Tag Archives: ketchup

circus, depression, ketchup, mushrooms, OM, unicycle

in the humdrum

monday moe was in vegas. i got a whole bunch of spam, DIDN’T have my regular counselling appointment because of a misread calendar, two weeks ago, DIDN’T get my tires rotated in spite of waiting around for an hour while they DIDN’T rotate my tires… 😒 i’m still not totally sure what happened: i made an appointment, showed up before i was supposed to be there, told the guy that i had an appointment, which he confirmed, and then… i waited for an hour, went up to the counter to inquire when they were going to get to my car, and was told “within the hour”, but i had other places to be, so i had to bail and come back later in the week…

and i was already ripe for mushrooms… 😒

wednesday, the smoke from wildfires (i never bothered to find out where they were) was bad enough that both seattle and portland had the WORST air quality in the world — worse than singapore or hong kong. also, apparently, someone dumped, and burned, a human body just up the street from the trailhead to the back side of taylor mountain, where i walk a lot… where i saw the bear… 😒 moe came home. i picked up quill at the puppy-sitter’s place near lake desire at 8:30, and picked up moe at the airport at 9:30.

thursday i had my circus class, and on the way back home, driving down I5, the smoke was bad enough that i couldn’t see more than a mile or so in front of me. 😒 then got my tires rotated — for real, this time. i was in and out inside of 15 minutes. a guy i had never seen before, but who i assumed was one of the managers, said that he “knew all about” the fiasco on monday, and that they’d get to my car right away… and they did, which kind of surprised me…

friday i decided that i was not going to take as many mushrooms as i had planned, because, by that time, the smoke from the wildfires was really awful. we bought some inflatable halloween decorations — a unicorn skeleton, and two enormous, flashing eyeballs. when it got dark, it started raining, so, naturally, monique decided that was the time to put them out… and the eyeballs (which were my part of the deal) only had one set of tethers, which meant that i had to cut and singe nylon string, in the dark-and-rain…

saturday i actually took mushrooms. instead of four capsules, i only took two, but — as is seemingly fairly typical — all the “good stuff” had filtered to the bottom of the bag, which meant that two capsules was SIGNIFICANTLY more than the past couple of times i had taken four capsules… and it was raining REALLY HARD, so even if i wanted to go up to taylor mountain and risk being high on mushrooms in the vicinity of an actual murder investigation(!!), it was raining hard enough that there was standing water in our back yard, which usually indicates that the trails on taylor are flooded, as well.

it was weird not being able to walk around while tripping balls, as is my usual habit, but i got through it okay… although i REALLY need a beanbag chair, because the only “comfortable” chair in the house is directly in front of the TV set (because that’s where moe usually sits), and, while it is actually big enough for two of us, i REALLY DO NOT want to watch TV while high on mushrooms… so i sat for a couple of hours in the 2nd-most comfortable chair in the house, which is on the opposite end of the house, until i got done peaking, and then it was — more or less — life as usual, only “usual” included being high on mushrooms this time.

we had a karaoke party last night — about 10 people… including one of our next door neighbours, kelly, who i talked to fairly extensively regarding our respective weed crops this year… it still ASTOUNDS me that it is legal, and, while still not technically legal, i have a mental health professional RECOMMENDING that i take mushrooms… 😲

today was the last unicycle class of the session — a new session starts next sunday — and i think i may have gotten back to the point i was at the end of spring session, before “the summer from hell” (which is how i have been referring to the summer of 2022), during which i had very little time, and even less motivation, to practice unicycle.

i have a sousa band rehearsal on tuesday, a circus class on thursday, tracy and kelly (next door neighbours) are having a “costumes optional” halloween party on saturday, and halloween, proper, is on sunday. i have been making more Operation Mindfuck envelopes to be distributed to random people, while in costume, over the coming week.

busking, COVID19, depression, the battle of the computer, wildfires

oh, alright… 😒

this is an update. what i’ve been doing:

busking. this has been a long time coming. it’s really good to get out and play music for people, and, so far, we’ve been averaging between $15 and $25 apiece for an hour or so of busking. now, instead of howlin’ hobbit and his ukulele, it’s thaddeus and his banjitar — an interesting hybrid, that looks like a banjo, but has six strings and is tuned like a guitar. as i’ve always said, the money is an extra, added bonus, for me, and it’s still true, even after a year and a half… but it’s always nice, and we’ve actually already got one “paying” gig as a result: the pike place market is putting on a “sunset supper”, and is hiring market buskers at $100 apiece for an hour of busking while rich people eat food… that is, most likely, NOT offered to the buskers, but they’re paying $100 apiece, so it’s sort of okay… the BSSB has started rehearsals again, too, which is another bonus. 😉

ripping CDs back into my music collection. i have only gotten the barest of starts sorting the recovery data, in spite of the fact that, in the small print, the data recovery people say that their “free” recovery media (a 1TB hard disk, in my case) only has a warranty of five DAYS — which, to me, says “if you don’t get your data off our recovery media post haste, we’re not going to guarantee that you’ll have ANYTHING, regardless of how much you may have paid us.” nevertheless, at this point, i’ve got all of the data that really made a difference (the panchamukhi ganesha from my car, the spreadsheet containing the data for the Incense of the Month Club, and the spreadsheet of blocked-for-spamming IP addresses), and, basically, if i had anything else i need, i don’t remember it, and probably won’t until i need that data again, which will mean that i’m probably going to have to keep going back to the recovery data on occasion, for the rest of my life… however, if i already have freshly ripped .flac files, then, when i finally get around to slogging through the 1TB MESS of recovered data, it will be slightly less of a concern if the archives i got are incomplete or corrupt. this is an ongoing project that is probably going to take several weeks to finish, and while it’s going on, i may not post here, as much.

hiding from the smoke and heat. it hasn’t been as bad as it was a couple years ago, but it’s definitely smoke season. i look out my office window and see orange skys and translucent air, and the AQI is 63, which is firmly in the “yellow” range. busking, yesterday, was an extra bonus, because it was around 10°F cooler at the market than it was at home… it’s 20° cooler than it was in june(!!), but it’s still in the high-90°s, which is extremely rare around here, in my experience. the government climate change investigatory committee just released the first part of their study, a few days ago, and it says what climat change activists have been saying for 30+ years, now, which is, basically, climate change is real, it’s happening, and it was definitely caused by humans… and then, two days later, 7 democrats switched positions, and voted with ALL the republicans, to pass a law making it illegal for the government to EVER ban fracking. 🤬 so, i guess that means that, ultimately, climate change will kill us all, but the rich people are going to die last. 🤬🤬 i have never wanted to, but it’s my impression that, soon, i will have to apologise to ezra for bringing him into a world where he may never reach his full potential, because of the thoughtlessness and carelessness of my immediate ancestors.

hiding from the virus. the delta variant is 1000 times more contagious than the original strain, and they’re saying that recipients of the pfizer vaccine, at least, will have to get a “booster” shot, but they’re not saying when it will be available, or how long we have to wait before getting one. in the mean time, schools have been making masks optional, and reopening, and then closing down again, when 40% of the students get COVID, while the right wing, q-anon devotee, anti-mask, anti-vax, trump morons are dying by the thousands, and STILL ranting their nonsense about it affecting pregnancies, or tracking microchips in the vaccine. there’s an image i saw on twitter that is, basically, a huge banner, strung between two cars, that says they’ll never get the vaccine, and that you’ll have to kill them… the ironic part is that, most likely, we won’t have to kill them, because the virus will do that for us, and we won’t have to do anything. hospitals are failing in missouri, texas, and florida, where the governors are particularly anti-mask and anti-vax, despite the surge in cases, and a vast majority of the fatalities have been people who refused the vaccine. at this rate, we’re going to be dealing with this pandemic for A LOT longer than the 1918 “spanish flu” pandemic, primarily because of STUPID people who won’t get the vaccine or wear masks, on account of their “freedom”. 🤬

ketchup

केत्छुप्

i got new glasses about 2 months ago. they’re round, for the first time since the 1990s. they also came with polarised brown “clip-on” sunglasses. i thought they looked really cool, and they matched the brown cap that i had been wearing…

but i quickly noticed that i was feeling REALLY depressed… like last year, when the smoke from the forest fires was so prevalent. i looked up and the sky was the same colour brown, and it felt like i was being opressed and couldn’t get away.

i did some research, and talked to a few people, and came to the conclusion that there is a modicum of truth to the old aphorism about “looking at the world through rose coloured glasses”… only these were crap coloured glasses.

so i ordered a set of grey clip-on sunglasses, and when i first put them on, i noticed a PROFOUND difference, almost immediately.

i moved stuff around in my office, in an attempt to make things easier to access. i’ve now got my main desktop computer, my amplifier and my printer on shelves, right next to the monitor, and i moved the speakers so that i’m more in the “sweet spot” when i’m sitting at my desk than i was before. i still have to figure out where my laptop is going to live, because it had been on the desk where the desktop computer is, now. for the moment, it’s folded up and sitting in one of the shelves, to my left. it’s okay there, for now, but i’m fairly sure that, when i actually have to use it for more than a few minutes, like a couple of days in a row, i’m going to have to figure out a new spot for it, because where it is now is not good in the long term. i have been thinking of going to ikea and seeing if there are some half-shelf inserts for the expidit (now called “kallax”) bookshelves, because i could probably make better use of some of the shelves if there were half-shelf increments in a couple of places.

i celebrated moving stuff around in my office by spending a few days digitising vinyl records. the turntable fits a lot better on the right side of my desk than it did on the left side, and it is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE easier to connect to the amplifier and computer. however, for some, unknown, reason, my internal CD/DVD ROM is not working correctly, so i can’t archive anything, once i have digitised it.

i sent out three emails to different agarbathiwalas that i know, who had expressed interest in the HPOI when i got it, but now that i actually have it in hand, i haven’t heard anything from them for a couple of weeks. i figure i can wholesale them for $25 a dozen and still make a profit, but if i haven’t heard anything from my email contacts soon, i’m going to try places like the Pike Place Pipe Palace, Tenzing Momo, and Zenith Supplies.

the weather has gotten nicer, and i am walking more, but i like to walk at sunset, and sunset is getting later and later as spring progresses. i like walking at sunset in my burnoose and djellaba, and being invisible. i’m also taking a basic circus skills for handicapped adults class, at SANCA, which is really cool, but i’m getting worn out by it really quickly. i really want to start going to the gym again, but i haven’t done it yet. 😕

politically, things continue to get worse, on a minute-by-minute basis. the probability is very high that congress will flip in november, which will mean that #drumpf will, in all likelyhood, be impeached, which will mean that mike pence will become president, which is an even worse proposition than #drumpf, in terms of human rights and the environment. whatever happens, we’re screwed, and will continue to be screwed for the forseeable future. when they said “emanentise the eschaton” i didn’t think it meant “by any means possible”. 😠

ketchup, miscellaneous

so it’s that season again…

the panto starts next weekend. we’re actually starting with a real audience on wednesday, which is actually our dress rehearsal, but we’ve invited a select few actual audience members to attend as well, so we can gauge our new bits.

it’s probably one of the most changed pantos, compared to the oregon country fair version… we haven’t actually changed the order of when things happen, like we did a few years ago, but we’ve added a whole bunch of new stuff, including two entirely new characters with their own sub-story.

we may also be adding new music — which we haven’t actually gotten yet — which should be interesting.

(ETA 161206) yep, we got a new song during last night’s tech rehearsal… 😕

politically, it keeps getting worse, almost by the hour. drumpf broke several decades of protocol and talked with the president of taiwan, had a twitter tirade over alec baldwin’s impressions of him on saturday night live (alec baldwin responded “release your tax returns and i’ll stop”), has gotten into a dick-measuring contest with china that threatens world war three, and he has appointed clearly and overwhelmingly unqualified people to positions of power which they are going to hold on to far longer than drumpf is going to be president… and that’s not to mention the fact that he has recently settled a lawsuit involving his fraudulent “trump university” for $25 million, still hasn’t released his tax returns (although it is rumoured that he hasn’t paid taxes in almost 30 years), STILL hasn’t said anything nasty about the ignorant, racist, bigoted, xenophobic people who are behind a rising wave of hate crime, that have been supporting him, and is already accepting financial favours from various different kings and potentates in violation of several well-established statutes prohibiting the president from making money by being president. i don’t see how it’s going to get better at all, in the short term, and, over the long term, i don’t anticipate my life getting significantly better than it is today, and i can forsee the distinct possibility of it getting considerably worse before there’s even a hint of it getting better… and i am a “priveledged” straight, white male. 😐

and i haven’t even started complaining about the dakota access pipeline and the surrounding furor involving that, or the “christians'” predictable and boring response to the “war on xmas” this year… although i have been putting OM AC cards in bell-ringers buckets.

bssb, depression, ketchup

केच्छुप्

1 Comment

our “three weekends in a row of performances” with the sousa band is over. snake suspenderz played a moisture festival gig in redmond last week…

redmond was a trip. i haven’t been there in a long time… probably not since stlabs moved from redmond to factoria, which (according to my handy-dandy chart of when things happened) was approximately 1998… i may have been there once since then, but… wow, things have changed A LOT since the last time i hung around there. the obvious thing i noticed right away was the overwhelming number of indian and asian families i saw. definitely different than 1998, that’s for sure.

and that’s not to mention the huge mall that has suddenly appeared where there used to be woods…

i’ve been more than ordinarily depressed for about a week. i’m convinced, at this point, that the only reason i’m able to recognise it is because of the 5-HTP i’ve been taking. it doesn’t stop the depression from happening, but it gives me a degree of separation from it, so instead of being bogged down with depression, i can say “oh, i’m depressed” and continue living my life, more or less. i’ve met (finally) with a person who may become the replacement for ned. she’s REALLY young (like, possibly, still in her 20s) but it seems like things will work out, which will probably help the bouts of depression when they happen in the future. it’s likely, however, that the lack of such a person is only exacerbating the depression this time.

one of the three-weekends-of-performances-in-a-row was at deception pass, a place i haven’t been to since approximately 1991. it’s really surprising to me how much i can remember just by going to a place, when i hardly remember anything without actually seeing the place.

160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass

the picture above is the underpinings of the deception pass bridge. i climbed across the bridge, beneath the road surface, a whole bunch of years ago, before they put up the sign that says “Climing on bridge is prohibited”. unfortunately, when i got to the other side, the only place to get down from the bridge is on the top of a concrete pylon that’s about 25 feet above the ground… which, of course, meant that i had to climb back across the bridge to the place where i could get off without breaking my neck.

160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
160723 deception pass
ketchup, miscellaneous

fleeb

last week we went to the beach at moclips. next week i’m going to orlando and warrensburg to see people that i haven’t seen for 40 years (in orlando) and people to whom i am related, but have never met in person before (in warrensburg). it’s also going to be the first time i have flown cross-country and been on the east coast this century, and the first time since my injury… which was 13 years ago, if my memory serves…

it’s also what my handy-dandy chart of when things happen says, so my memory does serve for once.

i’m having the hybrid elephant web site re-designed. instead of using OSCommerce, i’m using wordpress and woocommerce, which will make it a lot easier to keep up to date. i’m fairly sure that it will also provide me a much needed alternative to paypal in the payment department. it’s alledgedly going to be going live, soon… as soon as a few final details are worked out…

ketchup, miscellaneous

miscellaneous ketchup

160418 selfie with swastika
160418 selfie with swastika

i’ve been reading about how micro-dosing with LSD or mushrooms helps to overcome farcebook addiction. i really need to give it a try, because my farcebook addiction is almost overwhelming.

moisture festival is over for another year. as with last year, i’m torn over whether or not i’m actually going to be performing in next year’s moisture festival. great people, with a few exceptions, but those few exceptions make life miserable for the period of time that i have to deal with them, and everybody else either ignores it or doesn’t know it’s happening. more details should occur around the time that MF decides to issue my check. i know for a fact that it’s going to be considerably less than last year. how much less will play a pivotal role in what’s going to happen next year.

we’re spending a week at the beach, in may. then i’m going to orlando and warrensburg. tomorrow is bicycle day, and the day after that is 4/20… unfortunately, i won’t have any of my own weed on 4/20, because of the blasted spider mites, but i’ll have plenty of mean green, because i can. 8)

my trip to orlando and warrensburg is slowly developing into a deep sense of foreboding and dread. i have absolutely no idea what to expect — seriously, i go from being really excited, to deciding that i’m going to cancel the whole thing as an expensive mistake — and, for sure, i’m going to be, either, in the presence of people who possibly don’t like me, don’t have time to deal with me, or i will be completely, 100% alone in a city halfway across the continent from anything like “safety” and “home”… the only reason i haven’t cancelled it is because i found out that Wonder India (the U.S. supplier of aparajita) has a branch in orlando, and, if nothing else, it’s only going to be a little bit more than a week, and i’m 51% certain that i can hold out for that long on my own, if it comes to that.

ketchup, pictures

catchup

moe is better. she didn’t have norovirus, just a bad case of food poisoning. but she is under a lot of stress, which is not good. she doesn’t have enough people working for her, and she has to travel in march, which means that she’s either got to find enough, qualified people to work for her really quickly, and bring them up to speed, or the clinic will have to cut back hours and/or close during the time she’s travelling, which, basically, isn’t an option, and even if it was, it’s not hers to make anyway. also, the place that was going to do the body work on her car screwed up their appointment with her to have an estimate made on the car, and didn’t call her back like they said they were going to, which means that we’re probably not going to be able to get the body work done on her car while she’s travelling in march.

and, of course, i’m doing what i can to help, but it’s not enough, and i don’t want her to break, because i’m going to have problems dealing with a broken person when i’m already pretty broken myself… 8/

plants doing well — how could they not be, actually — 3 under flowering light, 9 clones under vegetative light. probably another month and a half or so before harvest. maybe more…

planties
planties
planties
planties
planties
planties

allegedly, there are space queen starts that i can access, but i don’t know for sure yet. 8)

i’m thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to add another loft in the workshop. it would only take four 2×6 beams and some plywood, and then i’d have a whole bunch more storage space that would clear out a lot of space on the floor of the workshop, and in the spare bedroom. moe keeps saying that, eventually, i’ll move the plants to the floor of the workshop, but i don’t see that happening any time soon. however i do see the extra loft being built. it’s going to have to wait until we get nicer weather, though, because building something that large in the workshop is going to mean moving a whole bunch of stuff out and storing it somewhere else for two or three days.

bellingham, didjeriflute, ketchup, malfunctioning people, rants, spam

ketchup

i isolated 10 “good enough” tracks from the raw files, but none of them were more than 6 minutes, and i wanted at least one that was 10 minutes or more, so i’m going back to fort worden next tuesday to try it all again. i’ve also bought a recording device of my own, which should make things more interesting, if nothing else.

i woke up the other day and tried to log in to my email account and discovered that everything was offline, and when i went to the host provider to determine why, i discovered that my account had been suspended because they received a spam complaint about me… except that, when i looked at the complaint they received, i recognised it immediately as one that i had sent to an upstream provider a couple of days before, and what they had done was forward it to the upstream provider on the “From:” line, instead of reading the headers to determine that they were, in fact, the people responsible… and, because of the fact that i NEVER receive spam complaints, they arbitrarily suspended my accounts, instead of reading the headers to determine who was actually responsible. 😕 since then i have received about 10,000 spam messages, in 1000 message increments, from people whose php servers have been compromised such that, simply by reading the headers and knowing where to click, i can actually see the spammers online interface on the compromised server…

but I was the one whose account was suspended for spamming. if it weren’t for the fact that i’m still recovering from my bout of changing host servers every few months, a few years ago, i would seriously consider switching, but… in spite of everything, the host server i currently use has been better than any of the others that i have found, for the price.

by the way, here is the place to get your email headers analysed, and here is the place to get information about the IP numbers you’ll get from analysing your email headers. basically it’s the same thing that spamcop used to do. i suppose there’s a way to automate it so that i don’t have to go through all the steps to figure out who gets the LARTs, but i like getting my hands dirty, because i know it’s being done correctly this way. 😏

i have a gig next saturday with the fremont philharmonic at “dudefest” and another gig on sunday at the peace arch in blaine with the sousa band. i’m probably going to spend sunday night in bellingham… depending…

geek stuff, ketchup

케첩

also, i am “in the cloud” now…

recently i bought a 2TB hard disk with NAS (from frys, for under $100!), which allows me to connect, literally, from anywhere. now i’ve got a place to keep my /home directory that’s accessible by ALL my computers and electronic devices but, conveniently, NOT accessible by anybody else (unless i, personally, make an account for that person), and, most significantly, is NOT owned by apple, microsoft, google, yahoo, dropbox, or any other corporate interests.

now, along with all the other stuff i have to do, i have to move my /home directory from both my linux box and my mac over to the cloud drive, and compact them, because a lot of the information from my /home directory is duplicated on both machines…

<sigh>…

it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that i was terrifically impressed by the 4TB array i was working with, which had the capability to handle millions of individual email messages to thousands of different users… and it doesn’t seem like it was too much longer ago than that, when i was totally impressed with an 80MB external hard disk, which i likened to an “electronic black hole, into which i could toss files forever and never be able to fill”…

the 2TB drive sits on my bookshelf, with two other terabyte drives, one 2TB and one 1TB, surmounted by my router, which is about the same size as one of the drives…

ezra, ganesha the car, hybrid elephant, ketchup, web design

catsup

i’m still more or less stuck on the new web site, but i’m not really worried about it, because i continue to get orders from the current one… yes, i’m not always getting all the emails i should be getting regarding customer orders, but i continue getting the most important ones. also i still haven’t discovered an alternative for paypal, but both of those things may be mitigated by the fact that i may be hiring a professional to “do it for me” at some point. at this point, such a thing would only happen after a disaster, such as somebody cracking the site in a way from which i can’t recover on my own, or something like the current version of PHP or the database no longer being supported, or something like that. it remains a fantasy, but part of the current fantasy for the near future.

today i helped ezra move a four-foot-by-four-foot “painting” from his apartment in the central district to a recording studio in fremont. it barely fit in my car. the word “painting” is in quotation marks because the object looks like, and functions like a painting, but is, actually, made from scraps of vinyl. we also spent some time wandering up and down the burke-gilman trail discussing recent events, future plans, fantasies and miscellania. he’s going to lisbon for a couple of weeks, and then he’s doing a residency in central oregon for a month… my son is thinking of moving out of state, and perhaps even out of the country, on a more-or-less permanent basis.

i’ve gone through one “artist” who said that they would make a vector representation of my raster-based file. i don’t know whether or not they actually made a vector represntation of my file, because they responded with a “proof copy” and then stopped responding… which, i suppose, i should have expected, considering that i found out about them on “fiverr dot com”, which is, allegedly, a place you can go to find just about anything for increments of $5. i’ve sent a preliminary file to a “professional” in florida, who claims to do the same thing, although more “reliably” and, predictably, for more money, but they, too, said they would get back to me in 24 hours, and that hasn’t happened yet. fortunately, i haven’t actually forked over any money, yet, but this person’s web site had many, glowing testamonials from seemingly responsible, professional businesses and suchlike, so i’m hoping that the only reason i haven’t heard from her yet is because it’s sunday.

once i actually receive a vector drawing based on my raster drawing, i’m going to give it to the local guy who does vehicle wraps, and get a proof from him, and then, if i like it, i’m going to get a vehicle wrap on my car. i may, actually, be able to fit all 1008 names of ganesha on my car, due to the fact that i can, more acturately, render the typeface size because it’s from an electronic file, and not painted by me… 😎

ketchup, miscellaneous

hot spoons

last post on the 24th. at that time, i had nothing scheduled until a saturday gig with snake/rhino. since then:

i had an appointment with ned and an appointment with stick on monday, which involved driving to and from seattle, tuesday i took moe’s car into the shop to have its brakes replaced, and did two printing jobs for BFNA, one of which got shipped today… then, today, i was rick’s transportation to tacoma, i got the oil changed in my car, went out to the farm to pick up half a lamb, and went to the bank…

and, while it’s not been particularly hot (mid-70s to low-80s) for the past few days, it’s also been overcast and rainy, which makes it a lot more humid than it usually is… and it feels like a sauna…

wait, maybe that’s how to deal with hot, humid weather: no clothes! 8)

i’m hoping that i can rouse some more interest in busking tomorrow, among my (now) many friends who engage in such pastimes