been in existance for a little more than 10 years. she bases this preference mainly on the fact that she has a degree in communications, and has been requested to sit in on initial consultations with clients in a corporate setting, but she’s been a member of the cirque for only a year, and there are other people with more seniority both in the cirque and on the net, who are just as qualified as her to be making decisions. if nothing else, regardless of what kind of degrees she’s got, she’s a very poor communicator, and that’s not just from a web-site perspective (she taught the poi class i took last summer, and she couldn’t understand how my brain injury makes poi difficult for me). i’m ready to quit the team, even as it is just getting started, which is not a good sign. i’m probably going to stick with it for a while, just to see if things get better, but i’m not holding my breath.

i finally got infected. i searched for viruses last friday, and i came up with two on my windoesn’t machine… i don’t really understand exactly how i got infected, because i don’t install software, i don’t do email on this machine, and i’m very careful about the links i click, but they’ve found a way in somewhere. it’s just more fuel for the rant that is posted here. so i went to the symantec web site, because they’re one of the biggest manufacturers of AV software for windoesn’t, and paid for a downloaded version of antivirus 2005, which, i then discovered, doesn’t work on my operating system, which is W2K server. as far as i can tell, there’s no way to tell from their web site that AV2005 doesn’t work with server operating systems, and, as far as i can tell, they don’t make an AV system that works with W2K server… so i called (and spent over an hour waiting on hold) and gave them my story, and the guy said that i would get a refund. i then went to the mcafee web site (because they’re another big one), and paid for another antivirus program (which i made sure would work on my system before i bought it), which should be delivered by UPS tomorrow. then i got an email from symantec telling me how to download their software (which i had already done, which is how i discovered it won’t work), so i called again (and waited another half hour or so on hold) to complain, and they said that if i had already downloaded their software i would either have to pay for it, or fill out a “letter of destruction”, proclaiming that if i didn’t really destroy their software i’m subject to a massive fine or something. they gave me a link to find the letter of destruction, which i found and filled out, and i thought the matter was settled… then, yesterday, i got another email from symantec, saying that the software i had “ordered” wasn’t available, and had to be back ordered. so i called again (and waited on hold for about 45 minutes), and the guy said that i hadn’t filled out the letter of destruction, which i said i had… i also complained about the fact that they don’t say that it won’t work with W2K server, there’s no phone number posted ANYWHERE on their web site, and that when i did finally get their phone number, i had to wait on hold for an extremely long time, and i felt as though for as little time i had spent actually dealing with them that i had been the recipient of extremely poor customer service, and that i was going to go with mcafee because of it… so he sent me another link to the letter of destruction, which was the same as the first one, which i filled out again, and hopefully this time they’ll get the message. the moral of the story: use linux.

Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab presents Drunk Puppet Nite #5!

At The Re-Bar
1114 Howell St. at Boren Ave., Seattle

Thursday, Friday & Saturday.
January 13-15; 20-22; 27-29.

Show at 8:00 SHARP; Door open at 7:00
21 and over only w/ID

Tickets $15
Thurs. Jan 20 pay-what-you-can

For info and reservations call Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab (206) 675-4500
http://www.monkeywrenchpuppetlab.org

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the 5th Drunk Puppet Nite!

Once again, Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab is hosting Drunk Puppet Nite at Seattle’s Re-Bar. Drunk Puppet Nite is an evening of puppetry from beyond the pale; a chance for Seattle’s best, and most notorious, puppeteers to expose their ids in public. We dare to enter the nether realms of puppetry. Drunk Puppet Nite is subversive; it’s ugly, it’s ridiculous, it’s sublime, it’s controversial, it’s lovely, it’s righteously political, it’s literary.

The truth is, no one knows what to expect from Drunk Puppet Nite. Over these three weekends, our puppeteers have no boundaries. Performers include Clay Martin; Matt Fontaine & Tamara Paris; members of Circus Contraption, Cry of the Rooster, Islewilde, Tears of Joy; Thistle Theater and all of your Monkey Wrench favorites! No two evenings are the same.

Monkey Wrench is a cluster of Seattle area puppeteers who are working to expand the public’s definition of puppetry by bringing their blend of the surprising, the bizarre and the artistically excellent to audiences around the Puget Sound. Monkey Wrench is the group responsible for Frankenocchio, The Mermaid who Broke my Fucking Heart, Halfpenny Opera and the upcoming Dracula.

For more information call Monkey Wrench at (206) 675-4500.

moe left at 7:12 am, which meant that i had to wake up at 4:30 to take her to the airport. she’s scheduled to be in san francisco at around 9:00 am, then she leaves SF at noon, and isn’t scheduled to land in orlando until 8:00 pm… which always throws me. the fact that a four hour flight actually takes 8 hours because of shifting time zones is boggling to me. at least i’m not having to live through it. i hope she comes home soon. i already miss her…

digging around in the garage, i found this, printed in “old fashioned” type on computer paper:

Ye anciente obscure weirdnesse spelle

Assemble magickkal tools: magickkal knife, magickkal dagger, magickkal sword, scissors, whip, chains & rubber candles. Lock yourself in a closet and face Pittsburgh. Pour water in a paper bag; add salt, pepper, two cloves garlic, one ripe tomato. Bake at 358 degrees.

Chant: “I excersise thee, O sprites of Walter, casting out yuckies and grossness. Kiss my nose.”

Walk in triangles pouring the mixture on your feet. Pound on a bell. Cast the circle out the window and jump after it. Light 6 candles with a burning sock. Face the 4 quarters and revoke the incrementals. Sprinkle incense in your hair and light it. Fill your pockets with sand and dance naked on the roof. Recite the Middle Pillow, visualise Gro-Lites down your spine and goose the first entity to cross the circle.

Point your magickkal twanger, froggie, drink the spirits, uncast of thousands and collapse in a stupor. Fly to Cleveland and debauch. Repeat twice a day for life.

WARNING: On peril of risk to body & soul, be utterly certain that you prefckqua or a plage of foul marmots will grossly and then eat up your favourite. Tear or burn along the line.

EDIT: she called from san francisco at about 10:30. apparently they disembarked at the international gates, which is on the opposite end of the airport from where she is leaving from, and she had to go through the department of clownland security checkpoint again before being allowed to procede to her departure gate. it’s a good thing she had a 2 hour layover before she had to depart, she said that people who had another flight to catch in 30 minutes were screwed.

moe is going to orlando for a week, and she’s leaving tomorrow. this has something to do with continuing education that is required to maintain her license, but it ultimately means that i get to stay at home for a week and be depressed because i can’t find a job, while my wife goes off gallivanting halfway around the world to further her already impressive career. not that i don’t want her to go, it’s just that i’d be a good deal happier about it if i were going with her, even if it would mean that i get to sit around in a hotel room for a week while moe attends her symposium on organisms that grow inside dead animals and how to tell them apart. i’ve actually got a friend in orlando that i haven’t seen for a very long time (1975), and if i were there, i could be out looking for him, because i don’t know if the address i have is any good or not, while moe is in class, and there’s a good chance that she won’t have much time herself, so it’s a good bet that i won’t find out if he really lives there or not until much later… not to mention the fact that it means a week of sleeping by myself. i suppose it’s partial payment for her missing a month of sleeping with me while i was having my injury.

i got a reminder that it’s time to pay my annual combined excise tax but honestly, i don’t remember even using any annual combined excises during the past year, so i’m not sure i have to pay anything.

jill may be coming up next week for drunk puppet night, and if she does, i’m going to invite her to stay here, because that way she won’t have to face a four hour drive home at midnight, or whenever it’s over. something seems wrong about inviting the woman i fantasised about when i was 17 to spend the night in my guest bedroom when i’m 45, but what the hell… it’s only one night, moe will be home from orlando, and that way she won’t have to pay for a hotel… besides, i’m not 17 any more.

May 3rd, 2003

now admittedly, i’ve submitted to a fair amount of brain damage since then, but i seriously wonder what criteria they’re using to make these "diagnoses"…

the mars rover spirit has been on mars for a year now. pretty good considering that it was only intended to last for 90 days, and there’s no spare batteries. too bad we’re so hung up on the war in iraq and afghanistan to pay any attention. the internet is shit is a rant by someone who is disappointed that McNewspaper isn’t the happening thing any more, but their basic premise is still sound. the more geeky it gets, the less shit-like it becomes, but on the whole i tend to agree. at the same time, if it weren’t for internet, i would never have found out about eric doeringer who makes illegal objects as art. if he is able to make a living at it, then i should be able to pull it off as well…

shirley chisholm died saturday. i mention this only because i have seen no other mention of it on internet. admittedly, i haven’t been paying that much attention, but at the same time, i would have hoped that she was enough of a hero to everyone else that more would have been said about her death. i should have known better…

i went to 47° 58′ 23.7″ n, 122° 31′ 20.1″ w today. it was the first day in over a year that we have taken the dogs to the beach, because of various injuries (mine, then the dog’s knees), and only the second time we have ever been to the double bluff off-leash area, but paddy and magick both remembered it and were making all kinds of noise by the time we actually got parked. i imagine that if i give it the right information, the device that i’ve got that gave me the coordinates above could tell me exactly how far away from home i was, but i haven’t figured out what information that is or how to give it to the machine yet.

create your own visited states map

create your own visited countries map

see, this is the reason i find north america to be boring. i want to emigrate to new zealand…

i recently commented in someone’s journal, and got banned from commenting as a result, because i had the audacity to disagree with the person when they said i am clueless and brainwashed… i may be clueless about his specific situation, but if he’s going to be that negative about a comment in his journal, and ban me with essentially no warning, then i don’t think i want him as a friend anyway… this is exactly the reason i was hesitant about taking up this "hobby" to begin with. so far i think i’ve done pretty well at staying clear of "drama", and i don’t want to start up with it now. enough said.

You are WEED.

What Drug Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

it seems vaguely appropriate until you realise that by changing one answer (no prizes for guessing which one) results in extacy, which i have never tried.

if you like coil (which i do), you can download all 197mb of "Full Cold Moon", a tribute album dedicated to the memory of jhonn balance, from here.

xmas was full of driving and in-laws, which is to say, somewhat boring, and somewhat scary, but way better than it would have been at my parents’ house. i didn’t get what i wanted

but i got something almost as cool

and, as i predicted, around 100,000 innocent civilians were killed within 24 hours of xmas… but the fact that it was because of natural causes doesn’t matter, because the tamil tigers have refused even to talk with the sri lankan government, in spite of the fact that one of the provinces hardest hit by the tsunamis is under their control. no word on what’s happening in iraq or afghanistan, but i assume that it’s bushiness as usual.

drunk puppet night begins in a couple of weeks. as far as i know, we get one rehearsal before it starts, which is better than none at all, but considering that we’ve got at least 20 different acts which occur more or less randomly over a 3 week run, it should be interesting, to say the least.

the web site for the cirque doesn’t have an initial meeting scheduled yet, but it probably will within the next week. if it doesn’t, then i’m going to schedule one myself, because the work really needs to be started.

dominionism
dominionism
satanic christians
jesus was a loser
the poor

i’m so fucking frustrated with the whole thing that i can’t even type straight… which means that this is taking even longer than it would otherwise. of course, once it’s typed nobody will recognise that, which is even more frustrating.

for those who can’t be bothered to actually read more than one web site, dominionism is a “militant post-millennial eschatology which pictures the seizure of earthly power by the church as the only means through which the world can be rescued”… and, by logical extension, if that earthly power isn’t seized by the church, then the world will continue it’s “downward spiral” into chaos, madness, and, potentially, islam. no matter that the world will continue to exist, it will be so emmeshed in evil and hatred (which means “no war” and “equality for everyone”) that we won’t be able to get anything done…

meanwhile, donny rumsfeld is under scrutiny for not caring enough about the troops that are already over there “fighting for freedom” that he’s not providing them with adequate body armour, and signing letters of condolence to families of troops killed with a “rubber stamp” (“but there’s so many of them, and i’ve got so many more important things to do”), more prisoner abuse has surfaced, which the government says will be “thoroughly investigated” (meaning they’re trying extra hard to sweep it under the rug as quickly as possible, in the hope that if it’s “investigated” quickly enough, nobody will notice that these muslim “terrorists” that are being abused are just as human as the rest of us), and the president’s approval rating has fallen below 50% one month after his election – THE FIRST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY to have that happen.

meanwhile, there are still homeless people around the world, there are still sick people who don’t have any way of paying for necessary medications and hospitalisation, there are still orphaned children with nobody to take care of them, there are still people who don’t have any means of supporting themselves and nobody seems to care about these things. they (YOU) are so caught up in the “war on” terror, or drugs, or whatever, and they (YOU) are so caught up in their materialistic fanasies that they (YOU) don’t even seem to notice these things at all. ALL of these things could be adequately addressed by application of 10% of the current budget that’s being spent, instead, on war in iraq, war in afghanistan, war on drugs, war on terrorism… in short, WAR!

one thing is for sure… there won’t be a “christmas truce” this year (like there was in world war I). i wonder how many innocent civilians will be killed on christmas because “terrorists” hate our “freedom”? i wonder if it’s even possible any more for individual people to say “that’s enough,” to go and make friends with the “enemy,” and dispense with war all together. it’s too bad that it wasn’t more permanent 100 years ago, because if it were, we’d be looking at a totally different society today. one in which there are no homeless, sick, orphaned, out of work people anywhere!

i had a performance last night. before my performance, i went out to buy a single present for a family member. it took me an hour and a half to drive less than 10 miles to and from (thus making me late for my performance), because of people who are hung up on the wrong message. they can’t seem to get it through their heads that they WON’T HAVE this kind of “xmas” much longer because it will all come crashing down around them when the “war” on terror finally comes to their doorstep.

my whole life i’ve heard the “peace on earth, good will towards mankind” message, but, oddly enough, i’ve only heard this kind of message around xmas time… the rest of the year, it seems like the message is “peace and good will to people who are “christian” and to hell with everyone else” (or, as one LJ user put it, “christmas is a time for giving and loving and snow and happiness and if you don’t stop trying to ruin it i am going to kick your ass”). it’s kind of amusing, in a sick and twisted sort of way. like the people who say it are just parroting what their parents have parroted to them. nobody pays attention when someone refuses to go back into combat because it’s combat, in spite of the fact that there have been at least two such cases in the past year… as long as it’s not xmas, almost everybody is either willing to go, or votes for the guy who lied to get us into the war in the first place, while people like me are left wondering where our next mortgage payment is coming from.

i could write for hours, but i’ve got to go to my “random” job search log review, a lovely conflagration in which i sit and listen to information i’ve heard at least three times before, being read from powerpoint slides (with trendy, eye-catching “clip art”) for an hour and a half, and then spend another half an hour waiting in line to have some flunky at the unenjoyment office check to make sure i’ve really been keeping track of the jobs i said i applied for (i know it’s “random”, because it says so on the computer printed form letter they mailed to me), otherwise i won’t be getting any more unemployment benefits… a lovely way to be looking at “xmas”… 8/

i hope everyone has a “merry xmas”.

Almost Half of Americans Favor Restrictions on Muslims’ Rights

Nearly Half in U.S. Say Restrict Muslims

from here, but since it may not stay up as long as i’d like…

Bhutan Bans Smoking in World First
Fri Dec 17, 6:04 AM ET

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) – The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan banned smoking in public and tobacco sales on Friday, the first country in the world to do so.

The ban by the reclusive, predominantly Buddhist state follows a decision by its national legislature in July to curb smoking to promote national well-being.

“A total ban on the sale and smoking of tobaccos has been imposed in the country from December 17,” said Lily Wangchuk, a spokeswoman at Bhutan’s embassy in New Delhi.

“It is for the well-being of the people, to protect the environment and preserve our culture,” she told Reuters.

People who cannot kick the habit can import tobacco for personal use, but at a 100 percent tax. They can only smoke indoors in the privacy of their homes.

Shops and businesses defying the ban face fines starting at $225, a steep amount by Bhutan’s standards, and repeat violators would risk losing commercial licenses.

Bhutanese officials said only an estimated one percent of the country’s 700,000 people smoked or used tobacco. The loss to tobacco businesses was not immediately known.

Bhutan, sandwiched between India and China, is governed by a monarchy which believes in tight controls.

The tiny country, home to breathtaking mountains and scenic valleys, restricts foreign tourists to avoid the erosion of its culture. Television was banned until 1999 for the same reason.

The ban was not expected to be opposed, one commentator said.

“People won’t go against the order because they follow what the monarchy says,” said Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel, Bhutan’s only newspaper.

But residents of Samdrup Jhongkhar, a Bhutanese town near the Indian border, were not so sure. They said smokers were upset by the ban and predicted that cigarettes would be smuggled in from India.

“I will now have to pay more to smoke. It will become a luxury,” said Prem Dorji, a Samdrup Jhongkhar resident. “Common people will be worst hit as they won’t be able to give up the habit easily and will be forced to pay exorbitant prices.”

i wonder what it would take to emigrate to bhutan. from what i understand, they’re not particularly fond of “foreigners”, but neither am i (speaking of “foreign” thought patterns: the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on intellectualism, etc.). it’s a buddhist monarchy, too, which means that they’re constrained from participation in more conventional wars… i believe christian evangelism is illegal there, as well.

Choose a band/or artist and answer only in song TITLES by that Band:

the band: frank zappa

Are you female or male: i’m a beautiful guy

Describe yourself: i’m the slime

How do some people feel about you: strictly genteel

How do you feel about yourself: dumb all over (a little ugly on the side)

Describe your ex girlfriend: the toads of the short forest

Describe your current girlfriend: teen-age prostitute

Describe where you want to be: the village of the sun

Describe what you want to be: evelyn, a modified dog

Describe how you live: can’t afford no shoes

Describe how you love: broken hearts are for assholes

Share a few words of wisdom: what ever happened to all the fun in the world?

much as i hate to do this, at the same time, i’m that close to obtaining a free ipod, or so they claim, so forgive me if you’re offended by things like this, but i’ve got to see how far they’ll really go…

there’s this site that claims to be giving away free iPods (i haven’t seen mine yet, but they’re reporting it on TV as a genuine offer, so it’s either a genuine offer or they’ve pulled the wool over more peoples’ eyes than just me)…

all you have to do is join and complete an online offer (which means submitting your email address to thousands of potential spammers, so be sure to use a throw-away email address), and then refer friends to do the same (like what i’m doing now). i know it’s verging on spam, but bear with me, okay?

to help me get my iPod, click this exact link to join, or copy and paste it into a browser: http://www.freeipods.com/?r=12545079

have fun and beware of spam. who knows… i may actually get a free ipod out of the deal.

i just came from the annual close-of-season meeting/potluck/party for the cirque de flambé… it turns out we’re not playing in spokane for first night, because they didn’t bid for a band, so that’s one thing i don’t have to worry about. consensus among the attendent rabble was that it would be a good idea for us to come up with a 5-year-plan for the cirque, because 1) bizarre and exotic places like brazil, oman, and the united arab emirates have expressed interest in having us go and perform for them – really, no shit… and 2) the cirque du soleil has filed an appeal on our copyright (which they contested to begin with, but was given to us anyway), which means that maque is going to have to find an attorney who knows what colour paper to file his briefs on, otherwise they’re going to be summarily thrown out. i bought two cirque de flambé belt buckles…

and then i find out that i’m getting a belt buckle, complete with belt, as a part of my costume for Big Bois With Poise, so now i’ve got two extras… i can’t decide whether i want to give them as presents, sell them, or hang on to them until after the copyright fiasco has been straightened out…

DVR, the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, has become interested in the fact that i’m "unemployed" (although i gather that’s somewhat of a politically incorrect term these days, in spite of the fact that it’s true) since my injury. they gave me a list of professions that are "in demand" and a list of professions that are "in decline", from which i’m supposed to choose, or something like that… the problem is that musicians are listed on the "in demand" side of the list, but musical directors and composers and musical instrument repairers are listed on the "in decline" side, which strikes me as pretty pointless… sure, you can have all the musicians you like, but they can’t play anything, there’s no one to lead them, and even if they could play something, their horns are broken and there’s nobody to fix them… also art directors and graphic designers are "in demand" but graphic artists are "in decline", which makes me think that the list is put together by the crazy person they keep under the dome in olympia… maybe they expect the actual graphic art to just appear or something… and i’m just sniffing around the edges at this point. DVR has just taken my application last week, and they’ve got a 9 month waiting list for people who have "category 1" disabilities, which are the most severe… and in spite of the fact that i can prove that my brain actually exploded, i don’t think they’re going to classify my disability as "category 1".

i’ve already got updates on the absurd thing that happened to me web page, but nothing substantial. i just found out the likely reason for the screwup… it doesn’t make it any less absurd, though… in fact, it makes it even moreso.

georgeanne clark died november 25, and today was her wake… she would have approved, except that she would not have had the party be intoxicant free, which it was, for the benefit of those “family members” who choose to be abstinent at this point in time… if she had been there personally, she would have been sucking up the intoxicants of various varieties, both legal and illegal, with the best of them. i went, and saw for very likely the last time, the vastly extended (distended?) dysfunctional quasi-family of which georgia was mother/grandmother/drug dealer, all in one place. i’m pretty sure that’s a good thing, too, because much as everyone was putting on a good face for georgia, i could tell almost immediately upon walking in to the house that there are hatreds that run extremely deep among some of those people. i saw jim for the first time since my injury. he was one of the people i was talking about whose hatreds run deep… i sat in on the edge of a conversation with tall paul, gunnar and jim where they were talking about the direction georgia’s house had gone since gunnar and tall paul moved out. my philosophy generally is to avoid speaking evil of the dead. they set up music gear, and gunnar and matt and joe and leonard and a girl that played mandolin whose name i don’t remember, but probably should, played… i would have played except they didn’t have a keyboard, and i couldn’t remember the chords even if they had had one. tall paul is looking a lot better than he was the last time i saw him, but then, the last time i saw him, he was living in his truck which was parked next to georgia’s house. matt has cut his hair, and moved to california. he’s a good deal balder than he was the last time i saw him, as well… snicker…

the fremont philharmonic played for the 132nd Annual Lighting of Lenin in fremont last night, and next saturday and sunday they’re having a fund raiser for the 2005 moisture festival at hale’s ales in fremont, where the fremont phil is performing at least three times in various different forms. also, there’s going to be an art sharing in bellingham on friday, which in which i’m planning on performing, and i have to do some final tweaks on kenyth’s flute while i’m there. supposedly we’re playing for winter feast, which, i believe, is the 21st, and again, supposedly, we’re playing first night in spokane on 1 january, but i haven’t heard anything definite about either one, and i’m not too enthusiastic about either performance. the winter feast is another one of those “good old boy” events where, if you’re not one of the “good old boys” you’re not invited, except in my case i’m invited because i play in the band that’s providing entertainment… moe and i went to winter feast 2 years ago, when the phil played, and it was a typical pagan community gathering, which is to say, not worth moe and i not even being invited if it weren’t for the phil. i was even sworn to secrecy about the location of winter feast until after it was over, for fear that “unauthorised” people would show up… it was the segway, by the way, which is probably where it’s going to be again this year… i’m not too enthusiastic about first night in spokane because it’s an overnight gig, but they’re only providing us with 5 motel rooms, and i probably will have to attend without moe, which is a miserable way to spend the new year… but i haven’t heard anything definite about either one, so i might as well say i don’t know anything.

also, this absurd thing happened to me the other day… so absurd that i had to post a separate web page about it… it’s that absurd… really!

thanks to , the Patron of Inflatable Reindeer of The Church of Tina Chopp, and because this is, among other things, the season of Bizarre Holidays…

" tried to do the Silly Fake Mustache Meme last month, but I’m not sure how well it got off the ground. Maybe I’ll have better luck with it, because everyone seems to think I’m cool for some reason. Hey, if we’re lucky it could turn into the next Veginostrum — or at least confuse the hell out of folks browsing the Recent LiveJournal Images page."

(that’s by the way, i have no illusions about whether people think i’m cool or not.)

1. Download kingnose.pdf.
2. Take a picture of yourself impersonating the King of All Cosmos.
3. Post the picture in your journal.

halfpenny opera ended last week, and i’m going to really miss working with those people. it was a good show, they ended up paying me, which was more than i expected, and i made a bunch of contacts from it, including a for-sure job doing lights for drunk puppet night in january, and another for-sure job for a weekend in portland in february. seanjohn, halfpenny opera’s "mack the knife", really is giving up his evil ways and pursuing a job in real estate, although he’s still going to do the first friday cabaret, the next one of which is in feburary.

on the other hand, it’s almost december and i still don’t have a regular job… which is a good thing and a bad thing, as so many things in life are: there’s not much of a chance of my finding regular work, either as a tester or as a graphic artist, until at least february, because of the "holidays"… and the presence of those "holy-days" requires that i have had a job recently, so that i can afford the inevitable material glut that is their result, so my prospects for a "merry x-mas" are slim to none… which doesn’t matter much anyway because i don’t celebrate "x-mas", although a number of people who i hang around with, and who expect me to "be there for the holidays" (i.e. my inlaws) do…

on the other hand, i believe that the philharmonic is doing something for winterfeast, in december, plus i’ve more or less committed to going to bellingham for the art sharing, i believe that cirque de flambe is doing first night in spokane, and drunk puppet night is every weekend in january, so the fact that i don’t have a "real" job, once again, plays to my advantage… it’s too bad all these things don’t pay…

i lost two auctions on ebay. one for $250 worth of belt pouches, and the other for a proximity coat. neither of them are things that i particularly need, but they’re both things i could have put to good use.

i think magick, our australian sheperd, is trying to herd me. whenever monique is home, magick hangs around with her, regardless of where i am… and when i get up to go into the other room, or if i’ve been sitting in the other room for a while and make some noise, even a keyboard noise or something small like that, magick barks, and she barks loudly and sharply enough that my right arm jerks. it’s really irritating, especially since i can’t control the jerking, and it has affected my computer a couple of times as a result – i’m mousing with my right hand, magick barks, i jerk and the mouse drags the window to a place where i can’t access the menus. this is usually not a problem, because most of the applications i use have keyboard commands that i know, and i can just use the keyboard commands, but occasionally they have keyboard commands that i don’t know, and that’s where it gets to be a problem. there’s a possibility that we’ve found a solution, which we discovered over the past few nights (while monique was home sick), but if it is the solution, it’s going to mean training magick to do something other than barking, which will take a while.

check out Animusic… i got their DVD (which is fantastic, by the way) last year, and this year they sent me a web-coupon – EMN4 – which is good for $4 off anything at the animusic online store before 31 december. i’m not sure whether i’m going to use it or not (their new DVD isn’t available until sometime next year), and they said that it was okay to share the code number, as long as it was only used once per customer.

Memes don’t exist — tell your friends.

1. When did you first “friend” me?
2. Why did you first “friend” me?
3. What posts of mine do you like to read the best?
4. What would you like me to write about that I don’t?
5. Do you think we would be friends in real life?
6. How often do you read my journal?
7. What do we have in common?
8. Will you post this in your journal so I can answer?

Was the Kaaba Originally a Hindu Temple?

now i know that this is likely to cause some controversy among those muslims who read this journal, but remember… i’m hindu, and hinduism doesn’t have a concept that is equal to blasphemy, so calm down and read the article – then blast away at it, if you can… but just remember, hinduism is the oldest religion continually practiced on the planet, so it’s kinda difficult to find something religious that hasn’t been affected by hinduism in some way or another…

Cirque de Flambé presents Chicken Flambé, which was not accepted when they applied to be chefs on the Food Network…

too bad, really…

okay, this is just cool in spite of the fact that it points out just how much of a geek i really am… particularly pngreader, which is a tool for encoding other works of art (graphic, movie, text, and music files) as graphic files. so much for intellectual property… yes, a song on a CD is intellectual property, and an unauthorised mp3 of that song is, technically, a "violation" of the intellectual property holder’s rights concerning that property, but what about graphic that encodes that mp3?

if you run this graphic through the right decoder you get an mp3 file that contains the song Burn Hollywood Burn, by Public Enemy. how can you control it? what’s to say that it’s not just another graphic, and doesn’t encode anything? and if you don’t have the proper tool to decode it, how can anyone else prove that it is, in fact, a mp3 file and not just another graphic?

oh, there are all sorts of problems that this type of software will now create. i can hardly wait! }8-)

and that’s not to mention all of the other goodies to be found at runme.org. definitely some place where i am going to have to do some intensive browsing.

also, if it hasn’t been said enough already, JOHN ASHCROFT RESIGNED!!! now if he had only resigned over some tawdry scandal, that would be really sweet, but i’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

i finally got the plushies i ordered (i ordered them around the 15th of october, and just got them a couple of days ago): a baby nyarlathotep, a cthulhu plushie and a cthulhu hand puppet. they’re really cute. i made the baby nyarlathotep into an icon, if you hadn’t noticed.

apparently the fact that i suffered a brain injury makes me eligible for job placement and training opportunities for which i wasn’t eligible without the brain injury, so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, but i don’t think so. i’m waiting for a call back from the representative for CARES of Washington, but i’m not holding my breath… i’ve been waiting for a reply to an email i sent to the worksource lady who ran the classes i was forced to take about two weeks ago, and so far i haven’t even gotten a received notice, much less an actual reply. they put phone numbers and email addresses on their cards, but i get the impression that they’re the same as they ever were when it comes to actually responding to them.

i heard from jill a few days ago. apparently, with all of the cancer-related problems she’s been having (which she’s surviving handilly, in spite of how life-threatening they appear to be), since i saw her at the oregon country fair, her husband of 25 years met someone else and she has moved out. you’ve got to wonder how a person could be so heartless, but if anyone is prepared to face this challenge, it’s jill.

divali is friday. happy divali, everyone.

thanks to for linking to it, and d.c. simpson (holder of the copyright) for this enlightening, if a little late, commentary.

okay, if anyone is searching for something to get me for christmas (even though i don’t celebrate it, i still give presents, so don’t be shy), this is what i had in mind:

(the one i want is the black wool one, 58.5 cm)

now it’s $150, so i don’t expect it, but it’s out there, if anyone wants to step up… i’d be eternally grateful…

alternately, if you don’t want to spend $150, you could get me this one

which is only $80, and i’d be just as happy.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

hmph…

there’s one thing about the technogocical community in brazil that really impresses me: they essentially have no micro$oft, and they like it that way. here’s what i’m talking about.

i particularly like this statement:

“In 1556, not long after the Portuguese first set foot in Brazil, the Bishop Pero Fernandes Sardinha was shipwrecked on its shores and set about introducing the gospel of Christ to the native “heathens.” The locals, impressed with the glorious civilization the bishop represented and eager to absorb it in its totality, promptly ate him. Thus was born Brazilian culture.”

now if we could only convince people that those who threaten our way of life (or who we want to know more about) are good for food, we could solve all sorts of problems in the united states…

flagrantly stolen from . enjoy…

Professor Garbanzo

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable pony, or a comical garbanzo bean, or a llama in a car. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

there are only two industries which refer to their customers as "users" – the computer industry, and the drug industry… but bad interface design is rampant in more than just visualisation of information. the recent election springs to mind as an example.

also, as if you needed any more reasons to hate microsoft, what i’ve suspected all along about powerpoint is actually true: "It induce[s] stupidity, turn[s] everyone into bores, waste[s] time, and degrade[s] the quality and credibility of communication." why else would THE U.S. GOVERNMENT use it!?

on a different note, there’s evidence that the world isn’t bound for hell just yet (thanks to )… God willing it will have some effect, since nothing else we do seems to affect anything whatsoever.

it’s too late for me, but if i were single, i’d go for this.

by the way, in case you’re interested, i reincarnated . it’s not very active, but it never was. we’ll see what happens.

i’m torn between apathy, because i know that regardless of who is elected, things probably won’t change that much (and it will continue to remain more or less the same until someone gets tired enough of seeing things go the same way again and actually does something about it), and saying "OH… MY… GOD!" and immediately moving to one of the 9 countries listed in the Index of Economic Freedoms as being more free than the US…

even if (God willing) shrub-boy does something smart for a change, like dying, we’re still going to have to deal with the republican backlash for a long time to come. this is definitely looking like a place i would rather not live.

i’ll be glad when all of this political furor has died down, but i’m pretty sure it won’t be gone by tomorrow, which is what i’d really like. i mean, why are all those political signs all over the place? littering is illegal, but putting up political signage with no intention of ever taking it down is not, and personally i’d rather see heaps of rotting garbage in the street than the over-abundance of political signs that have cropped up within the past few weeks. it’s not as though they’re being there is going to automatically make me change the way i vote… i’m actually sort of offended because somebody put a “george bush” sign in our front yard (fortunately it was at night and i found it when i came home from the halfpenny opera at 1:00 in the morning, and removed it before anyone had the chance to see it), as though having the sign in our yard was going to change the way we think about this whole thing – if anything, it would have the opposite effect. i’m pretty sure that the people who put them up, especially the ones on the freeway on and off ramps, and by the side of the road in areas which are not residential, are not going to be the ones who take them down… and i’d be willing to bet that there will still be john kerry and george bush signs still up 6 months from now.

i’m still unemployed. oh joy. i’m going to “worksource” (which is the modern, “politically correct” term for the unemployment office) today to talk with someone about finding a job, but i’m not holding my breath. i’m thinking that i might go back to school, but i’m not sure whether i can or not, because i’m not sure whether i’m eligible for any kind of financial aid. i’m still determining whether i want to be employed or not, anyway. i’m not sure that i want to support the concept of wage slavery in any way, and being employed is one of the biggest ways i can see for doing that.

trolloween, and the first week of halfpenny opera went down without a hitch. moe didn’t go to trolloween because she had to work in the morning (see what i mean?), and she’s going to go to halfpenny opera on thursday of this week… if there were just some way that i could make my participation in these events pay money, then i wouldn’t have to worry so much about not having a “regular” job… well, i’ve got a worksource appointment this morning, so i’m probably going to talk with the person about that then.

recently i was made aware of this, and this, which make me think that i should update my “I AM A TERRORIST” page, but i’ve been so uninspired to even read the news that i’m not sure whether i’m actually going to do it or not. i keep thinking that if i ignore the news enough, eventually it will go away… and besides, i’ve got more interesting things to do anyway.

check this out…

SCARY!

they actually expect us to believe their crap????

that’s why i’m voting for badnarik… or maybe kerry, but probably not.

Monkeywrench Puppet Lab is proud to present Halfpenny Opera – In these troubled times, our only heroes are troubled men. What can an honest man do in a world where all the cops are criminals, all the saints are whores and all the politicians are on the take? A sad and sordid story of love in a time of greed and cynicism. A satire of the classic tale of political corruption, with original music, puppets and actors. – October 28 – November 20, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm at the Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater, 2322 2nd ave. Tickets can be had at Brown Paper Tickets for $12 or $10 if you’re a student or a senior. November 4 and 11 are “pay-what-you-can” nights for those of you for whom $12 is too much.

unless you’re using linux or mac, but if you’re smart enough to use linux or mac, you’re probably smart enough NOT to use AOL…

—–

Security for Internet Users Deemed Weak

By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer

WASHINGTON – Internet users at home are not nearly as safe online as they believe, according to a nationwide inspection by researchers. They found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers.

One beleaguered home user in the government-backed study had more than 1,000 spyware programs running on his sluggish computer when researchers examined it.

Bill Mines, a personal trainer in South Riding, Va., did not fare much better. His family’s 3-year-old Dell computer was found infected with viruses and more than 600 pieces of spyware surreptitiously monitoring his online activities.

“I was blown away,” Mines said. “I had a lot of viruses and other things I didn’t know about. I had no idea things like this could happen.”

The Internet always has had its share of risky neighborhoods and dark alleys. But with increasingly sophisticated threats from hackers, viruses, spam e-mails and spyware, trouble is finding computer users no matter how cautiously they roam online.

The technology industry is feeling the pain, too.

Spurred by the high costs of support calls from irritated customers — and fearful that frustrated consumers will stop buying new products — Internet providers, software companies and computer-makers are making efforts to increase awareness of threats and provide customers with new tools to protect themselves.

Still, many computer users appear remarkably unprepared for the dangers they face.

The study being released Monday by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance found that 77 percent of 326 adults in 12 states assured researchers in a telephone poll they were safe from online threats. Nearly as many people felt confident they were already protected specifically from viruses and hackers.

When experts visited those same homes to examine computers, they found two-thirds of adults using antivirus software that was not updated in at least seven days.

Two-thirds of the computer users also were not using any type of protective firewall program, and spyware was found on the computers of 80 percent of those in the study.

The survey participants all were AOL subscribers selected in 22 cities and towns by an independent market analysis organization.

The alliance, a nonprofit group, is backed by the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Trade Commission, plus leading technology companies, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft, eBay and Dell.

The group’s chief, Ken Watson, said consumers suffer from complacency and a lack of expert advice on keeping their computers secure. “Just like you don’t expect to get hit by a car, you don’t believe a computer attack can happen to you,” Watson said.

“There really is quite a perception gap,” agreed Daniel W. Caprio, the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant secretary for technology policy. “Clearly there is confusion. We need to do a better job making information and practical tips for home users and small businesses available.”

Wendy Avino, an interior decorator in Lansdowne, Va., said researchers found 14 spyware programs on her borrowed laptop and noticed that her $50 antivirus software was not properly configured to scan her computer at least monthly for possible infections.

“We don’t go in funny chat rooms, I don’t open funny mail,” Avino said. “If it says ‘hot girls,’ I delete it. We do everything in the right way, so how does stuff get in there?”

She complained she was misled believing her commercial antivirus and firewall programs would protect her from all varieties of online threats; most do not detect common types of spyware.

“It is very complicated for the average home user,” said Ari Schwartz, an expert on Internet threats for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington civil liberties group.

“There’s a lack of accountability all around, from consumers who don’t believe they should have to do this to companies who blame the consumer. It’s finger-pointing back and forth,” Schwartz said.

Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates said the company spent nearly $1 billion on its recent upgrade to improve security for customers using the latest version of its Windows software (and that was before the study which found spyware and malware on the computers of those people who participated in the study… IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!).

AOL purchased full-page advertisements in major newspapers this month pledging better security for its subscribers. Dell has begun a campaign to educate customers how to detect and remove spyware themselves.

The government is increasingly involved, too.

The FTC this month filed its first federal court case over spyware. The House overwhelmingly approved two bills to increase criminal penalties and fines over spyware. The Homeland Security Department offers free e-mail tips for home Internet users to keep themselves secure.

Thung or Feeblens V is another piece i’ve worked on recently. it’s another random, "hands off" piece that could be longer, but isn’t because of size limitations. my impression is that it’s not very accessible either, but i never know how other people will take it…

a little thing called roscoe which is the latest piece of music i’ve been working on… not very accessible, is it?

alert: Lore Brand Comics (courtesy of harpal)… especially this one:

got a gig doing lights for the monkywrench puppet laboratories “Halfpenny Opera” which i’ve been hearing about and seeing bits and pieces from (at the late night cabaret, with seanjohn as Mack the Knife) for the past year. the performances are coming up pretty soon, and they’re going to be at a “professional” venue, the rendezvous jewel box on second avenue. i’ve never done lights for a “professional” show before, but the concept isn’t too difficult to understand, and i’ve run a light board before, so it won’t be anything new. it even pays a little bit, although my guess is that i’m going to be paid with comp tickets and alcohol a lot more than with money.

trolloween is coming up soon and the theme this year is "the trials of trollmetheus", and it’s a trouser affair. the fremont trollharmonic is going to perform, as well as a bunch of trolls (of course), the fire-breathing troll gods, vamolá, and the usual suspects. i’ve recently made a new acquaintance who is turning out to be a tremendous source of inspiration to me. he’s put me one step closer to being able to create the ganesha mask that i’ve been fantasizing about for 10 years or so (i’m probably going to take his mask-making workshop this spring), and is even more interesting because of his apparent survivial in spite of not having a “regular” job outside of making masks and puppets for the fremont arts council.

i recently got a catalogue from Art & Culture, which is a predominantly vaisnava resource outlet. i’ve been considering adding some of what they’ve got to the selection of stuff at hybrid elephant, but i haven’t decided what yet, although i’m not sure that i’ll offer things like the marble radhakrsna set (temple-style, for dressing and decorating) for $1800, until i’ve got some more reliable business… they’ve got everything from tablas, mridangams, sitars and tamburas to yantras, incense, t-shirts, murtis, books, and everything else imaginable. i’m slowly getting the last of the old inventory on the web site, and i’ve still got a bunch of new stuff for which i’ve still got to write pages.

the vegetable sacrifice was tremendously disappointing, and i’m still upset about it. not only that, but i’ve applied for 11 jobs so far this week and have gotten no responses, and a recruiter called me with a testing position that i’d be perfect for, except for the fact that it requires a level of coding that i’m not even close to… it’s becoming quite difficult to get beyond being depressed about things. if it weren’t for the fact of the show, and the minimal positive bump i’ve gotten from the mask-making connection, and the fact that it’s so boring to be depressed for any length of time, i’d be headed in that direction very strongly at this point… at the same time, i suppose that the fact that i’ve been able to identify the fact that i’m depressed, and i’ve been able to identify specific steps i can take to alleviate that depression is a step in the right direction.

there’s a meme that i’ve seen recently, but i’ve waited a while to post it myself. of course, the first thing i did was to delete the first two columns of interests completely and then re-do the thing, because i so do not need to be identified by interests that are universal or popular. in fact i considered deleting all of my "common" interests as well, but not for now…

meme to be added with a (non-windoesn’t) system that is unicode compliant… which would be linux this time.

---

Enter username:

InterestRank was bought to you by _imran_ and MemeLand.org

---

this is why i’m depressed: i plan for months, pretty much ever since i get out of the hospital… i send out notifications a month in advance and a week in advance, i say that it’s going to happen rain or shine, and still i was the only person at the vegetable sacrifice! and then i got back in time to be invited to go and see team america with moe and scott and nancy, and while it had some extremely funny parts, it also had a vomit scene that puts the one in the meaning of life to shame (in spite of the fact that the vomit was coming out of a puppet), and overall, it wasn’t funny enough to offset the fact that i put a lot of energy into something that totally bombed… and then moe left to go do treatments at the clinic and then she’s going out for sushi with a woman that she’s trading dog lessons for sushi with, so i’m alone and depressed.

i don’t say this often, but fuck!

today is the ritual vegetable sacrifice… 1st real sacrifice since my injury… there was a vegetable sacrifice last year, but only one person other than me showed up. it’s 10:30 am, and the ceremony starts at 1:00 pm, i have to be there at 12:00. at this point, i’ve had two people say they might show up, but it’s been raining all morning – it’s not raining now, though. i said that we would have a sacrifice whether it was raining or not… we’ll just have to see.

the past few days have been spent more or less successfully fighting off depression…

all told i applied for 17 jobs this week, but i don’t have any prospects yet, and i’ve got to do it all over again next week. i talked with the woman at sacred traditions and she said that she would probably be placing an order for incense, unlike what she said last time i talked with her a couple of years ago, shortly after they first opened, when she said that the only incense they were going to carry was their own brand. i also talked with the manager of stargazer’s, but there’s no telling what she really thought… she asked me about palo santo, which is not really an incense, but i can get it, if she wants to buy a whole bunch of it.

it’s difficult, though… a lot of people are out of work around here, plus i’ve got a brain injury, which doesn’t make a lot of difference to me (apart from the fact that i still can’t type as fast as i used to, and sometimes i either don’t or can’t say things in an understandable way, and once i’ve said whatever it is, i’m just as confused about it as the people who are listening to me, and i don’t know why), but who knows how much difference it will make to the person who has to choose between my resume and the one of someone who is not brain-injured. and that’s not to mention the fact that i’m already predisposed towards depression, even before my injury. so far i have been, as i said, more or less successful, but i’m not sure how much longer i can be so, especially if things continue to go the way things have been going recently.

i keep getting random catalogues in the mail. it’s probably because of hybrid elephant, but it’s still strange. recently i’ve gotten two different catalogues from suppliers of packaging materials, boxes and lables, and today i got a catalogue addressed to “gifts and accessories buyer” for “enchanted world of boxes” which is really strange… it’s “polish boxes”, not boxes for packing things in… kind of decorative, keep gifts in, or perhaps give them as gifts type of boxes.

magick was in a big hurry to rush out into the back yard last night, and caught one of her toes in the groove for the sliding glass door and ripped out her toenail. with both her knees having been surgerized recently, that only leaves her with one leg that is not injured in some way. moe has been really upset about it, primarily because magick’s been going stir crazy with being kept in her kennel all the time for her knees, and now that she’s allowed to start working again, this toenail thing comes up.

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???????????????????????????? ????? ?????? ??? ????? ? 2 ?

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????????????? ????????? ????? ??????? ??? ????? ? 3 ?

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???????????????????????? ????? ?????? ??? ????? ? 4 ?

???????????? ??????? ??????????? ??????? ?
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Shiva Panchakshara Stotra Mantra

Stotra 1:
Nagendra Haaraaya Thrilochanaaya
Bhasmaanga Raagaaya Maheshvaraay
Nityaaya Suddhaaya Digambaraaya
Tasmai Nakaaraaya Namah Shivaaya

I offer my humble salutations to Lord Mahesvara – who has a garland of serpents around the neck; who has three eyes; whose body is covered with ash (vibhuti); who is eternal; who is pure; who has the entire sky as His dress and who is embodies as the first letter Na.

Stotra 2:
Mandaakini Salila Chandana Chaarthitaaya
Nandeesvara Pramatha Naatha Mahesvaraaya
Mandaara Pushpa Vahu Pushpa Supoojitaaya
Tasmai Makaaraaya Namah Shivaaya

I bow to Lord Mahesvara, who is embodied as Makaara (letter Ma), whose body is anointed with holy waters from the river Ganges and sandal paste, who is the sovereign king of the Pramatha Ganas and who is adorned with innumerable divine flowers such as Mandaara.

Stotra 3:
Shivaaya Gauri Vadana Aravinda
Sooryaaya Dakshaadhvara Naashakaaya
Sree Neelakantaaya Vrisha Dhvajaaya
Tasmai Shikaaraaya Namah Shivaaya

I offer my salutations to Lord Shiva, who is the resplendent sun for mother Gauri`s lotus face, who is the destroyer of Daksha`s sacrificial ritual, who is the blue necked Lord (due to the Haalahala poison which He agreed to consume), whose banner bears the emblem of a bull and who is embodied as the letter Shi.

Stotra 4:
Vasishta Kumbhodbhava Gautamaaya
Muneendra Devaarchita Sekharaaya
Chandraarka Vaishvaanara Lochanaaya
Tasmai Vakaaraaya Namah Shivaaya

I prostrate before the God of Gods, who is worshipped and prayed to by great sages such as Vashishta, Agastya and Gautama, whose eyes are sun, moon and the fire and who is embodied as Vakaara (letter Va).

Stotra 5:
Yajna Swaroopaaya Jataadharaaya
Pinaaka Hasthaaya Sanaatanaaya
Divyaaya Devaaya Digambaraaya
Tasmai Yakaraaya Namah Shivaaya

Prostrartions to the sacred Lord who is the Yaksa incarnate, whose hairs are long and matted, who holds Pinaaka (trident) in His hand, who has the entire sky as His attire and who is embodied as the letter Ya.

Stotra 6:
Panchaaksharam Idam Punyam
Yah Pateh Shiva Sannidhau
Shivaloka Mavaapnothee
Shivena Saha Modate

Whoever repeats this prayer composed with the five holy letters before Lord Shiva, attains that supreme abode of His and enjoys the eternal Bliss.

http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/plush/01.html

that led me to this…

http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html

and so i’m getting one. i’m also getting a plush nyarlethotep…

and, finally, http://www.necfiles.org/ is the place where you can discover the background for all of this.

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html – tree octopus? i can’t tell whether it’s serious or just someone with a lot of time on their hands… The TRUTH About “Belgium” tends to make me think that it’s someone with a lot of time on their hands… a lot of free time… oy…

http://www.freedomware.us/stars/microshaft/index.php – he’s a wacko, but he’s an interesting wacko… kind of like the guy at http://www.digicrime.com/ – but only if you’re using windoesn’t and internet exploder.

p.s. i need the following frank zappa CDs to complete my collection: Uncle Meat, Waka Jawaka, Hot Rats, Burnt Weenie Sandwich, Chunga’s Revenge, Shut Up N’ Play Yer Guitar, Strictly Genteel and The Grand Wazoo. they’re officially going on my wish list, if anybody’s interested.

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
????? ????? by Anuradha Paudwal

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does:
how about five books:
De Arte Magica by Aliester Crowley
The Philokalia
?????????????
The Boo Hoo Bible
The Books of Tina Chopp
??????????? by Adi Shankaracharya

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no-one else on your friends list does:
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T

brought to you by Rene Laanen, author of the Trombone Page of the World.

blah blah blah…

debates: didn’t watch them. i’m probably going to vote for badnarik. I872: no, I884: no, I892: yes, R55: reject, I297: yes. unenjoyment has mandated that i go to “job hunter orientation” and “job search preparation” classes, which i need about as much as i need another hole in my head, but if i don’t go, they deny my meagre unemployment check, which is now half of what it was, and will probably last another 6 months. meanwhile i’ve applied for 13 jobs so far this week, but no possibilities at this point. we’re doing allad’din at the tacoma mall in december, because they want us to perform, but babes in the wood is not ready yet. music, but nothing amazing yet.

i went to bellingham yesterday and came back today. i saw darol and collette, and gave them my old imac. they’re both so computer illiterate that they may actually be able to use it for something. i certainly can’t anymore, and it’s just as well that i gave it to collette and darol, because i was thinking about how else i might get rid of it. i stayed at serendipity last night, with ken and kamalla, and their housemates lucy and phyllis. there was an art sharing last night, and ken, kennyth and i played together in celebration of 25 years of playing together… and now that i come to think about it, that was our second public performance, too… the first one was at the end of the show and everybody left during it, except for ken yanik, who was asleep. i also saw david mason, who has parkinsons disease now, but i understand that he still has moments where he is as bright as he’s ever been. leslie conton was there, also. ken has a new friend, by way of phylis, who is a very young guy named aaron (yes, another one) who may be the third member of and more. i’m currently playing a piece that ken, aaron and i did with reason, that’s pretty amazing. i started out with the original sound, then ken took over and made his part of it, then aaron tried his hand… we went back and forth all morning with it, and it turns out that there’s a whole genre of music called "glitch" which it fits into very nicely. if you’ve got reason, here is a link where the rps is located, but if you don’t, then you might as well not bother.

kamalla has this fantasy of turning the property that the blue house, kennyth’s house, serendipity, the yellow house that i lived in, the wind-up neighbor’s house (which was owned by kathy veterane, and is now owned by karl meyer), and the field on the other side of the yellow house, into a combination intentional community and teaching center. i have heard a number of wild-ass schemes for doing that kind of thing in varions different parts of bellingham throughout the years, but if anyone’s going to do it, i think that kamalla has a better chance of it than anyone else i know about. she’s got enough interest already that some people from the findhorn community are giving talks there, one happened today, but i couldn’t hang around for it. if such a thing does happen, eventually, i’m going to have to be a part of it in some way or another.

moe approached me with another “eventually” idea, as well. apparently micah has this fantasy of him opening up a mammal center somewhere in california – at this point it looks like santa barbara, but this is all just a fantasy at this point – and if he does, he plans on offering moe a job, which would mean moving to santa barbara. as much as i hate the idea of living in california, i’ve actually been to santa barbara a couple of times, and it’s enough different from both LA and SF that i could probably handle it.

it was good to see all the people from bellingham again, and i’m definitely going to have to plan on going up there next month for the art sharing, if nothing else… now all i have to do is find a job. soon.

gunnar has finally got a web site where he can keep his amazing fractal drawings. i just shipped out a wholesale purchase of om gayatri incense for someone in california… now all i need to do is get more of those kinds of people to buy my incense and stuff and i wouldn’t have to worry. another major site update is coming soon. i’ve got some new jewelry, a new ganesha statue, and a bunch of “new” incense (which is to say, the last of the old inventory) that i have to add to the site. i’m still going to carry incense from sugandha prabhu, i’m just not going to rely on him as my main supplier any more, because he’s not well, and even when he is, he’s more than a little flaky.

this is a test.

???????? ????????? ????????????????????? ? ???????? ?????????? ????????????????? ??

this is the end of the test.

पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते । पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥

this is what it should look like.

i saw ezra and his new (as of yesterday afternoon) apartment yesterday. he said that he wanted to be closer to school, and i don’t blame him. he’s got a schedule that only a 20-something college student could handle, from 9 in the morning until 8 to 10 at night, every day with no days off… i wonder how long he’s going to be able to keep it up. he also said that he moved partially because cornish is giving him several tons of money for rent, tuition, books and supplies, and so forth, which is probably a good thing since i can’t afford to give him money myself and katharyn’s in a mental institution. he seems to be doing a much more successful job of getting money for going to college than i ever did.

i’m going to the vedanta socity in about half an hour. swamiji’s lecture today will be “After death experiences existance” (brain injury) which should be interesting since it is subtitled “Fact or fiction”, and i’m pretty sure that swamiji will come down on the side of “fact”, but i’d like to see how he’s going to prove it.

more memes to ponder. i could just post a link to quizilla dot com (or whatever) and let whatever comes of it happen, but i’d like to post only those memes which i have personally come in contact with, even if i do only post links to them and not my actual results.

i don’t use windows… for much! so when i ran virus scan, found a bunch of spyware applications (on my recently installed system mind you) and deleted them, i wasn’t too worried when the result was an error message telling me that c:\winnt\system32\bridge.dll wasn’t installed… but i just got rid of the error message! apparently there’s a registry key that doesn’t get changed back when you eliminate spyware using “unusual” (that is to say “manual”) methods. in case you’re wondering, open the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run\ and the key that loads bridge.dll should be apparent (it contains the words “rundll”, “bridge.dll” and “load”. delete that key and you won’t get an error message any more!

<edit>

highlights of swamijis lecture (which i need to remember): there are five types of proof; direct perception, inference, comparison, reliable testimony and “non-perception” (the latter of which is not accepted by all schools of philosophy). existence after death can be proved by the fourth variety – reliable testimony – because the scriptures say so, and because people who have “super-sensual knowledge” say so. you can question this if you want to, but the only other way to prove it is with direct perception, which we will all have, eventually, but unfortunately for those of us who are left, the one who has this direct perception will be unable to share it with anyone else.

he included a descripiton of what a “non-perceptive” proof might be as well: a husband says “i left my wallet on the dresser, would you go and get it for me?” to his wife, so the wife goes and finds that it’s not there… that is a “non-perceptive” proof: the wife, by her “non-perception” of the wallet, proves that her husband didn’t leave it on the dresser…

there are actually two bodies which make up an individual (which is stuff i knew before): the “gross” body, which you can perceive, and the “fine” body, which is made up of as many as 17 or as few as 11 (depending on how you count them) limbs; the five sense organs, the five motor organs, the five energies (prana, upana, etc., which can be combined, as prana manifests differently depending on whether it is ingesting, digesting, excreting, etc.), buddhi and manas or “cognative ability” (which can be combined as “mind”). the mind is the “mirror” which reflects divinity resulting in the soul. thus where the mind is, the soul is as well.

a review of the august cirque de flambé shows by Seattle Sun magazine, for those of you who didn’t see it.

mount saint helens is erupting at this very moment! this is the 2nd time it’s erupted in my lifetime!

the wurst festival went as planned and was pretty much the same as it was last year, except for the fact that i wasn’t recovering so immenently from a brain injury this year. i actually got a chance to look around a little, although there wasn’t much. basically it’s a church/school/neighborhood party that’s gone a little overboard: they had a bunch of inflatable “rides”, a dunk-tank, a few food booths, a few more sales booths and that’s it… although they did have a really nice mixing board, which i assume they had last year as well, i just didn’t notice.

the tacoma gig was excellent if you were the audience, but it was so-so from a performer’s point of view. we started performing at 5:00 and finished at 10:00, after a “parade” (in which the rich, starched-collar patrons of the two museums involved wandered from one museum to the other while the band – especially the tuba player who has an upright tuba, no strap, and a brain-injured right hand that doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to – struggled to keep up), and a two hour “break” in which we had to frantically get set up and ready for the show while the rich patrons had dinner. my book ended up in the back of alan’s truck during the parade, and then alan disappeared, so i didn’t get my book back until just before we started, but it all worked out. the show was only a half an hour, but we included all of the best parts from august’s show, and macque added a new twist to pyrochaotica without telling anybody: two pyro-fountains at the end, which were loud enough that they drowned out the band for a couple minutes. the effect was sensational though – a fountain of crackling sparks going about 75 feet in the air, along with the standard compliment of other pyro stuff, with the backdrop of puget sound and the glass museum. there will probably be pictures eventually. it’s kind of odd, though, because one of the organisations that was putting the whole thing on was the philanthropy northwest society, but apparently they didn’t think to provide the “hired help” with important things like food, and passes to get in to the dressing room. we had a dressing room, but we had about 30 performers and only four passes, so there was as much searching for someone with a pass to get in as there was just about anything else, and i went home hungry. it’s presumably a good thing though, because now we can put the show on our “resume” and people will know that we can interact with highbrow society without getting under their skin, which will mean more performances in the future.

also announcing the fremont philharmonic performing at the Late Night Cabaret, friday, 1st october, at 10:00 pm down on airport way just north of boeing field… i think the address is 2110 airport way, but i’m not sure.

this is the continuation of performances that took a break in june. now they’re back again, and if they’re going to be anything like what they were like in june, they should be loads of morbid, grisly fun with a side of pie and shack jack frost to boot. don’t miss it!

announcing the Fremont Philharmonic performance at the Wallingford Wurst Festival, saturday, 25th september, at noon, and the Cirque de Flambe performance at the Tacoma Museum of Art and the Tacoma Glass Museum (which are, apparently, fairly close to one another), sunday, 26th september, between 5:00 and 9:00 pm. be there or be trapezoidal.

hoo boy, the shit really has hit the fan with katharyn this time… and this time i didn’t have anything to do with it, and haven’t for several years now, so there’s no way she can possibly blame it on me, in spite of the fact that i have no doubt she’d want to if she had the opportunity.

i talked with ezra yesterday, and with what he said and from talking to darol, i learned that darol bailed her out of a house-sharing fiasco back in december, and then she moved into the mad house in may. she apparently lived a fairly normal madhouse existence for about 4 months, and then went off the deep end. she locked herself in her room and spent four days there, pounding on the floor and being abusive to the many requests that she had to be quiet. when she did come out she freaked out and ran out of the house and into the neighbor’s house (who she didn’t know) and ended up seeking sanctuary at the synagogue, which kicked her out. then she came back, drew stars of david in red felt pen on people’s doors, met darol screaming about aliens, and ended up in a bush a few houses down the street raving about how she wanted to talk to the intergalactic police, because the local police were going to put injection cuffs on her.

apparently she’s been confined against her will at the western state hospital in stillicum for the past three or four months, with no telling when she’s going to get out, if at all. darol has decided that he doesn’t want her living in the mad house any more, and who can blame him… but it’s interesting that the only person who darol has ever decided that about, is someone with whom i used to be associated. darol also wants to put katharyn’s stuff somewhere so that he can rent out the room, but it’s not going to be with me… even if i was willing to take katharyn’s stuff, i imagine that she’d be even more irrational about me than she was when we were dealing with each other.’

i sure must have missed a whole bunch of stuff while i was in the hospital, because i hadn’t heard any of this. in a way, i’m kinda glad i had my injury instead, because if i hadn’t, i’m sure that katharyn would have come up with some way for me to be involved in her little debacle…

in other news, apparently kolette and ben have broken up after 15 years together, because ben went out and got married to someone else, so kolette is back in b’ham, living at the madhouse again after 13 year absence, and shacking up with darol… which is probably really good for both of them.

i might have known… they’re looking for someone with more PC experience. apparently mac protools isn’t good enough for ’em, they want windows experience… but you know, nobody uses windows for sound engineering.

they said that there are some other positions that they would consider me for, but they’re not open until october.

feh!

i don’t know whether i should do this or not, but i’m already doing it, so it’s a foregone conclusion…

i have a job interview tomorrow morning at micro$oft. they apparently need a sound engineer(!) in their codec testing team(!!). they were reluctantly going to offer the job to someone else, but then my resume(s) came along and they decided to change their mind and interview me instead. apparently the manager, who is a 2nd level manager, with the option of offering me a blue badge position if the cards fall just right, thought i was a very strong candidate for the position.

it’s microsoft, but what the hell… i don’t have to like it, or use it at home, but if they’re going to pay me to be a sound engineer and network maintenance geek, who am i to complain?

i wouldn’t normally mention this to anyone, because i’ve had horribly bad luck with jobs i’ve told other people about before i’ve actually gotten the job, but this is different, because it’s a sound-oriented job at microsoft, rather than a computer or print-shop job somewhere else. we’ll just have to see what happens.

another new icon. hopefully it works out okay…

the clowns were excellent. there was some performing, but by people who were much more prepared than i. i was the only member of the band to show up, but there were various kinds of fire-dancers, poi-spinners, hula-hoops and fire-breathers (and, fortunately, no fire department, although the police made a brief appearance, it was well after everything incriminating had been cleaned up and put away), and they were all much more prepared to perform than i would have been. now i’ve just got to remember to put their email addresses somewhere where i’ll be able to find them. i met a clown of indian descent (who was actually born in cincinatti), whose name is gotham, and his actual indian cousin, named akshay, who happenes to be living in renton for a month while he is a consultant at boeing… so maybe i’ll take him out to pabla’s in downtown seattle or something. he was complaining that he hasn’t got the chance to see any of the city during his stay. i also met greg, who is “the black clown”… he said people ask him which one he is in the show, and his response is “i’m the black one”… that way there’s no question. he’s leaving the show at the end of this, his fourth year, but he says he’s not sure what he’s going to do afterwards. i met a bunch of other clowns as well, people from hungary and japan, but they didn’t speak any english, so i didn’t get the chance to communicate with them much.

the talk at the vedanta society this morning was about divine mother sarada devi as an example of the global ideal. the speaker was swami swaahaananda, the head of the vedanta society of southern california, and the translator of (among other things) my copy of chaandogyaopanisad. a few things he said made an impression: the way to be happy in life is to find no fault with others. for a family, sometimes individual interests must be sacrificed; for a village, sometimes a family’s interests must be sacrificed; for a nation, sometimes a village’s interests must be sacrificed, and so with the world, sometimes even an individual nation’s interests must be sacrificed.

i’ve discovered the reason why i didn’t die last summer…

D.R., from the cirque, sent out an invitation last night. it seems that he and a bunch of random cirque people have been invited to go and hang out with the clowns from Barnum & Bailey tonight, and i’m going along with him. this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, as well as a great way to get to know some new people, and i would have hated to die, knowing that this kind of thing was going to happen.

i’m still resting my right hand on the keyboard for long enough that i’m typing lines of llllllllll or multiple spaces between words and stuff like that, which is irritating…

but i’m going to hang out with professional clowns! WHEEE HAH!!!

The Church of Tina Chopp is pleased to announce yet another

PUBLIC RITUAL VEGETABLE SACRIFICE

yes, it’s happening again, and this time i’m preparing for it early, since
last year was such a disaster (in more ways than you think).

the date is

SUNDAY, the 17th of OCTOBER, 2004 at 1:00 pm

please bring the following:

0. AN OPEN MIND!!!
if you don’t approve of bizarre rituals involving vegetable sacrifice and
snake worship, do something else that day. if you show up and cause problems,
we’re not responsible for what happens.

(the following are suggested, not required)

1. YOUR OWN VEGETABLE TO SACRIFICE!
we will be supplying at least one pumpkin, but it’s always more fun when other
people are involved.

(yes, there is no 2nd thing to bring to the sacrifice… we know that)

3. THE TIME AND ABILITY TO CLIMB APPROXIMATELY 1/2 MILE UP A STEEP TRAIL IN
THE CASCADES
the site is located at eXit-38 off I-90, east of fall city. for more details,
see the web site:

http://www.ebeneezer.net/ritual/vegetable/public.html

RSVPs are nice, but not necessary, however if you RSVP and then don’t show up,
you’ll be banished to safeway for the rest of eternity. we know who you are.

we hope to see you there!

qwest screwed up again… it’s not like i wasn’t expecting it, but it’s been closing in on three weeks that they’ve been screwing up, and i still don’t have a cell phone despite the fact that i’ve been paying for one all this time. i’d complain to the WUTC, but they apparently offer no regulation for wireless services, so it’s a matter of waiting until qwest decides to get their shit together, whenever that’s going to be.

roy and irene came by yesterday. we were sort of expecting them, but they said they were going to call before coming over, and they didn’t, so i was sitting behind the computer/synthesizer/keyboard and smoking a bong toke when they arrived, and i had to put things away in a hurry. they’re going on a cruise of the inside passage for roy’s retirement from gerber, and i’m driving them down to pier 30, and then we’re watching their truck for a week until they get back.

i recorded a new piece of music yesterday, in between cleaning up and being here when roy and irene arrived. it’s in 11/8, which is interesting seeing as how the rhythmic samples that i used for the basic tracks were in 4/4 originally… it came out really well, in spite of the fact that i didn’t have any real inspiration, and no clear idea of where to go with the synthesizer when i started out. i’m probably going to perform it at the art sharing in bellingham next month.

painting my car is officially sort of on hold until i can come up with money or something to fix the “minor” oil leaks which resulted in my having no oil when i took it in to get the oil changed the other day… which probably won’t be until i’m employed again.

today was going to be the day that they sent me the correct battery for my new phone. instead, they sent me another phone, and no battery. it has now been two weeks that this has been going on. i had moe call them, because i knew all i would do is get more upset. it’s a good thing, because despite the fact that the guy said he was going to send me a battery when i talked to them this afternoon, in fact, there was no order for a battery at all. i don’t believe that they continue to do business that way and continue to get customers. moe says that one of the reasons we use qwest is because they’re the cheapest. they certainly don’t waste their money on things like competent customer service. i’m scheduled to receive a package on friday that should make everything all right, but at this point, i’ll believe it when i see it.

cool pictures from the cirque show. also, today is janmaastami, which is what amounts to hindu christmas (for those of you who don’t know). happy janmaastami.

they fixed my phone… they also called me at 7:00 am to have me push some buttons on the phone to make sure it works… even when they are trying to straighten out a screwup that they caused they screw up.

i took pictures of the car in preparation for painting it. i’d post them except there’s nothing to compare with… a before, but no after yet. i also bought paint today. surprisingly, not a single art supply place had what i wanted, which is one shot. i ended up getting gloss enamel at mclendons, which is the last place i would expect to find it. i’ll post pictures when there’s something to post, but don’t hold your breath… i’ve been known (recently) to get to the starting point of an art project and then let it sit for a while. especially since i’m not quite sure whether i should use the sivaananda lahari or whether i should use sri vinayaka ashtottara sata namavali, which would be more along the same lines as the license plate that says GANESHA… the problem is that i’ve got sivaananda lahari in devanagari, but i’ve only got a romanized transliteration of the sri vinayaka ashtottara sata namavali, and i don’t trust my ability to re-transliterate it back to devanagari, and i don’t want it to be incorrect, even if nobody would notice.

i’m going to the vedanta society by myself for the first time since my injury. swami’s lecture is going to be The Wonder That Was Sri Krishna.

now here’s the kind of meme i would prefer to see more of…

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

it was right on the money, too: hinduism, 100%; jainism and mahayana buddhism, 80%; “neo-paganism” (whatever that is) 75%; unitarian universalism 65%… it would be interesting to see what gliz would do with it.

here’s something new, and it fulfills the law of fives as well:

http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html

not only does my “new” phone have a battery that doesn’t fit, but they were supposed to pick it up yesterday and they didn’t, which means that now they’re going to wait until after the long weekend to pick it up, which means that it’s going to be that much longer before i get the “correct new” phone. and to make matters worse, for some unknowable reason (in other words, they don’t know why themselves, and in fact they denied that anything was wrong until i had them call the number), my “old” phone doesn’t work any more, and there’s probably no hope for it until tuesday, because of the long weekend.

also i had to shut off two more email addresses at all of my domains, because all the mail they were getting was spam. i spend as much as an hour a day dealing with spam, and i’ll sure be glad when something is done about this problem.

qwest SUCKS ASS!
spam SUCKS ASS!

a lot of grief could be spared a lot of people if these two things simply ceased to exist.

i suppose i should probably update this thing, even though i don’t feel much like it. my contract ended friday of last week, which means that i’ve got to go into overdrive with the job search. it’s thursday, and so far i have made twice as many job contacts as i made during the same period four months ago. no prospects yet, but that’s not surprising given the economy these days. hopefully something will happen soon. meantime, i’ve finished the updates on the hybrid elephant web site, and i’m waiting for one more order before i post them.

i’m gearing up to paint my car. i’ve decided on using passages from the sivaandanda lahari of sri sankaraacaarya. now all i’ve got to do is procure the correct paint, and lay things out on the actual car. maybe i’ll actually be able to get it painted before i have to go back to work again.

they screwed up the primary system in washington recently, which means that now you’ve got to choose one of three political parties, and then vote only that party in the primary, which is totally wrong, and should be abolished immediately. i don’t know who the candidates are, but i’m probably going to vote libertarian, because neither the republicrat nor the democretin candidates do anything for me at all. ultimately i believe the whole party system should be abolished, along with the electoral college and most of the laws, but i suppose it’s not going to happen during my lifetime, unless bush gets us into the war of armageddon, which, unfortunately, isn’t too unrealistic.

something completely unexpected happened: we got a real new car, along with dramatically reduced car payments. a guy from the dealership kept calling monique and hassling her because there’s apparently a huge demand for SUVs, despite they’re being one of the most inefficient vehicles in existence, and the guy wanted to know if we wanted a new car so that he could have our SUV. so we took our 2000 tahoe with 12.9% interest and traded it in for a 2005 venture with 1.9% interest. it’s a minivan, which isn’t much better, but it’s a step in the right direction. now all i have to do is to figure out what to do with the car that doesn’t work and has been sitting in our driveway for over a year.

i finally got fed up with having three monitors, keyboards and mice on what limited desk space i have, so i got on ebay and bought a four port KVM switch, which will reduce the clutter on the desktop considerably, as well as giving me the option of having one more computer, eventually. sadly, it’s being delivered by parcel post, rather than the somewhat more timely UPS, so i haven’t got it yet. along the same lines, we got a notice saying that they were upgrading our wireless network and the current wireless phones we have will stop working. it’s okay though, said the notice, because we’re going to be given (as in free of charge) new wireless phones that will work with the new network. well the phones were delivered today, and moe’s is really cool, but they somehow screwed up (leave it to qwest) and they sent the wrong battery with my phone… so i don’t get a new phone until tuesday. it sucks because moe has been getting a whole bunch of new toys recently (an ipod, a powerbook, a cell phone…) and all i’ve been getting is worried because i don’t have enough money coming in…

which is why i don’t feel very much like updating this recently… sigh…

it is as i feared.

my unemployment claim runs out at the end of september, and i only have enough hours to qualify for half of what i have been getting, because of the fact that when i was working for schemalogic i was on a 1099 rather than on payroll, so i didn’t get unemployment tax paid. and worse, if i don’t apply before 04-october, i won’t get any benefits at all, because i have to have worked 680 hours to qualify, and the hours that i worked at schemalogic don’t apply. all because i suffered a brain injury last year, and carl was an asshole and fired me. if i ever get my hands on him, he’s going to wish he hadn’t.

i remember back in 1995, when i got my first tech industry job, i was talking with tamzin and she was telling me that i would never again have to deal with unemployment, because i worked in the tech industry now… little did anyone know how wrong she would be. she’s still working, doing network administration and technical support on macs for a school district in the san francisco area, and several other places, but she’s self employed.

i’ve made a new icon, but for some reason i can’t see it, so i don’t know if there’s anything wrong with it, and probably won’t until later on in the weekend, and/or whenever i get around to rebooting, or whatever it wants to refresh itself. in case you’re interested, i got it from here.

i stole this from ‘s journal, and then modified it, because i think it goes a long way towards saying what i want to say to gliz, and, just maybe, he’ll understand what i’m talking about.

God, Are You Real?

I whispered, “God, speak to me.”
And a meadowlark sang.
And I took notice.
I yelled, “God, speak to me!”
And the thunder rolled across the sky.

I looked around and said, “God, show yourself to me.”
And a star shone brightly.
And my heart was glad.

I said, “God, show me a miracle!”
And He healed my brain injury.
I cried out, “Touch me God, and let me know you are here!”
Whereupon God reached down and touched me.

But because of human language and stubborn ignorance,
I cannot express that to you.
You disapprove.

When it comes down to either believing you, or believing God,
I choose God.

he wrote 4 more times since the last entry, and, in spite of the fact that i said i was going to be unpleasant and bizarre in hopes that he’ll go away, instead, i just didn’t respond to his last email.

i’ve only got one more week until i’m back on unenjoyment again. oh thrill. 8/

<rant>
in spite of the fact that i’m going to be unemployed next week, i’m not going to burning man for the following reasons:

1) i’d have to go by myself. yes, there would be a lot of people there, and i’d probably end up staying at the cirque camp, but i wouldn’t have anybody watching out for me, and

2) it’s an extremely dangerous environment, which is

3) accessible only with a car whose long term capacity to function is still not reliably known, and if it breaks down in the high desert, i could very easily succumb to

4) weird, unknown things having to do with the combination of my injury and the heat, and

5) i can’t afford the $225 for a ticket, because i’ve been sporadically employed since my injury…

and if that weren’t enough,

6) i’m significantly frustrated with the fremonster people who think it’s okay to get me involved with things (OCF, burning man…) that turn out to be for “elite” people only, in remote, difficult-to-survive-in locations, which don’t allow dogs, that cost WAY too much money, and are of suspiciously unknown artistic value.
</rant>

i heard from steve, which means that he’s not dead, which is good, i guess. he’s been in and out of the hospital three or four times since january, and he hasn’t been doing any business, so it’s probably a good thing that i took the incense offline. now all i gotta do is get off my ass and finish the new catalogue, with some of steve’s stuff included, and get it online again. knowledgeable as he is, he’s too flaky to rely on when i’ve got customers waiting for orders. i made a deal with to trade a quantity of incense for some tie dyed shirts, which i plan on adding to the web site as well. hopefully the coming period of unemployment will give me the opportunity to take care of all my web updates.

random links
If Jesus Was Mexican (requires shockwave)
Terror Tubbies (requires shockwave)
Funny Cats (requires quicktime)
9 naked men… (requires quicktime) don’t say i didn’t warn you.
an amateur PyroBoy! (requires windows media)… too bad he gets burned…
This is actually an expected event at a power substation! (requires windows media) WOW! at the end of the clip, if you look in the lower left corner of the screen, you’ll see two guys, walking away… that was big…
Dedicated to the art of mocking public works
The Gematriculator
419 Eater
Noney
They Saved Zappa’s Moustache
Ramakrishna and Vivekakanda information.
Registration services for the .om TLD… now that’s something i should make use of!

memes
a whole lot of ’em
even more of them
What type of mage are you?
What kind of God are you?
Which trickster are you?
Which Great Old One are you?
20 questions to a better personality, just as intrusive but not quite as creepy as scientology…
you can tell why i’m skeptical of the value of these things.

last minute reprieve, or something… my contract has been extended two weeks, but that means that now i’m going to have to re-apply for unenjoyment, because my current claim runs out in september. i hope i’ve worked enough hours to be eligible, otherwise i’m gonna be screwed.

i don’t understand why some peope have no problems with other peoples’ religion, but others can’t rest until the whole world is converted to their point of view. you guessed it, i’ve been involved in yet another pointless debate with a mindless “christian” who doesn’t know when to quit.

i refer, of course, to my recent “converstation” with glen, who shall from this point forward will be referred to as “gliz” (lt’s a lizard thing moe came up with, i don’t completely understand, but i’ve adopted it anyway, as i generally respect moe’s opinion of things like this). his most recent tirade is because of the fact that i pointed out that his assertions that “you can’t agree that evolution is true, because if it were, then we would be no better than monkeys and apes” and “you must believe in God, for otherwise life would have no meaning” were faulty logic. i showed him proof that these two statements were the result of faulty logic, and he still insists that i defend my position…

it all started innocently enough when he sent me email saying that he’s seen my web site (i had cards printed up with the url on them to give to people who asked me about my injury), saw that it had references to Ganesha and asked if it was all right if he “asked some questions”, and as long as it stayed that way it was fine: he asked questions, and to the best of my ability, i answered them with what i’ve learned… but it didn’t stay that way for long. the “discussion” started on 12/3, and i warned him that i was not prepared to debate him, and i didn’t want to debate him anyway, on that date, but by 21/3 it already had the overtones of a debate, and it went downhill from there. i told him that i didn’t have to justfy the fact that my philosophy doesn’t follow strict logic as long as i wasn’t asking anyone to agree with me, but if he was asking me to agree with him, he was going to have to offer me something better than what i’ve discovered on my own, and so far he hasn’t come up with it… he wasn’t willing to accept that.

it is *still* going on: i wrote back to him this afternoon. it has involved josh mcdowell ministries, who also could not offer me anything better than i’ve come up with, but while the josh-mcdowellite was polite and gave up without raising a stink, gliz is continuing his abusive rants. he said that “a person… with josh mcdowell ministries” wanted to discuss the “questions” i was asking (??) on my site, and that he “did not suggest this or set you up” and that it was “not some kind of plot or trap”, and for the most part, it was a civil exchange that ended when i said that it was about as difficult to change my opinions with the information that he had available as it was for me to change his opinions with the information that i have available. the josh mcdowell part of this “discussion” took place between 14/7 and 21/7, and then gliz got involved again. it turned out that he and the josh-mcdowellite had been comparing notes all along, without telling me. i wrote to gliz telling him that, essentially, the josh-mcdowellite had gotten nowhere, and that’s where the invective started.

he stated that infinity doesn’t mean infinity; that an “infinite god” was “qualitatively infinite, but not quantitatively infinite” and when i asked him why he thought i should believe that an infinite God was not infinite, he responded with the statements above. the fact that he has accused me of “childish insults” and, acting offended, accused me of telling him to “shut the hell up” (which, in spite of the fact that he insists it’s true, i’ve done a text search and the only time that phrase has come up is when he has said it) is only the most recent of ravings from this idiot with a doctors degree…

yes, i’m being childish and insulting here, but he won’t read it here, and i’m tired of being nice and polite anyway. if he doesn’t like it, and he won’t leave me alone, then i’m going to be bizarre and unpleasant until he either shuts up or goes home, because i can’t make an impression on him any other way.

in other news, my contract at jetstream ends on the 15th, only this time my benefits expire in september, so i’m going to have to reapply, which sucks. today is my first real day off in almost a month… i’ve been BUSY since before country fair, and i could use some time off, but i wish it was by my choice. tomorrow the show starts, so i’ve got to do laundry, take a shower and sleep, because i’m going to be up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning for the next 3 days…

random urls:
talk.origins archive
an ex creationist
“christian”-bashing jew
theremin kit and other goodies
Little Marcy
Reinhardt A. Fuck… really!

memes that i don’t believe in:
How grammatically sound are you?
What’s your stand on…
What bodily discharge are you?
a whole bunch of them
friends quiz
this one is sort of useful, a word count
are you a freak?

this is to announce the upcoming performances of Cirque de Flambé, performing “Uh Oh! Playing With Fire (a parody)” at Warren G. Magnusson Park (the old Sand Point Naval Air Station) next to Hangar 27, on friday, saturday and sunday, august 6, 7, and 8, and friday and saturday, august 13 and 14. this show will also feature the Fremont Philharmonic, and BBWP. be there or be square.

very busy with rehearsals for the upcoming cirque de flambé show. recently it’s been monday cirque rehearsal, tuesday BBWP rehearsal, wednesday cirque rehearsal, thursday philharmonic rehearsal… then last week, friday we went to boise for three days to attend the wedding of laura and scott. laura is a friend of monique’s from high school and scott is a recently graduated from law school guy who lives in boise. boise is a hot, flat, dry place. i think a good word for it is “desert”, but that doesn’t leave much room for doubt, and with boise, there is some doubt. of course we went there on the first day in a long time that we’d had temperatures in the 90s at home, so it was to be expected that the temperature would be 20 degrees warmer where we were going. i’m glad we were on the road, and i’m glad we had air conditioning.

on the way back from boise, we stopped in the middle of nowhere so monique could meet one of the dog breeders she’s been talking to recently, and meet her dogs. she has 16, small, noisy, frantically entergetic dogs, and monique wants to get one, but i don’t think it will be from this lady. she’s gone with trudy to see a dog in gig harbor, one of the ones we looked at a few weeks ago. it’s all a mystery to me. one small yappy dog is more or less the same as the next, as far as i’m concerned, but moe has dreams of being a dog trainer when she grows up, so far be it for me to do anything but support her.

monique bought a powerbook after somebody gave her an ipod a couple of weeks ago, so i’ve spent the whole day rearranging things (again), and have finally got everything working again. basically the powerbook takes the place of the imac, but since it’s faster and more powerful, it also takes the place of the g3, which moves over to my desk, so now i have three computers on my desk.

i’ve wanted to start going to the vedanta society again, now that i’m not reliant on someone else to take me places, but so far i’ve been busy every week. i’ve come to what i believe is the end of a conversation with a couple of “christians”, one of whom is glen and the other one is MH from josh mcdowell ministries. they want to have a “conversation” with me concerning my web pages, but it has very quickly turned into a debate about whether they’re right or not. i recently found the index of logical fallacies which has been indispensible in my arguments with them. i accuse them of redefining infinity when they say that an infinite God is “qualitatively infinite but not quantitatevely infinite”, i accuse them of appeal to consequences, and am able to use the index to my advantage when they accuse me of “begging the question” but they don’t know what it means. they claim to use logic, but in reality they only use logic when it suits their purposes… which is fine as long as i am free to do the same, which i make no bones about. the minute they start saying that their random combination of manmade tradition, sacred revelation and holy scripture gobbledy gook is superior to mine they’re going to have to do a lot more than claim to be logical before i’m going to believe them.

i couldn’t resist, and, as i suspected, this thing popped out emperor norton. who’s surprised by that?

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

You are Joshua Abraham Norton, first and only Emperor of the United States of America!

Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, you carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, until an entry into the rice market wiped out your fortune in 1854. After this, you became quite different. The first sign of this came on September 17, 1859, when you expressed your dissatisfaction with the political situation in America by declaring yourself Norton I, Emperor of the USA. You remained as such, unchallenged, for twenty-one years.

Within a month you had decreed the dissolution of Congress. When this was largely ignored, you summoned all interested parties to discuss the matter in a music hall, and then summoned the army to quell the rebellious leaders in Washington. This did not work. Magnanimously, you decreed (eventually) that Congress could remain for the time being. However, you disbanded both major political parties in 1869, as well as instituting a fine of $25 for using the abominable nickname “Frisco” for your home city.

Your days consisted of parading around your domain – the San Francisco streets – in a uniform of royal blue with gold epaulettes. This was set off by a beaver hat and umbrella. You dispensed philosophy and inspected the state of sidewalks and the police with equal aplomb. You were a great ally of the maligned Chinese of the city, and once dispersed a riot by standing between the Chinese and their would-be assailants and reciting the Lord’s Prayer quietly, head bowed.

Once arrested, you were swiftly pardoned by the Police Chief with all apologies, after which all policemen were ordered to salute you on the street. Your renown grew. Proprietors of respectable establishments fixed brass plaques to their walls proclaiming your patronage; musical and theatrical performances invariably reserved seats for you and your two dogs. (As an aside, you were a good friend of Mark Twain, who wrote an epitaph for one of your faithful hounds, Bummer.) The Census of 1870 listed your occupation as “Emperor”.

The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, upon noticing the slightly delapidated state of your attire, replaced it at their own expense. You responded graciously by granting a patent of nobility to each member. Your death, collapsing on the street on January 8, 1880, made front page news under the headline “Le Roi est Mort”. Aside from what you had on your person, your possessions amounted to a single sovereign, a collection of walking sticks, an old sabre, your correspondence with Queen Victoria and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine. Your funeral cortege was of 30,000 people and over two miles long.

The burial was marked by a total eclipse of the sun.

i’m finally done enough that i can write something…

in the past six days i have performed jack and the bean stalk six times, performed with the fremont philharmonic three times, performed Big Bois With Poise once, waited in various different lines for approximately 12 hours, slept four nights in “mosquito acres” (otherwise known as “Chelamela staff camping”), spent 4 hours tearing down the stage, traveled almost 900 miles, got lost in Portland for 4 hours, spent 8 hours working, 3 hours getting my car fixed again, and 1 hour doing an emergency web update for diana.

country fair went well, although it was more of a job than a vacation. it was very odd seeing the dichotomy between the fantastic utopian dream that it could be (and almost is), and the harsh, stark reality of hippies that are so hung up on their own fantasy about “what country fair is”, that they complain because somebody has their tent set up 6 inches to the wrong side of some imaginary line that only exists in the hippie’s over-stoned brain, or bitching because they can’t drive against the flow of traffic, because that’s what they have “always done” at country fair, regardless of how unrealistic it is this year.

thursday afternoon check in was the most difficult part of the whole thing. i drove for 5 hours and parked in the “temporary” lot to check in and get my “wrist band” (which is one of the ways that they identify people and sort them out into categories), but my name wasn’t on the list, so i had to wait in line to see the “troubleshooter,” and then wait in a third line once the troubleshooter had straightened out whatever screwup had happened. then, once i had gotten the wrist band, i had to wait in line again so that i could have the priveledge of paying $5.00 to have it cut off and made into a laminated card that you wear around your neck, because the wrist band was too much like being in the hospital.

then i had to wait in line again to be able to drive my car to the place where we could offload our stuff (which was about a quarter of a mile from the actual camping site), and proceded to lock myself out of my car, so i had to go find the quartermaster, wait in line *again* while he did several other things before he found his lockout kit and opened my car… and after all that, i had to park about 2 miles away from where i was camped, which was about a mile away from the stage… john called it H.I.F.: Hippie Ineptitude Factor. i’m not entirely sure i approve of calling it that, since i *am* a hippie, but it seems to fit anyway.

the jack and phil performances went really well, and the phil sold all 50 cds that we had made (don’t worry, they were phil cds and not my personal cds), so there’s a possibility that i’ll even get paid eventually. BBWP was a gigantic hit: i heard someone that i didn’t know, ahead of me in line at the ritz, raving to someone else i didn’t know about how hilarious it was. there were probably 100 different artists that all swung poi with great aplomb and immaculate skill sunday night, but the one act that they’ll remember 10 years from now is BBWP, which is *REALLY* cool.

as i said before, i met one of the musicians from dreamtrybe. i was talking with pam and R.A., and got inspired to go and chant hare krsna with a bunch of hippies, and it turned out that the one who was leading the chant was from dreamtrybe. i hadn’t even thought of their album since my injury, but i remembered that i had bought the album for one particular song, and it turned out to be *exactly* what i needed to hear. i also saw carl (the one from bellingham, not the slime ball who was responsible for my unemployment), who i hadn’t seen since before my injury, tim “fyodor karamazov” of the flying karamazov brothers, who i haven’t seen for almost two years, and matthew bob, who was also camped in mosquito acres.

i saw jill friday and saturday. she lives in philomath, which is nearer to veneta (the town where country fair happened) than any other place i’ve been since i have been in contact with her. we hung out together for a couple of hours, and didn’t say much… which, i think, is a good thing. there’s really not much that needed to be said. it was nice hanging out with her and gawking at the hippies, and it was really nice to hang out without having to worry about her crazy step father and his shot gun. she had her daughter with her on saturday, and it was pretty odd to be introduced to an adult person whose mother i had originally met when her mother was younger than she was. it was a little awkward, because apparently jill isn’t as much of a hippie as i am, but at the same time, it’s been 25 years since we’ve seen each other, and a lot has changed for both of us in that time. apparently jill took a whole bunch of pictures while she was there, which she’ll be sending me, and i’ll probably post a couple of them either here or on my brain injury page when i get them.

by the time we got to country fair, the car was smoking. NOT what i wanted to see. it turned out that the constant velocity joint cover had come loose, so the smoke wasn’t serious enough to strand us in the middle of nowhere, but i had to get it fixed for real this time. supposedly it was supposed to be fixed on wednesday before i left, but i showed up and the guy who was going to do the work never showed up, so i had to drive to and from with a leaky power steering line, and a constant velocity joint that was smoking. hopefully, now that it’s fixed for real, i won’t have any more problems for a while and i can work on turning it into an art car with no further distractions.

it was kinda sad, not being with my sweetie on my birthday, but i made up for it by taking a 6 hour sauna at the ritz (note to self: the next time, buy a house with a sauna!) and buying myself a double dragon brooch, which is shaped like the letter “S”. i also got goodies for moe, so she wouldn’t feel left out when i got home: a goblin “bonnet” with horns, and two pairs of earrings. all in all, i spent too much money at the fair, so i guess i’m going to have to go back to work again. sigh.

Why did you tap me on the shoulder in my sleep last night,
Telling me I must write this song now, that the time is right,
They’re gonna think I’ve lost my mind,
Some of them will be unkind,
When I say

THERE IS NO HELL!

We do not die,
We are not gone,
We are alive,
We are just on
The other side,
We are not dead,
We are alive,
We do not die!
We do not die!

They’re gonna wonder how I got this information here,
What will they say when I tell them you whispered in my ear,
How can I prove their greatest fears
Have been unfounded all these years,
The truth is

THERE IS NO HELL!

We do not die,
We are not gone,
We are alive,
We are just on
The other side,
We are not dead,
We are alive,
We do not die!
We do not die!

So many people have seen the light,
When what they thought was the end in sight…

I’m not the only one who shares this bold philosophy,
I can only say that what I saw is plain to see,
But I was once a skeptic too,
Until the day I heard from you,
When you said

THERE IS NO HELL!

We do not die,
We are not gone,
We are alive,
We are just on
The other side,
We are not dead,
We are alive,
We do not die!
We do not die!

– Dreamtrybe

it’s shockwave heavy and caused my browser to crash, but it’s http://www.dreamtrybe.com if you want to give it a try.

i got their album Acoustic Autumn specifically for this song, about a year before my injury. i hadn’t thought about it until country fair, when i met one of the musicians in Dreamtrybe and dug their album out again.

more about fair later. i’ve got to go get my car fixed (!#@$^%&!!).

i forgot to mention… The Rite of Slem Bu (my 3rd album) is ready. write to me, or go to Hybrid Elephant for more details.

here is a quiz i found on ‘s journal…

You are the Devil card. The Devil is based on the
figure Pan, Lord of the Dance. The earthy
physicality of the devil breeds lust. The
devil’s call to return to primal instincts
often creates conflict in a society in which
many of these instincts must be kept under
control. Challenges posed by our physical
bodies can be overcome by strength in the
mental, emotional, and spiritual realms. Pan is
also a symbol of enjoyment and rules our
material creativity. The devil knows physical
pleasure and how to manipulate the physical
world. Material creativity finds its output in
such things as dance, pottery, gardening, and
sex. The self-actualized person is able to
accept the sensuality and usefulness of the
devil’s gifts while remaining in control of any
darker urges. Image from The Stone Tarot deck.
http://hometown.aol.com/newtarotdeck/

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

these things are really starting to make me wonder. i’ve heard them called “memes” but i’m not sure what that means. not that i haven’t heard a definition of the word, but i’m not sure if i agree with the definition when it comes to things like this. i think that these *may* actually be more sinister things.

there are many things that i wonder about this quiz, specifically, and all quizzes like this… is it major arcana only, or does it include the minor arcana as well… what are the computer’s criteria for determining which card you are? i tried the page they said their information was borrowed from, but that page is no more, and there doesn’t appear to be any other links on the page that would tell me about how this particular computer program works, or who made it…

how do we know that whoever wrote the computer program interpreted the cards correctly? we don’t. in fact, we don’t even know who it is that wrote the computer program at all. presumably there are ways of finding out, i’m sure that quizilla knows something, but it’s not made very evident for those of us who think about such things. what if the programmer had an alterior motive; what if, instead of giving accurate interpretations of cards based on logical inferences made from the answers you gave to the questions, what if they programmed it to spew out random interpretations and images, totally ignoring the questions all together.

and what about the questions? they’ve got your IP address as soon as you login, what do they do with the answers they gather to the questions? especially if the questions reveal you to be a person likely to do socially inappropriate things? i saw a “quiz” recently called Which America Hating Minority Are You? which had me down as a “terrorist”, which doesn’t surprise me, but now the epithet “terrorist” is associated with my IP address in some anonymous log somewhere… whose job is it to keep track of those logs?

i’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t all a big government conspiracy to gather as much information about us as they can in ways that, for the most part, we’d never suspect. 8/

i have a new car… well, i have a recycled car, which is the only thing that makes me feel even remotely good about the whole thing. we’re desperate enough for oil that we’ll listen to the lies bush spews, and go to war for a commodity that will run out whether we go to war or not, and here i’m getting a car… who put that thought into my head? the car i’d been driving for 5 years, a mazda 626, died last year when i was in the hospital. monique figured (rightly) that i woulnd’t be needing it for a while, so she loaned it to mal, and the first day that he actually *had* to use it was the day it died. one of the things i did to prove to them that i was ready to leave the hospital (a process that took about a month, and required me to have, among other things, a neuropsychological examination to determine how “brain damaged” i was) was to accompany moe and mal to the towing yard where it had been impounded, and “drive” it home (which means i rode along in the car, never got out, and moe and mal did all the driving). the new car is grey, which i plan on modifying by writing sanskrit verses on it, in white (i figure one shot should do perfectly well), with about 6 inch letters. at this point it’s just beyond the fantasy stage, but probably won’t get any farther than that at least until i get the new license plates for it, which, God willing, will say GANESHA, and probably won’t even get to the “figuring out what sanskrit verses to use” stage until *at least* september, which will be after the cirque performances are through.

i’m going to the oregon country fair in two weeks, where i hope to see jill for the first time since high school. it should be interesting, if nothing else. mike and linda are going to be there also, but i’m not sure if they’re aware of the fact that i’m going to be there, and i think i like it that way. mike and linda are sort-of relatives of monique – mike is monique’s mom’s housemate’s brother, but monique’s mom and ann, her housemate, have lived together for long enough that i wonder whether it’s more than just friendship in spite of (or because of?) the fact that they’re both so straight outwardly, combined with the fact that monique’s mom has been sexually mutilated, in a medical sense, and has a rather low opinion of men in general. mike and linda are old-timers at OCF, and they were sort of snooty when i mentioned that we might be coming, and that we’d never been before. on the other hand, i know rev. chumleigh from high school, although he probably doesn’t realize it, so we’re probably more “even” than they’re snooty-ness lets on.

the cirque de flambé is in full rehearsal mode: our next production is going to be called Uh Oh – Playing with Fire: A Parody (in honor of the fact that we finally got the name trademarked, which means that it’s going to be harder than ever for the cirque du soleil to sue us), the big bois with poise (an act for the cirque de flambé) is in full rehearsal mode, we’ve got a weekend’s worth of performances at OCF and rehearsals for the next show (another “british panto” called Babes in The Wood, which is a cross between Robin Hood and Hansel & Gretel), the fremont philharmonic is so far into the recording schedule that fred (hawkinson, not mclain) is practically impossible to get along with – although once the recording is finished, i’m sure he’ll revert back to his normal, easy-going self – plus we’re in the fremont players’ and the cirque de flambé rehearsals as well… i’m working tentatively full time, so it’s a good thing that i got a car, but i’m spending around 10 hours at home, and for 8 of ’em, i’m asleep! in fact, i’ve got a rehearsal i need to get to now, so that’s all.

okay, this is the announcement of upcoming performances at the fremont solstice parade (saturday) and the fremont street fair (sunday) of the fremont philharmonic (saturday) and the fremont players’ rendition of Jack and The Beanstalk (sunday). i’ve been working my tail off, what with cirque rehearsals (performances in august that includes the phil and the BBWP), players’ rehearsals and performances, phil rehearsals, performances and a recording, BBWP rehearsals, and a job. what was i thinking?

nothing else. just wanted to post this.

new job, testing software for big brother, by way of an outsource testing firm called jetstream. it was interesting… i started on 0602 because 0601 was a “holiday”, and worked until friday, then i worked monday through thursday, i *didn’t* work on friday, and it looks like i’m not working on monday either, in spite of the fact that they’ve added me to their payroll… i guess that’s what being a “temporary employee” means. i wonder what’s going to happen next. i’ve still got unenjoyment left, but that ends in september whether i’ve used it or not.

meanwhile, it looks as though i’m having my CD label printed. i talked with troy and he said to bring him the stuff on monday, and i’m not working monday, so it’s convenient, sort of. i’ve also got to go to the social security office, because when i went to renew my drivers license, they told me that the name in their records doesn’t match the social security number on record for me. i’m pretty sure it’s because of the fact that they screwed up my name in order to fit it into their computer, but i’ve still got to go to the social security office to get their word on who i am so i can go back to the dol and say that they’re the ones that screwed up…

i’ve been somewhat perturbed to find advertising windows open on my windows machine, in spite of the fact that there are no other apllications running and haven’t been for a couple of days, so i installed AdAware, and it found a whole bunch of spyware that i *DIDN’T* install. of course i removed it immediately, but when i rebooted, one of them had the audacity to put up an alert window that said “an application has caused the removal of 180search assistant, possibly without your knowledge…” and asked if i wanted to *reinstall*! i’ll tell you what: when i am aware of the fact that i’ve installed your software *the first time* then i’ll think about *re*installing it, but until then you can *KEEP YOUR GODDAMNED HANDS OUT OF MY COMPUTER* thank you very much! it’s that kind of thing that makes me wish i knew more about coding, ’cause i’d write a virus that would track them down and erase their hard drives. grumble, mutter…

what do you know? there’s still just the two of us… the person with the username that matches my real-life name on LJ is the same person i corresponded with outside of LJ a couple of years ago. i would comment on what a small world it is, but that’s been done already, and besides that, when you combine the fact that it *is* a rather unusual name with the fact that it’s spelled wrong (unless, of course, you’re referring to me), it’s not as suprising as it could be.

i just found a LJ user who has the same username that i have in reality. this is odd, because the name that we share is spelled in a way that most people would consider “wrong,” and, as far as i’ve been able to tell, i’m the only person who actually *has* this particular name (no, i’m not going to tell you what it is, i’m not that interested in giving that much of my life over to examination by other people). there is (as far as i’ve been able to tell) only one other person (other than me) with that same username (the other one used to have an address at AOL, but i haven’t heard from her in a couple of years). now i have to poke around and see if this is the same person, or if it’s an entirely new and different person, and if so, why she chose to spell that name “wrong”.

in other news, i’ve started a temporary job testing software for Big Brother (micro$lut), but i’m not actually *working* for micro$lut, so it’s okay. i really like testing windoes’t software, because regardless of what you do (or don’t do), you’re guaranteed to find bugs. this particular piece of software is the windoesn’t “Media Center”, and it is my job to make sure that the TV portion of the program displays properly regardless of the screen resolution, but i’ve only been at it for 2 days, so i haven’t found much yet. i’m working with aaron c., who i worked with at STLabs, several years ago, and he is a large part of the reason i’m working here currently – he said that he told the people in charge that if i was available, they’d better grab me while they could. it’s good to know that i’ve got friends, especially when the rest of my life is in such chaos… now if it were only a *permanent* job…

at the same time, i’m still not completely sure i actually *want* to work in the computer industry. the temporary job i had at schemalogic taught me that in spades. if a printshop job came along at this point, i’d take it, especially since my current job is a temporary one anyway, although if they offered to make me a permanent employee, things might be different… on the other hand, i wonder if *any* job can be said to be “permanent” any more. certainly not in the same way that my father was offered a “permanent” job. one way or the other, i’m glad to be working again, and i’m even gladder to have a job, temporary or permanent, that is as flexible as this one. the day that i started, dave was talking about the possibility that i could work from home, which i probably *couldn’t* do if i had a printshop job.

i figure as long as i’m going to pay for this thing, i’ll get some use out of it. i should check the web archive to see if the entries go in there as well.

still no work. unenjoyment doesn’t run out until september, but i’m starting to get worried. i’ve got an interview for a temporary job on monday, but once that runs out in july, then i’ll be right back where i started from, except that it will be closer to september. monique has mentioned that we may have to sell the tahoe, which would mean either a smaller, less versatile car, or taking the bus, which would add even more stress to our already stressful lives.

have i mentioned recently how much i hate wage slavery? it’s even more pronounced since my injury: i hate wage slavery with a passion that wasn’t even imaginable before my injury. maybe one of these days i’ll do something about it.

so i am going to the oregon country fair, for all three days, by myself. it’s kind of a bummer to think that i’m going to have my birthday and the one-year anniversary of my injury without monique, but that’s easier than dealing with the fremont players bitching at me because i was only at OCF for two days. also, apparently jill’s going to be there, which will be the first time i’ve seen her since i was a sophomore in high school… so it won’t be that bad… i think.

the brain injury is still there, and will be for the rest of my life. deal with it, i did. for more updates, go here. employment is down the tubes. there is hope, but it’s fading fast. i’m thinking of going back to school to learn perl and apache (the web-server, not the language, as google thought), but i’m not teriffically inspired to do that, either. the fremont philharmonic has been getting busier and busier, to the point where i’m almost glad i don’t have a "real" job anyway. i’m auditioning for the cirque de flambé with "The Big Bois With Poise", which is taking up even more of my already diminishing free time with rehearsals and practice (because i have a brain injury, combined with the fact that i’ve never spun poi before). the fremont players’ Jack and The Beanstalk is going to the oregon country fair this year, which is on the weekend of my birthday, which is also the one-year anniversary of my brain injury. i’d be a lot more excited about it, except that it looks as though they won’t let monique come, because of the dogs. they’d let her come without the dogs, but she never travels anywhere without them, and she said that if they don’t allow dogs then she’s not coming. i wish the fremont people would stop doing things (the solstice feast, the oregon country fair) for which to get in you have to "know somebody". on the other hand, they’re getting a lot of publicity, and not all of it is bad. anyway, i still haven’t decided whether i’m going to stay home in protest, or whether i’m going to go and "have fun" without my sweetie, which won’t be any fun at all…

a long silence during which a brain injury happened. details as they come in,

carl is gone. i’m working for someone else now. carl can go to hell as far as i’m concerned.

aum ganganapataye namaha
aum gatahitaaya namaha
aumkaraaya namo namaha

general consensus is that carl would be a lot more use to everyone if we simply shrink-wrapped him and stacked in a back corner on a drying rack. there’s no doubt that we’d get at least twice as much work done and we wouldn’t have to be constantly redoing jobs that got screwed up because carl scheduled them on the press before getting an approval from the customer. how he has managed to stay in business as long as he has with that kind of policy is beyond me.

at this point, it’s fairly obvious to everyone *except* carl that the only jobs that are getting screwed up are ones that carl has had a part of in some way or another. his standard trick is to schedule things for the press that haven’t been approved, or claim that he’s proofread them himself, when what we’re waiting for is confirmation that incorrectly spelled names or phone numbers are incorrect so that we can make corrections. he seems to feel fairly confident in second guessing the customers, but he’s only right about 50% of the time. if he guessed wrong any more than he does, he’d definitely be losing money…

in fact, perhaps that’s part of his rationale for the latest miasma he generated cutting me back to 3 days a week and hiring, and then firing shannon. it’s possible that the screwups she contributed drove the shop beyond it’s 50% screwup limit, and carl started actually losing money.

anyway…

i got email from someone this morning who was responding to one of my rants. i’m not certain if he agrees with me or not. it is my guess that english isn’t his native language, although his message was largely comprehensible enough that i would guess if english *isn’t* his native language, that he’s been speaking it since childhood, because he doesn’t use the language in the awkward, clumsy, hesitant way i’ve seen a lot of non-native english speakers use english.

i wrote back to him, and i wanted to write more, but his mail arrived just as i was getting ready to leave for work, and as it is i spent enough time responding to him that i was late for work. in a way, i’m getting a little tired, and a little annoyed with people who write to me simply to disagree with my web site, especially since most of them have been total nimrods. i’m not sure whether he agrees with me or not, but i was in a hurry, and i was pretty brusque in my response. if i’ve scared him away, that’s too bad, but it’s not my problem. on the other hand, i do sort of hope he writes back, simply because if he *does* agree with me, it’ll be nice to have someone new to talk to.

once again, things have changed… do they ever stop?

carl, in his infinite wisdom, has decided that cutting me back to 3 days a week was a mistake, so he’s brought me back to 5 days a week, at $1 an hour more than i was making before. the only “catch” (as he calls it) is that i have to agree to stay at least until september. i’ll agree as long as it’s to my advantage, which means that if another job comes along that i like better, i’m taking it. on the other hand, considering what’s been going on the past couple of years in the job market, it wouldn’t surprise me very much if i don’t see another job i “like” as well for quite some time.

have i mentioned how much being a wage slave really sucks?

the sad part is that, after having me back to 40 hours for a whole week, he’s informed shannon that if “things don’t pick up”, she’s outta there. damn carl! he’s such an asshole – *ANYBODY* with an ounce of common sense could have forseen that this kind of thing would happen to him, and yet, carl, the quintessential businessman, had to shoot himself in the foot before he figured out that the gun he was playing with was loaded… too bad he didn’t shoot himself in the head.

so, if a job i like better comes along, i’m taking it, regardless of whether september has come around or not. as usual, my choice of a job i “like” is pretty restrictive: i want a full time, “permanent” position, not a time-limited contract (although a contract for a year or more would be an acceptable alternative if all of my other criteria are met); i want *at least* $65k/yr; i want insurance that includes vision and dental; i want to work with mac, unix or linux, but *not* with windows, however if i have to work with windows then i want at least $70k/yr; and i want to be able to work from home as much as possible, or at least 3 days a week, whichever is greater.

those criteria being met, i would *like* to work with graphics or music in some way or another, whether as a software tester, designer or artist. failing that, something having to do with networking and/or internet, communications or publication would be good.

anybody hiring? didn’t think so.

now, off to obtain phad tai. yum.

weeks went by… the weird little web service for which he had paid good money went unused. then, suddenly…

collette, who insists on calling herself “Kitty Mojave” these days, came, stayed for a week, and went back to arizona, which she says is vastly superior to the seattle area. it’s been 10 years since i saw her last. she hasn’t changed much, although she seems to have gotten more obsessed with things that appear to me to be fairly trivial. she’s got surprisingly superior brain power, but doesn’t appear to have much desire to do anything with it. she says she’s content, but i don’t think she is… she certainly doesn’t act content, in fact she acts very restless and frustrated, but who am i to say?

working 3 days a week sucks ass. the paycheck is only about half as big as it was, things are going to hell at the print shop and i have to spend most of my 3 days whipping them back into shape, shannon means well, but doesn’t know anywhere near enough to be able to survive in that job on her own, and, so far, nobody has offered me anything else. fred came up with a testing position that’s a 3-month contract with the possibility of going permanent, but… gawd… i don’t know if i want to work with/for fred, and if it doesn’t go permanent then i’ll be totally screwed at the end of those 3 months. AAA is hiring a web designer, but i don’t know what they want because when i found out about the position, *they* didn’t know what *they* wanted. now the job is closed, all the applications, including mine, are in, and it’s a waiting game. if they hire me, i’ve heard they have great benefits, and i’ll be working with the web, which wouldn’t be bad… and they can’t possibly pay less than carl does, so that would be a step in the right direction. i called yesterday, and talked to cecilia, who is the HR representative. she said the hiring manager is going over resumes and would be calling someone next week, but, honestly, as much as i’d like that job, i’m not holding my breath. i’m going to bet they’ll hire someone with java/scripting/cgi/shockwave/database experience.

i’ve been literally losing my mind recently. if it weren’t nailed down, i’d probably forget my head… cancel cancel! damnit that’s what my stupid ass parents always used to tell me, and they’re FUCKING WRONG!

nevertheless, i somehow managed to forget that the weekend of june 21st is our 5th wedding anniversary, and we’ve planned to go to our traditional dog agility trial, and camp out in lacey for the weekend. what this means is that i somehow volunteered to be “band leader du jour” for the fremont solstice parade – i am the fremont philharmonic’s official representative for the parade which occurs on… june 21st. not only that, but we’ve also got jack and the beanstalk performances on june 22nd.

naturally, i’m the one who has to fix this problem. my solution is to bust my own ass rather than simply cancelling one or the other obligation. i can’t, in good conscience, skip out on my own wedding anniversary, but i also don’t want to appear irresponsible to my band-mates. so, what i’ve decided to do is to go to lacey with monique on friday, then go back to seattle on saturday for the parade, and return to lacey saturday afternoon. i’ll then get up sunday morning, pack up all the camping gear so that all monique has to do is get in the car and drive away when she’s done at the trial, and then i’ll head back to seattle separately, hopefully getting there in time to be in the jack performance at 1:00.

we’ve got a jack performance at 1:00, a fremont philharmonic performance at the fremont street fair at 2:00, and then another jack performance at 3:00. by the end of that weekend, i’m gonna be so exhausted i’ll be surprised if i can stand up… and then, oh joy… i have to go to goddamn work on monday morning and be a wage slave for carl. fuck that!

got another book of scripture by uncle al. i’m developing quite a collection of them. i feel a sense of accomplishment having collected them, and they’re really interesting to read and study, but i seriously wonder what other people would think of them. at the same time, i don’t really care what other people would think, because if they were to read those books themselves, they would certainly find absolutely nothing disgusting or immoral, or even improper. uncle al’s writing helps me understand what i believe better than i would if i didn’t read his writings.

roses are in bloom in our back yard. we have *A LOT* of roses this year. monique hacked them back last year, and it took them a year to recover, but this year they’ve come back in force. they’re really wild. we’ve got one rose bush that has both yellow blossoms with pink edges and pink blossoms with yellow edges on the same branch. we’ve got a whole bunch of different varicoloured blossoms, white, pink, yellow and several different shades of red. the leaves have “black spot” on them, which is theoretically treatable, but neither monique or i know anything about it. the only reason we know it’s a problem is because one of monique’s co-workers has some kind of degree in plant biomedicine. he looked down his snobby nose at the beautiful blossoms monique brought in to work the other day. so our roses aren’t absolutely perfect, show-quality blossoms without any defects, but nothing is perfect, and my impression is that the perfect ones don’t last as long, and aren’t as prolific anyway, so screw his opinion.

installed reason v2.5 the other day. i remember how excited i was when i installed v1.0, and this is just as good. new reason adds to the already increased capability of v2.0, and includes signal splitter/mergers, another new synth module, and a vocoder, which is something i’ve wanted for years. now i can *finally* do my robotic rendition of that old joan jett song “i love rock & roll”… in fact, that’s what i’m going to do now. poof.

does this surprise me?

no.

fuck.

life sucks.

i’ve been working for carl for a year now. recently carl hired shannon full time, to work behind the counter. now carl tells me that he can’t afford to pay me to work full time. he wants to cut me back to three days a week.

most jobs i’ve heard of, after you’ve been working for a year, you get a raise and a little more vacation time. you don’t get your hours cut back.

if carl hadn’t hired shannon, i could be doing shannon’s job. if there wasn’t any typesetting, i could be taking orders, or doing bindery. i could be doing deliveries…

instead, carl pays jeff to come in two days a week to cut business cards and do deliveries. he pays shannon to come in full time and sit around, as troy says, with her teeth in her mouth…

but he can’t afford to pay me to work full time. he says he doesn’t want to hurt me, but he also makes it pretty clear that my options are either reduced hours, or no job at all.

of course, the first thing i did when i got home today is start looking at job listings, and i even found a few for which i would be supremely qualified, which would very likely pay me a fair amount more than what carl pays. i hope that i find another job so i can simply walk away from carl. he’ll have a cow trying to find someone to replace me, although i have no dobt that he’ll put someone in the position (if i walk away, he’ll probably give shannon the job, but i know for a fact that she wouldn’t be able to keep up).

carl, troy and bart, all three, have given me enough details about my predecessors that i know that i’m the first person *EVER*, in the history of that business, to have the knowledge and experience to do the job correctly, but apparently carl doesn’t value that characteristic enough to realise that if i’m not there, it won’t be getting done right… and he’s not making me very interested in keeping the job at the moment.

god damnit! i *HATE* wage slavery!! if i could exist without having to have a job, i would be completely content. i hate having to look for a job, i hate writing cover letters, i hate going on interviews, i hate having to apply for unenjoyment, i hate not knowing whether i’m going to be able to pay my bills or not… and this is worse! i not only have to worry about my bills getting paid, but i also have to worry about what’s going to happen to monique and the animals! i can’t just sell everything and go live in the woods for the summer… i have a house and a wife to take care of. i can’t let them be homeless, too…

fuck carl! i hope he dies… no, i hope he loses all his money and has to ask me for financial assistance, because i’ll step on his head! asshole!

it’s incredible how depressed i can get when i think about the crap that’s been going on between my parents and i ever since i was 6 years old. it really sucks. here i am, 43 years old, and i’m still hung up on what my parents think about me… or, rather, i’m not hung up on what they think about me any more, i just wish they’d either decide to try to get along, or simply leave me alone. the fact that they must drag out the 30-year-old dirty laundry every chance they get, the fact that they claim that they’re still nervous about being around me, and the fact that their hatred of me apparently rubs off on monique and ezra, neither of whom were even born when all that crap was actually going on, make me wish that i could simply swap parents with someone else… although, at the same time, i don’t even know anybody whose parents i’d want to have instead. better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, i guess, but still… my parents REALLY SUCK! if you think you’re going to grow out of them as you get older, you’re wrong!

on a lighter note, animuation is amusing, but noisy. not for watching or listening to while at work, unless you’ve got privacy, headphones, and/or a boss who doesn’t care.

it is not possible for a society to be a “christian democracy” for the following reasons: democracy demands equality for all citizens, including the freedom to practice whatever religion one chooses, or to refrain from practicing any religion at all. “christianity” demands the obliteration of religious belief that is not “christianity”. when a “christian” tries to claim that the creators of the concept of social democracy were, themselves, “christian”, they are lying. plain and simple.

the fact that “christianity” demands the obliteration of every religious belief that is not “christian” is amply demonstrated in that commonly quoted passage from the gospel of mark, chapter 16, verses 15 and 16 – "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."

and, we can rest assured, that if God doesn’t do the damning personally, that the good ol’ U. S. of A. will take care of the job for Him.

here’s the deal. “christians” (along with many other self-proclaimed “spiritual” people) describe God as all kinds of different things, but keep in mind – God is indescribable. how can we, with our limited human imagination, and our limited human language, ever hope to describe that which is indescribable?

as far as i have been able to tell, God has three humanly-describable characteristics. anything beyond that, and you’re dealing with somebody’s opinions about what *they* think God is like. those three humanly-describable characteristics are perfection (or changelessness), infinity (or eternity) and omnipotence. if what you’re describing is incomplete, or in any way lacking, then what you’re talking about is not God. if what you’re describing is not capable of doing anything – even things which appear to us to be contradictory or self-negating – then what you’re talking about is not God. if what you’re describing is finite, limited by time, or limited in any way, then what you’re talking about is not God. the bible clearly states that God is “the same yesterday, today and forever” which covers all three characteristics: if God is not the same, or if God changes over time, then he is not God. if he exists today, but not yesterday or forever, then he is not God. and, obviously, if he is not capable of remaining changeless for eternity, then he is obviously not omnipotent, and therefore, obviously, not God.

a lot of “spiritual” people (i normally gripe about “christians”, but i know that a lot of Christians aren’t like that, and i also know that there are a lot of allegedly spiritually oriented people who *are* like that) will tell you that “God hates sin” or that “God has a plan for your life” – if you don’t happen to believe in God, or if your favourite deity has a different name, feel free to insert whatever you like in place of the word “God” in these phrases.

however, if God really *does* hate anything, if God is affected by emotional states, then God cannot be changeless, unless He is *eternally* hateful. obviously, a God that is eternally hateful is clearly not what the bible or other scriptures are describing – although scripture *does* describe God as having a state of hatefulness. thus we can infer that it may be possible that God *is* eternally hateful, but if that is the case, then God must also be eternally joyful, because scripture also describes God as delighting in certain things. a God that is both eternally hateful and eternally joyful is a contradiction, but only a God who is truly infinite and omnipotent can be capable of such a contradiction. not only that, but the states of hatefulness and joyfulness would, presumably, cancel each other out, meaning that God is eternally in a state which can be described equally accurately as “joyful” or “hateful” – in other words, eternally in a state which we, as limited human beings, are incapable of describing.

the same holds true of the statement that “God has a plan for your life”. to imply that God has a plan for anything implies that God is somehow dissatisfied with your current state of existence, which implies that God is incomplete, or imperfect. as long as you are in a state which causes him disatisfaction. if, as long as your state of being is a source of disatisfaction to God, then God is incomplete, or imperfect, and such an imperfect being cannot be God. furthermore, if God has a plan for your life, that implies that the ultimate goal of God’s existence is to realise that plan, at which point God will become complete. again, this implies change, which, if God is truly changeless, cannot happen.

thus it is logical to assume that a truly perfect, infinite and omnipotent God *must*, by definition, be completely satisfied with the way things are – including all the war, and pornography, and other things that offend certain segments of the population. if God is completely satisfied with the way things are, then *NOBODY* has to change! *NOBODY* has to convert from one religion to another… *NOBODY* has to worship jeezis if they don’t want to, and *NOBODY* will go to hell for saying Tina Chopp is God!

interesting. i was digging through my incense samples, looking for one i hadn’t tried yet, and i found “Hem Precious Chandan”. when it’s not burning, it has a powerful, sweet, sandalwood scent. when it’s burning, monique says it smells like “drakar” cologne – and, i must admit, it has a very characteristic cologne-like smell. familiar in a way that reminds me of ancient times with my family-of-origin, and situations i only barely remember at my cousins’ house. i also found a tube of “boddhi sattva” incense which is a really powerful camphor. monique doesn’t like it – she says it smells like vicks vap-o-rub, but it reminds me of aarati.

i really like being an incense peddler. i recently had to take inventory (the tax people want to know how much money i spent, so they can figure out how much of my profits to take away), and i discovered, for the first time in my life, i actually think i have *enough* incense… three five-foot-long shelves full, plus another half-shelf full is *a lot* of incense, but if things keep going the way they’ve been going, i should be able to sell all of it within the coming year.

another side benefit is the murtis. i shipped out a shi ga murti to my first murti-only customer, someone from ohio. i ended up having to order *A LOT* of stuff from the murti-supplier in order to get *one* shi ga murti, and then it turned out they didn’t have the one i ordered, so i had to substitute it for a different one. blah. but, at the same time, i now have four nine-inch dragons, two sets of foo-dogs and another shi ga, all of which are, essentially, pure profit!

gah… materialism… but, it’s not exactly like materialism. i like being able to provide these things to people… i like being the one resource when they’re not available anywhere else. a good example of this is one of my incense customers, frank. he’s a professional musician, and he lives in new york. he was a personal friend of george harrison, and he is a personal friend of ravi shankar. apparently george harrison gave him some incense many years ago, and the only place frank knew where to get it from was george… until george died. now he gets the same incense from me! 8) and i recently sent him 3 kilos of another kind of incense, which is one of his favourites, which he can’t find anywhere else. i can’t believe that i’m the *ONLY* incense peddler in the united states who carries the kasturi masala made by shroff channabassappa & sons, but if frank wants to think so, i’m not going to get in his way. i don’t do it because i like having a lot of incense, although i do like having a lot of incense. i also don’t do it because it makes me money, although i like the fact that it makes me money. i do it because i like helping out people like frank, who wouldn’t know where to buy his favourite incense if it wasn’t for me. that’s why the business is called Hybrid Elephant and not something else.

aum gam ganapataye namo namah
sri siddhiivinaayaka namo nama
ashtavinaayaka namo namah
ganapati baapaa morayaa
mangalamuurti moraya

hrm… joined a new community recently – the bhagavad gita discussion group… except as far as i can tell it’s that translation by ac bhaktivedanta prabhupada. he may have been an outstanding sanskrit scholar, but his english left quite a bit to be desired. i always like to balance his translation with the superior (IMHO) ones by Sir Winthrop Sargeant, Swami Chidbhavananda and Sir Edwin Arnold. but, and this has been a mystery to me for a couple of years now, i can’t seem to find my study copy of the edwin arnold translation. i’ve got 3 copies of that translation. two of them are little, blue, hardbound books, one of which is held together with duct-tape (because it’s been very heavily used for many years, of course), and the third one was published as a collection of “indian miniatures” – lithographic prints of ancient indian paintings, but this third one *isn’t* one of my two study copies, it doesn’t have the slokas marked in it, and i don’t want to write in it because it’s allegedly a “rare” book. i *KNOW* those books got boxed up and transported when we moved out of beacon hill, but i haven’t seen them since. included in the stack of mysterious disappearing books is a digest-sized, red hard-bound “blank book” that i used as a journal for the couple of years either side of my high school graduation. i’m sure they’re all in the same place, but i don’t know where that place is.

work was slow today. shannon was out – apparently her father had a stroke. for some reason, image east keeps not receiving the emails i send them, so i had to frantically dig around and re-send a job i sent to them on friday, which was supposed to be finished today. it sucks, but at least it’s not my fault. i have proof that i sent it, so it’s their problem.

here it is. this is what i’m going to do with my thoughts about jill. this may actually be the reason, or one of them, for this whole thing.

okay, in 1976 i played trombone in the washington state bicentennial band. we spent 2 weeks rehearsing, then we spent a week in washington DC, where we performed on the capitol steps, and in the kennedy center. jill was one of the trumpet players in the band. she lived with her family in washougal, which is about 200 miles away from where i was living with my family.

jill and i had a very weird, mental connection – very powerful. we could communicate just as easily as talking without saying a single word. i could hear her thoughts in my head, and she could hear mine. we spent the entire three week experience of the bicentennial band being in much closer contact than i’ve been with almost every other person i’ve ever known.

there wasn’t really any kind of identifiable “romance” as such going on, except for a few awkward words spoken (actually spoken) towards the end of the trip, but we both knew that we had found a soul-mate, and we were both deeply in love. we went our separate ways, although we kept in touch by mail.

apparently she had the same kind of mental connection with her father, or, perhaps something else was going on, but in order to keep her father from finding out that she was communicating with me, we arranged for a friend of hers to send and receive letters for her. it turns out the guy i thought was her father wasn’t her real father, and there was a lot worse going on than i knew about at the time, but that’ll come later.

after about a year of communicating by mail, my high school jazz band went to a competition which was held in a city near where jill lived, and we arranged to meet after the competition, which was being held on the campus of the local college, was over. i found the appointed place and, at the appointed time, she didn’t show up. i waited for about half an hour, and then someone i knew from an entirely different set of circumstances, but, apparently, someone who was somehow related to jill (her cousin, or something), came up to me and informed me that jill’s father had found out that she and i were trying to meet, and that i should watch out for him because he was crazy.

the jazz band competition was over, and i didn’t have any reason to stay any longer, and the thought of being accosted by a crazy man who was pissed off that i was trying to meet his daughter didn’t appeal to me very much, so i went back to my hotel and checked out. just as i was getting ready to walk out the door, i heard a knock. i looked through the peephole and there was a guy dressed like a cop, holding a shotgun. i asked who it was, and he said “officer lee”. i figured it couldn’t be good if he had a shotgun, and i knew i hadn’t done anything wrong, so i figured this was jill’s father who had somehow tracked me down, and i took off out the back door of the hotel room… it’s a good thing i was on the ground floor.

he saw me driving out the hotel parking lot and caught up with me just as i was getting on the freeway. he followed me on the freeway from vancouver to olympia. once i was sure i had lost him, i found a state patrol office, and asked them if there was some way i could file a complaint against someone dressed like a cop who had threatened me with a gun, but they said as long as he hadn’t actually hurt me, there was nothing they could do.

needless to say, i never heard from jill after that. through a strange sequence of events a couple of years later (when i was in college), i ended up hearing a rumour that, not long after that whole thing happened, jill married a man named rockie, and that was the last i heard of it.

until about a year ago.

i was poking around on internet, and i managed to find an email address for jill, and we have exchanged quite a bit of email since then. she lives in central oregon, in a fairly remote, small town. she’s been married to rockie for 24 years, and they have either two or three (my swiss-cheese brain can’t remember) grown daughters. jill is a very important person in the nursing industry in oregon, and a practicing nurse of some fairly high calibre. rockie is a researcher of some kind or another (again, my sieve-like mind has forgotten that detail). jill also has terminal cancer, and it’s my understanding that the mere fact that she’s still alive at this point is somewhat of a miracle.

it turns out the guy i thought was jill’s father, “officer lee”, really was certifiably crazy. he eventually ended up in jail for dressing like a cop and shooting someone. according to what jill told me, he perpetrated many years of sexual abuse on her as well. jill’s exact words were “i was his concubine”. no wonder he didn’t want me around.

i gave up on jill a long time ago. being chased out of town by a nut with a gun should be enough to scare some sense into pretty much anyone. at the same time, i didn’t have the first clue how nutty he really was, and how awful jill’s life was at that time. if i had the first inkling that her life was that awful, i would have at least tried again. admittedly, my life was pretty awful at that time all by itself, but i would still have been compelled to help in whatever way i could.

the fact that jill married rockie so soon after her father chasing me away makes me wonder how serious she really was about me, which makes me feel bad now. on the other hand, the fact that she’s only alive because of a miracle makes me feel bad that i would even be thinking of something so trivial, and, at the same time, makes me wonder how, or even *if* i can be a friend to her now. the fact that she’s very strongly medically oriented means that she will very likely have a very interesting attitude about death, but i don’t know if it is even appropriate for me to ask her about it.

apparently my father (!) wrote to jill’s “father”, in an attempt to tell him that i wasn’t a danger to jill. jill told me that her “father” ripped up that letter in front of her, without letting her read it. that kind of thing strikes me as being *extremely* uncharacteristic for my father, who never failed to criticise me whenever he got an opportunity. on the other hand, there’s a very strong probability that my father didn’t have the slightest suspicion that “officer lee” was sexually abusing his daughter – after all, he still vehemently denies the possibility that *i* might have been abused as a child, which is totally ludicrous.

so, anyway, that’s the story, for what it’s worth. my side of it, anyway. now i’ve got it off my chest, so to speak.

more bizarreness. danelle used to work at the clinic, but she was fired because they suspected she was stealing stuff. then, a couple of weeks ago, someone broke into the clinic and stole a huge quantity of drugs. so, apparently, today, the police served a search warrant on danelle, and found huge quantities of drugs which had been stolen from the clinic in her house. they also found her employee file, and her customer file, which were apparently stolen at the same time. the weird part is that now danelle is saying that monique and sarah helped her steal the files, which is a total lie. danelle is frantically trying to cover her butt, ’cause she *knows* she’s gonna do a lot of time for all the drugs and shit she stole. at the same time, according to what monique says, the police have already asked sarah if she’ll submit to a polygraph test. considering that they found stolen property in danelle’s house, i seriously doubt the police are giving what she says much credence, but at the same time, it’s a little scary that monique may have to submit to a polygraph test. it’s not as though she’s done anything wrong, we just don’t want it to turn into a fishing trip.

shannon was hired at work on monday this week. she managed to finish her first week fairly well. hopefully she’ll take over enough of the “brains” function from carl that things will start to run more smoothly. as it is, carl has been making a reputation for himself recently by sending jobs to press that haven’t been approved. i get a call from the customer saying they’ve got changes on their job, and i can’t find the job, so i go back to troy and he’s already printed it on carl’s approval. we’re doing at least two or three of those per week recently. so, shannon and i are conspiring against carl. i requisitioned a proofreading stamp, and now, theoretically, jobs *won’t* go to press until they’ve been signed off by the customer. period. troy says this is never going to work. he says that it has been tried before, and after a while, carl simply ignores it. troy has even offered to bet me $20 that he’s right. the way i figure it, if i put money down it, that’s going to guarantee that i’m going to lose. the way it is now, especially with shannon taking over a lot of carl’s responsibilities, i think we may actually be able to get it to work. status quo never changes until it stops being status quo, and it takes cojones to change things. in spite of everything, my impression is that troy simply doesn’t have ’em.

at the same time, i’ve had a little “frisson” of fear (nice word i learned from jill not too long ago) that carl hired shannon to replace me. shannon has *A LOT* of print shop experience, what appears to be a fair amount of computer experience, and she’s a lot more “customer service oriented” than i am. if it were up to me, i would *NEVER* have *ANY* contact with the customers (’cause i’m too likely to bite their heads off when they’re being stupid), and i’m hoping that carl hasn’t hired shannon because he wants someone up front who doesn’t mine dealing with the customers. so far there’s been no indication that this is *actually* going to happen, but i’m an inveterate paranoiac, and i can’t help thinking that way once in a while.

got a nifty box fulla stuff from the statue people. four 9″ dragons, two sets of “foo dogs” (i’ve called ’em “guardian lion dogs” before, but apparently they’re also called “foo dogs” also), and a couple of shakyamuni statues, one of which gets sent to some guy in ohio. selling stuff to people like this is *COOL*! they pay me, i buy cool stuff and send it to them, and everybody’s happy. i’ve been talking to a few people about doing some commission sales from our site as well, but so far nobody has “bit”. i talked to kolette about engraved talismans or some such thing she makes. pretty much anything she makes will be saleable – her artistic genius is rarely matched. saint fred’s friend who does ceramic stuff also contacted me a couple of weeks ago, and i had a nice conversation with gunnar’s friend joseph about a huge pile of glass pipes and suchlike that he’s got stashed in his basement. if even one of these things actually happens, we’ll have some nice additions to the business.

went to buy mice for herb and agador this afternoon. there’s a new PetsMart across the freeway from the print shop, so i decided to check it out… except that they don’t sell feeder animals because it’s “not ethical”. they also don’t sell reptiles, because they don’t want to have to sell live animals as food for them. oddly enough, they *do* sell predatory fish, and they also sell feeder fish for them, so i really wonder where they draw the line. meanwhile, i had to drive back down to petco to get mice, ’cause i *know* petco will sell me mice. and they’ll even weed out the cute ones for me, so monique won’t gripe about feeding them to the reptiles. 😉

i got email from a random, relatively local innocent bystander, who has apparently been watching The Church of Tina Chopp for a while, and he wants to attend a Vegetable Sacrifice. i told him that he should propose a date and we’ll see what we can organise. it’s a little odd, not having the Public Sacrifice on Sproogle, but there’s been such a small amount of interest over the past few years that i’m pretty desperate for *any* kind of action these days. if he wants his own, special Vegetable Sacrifice Ceremony, who am i to deny him?

new music been crunching around in my head for a few days. woulda got something down on tape (so to speak) several days ago, but massive fatigue has been plaguing me. hopefully i’ll get caught up a little this weekend. i’ve been coming home from work and going to sleep by 8:30. it’s a little alarming. i’ve got a bunch of new music i need to get down, and i’ve got a website update for diana that’s almost finished that i need to upload, so i can’t go to sleep until *at least* 11:00 pm tonight.

vaguely interesting, vaguely Tina related conversation w/a couple of geeks at #verylowsodium. every now and then it’s good to have a reminder why i really don’t like IRC… although, i must admit, i’ve had some fun trading music on IRC, so it’s not all bad.

talked w/nexus about perl code for the big ass form. got some good ideas, but still don’t know how to make any of it work. nex hasn’t done perl for a while, and he was giving me information as though i know what i’m doing, which i don’t… so now i’ve got some nifty code snippets that look like they may be modifiable into something that might work, but i’m not the one to do it… oh well, i’m closer than i was before.

been trading snippets of poetry with ian over the past few days. mostly bits of lyrics from songs by brian eno and godley & creme. my impression is that ian may be able to take the code snippets and do something useful with them, but he’s been somewhat distant… um… ever since i first got back in touch with him after he got out of the army, which was… um… 10 years ago, or something like that. he’s always been kind of a loner, and he’s always lived on the edge of civilization, but he’s working less than a mile from where i work, *and* he’s got a lot more email access than i do currently (only because he’s working as a geek, and i’m not). i guess i should be happy to hear from him as much as i do, all things considered.

the phone company *SUCKS*… i’d just like to say this in public… specifically qwest. i’ll say it again, with emphasis this time: QWEST SUCKS ASS!

monique and i got new cell phones. the qwest drone told us that they would have “the most up-to-date software available” installed in them. when we got the phones, they didn’t do a bunch of the stuff the qwest drone told us it was going to do. i contacted motorola, and discovered that we *don’t* have the most up-to-date software. motorola informs me that the most usual way to get software upgrades is to download them from my service provider. but qwest says their network “doesn’t support downloads”… !?!?

they say that the only way to get a software upgrade is to replace the phone… so i tell them i want a software upgrade, and they send me another phone… which has identical software in it. i contact motorola to see if there is another solution to this problem, and it turns out i can mail the phone to motorola’s offices in texas, and they can upgrade the software for me, but that takes 20 days… and, of course, qwest won’t loan me a phone for that period of time.

qwest says it’s “not in their contract” to provide software upgrades. they say the only thing they’re required to do is provide the ability to make and receive wireless phone calls. anything beyond that is out of their jurisdiction.

to make matters worse, i’ve relied on the WUTC to persuade the phone company to do things they’ve promised to do, but then changed their minds, however apparently the WUTC doesn’t have jurisdiction when it comes to wireless phone providers. they recommended i complain to the FCC…

so, i’m doing that tomorrow.

and they call this civilization?

aum ganganapataye namah

so, i’m going to burning man this year. i’ve wanted to go for a number of years, and now i’ve actually got an “excuse” to go… i’ve even got my ticket, which set me back a whopping $225, qualifying burning man as the single most expensive event i have ever attended.

problem is, i don’t know how i’m getting there. monique wants to meet me on the southern oregon coast *after* burning man (she’s not going to burning man because it’s not a safe environment for dogs, and she doesn’t want to leave the dogs at home), but that’s assuming that i not only have some way of getting to burning man, but a way of getting to the oregon coast afterwards.

20 years ago, i would have hitchhiked, and not been concerned about it. 20 years ago, i didn’t have a job and a schedule to worry about. i’ve got a very limited amount of time between the time i leave and the time i have to be back at work (bleah), so i’ve either got to find a ride to burning man who is also willing to drive me to the oregon coast afterwards, or i have to figure out a way of driving myself.

our small car won’t make it – it’s on its last legs as it is, and an extended road trip would be its death knell. our big car would make it, but if i take the big car, monique won’t have any way to get her and the dogs to the oregon coast afterwards, and if i come home after burning man and before going to the oregon coast, it’ll waste at least two days.

i could rent a car, but that would cost a fair amount of money and i’m already trying to keep expenses down (what with the $225 ticket), and besides, i’m planning on taking at least 20 gallons of water, so it would have to be a fairly substantial car, if i ended up renting one, to be able to transport that, plus me and a week’s worth of camping gear and food.

i was hoping to get a ride there and back from sasha, but now he’s not sure whether he’s going or not, ’cause his sweetie’s father is sick. i’m sure i know other people i might be able to get a ride from, but i’ve emailed a bunch of ’em and so far i haven’t got any responses.

mal offered to loan me his RV, if he hasn’t sold it by then… but even if he hasn’t sold it, i don’t know whether it’s in any shape to make that long a road trip, not to mention the fact that i’ve never driven anything like that before.

blah.

aum ganganapataye namah

this is a test entry, to see if the damn thing works.

so now i have an online journal. thrill.