i ordered something that was shipped from gainesville, florida, on the 30th of april…
250506 fun with the post office
i’m going to bet that it WILL NOT be delivered on time, and that the postal service has their head up their collective asses again. 😒
i am getting SO TIRED of #drumpf and his minions… 😠
ETA: and, now, the web site informs me that i can’t get assistance with my package until the 9th… i guess that’s one way of dealing with the problem of not being accurate on their estimates of arrival times… 😒
250426 custom-tailored band jacket – dark purple velvet, knee-length jacket with a maroon vest, cuffs, and lapels with gold accents
i think i may have taken the purple suit to a new and unheard-of height of preposterousness. 😉
so, the father of a guy i know made him a bright pink band jacket, and i asked him if he could ask his father to make me one. last month, the guy face-timed me from pittsburgh, where his father had a whole bunch of fabric that he COULD make a jacket out of, and asked me if i wanted something other than bright pink, to match his jacket… and one of the fabrics he had was this dark purple velvet, which, to me, looks EXACTLY like a ’60s-era psychedelic rock band jacket… add to that the maroon-with-gold-accents for the cuffs, lapels and vest, and… well… $450.00 later, i’ve got a custom-tailored, ’60s-era psychedelic rock band jacket that is exactly like nobody else’s IN THE WORLD!! 😎
now, i’ve either got to find a whole bunch of new gigs in which to wear it…
or i’m going to become one of those people who dress strangely when going to fred meyers.
i woke up in an AWFUL mood, partially, at least, because i had a REALLY disturbing dream about two friends, who are moving AGAIN in real life… and, apart from the general feeling of dread i get whenever I have had to move, rubbing off, i don’t remember why it was so disturbing. i got up, and went through the motions, taking care of practical stuff (like laundry, dishes, doctor’s appointment, etc.), while wishing i could die, or at least sleep for longer, without having disturbing dreams.
over the weekend, i went to bellingham, to get some starts from darol… who is SEVENTY FOUR now… 😲 he said that, when it became legal, he lost his customer base, and hasn’t actually SOLD any cannabis for about six years. 😲 he still grows his own, though, and he has a healthy crop that is still under vegetative lights, from which he gave me a few.
250415 under lights
three “medium sized” “starts” (which are big enough that i might put them outside right away, if the weather stays nice), one “small” start, which is STILL bigger than the “starts” i have gotten elsewhere, plus two from seed, which are the ones with the paper markers, because they’re still small enough that i can’t see them without a clue…
darol also gave me some “surprising, but not surprising” news about my older-younger sister and her, apparently now “used-to-be” husband, which strikes me as REALLY typical and even expected, but still, not something that i would have entirely thought possible for someone who USED TO BE a friend of mine (admittedly, a long time ago). and everybody’s dying — 😒 — while i seem to be chugging along like nobody’s business, despite the fact that i think i’ve got long COVID (thus the doctor’s appointment). 😒
then, this afternoon, i went out, ostensibly to wash my car in preparation for SACBO, for which i just registered, and went for a drive, ostensibly to dry my car because i’m too lazy to pay for a drier, and sat through FOURTY-FIVE MINUTES of traffic to go the QUARTER MILE between snoqualmie ridge and the freeway, because of a new traffic light on a street that doesn’t even exist yet, but which had an empty cop car with its lights going sitting next to it… (😒), and, despite everything, the mood of the morning appears to have passed.
and, when i got home, i had a UPS package containing a wireless charger and two cube-taps which i needed to further refine my office space. 😉
i started them today. these are seeds from last year, but if they’re anything like last year’s crop, they should be pretty good. i’m also going up to bellingham, on sunday, where i hope to see darol and get some of his starts, which are, by definition, excellent. 😎👍
it’s a good thing it’s legal, considering the political/social dumpster-fire-in-a-flood-in-a-tornado that is currently happening. i wonder when it’s going to change?
since our trip to double bluff went so poorly, last year, we went to campbell this year, and successfully hiked about 5 miles without seeing another person… until we got outside the gate on the way back, at which point we saw what we could only guess was a keg party or something like that — five cars, one of which was definitely NOT going to make it all the way to the campbell gate (because the road is so pot-holed) inhabited by several girls in party clothes, and two guys on motorcycles (which are banned inside campbell), one of whom had what looked like a couple cases of beer strapped to his luggage rack… 🤷
as a xmas gift, moe and i were given paint-by-numbers sets based on a photograph of a pet that we sent in, in november. moe’s was a black-and-white photo of magick, which moe finished yesterday, and it looks like it was a professionally done painting. mine was a photo of timmy, sitting on one of his little shelves in the bedroom. we started the paintings on the 13th, and i finished mine last night, at ten minutes before midnight.241231 23.49 Tim Minchin, The Cat — paint-by-numbersit looks better from a distance, or as a photo… my guess is that part of the reason is that it started out as a photo, to begin with, but also, speaking as an artist, the colour palette is way off… timmy is a yellowish-orange cat, and the painting made him out to be pinkish-flesh-tones. now that i’m actually finished painting the numbers, my next task is to figure out a “wash” to make it more orangish and less pinkish. 😒
it’s really interesting to paint stuff again… i used to paint a lot, when i was in my 30s, and i still have a lot of sort-of “professional” painting equipment: an adjustable easel, a huge collection of paint brushes and palette knives, a couple mahlsticks, and even a bunch of blank, stretched canvasses, in the garage. i found out, today, as i was searching for a colour to make a wash, that all of my watercolour paints have dried up (which is no great surprise), so i’m probably going to have to scout out a new art supplies store, since the ones i used when i was in my 30s no longer exist.
between tuesday night, 241119, and wednesday morning, 241120, we experienced a “bomb cyclone” (whatever that means: basically a huge wind storm, with lots of rain) that took out electricity in ALL of western washington, from the sea-tac area up to vancouver, bc, and left many roads impassable. we got electricity back on sunday, 241124, which is also when 276th/issaquah-hobart road (two of the three ways to get here) opened up again, following MANY trees fallen over the road and utility lines.
ALLEDGEDLY we’re going to have internet restored thursday, 241128 (i’m writing this on my tablet, which is using my cell-phone WIFI hot spot to connect to internet), but i’m not holding my breath, because it’s a “holiday” (for what, i never have gotten it entirely straight), and, besides, i went out today, and saw MANY downed lines, trees over lines, and general mayhem and confusion… although i didn’t see ANY traffic lights out, today, which is quite a bit different than it was a couple days ago.
#drumpf and his cronies don’t believe climate change exists, and they want to fire all of the people in government who maintain otherwise. if our infrastructure is so fragile that all it takes is one bigger-than-normal wind storm to knock everything out for more than a week, what we’re experiencing now is, very likely, as good as it’s POSSIBLY going to get for the forseeable future.
in order to prevent myself from flipping out (too much) about the election (🤮), i have been going through and categorising my remaining vinyl albums. at this point there are two loose categories, those that i want to keep, and those that i want to sell. the ones that i want to sell are also in two, loose categories, those that are already on discogs, and those that are not yet on discogs. the pile i want to keep already almost fills the “record safe” box i got on freecycle, a few years ago, and, when i’m done categorising everything, the “record safe” should be close to full. the pile that are not yet on discogs is growing, as well, which is where everything else is going. i got some blank cardboard record sleeves, some rice-paper inner sleeves, and some vinyl outer sleeves, so that ALL of the records i send out will have adequate protection, and look “more professional”. this is the last dregs of the vinyl dump from KUGS that started (<mumble mumble>) years ago (ten? fifteen? who knows… 🙄) which is the primary reason i am now in possession of records like The Passion and Transfiguration of a Post-Apocalyptic Eunuch, and The Nova Convention, and From The Music of Harry Partch, and Feet Hacked Rails. also, since i actually HAVE my turntable set up and operational, now, i have been re-ripping the albums i USED TO HAVE ripped, but which were lost in the great cloud drive crack of 2021… another small step in recovering a tiny fraction of what was lost — sigh…
last sunday i fell off my unicycle and fucked up my tuba playing hand — just in time for the players to announce a new gig with a new brewer in the area, for which we have an emergency rehearsal this sunday, and are performing an “abbreviated” panto at some location of which i have yet to learn… on tuesday… my hand has been going through the stages of being severely bruised (blue, then purple, then yellow/green), but nothing is broken, or even fractured, so, presumably, it will go back to normal, or something like that, eventually. it’s well enough that i’m only having a little trouble typing, although immediately after it happened, i couldn’t even close my fist without significant pain.
241112 – right hand fucked up after falling off unicycle
it’s not the same as when i was 35, and i could just expect everything to get better… 😒
it’s slowly coming together: i actually put together the turntable and ripped the stack of albums i had been collecting for the past few years, and i have shipped out two incense orders, WITHOUT having to re-arrange stuff, or unplug stuff… and i discovered that my linux box, indeed, DOES HAVE a WIFI adaptor, which means that i can plug the printer into the mac more-or-less permanently and not have to switch the cable when i want to print from the linux box…
i’ve still got a mixer in a box, and a huge pile of cables, which will, ultimately, hook the synth and the piano to the mixer, and the mixer to the amplifier, and i’ve still got a box for the turntable which i have to decide where to store, but those are both lower priority, now that i’ve got the main part of the office straightened out.
241016 pano south west north241016 pano north east south
in other news, i replaced two strands of rainbow lights on the outside of our house, because the old ones were burned out, or burning out, and while i was messing around with ladders, i decided that it would be a good idea to clean out the gutters, since the weather was nice. i didn’t clean ALL the gutters, because there are a few of them that are too high for me to reach, comfortably, with the ladders i have. the new strand of lights is a good deal less dense than the old ones were (fewer lights per foot 😒) but they were the only ones i could find that are JUST rainbow coloured lights, without colour-changing, remotes for choosing the colours or flashing patterns, or a “controller app” for a phone, so i suppose they’ll have to do… despite the fact that the instructions clearly state “this seasonal use product is not intended for permanent installation or use.” and “do not use seasonal products outdoors”… despite the fact that these are clearly labeled for outdoor use… 🙄
241008 office re-orgit is finally coming together… slowly…
i finally got a couple of shelf brackets for my speakers, and then discovered, because i had ordered them online and not had the chance to inspect them in person before purchasing them, that the brackets don’t fit with any of the THREE DIFFERENT sets of speakers which i currently own(!), and, despite the fact that i ordered them online, they can only be returned “in store”, although the store won’t reimburse me, because i paid through paypal… 😖🤨
so i had to order ANOTHER “floating shelf” — online, OF COURSE 🙄 — but, because of the fact that these were “shelves” and not “brackets”, i got them to work, which meant that i — FINALLY — hooked up my speakers, and connected the computer, so that, now, i have music that is a subdued volume and doesn’t blast in my ears from wireless “party” speakers which have no volume control… 😒
and — OF COURSE 🙄 — after having realised it was missing, and spending three weeks or so looking for it, i found the patch diagram which shows all of the devices and their preferred inputs and outputs, a few days later, and — NATURALLY 🙄 — i have ALREADY plugged things in incorrectly… 😩
slowly… 😒
and i am STILL getting used to having a mouse that i can hold naturally and click without twisting my wrist. 🤬 right-handers are a lot more insidious than they appear.
yeah, it hasn’t changed much, but motivation is a major obstacle with this project… i really didn’t want to start it, in spite of the fact that it needed to be done, and has for a very long time, now (upwards of two years)… the big problem is that what i REALLY need is a bigger mixer — which is the thing to the right of the computer monitor, on top of the stack of stereo components, in the white box, in the picture above. if i don’t get a new mixer, the next alternative is a specialised, custom-built patch bay, so that i can unplug and re-configure the studio without having to pull out the individual components, and root around behind them to re-configure everything. basically, the mixer is big enough to give me playing capability for my piano and synthesizer OR to give me recording capability for my record player and tape recorder… but not both. and to switch from recording to playing involves completely reconfiguring the mixer and the pre-amp (the bottom on the stack of stereo components, in the black box) before any actual “tinkering” can be done…
and, for that matter, i don’t even have that set up, because i have to decide where the speakers (currently on the right margin of the photo above, about in the middle) are going to go, and mount them, before i can even think about getting started with anything else, and, what with the aforementioned reconfiguring rigamarole, plus the fact that i haven’t actually produced any original music since about 2015, my motivation for setting up the stereo is minimal… at this point i’ve got the music player on my tablet talking to two battery-powered, bluetooth “speakers” (which double as “party lights”), and that’s about all i can get motivated to do.
and there are some things that i would swear i would have been able to put my hands on almost immediately, before i started this whole miasma, which are now nowhere to be found. they’re not REALLY important (my folder of music i wrote in high school, a couple of books (both found shortly after posting this), the box of CDs that i am selling, etc., etc.), but it’s really almost enough to make me wish i hadn’t started this reorganisation project to begin with. 😒
the thing about depression
well you just can’t let it get you down
you have to see the world for what it is
a circus full of freaks and clowns
and you’ll never please everybody
it’s a well established fact, he said
i recommend a fifth of jack and a bottle of prozac
this is the new office configuration. the “closet” is now a sitting desk, which (eventually) will have mostly things like the stereo amp, tape recorder, turntable, and mixer on it, with the first shelf for things like the printer. the sit/stand desk is in the standing configuration, now, but it won’t accept the old monitor riser that i used to use (it’s too thick, plus the glass surface wouldn’t hold up to the heavy duty clamp that secures it to the desk), and i’m not sure how to raise the monitor, because PHONE BOOKS DON’T EXIST ANY LONGER 😒 i’m thinking of re-purposing the two smaller shelves that are currently on the main part of the desk, putting them on the, wider, first shelf, and adding stuff that used to be on top of the bookcase (which is out of the shot, behind me)…
because, well, i read “Earth to Moon” recently, which is Moon Unit Zappa’s reminiscences of growing up with Frank Zappa as a father, and what i read gave me a whole new outlook on Frank: i still like his music, and i still think he was a musical genius, and he said a lot of things that i will still quote at the end of my emails, but (and i’m definitely going to sound like my parents, here) — DAMN!! — he was an AWFUL parent!! 🤬 and a questionable role model, at best… which means that the bookcase covers up a lot of space where my frank zappa posters were, and i’m not sure how (or if) i want to replace them.
but everything is not moved back in, yet, and i still don’t have a functioning stereo, and, in spite of the newly created shelf space, and newly created shelves in a couple of different places in the office, i’m STILL wondering where i’m going to put stuff.
i feel a lot better than i did a week ago, but it’s still not over, yet, and i’m getting really tired of it.
germinated 240618, things are proceeding nicely and, according to the packaging, they should be ready to flower… personally, i think i’m going to give them a couple more weeks before switching the lights. at this point there’s little to lose, and a lot more to gain to let them grow a couple more weeks, and, as they’re already under lights, it’s a trivial matter to switch them when I decide is best, and not natural processes. 😉
… because of the well-known fact that all ginger cats share one brain cell…
yes, Timothy Burch, otherwise known as “TIMMAH!” from South Park, is a ginger. 😉
as all of our cats have been named after musicians or composers (“Charlie” was named after Ray Charles, “George and Ira Gershwin” was obvious, “Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, The Tookah” was named after David Bowie, and “Frank Zappa” was obvious), “technically”, he is named after Tim Minchin… who is also a ginger. 😉
240811 Timothy “TIMMAH!” David Minchin240811 Timothy “TIMMAH!” David Minchin
he lived a normal cat life up until last saturday, when he stopped eating, which we figured was because of his IBS, from which he has suffered for a few years now. we medicated his IBS, and things seemed to be getting better on monday, but then he quit eating again, and today he developed a fever, so i took him in to the vet, and they discovered a “mass” in his abdomen, which, thanks to exploratory surgery (which i got to watch!!), was determined to be two fairly large cancerous tumours in his small intestine… at which point moe and i decided that it would be better to euthanise him than it would be to wake him up so that WE could “have more time with him”…
240801 the last photo of frank zappa (the cat)240705 Frank Zappa (the cat)160418 ROTFL-Meow!150523 frank zappa (the cat)’s right front paw
somebody, recently (i would say probably within the last 2 or 3 days, at most), left flowers on his grave… the only possibilities that ian and i could think of is 1) his father, which, considering his father, isn’t particularly likely, 2) some cousin or relative that ian and i don’t know about, which is somewhat more likely, but, considering the location (finn hill cemetery is in a REMOTE corner of central, western washington, not close to ANYBODY’S house, with the exception of — possibly — his grandparents’ house, but as his grandparents are also buried in the cemetery, not particularly likely), or 3) some random church-goer who regularly goes around to the cemeteries in the area and leaves flowers at random graves, to make it look like someone remembers these people… which, considering the remote, out-of-the-way location, we figure, is the most likely possibility.
and, now, there are cucumbers planted there, as well. see ya’, randy. 😉
so, ON MY BIRTHDAY, in 2015, i took this picture of a furry in xavanadu…
150711 furry in xavanadu
again, ON MY BIRTHDAY, almost 10 years LATER, in 2024, i posed with Timber, a furry dog, in the photo ID booth…
240711 salamandir and Timber
without realising that they were the same person, and under the impression that they WEREN’T the same person, i, enthusiastically, told Timber about this picture i took of another furry, a few years ago…
today, after exchanging emails with Timber, i found out that both of these furries have THE SAME PERSON underneath the fur-suit! 🤣
it’s NO WONDER that, when i saw Timber, in 2024, i IMMEDIATELY thought of the furry that i took a picture of in 2015. he says “I intentionally tried to make them look quite close to one another in the facial markings and general body pattern”. he doesn’t wear the older fur-suit at fair any longer, but he says that it’s “a real treat to see some more pictures of my “younger” self from a few years ago.” 😉
things went A LOT more smoothly than… just about ANY other OCF since i have been attending…
i left at 09:00 and pulled in to the public lot (i think it’s called “Trotter’s Field”) at around 14:30, and i WALKED UP to the registration booth — there was NO waiting in line in the broiling sun for hours at a time — and the guy found my name in his registration book right away… it took MAYBE twenty minutes, total! then, while i was on the way back to my car, i realised that my car was parked in THE MIDDLE of a huge, colossal, developing, traffic FUCK-UP that it was going to take me an hour to slog through… so i decided to wait in line, and not stress about it…
the guy in the car DIRECTLY behind me, on the other hand, was definitely impatient and stressed. he kept honking his horn and yelling, as though i could have gone anywhere. the traffic-control hippie eventually went back and talked to him, but he still kept yelling until i pulled away from him, at which point he started yelling even louder, because the traffic-control hippies weren’t letting him bully his way into the line ahead of everyone else. 🤣
then i proceeded to the “full-load teddy” booth, but the second-to-last hippie before the booth said that if i wasn’t actually driving into the eight, that i didn’t need a teddy, and to just drive right on through, which i did… i very quickly found out that this was a LIE, but, by the time i found out, i was already most of the way to the stage, and the hippie that informed me of the lie wasn’t going to waste my time by sending me back for a teddy. 😉
i drove up to the stage, unloaded my gear, got the second choice of camping spots — the first one had too much undergrowth and wasn’t big enough for my tent 😢 — got my tent set up and my gear loaded in, and took my car to where the SCOFlot used to be, only to discover that they have turned the SCOFlot into camping, and the new “handicapped” lot is north miss piggy, which is across the street and back towards registration, but still not that far from where i was camped. i found the lot, and parked, with the assurance that, as long as i had a handicapped placard, that all would be well, AT LEAST until thursday, and MAYBE all weekend, but the hippie in charge of the lot wasn’t sure.
so i left my car with the assurance that, if i came back tomorrow, they would let me know whether or not i had to move it somewhere else at that time… and it turned out that i didn’t have to move it at all… and i was a little stressed about having an expired handicapped placard, but they didn’t ask, and i didn’t tell, so i was able to use the handicapped placard with no problems… and, as sasha said, it’s not as though my handicap expires when the placard expires… even though it’s not REALLY my placard to begin with… 😉
i walked back to camp and was drinking a (cold) beer, backstage at the morningwood odditorium, by 18:30, a full TWO HOURS before i was planning! 👍👍
the shows were, typically, disorganised and chaotic at first, but not bad. the band member who missed the last rehearsal at the sweat shop who said he “absolutely was going to make the dress rehearsal at the stage”, arrived after the dress rehearsal was over, but it didn’t make any difference. we put together music for a last-minute show called “Pappenspiel”, which was two older german people (from berlin) doing bizarre, clown/puppet/mask-type stuff, which went A LOT better than i expected the first time, and got progressively better every show. i forgot to pack ear plugs (they’re already on the list for next year), which was a bit of a problem friday night, but nothing i couldn’t sleep through, and there was a booth two or three down “Phun Way” from morningwood, that was giving away free narcan, free COVID tests, and free earplugs, which was a LIFE SAVER saturday night! 😎 the bassoon player and her partner tested positive for COVID saturday evening, and left, hurriedly, sunday morning, before the first show, but, somehow, we managed to adjust the show tunes to cover the fact that we were missing an instrument… and — SO FAR (fingers crossed) — there hasn’t been anybody ELSE in our crew that has tested positive since then. we took down the stage, and had all of the crew stuff mostly packed up and staged for the arrival of the truck by 21:00 sunday evening, and, once again, i sat around back “stage” at morningwood drank beer, smoked pot, and talked about The Church of Tina Chopp with a pretty young girl who is a philosophy major in college, but never heard of it before… 😈
it was UNREASONABLY hot — between 95° and 110° every day from about 10:00 until sunset, but it cooled off nicely once the sun went away… but, of course, the lack of sun at night only encouraged the mosquitos, which were RAVENOUS. the backstage area had some new bug-repeller devices that worked better than the ones we have used previously, so it wasn’t so bad backstage, but everywhere else the bugs were endemic. i went by white bird on wednesday evening, to warn them about my recent bout of diverticulitis, but the only time we actually NEEDED someone from white bird was when one of the UkeLadies had not been hydrating enough and passed out just as she was going on stage… she had to be hauled out in a moving cart, but i saw her the next day and she said she was fine. once again, i avoided the ritz — i didn’t even walk by it, because of the heat — and i only took one shower, which was 5 minutes (or “three pushes” of the knob that lets out the water) of INTENSELY cold water, which was enough… but it was not enough, and i took a LONG shower pretty much as soon as i got home… five days of unreasonably hot weather and only one shower was a little much, but it wasn’t enough to make me even THINK about not going again next year…
monday morning, i woke up around 07:30 and decided that it would be a GOOD THING to break camp and pack up BEFORE it got to be hot as hell, with the result being that i pulled out at 09:15 and arrived home at 14:35.
and now, the pictures:
240711 salamandir and Timber
i don’t know how he was handling the heat… it was 100° in the shade, and he was wearing a full-body fur-suit… i would have DIED! 😱
240711 google lens says that this is a varigated meadowhawk, but i’m not certain
Varigated Meadowhawk is Sympetrum corruptum, which is an interesting binomial name, but it gets even more interesting when you realise that there is also a Sympetrum ambiguum, or “blue-faced” meadowhawk… 😉
240711 wooden dragon sculpture240713 dance pavilion and moon240713 random glowing hippie shit240714 Gadzooks! It’s a stump! right next to the stage, all that is left of the shittimwood tree after which the morningwood odditorium is named.240712 some random hippie240714 some random hippie
Some Random Hippie from 2004 to 2019… then EVERYONE missed two years, because of COVID, and then i missed a FURTHER year because of COVID (😒)… then Some Random Hippie from 2023.
i went for a 3 mile walk up the green river gorge to franklin, a ghost town east of black diamond. there’s not much of a “town” there, any longer, having been abandoned by 1920, and i didn’t see any ghosts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t there, if you believe in such things.
240702 Green River Gorge240702 Green River Gorge240702 Green River Gorge
there is, actually, a “Green River Gorge Resort” which has the DISTINCT trappings of a former hippie commune, or something like that, although, these days, who knows who lives there. i parked across the street, at a public-access artesian well.
240702 Green River Gorge Resort — a former hippie commune, from the 1960s?240702 Green River Gorge Resort240702 Green River Gorge Resort240702 Green River Gorge Resort240702 Green River Gorge Resort
here is what is left of the town of franklin. click to embiggen.
240702 – Franklin, WA
uphill about half a mile from the site of the town, is an open mine shaft from the turn of the 20th century. it’s allegedly 1,300 feet deep, but there’s no way to verify that, at this point, because safety nerds took after it, in 1984, and made it “safe for human consumption”.
240702 — the Franklin Mine Shaft240702 — the Franklin Mine Shaft
my previous attempt at starting from seed was a horrible disaster, which resulted in my coddling four, then three, then two pitiful plants from relatively healthy, to severely stressed, to slowly and painfully dying over the course of about a month. i’m not sure what i did, or did not do, that brought about this sad course of action — there are a number of things that i did which could have caused some stress, and a couple of things that i didn’t do which might have contributed to the problem, but i don’t know. 😢
however, i actually bought more space queen seeds, and this time they’re doing A LOT better…
240620 space queen after two weeks240620 space queen after two weeks240620 space queen after two weeks
according to the label, indoor plants are expected to flower in 65 days. i hope so. 😉
the word “swastika” comes from the sanskrit word “स्वस्तिक” (/svastika/) which means “little good luck charm”. the word “swastika” replaced the more common greek word “γαμμάδιον” (/gammadion/) — which means “four letter “G”s” — in the 19th century (≈ 1800s CE).
the swastika is one of human-kind’s oldest symbols. it has appeared on rock carvings dated to 10,000 years ago, approximately 8,000 BCE, in what is now ukraine, as a symbol of fertility and good auspices. the swastika has been used by every people-group on the planet (including the hebrew people) as a symbol of good luck, love, life, light, and auspiciousness of every kind, until approximately 90 years ago, when it was cöopted by nazis in the 1930s.
one of my favourite artists, ManWoman, said this:
Think of the most sacred thing in your life, think of the most precious thing in your life, and put the Swastika into that place. Put the Swastika into your heart. Put the Swastika on your altar. Put the Swastika on the image you use to represent god, love, peace, or the cosmos. Put the Swastika on the thing that makes you happy. You will BEGIN to see what the Swastika has meant to humans over this entire planet for all of our human history. For these places are exactly the places it occupied for thousands of years, until the second world war, when it fell victim to a chronic infection.
Swastika of peace, by ManWoman
in the past 20 years, i have seen a great deal of improvement, overall, in the general attitude of the public, concerning use of the swastika, particularly if it is NOT depicted as the nastys do, (a black, right-facing symbol, rotated 45 degrees, on a white circle, with a red background), but, even so, i had a good, artist, friend of mine tell me, last weekend, that, in her opinion, any swastika was “evil”… apparently including the swastika that she, unknowingly, put on her own art-car, which, when i pointed it out to her, her immediate response was “that’s not a swastika”, even though it clearly WAS.
211105 The Swastika takes many forms, but it’s still a Swastika. The issue is not whether Hitler’s Swastika is different from ours. The issue is that it is our Swastika, not Hitler’s.
here’s hoping that, in another 20 years, humanity will have gone back to the PROPER use of the swastika. ࿗
peering out at me from an otherwise innocent-looking box of generic™ breakfast cereal on the shelf at the grocery store, as i was going about my business…
so i decided to put my photoshop™The GIMP skills (such as they are) to the task of bringing him out in the open…
240528 – Kellogg’s™ EVIL Frosted Mini Wheats
it’s actually somewhat surprising how little i had to do to this in order to completely change the character of the entire graphic… a “free select” tool to select just the eyebrows (highly convenient that they are ALREADY on a white background!), “float” to separate them from the main graphic, then clone-stamp to fill in the resulting blank space, a little rotation of each eyebrow, separately, then anchor the floating layer back down, and a little black brush touch-up to the teeth…
i thought about making a stencil-font word “EVIL” in red, rotated slightly, in between the word “Kellogg’s” and the word “Frosted”, but then i realised that doing so would be laying it out for everyone to see, which i don’t necessarily want to do.
i’m thinking of ways i could just get the “eyebrows” and the teeth printed on clear acetate, so that i could just cover up the face with the more accurate one, and then watch to see how many people freak out, versus how many people don’t even notice… 😈
today, thaddeus and i busked at the pike place market, under the clock, for an hour, and made $115 a piece… that takes into account the fact that we were amplified (which isn’t normally allowed at the market) and playing on the back of a truck for the “flower festival”, and we were being paid $100 a piece by the PDA to be there… the extra $30 was from tips, because of course we set up our tip bucket, because we were busking at the market. for some reason (probably the fact that he was being paid by the PDA) the busker who was on the stage/truck before us did not have a tip bucket out. 🤷
yesterday, i finished the pea gravel to the west end of the house project that i started earlier in the week. yesterday was also a “category 5” geomagnetic storm, caused by sunspots, which made a “visible” aurora borealis across most of north america, so of course moe and i went out to a “light desert” near salmon la sac, and took pictures. it was the first time i have ever actually seen an aurora… i have PROBABLY “seen” other ones, but they weren’t anywhere near as spectacular, and, significantly, i didn’t have the technology to actually “see” what i was “seeing”: what i saw with my naked eye was lighter grey stripes that were, basically, indistinguishable from clouds, which, very occasionally, had slight hints of colour… but apparently cameras these days take in A LOT more light than our eyes do, and the photos that came out of monique’s phone were phenomenal:
thursday was my circus class, wednesday was busking without amplification or the extra $100 a piece — we made a grand total of $6 ($3 a piece), which qualifies as one of the 5 WORST days i have ever had busking at the market. also i cleaned the furnace filters that i forgot to clean on monday. tuesday and monday i started adding pea gravel to the area behind the fence at the west end of our house. monday i forgot to clean the furnace filters.
last sunday was my unicycle class, where i may actually be making some progress, in that i am free-mounting pretty regularly, and i just discovered that if i do it right, i can actually idle, rather than riding away after a free-mount… but everything is still sort of tentative, and i’m not sure whether it’s an actual improvement, or whether i’m just doing fine this week and i’ll go back to not being able to do it next week… which is sort of what i’m expecting. 😒
last saturday was may 4th, which is bongwater day, and world naked gardening day, as well as the more conventional star-wars day. last friday was international tuba day, national paranormal day, and world press-freedom day. last thursday i had my circus class, may 1st (wednesday) we busked at the pike place market, under the clock, with interference from the “pike place drummer” who sets up on the corner opposite the market, so that he is NOT “on market property”, sets up a trap kit and an amplified, pre-recorded MMO tape, and drowns out all other buskers in a three block radius… and we STILL made $20 a piece, which was more than the drummer made. 😉
i’ve been wondering about #2 for about a week… it appears like it’s growing, but it also appears like it’s dying, so i’m not really sure. i keep watering it, and it keeps growing, so there’s still hope. the other three are all doing really well. i’m hoping that this year’s crop will make up for last year’s. 😉
i was digging through a box of, mostly, ephemera, that i haven’t actually looked in since before we moved into the house out of which we moved 4 years ago, to move into this house. the reason i haven’t looked in it for 20+ years is because i thought i knew what was in it. while that was largely true, there were a few unknown things in that box which i’ve been wondering about for some time. one of those things was the “secret” taxi-driver’s guide to seattle streets.
this was before cell phones, and before most people had even heard of networked computers, much less internet: this was in the mid-1980s, very few people had cell phones, pay-phones were the common way of communicating outside of your house or office, and taxi drivers HAD TO HAVE a way to remember where everything was…
this was it.
the “secret” guide to seattle streetsthe “secret” guide to seattle streets
this “secret” guide, combined with “The Thomas Guide” map book for king county (colloquially known as the “tommy guide”), pretty much assured that, regardless of how obscure or little-known a street might be, you could get to it without having to ask anyone how to get there.
it had each street name listed alphabetically (or numerically, for numbered streets), and directions for how to get to that street from one other street. if you didn’t know where the one street in the directions was, you looked up that street, and so forth, until you got to a street you know. the “secret” guide also had the number of the map in the tommy guide that included it, so that, if you had a tommy guide (99.8% of cab drivers had one at the time) you could look it up there, as well, but as the tommy guide was a book with A LOT of streets, listed in a not-always-logical order (because it was a map book), i usually didn’t use it. the “secret” guide was more accurate and took up less space. 😉
another thing that the “secret” guide has, which is, maybe, not so useful any longer, is that it has the major bus routes for every street. as far as i know, what we now know as “seattle metro” was a completely different organisation in the mid-’80s, and i sincerely doubt that any of the bus information is reliable these days…
however, streets don’t change that much. fourty years later, much of this “secret” guide is still perfectly usable… a lot of the building names have changed, and things like the kingdome and the alaska way viaduct are no longer there… but it won’t spy on you and steal your data, like google will. 😒
a while back, i mentioned this, and i tried to summarize, but i didn’t do anywhere near as good a job as xydexx did, with fewer words… 😕 oh well, here’s the real deal: xydexx macro
so i’m going to try a smaller dose for the next 100. i’ve learned a little more about how to make capsules more uniform, and i decided to make 200 milligram doses, rather than the (nominally) 250 milligram doses i’ve been taking. a “microdose”, by definition, is “subperceptual”, and, for the most part these are, but every now and then i get a little twinge of psychedelic-ness, and i KNOW that as little as 50 mg will affect my mood, so i figured why not go lower, just to see what happens.
turns out using a sieve to sift the powdered mushroom filters out the pieces that are big enough to cause problems with consistency, and makes it easier to re-powderise the remainder. i was able to get 100 capsules that range from 190 mg to 210 mg, compared to my last 100, unsifted “250 mg” doses, which were anywhere from 190 mg to 270 mg. i’ll take a 20% margin, but 80% is pretty close to unsatisfactory. 😉
i’m still about halfway through the 250 mg doses, but i’ve got the next 100 doses all ready, plus around another ounce or so of powdered mushrooms, and “30 gram” “ounce” of unpowdered mushrooms…
231106 capsule making in progress231106 capsule making results
I BOUGHT A NEW TUBA! 😎 240125 salamandir, frank, and two tuba cases.
the bigger of the two is still smaller than the original case i have for it. i bought the new case (on the left side of the photo, to my right) a couple of years ago, because the original case, while still good, was 50 years old, and not as solid as i would like… and it was HUGE!! the new case (shown here) is only about 25% smaller, but it is also brand new, and designed to fit the instrument better… but it’s still big enough that, when i put it in the back of my car, there is NO room to spare on either side… the micro-tuba, on the other hand, is small enough that i’ll be able to fit A WHOLE BUNCH of extra gear when i go to the oregon country fair this year… 😉
240125 salamandir and two tubas
this shows exactly why the new tuba is needed: it has rotary valves, whereas the big tuba has piston valves, and, despite the fact that it is less than half the physical size of the big tuba, the little one plays in EXACTLY the same pitch. that’s right, other than the physical size of the instrument, there is no other difference! 240125 salamandir holding two tubas
yes, it is, in fact, possible for me to hold two tubas at the same time. if i had my other mouthpiece, i could probably PLAY two tubas, but not at the same time, because that would require me to have a ridiculously, and unrealistically, wide mouth. if the micro-tuba was the same size as the other one, i could probably still hold them, but i could definitely not play either one without putting the other one down.
i took it out busking at the pike place market, yesterday, and it sounds EXCELLENT! 👍👍
Professor Peter Schickele, head of the Department of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, died yesterday, at the age of 88.
230117 The Art of The Ground Round, score by P.D.Q. Bach, autographed by Prof. Peter Schickelein 1977, or thereabouts (it was prior to my 18th birthday) the northwest chamber ensemble, or some group like it, gave a concert of music by P.D.Q. Bach, who was the composer whose music was the particular area of study of Professor Peter Schickele. they gave a party at some fancy bar/restaurant on the waterfront in downtown seattle, along with a scheduled “P.D.Q. Bach Compose-A-Like” contest, and Professor Peter Schickele was the guest of honour, and the judge of the aforementioned contest. i had been a fan of professor peter schickele for many years, i owned all of his albums (i think there were 4, at the time), and his book, along with the scores for many of P.D.Q.’s musical works, such as The Art of The Ground Round, and The Seasonings, and i was an AVID composer of… some might say “bizarre” music… however, at age 17, i was simply too young to get into a 21-and-older bar. however, i had a plan: a friend of my father’s was a member of the northwest chamber ensemble, and he got me into the bar with no questions about my age, where i entered a composition of my own, for left-handed sewer-flute and electronic tape. i actually made a left-handed sewer-flute, which had a faucet at the bottom, and part of the performance was opening the faucet, whereupon water would drain out of the extraneous tubing behind the head-joint cork. the performance went about as AWFULLY as any performance i have ever done, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, with the exception of the water draining out of the faucet, which couldn’t have gone wrong because there was, literally, no place else for it to go, i actually only played about 4 notes on the “flute” part, the tape playback machine refused to work, and then it only worked intermittently… and yet, somehow, i won first prize in the contest. and the first prize was two tickets to the concert. the guy that won second prize had actually composed a legitimate, classical-style string quartet, in three movements. the second prize was a “genuine” P.D.Q. Bach “water-powered turntable”, which was a lawn sprinkler with a record platten attached to it with zip-ties. i got professor peter schickele’s autograph on several of the scores that are still in my possession.
i ordered some jewelry from an artist in poland. i’ve been tracking it for a month, now. from poland, it spent almost two weeks undergoing microscopic scrutiny in customs, in florida, and then it took another week to get from florida to kent, washington (which is right down the road from where i live)… but, after spending a full 48 hours, plus, in kent, it suddenly, this morning, makes a leap to juneau, alaska, where it is currently “preparing for delivery”… 😒 if it’s anything like the recent shipments i’ve gotten from germany, the united kingdom, or portugal, it will be delivered today, in my residential mailbox, with no further explanation for why it was reported to be in alaska, but, as this delivery is “registered mail” (because of the fact that it’s jewelry), i’m probably going to have to sign for it, rather than having them just leave it in the box.
the postal delivery person just came and went, with no registered package from poland, so i guess it HAS gone to juneau, and who knows when i’ll be seeing it. 🙄
i’ve settled down to microdosing every other day, which seems to be working A LOT better than the commercially available (legal) alternatives that i have tried (buproprion), but i’m getting frustrated again, because either, i feel “okay” (in that i do not feel as frustrated or depressed), or i feel frustrated and/or depressed about stuff that has been there, is there now, and will be there tomorrow and into the future, regardless of whether or not i am taking medication of any kind. it’s frustrating to have to be taking a microdose to feel better, rather than being able to do something constructive to rid myself of the factors which cause the frustration and depression to begin with, but which are not possible, because they require things like killing tens of thousands of #drumpf-cultists and/or making major changes in society as a whole… which is exacerbated by the knowledge that if i were taking 2.5 grams, instead of .25 grams, things would be a lot more different. i call mushrooms my “don’t give a fuck pill”, but i guess i should call the microdoses my “give a little bit less of a fuck pill”, which, i’m not totally sure, is the point.
in the upcoming 49 days, i have 25 panto-related obligations, including 18 performances and 7 rehearsals, starting next monday. wolfenoot is thursday (as is thanksgiving), when our friends from hawaii are coming for dinner (but, significantly, NOT my mother-in-law), and, on friday, moe and i, and our friends from hawaii, are all going to go get tattooed: a few years ago, pre-COVID, we rented a house on the beach, and invited a whole bunch of friends to come and visit. the only people that ended up being able to come were micah and shaya, our friends from hawaii. we spent a week in a VERY large house, under the influence of a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aid, flying kites and playing board (bored?) games, which included a “boys-against-girls” round of pictionary, in which the girls won with monique’s drawing which has come to be known as “snake-camel”… so, on friday, we’re all going to get a tattoo of “snake-camel”… which looks like this:231028 snake-camel
the panto this year is a re-visitation of one of our previous pantos, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”. we’ve got 7 rehearsals scheduled during the next two weeks, including one band-only rehearsal. marni, the flute/alto-sax player that moved to england just before the pandemic, is back, and she was the “purple” member of the group, so i don’t know how the fact that i have sort of taken over that position is going to play out. rehearsal season, this year, has been decidedly abbreviated and condensed, and i’m not sure whether or not that is a good thing.
i harvested the third of my three plants on wednesday. today i cleared out the grow tent, moved the clones to the shed (as compared to the grow tent), took the grow tent apart and got the critical parts ready for cleaning, which i’m sure they’re going to need, considering that the previous crop got pretty moldy, and the more current crop was developing a case of spider mites, which APPEAR to have been thwarted by liberal application of diatomateous earth. i am considering insulating the shed, which really wouldn’t be that difficult, and it would give my current clones a better chance at survival… although, at this point, they seem to be doing pretty well, in spite of the diatomateous earth.231027 the changeit’s amazing to me how much space the grow tent tool up… which gets my mind to thinking of a way to put it on its side, on top of one of the shelves… possibly use it for starts, or something…
231007 snoqualmie tree farm looking west, with bellevue and seattle in the distance231007 snoqualmie tree farm, with lake hancock and quill, the dog, photo by moe
“sdukʷalbixʷ” is the lushootseed (dxʷləšucid) word from which english-speakers get the word “snoqualmie”. it means “people of the moon”.
there are a bunch of campaign signs that have sprouted up through the area, recently, including this one:
231002 “FEWER” NOT “LESS”!!! 🤬
knowing NOTHING ELSE about these candidates, i would not be inclined to vote for them PRIMARILY because of their ungrammatical use of the word “LESS”… 😒
but BECAUSE OF THE FACT that they (or, more likely, some over-zealous zombie sign maniac) chose to post their sign RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from a MIDDLE SCHOOL:
231002 Summit Trails Middle School
i really start to wonder… obviously they DON’T care about children, despite what their other signs might proclaim, because instead of leading them in education, they are lambasting them with ungrammatical twaddle… and they really MUST NOT have thought about it very much, because the people who are the most likely to see this humongous sign are middle school students who aren’t old enough to vote… 🤣
because of the weirdness surrounding the three cannabis plants i’ve been growing this year, i harvested two of them — the two that “re-vegetated” and spent time in the grow tent — because 1) they were as ready as i expect they’re going to be, and 2) the two that lived in the tent turned out to be mutant plants the likes of which i have never seen before…
230930 mutant plant
these “leaves” were coming directly out of the stem of the plant. there was no bud structure, and no leaf stem… really bizarre, and really common on this plant.
230930 mutant plant230930 mutant plant
are these male buds, or female buds? i think they’re female, because, in spite of the seed-pods, there don’t appear to be any seeds… but…? who knows? 🤷
230930 yummy bud!
in spite of all the weirdness, i have some AMAZING buds, plus i’ve got one more plant that is still about a month away from harvest, which is looking REALLY good, AND there are two clones, one of which took off about three weeks ago and is now almost two feet tall, and the other which just took off a couple days ago, which is actually the older of the two, but it has been sitting, not dying and not taking off, for about two months.
so, before i moved them out of the tent, my two inside plants looked like this, so i wasn’t too worried about what sex they were…
2023-08-2 plants in the grow tent
but, as you may recall, when i moved them out of the tent, i encountered SIGNIFICANT mold on the underside of the plant that is on the left, in the picture above. i propped it up, and trimmed off almost all of the mold — i am still fighting mold on this one plant, as of yesterday… i think i’ve gotten it all, and then another patch of it crops up… 😒 and i’ve also propped up the outdoor plant, as well, but that is only because it is spreading out wider than the space that i’ve got all three of them growing in, now, and not because it really NEEDS propping up. 😉
now that i’ve got my lights a little more under control, i think i can see why some people who grow LOTS of weed like “re-vegetating”, because it appears to create MASSIVE buds
2023-09-08 and they’ve got another month to go!2023-09-08 and they’ve got another month to go!
but re-vegetating also produces THE WEIRDEST mutations i have ever seen:
another weird thing that has happened to me is that my medical cannabis authorisation needs renewing , as it does every year — as if, one day, i’m suddenly NOT going to have a brain injury… 🙄 — and so i texted dr. peterson, like i have for 6 years in a row at this time… but this time he didn’t respond. he retired a couple of years ago, but he kept issuing cannabis authorisations because he liked the money or something, probably… and he’s gotten more flaky as the years have gone by, but usually he responds… but not this time. so i called Marley 420, which is the medical dispensary i frequent, and asked them for a recommendation, and they pointed me towards a place in covington, but it turns out that they don’t do authorisations for people who have bipolar in their medical charts, and they recommended this guy in vancouver, washington. but i figured there had to be someone closer than that, plus i’ve had some rather unpleasant experiences with long-distance telehealth
a doctor in georgia, dr. olajumoke akinyele, who was responsible for my buproprion prescription, initially: she prescribed too much and i went through a week of, essentially, “overdosing” on a drug that made me nervous, twitchy, anxious, restless, short-tempered, unpleasant-to-be-around, caused massive tinnitus, etc., etc., before she got around to changing the dose, and when i asked her about psilocybin, she didn’t know what i was talking about and said that it would be too much like taking cocaine or heroin. 😒
so i asked my counselor, kate, if she had any recommendations. she said to contact dr. j, who didn’t do cannabis authorisations, but recommended i go to Green Leaf Health Care (😉) and, it turns out, that the doctor at green leaf, dr. mcdonald, is the guy who gave me my first medical authorisation, back in 2013. 🤣
this is a picture of my kindergarten class. i am second from the right, in the second row.
1966 Mrs. Peace and my kindergarten class
interestingly enough, this was at marvista elementary school, in normandy park, in 1966. another of my friends, smerdyakov karamazov was also at marvista in 1966, but he was in the second grade, and i didn’t know him at the time… 😵 (that’s a “dizzy face”, in case it isn’t obvious)
Shirley Day Peacebut the real point of this whole study is the teacher, Mrs. Peace — her name was Shirley, but i didn’t find that out until much later. the reason i found out her first name is because, about 20 years or so ago, moe started hanging around with another local dog trainer, named ali. she was always coming home talking about something ali had done, or had not done, that was really interesting, ali having surgery, ali living her life, that sort of thing. i paid attention, but it was all from a distance, because i had never met ali, and didn’t know her… until one day, moe happened to mention ali’s last name…
peace…
peace is not a particularly common name, so immediately, i asked if she was related to mrs. peace, my kindergarten teacher.
the answer is yes.
ali peace is the granddaughter of shirley peace. shirley died earlier this year, at the age of 98. unfortunately, i wasn’t able to find out if she remembered me, but…
ali peace and a dog
this woman, who i have now met, who is a frequent guest at our house, who has been a friend and colleague of moe’s for 20-plus years, is the granddaughter of my kindergarten teacher… 🤯
230729 re-vegetationtwo of my three outdoor plants are “re-vegetating”… what this means, apparently, is that the plants were triggered to start flowering much earlier than they should have been, and when i moved them outdoors last month, they decided that, instead of continuing with the production of buds, they had to go back to vegetative growth, which causes the little bud-lets to develop into sort-of fan leaves… but they’re smooth, instead of serrated, and they only have one finger, instead of the characteristic five or seven fingers…230729 re-vegetation
this is frustrating, because outdoor plants shouldn’t re-vegetate, and, if i allow them to continue, then they won’t be flowering by the middle of next month, like they should, which means that there won’t be any buds this fall. 😢
so, i bought a light-proof grow tent, to force them back into flowering… 230807 light-proof grow tenti don’t really understand why all three of my plants aren’t re-vegetating. they were all started at the same time, and they all moved outdoors at the same time, which should mean that they all got the same “trigger”, but only two of them were affected… and, when it comes time to move them inside, it will be that much easier, because two of them are already inside, with a 12-hour light cycle.
i wouldn’t worry about the grow tent, but i cloned one of the plants, and it’s currently inside, under a 24-hour vegetative light, and if i didn’t have the grow tent then i would have to kill the clone, or the mature plants would continue to be confused — and confused plants are more likely to become hermaphroditic, and we DON’T want that.
although, if it DOES happen, getting a bunch of feminised seeds instead of buds, would not be ENTIRELY awful…
there’s still a chance that i’m going to have to kill the clone, but it’s a lot less likely now that i have a grow-tent, because, when the other plant has to move inside, i can just switch the lights, and move the clone into the tent to keep it from getting confused.
microdosing the fair was successful beyond my wildest imaginations!! i took a .25 gram capsule, every morning at 0700 or so, so if i were to have some kind of major psychedelic effects manifest, i would probably be over them by 1100, which was when our “call” was, every day.
i was actually able to relax(!), and have a good time(!!), despite the fact that i avoided the ritz, because of COVID concerns (mine, not theirs)… however, i will say that being, literally, right across the path from a place that makes mac and cheese with smoked salmon in ENORMOUS bowls didn’t hurt anything. 😉
AND i experienced at least two occasions where, absent the .25 gram dose, i would have been SIGNIFICANTLY more cranky and disagreeable afterwards. the first was yesterday, when the guitar player (chris gross) and i conspired to take a cart full of gear to our respective cars, because having two people drag a cart is infinitely easier than having to either drag it yourself, or having to wait, sometimes as much as an hour, for the cart to return… so we loaded up a bunch of gear that we were no longer using, and schlepped it out to the “SCOFlot”, where the “handicapped” people (and marginally-handicapped people, such as myself, who have a valid placard 😈) are allowed to park… only to discover that i had left my key-fob back in camp, three quarters of a mile away… so, i trudged back to camp and retrieved my key-fob, and we unloaded my gear into my car, but in our original schlepp-age, one of the cart’s tires had bit the dust, and we got about halfway to chris’s car when the inner-tube got wrapped around the axle, and ceased moving forward… so we spent 15 minutes untangling the inner-tube and schlepped another quarter mile out to chris’s car. chris unloaded his stuff, only to discover that he had left his guitar back in camp! 🤣 so we went back to camp AGAIN… the second was this morning. naturally, after a glorious, sun-shiney weekend, it rained monday morning, which meant that i had to put the tent away wet. i got everything packed up and moved out to the staging area (on the stage), and slogged out to retrieve my car, but when i got there, i couldn’t get the key-fob to work… like, AT ALL!… and it’s a new enough car that i haven’t poked around and actually FOUND the manual key slot… my comment (to no one in particular) was that it sucks AND blows: all things a good vacuum cleaner should do. 🤣 i phoned moe (thank cthulhu i had cell service) and she gave me some suggestions, and said she would look up a youtube video for me… and then i got the key-fob to work, ONCE, which was all it took… i was able to start the car by holding the key-fob up to the start button, and i was on my way… but when i got to camp, “somebody” (not a part of our group) had parked an ENORMOUS camper, with an ENORMOUS trailer, directly across the opening to our stage/staging area, blocking three cars IN and making it impossible for me to park remotely close to the stage. i started carrying a load of stuff around the camper-trailer-conflagration and i ran into (literally) someone who was helping a kid into the truck, and i asked them how long they were planning on staying there, to which they responded five minutes… fifteen minutes later, they were STILL there, so i got someone from our group to help me move the big, heavy, bulky power cart to a place where it blocked the camper, and went back to loading. 😈
the guy eventually left (after struggling to move the power cart by himself 😈), and i was able to pull in next to the stage, but when i shut my car off, the key-fob stopped working AGAIN, only, this time, because i was already in the car, i was able to get it started again, but it was only after i was in the car, ready to go, and the car said “key-fob not present” that i realised that it was the battery in the key-fob, and not something more serious… and, when i got home, i took the fob apart and replaced the battery. 😎
the panto is a re-run of one we did a few years ago, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”, and it was together, with no missed cues from either the band OR the actors in record time: by the second day, we pretty much had it down, and the actors were starting to modify the script in ways that will be reflected in the productions this winter.
230706 some random hippie230707 some random hippie230708 some random hippie230709 some random hippie
also,
230709 simon neale
and,
230708230708 i invited her to morningwood odditorium, where we had been pasting googly eyes on everything, but she never showed up230709 i asked him if he was the Muffin Man, and he said no, he’s a cupcake, so i had to mention the line from the frank zappa song about the muffin man: “some people like cupcakes better. i, for one, care less for them.” 🤣 he said he had heard that a few times.
july 4th (🤢) today. we’re planning on taking a drive in the back country, rather as we did last year at this time, when we came down with COVID. this year, we’ve already got the COVID out of the way, so i have every intention to leave for OCF around 08:00 tomorrow. as i did last year, with some creative ingenuity, i fit everything EXCEPT my foghorn* into the car, so the only things i have to do tomorrow is take a shower, put the stuff from the fridge into the cooler, put freezer-blocks into the cooler, and put the cooler, and the 5 gallon water bottle, into the car, and gather a few, small items — my soap and foot ointment, my tablet, my reading glasses, my phone, my weed, pipes, and vape supplies — into their assigned boxes, and then i can leave. moe doesn’t have to be in to the clinic tommorrow until 10:00, so there’s a chance that i’ll be gone before she gets out of bed… at least i hope so, because she works WAY too hard, and doesn’t take time off as frequently as she should.
230702 salamandir in a kayak
in the past week, we have gone from having NO boats, to having TWO boats (kayaks), three paddles, PFDs for one human and one dog, and the roof support rack (with “all the trimmings”) to carry one kayak… the other (smaller) kayak needs some foam pads to carry on the roof, because it is short enough that it doesn’t fit… but that’s okay, because it means that i can carry it on the top of MY car, as well as moe’s… this morning, moe took the larger boat out on rattlesnake lake, with the “puppy”, quill (who is now the largest of our three dogs 😒), and he only fell in once (🤣) before he decided that he was going to sit in the center of the boat and be a good doggie…
230703 moe and quill in a kayak in the pond across the street230704 quill being a good doggie on rattlesnake lake
how we made the journey so quickly has to do with moe’s boss giving us the smaller kayak and paddle, and moe developing an insistent obsession. 😉 i know that goat island has a web site, now, but it seems like everywhere has a web site, so it’s not as surprising as it once was. it makes me wonder what’s happening in what used to be fishtown, these days.
after OCF…
* i have wanted to take the foghorn to OCF for a few years, but i have never been able to fit it into my car, with all the other stuff i have to take to OCF… but, it’s probably a good thing, because i think that it would annoy a lot more people than it would amuse… oh well…
we went to the Campbell GlobalSnoqualmie Tree Farm today, pretty much square in the middle of the humungously vast, unpopulated area surrounded by skykomish, grotto, baring, halford, index, big bend, gold bar, startup, sultan, woods creek, monroe, high rock, duvall, novelty, lake marcell, stillwater, carnation, pleasant hill, fall city, snoqualmie, north bend, riverbend, tanner, ragnar, and garcia. we walked 4.5 miles, 2.25 up and 2.25 down from approximately here (which is where we parked the car), we left home at 0830 and arrived back around 1500. we saw things like this:
230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm230601 campbell global snoqualmie tree farm
as i frequently do when i am hiking in the deep forest, i picked up and packed out litter. one piece of litter i picked up was a rainier beer can that was before they introduced the integrated opening tab (i.e. it had a separate opening tab that would cut your feet if it was encountered barefoot), but after they started marketing “all aluminum recyclable cans!” which, i would guess, places it somewhere between 1970 and 1974… far away from pretty much anything that one might consider “civilized” by any stretch of the imagination, and i find litter from when i was a teenager. 😒
230601 40-year-old litter230601 40-year-old “PLEASE DO NOT LITTER” litter230601 40-year-old “All Aluminum Recyclable Can” litter
apparently ezra has been talking to my father recently.
ezra texted me to say that my father had given him two photo albums that contain mostly pictures of me…
the fact that my father gave them to ezra, and not to me, is one of the reasons i haven’t talked to my father in a very long time, now. 😒
salamandir, age 12-14
i believe this picture was taken between 1972 and 1974, and i believe it was taken in new york, before we moved back to seattle… i may be wrong, but the seamless backdrop was something that my father didn’t have room to set up more than a few times, and i don’t remember seeing it after we moved, but that could just be my swiss-cheese brain at work. the closer it was taken to 1972, the more “brand new” the trombone was…
of course, the original photo may have a date on the back, but because of the fact that i have COVID, currently, i can’t rush over to ezra’s place to look. 😒
salamandir, age 62
this was taken on 221024 by someone at the fisher pavilion who wanted a picture of me, and i liked it so much that i asked for a copy of it. this is my current Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band uniform, and i was at the fisher pavilion to play for Festa Italiana, like we do every year… the coat is a new acquisition that i bought at a “purge-o-rama” sale at a costume shop in redmond. i have been looking at that, exact coat, in the display window of the costume shop, ever since i worked in redmond (in 1995 or thereabouts), and i finally went in because i had heard that the shop was closing (it’s not, they’re just moving to a new location… one without display windows), only to discover that they wanted $300 for it, but because of the fact that they were having a “purge-o-rama” sale to prepare for the move, they had reduced the price to $100… so i bought it immediately.
prior to that, i wore a uniform that i got from working for the Floating World Circus, after i graduated from high school. it was also red, but a lot it was also a lot more “normal” for a band uniform…
salamandir parade ?1991
this picture, i believe, was taken in 1991, in anacortes, where the band that i was playing in at the time was playing for a parade.
the astute observer will immediately realise that the trombone depicted in all of these photos, is exactly the same. 😉
this is the fourth (or possibly the fifth) time i’ve had it. i’m fully vaxed, fully boosted, i wear a mask everywhere (inside), and i STILL got COVID! 🤬
230520 actual art for a change!230520 actual art for a change!
actual art… actually created… by me! 👍 incredible!
okay, they’re modeled after photographs, which i used as reference, but the artwork is not the photographs.
it’s amazing! 😎
what makes it even more amazing is that i created it on my tablet, with a stylus, the same as i would on paper, except that i can actually FIX wobbly lines, accidental brush strokes, and that sort of thing, WITHOUT having to start over from scratch…
and i can make animated gifs, as an added bonus… 😉
230520 actual art for a change!
this may just be enough to start my sketchbook again… wouldn’t that be something?
we went to the campbell global snoqualmie tree farm, this morning, ostensibly to exercise dogs, but an ulterior motive was to scope out the “firewood” area, which is adjacent to the active logging, but they have logs pulled to the road and stacked, so that (if you’ve got a permit) you can go up there with a chainsaw and lop off firewood-length pieces, put them in your truck, and drive home without having to pay for it… thing is, the permit costs $300, which is about the same as a cord of firewood, but (if you’ve got a permit), you’re allowed to take up to 5 cords of firewood… plus, there’s literally 90,000 acres of trails that NOBODY else hikes on, because you’ve got to have a permit and a key… and, guess what? moe bought a permit when they went on sale, which is a little surprising because the permits sold out within a half-hour of going on sale… oh, and we have a pickup truck now… did i mention that before? we’ve had a ford f150 pickup truck for a little more than a year. it doesn’t get used for much — picking up loads of gravel, wood chips, or, soon, firewood (still got to wrassle up a chainsaw) — but it gets loaned to a whole bunch of different friends who need a truck for this or that…
230513 campbell-global snoqualmie tree farm
i wrote to the newest member of the IOTM club last week, both from my hybridelephant.com account, and from my new hybrid elephant gmail account (because i’ve been having trouble with email, which is another story), and i have gotten no response, which makes me REALLY suspicious about this subscription… but, at this point, there’s absolutely nothing i can do about it, except to cancel the subscription and refund their money… which, at this point, is a little extreme, since, basically, the ONLY thing they’ve done is make me suspicious… but they’ve made me suspicious, which is very suspicious, and i really feel like there should be more than i can do to alleviate my suspicion.
the email thing is starting to grate on my nerves… fundamentally, there is NOTHING “wrong” with my email, but because of the fact that it doesn’t (by design) go through one of the “big guys” (i.e. micro$lut, yahoo, google, apple, etc.) i am finding that more and more services are either silently blocking my email, or producing more and more convoluted hoops that i have to jump through to get my email to… the people i do business with, my customers, suppliers, etc… 😒 at this point, i’ve gone back and forth with micro$lop so many times that my host provider is no longer willing to fight with them on my behalf, and has recommended that i route my mail through google or micro$hit to solve the problem… but i don’t see why i should have to pay — especially, i don’t see why i should have to pay micro$not — to solve a problem that micro$hite is causing to begin with. at this point, when i suspect that there may be a problem (like when a customer has an address @hotmail.com or @live.com, or something like that), i send them a response from my hybridelephant.com account, and if i think it may have been “interfered with” in some way, then i send them another response from my gmail account, which usually does the trick. but it’s grating on my nerves because it SHOULDN’T be this way, and i SHOULDN’T have to worry about whether or not my emails have gone through… it’s not like i’m running an open relay, or something like that, i’m just not willing to send my email through one of “the big guys” because, to be quite frank, i don’t trust “the big guys”… and it’s behaviour like i have seen from micro$leaze that causes me not to trust them. 😠
i guess there was some doubt, considering that i don’t believe in “god”, in the sense of the word recognised by most people… even other hindus… not to mention the fact that i was born in peoria, which is nowhere near the indus river, and “technically” to be a “hindu” means being born on the indian subcontinent, south of the indus river…
Hindus subscribe to a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but have no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, nor a single founding prophet; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. Because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion “defies our desire to define and categorize it”. A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw upon ideas of other Indian or non-Indian religious thought as a resource, follow or evolve his or her personal beliefs, and still identify as a Hindu.
but i got something in the mail, today, that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is SOMETHING in me that recognises hinduism as the right spiritual path for me, and i didn’t realise it until i looked it up, when i got the object, this afternoon.
the object i got was a stone. specifically, it is a red “sonbhadara shila”, which, like the shivalingam is the stone that represents shiva, and the shaligram shila is the stone that represents visnu, the sonbhadara represents ganesha, and when it is combined with four other stones, which represent other deities, they become the object of worship for “panchayatana puja“, which was introduced by adi shankara as a way to stop people from fighting over which deity is supreme, but it is apparently a lot older than shankara…
but it’s just one stone, right? how could a hunk of rock make the determination for me that i am a hindu, beyond a shadow of a doubt?… i hear you ask…
the reason is because, without realising it, over the past 40+ years, i have been collecting interesting rocks and crystals, and, again, without realising it, i have now amassed ALL FIVE STONES… the red sonbhadara was the last of them! 😉
230418 Panchayatana puja
the stones, and their corresponding deities, are: shivalingam represents shiva, pyrite, or “swarnamukhi” (स्वर्णामुखी – “golden face”) represents shakti (parvati, devi, or ambika), sphatik or quartz crystal represents surya, shaligram represents visnu, and sonbhadara represents ganesha.
i’m only about 90% certain that the black stone is, in fact, a shaligram. it came, carved that way, as part of a lingam and yoni set that i purchased from india, a number of years ago, and the stone was immediately replaced with a different lingam… however, i learned (again, today) that sometimes shaligrama are carved into lingam-shapes, and the stone doesn’t really resemble a shivalingam, otherwise, however it DOES resemble a shaligram… and, technically, the sphatik is supposed to come from the vallam river in tamil nadu, and the pyrite is supposed to come from the swarnamukhi river in andhra pradesh, and i’m fairly sure that mine don’t, but, from my standpoint, quartz is quartz, and pyrite is pyrite, regardless of where it’s from.
so, i guess that means i’m a for-real hindu now. 😉
also, i got some new, obscure incense: silver oud and mysore sandal, made by <insert fanfare here> shroff channabasappa and company! the company i thought was out of business, but apparently is going… well, not as strong as they once were, but going, none the less… WOO! 👍
gearing up for the moisture festival (starts march 23, i play one show on the 23rd, and then two shows per day on the 24th, 25th, and 26th), AND one of my favourite costume shops is having a “purge-o-rama sale”, in preparation for moving to a new location… so…
i ordered a CD from france. it’s Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and The Wolf”, performed by the Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi, with Lina Prokofiev as the narrator.
in my opinion, the only better performance is the one in which Victor Borge is the narrator, but i’ve already got that one.
i’ve been tracking the package (as i often do, particularly when they are from places other than the united stoats), and, according to the web site, it should be out for delivery, today…
i really want to go exploring in the cedar river watershed.
the place that is surrounded by a fence, with big, dire warning signs that say “NO TRESPASSING – $10,000 FINE!”…
200828 the watershed, photo by The Prophet Ian
but, the thing is, there are a couple of “communities” near my house which i really want to go and visit: Trude, and Snoose Junction. if you plug those names into google maps, they exist, and if you plug in your home location, it gives you directions for how to get there. directions to Trude
and in the case of Snoose Junction, it gives me two alternate ways to get there! directions to Snoose Junction alternate directions to Snoose Junction
i know there aren’t people living there… legally, anyway… i do know that there are some hold-outs who live on the outskirts of society, who probably live in the watershed illegally, but the state frowns on such things, and i would think that the location of an actual community, even a defunct one, is probably one of the last places such people would choose to live, because of that…
if they don’t want people going there, then why are those places even listed on the map? why does it give precise, turn-by-turn directions for how to get there, if nobody is supposed to go there? it doesn’t make sense to me! 🤨
both of these places are an easy bike ride from my house, they’re both places where people used to live, and i want to go poke around, take pictures, and see what is there now.
i know that they say $10,000 fine for trespassing, but i also know that there are SEMI-TRUCKS that regularly go in and out of the security gate at landsburg crossing (marked “Cedar River Trailhead” on the maps above), and i’ve seen folks with state-owned trucks, traveling on roads that have no trespassing signs on them, so i KNOW that the state makes exceptions to that rule… now it’s just a matter of finding out which strings to pull to have them make an exception for me… 😈
230131 Psilo-QTest results!i got some psilocybin Q-Tests to test my homegrown shroomies, to make absolutely certain that they are, in fact, Psilocybe cyanecens…
now i have to (once again) pester the web designer into showing me how to make a product that has multiple purchase choices: one postcard, two postcards, three postcards, four postcards, five postcards, multiple 5-postcard packs… that sort of thing… he’s showed me how to do it once, with the jagannath pins that i had a few years ago, but they all sold out, and the item got deleted in one of my “clean up my web site” binges.
for a few years now, i have been playing around with this app for my tablet called FRAX, to which i was pointed by my friend gunnar, who is a fractal maniac. i find it really easy, and somewhat meditative, to generate an infinite variety (they’re fractals, after all 😉) of magnificently detailed, wildly psychedelic patterns, and i can crank out 4 to 6 images per hour, for several hours, before getting “bored” with it.
i have maintained for some time that “boredom is a state of mind i never visit”, and, while it’s true, from the outside one might presume that it’s boredom, when it’s really something else… but i digress…
the other day, i went through the photostream on my tablet (which i am finally getting organised enough that i can find what i’m looking for, some of the time), and discovered that i have 91 frax drawings in a directory, which started me thinking…
2017-12-26 16.03.22
what if i made postcards out of these drawings, and sold them on my web site?
2019-03-08 19.08.12
i’ve got more than enough raw material, and they wouldn’t take that much tweezing to get them to fit on a postcard…
2021-12-31 23.41.06
and i can buy 100 18 point postcards (the really thick ones) for less than $20, which means that i can sell them for $1.00 a piece and make a profit (assuming that people buy them, about which i am not as certain).
2022-07-29 06.48.09
not only that, but i can send them out to the IOTM club, which is coming up a lot sooner than i realised.
2023-01-19 18.36.21
so, yesterday, i ordered 100 of five different fractal drawings (not necessarily the ones depicted here)… we’ll see what happens next.
230116 monique feyrecilde and temple grandin
my famous wife and her famous friend… over whom i have been a massive fanboy for longer than monique has been alive… 😉
at first, i wasn’t completely sure (it’s always a good idea to be skeptical with mushrooms), so i plugged it into PictureMushroom which confirmed that they are, in fact, Psilocybe cyanescens, a “Toxic” mushroom.
230103 PictureMushroom identification
specifically:
Wavy caps and should be treated as a moderately poisonous mushroom, best avoided. Ingestion of wavy caps can induce symptoms that include vomiting, nausea, fever, psychosis and seizures.”
it goes on to describe almost exactly the same environment, region, climate, and time of year. combine that with the fact that i INTENTIONALLY propagated P. cyanescens spores, and i’ve got about as much confirmation as i need… 🍄😉🍄😎🍄👍🍄‼
in my attempts to break free of #twit™ #turd™, i have created a reddit profile. i joined the r/incense subreddit, and almost immediately got banned for “spam”. the “spam” i am guilty of disseminating was the phrase “i’ve got resins for sale: pure frankincense, copal, and loban (seperately)… i’ve also got a big chunk of palo santo.” which i posted in response to ONE person.
it’s not “spam”. i didn’t advertise anything, i didn’t include links to my business, and i didn’t “mass mail” anybody: this was in response to ONE person.
nevertheless, the moderator that banned me was disinterested in discussing it, because “we both know what spam is”, and, as i am a “newbie” at reddit, i didn’t feel like arguing about it…
but… 😉
i was searching for other subreddits which may or may not be similar to r/incense, when i came across this post… in r/incense 🤣
someone else’s reddit ad in a subreddit from which i was banned… 😉
and it got 14 upvotes! 👍👍😉 this is, also, NOT spam (as it is on my own web site): a link to 999 Lord Krishna Puja Agarbatti, if anybody reading this is interested in purchasing some. 😉
221220 hybrid elephant iphone!
i’ve had this sayagata-pattern iphone case for an iphone that i have never owned, and, probably WILL never own, simply because its got a cool pattern on it. i was showing it off to moe, a week or so ago, and complaining that i didn’t know of anywhere i could get an iphone case with pictures that i want on them, and moe recommended about a dozen places that make custom iphone cases… because, these days, her “google-fu” is orders of magnitude better than mine… 😖
so, i had one made. now my phone exactly matches my car. 😎
221201 snow
it’s early enough in the season that i hesitate to call it an actual “snowpocalypse” (particularly since mercer island apparently has no snow at all), but, around here, it’s bad enough that i had to cancel my attendence at the (essential) panto rehearsal, last night, and i’m going (once they open) to have to cancel my attendence at my circus class this afternoon. 😒
moe waited until 8:00 am to go in to work, and, apparently, the “main road” is clear (having been plowed this morning), but i still worry about her ability to get home. yesterday, she left work at 5:00 pm, and didn’t actually get home until 7:30, because of the snow/traffic that had built up in issaquah… and she said the state patrol had just closed down eastbound highway 18 as she was going by.
AND i have four incense orders that have been scheduled to ship out today, and it doesn’t look as though i’ll be able to do it, because… well… moe took the truck, and my car is snowed in! 😠
i hate snow. 👎
BUT… there’s this weird thing happening in the pond across the street, this morning. i THINK i know what is happening, but that doesn’t make it any less weird: 221201 circular hole in the pond
i think that this circular hole in the pond is where there’s something (a branch, i think) sticking through the surface of the pond, and making a place where the snow/ice doesn’t stick… i’m not sure, because i have never seen this kind of thing before, but that’s the only thing i can think of.
on this day, in 2007, i started this blog, as a response to livejournal selling out to the russians, which means that this blog has been in existence for 15 years, in more-or-less the same place. i wonder if it will last another 15 years. 😏 as a result of getting closer and closer to leaving “twit-turd”, i have established a presence at linktr.ee, where i put ALL the links to EVERYWHERE that i might be contacted… which is a little strange, because, as far as i know, it is the first time i have EVER posted, in the same place, links to personalities that i have endeavoured to keep separate, prior to this. it is also a bit strange, because i actually switched my harmonic flute video to “public” from “you can’t see it unless i gave you the link”, because i didn’t want “salamandir” and “rev. deluxe” obviously associated with each other. now, i’m not as concerned, i don’t think anyone of consequence will notice, and, even if someone of consequence DOES notice, it simply doesn’t bother me as much as it did 15 or 20 years ago.
“twit-turd” has become a seething morass of white supremacists, nazis, fascists, MAGAts, drumpf-lovers, vaccine denial, and hatred, ALL OF WHICH is more-or-less unmoderated, because (among other stupid things he’s done), when “ELONgated MUSKrat” bought it (under duress), the first thing he did was to re-instate a whole bunch of people who had been kicked off the service, for violating rules that “ELONgated MUSKrat” disagreed with… which, at this point, includes “Fartgorie Taylor-Greene” (who was booted for spreading vaccine misinformation), and Donald J. Drumpf, himself (who was booted for spreading lies about the 2020 election). how long i stay there is still up in the air, but it’s a matter of days, weeks, or months, and certainly not more than a year, unless some massive change happens. 😒
the first show of 2022 fell yesterday. it wasn’t very much, but it’s enough that i am re-thinking my plans to go to the panto rehearsal this evening, despite the fact that we only have three more rehearsals until the show starts.
221129 – 0930 am
this was yesterday, at approximately 9:30 in the morning. i PROBABLY could have driven my car in this amount of snow, but unfortunately…
221130 – 0745 am
this was today, at approximately 7:45 in the morning… i definitely COULD NOT drive my car with this amount of snow… moe says that, outside of our neighbourhood, the roads are plowed, clear, and passable, but… from where i sit, it looks like a skating rink, and i have to get up a hill (which moe said is a skating rink) in order to get out of the neighbourhood… and the only reason moe knows this is because she took the truck, loaded with concrete blocks to work today, because her car needs new tires (which she just discovered yesterday, after having slid around on various streets on her way home from work, yesterday).
we got a whole bunch of new information about moe’s ancestors, and one family group caught my eye almost immediately: moe’s 4xgreat grandparents were related to each other…
221126 weird genealogy
the brother married into one family, the sister married into another family, they both produced children, who, then, married each other to produce one of moe’s 2xgreat grandfathers…
her 3x great grandparents were first cousins…
we don’t know, for sure, who the brother’s parents were, but they were born 15 years apart, in the same town, in the same county, in the same region of the netherlands, so the probability is fairly high… 🤣
i went to bellingham on saturday. i left maple valley around 10:45, made it to bellingham by 11:30, picked up the license plate and dropped off a bag of weed for darol (i figured he deserves it, considering how many bags of weed he has given me), and made it out to ken and kamala’s new place on hannegan by 12:10, left there around 1:30 and drove down chuckanut on my way home.
and i’m pretty sure that the “old curse of bellingham” (the one where an old indian chief is reputed to have cursed the people that come to bellingham, that they will never be able to leave) is a superstition, because i have no more desire to live in bellingham. i have friends who live there, and it will always be a place i USED TO live, but i have zero desire to move back there. in spite of everything i’ve been complaining about recently, and my state of depression, i would still rather be where i am, than in bellingham.
the most recent payment gateway to be tried is square. i checked authorize.net, but they want a $25 a month fee above and beyond the credit card processing fee, and sometimes i don’t make $25 in a month. square seems to be a viable alternative which comes highly recommended by at least one business-owner that i know personally (despite the fact that my web developer says “this one is one of the worse gateways” – he also accuses me of “refusing” to use paypal, however, which just goes to show how much he really knows) and i actually signed up for a square account a few years ago, when i bought a credit card reader for my phone… which i never used because i never needed to. apart from the fact that i have to go through all 323 products that i sell, one at a time, and mark them “sync with Square” (i’m still not certain what it even means, yet, but i’m sure i will find out soon enough…) i’m hoping that this will be the end of my credit-card-processor search for a while, because i’m done with it.
harvested one plant today. i was manicuring it, yesterday and today, and i found a small patch of mold on one of the buds, so i snipped it off, finished manicuring it, and gave it the chop. the other plant still has a couple weeks to a month before it’ll be ready, but, because of the mold on the other plant, i’ve got to be even more aware than i am normally, if i don’t want a moldy mess instead of nice fat buds…
221003 moldy bud221003 close up of the mold
however, currently, i have a fine crop of nice fat buds, so i’m hoping to keep it that way. 😉
221002 selfie with buds221002 buds before manicure221002 buds before manicure221002 buds before manicure221003 buds after manicure and chop
this is what i wanted with #3, yesterday, but i didn’t get the offset right, because i wasn’t working with an extended background, once i extended it, i was able to get the offset where i wanted it.
it looks better the bigger it is… it might be cool as a heroic-size portrait… 😉
1 and 2 are straight from apple messaging phone. 3 is from the gimp, and is a combination of 2 and the reverse of 2. moe thinks they’re creepy. i disagree.
pretty good shots, for my phone… although, i admit that the shots got orders of magnitude more difficult as the range decreased… the last one was the best of five shots, the other four of which were blurry because i was breathing. 😉
when i get cranky, depressed, irritable, out-of-sorts, and tired of doing anything, my “don’t give a fuck” pill helps me survive all of the unjust, inconsiderate, and outright wrong things that are happening to and around me. 😒
yeah, it doesn’t make the problems go away, or even diminish noticably, but what it does is gives me the ability to “not give a fuck” rather than letting them fuck with my brain to the point of incapacity.
that’s what MEDICINESHOULD DO!
my MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICIONERTOLD ME to take mushrooms. — it still BLOWS MY MIND that i was given this instruction 🤯
she was right. 😉
so, instead of griping about how unjust my life is these days, and how many things have gone irretrievably wrong, i’m going to post pictures of my cannabis plants, and my trip in the forest. 😉
i went up road K again, where i saw the bear last year. no bears this year, but plenty of evidence that they had been there. 😉
220826 where i saw the bear220826 bear shit, five steps away
because of the fact that it has been so dry, i actually went all the way up road K to the place where there isn’t any road, and there’s a sign that says “trail under construction, use different routes”. i could have gone further, but i was tired, and it was uphill. uphill is great when i’m “on my way up”, but by that time, i had reached a plateau, and uphill was asking too much.
so i walked back down to the old homestead, where i meditated for about an hour.
220826 looks like a duck
looks can be decieving… is something my father would have said. 😒
220826 duck, from the other side!220826 MUSHROOMS!220826 MUSHROOMS!220826 i’m in the middle of nowhere, and i’m not really sure why i’m here, but I EXIST, AND I AM IMPORTANT!220826 intersection
and the difference in my mood will definitely be to my advantage tomorrow, when there’s going to be game night at the burke’s, and on sunday, when the sousa band is playing at the ballard locks. 😉
i don’t know for sure, because i don’t know what it would be like if i HADN’Ttaken mushrooms a week ago, but i will say that it’s PROBABLY a good thing i took mushrooms a week ago, because the intervening week was depressing beyond belief.
last tuesday, which was also our 24th wedding anniversary, when i was IN THE MIDST of a significantly more powerful psychedelic experience than i EXPECTED (considering how weak and impotent the immediately previous psychedelic experience had been), i got a text from moe, which said that some unknown thing had happened to rye (currently, our most senior dog, at 11½ years), and he was having trouble walking, moving, and standing — quelle horreur!!
220624 injured ryewhen moe came home (still in the midst of a significantly more powerful psychedelic experience than i was expecting), rye was barely recognisable: he was curled up and bent over like a dog that was in SEVERE pain, he could barely walk, and he couldn’t even manage the two stairs leading from the garage to the back yard. they had done everything they could at moe’s veterinary practice to alleviate his pain, but they didn’t have a clue, and when they sent his x-rays out to a specialist, there was still no clue why he was in pain, so thursday, he had an MRI, and had surgery on his neck THAT DAY, because it was that emergent. 😱
the neurologist said that they were suprised the dog was walking at all. 😟
he came home from the hospital friday, and has been recovering ever since… which, basically, means that his movement is severely restricted: he lives in an ExPen, in the living room, full time, except for 4 or 5 bathroom breaks every 24 hours, and he sleeps in a kennel in monique’s office. it’s going to be two weeks before he will be allowed to go up and down stairs again, so moe has moved all of her stuff downstairs for a couple weeks.
SINCE THEN, i have had to deal with, suddenly, being in the middle of rehearsal season (rehearsals wendesday, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, and so on) which i haven’t experienced AT ALL for two years, AND i’m going to the oregon country fair, for the first time in two years, which TERRIFIES me, even though i really want to go, AND (oh, joy), we’re getting a NEW PUPPYWHILE i will be at the oregon country fair… which means that, when i get home from OCF, we’re going to have a disabled dog, and a new puppy, AT THE SAME TIME…
😩😰
i am running low enough on spoons that i actually cancelled busking this week, because i have a rehearsal later that day, and i’m pretty sure that if i went busking, i would be totally useless by the time the rehearsal came around.
quite apart from it being EXTREMELY WEIRD to be high on mushrooms while dealing with emotional people (who don’t know i am on mushrooms), and a severely injured dog, and quite apart from the fact that i am committed to doing something (OCF) that simultaneously terrifies me and is something i REALLY want to do, this entire sequence of events has not been particularly easy or enjoyable for me… 😒
and i’m REALLY not sure how i would have been able to handle it if it were NOT for mushrooms.
i am, once again, the owner of an art-car! SACBO here i come! 😉
(however, on the way home this morning, i picked up a rock chip on the windshield, which is already bigger than it was originally… looks like monday is going to be “repair my windshield” day. 😒)
The team of Thaddeus Spae (banjitar) and salamandir (tuba) performing at Pike Place Market, 5-11-22. Thaddeus said he has a street performance badge since 1975, while salamandir has one from 1978 The team of Thaddeus Spae (banjitar) and salamandir (tuba) performing at Pike Place Market, 5-11-22. Thaddeus said he has a street performance badge since 1975, while salamandir has one from 1978
photography by david carlos
it’s almost a sacrilege to wear this hat with ANYTHING other than an all-purple suit (and even better if it was a matching zoot suit, but they cost too much), and i have such a suit… but i’ll post this because it’s SO cool…220510 salamandir’s purple zootTando hat
this is the final element of an all-purple suit: coat and pants, vest, shirt, cufflinks, a choice of 3 DIFFERENT shades of long ties, or a bow tie, pocket-square… i’ve even got a purple and black lapel-pin…
i MIGHT be wearing this to busk in, tomorrow… we’ll see. 😉
unless something very unusual happens after this point, this is what my car’s hood will look like, very soon… (except that it won’t be blurry or fuzzy, that’s just the screen-resolution graphic. the finished product will be full colour and crisp lines. 👍😉)
and, to midnight window tinting (the guys who didn’t care about the fact that i couldn’t email updates to them), i say “bleh”. 😛 wicked wraps was able to handle my file without an issue, didn’t require me to save it in a different format, was able to figure out EXACTLY what i wanted with minimal input from me, they’re doing it for less money than midnight window tinting 👍👍, and they even took the finished graphic as a RGB file (which amazed even me), because, apparently, their equipment works better with RGB than it does with CMYK… 👍 they haven’t even seen my car, yet, and, already, they’re doing a far better job than you guys ever did! “bleh” 😛
229430 hemp stalks for casting i chinga long time ago…
(and i know it was a long time ago, because it was when i put a lot more faith (or whatever) in such things, which i have not done since well before my injury…)
i learned that there was some sort of mystical presence unlocked when, instead of using yarrow stalks, you used hemp stalks to cast i ching hexagrams.
i have always thought it was an interesting idea, and, to that end, now that it’s legal to grow hemp, i have now accumulated 50 appropriately sized hemp stalks which are intended to be used to cast i ching hexagrams.
however, because of the fact that i no longer place much faith (or whatever) in “techniques for divination”, i wonder what i should do with them? 🤷
i understand that i ching, particularly, is used as a valid form of self exploration, as well as a meditative practice, especially when the ancient, and far more meditative form of casting (which uses yarrow/hemp stalks), is used… but i don’t feel tremendously inspired to take up, or incorporate, another ancient practice, along with the ancient hindu, taoist, and muslim practices in which i currently engage.
i could put them up for sale on my web site, but that would seem to imply that i have multiple sets of stalks… and, while i do, there aren’t that many, currently, and only one of them is prepared enough to sell…
this may not be the final artwork, but it’s pretty close.
i dispensed with midnight window tinting, despite the fact that they sent me an original graphic, last year, when my cloud drive was vandalised, because the guy refused to talk to me, gave me vague reasons for doing things that i know nothing about, and refused to tell me more, then gave me a screen shot of my artwork that was totally screwed up (despite the aforementioned fact that he actually had a good copy, previously), and, to top things off, his email provider uses a spam detection service that “detected” my email, and refused to deliver my emails to him, and when i texted him to tell him, his response was “don’t care”…
i’m now going with “wicked wraps” — sounds like an east coast thing, but they’re on the west coast… who knows? 🤷 — i haven’t met them in person, yet, but i’ve corresponded with them, and i’ve seen their work, driving on the freeway…
looking at the photo above, at 100% (what you see here is approximately 45%), i’m not sure whether or not i like this effect… which is odd, because, as far as i know, i didn’t use any effects when processing this photo… 😒
i took “the rest” of my mushrooms today, at 12:00 pm. i don’t know how many there were, in terms of “mushrooms”, but it was between 1 and 2 grams (two 00-sized gel-caps, plus a tiny amount) of powder, mushroom bits and detritus at the very bottom of the bag. this trip followed the predictable pattern of ramp up, peak, maintain, and ramp down, but it was a great deal more than i expected, considering how mediocre my recent mushroom escapades have been. i must have been taking the parts that didn’t have the right stuff, before, because this trip made up for it “in spades”. 😉
the fact that i actually logged in here, and am making what i suppose is something like sense, at this point, at 5:00 pm, is somewhat amazing, and is made even more amazing by the fact that i went out and got a prescription refill for moe, a 12-pack of diet ginger ale, and canned salt-free green beans for dog food, an hour ago. i have discovered that driving while high on mushrooms has, apparently, been affected by both the fact that i have been driving NOT on mushrooms for quite a bit longer than the last time i did so (which was in my 20s), and the fact that cars, these days, are a lot more “hands off” than they were fourty years ago… following distance, speed limits, road-center detection… even an amount of steering… are all “automatic” at this point.
“high self”, meet “normal self”. 😉
while i was out walking in the woods today, i saw a fallen branch with moss growing off of it… and it looked just like a lazy duck with green hair.
220209 is this just a fallen log, or…?220209 is this just a fallen log, or…?
i knew those emergency eyeballs would come in handy… 😉
i confirmed that the big tree that has been speaking to me, is a “Tree of Being”… the only other one that i know of is on sehome hill. this one appears to be around 600+ years old. i sat beneath it, today.
this better have some lasting anti-depressant effects, otherwise i’m going to have to do it again. 😉
a couple of friends bought moe and i tickets to see the cirque du soleil show “Allegria”, which we used today. i have seen “Saltimbanco”, and “Volta”, and i think i like this one best of all. it is, apparently, “Allegria 2.0”, which is a reboot of the show they did from 1994 to 2013, which, according to moe, was “why there weren’t as many set pieces and why there was a lot more acrobatics…” and, indeed, there was A LOT more acrobatics than i have seen at previous cirque shows. there were stacks of 3 people in several of the acts, and EVERY. SINGLE. ACT. had some variety of “death defying stunt”, from the stack of 3 people that “fell” into a bunch of long poles, which were being held on the shoulders of other guys, and ended up with two of the stack of three people standing ON the poles… and a 4-way “tumble track” that had 8 people bouncing and tumbling over the top of each other… and the guy with the german wheel that started with the wheel flat on the ground, and he got it up and rotating SIMPLY BY exherting momentum with his feet… 220129 cirque du soleil fire baton juggler – photo by moeand the guy that juggled two fire batons, which he lit by passing the fire from one end to the other with his mouth… and the people that did the 3-dimentional acrobalancing dance, hanging from wires in the ceiling… and the contortionist/hand-balancer that, i think, may have been in the moisture festival a few years ago… and the flying trapeze artists… oh my! i don’t know what the original “Allegria” show was like, but this one BLEW. ME. AWAY!
literally… there was one of the “entr’acte” scenes, with clowns, where they created a literal blizzard of confetti that completely engulfed the people who were sitting close to the stage (which included us)… and then, after they had done a little dance with leaf blowers, to get the confetti off the stage, they had people who ran sheets up, over the heads of the front rows of seats, and they blew the confetti on to the sheets, which were, presumably, gathered up and recycled for the next show… there was A LOT of confetti…
and i got a souvenier collapsible velvet top hat, which is something i have wanted for a very long time. 😉
a VERY long time ago — i would guess somewhere between 1964 and 1967, or thereabouts — i participated in a “market research study” (for which my parents, hopefully, got paid), where, over the course of a week or so, i would try various different dry cereals, and “potential” dry cereals — which they had produced, but hadn’t “hit the market” yet — without knowing anything about them, and rate them according to what i thought dry cereal should look and taste like.
i’m fairly sure i screwed up ALL of their data points, because i was a combination of three things, which severely skewed my personal experience of dry cereal. the first was that, when i was very small, there was a concern that i might be allergic to cows’ milk (which had been proven false, by the time this took place), and so, when i was learning which cereals i liked, i was only given cereals that could be eaten “without milk”… which, for some reason, meant various different kinds of oatmeal and grits… i wasn’t even given “cream of wheat” because it had the word “cream” in it, and, particularly, my mother was CONVINCED that it wouldn’t be good for me. the second was that my parents were “progressive”: not full-blown “hippies” (however, my dad did have long hair and a beard, but it wasn’t until the ’70s) but definitely not the standard fare for the time and place they were from, which was central illinois “corn country” in the mid-to-late ’60s. thus, they were CONVINCED that sugar was “bad”, so, as a result, when it was determined that dry cereal was “a thing”, i was only given ‘bland’ cereals, such as cheerios, kix, chex, puffed wheat, and grape nuts. by the time i was part of the survey, i was eating cows’ milk all the time, but i never liked “sugar frosted flakes”, “sugar smacks”, “chocolate frosted sugar bombs” or anything like that… and the third thing is that, when i was very small, i was forced to eat fruit at a time when i really DID NOT want to eat fruit, and, as a result, i developed a lifelong distaste for fruit, in general, and about 75% of the cereal that i tested was fruit flavoured, in some way or another.
i spent a few days trying, and rejecting about 95% of the “chocolate frosted sugar bombs” they offered me, primarily because they were so sweet that it overpowered any “cereal-like” taste there may have been.
220123 Chocolate Cheerios! 😱however, there is one thing that i remember clearly, and that was that “they” (the people conducting the survey, who were, according to my interpretation, in a position to know these things) told me that there would NEVER be “chocolate cheerios”. they told me that the makers of cheerios were totally against making their cereal “pre-sweetened”, and if i saw chocolate cheerios on sale, it would mean the end of the world. cheerios was, by definition, NOT a “pre-sweetened” cereal.
over the years, they have come close… the closest they’ve gotten that i know about was “honey-nut cheerios”, which was “pre-sweetened”, but, because of the fact that it was, alledgedly, sweetened with honey, and not sugar, it was, alledgedly, “okay”…
220112 ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ buttonso there’s this, which is a prototype (flong!) of a 1½" button for next month’s IOTM VIP goodie…
however i’m not sure about it. it’s an absolutely delicious double (or triple!) entendre, for those few who “know about such things”, but how many people spent the first 30 years of their lives studying obscure religious facts? and, i’m afraid it could be taken to be VERY offensive to… um… just about anybody else…
under normal circumstances, i wouldn’t care in the slightest, but this is, allegedly, representing my business, and i would be sending them out to people who don’t know me…
[ETA 220114] — it’s an 18th century drawing of what the ancient roman god Priapus might have looked like. ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ (soter kosmou) means “Saviour of the World”, and it was usually inscribed below the penis face. however, in a bizarre twist, the figure of “a man with the head of a rooster and an erect penis for a beak” may have also been a representation of st. peter, in which case, ΣΩΤΗΡ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ refers to jesus. it’s one of the reasons a penis is sometimes referred to as a “peter”. 🤣
okay, this is discounting the fact that gods only exist in the minds of those who worship them… this is a purely practical examination of the aspects of hindu gods, in particular… and to be precise, an examination of their clothing.
most depictions of deities are clothed. there are deities which are naked, and part of the devotion to these deities is dressing, undressing, and bathing them, but i’m talking about the deities that are depicted as clothed.
i wonder…
a depiction of the multiple arms of Kali Maa, in Goa
day NINE of more than one foot of snow, and it’s currently snowing at this very moment!
i tried getting out to ship out the IOTM orders this morning, and didn’t even make it out of the driveway before getting stuck!
220103 stuck car
this is not fun any more. 😒
although, it’s a good thing i got stuck when i did, because i could have made it halfway down the street, or halfway to the middle-of-nowhere post office before getting stuck, which would be even worse…
[ETA] moe came home early, and informed me that there is a tree down across the road, about 150 yards up the street from our house, where it can’t be seen from our house… which means that, even if i had gotten out, i wouldn’t have got far. a lady heavy equipment operator came around and plowed the street in front of our house, all the way to the dead end, in exchange for $100. she said she’s been plowing the roads in our neighbourhood for 4 years.
day 5SEVEN of 1+ foot of snow. keeping fingers crossed, but no power outage yet. at this point, the main roads are slushy, and some of them are bare and wet, but the street in front of our house has few enough tire prints that i can still count them. last year someone eventually plowed our street, but i don’t know who, and they haven’t done it this year. i brushed all the snow off my car, and ventured out today, because i’ve actually got a unicycle class tomorrow, and i needed to know whether or not to admit defeat, and take monique’s all-wheel-drive car (or the truck). as it is, it’s supposed to get up to 42°F, so i will probably take my car to class.
goo dot gl URL redirect QR codea few years ago, i got a QR code from google, attached to their URL-forwarder at goo dot gl, that resolved to वृत्तिः from “Unknown Album”, which i promptly had made into a sticker, which i have been sticking to various different things, and handing to strangers i meet on the street, for a few years now.
i INTENDED to use goo dot gl’s analytics to determine how many people had hit the link, and where they were located. apparently that was only a SMALL FRACTION of the information i could receive from the QR code.
what i didn’t know is that they shut down their URL-forwarder at goo dot gl in 2018 and i only JUST found out about it.
fortunately the QR code, and the URL-forwarder continue to work, but…
goddam it, gewgel… when you stop using something important, you should make it somewhat more obvious. 😒
now, admittedly, i INTENDED to use the goo dot gl analytics, but i only logged in to see what was happening for the first time, today, so i really was NOT paying attention, but still… you would think that a company as big as the big G could be a little more public about things like this.
i have discovered YET ANOTHER thing that fell victim to the crack of 2021, and that was the user manual for our fireplace!
particularly, this exact diagram (found, and re-downloaded by MOE, who is the undisputed google-master of this house) which is found on page 28 of said manual: 211111 wood-stove diagramthis shows the position of the flue/damper (labeled “burn rate air control”) and the automatic startup air control for the woodstove. the flue/damper is a thing i am familiar with, but the postion and manufacture of this particular woodstove, plus it’s relative “new-ness” from my standpoint, makes it very difficult for me to remember the correct position, which is VITALLY important when starting this stove, in order to prevent huge clouds of smoke from coming out of every non-welded join in the entire stove and chimney…
and the “automatic startup air control” is something i have never experienced in a woodstove before… it’s got a mechanical timer, and it gradually closes vents at the bottom of the fire, so that it has plenty of air to start with, but not so much air after 30 minutes or so…
and WITHOUT the information in this diagram, i have a very difficult time remembering the correct position for these things, which makes it REALLY frustrating, when i have to start a fire, as i did this evening. 🤬🤬🤬
fortunately, i have MOE to rescue me when technology fails. i now have this manual re-downloaded and stored away in an obvious place on my new cloud server. 😉
my guess is that this sort of thing is going to become, more-or-less, a standard occurance chéz salamandir, so it’s a good thing i’m starting to keep track of it now… i think… 😕
211105 The Swastika takes many forms, but it’s still a Swastika. The issue is not whether Hitler’s Swastika is different from ours. The issue is that it is our Swastika, not Hitler’s. Friendly Swastika dot Art
it’s still not as full as i have seen it, but it’s getting there. a month of near constant rain doesn’t hurt, but it’s still not as full as it was before this summer. 😒
211019 harvest!
starts under lights on 210502, harvested 211019, almost two pounds (estimate based on raw weight of the harvested plants), 171 days, 122 of which were outdoors…
… making this my first successful, mostly-outdoor grow. 😉
200412 first morningacross the street from our house is a pond. it normally has about 10 feet of water in it. you can see it in this photo of the “first morning”, which was taken last year. the pond started losing water in early spring of this year, and it has been mostly dry for almost four months.
today, after 3 days of rain, the pond FINALLY has water in it… not 10 feet of water, or even 10 inches of water, but it’s a start… and it’s going to have to rain A LOT MORE before we’ll be back to the “normal” 10 feet of water. 😒
but “climate change” and the coronavirus are chinese frauds, and we need to prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory to junior high school kids in public schools. 😒
211006 the “pond”
seriously, i’ve been removing flyers for patriotfront dot us, and flyers for somebody who is running for school board SPECIFICALLY on the platform of “mask CHOICE, not mandate” and “no CRT in schools”, from the bulletin board at the local convenience store… 😠 i’ve been replacing them with my “ultimatum to world leaders”, with a link to ABillionPeople.org, but it’s been being taken down almost as soon as i put it up, so i’ve been trying to get “creative”…
but it’s really disturbing to me that there are actual nazis living in my community. 😠 if he gets elected (which i hope doesn’t happen, but around here, who knows), i wonder how much actual school board experience he has, because the pandemic is not going to last forever, and once he discovers that public primary schools AREN’T teaching “critical race theory” he’s not going to have much of a platform left… but, by then, he’ll have discovered that the school board buys school books for the district, and i’m pretty sure he’ll have something to say about that. 😒
on 190114 i reached the first plateau, and i’ve been hanging around there ever since.
but, recently, the batteries that completed the first plateau have been acting like they’re on their last legs, not holding a charge, or charging inconsistently, so i decided to get new ones.
unfortunately, the batteries that they made in 2019 are no longer being manufactured, and i really don’t like buying stuff online, where you can’t examine it closely before deciding it won’t work…
which is exactly what happened with an outfit called “slick vapes” (they have a web site, but i won’t link to it, because they’re assholes). i looked through their selection of dab pen batteries and bought 3 “Evolve” batteries… which turned out to be exactly the same as the batteries i rejected prior to reaching the first plateau (they were “pen sized”, wouldn’t hold more than a few hours charge, when they would hold a charge at all, charged inconsistently, etc., etc., etc. 😒). then, i discovered a new type of “coilless” atomiser that looked like it would fit, but i wasn’t sure, because… online… 😒 so i ordered them, and they got back to me and accused me of using a stolen credit card… 😒 and when i got that straightened out, they said they had shipped the product, but the tracking number they sent me said that USPS was still waiting for the package two weeks after they said it was shipped. 😒 and when they FINALLY arrived, wouldn’t you know, they don’t fit any of the vape mods i have. 🤬
210915 the second plateaui’m still in the process of getting that whole FUMTU straightened out, but, in the mean time, i went to XHale Vapor ‘n’ Smoke, in issaquah, and bought an ELeaf iStick TC40W battery which has controls for temperature and wattage! so now i don’t have to press the button and about 50% of the time get no vapour at all, and the other 50%, get so much vapour that i choke. 😉 it also has a battery life indicator. the one down side that i’ve noticed, so far, is that it uses the micro-USB charging port, but it came with a cable, and the other micro-USB cables i have fit, so i’m just going to have to see how long it lasts. but it’s solid! it’s “hefty”… it’s got substance… not like the batteries from slick vapes, which, honestly, look a lot more flashy than anything else.
two cannabis starts under lights on 210502. 18 weeks later, 126 days, and now they are taller than me… 210910 cannababies! every day they’re bigger, and looking more and more juicy and delicious! yum! and totally legal! 😈
210825 woods walkeven under the best of circumstances, “microdosing” mushrooms is a hit-or-miss proposition…
a couple weeks ago, i decided i was going to take a “proper” mushroom trip, and, towards that end, i prepared two 00-sized capsules with the oldest of my mushroom stash. by last week, i had decided that i didn’t want to take the whole thing, all at once, so i took the larger one…
and didn’t feel anything… 😞
which was really dissapointing, but i figured the mushrooms were old enough that they’d lost all their potency. despite the fact that i didn’t “feel” anything, i definitely noticed the “characteristic” anti-depressant effects of the psilocybin, and so, this week, i decided to take the other, smaller capsule.
that was at 12:30 this afternoon…
this time, i DEFINITELY feel something…
despite the fact that the capsule was approximately 25% SMALLER than the one i took last week, i’ve definitely had a marvelously melty afternoon, after going for a ≈5 mile walk in the woods, i came home and spent the afternoon doodling and listening to music over headphones…
it’s now approximately 6:00…
210825 mushroom drawing
something i haven’t done in a very long time… stupid brain injury… 😒
this afternoon, i was doing some yard work, and i found this in the gravel between the house and the trailer… 210819 Alaska Yukon Pacific 100th Anniversary pin, quarter for scale
it’s small enough that i’m 100% certain that, if i didn’t already know what it was, i wouldn’t have even noticed it, but…
AS IT HAPPENS… i know EXACTLY what it is, which is a 1909-2009 Alaska Yukon Pacific 100th Anniversary pin, which was given to performers at the celebration, and (i believe) were also for sale to the people who came to the celebration. i know this because, in 2009, the ballard sedentary sousa band peformed at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exhibition 100th Anniversary… although, for some (now) unknown reason, i was unable to make that gig, so i had liz get me a pin, becuase i have always been interested in the alaska yukon pacific exhibition, and i was really dissapointed that i couldn’t be there… and i THOUGHT that pin was on my red fedora, because that’s the last place i saw it, and it was only last week that i wore that hat…
could i have lost my AYP pin? 😨
so i ran upstairs to check, and… no, my AYP pin is right where it’s supposed to be:
210819 my AYP pin, right where it’s supposed to be
so, that raises a new question… was the former owner of my house at the AYP 100th anniversary, and did he/she/they buy a pin? or were they performers? i consider the latter to be EXTREMELY unlikely…
i’ve got a lot on my mind… my new car, my old car, monique’s old car, my cloud drive, the data, which still needs A LOT of categorising and sorting. there’s so much of it, and about a third to one half of it is corrupt, but i can’t tell without attempting to read it…
next to my tablet is a cup which contains pens, pencils, permanent markers, a divider, a compass, a bong reamer, several dental tools, a couple of hemostats… miscelaneous things that i need on a regular basis. i was looking for the original gear shift knob for my old car, which involved emptying out a bag of miscelaneous leftovers from when we moved (last year), which i never got around to sorting out. it had a number of things that i had been looking for, like my extra vape battery, an extra container for concentrates, my (ORIGINAL!) fidget-cube, and some extra pens and pencils, which i proceded to put in the cup next to my tablet… but it was full.
so, i decided to get a larger can, from my workshop, into which to transfer the pens, pencils, and miscelaneous tools, which took a while, because i had to find the can that i was looking for. when i’d found the can, i went back into my office, and transferred the stuff into it, in the bottom of the cup, i found this…
miniature citrine ganesha
i got this… i don’t know how many years ago… i think it was before my injury… i got it a clear quartz ganesha, and this citrine one, at the same time, but i lost the citrine one almost immediately — like, within the first two weeks — and i have never seen it since.
210617 stele progressit has taken a really long time to get this far, and i have been going miserably slow, because i’ve had to source materials (and made some pretty dramatic “compromises” in order to simply get the project started… 😒), and because of other things (read “databases”) taking my attention…
AND because i’m being a perfectionist about it, and not being satisfied with the work that i’ve already done… seriously, there have been a couple of times when, despite the work that i’ve already done, i’ve thought about trashing the whole thing and starting over, because ONE TINY DETAIL is slightly askew, which nobody except the most hard-core thelemite would notice…
but, see, that’s the thing… i’m making this because I AM a “hard-core thelemite” (among other things), and, seriously, i want it to be as close to the original as absolutely possible, while, at the same time, being 40% smaller, and entirely made by hand…
AND, BUT, ALSO… a NEW CAR!! 😒 no, no, no… AND because i have been depressed enough that, even when i am doing nothing else, for EXTENDED periods of time, i have been having difficulty finding the motivation to work on it, and i kind of DON’T want it to turn into “depression art”, it being a spiritual piece, and everything…
what i am doing to combat depression:
taking 100mg of bupropion every day. whether it’s doing anything or not remains to be seen.
taking mushrooms occasionally, but not as frequently as i’d like (the most recent time was last tuesday, three mushrooms). along those same lines, i am still:
planning on growing mushrooms in the near future
got expert advice on call
got the spores
got the substrate: “Uncle Ben’s 90 minute rice — 90 minutes, perfect every time!”
got a still-air egg incubator
still need to find information about how and when to transfer from the sterile substrate to “growing boxes”
bought some size 00 capsules. am going to try grinding the mushrooms and putting them in capsules to see if i can standardise the dosage a little better. 😉
read “Wired For Love”, planning on buying the book.
convinced moe to read “Wired For Love” (she starts it this weekend)
going as slow as necessary
being as easy on myself as i can.
possibly other things i don’t recall at this time.
whether those things are actually having any effect remains to be seen. i’m afraid to think of what comes next if they’re not having any effect. 😒
i gave the web developer my login to the open support ticket at the host provider. there hasn’t been any obvious action yet, but i’ve emailed with the web developer, who worked out a temporary solution which may work out if his attempts to communicate with the host provider don’t work out… but, as i said, he hasn’t even logged in, much less done what the host provider asked of me, which was to “clearly lay out the issues you’re facing and the solution you need done to resolve this issue”.
210606 screenshot SQL errorthe issues are that i can’t add new content (the “not HTML” difficulty and its results), and i get weird SQL errors, which only appear once, and then go away. i don’t get them on a regular basis: sometimes i get them the first time i hit the site, when i boot my computer in the morning, and sometimes i get them in the middle of the afternoon. frequently i get them when i’m hitting the base URI, but i’ve also seen them when i’m hitting deeper content.
i don’t know what the solution is, because i don’t know what is causing it. my web developer seems to think it’s the database engine at my host provider, because he has some sort of advanced tool that tells him when things aren’t working correctly. my host provider says he’s full of shit, that his proposed “upgrades” will break things for everybody else, and won’t even talk to the him unless he logs in as me. unfortunately, i know little enough about database engines that any input i can offer would be totally meaningless.
i feel a little bit better, because, now, instead of "doing this as a courtesy as this is not included as part of your Web Maintenance", they have now, actually charged me money, so i am, actually, paying them to fix my shit, and the temporary work around that he proposed, while not ideal, would certainly fix the problem for at least a year.
but i seem to recall going through another database fiasco last year around this time, and, if this is going to become a regular occurrance, i think i’ll pass, thanks. 😒
ETA: the web developer has logged in as me, and given a detailed description of exactly what is wrong, exactly why he thinks it’s wrong, examples of identical installations that follow his guidelines that don’t experience the problems i’m having, and a variety of different solutions to the problems he’s found. the host provider has yet to reply. because of the fact that they’re on eastern time, there’s a good chance we won’t hear anything until tomorrow.
so, for some time now, i have wanted to make a reproduction of The Stele Of Revealing, and i got started the other day. but very quickly, i realised that, if i want to make it a “good enough” reproduction rather than a reproduction that would only look good if you didn’t look too closely, i would need to know the original dimensions, and have a reasonably accurate idea of what the heiroglyphs look like, and what the other artwork looks like, and i would, then, need to reduce them from their original size to the size that i ended up deciding i was going to make it — approximately a 40% reduction.
because i’m an artist, i know that, usually (in the absence of photocopiers, or proportional cameras), the tool used to make miniature reproductions is a proportional divider. i have used them before, know what they look like, and know that they can be very expensive. i didn’t want a really expensive one, but i also did not want something that somebody (most likely me) made out of plywood, because it wouldn’t be accurate enough, so i went to ebay, and discovered the exact tool i needed — from the picture, i deduced that it was, largely, the same tool i used in high school, when i was first learning about proportional dividers.210515 proportional dividers
they arrived in the mail today. they are… um… not what i expected.
what arrived in the mail was a finely machined set of proportional dividers with sharpened tool steel points, and an engraved scale for both circles and lines. it is stamped “J.H.Weil & Co.” and it came in a velvet-lined case with antique gold writing on the outside that says U.S.C.E., which i take to mean U.S. Army Corps of Engineers… my impression is that, under normal circumstances, this could be as much as a $200 tool, but, because of the fact that it appears to be a vintage, military tool, it could be worth a lot more… this is a tool that is, pretty much GUARANTEED to be accurate to at least one thousandth of an inch… and it cost me less than $50!
so, i just wanted to give a shout out to Next Stage Vintage… they suprised the hell out of me! thank you! 😉👍
and i am going to use it to reduce The Stele Of Revealing… 😲
trillium — picking parts off a trillium plant can kill it even if the rhizome is left undisturbed… so don’t. around here, they are T. albidum, T. ovatum, and T. petiolatum. all the ones pictured here are ovatum. 😉
i got the nuts that fit the screws, i took the loupe part off the old, broken frames, and mounted it on the new, unbroken frames, with entirely new screws and nuts, and washers from the repair kit the denmat/perioptix people sent me. the new screws are TINY alan-key drive… mcmaster-carr doesn’t have philips-head screws that are 2-64… 😒 i don’t actually have an alan-key small enough to tighten them, but i’m pretty sure i got it tight enough with a wrench on the nut side. 🔧
ETA: it turns out i do have an alan-key that is small enough, and i did get it tight enough with a wrench… HOWEVER in my final look-over before i put it back in the box, i noticed something i hadn’t before, which is that the hinge is completely broken, and, while the repair kit they sent me has a replacement hinge, it’s actually the part of the hinge that is a molded part of the magnifier, itself, which means that i cannot fix it, because it is an integral part of the actual optical piece… replacement parts for which, i already know they no longer make. 😒
210421 eyebrow hole
at this point, it’s still in one piece, and functional, so long as you don’t move the hinge around too much, but the hinge has already failed and cannot be repaired. it’s just a matter of time before the whole thing falls apart. 🤬
i also burned a hole in my eyebrow, when i was grinding down the screw so that it wouldn’t poke the wearer in the eye, and i put the frames on to test them too quickly after grinding… 😉
it was one of two that have been in the freezer for AT LEAST 20 years, and maybe as many as 30… my recollection is that i actually obtained them during one of my “oh my god the world is going to end any day now, and i’ve got to have an emergency stash, just in case” phases, and has been hanging out in other people’s freezers when it wasn’t in my own, and when neither one was handy, it was on my altar in an airtight bag, in an airtight film canister…
but, it was AT LEAST 20 years old, and i really had no idea what to expect.
and, i just realised that i grossly underestimated how old those were… i think i got them after i lived in mount vernon, and before i moved to seattle, which was in the 1993-4 range…? gawd i’m old… 😒
i dropped at 10:00 am, and by 11:30 i was totally thinking it was a dud. then i got a text from lisa, who wanted to come at 1:30, and get their (well, not exactly “their”, but it’s a long and unrelated story) pressure washer, and, i decided that, if it was a dud, then it would probably be safe for me to drive to 4 corners, and refill their gas can (which i had almost completely drained, in my two day attack on the slime front deck), and i did so, without any perceivable distortion… but by the time 1:30 came around, i was feeling a little something, and i figured, oh, well, delayed release, but it’s something… and by the time 2:00 came around, and lisa actually showed up… well, i had been sitting out on the front deck, talking to the hummingbirds. 😉
after she left, and against my better judgement (but i was high on acid, so pretty much anything i did would be against most peoples’ better judgements), i drove the 3 miles from our house to the back side of taylor mountain TRIPPING MY ASS OFF and wandered up taylor mountain for a few hours.
210413 acid tripping210413 acid tripping
first, i came across this rock:
210413 aware rock
it was by the side of the path, not far enough out to be a hinderence or something to trip over, but about six inches from the outer edge of the path, and as i walked by, i suddenly became aware of the fact that that rock has been watching me, every time i walk that path, ever since i first started going there, about three months ago… that rock is AWARE of me… at which point i had to fight off a strong desire to turn the rock upside down, to see if that would affect it’s awareness of me, but then i realised that it would only make it more aware of me, because i was the person who turned it upside down.
then i went up to the washout, where road “A” doesn’t go through any more, and meditated for an hour or so, and played with the tube…
i REALLY want to get up there with my harmonic flute and electronic doodads, but it wouldn’t help an acid trip, and i’d just watch the lights blink, anyway (this alludes to one of the many, many times i took acid in the early 1980s, when i was in college, and thought i would try to make the synthesizer work… and i ended up hooking it up so that every light blinked in a random fashion, but made no noise, and then turned out the lights in the studio, and… you know the rest 😉).
then i walked up to the intersection of road “A” and road “H”, to the place where the beaver pond washed out road “A” (this is the “upper washout” on road “A”, the one i have been to before, is, apparently, the “lower washout”), where, at 4:30 in the afternoon, on a tuesday, i ran into a random guy and his dog, who were out for a walk…
he looked at his watch, and said that he was shooting for three miles, and he was only at two and a half, and walked on up the trail…
on the way down the hill, i recorded an instance of 4’33” which i uploaded to johncage dot org. you can listen to it here.
i made it back to my car around 5:30 pm, and drove the 3 miles back home. it’s now 7:30 pm, and i’m still high… if experience is anything to go by, i’ll probably be tripping until at least 10:00…
i guess it’s a really good thing i didn’t take the other hit when i thought the first one was a dud… 😉
i prefer the gentle, insistent urgings of mushrooms to the “kick upside the head” of LSD, but, when it comes to getting me “out of my mind”, either one of them will do the trick.
i had one relatively large mushroom, approximately half a gram, or so, and some leftover stems and pieces of cap that, all together, made up, maybe a gram, total… i.e. not very much, under the best of circumstances, and they were, also, at least three years old… so they weren’t particularly powerful, anyway…
… but… 😉
i definitely felt something — a little shimmering and sparkling around the edges of the forest — and the antidepressant effects are plainly evident. 😉
i went for a walk up the back side of taylor mountain. i started out going down the carey creek trail, which hasn’t been open since i’ve lived here. i walked down that for about half a mile, until i got to the edge of a king county park (on the map i found, it’s called “donkey engine”) when i noticed that i had been walking down a railroad grade, it started getting more steep, and i realised that i wouldn’t want to be walking uphill when i was coming down from a mushroom trip, so i turned around and went back the other direction.
where i parked was at the southeast 208th st. “back” entrance to taylor mountain, right across the street from the dire warning no trespassing cedar river watershed signs. after walking down the carey creek trail, i walked up “road G” until i came to the intersection of “road A”, which was closed because of a washout… evidently, a couple of years ago, at least, because there was a fairly well established trail through the washout, that skirted the “official” “road closed” signs and fences. 😉
and, i walked from the washout to the intersection of “road K”, which is when i realised that this end of “road A” connects up to the end of “road A” that comes out at the “front” entrance to taylor mountain, about 5 miles up issaquah-hobart road, just off highway 18.
here’s what i saw:
210406 moss
to my mushroom-induced mind, this moss took the form of a tall, shapely woman with long hair, walking away from me… it doesn’t look anything like that now, but it was startlingly clear enough that i took the picture AND remembered what it was.
210406 20-foot stump
the tree growing out of this stump is four feet in diameter. the stump, itself, is around twenty feet in diameter. 🤯
210406 trees
i was tripping on mushrooms, so, of course, i had to take a picture of the sky, through the trees… 😉
210406 tree
this could be another “Tree of Being”… i’m not sure, but it speaks to me… 😉
210406 spiral
this is taken at the end of an overflow pipe that is supposed to sluice water away from the washout… it was, evidently, uneffective, because it is well above the washout. it is a place that, insinctively, i stuck my head into, and started humming to find the resonant frequency. it’s definitely some place that i should return to, accompanied by my harmonic flute and electronic stuff… and, it’s especially appropriate because it’s a spiral, and i was tripping on mushrooms (although, by the time i came across it, i was already mostly down from my trip 😉)
today, i started pressure washing the front deck, possibly for the first time in 10 years or more. the deck, for the entire time we’ve lived here, has been a trecherous place to walk, when it is wet — and, i mean, TRECHEROUS… even being careful, i have suddenly and unexpectedly found myself on the ground after the frequent rain showers we have around here. i’m not sure, but i think that, at one time, it had been stained a dark brown, but it hadn’t been sealed, and, quite quickly, the dark brown stain started to mask some dark brown mold that was allowed to spread, unchecked, until the house was sold to us, last year.
and i have, FINALLY started to pressure wash it… with a gas-powered pressure washer, loaned to us by monique’s boss. unfortunately, it was stubborn enough that i didn’t finish, and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so i don’t know if i’m going to get a chance to finish it until monday.
210327 deck side stairs210327 half done
i started around noon, and gave up when monique got home, at 6:30 pm. once i get it pressure washed, a friend who has a deck sander is going to come by and sand and seal it for us, so that it doesn’t turn into an ice-skating rink every time it rains.
141205 Zorah at the NADAC championships140319 Zorah, The Fourth Fastest Dog In The Universe (by .2 seconds)140319 Zorah, The Fourth Fastest Dog In The Universe (by .2 seconds)
i didn’t have to spend three quarters of the day dealing with testy customs agents, indifferent import brokers, and recalcitrant shipping managers, and paying almost $500 to various people i had never heard of before, who had practically nothing to do with my shipment…
i arrived, was directed where to go, submitted two documents, had the lady scan my driver’s license, and then she gave me a piece of paper (with my scanned driver’s license on it), and told me to go “down the hall, to your left”, where i walked into a big wire cage. on the other side was a warehouse, full of wares. a friendly-looking guy with a grey beard under his mask, came up, asked to see my paperwork (😉), and then told me to pull around to the sally-port and he would meet me there. i backed my car up to the sally-port, and the guy came with a forklift, carrying three big boxes… i loaded them into my car, and drove away.
i am fully vaccinated, which means that i can get out and do stuff without anxiety… and, because of the fact that we moved (last year at this time 😒) i’ve got a bunch of places that are a 5-minute drive (or a half-hour walk along a busy rural highway) away from home, which i have been, more or less, unable to “explore” because of the fact that i wasn’t fully vaccinated.
today i went to big bend park in maple valley, and walked along the old railroad grade. the railroad grade actually cut off a part of the cedar river, which, i imagine, was the original “big bend” that they’re talking about.
here are some things i saw.
210309 old utility pole210309 old utility pole210309 bounded chaotic mixing producing strange stability
i really like the place we’re currently living, and i REALLY don’t want to move again (ever, in my life, if possible), but if i were to allow that possibility, here’s a house i wouldn’t mind living in, and it’s not even that far from where i live now. 😉
210309 fantasy castle
and, finally, here are some signs that are posted in this “neighbourhood” park… 😉
210309 what to do when confronted by wild animals210309 impossible logs
it’s raining now, but it’s supposed to start snowing again after dark, which is in about an hour…
i walked out to the main road. it’s clear and wet, with patches of slush. the snow accumulation off the road is pretty similar to what we have here… but in order to get out to the main road, you have to drive UP a hill that kids have been sledding on for two days. it’s possible to drive up the hill, but only barely.
and, because of the fact that they’re there, we also had a couple of downed trees. they didn’t hit anything, and they’re not across the road, but it’s not over yet, and i haven’t been out further than the mailbox — it had come open, somehow, and was three-quarters full of snow, which was on top of the letter that i was hoping the letter carrier was going to pick up — so i don’t know what “the real world” is like… supposedly, we have a “micro-climate” around our neighbourhood, and the weather is substantially different about a mile away, on the main road.
this is the one of the… i’m not sure whether it’s an “advantage” or it’s a “danger”… of living in the remote wilderness.
at this point, it’s not an awful lot different than any other day, during COVID. 😒
i recorded the tuba part for a collaborative effort to create the panto 2020 “Welcome Song”, but since we can’t actually meet to rehearse, we’re recording the parts, which, presumably, will be together enough that they will be able to be combined together, and then emailed to the people who have come to the pantos in the past.
i experienced the clarinet part, and the “click track”, which was kiki playing the song on the ukulele and singing, along with a metronome. without the click track (which, i’m assuming is the ultimate goal), the clarinet part and the tuba part ended up staying together… mostly… and the times when it seemed like we were going to lose the beat, miraculously, found the beat again in a lot less time than it would have taken if we had been in a live rehearsal.
but it’s really weird playing the tuba part without all of the other parts, only knowing that they will be put together at a later date.
Heirophanythere’s a possibility that thaddeus and i are going to resurrect “Heirophany”, which is me playing the harmonic flute and twiddling with electronic gadgets, and thaddeus playing guitar, and twiddling with electronic gadgets. we released a 12 minute long single — with a fantastic cover, which is a picture of a ‘cello on fire 😉👍 — a couple of years ago, and then didn’t do anything else, but, at this point, we can do it “socially distanced”, and i’ve even been thinking of designing a mask for the harmonic flute, anyway, that will make it so that i can play when it’s windy… only, now, it’s so that i can play while i’m masked… and it’s something where we can play for other people, and, potentially, make some money at it at the same time.
#drumpf still hasn’t conceded, and his lawsuits are getting tossed out as fast as he can file ’em, but, ultimately, i think he’s going to try to make an end run around losing the popular vote and the electoral vote by “declaring” the election invalid, refusing to accept the results, and going to the supreme court (which he has stacked with sycophants) to make the final decision. he has made statements within the past 24 hours that include “just get rid of the ballots”, and “there will be no transition”, and “biden can’t enter the white house without proving that his ballots are legal”, which don’t make it sound particularly like he’s intending to go anywhere. and, while i would like nothing better than to watch as he was dragged out by his heels, kicking and screaming like a three-year-old having a tantrum (which, i have no doubt, would happen, if it came to that), i seriously doubt that any president that comes after that would have any chance of pulling the country back together again any time within my lifetime, i don’t care who he is, or how fast he impliments universal health care and universal basic income.
the fence is (allegedly) being fixed on thursday, by the guy who is the friend of the neighbour who is (still) being a dick about paying for the fence, despite the fact that the dead tree which destroyed it was on his property. 😒
the guy who is (allegedly) fixing the fence has already run down a whole list of (bogus) complaints he had about the current fence — i get the impression that he’s not particularly impressed with the quality or consistency of the fence materials, despite the fact that we had the fence made by a different company than the one which made the gates, and that the whole thing was built during the peak of the first round of COVID…
but i get the very strong impression that the guy is going to do everything possible to get away with doing a halfway job and begging off, never to be heard from again, which is why i’m going to be keeping an eye on the work progress, when it happens. 😒
election day is (finally) tomorrow. in spite of the fact that he was impeached, we managed to survive (barely) four years of #drumpf, and i’m not sure, even now, that we’re going to vote him out tomorrow… and, even if we do, i’m even less sure that he’ll leave without making a BIG fuss, and/or flagrantly cheating… and even if we do manage to eject him into the sun, there’s going to be A LOT of #MAGA #chuds who will be stubbornly unwilling to accept it, and even if we are actually able to eject him into the sun, they’re not going to be so “easy” to deal with, nor will they just “go away”, once the solar ejecting has actually been accomplished.
i keep saying it’ll take us at least a hundred years to recover from #drumpf, and i’m not sure we have a hundred years left, even if we do, miraculously, make him and his cronies just vanish.
in other news, i made a new page for the Incense Of The Month Club, but i can’t figure out how to put the background image on it that i want, so it’s not linked anywhere, yet. i bought a 1½” diameter button press (because why not), and now i’ve got to round up some civic organisations which want buttons for some campaign or something.
okay, as i reported here, the HPOI arrived on friday, at 1730. i went to WFS, but was informed that i had to get the shipment cleared through US customs, before i could pick it up.
customs operates under “normal” business hours, i.e. 9-to-5, M thru F, so i figured i was going to have to wait until monday.
the “carrier certificate” that WFS gave me said that i had to pay an ISC fee, which worked out to $89 if i paid it online, or $125 if i paid it in person, so, while i was waiting — saturday and sunday — i took the opportunity to pay it online, so that i would have yet another impediment taken care of before monday.
the “carrier certificate” also, CLEARLY said that the date that storage charges started accruing was 201012, which was further impetus to get things rolling as quickly as possible.
note, that THIS ENTIRE TIME i have been getting EXTREMELY CONFLICTED messages about whether or not i would need a broker. at this point, everything i have heard leads me to believe that i would NOT need a broker to pick up my shipment of incense.
this morning, i contacted customs, got their new address (because they just moved, and nobody at WFS knew where), and went down to clear my shipment.
when i got there, i talked with a US customs agent, who told me that, because my MAWB said that the value of the shipment was more than $800, but less than $1,000, i would have to have a broker clear the shipment.
way back when i was arranging all of this, i specifically remember (backed up by email from 200824) arun giving me precise numbers: “USD 7.45 PER DOZENS”, which amounts to $357.60 for 48 dozen boxes. i also specifically remember (backed up by a different email from 200824), arun telling me “Please note Air freight is additional.”, so when he sent me a proforma invoice that said $986.40, i presumed that it meant “$357.60 for the incense, and $628.80 for shipping”… but it wasn’t itemised, and i overlooked that point.
i SHOULD HAVE gotten an itemised MAWB, but i didn’t.
so, i spent some time on the phone, talking with brokers, who quoted me around $400 just to get my foot in the door, and then i connected with lisa, from Frontier North America — a very nice, helpful lady who is going to get my business the next time around — who assured me that, because i was actually paying more for shipping than i was for the actual product, that she would clear my shipment, and provide a surety bond, for $182.22, so i said go for it, and half an hour later, my shipment was cleared through customs.
miracle. 😒
then, i went back to the airport, to WFS, who informed me, because i didn’t have a broker, who could clear my shipment on friday, after business hours (despite the fact that customs was CLOSED for “normal people” like me), that i had to pay a $110 storage fee — which was EXACTLY the thing that i was trying to AVOID by picking up the paperwork on friday, after normal business hours — and then they had a problem charging me the storage fee, because i had already paid the ISC fee, and they couldn’t charge me as a “guest” because the computer wouldn’t let them create two different accounts with the same MAWB number. finally, they told me that their web site wasn’t meant for people with iphones, which meant that i would have to go home to use my computer at home to “set up an account” so that they could charge me a storage fee, before i could pick up a shipment that i was already there to pick up… 😒
fortunately, after talking to two other managers, i finally talked the third manager into waiving the $110 storage fee, and, after scanning my drivers’ license (because my passport wouldn’t fit in their automatic scanning device 😒) they “gave me permission” to pick up my HPOI.
and i managed to get through the whole thing without swearing, losing my temper, or stomping out of various offices, as good as it would have felt.
our BRAND NEW, not even three months old yet, 6-foot security fence, has been destroyed by a falling tree.200925 FUCK 2020!
200925 FUCK 2020!200925 FUCK 2020!
it was a dead tree, on the neighbour’s yard, that fell… it didn’t even have the decency to fall all at once; it broke off about 20 feet up (remember, it was dead), and the broken part fell on our fence… it didn’t hit the shed, and nobody got hurt, which is a good thing, but still…
apparently, it is triggered by “over-watering”, among other things… which makes sense, because i have run the sprinkler in or around that location for 4 days, now, including two days ago, when i “forgot” and ran the sprinkler for two or three hours… and last night it rained, so… 😉
200806 heksenbotar
in dutch it’s called “heksenbotar” which means “witches butter”. in scandanavian folklore, it is referred to as the “vomit of troll cats“. in english it’s called “dog’s vomit”. scientifically, it is called Fuligo septica. more information at Fuligo septica, the dog vomit slime mold.
it was visible with the naked eye, but this photo was taken by my wife and her awesome camera which is controlled by her phone… the camera and the phone are separate objects, linked by bluetooth. she can make adjustments to the camera without actually touching the camera, which is essential when you’re talking about extended exposure times. this particular exposure was around 15 seconds…
also, the lack of having to develop the film and make prints before discovering how awesome (or shitty) the picture is, adds A LOT to the whole experience. 😉
XKCD – Slide Trombone
a long time ago — probably mid-1970s or thereabouts — i was at the Marrowstone Music Festival at Fort Flagler State Park (which should give those people who know about such things a much clearer idea of exactly when this occurred) for a two week “intensive”, where we learned, rehearsed, an at the end of the two weeks, performed a concert of orchestral works.
a lot of the trombone parts were mostly rests, with occasional blasts of fanfare, or glissandos, or other suchlike “trombone” things. trombones in a classical orchestra have a reputation for being lazy, and jokers, but that’s only because we have nothing else to do! nobody writes for trombones in a classical orchestra setting!
it’s true! beethoven, the quintessential classical composer, wrote NINE symphonies for “full orchestra”, but he only wrote one piece that had parts for trombones, the Three Equale for Four Trombones, which is one of the most beautiful pieces in existence.
for the most part, the classical period was before what we know as the modern “trombone” existed, and, at best, the “trombone” parts that exist are usually parts for serpent or ophecleide which have been transposed.
after one morning rehearsal — where the trombones had rests and didn’t play at all for the 4½ hours of the morning rehearsal — we were all feeling a little punchy as we went to lunch. for some time, i had been warning the other trombonists that, if they left their instruments out, on the stage, when we weren’t there, something bad could happen to their instruments… i was thinking something along the lines of “someone bumped into your horn and now the horn has a disabling slide injury that will cost several hundred dollars to repair” or something like that, and i always put MY horn away, when i was not actively holding it in my hand, but, despite my almost constant, annoying reminders, the other trombonists left their horns on the stage as we went to lunch.
so, i developed a plan…
while the other trombone players were eating lunch, i attacked their horns.
trombones that have “attachments” (i.e. every trombone that is LOWER THAN a “tenor” trombone) have at least one valve, which lowers the trombone’s pitch. when that valve is not activated (most of the time), the trombone plays in B-flat, but when the valve is activated, it plays in F (or some other key, depending on other things). most trombone players that have a valve, only use it occasionally, to play notes that they would, otherwise, be unable to play reliably. the valve section of tubing is like a separate little bit of the trombone, that is only used occasionally. it has its own tuning slide, and, when the horn is being played without the valve, the extra tubing is sealed off from the main part of the instrument.
what i did was remove the tuning slides for the valve sections of their horns, and filled the valve sections with water. then, turning the horns upside down, i replaced the valve section tuning slide, and placed the horn, right side up, on the stand, so that it looked like it hadn’t been touched.
when they came back from lunch, they picked up their horns, blew a few notes, and then cycled the valve, which released the water into the main part of their horns…
BLLLOOOOP!!!
then they “emptied their spit valves”, thinking that their horns just had water that accumulates when they went to lunch… after about 5 minutes of emptying their spit valves, they gave up, and took the slides off and dumped the rest of the water out of their instruments…
all the while i was busting a gut trying NOT to laugh, which, among other things, would have disturbed the rest of the people in the rehearsal, some of whom were actually rehearsing by this time…
and, you know what?
they never left their horns out on the stage after that… 🤣
string ball
this is my current string ball. it’s about 5 years old, and it already looks different because i’ve added string to it. i use a very loose definition of “string”: there’s some metal cable and a fair amount of plastic in there as well… it’s a “string-like” ball, in that regard, but at this point nobody would know unless they actually unwound it… which, under the worst of circumstances, is very unlikely.
in the past, i have been the owner of a couple of string balls that were considerably bigger… one was big enough that, when i was holding it in my lap, you couldn’t see my head. i’m hoping that this one will reach that size, or bigger, eventually. 😉
outside our new house
our new house has a whole bunch of interesting things that were left behind by the previous owners. i get the impression that i would NOT have gotten along with them in the slightest (they were #drumpf-supporters), but this is one of the things they left behind. it’s better that way.
office
this is my office. it’s also the music room.
office
music & computers
this is the music room part. i’ve got my piano and my sythesizer set up, for the first time since i got married (which was 22 years ago), and, because of the fact that i bought a mixer in the interim, i now have it set up so that i can use the synthesizer (a yamaha DX7) as a synthesizer AND as a MIDI-controller. as a MIDI-controller, i’ve got old, familiar Reason on my laptop, and i’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s MIDI-controllable on my tablet, which i haven’t played with at all, because i haven’t had room to set it up. i got the DX7 a SuperMAX+ upgrade a couple of years ago, which was also after the battery died, so i’m going to have to learn how to use it all over again from scratch, and i’ve got to reload all of the stock noises (which i’ve got, thanks to a MIDI-controlled patch library on my laptop), but that’s part of the “fun” of COVID19 lockdown… i’ve got the time to do that sort of thing…
last month i was going crazy, so monique took me to see the National Wild Horses Monument in quincy.
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WAit was on the top of a bluff overlooking the columbia river, in eastern washington.
milestones
milestones
i don’t know why this photo came out so fuzzy, compared to the other ones… but, unfortunately, it’s the only one i got of this particular milestone, so you might have to squint to see it…
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
the other day i had occasion to wander through Celebration Park in auburn. when i first lived in auburn, in the early 1970s, what is now celebration park was a huge, essentially vacant lot that had some abandoned businesses on it. nobody wanted it as residential property, because it was in the flight path for the airport. at some point, in the distant past (before 1960) i think the property had been an airfield, or something like that, but, by the time i got there, that was long gone, as well. in the ’90s, when i was in bellingham, the city bought the property and created celebration park, but it still has a lot of the same aspects that made it a vacant lot, including a lot of wooded areas where homeless people camp, and drug addicts shoot up…
which is where i found this… interesting… little tidbit.
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
200704 Ross Lake
on the 4th of july, we went on a road trip, so that the dogs wouldn’t freak out because of all the fireworks. we went through the Ross Lake National Recreation Area and saw this waterfall. BOUNDED CHAOTIC MIXING PRODUCES STRANGE STABILITY!
i have been around the sun 60 times
my 60th time around the sun was celebrated on saturday. never, in my wildest imaginations did i ever think i was going to be 60 years old… in fact, my imaginings never exceeded age 40, which means that i’ve been living new and unimagined territory for 20 years now.
we celebrated by having a “gathering” in our back yard. kiki, sasha, stuart, d. barnes and jesse, his son, and hobbit and lucifer, his… partner? i’m not sure exactly what their status is, but they’ve been together for 1719 years or so… and they all brought musical instruments, and we had a “jam session” in the back yard. monique made the german chocolate cake (my favourite), and cupcakes with raspberry butter cream frosting, made with raspberries from our back yard…
it was good to see those folks, after such a long time, and it was really good to play music with them.
* i am MORTIFIED! i read the title as “The Diambola Mikado” and named my piece “The Diambola Mikado…” and then i find out that the name is actually “The Dimbola Mikado”… i’ve already released my mix, and even presented it to mr. phizmiz — who didn’t say anything, which makes me wonder whether he’s just being polite, or whether he didn’t notice… oh GAWD, whatever am i to do??? 😭
i’ve never seen the movie “Soylent Green” (although i have read the book on which it was “loosely based”, called Make Room! Make Room!), but i’ve heard all the quotes, and seen a bunch of youtube excerpts…
so, when they first came out with a product called “soylent”, i was skeptical, to say the least.
but then, i had occasion to start drinking a “protein shake” on a regular basis, and i discovered that, while ALL the others had “sugar” as one of their first five ingredients, soylent contains NO sugar… yes, it has other sweeteners, but they are not within the first five ingredients.
and it tastes good.
then, they came out with soylent mint and chocolate, in a green bottle… “soylent green”…
i’m sure some executive, in some penthouse office somewhere, is chortling with evil glee at that one. 😼
and it tastes FANTASTIC!
seriously, i could get addicted to this stuff!
Soylent Green – chocolate & mint – YUM!
i realise it’s got a name that gives you nightmares, but it’s really good! you should try it… in part, BECAUSE of the fact that it’s name gives you nightmares! 😎👍
200611 tree eyes
i’ve got another set of reflectors… blue ones… and that tree to the left has some definite possibilities… also, we actually have a hedge-trimmer, now… 😈
200531 Serve and Protect sculpture, Salt Lake City
increasingly violent protests have been escalating globally. if we had all listened to colin kaepernick, way back when, we might have avoided this.
meanwhile, drumpf has issued an executive order making antifa a “terrorist organisation” — meaningless, as antifa isn’t an “organisation”, but convenient, because now drumpf can claim anybody is antifa, and have them arrested — and inciting violence on twitter with rhetoric recycled from the republican side of the ’60s-era race riots.
and “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” means the same thing 50 years ago as it does now.
COVID19 has facilitated increasing fascism. it’s just a matter of time before drumpf declares martial law, and/or someone assassinates him.
something that would be supremely ironic, in drumpf’s case: “assassinate” is a word that begins with not one, but two “ass”es…
these are the ones that #SCROTUS refused to buy, because they’re chinese, even though they are EXACTLY the same as the american-made N95 masks… 😒200424 first KN95 mask
woo, i can go out to costco and office depot, now. 😒
#drumpf is in the midst of impeachment, but it doesn’t appear to be making a whole lot of difference (thus, the mushrooms), but there have been some good things happening.
i have been getting A LOT of incense orders: 13 since the first of october, compared to 5 or fewer per month from january to september. also, i’ve gotten more orders from england and germany, since the first of october, than i have in the entire year previous. i still don’t entirely know what’s happening, but the end result is that i’ve now got more than $4,000 in my hybrid elephant account… which is somewhat startling…
191102 moelast weekend, moe and i took a mini-vacation to san diego, for one night. ostensibly, moe had to rack up enough airline miles to qualify for “gold status”, because she has been travelling A LOT recently — mostly because of her newfound notariety as the author of a revolutionary book on animal behaviour — which, naturally, means that i have to stay at home and look after the pets.
seriously, folks… i’m married to a famous author! this week, she’s staying at a hotel in times square! it’s probably about as close to famous as i’m ever going to be! 😎
so moe decided that she would find a pet sitter and we would go off on our own (which i really appreciate). she chose san diego because she has been there before, and i haven’t, but i realised that san diego is the home of not one, but two outlets of the Village Hat Shop, which is where i bought my red fedora, and it is also home to the naval amphibious base coronado, which is a building shaped like a swastika.
i saw where it was when we were flying in, but i didn’t actually see the building because we were at too shallow an angle, and you pretty much have to be directly overhead to actually see that it’s shaped like a swastika…
so we flew to san diego to go hat shopping. i bought a pork pie made out of paper (a paper pork pie), and exhibited a great deal of self restraint becauuse i really wanted to take home about half the shop.
we actually stayed on coronado islandHotel del Coronado – you see that large, famous, historic hotel over there? where we stayed is right behind it, in the Glorietta Bay Inn.
we stayed in a hotel room that is so “far above our station” that i almost got a nosebleed. 😉
and we flew home the next day, which was sunday.
i went busking yesterday, which was good, despite the fact that we only made about $20 a piece for 2 hours of busking. today i took two packages to the post office to ship out, and went to the dispensary, where i spent it all on weed and weed-related products.
and no w m y jmushrooms have kikckedk in ahd i heeed to be g oijn go ut for a wal,,k oris oemething lll…. 😁
so the feedback that we got from deni, regarding the oregon fair was that we “weren’t colourful enough”…
190902 not colourful enough
this is a selfie i took on the last day of the fair.
i was wearing my red hat, blue sunglasses, a rainbow tie-dyed hawaiian shirt, a multicoloured tibetan vest, a kilt with a bright purple band, PLAYING A TUBAAND SITTING ON THE GROUND‼‼‼
if this isn’t “colourful” enough for him, i’m sorry, but that’s all i can do… 😒
we’ve emailed deni with our “list of demands” for the yakima fair. he hasn’t responded.
he has until thursday, which is a week before we would have to leave for the yakima fair.
if he doesn’t respond before then, we’re not going, which would be 100% fine with me.
if he does, we’ll have to see what he has to say about our list of demands before we’re going to decide.
i got back from the oregon state fair yesterday. things went as follows:
we left at approximately 10:00 am, the morning of thursday, august 22nd, on our way to salem, oregon. on our way, before we got to the I5-I205 split, just north of vancouver, washington, we stopped to meet deni, the guy who hired us to busk. we picked up a preliminary check for $500, and got some advice concerning our appearances — “shave yer scruff, this is a family-oriented show”, and “be colourful”, were the gist of it. there was no inkling of how absolutely pointless this would be, but we were blissfully ignorant, and pressed on.
we got to the fairgrounds and almost immediately discovered that the guy we had been told (by deni) to contact, was no longer working for the fair, and we should contact another guy, who turned out to be joe, but he wasn’t available, so we proceded to our hotel.
the hotel had two criteria: it had to be “convenient”, and it had to be “cheap”. it was both of those things. we were, literally, less than a mile and a half from the fairgrounds — i walked almost the entire distance the first morning we were there, and didn’t realise it because i decided to go back before the road curved around so that i could see the fairground. it was also “cheap” in that it cost less than $900 for an 11-night stay with two beds… but it wasn’t particularly clean: the kitchenette and the refrigerator had mysteriously consistent yellow stains, the shower-curtain rod looked like someone had tried, and failed, to do pull-ups on it, the shower curtain itself was infested with black mold, the sheets and towels were stained, and the staff that i interacted with, with the exception of the lady who checked us in, and a different lady who checked us out, were surly and inconsistent, yelling at us for smoking on the breezeway outside our room, but smoking, herself, in an area that has a sign designating it as a “no smoking” area. for a hotel that had two criteria, however, it fit the bill adequately, and we didn’t spend much time there, apart from sleeping, anyway.
we were supposed to show up at 10:30 am, friday, for indoctrination an important meeting with joe, where we were going to be shown the fairgrounds, the “green room”, get our ID badges and parking permit, and other important stuff. the GPS told us to take 17th ave. to the “red gate”, but 17th ave. was blocked off with a sign that said “vendors exempt”, and we had been told that we were “vendors”, so i pulled around the barricades and was immediately confronted by a harried woman with blonde hair, who said i couldn’t go that way. i said “we’re vendors”, to which she responded, “you can’t go this way” and proceded to give us directions that took us, essentially “around the block”, so that we were approaching from the other direction. we thought it was a little odd, but we didn’t have our ID badges or parking permit, so i said “fuck it” and drove around the block… and, it turned out, that it was, in fact, to the other end of 17th street, and we encountered the “red gate” almost immediately… but we didn’t have a parking permit, so the drone wouldn’t let us park in the VIP lot, which was where we had been told to park. we parked along the street, and inquired at the “red gate information booth” — it said so, with a big sign that could be seen from the other end of 17th street, which caused similar sorts of confusion for two more days, until i decided not to deal with the situation any longer, and drove around the block without even stopping to discuss the matter with the harried looking woman any longer. eventually, we were told, that 17th street is only one way, during the fair, but there weren’t any signs indicating that, and there were other vehicles travelling the “wrong direction” on 17th, but, apparently, WE were “not supposed to”… which is one of the reasons i gave up trying to get a reason out of anybody…
anyway, we parked, and, eventually, met up with joe and brian, a magician, who had also been hired by deni. there was supposed to be a third guy, pug, but his car had broken down somewhere outside of salem, and he was still trying to get there, so we did the orientation without him. joe piled all of us onto a “gator” — basically a large, motorised, all-terrain tractor/cart thingy — and showed us some places we could, potentially, busk. he also showed us the “green room” which was an unlocked and unguarded room at the back of the stadium, where he said we could store our instruments…
fat chance…
dole whipand then he took us back to the red gate, and gave us our parking permit and our ID badges, and set us free to decide where we were going to busk for 4 hours. we decided on the last place we looked at, which was across from a dole whip booth, in a place where, we figured, we would get A LOT of traffic, and we were not disappointed… however it was also right behind the big stadium, and about 50 yards away from another stage — the Spirit of Oregon Stage — both of which had EXTREMELY loud bands at what seemed like random times, sometimes overlapping, and, while we COULD busk there, we, literally, couldn’t be heard most of the time… JIGGLE FOOT!!!and that’s not to mention the “Jiggle Foot” devices — enormous, brightly coloured feet, barrels, or logs, in which one puts quarters in order to cause a platform attached to a “magic-fingers”-like thing to jiggle, allegedly “rejuvanating” your feet. we had to do some creative re-imagining of how the jiggle-foot devices were plugged in, in order to have enough power for our amps, and for the jiggle-feet. and then one of them broke: first it jiggled REALLY LOUDLY, and then it stopped working at all, which caused many people to complain about it, which caused the fair security guards to come around, discover our creative re-imagining, and summarily unplug our amps, so that, even when there weren’t bands playing, we couldn’t be heard above the crowd noise.
and then, joe disappeared, and was replaced by britanny, until saturday the 31st, when he showed up again.
Howlin Hobbit and Washboard Williesomewhere in the chaos, hobbit heard some music that he found familiar, which, it turned out, was being made by a fellow named washboard willie, who hobbit busked with at the pike place market, 30 years ago. every day after that, we were visited by washboard willy and his rig, as they wandered by.
we put up with the noise until sunday the 25th, when we requested a different place to play, as we were pushing what we thought was an 8:30 closing time (which turned out to be incorrect, yet another screw-up), and we had only JUST completed our “contractual obligation” of 4 hours of busking. we were given the opportunity to busk under a tree, in the vicinity of a “dippin’ dots” booth and the booth of a hmong fabric artist, and right under the uphill slope of the northwest terminus for the “fair lift”, the oregon state fair’s answer to the “sky ride” from the washington state fair. there wasn’t quite as large a crowd of people constantly going by, but at least we could play without getting blasted away by disco turned up to 11…
Peanut Envy on the Fair Liftmonday the 26th was a lot more relaxed. we had the pop-up, but we didn’t need it, because of the shade from the tree. i asked, and was informed that they “would allow” us to take our instruments on the fair lift, so, tuesday, we did our first set on the fair lift, which was kind of amusing, although it was more than a little cramped.
Peanut Envy on the fair liftPeanut Envy on the fair liftPeanut Envy on the fair lift
by wednesday the 28th, it was pretty clear that we weren’t making ANYWHERE NEAR as much in tips as we could have been making at home, at the market, so we made some signs to encourage people. that was when we found out that, in spite of the fact that we had been assured otherwise, and we had actually submitted a “publicity photo” for them, there actually WERE NOT signs at the gates, indicating our presence, and suggesting that people who encountered us give us money in exchange for us entertaining them. the signs that we made, made the difference between $17 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance — which is worse than the worst day i have EVER had at the market, by a long shot — and $97 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance, which is an adequate day at the market for 2 hours of performance… but it still wasn’t a lot, which was really discouraging.
apart from not making very much in tips (a little more than $500 total, for 11 days, which works out to about $5.96 per hour, per person), the rest of the fair was pretty uneventful. we settled into a routine of doing a half hour set, with a half hour break, and then four 45-minute sets separated by half hour breaks, and then finishing with a half hour set around 6:00 pm… except for sunday, the 1st, when we were feeling rested enough that we had decided to play a 7th set, because joe (remember him) had said that we were okay until 8:45, when all the entertainment crew would be required for a fire show… but we had just started the 7th set, at 7:15 pm, when a different guy showed up and said that if we didn’t pack up and load out RIGHT THEN, that we wouldn’t be able to load out until 11:30, because of the fire show…
and, after that, we never saw joe again, so we don’t know why it happened that way… but it was just another frustration that made me VERY glad to get back home.
and then, on monday the 2nd, hobbit started losing it. i am sure he was tired, and fact that he has the worst case of sleep-apnea i have ever heard, AND his diet (which consisted largely of whiskey and cigarettes) probably didn’t help matters, but, during our first set, hobbit started out playing his ukulele and singing, and then sort of faded out, started singing gibberish, and then went to sleep… THREE TIMES!!! the first time, i thought it was kind of an odd thing that i had never seen from hobbit before, but by the third time, i was seriously concerned that he was having a stroke or something, so i flagged down a roving EMT, who put hobbit through his paces, and tested his blood pressure, which was 180/90. there wasn’t much he could do, and by that time, hobbit was complaining he was really okay, so he went away, and came back a couple hours later to check. hobbit really was okay, but i’ve kind of got a short fuse when it comes to potential brain injuries.
by the time tuesday came around, i was really glad to leave our sleazy hotel and get back to my own bed.
and, if everything goes the way i think it will, we (meaning hobbit and i) will do it all again, in yakima, in a couple of weeks…
i didn’t camp where i wanted to (right next to the stage), because my tent was too large, so i camped where i was last year, which was down in the gully behind the stage; i connected with people i only see once a year, including the bearded guy from the mighty tiny puppet theatre, whose name i don’t remember; we didn’t play at the ritz (again), however i took three saunas and got 4 tokens, one from the hat after the show (i now have 35 tokens); 2019 OCF 50th anniversary i connected with the hat-lady, who said that her life had fallen apart, and then she wasn’t sure i would like my (wonderful, amazing, outrageous) hat, which is why it took her eight months to send it to me… i told her she doesn’t know me very well, and gave her many hugs to reassure her that i do, indeed, love THE HELL out of my WONDERFUL, AMAZING, OUTRAGEOUS HAT — 😍 — i stayed up way later than i should have, multiple days in a row, and i only slept through one cue, i didn’t take any pictures, because, for the most part, they would be the same pictures i have taken since i first started going to the fair, i gave away 60 “Step Into Panto-Land” buttons, mostly to people who have no idea what it meant, the electronics for my harmonic flute decided to malfunction in a way that i have to be at home to fix, so i didn’t play my harmonic flute more than a little bit, although i learned how to play another style of end-blown flute, and i’m really excited to try new stuff with PVC as a result, i was part of the group that was disinvited to the memorial service for dead fair family (the whole Fremont Players troupe was disinvited, after having exchanged numerous emails with the people organising it, which indicated that we would, indeed, be a part of the program, prior to the fair), and i don’t know why, nor will i ever, probably…
nobody knows what happened to the totem pole, that i talked to, and one person told me not to bring it up. 😒
however, barring other, cooler things happening at the same time, i’ll more than likely go back again next year. i’m still open to other suggestions, however. 😉
approximately 6:30 pm — so far it’s been interesting? unusual?
i have been, and continue to be high, in certain ways (clumsy typing among them), and i continue to “see things” that are there, perhaps in ways that i might not if i were not “altered”, but…
190605 i’m not looking directly at the sun, my camera is! 😜
(also, the previous one was taken yesterday, so it may not count)
190606 three faces
what, you don’t see three faces? they’ve been looking out of my neighbour’s fence for a few years, now…
190606 imagine…
imagine a torso on that pair of legs… 😉
then, when i got home from my walk, i got a letter in the mail from the pike place market foundation…
190606 TINA CHOPP IS GOD!
it’s as “official” as it can be, at this point. they say “This stainless steel Charm will dance and shine on the new MarketFront Plaza for generations”, but they said the same thing about my tile, back in the ’80s, and look what happened there…
i’m “high”, but it’s different. instead of being euphoric, i’m depressed… but high. things “feel” okay, but i know that, when i am not “high”, they’re actually going to be a lot worse than i have allowed myself to imagine, because i am “high”…
it’s not an unpleasant sensation, but i’m not sure a repeat of it would be entirely welcome.
i saw someone who i believe to be the PHBFH today, at 11:41 am at the folklife festival, at the seattle centergrounds.190526 The PHBFH
i’m not 100% sure it’s her, but i’m about 98% sure. i walked past her, on my way to play at the mural amphitheatre, and recognised her immediately. i’m not sure if she recognised me immediately, but when i tried to work my way around to a point where i could take a better picture, she recognised me and ran away, which adds to the probability that it was her. also she did a little ballet pose before she disappeared around a corner, which further adds to the probability that it was her.
when i texted the photo to ezra, he said that he wasn’t able to tell for sure, but that it looked “like her style”. he also said that it is unusual for her to be in the city without showing up at ezra’s home… or in bellingham… i also noticed that she was wearing what looked like leather boots, which is uncharacteristic for the PHBFH that i know, but not entirely out of the question, since it has been almost 30 years since i’ve actually seen her.
it was creepy seeing her… 😱
but she looked healthy, strong, and happy, which makes me glad.
190511 salamandir, by jon leachwhen you hang around the pike place market enough, particularly if you don’t look exactly like pretty much everybody else, you will eventually end up having your photo taken by one of the multitude of street photographers who descend in droves on the market thinking that they will get “that shot” which will propell them into the realm of famous photographers like ansel adams or robert mapplethorpe. in this case, it was a chap called jon leach, who has been doing street photography for about 5 years — no clue what he did before that — and he took a photo of me that i like, because when you look at the whole, reduced photo, i look serious, almost frowning, but if you look at the photo up close, i’m actually smiling. 190511 salamandir, up close
busking this week has been a mass of contradictions: yesterday, we played two sets, after having been displaced at 11:00 from the place where i had added us to the list at 8:00 because an amplified band (which is “banned from busking at the market”) was setting up to play in a “flower festival” which the market managers had neglected to tell us buskers about until we actually got there — and they posted a new notice regarding the closure in exactly the same place where the “get your new buskers’ permit” notice had been, so the people (including me) who signed up on the list didn’t notice it until it was too late… so we went up the alley, behind the iron stairs, and busked for an hour, took an hour break (because “the official rules” say you have to), and played most of a second set before we got fed up — in the middle of a song — and said fuck it.
the reason we got fed up is because there were probably 20 people, from people taking pictures with their cell phones all the way up to people who had professional camera equipment, taking our photos, which includes a sign in a very prominent, central location, which says, in large letters “TIP FOR PHOTOS”, but NOT TIPPING FOR PHOTOS! 😠🤬
seriously! some of these people came in pairs, one of them standing next to, or behind us, and the other person, with the camera, lining up the shot so that we were both in the frame, with the sign that says “TIP FOR PHOTOS” in the frame as well, and when they were done mugging for the camera, they just turned around and walked off as though we were plastic manequins… and not starving musicians who have a combined total of more than a century of experience playing music.
my understanding is that the problem is partially because of the cruise ship companies which offer fares that “include all gratuities”, and partially because of the common myth that buskers are paid by the market. both are WRONG!! and it make life particularly awful for folks that have to make their living busking when people act like buskers are free.
on the other end of the scale are days like today, when we played 3 sets and made almost $50 a piece, which works out to around $16 an hour… which is not outstanding, but it’s enough that it makes you want to come back out and try it again tomorrow.
and then there’s the pike place market foundation. back in the ’80s, when the market was being renovated for the first time, i bought an inscribed tile, which was originally placed outside of the athenian tavern…
i had a picture of it, at one time, but i can’t locate it currently. 😒
anyway, they had to replace the floor in front of the athenian, in the ’90s, because it was unstable, and they tore out the section of floor that had my tile in it, and replaced it with somebody else’s tile.
when i bought that tile, i was in the tech school, and the price of the tile was in lieu of half a week’s groceries, but when i asked the market foundation about it when i discovered it was missing, in 2016, their response was to say that if it was not there, then it was not going to be replaced, and my money meant nothing. they offered me a “market charm” to be installed in the new section of the market (which they hadn’t even built yet) as a replacement, to which i agreed.
but it was, apparently, never installed. yesterday, i asked the lady custodian of the market charm database to check, and she couldn’t find it. so i filled out another market charm request, and she said it should be installed this fall, and i can check at their database at PikeUp dot org. while i was at the market foundation booth, i also bought a “pig pin” which came with this interesting printed card: Pig Pin card
i noticed a design detail on the card, which caused this conversation between me and the lady at the booth: ME: this card has swastikas on it! cool! Lady At The Booth: those aren’t swastikas. ME: they’re swastikas, they’re just not what you expected to see when i said “swastika”… they’re not nazi swastikas, they’re ORIGINAL swastikas, from before the nazis got hold of it: they’re “little good luck charms”, which is what the word “swastika” means, in sanskrit. Lady At The Booth: yeah, but they’re not swastikas, there’s another name for it. ME: the german word for a swastika is “hakenkreuz”. the reason english-speaking people use the word “swastika” is because nobody could figure out how to say “hakenkreuz”. Lady At The Booth: but there’s another name for them. ME: the word “swastika” is a sanskrit word that means “little good luck charm”. it’s the perfect symbol to put on the pike place market “good luck token”, and most people probably wouldn’t even realise that it’s a swastika, because it’s not a nazi swastika. the swastika is one of the world’s oldest symbols, and it was around, as a symbol of good luck for, literally, thousands of years before the nazis got hold of it! it’s about time we started taking it back, and making it into a symbol of good luck again! Lady At The Booth: really? cool! 😊
allegedly, they’re going to snail-mail me when the charm is installed, but they said they were going to install it in 2016, and they didn’t, so it remains to be seen what they’re really going to do.
my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa, the cat, innocently playing with a cat toy in a patch of sunlight, like a good kitty…my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa, the cat, honoured my presence (and the fact that i had just fed him) yesterday, by waiting until i had a full bottle of beer on my desk, and then jumping into my lap and doing the happy-cat-dance, which involves swirling around and waving his tail in such a way that it impacts the bottle of beer on the desk, spilling the contents into my keyboard.
😒
because of the fact that i have worked in several companies that actually, physically MADE keyboards — they really do wash partially finished keyboards in a household dishwasher before assembly — i wasn’t as upset as i could have been, but, nevertheless, i spent the entire rest of the evening taking my keyboard apart, cleaning the beer (and assorted dust, feathers, cat hair and other detritus) out of it, and re-assembling it…
only to discover that only half of the keys actually work. and not in a normal “right half works, left half doesn’t” way, but in a more random “half the keys in this line sometimes work and sometimes don’t” way, which indicates that some moisture probably got inside the four or five layers of waterproof linings — seriously, keyboards, these days, are practically impervious to spills… not like when i was a kid… — either that, or there was something that didn’t want to get bent, that got bent in the process of disassembling the keyboard: i tried to be careful and not bend any of the parts that looked like they might be upset if they got bent, but i may have bent them, anyway, without meaning to.
in any event, i have an alternate keyboard, just for such emergencies, which is the same model, but different colour keys. i have occasionally ransacked the alternate keyboard for spare parts, like when my “B” key’s spring broke, and the F2 and F3 keys died, so it doesn’t get used for anything, anyway… so i decided to make a frankenkeyboard…
in honour of my wonderful pet, Frank Zappa the cat.
Young O and salamandir, 040619i’ve known about this guy for a while: his name is Howard Tayler, he is the author of the web-comic Schlock Mercenary, and he looks like me… or i look like him, or something like that.
originally, it was pointed out that i looked like him when i posted a (now deleted, but reproduced here) photo here, in january, 2006, and when i sent the same photo to howard, he said that it looked similar enough to him that he started going through his photos, trying to figure out where it was taken.
Howard Tayler170307 burlesque show at the substation in ballard
eventually he shaved his beard, and we didn’t look so similar any longer.
but, recently, he’s either grown a beard again, or has a very accomplished makeup artist that has fashioned an appliance for him, because, once again, we look similar — except now he looks even more like me… in fact, i get the impression that he may be trying to look like me!
it is very creepy…
Howard Taylersalamandir, 180502
here’s a pingback to his blog. maybe, he will have something to say about this odd coincidence.
why do the words “FLAMMABLE” and “INFLAMMABLE” mean the same thing?pourquoi?
ETA: it has to do with some idiot in the 18th century trying to “improve” the english language, and someone taking them seriously around the 1930s. first there was “inflammable”, but then, in the mid-18th century, someone came up with “flammable”, which meant something very similar, but not exactly the same thing, and it died out, fairly quickly, because people were more sensible back then. but then, about the time of world war 2, someone decided that “inflammable” had the same connotation as “invisible” — i.e. “not” flammable — so they came up with “flammable” to convince stupid people that it really was capable of being set on fire. 😒
i’m getting closer and closer to divesting myself of all of my web hosting clients. i’m hoping that my last day of hosting anybody except me, and people directly related to me (i.e. my wife and son) will be 190430. i’m still trying to get two domains off my server, and then there will be one, which i don’t know whether they are going to find a new server, or whether they are just going to let it die. either way, it’s SEP and i don’t have to worry about it…
although i am… 😒
we came back from the beach. it rained a lot. i planned on taking mushrooms, but it rained, so i didn’t. i did spent a lot of time sleeping… and other passtimes:190408 drawing
like drawing…
190408 picture
although the dog moved by the time i took the picture…
and, given that it’s the first time that i’ve drawn anything other than doodles since my injury, i kinda like it…
then, we came home, and went to a concert by The University of Washington Harry Partch Ensemble, with authentic Harry Partch instruments:
190413 Harry Partch Instruments
the instruments are the Cloud Chamber Bowls, the Adapted Viola, the Adapted Guitar III, The Kithara II, the Spoils Of War, the Bass Marimba the Harmonic Canon, the Surrogate Kithara, the Diamond Marimba, the Marimba Eroica, the Koto, and the Chromelodeons I and II
190413 Spoils Of War
a close-up of the Spoils Of War, with the Cloud Chamber Bowls in the background, and the Diamond Marimba in the foreground
190413 Modified Viola music
it’s STANDARD NOTATION!!! just sub-scripts and super-scripts to define the microtones and the rythmn… i never would have guessed… but, at the same time, when you’re already working with music that is THAT DIFFERENT from what we, in the west, think of as “normal”, i suppose it’s a lot easier to not have to learn a new way of notating that “abnormal” music, as well…
it turns out that the current Harry Partch Foundation is located at the UW, and all of his instruments are housed there. again, i never would have guessed, but… wow.
i told monique, when we walked into the concert hall, that they had not played a note and i was already ecstatic.
i started my third session of my circus class. it’s a “basic circus skills for handicapped adults” class — mostly people with parkinson’s — but, because of the fact that i took to unicycle, i started a unicycle class, as well:190419 my very own unicycle! at first, i borrowed a unicycle from one of monique’s co-workers, but it was too short, so i went on craigslist and bought an almost-new, used unicycle, that was exactly the same size wheel but a longer seatpost, that is now my very own, personal unicycle.
i have this vision — my training from the flybottle class would say “fantasy” — of what i want to do with the unicycle: there’s this guy, in portland, who is known as “The Unipiper”. he rides around portland, on a unicycle, playing a flaming bagpipe.
i’ve wanted to make a flaming tuba for a long time. i’ve got all the necessary materials to make a flaming tuba. all i have to do is learn to ride a unicycle, and i can be “The Tubacyclist”.
i hope to be relatively stable on the unicycle by OCF this year. i’m GOING to do this! 🐉
one of the down sides to vaping, as compared to smoking, is that, every now and then (even under the best of circumstances), i have to charge my battery. the “newer” battery models (and quite a few of the older ones, as well) have a micro-USB connector that you plug into a micro-USB charging cable — which are ubiquitous — and then plug the cable into a USB outlet, in your computer, in an outlet strip, in a USB charger, or in a brick in the wall.
i don’t have one of that variety.
the variety of battery i have takes a special type of charger. i suspect that it’s just a matter of swiching out the micro-USB connector (which frequently fails anyway) for a “screw-on” charger, but i haven’t taken apart a micro-USB charger (yet) to find out. it looks like this:screw-on charger
the problem is that, after a while — usually somewhere between 3 days and 3 weeks — they just quit working. when you screw them on to the battery, the light turns green and nothing happens.
i finally got tired of having to go and buy a new charger every couple of weeks, so, in desperation, i took one of the no-longer-functioning ones (of which i have MANY) apart, to see what makes it tick. what i found makes me want to spit!
what i found was cheap, probably chinese electronics, with two wires coming out of the charging end, which i expected. what i did not expect was that the wires WEREN’T EVEN SOLDERED to the screw-on attachment, which had a hexagonal piece on the end, which locked into the plastic case to prevent it from spinning.not soldered wires! >8( the black wire was just layed down, flat, and the screw-on connector was laid on top of it, and the red wire was completely disconnected from the connector, which — naturally — prevented the charger from doing anything other than sitting there with a green light, looking pretty.
THIS IS PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE!!! 🤬
they build these things, EXPECTING them to fail, so that people will have to go out and buy a new one! 😠
i don’t have time, right now, but i am fairly good at soldering wires, and you can bet that, when i have the time, i am going to jigger up one of these gadgets that has BOTH wires correctly soldered in place, and take them to local vape shops and see if i can sell them.
before = three notebooks and a file folder full of music, weighing approximately 40 to 50 pounds.
after
after = one 8½"x11½" tablet, weighing approximately 2 pounds.
and ALL of that music takes up only a tiny fraction of my local storage… 292.5MB out of 256GB, so there’s plenty of room for more, as well! 😎
when going places with my tuba and/or my trombone, this is definitely several steps in the right direction! 👍😎
although i’m probably still going to take the big purple notebook (on the bottom of the stack) with me, when i go busking, because when i’m playing for nickels and dimes, i don’t want to have a $1,500 tablet on my music stand where anyone can grab it and run off… 😉
a while ago, i came across this word in a web-comic that i read all the time. it was in a joke about librarians who were in the process of being stereotypical stoners, and i thought it was just a joke — and, as “just a joke”, it was a pretty good one — but little did i know…
apparently there is an item called “flong” — sometimes called an “ad-mat” or “advertising matrix” in the newspaper business — which is a paper mould used to makestereotypes… which are called “clichés” in French, because it’s onomotapoetic for the sound produced when they’re made. 🤣
pieces of flong
i should have known that, even in web comics (possibly, especially in web comics) when librarians make jokes, they make jokes by which even the professionals are impressed. 😎 😉 👍
also, i think i want a refund on this life. i’m almost 60 years old, i have been a typesetter for almost 40 of those years, and i have only recently discovered flongs: this is UNACCEPTABLE! 😠
new ipadthe fedex package finally arrived, which, of c(o)urse, meant that i went to the fedex distribution centre and forced them to let me have it there, rather than waiting for them to pull their head out of their ass and hire a full time driver who learns where my address is, instead of using a different contractor who doesn’t have the first clue — EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! 😠
anyway, i’ve got it more or less set up. i set it up as a new ipad, rather than transfering all of my old apps to it, which meant that i had — and still have — some finishing touches to add, most notably, the noisepad app, which requires a hard link to itunes in order to upload new sounds, but the version of itunes i have on my ancient macbook pro is several versions out of date and won’t recognise my new equipment, and even if it did, the ipad only has a USB-C plug, and my macbook only has USB-A plugs… so i’m probably going to have to use moe’s machine to get around that.
the big benefit is that i can display full-size, 8½”x11″ pages, which is 90% of my music, and the other 10%, which is more than one 8½”x11″ page, i can get a bluetooth foot-pedal page-turning gadget for about $50.
new ipad
AND i’ve already got a fairly substantial portion of my music already “on the cloud” — i.e. either dropbox or my own, personal cloud-server — which means that, under the best of circumstances, i won’t even have to load my 256GB disk down with music files… although i might want to keep files on the ipad anyway, just in case i don’t have network connectivity, as i would (not) at the oregon country fair… 😉
and, after all, loading it down with music is the principle reason i bought a huge-ass tablet anyway… 😉
friday, 190209, it started snowing:jovita park, 190209
i was feeling adventurous, and it hasn’t snowed for a couple of years… and i recently bought a bunny suit and a set of steel-toed logging boots, and i have been joking with moe about going freight-hopping for a while… so i figured i’d go out for a walk. it was pretty easy, because there was only about 4 inches of new snow, and it was really pretty, because there wasn’t anybody else out in the park, in the middle of the day.
but the birds were not prepared for snow. the birds have been gearing up for spring early this year, because the weather has been so warm, and once it started dumping snow, particularly the hummingbirds were having a really rough time.
moe took this video of one of the local hummingbirds pecking away at the suet on saturday morning. pretty sad… we’ve been making sure to have enough bird food on hand, and our feeders have been flocked the past few days…
it snowed again today. i’m so over it. 😒 it’s time for more normal weather to come back.
i thought i had a picture of the PHBFH somewhere else in this blog, but apparently i don’t, or, at least, i don’t any longer, since i moved all of my photos out of livejournal, and out of flickr, a while ago, and if it were there, it isn’t any longer… and, to be honest, i did find this picture of the PHBFH in my old flickr folder, with a bunch of other photos that i took on 070515, when ezra graduated from college. ETA: it was here, and i haven’t looked at it for at least 10 years, which is why i didn’t notice when i removed the pictures from flickr and they disappeared.
070515 The PHBFH
i put these pictures of her on internet, despite her wishes for me not to do so, because nobody has heard from her in at least five years. the last time i know of anyone hearing from her was about 5 years ago, when ezra got a call from the doctors who had been “taking care of her” at the state mental institution in steilacoom, asking if he was in a position to take care of her. when he said no, that was the last anyone i know of heard anything about her. she was never too keen on taking “medication” of any kind apart from “flower remedies” and herbs that she bought from a local herb tea shop, so my presumption is that she refused to take her medications, and thus was ejected from state care.
as i mentioned the other day, i found a whole pile of black and white negatives that are between 25 and 35 years old, quite a few of which were taken by my friend randy, for inclusion in an issue of Tina Magazine that never got published. we first started talking about “The Trash Issue” when we both were living in bellingham between 1990 and 1993. it gets sort of fuzzy after that, but my recollection is that randy moved away from bellingham in the middle of 1993 and took all of the writings for The Trash Issue with him.90s COTC publications
i also have a picture of a whole pile of Tina literature that now, strangely, seems to be for sale at Alta-Glamour… in fact, i have narrowed it down to, either randy’s collection (which is more likely), or less likely it is jim’s collection… but, one collection or another, they somehow went from being in a photo that i took with my camera, with very few changes (none of the tracts, and the addition of The War On Drugs Issue, which is the reason i think it is randy’s… and if they have a ritual object, it is one of the bronze ones, because i have the silver one with the mystic emblems on the reverse side), some time between 1990 and 1993 to being for sale (at OUTRAGEOUS prices) at some rare bookseller, a fact which makes me angrier every time i think about it… 😠
but i digress…
anyway, i have a contact sheet which was marked up with indications of which pictures were to be used in The Trash Issue, and if i could think of some words to put with it, i would publish the posthumous Trash Issue on the church’s web site… because the internet was MADE for The Trash Issue.
i don’t know who took this, or when it was taken, but my impression is that it was taken while i was working at evergreen station organic farm (pulling weeds), which would make ezra about 6. i really enjoy the look on ezra’s face. it’s clear that his parents may not realise it yet, but he knows what’s coming down, and it’s not good. 🤣
by the way, here’s a photo of the PHBFH on internet about which she can do nothing… 🤣
i’m not sure where this was taken, or who took it. it’s possible that it was taken by ruth, and it’s possible that it was taken in anacortes, or possibly west seattle, in around 1990 to 1992.
i found a whole pile of black and white negatives that are between 25 and 35 years old. possibly older, as i don’t have a great memory for these things, so i keep a list of when things happened. according to that list, the picture above was taken in 1991 or 1992. it was taken to honour the fact that i had just experienced sabikalpasamadhi (सविकल्पसमाधि) for the first (and only) time, on the banks of the skagit river.
jim robertson
i just got back from picking up 182 4″x6″ prints. there are a bunch of pictures of ezra, the PHBFH, randy, and ruth. there are a few pictures of other people, including me, and jim robertson.
there are also a lot of pictures for the legendary “Trash” issue of “Tina Magazine”, which was never published, as well as several pictures of the Tina literature which is now, suspiciously, for sale at Alta-Glamour.
dont fuck with santa clausthis would be a good time to re-read the VEWPRF rant that i posted in 2008, because… well, it just is. that’s all.
the panto started last weekend, and it was good. it wasn’t great, but, for the first shows, it was better than average by a few steps, and it definitely has the potential for being great… especially after a couple more weeks of actual “rehearsal” 😉 i actually played most of the notes correctly, played a few notes that i have never been able to play before (low F, E and E♭), and they were audible and (most importantly) in tune, and i only got lost/confused/missed cues a couple of times, and it wasn’t because i wasn’t paying attention, like it usually is… which is good. there are a few physical sound effects: the ratchet, siren whistle, thunder sheet, bar chimes, slide whistle, that sort of thing, and there are a few electronic sound effects: horse whinney, squeak-stomp-splat for the donkey stepping on the ogress/mouse… and i’m thinking that i can probably come up with a better sword fight sound than the one i’ve got currently, which is bashing two metal spatulas together.
181120 salamandir & howlin’ hobbit
this picture was taken by a guy people know as “kurt vonnegut” — because he looks a lot like kurt vonnegut, apparently. i don’t know, because i barely remember the guy who took the picture, i was concentrating on the music so intently. i think his real name is davey, but i’m not sure.
Joe Desimone Bridge
this is the joe desimone bridge at 7:30 in the morning, before anybody gets there. at noon there are, literally, thousands of people passing through this space… and only a tiny fraction of them seem to notice the buskers… 😕
the “original” starbucks at 7:30 in the morning
this is what they call the “original” starbucks. it’s not really the original, because the real original is about two blocks away, on western avenue, below and to the south of the joe desimone bridge… but it’s not there any longer, having moved up to pike place in the early ’80s (i think). but they still have the “original” signage and store livery… and, at 7:30 in the morning they have a crowd of 20 or so people inside: the rest of the pike place market, more or less, looks like the previous picture of the joe desimone bridge, but at 7:30 in the morning, the “original” starbucks (which isn’t even the original one) has a crowd. at noon there is a line that stretches down pike place, of people waiting to get into the “original” starbucks…
I knew George Bush was lying from the beginning. Now we’re all stuck with him! READ MY LIPS!i remember when bushy george was elected. after 8 years of reagan, i was beginning to develop a frightened “i don’t care” attitude about politics in general, but i knew at the time that this was a definite step in the WRONG direction, and several orders of magnitude worse than reagan.
it “cycles” the way it’s supposed to: it spins as far as it can one direction, and then spins back the other direction automatically, while i spin the whole thing one direction all the time, thus making the characteristic “bull roar” noise. i made it out of plywood, to test the theory. i’ve got a chunk of really dense hardwood that should make a better, louder noise.
A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.
But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.
The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.
The document projects that global temperature will rise by nearly 3.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature between 1986 and 2005 regardless of whether Obama-era tailpipe standards take effect or are frozen for six years, as the Trump administration has proposed. The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986, so the analysis assumes a roughly 4 degree Celsius or 7 degree Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial levels.
The world would have to make deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming,the analysis states. And that “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
World leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, and agreed to try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the current greenhouse gas cuts pledged under the 2015 Paris climate agreement are not steep enough to meet either goal. Scientists predict a 4 degree Celsius rise by the century’s end if countries take no meaningful actions to curb their carbon output.
Trump has vowed to exit the Paris accord and called climate change a hoax. In the past two months, the White House has pushed to dismantle nearly half a dozen major rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, deregulatory moves intended to save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.
Administration estimates acknowledge that the policies would release far more greenhouse gas emissions from America’s energy and transportation sectors than otherwise would have been allowed.
David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who testified against Trump’s freeze of fuel efficiency standards this week in Fresno, Calif., said his organization is prepared to use the administration’s own numbers to challenge their regulatory rollbacks. He noted that the NHTSA document projects that if the world takes no action to curb emissions, current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would rise from 410 parts per million to 789 ppm by 2100.
“I was shocked when I saw it,” Pettit said in a phone interview. “These are their numbers. They aren’t our numbers.”
Conservatives who condemned Obama’s climate initiatives as regulatory overreach have defended the Trump administration’s approach, calling it a more reasonable course.
Obama’s climate policies were costly to industry and yet “mostly symbolic,” because they would have made barely a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions, said Heritage Foundation research fellow Nick Loris, adding: “Frivolous is a good way to describe it.”
NHTSA commissioned ICF International Inc., a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va., to help prepare the impact statement. An agency spokeswoman said the Environmental Protection Agency “and NHTSA welcome comments on all aspects of the environmental analysis” but declined to provide additional information about the agency’s long-term temperature forecast.
Federal agencies typically do not include century-long climate projections in their environmental impact statements. Instead, they tend to assess a regulation’s impact during the life of the program — the years a coal plant would run, for example, or the amount of time certain vehicles would be on the road.
Using the no-action scenario “is a textbook example of how to lie with statistics,” said MIT Sloan School of Management professor John Sterman. “First, the administration proposes vehicle efficiency policies that would do almost nothing [to fight climate change]. Then [the administration] makes their impact seem even smaller by comparing their proposals to what would happen if the entire world does nothing.”
This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned leaders gathered in New York, “If we do not change course in the next two years, we risk runaway climate change… Our future is at stake.”
Federal and independent research — including projections included in last month’s analysis of the revised fuel-efficiency standards — echoes that theme. The environmental impact statement cites “evidence of climate-induced changes,” such as more frequent droughts, floods, severe storms and heat waves, and estimates that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease its carbon output.
Two articles published in the journal Science since late July — both co-authored by federal scientists — predicted that the global landscape could be transformed “without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and declared that soaring temperatures worldwide bore humans’ “fingerprint.”
“With this administration, it’s almost as if this science is happening in another galaxy,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “That feedback isn’t informing the policy.”
Administration officials say they take federal scientific findings into account when crafting energy policy — along with their interpretation of the law and President Trump’s agenda. The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has been among the Trump officials who have noted that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants have fallen over time.
But the debate comes after a troubling summer of devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat and a catastrophic hurricane — each of which, federal scientists say, signals a warming world.
Some Democratic elected officials, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said Americans are starting to recognize these events as evidence of climate change. On Feb. 25, Inslee met privately with several Cabinet officials, including then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and Western state governors. Inslee accused them of engaging in “morally reprehensible” behavior that threatened his children and grandchildren, according to four meeting participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the private conversation.
In an interview, Inslee said that the ash from wildfires that covered Washington residents’ car hoods this summer, and the acrid smoke that filled their air, has made more voters of both parties grasp the real-world implications of climate change.
“There is anger in my state about the administration’s failure to protect us,” he said. “When you taste it on your tongue, it’s a reality.”
i was getting gas in my car, and this tall, weedy, semi-suspicious looking guy came up to me and said “tell me about your bumper.”
inevitably, this means that he’s a “christian” who is offended by the message of my bumper sticker, which says JESUS IS A GATEWAY DRUG, but i feigned ignorance, partially because there was a HUGE line of people waiting behind me. but then he left no doubt, by pointing at it and reading it out loud. i responded by saying that it was a pretty simple message, and what more did he want to know.
so he started to say “i’m a christian, and…”, at which point i interrupted him, saying “i’m a christian, too”, at which point he asked me if i was jewish “because of your license plate” — i guess he hadn’t seen, or hadn’t been able to identify the huge picture of panchamukhi ganesha on the hood — but i said, no. i learned about jesus, and that gave me the opportunity to learn about all of the world’s religions, and i learned that they are all the same, and all point towards the same God.
at that point, i was done pumping gas, and, as i was taking the hose back to the pump, he said something that i didn’t hear, but it started with “no…” so i probably didn’t miss much…
180905 gonowtogeorgethen he handed me a card, and said “this is my web site”. so i handed him one of my own cards — the one that says “Bounded Chaotic Mixing Produces Strange Stability” — which he stood and stared at until i got in my car and drove off.
check out his web site… it’s hillariously “old school” (complete with dark-coloured background and rainbow-coloured font) and is, literally, “George’s Links To The World” in that, if it’s on internet, and george has read it and agrees with it, it’s on his site, somewhere. it’s not quite as single-focused as Time Cube, but it’s just as entertaining.
a few years ago, i was driving through south-of-seattle afternoon traffic, and i saw, on the car ahead of me, a bumper sticker that said “TRY JESUS”, and, immediately, i thought “that guy’s a ‘pusher'”.
then i thought about my own experiences with jesus, jeezis and “christians”, and i thought, if that guy is a “pusher”, then, in my experience, at least, jesus is a gateway drug: i learned about jesus, then i learned about other religions, then i learned that they are all the same… but my initial exposure to all of this was jesus.
thus, the bumper sticker.
i wish i hadn’t been so flustered, because i would have really liked to explain that to george. it is my impression that it would have blown his mind even more than it already was. 😈
the graphic seen on this page, which looks like this: Donald J. Drumpf
bears a STRIKING resemblance to this photo, by Phillip Kremer: Real Donald Drumpf by Phillip Kremer
I’m writing this after spending the day hunkered down indoors next to an air purifier, as I have the good fortune of being in Washington state while it’s home to some of the world’s worst air pollution. For the second year in a row, smoke from wildfires has rendered the normally refreshing air practically unbreathable. My primary source of entertainment these days is checking air quality monitoring websites for signs of ominous red and purple bulges making their way down from Canada. Fires in other parts of Washington aren’t helping.
As if things didn’t already feel apocalyptic enough, there’s something about these wildfire episodes, with their sickly grayish-orange skies and sense of entrapment, that truly give one the sense that the end of the Anthropocene is nigh. Scientists say that warming temperatures plus population growth in burn-prone areas are causing the surge in wildfires; meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is, of course, blaming environmentalists. Hard to see how we come back from this brink, since we’re already so far over it.
you remember the neighbour lady i creeped out back in march?
🎵 she’s ba-ack… 🎶
😕
soon to be my hat
today, i was walking up the street, minding my own business, when i heard the distinct sound of someone trying to be sneaky, and failing miserably, behind me on the other side of the street. i turned around, and saw a very frightened looking lady in a blue dress, with a cell phone; i couldn’t tell whether she was using it to call 911, or as a camera, to document the dangerous terrorist in the black burnous that was walking through her neighbourhood. then i walked behind a commercial vehicle that was parked by the side of the road, and when i emerged on the other side, the lady was nowhere to be seen.
i can just imagine what she must have said to the 911 operator. i can also imagine several ways the 911 operator may have responded to her… 😕
it’s going to creep her out even more when my hat is finished. 😈
in sanskrit (the ancient language of india), छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेल मेल (“chela mela”, TWO WORDS) is “a festival of devotees”.
the band of north american kalapuya “indians” (otherwise known as “native americans”) called chelamela is ONE WORD…
the following pictures illustrate the fact that, at the oregon country fair, “CHELA MELA MEADOW” is TWO words… well, three, if you count the word “MEADOW”… 😕
chela melachela melachela mela
i wonder if anyone else knows this. according to their own definition, this is CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!
oh no… 😕
sombunall of the not-“native-american” artwork at the ritz is back in place, but the totem pole is nowhere to be found, and nobody knows what’s going to happen to it. the “archaeology” group (which was behind the lady who raised all the fuss last year) is still there, and still thinks we shouldn’t even have an oregon country fair, because it’s on “indian ground” (seriously, they’ve excavated a 10,000 year old camas oven from the bank of the long tom river, so there have been humans around that area for a LONG time) but the lady behind all the fuss last year was nowhere to be seen, as far as i could tell, and nobody was talking about indians feeling put out by the fair.
we didn’t play at the ritz. they didn’t make new tokens this year, so i only got one — last year’s design — in lieu of hat money, on saturday.
the fair was fun, and i’m not giving up on it, but it’s definitely time to find another therapeutic gathering in which i can get involved.
this year i took four pictures to make up for the fact that i missed a few years previously:
some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018
these were taken in order, on thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday. i also wore a djellaba and a red kufi (to piss off the cultural appropriation crowd), but i didn’t take pictures of that
the macthere is a new “pirate ship” next door to the morningwood odditorium, called “The Mac”, which produces macaroni and cheese in ENORMOUS bowls. i ate there four times. they also had smoked salmon mac&cheese, and bacon brocolli mac&cheese. yum.
tiny frog with a big attitudetiny frog with a big attitudetiny frog with a big attitude
sunday afternoon, i found a tiny frog trying to get into my tent.
on the way home, i drove up highway 101, and stopped in newport, where i got the business card for the company that made moe’s kite that broke. now all i have to do is find the stay that broke, measure it, and send them the measurements, and they’ll make a new one for it.
when i left the fair, i ran “off the map” with my GPS, almost immediately. i tried using waze, as well, but i didn’t have reception or connectivity until i got to lincoln city. then, when i got to astoria, i turned left, instead of following the default GPS and turning right, and i got the “return to the route” message no less than TEN TIMES, before it figured out where i was going… it’s a good thing one of us knew where they were going. 😉 on the other hand, waze looked at where i was going, and figured out a new route almost immediately.
it’s weird that this post is allegedly about OCF, and the parts that i get the most amusement out of are the parts where i have left the fair. oh well… 😕
i was forced into a fecesbook moratorium, because of the lack of connectivity. it was partially deliberate — i didn’t take my tablet, and couldn’t use my phone for anything except a camera, pretty much all week — and i’m thinking very strongly that this is a good excuse to abandon fecesbook all together. it’s awful, it doesn’t do anything to improve my mood, and the only reason i was there, to begin with, was because it’s the only way to get booked at the ritz… but now that job has been foisted off on someone else (or not, i don’t care), and there’s no obvious reason to continue wasting my time with it.
we got back from hawaii on friday, the 22nd. this morning, at 9:00 am, i took moe to the airport so she could fly out to las vegas, where she will be until wednesday. i think the dogs may have an inkling that she will not be returning today, but when they know for sure, they’re going to be PISSED OFF!!
we got to o’ahu on the 13th:180613 first honolulu sunset
our plane landed, we were met by micah at the airport and whisked away to dinner, which was poke and pork chops. then we proceded to the Diamond Head Beach Hotel & Residences, on Waikiki. the next day we went to the honolulu zoo and were given a private tour of their veterinary facilities, and went to kaimana beach, which was on the same block as the hotel, which is where monique took a picture of me on the beach:180614 salamandir on kaimana beach
the bright green rash guard would come in handy in the next few days. we went snorkling at kaimana on friday, and i was still getting my feet under me (figuratively speaking), which meant that i was pretty exhausted when we went in, and wasn’t particularly ready to take on an activity that was guaranteed to exhaust me even further. i didn’t do too badly, but i was glad to have a piece of clothing that differentiated me in the water, so that i could be rescued more easily, if necessary.
after we went snorkling, we went on a dolphin swim at dolphin quest, which was exciting, but kind of sad at the same time. i’m sure that if i (and, by that, i mean moe) weren’t so educated about animal behaviour (and dolphin behaviour, specifically), it would have been a lot better, but, as it was, there were a lot of cues that weren’t followed through on, and the dolphins were basically offering behaviours that weren’t getting rewareded enough that they were getting confused. we did get pictures, though, and most of the other people didn’t even notice.180615 salamandir and dolphin
also, friday was my friend, and long-time band-mate Howlin’ Hobbit‘s birthday, so i went out and bought a postcard, and sent it to him.
180616 kahalu’u
180616 waiahole poi factoryon saturday (which, coincidentally, was International Sea Turtle Day) we went to the “north shore” to see “the property”, which, if everything goes the way micah has planned (which is still quite questionable), we may actually be living there one day in a few years. it’s all pretty much a secret, now, though, so i may have to take this photo down. we also visited the waiahole poi factory on king kamehameha highway, just north of “the property”.
we, then, proceded to drive around the north shore, where we saw the coincidental sea turtle. the photo tag says that it was at wahiawa, but i don’t think it was there, and i’m not sure where it was, because i was totally lost at that point.180616 sea turtle
on sunday, moe and micah took off to do some veterinary-slash-“property”-related stuff and i was left on my own to wander through downtown honolulu, and buy an authentic hawaiian aloha shirt:180618 salamandir aloha shirt
naturally, i bought the most seizure-inducing colour pattern i could find. 😉 so, on tuesday, moe made me go out and buy shirts that weren’t so seizure-inducing. but before then, on monday, while i was wandering around in honolulu, a valet from some fancy hotel, out of the blue, asked me if i knew where he could get dimethyltryptamine, which, he said, was because i looked like a hare krishna devotee…180619 salamandir waikiki
180618 diamond head hotel from kapiolani park180618 kapiolani park from diamond head hotel
i wanted to mark up the following pictures with “we stayed here” and “here is where i took the picture from” circles and arrows, but, once i looked at them, it seems pretty obvious. this is the diamond head hotel & residences from kapiolani park, and the park from our hotel room.
figure it out for yourself. 😉
on tuesday, i went out and bought four other aloha shirts that were not so seizure-inducing. i paid $65 for the seizure-inducing shirt, which, apparently, was a pattern that they don’t produce any longer (big surprise), which increased its value. on the other hand, i bought four shirts for $35 from a thrift store (savers, also known as value village), including three “vintage” shirts that were actually made in hawaii (one was an original “Hilo Hattie” shirt with coconut shell buttons), which should have increased their value, and one that was made in korea.
on wednesday, we tried to go snorkeling at hanauma bay, but, even at 9:00 in the morning, it was so crowded with tourists that we were turned away even before we were able to drive into the park, so we went down the road a few miles to waimanalo beach, which was totally deserted…180620 waimanalo beach because of the stinging jellyfish180620 waimanalo beach but there were a few kids who had ignored the signs and were going in the water anyway. we were too smart for that kind of jazz, though, so we went back up the road a couple miles, not quite to hanauma bay, to the HURL facility at the MakaiResearch Pier, where we actually were able to get in the water and snorkle around for a couple of hours. i did a lot better, this time, and didn’t scare moe so much. 😉
although we did have an unfortunate incident at the end, involving a pile of shit that was not-very-deeply buried in the sand in the same vicinity that we left our non-snorkeling clothes which disturbed us a fair amount when we discovered it… 😠
thursday was our 20th wedding anniversary. we checked out of the hotel, and went to micah and shaya’s place, hung around for a while, and then went to the Honolulu Museum of Art, had a beer at the BeerLab on university street, had dinner at the sunrise restaurant, and came home.
i didn’t sleep very well on the red-eye that we took (approximately 5½ hours, with approximately 1 hour of actual sleep). we arrived home on friday, had a “recovery day” on saturday, and then, this morning, i drove moe to the airport so that she can fly out to las vegas.
at 3:26 pm, today, i blocked 88.99.0.0/16 from accessing my web site.
you may not fit the definition of a spammer, but you are definitely stooOOpid. is it possible that you are a machine? you have not done your owner a favour, you know.
it actually doesn’t look like that much incense, but remember… 75kg = 165.3467lb — these boxes are dense…
180423 package numbers
they have weird packing in india… all of them are labeled “CNT:NO1/3” but each of them have a different CNT:NO… i would have thought that CNT:NO1 would be labeled CNT:NO1/3, and CNT:NO2 would be labeled CNT:NO2/3… but i have never shipped anything from india before, so who knows. what i do know is that i had to pay ANOTHER fee before i was able to pick them up, which brings the grand total cost to $1,815.75, or $1.12 per package…
which is still pretty respectable, considering that, as far as i have been able to tell, nobody else in the united states sells these incenses online, and i can probably retail them for $4.00 a piece, or wholesale them for $25 a dozen. 😉
180423 contents
i haven’t opened them all, yet, but i opened this one because it’s one of my favourite incenses. they used to make 999 Lord Krishna Puja Dhoop, but they don’t any longer. fortunately they use the same recipe to make sticks, so i’ve got my supply. 😉
i understand why mr. joy wanted to send me more incense. the three boxes didn’t even fill up one pallet, and it would cost pretty much the same to ship three boxes or thirty boxes. i can see that, now… of the $1,815.75 that i paid for it, only $771.00 went to MSDF, and $1,044.75 went to various different freight companies. it would have been much better for me to order twice or three times as much incense, because i would have had to pay the same amount to ship it…
i saw the residents a few years ago, at neumo’s on capitol hill. at the time, randy (the lead singer) said that carlos, the drummer, had decided that, after 40 years, the “rock-and-roll” lifestyle wasn’t doing it for him, and he quit, which was why there was only three of them.
they seem to have found a new drummer, as well as a mysterious figure dressed in a cthulhu mask who sat there for the entire show and didn’t do anything.
they did a lot of their “Elvis” and “Two American Composers” songs to the tune of a lot of their “Train Wreck” and “The Ghost of Hope” songs, and there was some weird stuff about dreams with fabulous animated graphics displayed on a huge ball, so that they were even more distorted.The Dream, part 1
it was REALLY loud, but, unlike most of the other “rock” concerts i have attended, it wasn’t so loud that i couldn’t hear the lyrics (except when they didn’t want me to), and my ears weren’t ringing after the show, which impressed me.
i want a tablet that has a USB interface (or not, depending on its disk size) that is approximately 9″x12″ or thereabouts, on which i can store ALL of my music (and, potentially, music for everyone else in the band, as well). if it has a USB interface, then i can have different bands on different flash drives. if not, different bands go in different directories or suchlike. my understanding is that there is an “automatic page-turning” app that one operates with a remote using their feet, but my impression is that most PDF readers switch pages with a swipe, which is pretty much what i do already, anyway…
that way i won’t have to carry around 40 pounds of music, as well as my tuba, music stand and chair…
180325 tom noddy and the littlest gymnastthe second week of the moisture festival — the one that i played in, with the fremont philharmonic — is over. it went really well, i played a majority of the right notes, didn’t drop my music, or lose tunes, made a majority of my cues, kept ALL of my music in alphabetical order, except for the tunes that were “officially” part of the show, so i could find things instantaneously when things changed abruptly without warning…
which they INEVITABLY do at the moisture festival.
hacki and möppi were there, tom noddy was there, sandy was there, frank olivier was there, peewee and joanne (barry and yvonne, couple #69) were there… i saw people that i only see once a year, at the moisture festival… it was the 15th anniversary of the longest running comedy/varieté showcase IN THE WORLD (and my 15th year as a performer in the moisture festival), and hardly anybody mentioned the fact that the palladium is up for sale, and there’s a possibility that whoever buys it will not honour the contracts that events like the moisture festival (and the panto) have with mike hale… but, at least for now, things are happening in a more or less normal, for the moisture festival, way. who knows what’s going to happen next year… apparently somebody does, but it’s not me, and whoever it is, isn’t saying anything.
i am the guy who walked past your house in a cloak and hood (it’s actually called a burnous), like this:180319 you’re creeping me out without looking back, i yelled “i’m sorry”, but i wanted to give you a more complete explanation.
i’m sorry you’re “creeped out” by me, but when you yell at me like that, i want to come back and reassure you that it’s just me, and i’m not dangerous. in fact, i am a human being, with feelings, and it hurts me that you would think of me in that way. i also think that, perhaps, you should critically examine the things that “creep you out”, because they may be steering your life in the wrong direction. i’m not hurting anybody, and the fact that i don’t dress like “normal people” shouldn’t be an issue, as long as i’m not hurting anybody. it’s reactions like yours that make me afraid to walk in our neighbourhood, despite the fact that i’m not dangerous, and i never hurt anyone.
at the same time, you should not expect me to change my habit of dressing strangely and walking through our neighbourhood at dusk, because it’s my right, regardless of how much it creeps you out. 😡
new and replenished dhoop selections, a new nag champa, and a couple of new things to play around with: black copal resin and palo santo, which set off my new smoke alarm before i had the chance to adequately evaluate it. 😉inventorycoming soon, A LOT of incense from MSDF: 33 dozen 999 Lord Krishna Puja (the sticks, not the dhoop. apparently they don’t make the dhoop any longer), 63 dozen 7 African Powers and 40 dozen 909 Three Roses. 🙂
Thonotossasa, FL 160530i got an incense order, today, from lakeville, connecticut. lakeville is in the vicinity of two lakes which rival puyallup for odd native american place names: wononskopomuc, and wononpakook.
for a long time i was under the impression that puyallup was about as strange a native american place name as you could find anywhere… then i encountered thonotosassa, florida, and now thiswononskopomuc
i’ve wanted one for a long time: pretty much ever since i first read about them on internet, a few years ago. but i’ve never bought one, because it seemed too frivolous… and i’ve read some really negative reviews of them, that made me think they are not very well built, and so forth.
but this a gift, and it is from my lovely wife, so, of course i want it… and, actually, it plays pretty well — for a “novelty” “toy” that doesn’t have notes marked on it… it will definitely be an honoured member of my sound-effects collection, if nothing else… 😊
otamatone オタマトーン
not only that, but the guy on the package (who, i assume, is Novmichi Tosa, the inventor of the otamatone), is wearing a wrist watch with an old-school telephone dial on it:
wrist watch with a telephone dial… what does it do?
a couple months ago, i got rosemary’s DNA (my paternal great aunt) analysed. she has the same father as my great grandfather, but her mother is different than my great grandmother.
i figured that we would have some DNA in common, that we could both use to help determine who is part of our family.
apparently, we have ZERO DNA in common:
no DNA in common?
what the fuck?
ETA: it’s because the DNA analysis was done on our mitochondrial DNA, which, while easier to analyse, is passed through our mothers’ side. she had a different mother than my great grandmother, so there’s no overlap.
i went for a walk. when i returned, he was sitting on our gate post as i walked up. he flew up into a tree…
170922 WOL170922 WOL
monique sez that either it’s a dumb baby bird (possible), or he’s not feeling well (also possible). if the latter, he’s chosen the right place to do it… although i don’t know how we’d go about catching him to give him whatever care he might need…
170922 WOL
ETA: it’s probably just a dumb baby owl, ’cause it caught a rat and was eating it in the tree, about an hour later. nice owl. we’ll feed you lots of rats if you stay here… 🙂
i got back from OCF, which, apart from the fact that my email was screwed up when i left, and nothing had been done about it by the time i came back, was excellent. i left on tuesday the 4th, and returned on monday the 10th, got bit by at least 50 different mosquitoes. they were huge and ravenous this year, pretty much the same as always, but they definitely dissappeared by thursday. i don’t know whether or not it had to do with the incoming throngs of people, but there was a definite difference between the clouds of mosquitoes surrounding me on wednesday, and their dissappearance on thursday.
chela melathe big conversation this year was around “cultural appropriation”, specifically the “cultural appropriation” perceived by a few, very vocal, “native american” (or not) people who aren’t even associated with the fair, when The Ritz (one of my favourite places about the fair) after 5 years of carving this EXQUISITE “story pole” outside the ritz, in a very public way, decided to raise the pole.
that’s it…
the “native americans” (or not) decided, after 5 years of public carving, without saying a SINGLE WORD, that the ritz raising their “story pole” is “cultural appropriation”.
first of all, i don’t actually know anything (which is the way 90% of the fair is run, from the beginning). all i pretend to know is what other, very passionate, people, some of whom actually do “know”, have told me. but what they say is:
the lady that’s behind the cry of “cultural appropriation” is a “troublemaker” and has been for many years. she may or may not be native herself and she has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fair, but she has made an “anti-story-pole” web site and invited other “native american” groups to rally behind her standard. a small number have actually done so.
the ritz, in response to this lady’s blandishments, have COMPLETELY REMOVEDALL of the “native american” art from the premises, taken down the boiler that had native american artwork on it, that was prominently placed at the entrance, flipped over a fence that had native american style carvings, and replaced it with “vanilla” art, taken away 90% of the T-shirts, tote bags, bandanas and other merchandise that had “inappropriate” artwork, and minted new tokens this year, as well as taking the story pole off site for the fair.
at the same time, elders from a variety of northwest tribes, including the native kalapuya tribe, and elders from standing rock, have blessed the ritz, said that the artwork, and the ritz itself, HONOURS native traditions, and that this whole “cultural appropriation” fiasco is totally unimportant, considering how many actual issues of grave importance there are facing native americans, and society at large, these days.
finally, my own opinion is that ART IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION. people like picasso (or was it banksy?) have said “IMMATURE ARTISTS IMMITATE. MATURE ARTISTS STEAL.” ever listen to “jazz”?
not only that, but having studied, and tried to imitate, northwest native artwork, i can tell you, from personal experience, that it’s not easy at all. the guy who carved the story pole wasn’t native, himself, but he obviously had experienced and expert native assistance, as well as YEARS of personal experience, to make a story pole that looked as authentic as it did, despite having elements that would NEVER HAVE APPEARED on an authentic native pole…
which it was never presented as being in the first place! 😕
so i was intrigued when i read a blurb that was posted in “Xavanadu” (what used to be called “The Craft Lot”, outside Morningwood Odditorium), concerning why the fair decided not to raise the story pole this year. it said, among other things, that there were a band of the kalapuya tribe called “chelamela”.
i haven’t yet met anyone who knows for sure, but it was always my impression (and the sign above supports the idea) that “chelamela” was a sanskrit compound word: छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेलमेल (chelamela) is “a festival of devotees”.
the idea that there may have been a band of kalapuya indians called “chelamela” is intriguing to me — suspicious, but intriguing — especially considering all of this “cultural appropriation” furor that is currently going on.
apparently, it’s true… who knew? 😉 so, the next question is, who “culturally appropriated” who, here?
there wasn’t a single day in the week that i was there, when i wasn’t involved in a PASSIONATE discussion about this issue, with MANY people. it made for a REALLY INTERESTING fair…
😕
north trotter’sabove, is “north trotter’s” on wednesday. it’s about a mile from Morningwood Odditorium: to get there, i had to walk through fields called “Xavanadu”, “Miss Piggy”, “North Piggy” and “Kermit” to get to the “Cabal Crossing”, which is where i signed in. by friday, this ENTIRE FIELD was filled with cars. near the center of the photo, in the background, you can see a structure that marks the beginning of the exit road. on the other side of that structure is another, similar sized field, “The Dead Lot” (named for a Grateful Dead performance that happened in 1989(?) in the lot), and beyond that is another similar sized field called “Outta Site”… which is where i parked my car this year. there is a shuttle, called “F.A.R.T.S.” (Fair Area Rapid Transit System) which i had to ride if i didn’t want to walk.
birdthis was the bird that was over the dead lot, one of the times i decided to walk.
anagrams of Oregon Country Fair
a huge load of hippie crapon wednesday, someone delivered a huge load of “hippie crap” to “xavanadu”. they eventually assembled it all into this. at night, the “roots” lit up with rainbow crawling LEDs.
Godfrey Danielshe was my next door neighbour. 😎
more huge loads of hippie crapmore huge loads of hippie crap. at night it lit up with rainbow colour-changing LEDs.
some random hippie, 2017what’s wrong with this picture? 😉
March 26, 2000 – this took place right down the street from where we were living, at the time. i went, set up my (still) camera, and a tripod, and took 30 photos, in rapid succession, with the intent of making an animated .gif of the process… now, 17 years later, i have actually completed that task. go me.
one of my favourite strains of medical cannabis is space queen.
a year ago, i declined to pay $420 an ounce for space queen at a dispensary in auburn. in fact, after they told me how much it was, i walked out without saying another word. $420 an ounce is WAY too expensive! 😡
six months ago, i was able to buy space queen at another dispensary, in tacoma, for between $280 and $320 an ounce… the upper end of which is verging on too expensive.
i’ve been going to commencement bay cannabis for about three months now. at first, they didn’t have space queen at all. then, when they got it in, i was paying $180 an ounce — with a 10% discount, because i am over 55 years old… *(BONUS!)*
two days ago, i went to commencement bay cannabis, and bought TWO ounces, for $90 a piece, with a 10% discount, making them $81 a piece…
Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills – Teachers’ Edition
where do i start?
quite a number of years ago… maybe 35 or 40… i used to entertain myself by calling radio preachers and saying bizarre stuff. after a while, i started recording these conversations arguments, particularly with one specific radio preacher, Bob Larson, and playing them for my friends. i also sent a copy to a friendly person named Matt Jasper, who ran a little company called Tray Full Of Lab Mice Publications, who combined it with other sound sources and released his own tape, which was called “Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson”… in spite of the fact that “Tina Chopp vs. Bob Larson” was only a small part of that tape, which included other people interacting with bob in a similarly strange way.
at some point, someone at Bananafish Magazine got hold of matt’s tape, and combined it with a bunch of other, nominally musical, sources, and, in 1992, released a 7" EP vinyl album, called “Perceptual Motor Rhythm Skills – Teachers’ Edition” which was released, as a pressing of 1,500, with issue #7.
and i FINALLY had to BUY my copy, a couple of weeks ago, from the River Street Beats Shop, because i didn’t even know the album existed until a couple of weeks ago… 😎
so, i’ve had this idea for a bumper sticker:
it says “‘ana last earbia. ‘ana last arhabia. tawaqqaf ean aizeaji.”, which means “I am not an Arab. I am not a terrorist. Stop harrassing me.”
my blog’s birthday is today: it was on this day nine years ago that i left LiveJournal for good. i finally learned at least part of the lesson taught by Bacchus, in Bacchus’ First Rule of the Internet, which is, “Anything worth doing on internet, is worth doing on a server you own, and over which you have control.”
i’m not particularly concerned about whether or not my food contains GMOs… i’d rather that they not, but it doesn’t concern me an awful lot if they do, it’s just one of those things…
so, i was intrigued when i saw, on the back of the costco-sized package of peanut M&Ms that i bought recently, when i saw a notice on the back of the package that said “PARTIALLY PRODUCED WITH GENETIC ENGINEERING”…GMO M&Ms?
so, i called the customer inquiry line that they posted on the back of the package, and this is the story i got:
they are required, by law, to label potentially GMO products. however, suppliers of some of the ingredients — i.e. NOT associated with the M&M/Mars factory — may OR MAY NOT use genetically modified organisms to produce the raw material that gets sold to M&M/Mars, AND…
get this…
THEY DON’T HAVE TO TELL M&M/Mars whether they do or not.
because of the fact that M&M/Mars DOESN’T KNOW whether or not their suppliers use GMOs, they HAVE TO label their products, whether they contain GMOs or not.
in other words, by law, M&M HAS TO notify us, even though they DON’T KNOW THEMSELVES!
THIS IS WHY I AM VERY SUSPICIOUS OF FOOD LABELING! 😡
161010 not the clown you’re looking for
now, i find some place where people will notice me… i’m thinking of the freeway onramp at 340th and enchanted parkway.
so i “gave up” on my indoor grow project a few months ago, because of recurring issues with pests. i planted my four weedy, pathetic remainders outside and left them to fend for themselves.
returned from OCF yesterday. logged into farcebook this morning and was immediately confronted with political stupidity and people making fun of human failure. we weren’t able to play at the ritz this year, despite my being in contact with the booker through farcebook for two years now. i’m seriously wondering whether or not this experiment with “social media” is worth the hassle.
however, interestingly, i only went to the ritz twice, because it rained on saturday, but, in spite of not getting booked to play this year, i ended up with three ritz tokens, and actually got to play one song with stuart’s band, choro loco. i played cuica:
cuicacuica
i went to OCF last tuesday. the mosquitos were ravenous, and numerous… and HUGE! i got bit a lot tuesday and wednesday. thursday they calmed down a bit, and by friday they were all concentrating on the tens of thousands of other people who had just arrived. wednesday i slept for most of the day, which was luxurious, but somehow i wish there had been more activity.
there weren’t as many pictures, but they were memorable.
there were also a few pictures, not included, of daylight, close-up shots of the pedal-powered scroll saw i want to make.
2016 some random hippie
other years:
2011 some random hippie2012 some random hippie2013 some random hippieMorningwood Odditorium, with the back of David Barnes’ and Julia Kingrey’s headsmy tuba, at Morningwood OdditoriumStrangely stole my phonefound on mondayfound on monday
so, i made it to orlando and warrensburg and i got back without too much difficulty.
i got to orlando, and went to Wonder India, which is, truly, an international warehouse of all things india. not just incense, but packaged food products, housewares, clothing… if there is a local indian shop in the united states, it is probably supplied by Wonder India. the guy who i have been working with, one Karan Manglani, apparently quit his job without telling anyone, and i don’t know what’s going on with their “info@” address, but i got the name and phone number of the guy who i’m supposed to call. i haven’t yet called him, but i will soon, ’cause i’m running low on aparajita.
then i went to joe’s house, but joe wasn’t there and his partner looked like he had just woken up (it was fairly early in the morning), so i went to the beach, which, for orlando, means “out of town”. i headed east, and saw signs pointing to cocoa beach, which i’ve heard of, so i headed that way, but i took the wrong exit and ended up in titusville, instead of cocoa. titusville is the home of the world-famous canaveral national seashore, and, as it was still fairly early, nobody except a few naked people were present on Playa Linda, where i meditated for a few hours.
canaveral national seashore 160524
then i had dinner at the world-famous “Dixie Crossroads” in titusville, which was okay seafood, but it didn’t hold a candle to west-coast seafood. even ivar’s has approximately equivalent food. makes me wonder, a lot…
dixie crossroads 160524
i went to epcot with joe the next day. joe is an old man, which is saying a lot, because joe and i are the same age. it’s kind of like rick: i keep on thinking that they are the same people i knew a long time ago. they are, but they’re both a lot older now, and that means that they’re not in the best of health. i am also not in the best of health, because i have experienced a brain injury, but apart from that, i haven’t suffered the ravages of old age like my friends rick and joe have.
EPCOT, actually an acronym that stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow – which i didn’t know, previously, was laughably outdated. the exhibits looked almost exactly like they were made in and for the late ’70s or early ’80s, and the geodesic dome wasn’t anywhere near as big as i had envisioned.
EPCOT 160525 — with faux “northwest native” decorEPCOT 160525 — with a minimum of touristsEPCOT 160525 — “german” villageEPCOT 160525 — “chinese” village
it was really good to see joe again, and we made arrangements to have dinner before i left.
Joe Zimmer 160525joe and salamandir 160525
i had planned on spending a week in orlando, but with joe not being as available as i had first assumed, i was left with a few days that were, essentially unacounted for, so i spent the next day traveling to saint petersburg to visit a friend of monique’s, and her husband, who live in a hippie paradise, and had the cannabis that i was, by this time, severely lacking to make my trip tolerable. we also went to the dalí museum, which was OUTRAGEOUS!!! i saw the originals of the following artwork, and A LOT more. 8)
Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which, at 20 Metres Becomes A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (1976)Lobster Telephone160526
the tourist map that was provided by the hotel was printed upside down, i.e. “north” on the map was printed at the bottom of the map, as you held it upright, which i didn’t figure out until the day before i left. it was terrifically confusing, because i drove what i thought to be “south” on the map, for most of the day, before i ended up in Eustice, which is north of orlando, and i could not, for the life of me, figure out why until after i had returned to the hotel. joe informed me that this is because “tourists don’t want to go north from orlando”, but my impression is that orlando, generally, is a city that is one, big, enormous strip mall, from one end to the other, and anywhere would be preferable. seriously, i only found one indian restaurant, a hare-krsna related joint that was vegetarian, and closed. i’m relatively sure that there are other indian restaurants, but… come on, orlando… really??
on the other hand, orlando has some really cool stuff, which includes lizards (which i was unable to get photos of, despite the fact that they are endemic), trees that look like this:
160530 orlando
and plants that grow in peoples’ front yards which look like this:
what is this plant? 160530
and wild birds that look like this:
what are these birds? 160530
all of which was very interesting, and would have been moreso if i had remembered to bring, or buy once i was there, sunscreen… unfortunately, i didn’t think to do so until the day before i left, which meant that a lot of my meanderings were at night, which means fewer photos.
“puyallup” is no longer the most confusing place name i have ever experienced:
then, i flew from orlando to kansas city, missouri, where i rented a car and travelled to warrensburg, missouri. the first thing i noticed was the traffic lights in the middle of what would, ordinarily, be a freeway… and what appear to be “state highways” that, apparently, have names like “AA”, “BB”, “OO”, “X”, “Y” and “PCA” with no logical progression.
i met rosemary, my great-aunt, who i have never met “IRL” before, which was an interesting experience, essentially being included in her extended family, simply because we are related.
and we went to the (abandoned) Marshall Cemetary outside Knob Noster, to visit my great-great-grandparents’ graves
Marshall Cemetary, Knob Noster, Missouri 160601my great-great-grandfather, Charles Walter Hammond, died June 9, 1862
i also went to visit John William “Blind” Boone Park, in warrensburg
John William “Blind” Boone Park, Warrensburg, MO – 160602
and i also visited the Johnson County Historical Society, where i got even more information about my great-grandparents and my great-great-grandparents.
more accurate swastika, unlike the previous one which was (i suspect, deliberately) off center and inconsistent.
ready to start a new season of art-car shows, as soon as i get back from my trip… which i’m dreading… 😨 (which is U+1F628 FEARFUL FACE, if the emoticon doesn’t give it justice) (the trip, not the art-car shows)
i decided that i wanted an 8-ball knob on my shift-lever, replacing the boring, ordinary one that has the shift pattern engraved on the top.
i looked around a number of different places, locally, and discovered that the only place i could get a “regulation” 8-ball-sized shift-knob was a place where i had to order it, and then wait a few weeks until it came in — none of this “order on amazon and have it in four days” crap, this is an OLD SCHOOL customising shop which offers real 8-ball shift-knobs, not those dinky, small 8-ball-wannabe shift knobs that look cool for about 6 months and then wear out, here.
i knew i was probably going to have to match the threads on my car, so i went and measured them, and bought the proper size tap, while i waited for the 8-ball itself to arrive. it came in about a week ago, and, immediately i noticed that there was a big problem: the knob came with two plastic “inserts” and three set-screws that were supposed to hold it in place, but my car (which is a hyundai, with metric everything) not only wouldn’t fit, but i actually destroyed the proper sized plastic insert trying to get it to work.
i discovered that, to work with my shift-lever, with its metric threads, i would have to make a “shim”: i would need to get a brass rod the same diameter as the hole in the 8-ball (½"), and drill it out to the correct dimensions to accept a tap (10×1.25 metric thread), at which point i would drive the rod up into the hole in the 8-ball, drive in the set screws, and screw it in place.
first step, finding a ½" diameter brass rod. i figured i would go down to the local home depot and pick one up… but home depot doesn’t have ½" brass rod, and hasn’t had ½" brass rod for at least a year. no problem, i surmise… i’ll just go to mcclendon’s, they’ll be sure to have it. WRONG… they knew what i was looking for, but said that they stopped carring ½" brass rod when it became “too expensive”… 😕 i’m reasonably sure that i could have bought ½" brass rod at hardwick’s, but i would have had to drive into seattle for that, and i didn’t feel like driving that day… not only that, but with the information that brass rod had suddenly got “expensive” i wasn’t sure that hardwick’s would have it, and i didn’t want to drive all that way for nothing…
160422 brass shimso, i ended up buying 8″-to-9″ (random length) of ½" brass rod online for about $5.00 (which is what i expected to pay anyway, so i don’t know what they were talking about at mcclendon’s… too expensive??), and proceded to start to drill it out, but very quickly discovered that it was going to take a REALLY long time to do it manually, if i wanted it to be anything like the quality that i would expect to have on my car… but i know a guy who owns a machine shop in the south end of downtown seattle! 🙂
so, this morning, i went down to his shop and made a shim of the proper size, with the proper machinery, and it, literally, took five minutes (and most of that time was setting up the machine), and now i have a beautiful, new, authentic 8-ball gear-shift-knob on my car! 😎
160422 8-ball shift-knob
i would be doing a lot more of this kind of stuff if i didn’t have to wait around so long for materials to be delivered, that i used to be able to go down to the local hardware store and buy…
i think i may have found a way to market these online so that people will be able to get what they want without having it be a random selection chosen by me. it’s difficult, because no two buttons are exactly the same, but i discovered, quite by accident, that there are five different general categories that they fall into. i suppose, if i wanted to get really technical, i could separate them even further into a predominant colour, but i think that may be a bit more complex, because then it would be possible, theoretically, for someone to come up with a colour and category that doesn’t exist, and that would be embarrassing.
they are all swastikas: category 1 buttons have more of an abstract swastika, because you can’t actually see it, but if you can look beyond the borders of the button, you might be able to imagine where it would be. category 2 buttons are a little less abstract, but it’s still not a visible swastika, although it might be easier for some people to figure out where it is. category 3 buttons have at least one definite swastika. category 4 buttons have at least three definite swastikas, and category 5 buttons have EITHER no less than 6 swastikas, OR at least one swastika, and a significant area where there are no swastikas.
they’re all $1.00 or more a piece… i say “or more” because if people want to pay more for them, i won’t complain. 😉
160209 trichomes – field of view approximately 5mm
i took this with my cell phone and a clip-on macro lens… it’s not exactly in focus because it has a really narrow field where the focus is absolutely spot-on, and it changes pretty dramatically when you breathe, or move slightly, or that sort of thing… but considering that it’s a hand-held device with no way to fine-tune the focus, i’d say that it’s a pretty good picture over all… 😉
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…
plantiesplantiesplanties
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.
a long time ago… after i got married, but before my injury, when ezra was living with the PHBFH on capitol hill, and i was living on beacon hill, somebody (i always suspected that ezra knew who, but he never admitted to it) lobbed a fist-sized rock through the PHBFH’s front window, which struck ezra in the face and broke his nose. shortly after that, the PHBFH moved everything to an even rougher part of town in an attempt to get away from the roughness that she perceived surrounding her, pretty much everywhere.
i retrieved the rock, wrote the words “I BROKE EZRA’S NOSE” on it, put it into storage, and promptly forgot it, because i was up to my eyeballs in other stuff, including dealing with the PHBFH and her erstwhile lawyer.
i found the rock the other day: 151223 rock before
i texted ezra, to see if he wanted it. he didn’t, but he suggested that i carve the words into the rock and then “let it back out into nature :)” which sounded like an admirable idea to me, so i did: 151223 rock during
151223 rock during151223 rock during151223 rock after
the next step is to paint the letters with some durable, shiny paint in some bright colour, i’m thinking neon green, or yellow or something. i’m also debating whether or not to “enhance” the blood stains that are still on the rock, for dramatic effect.
then, to release it back to nature… possibly at double bluff park, since we have a tradition of going there every year. or at fort worden… i’m seeing ezra on sunday, so i’ll get a chance to talk with him about it, as well…
november 1st is the date i started my new project:
151101 plants
it is now december 22nd, i.e. approximately 2 months later…
151222 plants
i’ve created 7 clones…
151214 clones
and a space for the plants to go in once they’re ready to flower…
151222
which will be in another week or so. the light that the plants are under currently is the cooler, bluer light that is for vegetative growth, and the flowering lights are the warmer, redder light, but my impression is that the difference doesn’t show in photos so much.
and it’s legal! 😁
my guess is that it will be a couple more months or so, and i won’t have to pay for cannabis any longer, and i will also have a steady source of income. 😉
ManWomanDay was friday. i planned on getting tattooed, but i forgot my ID. then, moe and i went to the science cener, because they had a display up that hasn’t been up since the science center first opened in 1962… and i saw it in 1962.
151010 Amitabha Buddhist Society of Seattle151012 okay, how does one pronounce this name? i see a number of options, none of which make for a particularly memorable campaign slogan… “shit” for schools? “shite” for schools? “skit” for schools? i wonder why nobody thought of this before the campaign got this far…151014 glass blowing
for the past few weeks i’ve been learning to blow glass.
it takes time to anneal the glass, so i can’t take home pieces right away. this week i got the piece that i worked on last week. it’s a little wobbly, because it’s my first actual piece, but it turned out quite well…
150904 hand blown glass bong
next time i have a lesson (in 2 weeks) i will get to take home my second piece, which is orders of magnitude better than my first piece… 😎
in 2009 i uploaded a picture that was taken in 1981 of me and a bunch of guys juggling on the lawn in front of old main, at western:
one of those guys, barry alexander, was a friend of mine who was also a jeweler, and made the silver Ritual Object that has been used in countless Ritual Vegetable Sacrifices by The Church of Tina Chopp throughout the intervening years.
on sunday, the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band played a concert at the Peace Arch in blaine. after the concert, as i was putting my instrument away, i was approached by barry alexander, who i haven’t seen in probably 35 years. this is what he looks like now:
apparently, he knows a lot more about what’s going on with me than i do about him, because he knows about things like Hybrid Elephant, whereas what i know about him ceased to be updated when i lost contact with him, some time in the early 1980s…
i’ve knowingly been around this building for 45 years, but i’ve never actually been inside the Women’s University Club in seattle, until yesterday, when the ballard sedentary sousa band played there. it’s been there for 90 years, or thereabouts, and has been the venue for many a ‘hoity-toity’ event presented by the rich, upper-class women of seattle… and now it has also been the venue in which the BSSB has played, which either means that their standards are slipping, or that the BSSB has moved up the ladder, in our social circles, by several rungs… 😉
but the photo below is not that… it is about 3 blocks away, right next door to the building i lived in (according to the handy-dandy chart of when things happened) between 1996 and 1997, at terry and east union
seriously, this is one of my favourite places in the entire city, and i would live there again in a cold second, given the opportunity… there’s nothing like waking up in the morning, walking a few blocks, and being able to eat breakfast at the pike place market before starting your day… 😎
when i got to the women’s university club, i played, as i was expected to do, but i then learned about the fact that, in 1927, John Philip Sousa had actually been a guest of the women’s university club, and they had his signature in their guest book! so, of course, i had to take a picture of it…
of course, because of the fact that i took it with my cell-phone, it’s kind of blurry, but hey… it’s a real piece of history, that i’m a part of, because we actually got to sign the very same guest book! 😀
i still don’t completely understand the technology behind google’s deep dream project, but i bowed to peer pressure and submited a selfie, just to see what happened.
i’ve posted copies of this photo in various places, and the responses i have gotten have all been along the lines of “i want to rub his belly”…
👉 NO YOU DON’T! 👈
this is very much a situation like in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where five of his six ends are pointy… maybe you can’t see them right now, but i assure you that if you were to reach down to rub his belly, the five of those six ends that are pointy would converge on your wrist and not let go.
so, here are my pictures which i wasn’t able to couldn’t be arsed to figure out how to upload the other day. they are all taken within a 5-mile radius of 47.2464070, -124.2233262 (47° 14′ 47.0646″ N by -124° 13′ 23.9736″ W)
where we stayed this wasn’t in the 5-mile radius, and i’m not completely sure whether it’s not spelled correctly, or (possibly) referring to something completely different than i am thinking… inside, looking out not fukushima or deepwater-horizon this is the pacific northwest dead sand dollar live sand dollars zora voluntarily wading in water up to her shoulders — no, seriously, this is a big thing, ’cause zora HATES getting even the slightest bit wet… we’ll make a beach-doggie out of her yet… birds
only time will tell, and it’s verging on moisture festival time, so it may be a while before we know for sure… but i found a patch editor for the DX7 that runs on my mac, so, one way or the other, it’s gonna be a fun ride… 😎
in a post called fezorocity and antique brass…, from 100911, i wrote of obtaining an antique tenor horn, around 100 years old, stamped with the J.W. Pepper logo. i actually did some research online and found pictures of similar horns from around the same era.
i immediately featured the horn in an educational post entitled “THE "RIGHT WAY" TO REMOVE A STUCK BRASS MOUTHPIECE“, in which i used it as an example of a stuck mouthpiece and the correct way to remove it.
then, on 120502, i posted a composite photo of me playing three different tubas, one of which was that same horn with the J.W. Pepper logo. at the time i was under the impression that it was more or less a “mid-west” and/or east coast company.
little did i know… 😎
it turns out that there’s a branch of J.W. Pepper in tukwilla, just down the street from ikea. i went in there today and immediately felt like i’d been there all my life… they had racks of catalogued sheet music all over the place, a rack of batons for sale on the desk, and a friendly dog who greeted me at the door.
i ordered a copy of the piano score for Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel, which should be here next week, and i’m going to take the horn with me. 😎
This extraordinary picture shows the mummifed male body which is believed to be several centuries old. It was found at 6.30 pm 27 January 2015 in Songinokhairkhan province, reported Mongolia’s ‘Morning Newspaper’.
‘The mummified body sits in a lotus position, as if still meditating.
‘Experts that only had time to carry basic visual test say they believe the body can be about 200 years old’.
The report added: ‘So far there is no information as to where the body was found. The only details we learned was that it was covered with a cattle skin’.
It was not clear if it was the skin of a cow, horse, or camel, said the report. The mummy was delivered to Ulaanbataar National Centre of Forensic Expertise’.
Initial speculation is that the mummy could be a teacher of famous Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov.
Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, born in 1852, was a Buryat Buddhist Lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, best known for the lifelike state of his body.
His remains were reported not to be subject to macroscopic decay.
As police say lama found in lotus positon was destined for sale on black market, there are claims it was one step away from becoming a Buddha.
A mummified monk found in the lotus position in Mongolia is ‘not dead’ and is instead one stage away from becoming a real-life Buddha, it has been claimed.
Forensic examinations are under way on the amazing remains, which are believed to be around 200 years old, having been preserved in animal skin. But one expert has insisted the human relic is actually in ‘very deep meditation’ and in a rare and very special spiritual state known as ‘tukdam’.
Over the last 50 years there are said to have been 40 such cases in India involving meditating Tibetan monks.
Dr Barry Kerzin, a famous Buddhist monk and a physician to the Dalai Lama, said: ‘I had the privilege to take care of some meditators who were in a tukdam state.
‘If the person is able to remain in this state for more than three weeks – which rarely happens – his body gradually shrinks, and in the end all that remains from the person is his hair, nails, and clothes. Usually in this case, people who live next to the monk see a rainbow that glows in the sky for several days. This means that he has found a ‘rainbow body’. This is the highest state close to the state of Buddha’.
He added: ‘If the meditator can continue to stay in this meditative state, he can become a Buddha. Reaching such a high spiritual level the meditator will also help others, and all the people around will feel a deep sense of joy’.
Initial speculation is that the mummy could be a teacher of Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov.
Born in 1852, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov was a Buryat Buddhist Lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, best known for the lifelike state of his body.
Ganhugiyn Purevbata, who is the founder and professor of the Mongolian Institute of Buddhist Art at Ulaanbaatar Buddhist University, said: ‘Lama is sitting in the lotus position vajra, the left hand is opened, and the right hand symbolizes of the preaching Sutra.
‘This is a sign that the Lama is not dead, but is in a very deep meditation according to the ancient tradition of Buddhist lamas’.
The mummified remains, which were covered in cattle skin, were found on January 27 in the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia.
However, there is more to the story and now police have revealed that the monk had been stolen from another part of the country and was about to be sold off.
An unnamed official said that it was taken from a cave in the Kobdsk region by a man who then hid it in his own home in Ulaanbaatar.
He had then been planning to sell it on the black market at a ‘very high price’, with local media claiming he wanted to take it over the Mongolian border. Police uncovered the plot and quickly arrested a 45-year-old, named only as Enhtor.
According to Article 18 of the Criminal Code of Mongolia smuggling items of cultural heritage are punishable with either a fine of up to 3 million roubles ($43,000) or between five and 12 years in prison. The monk is now being guarded at the National Centre of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar.
once again, i was at the artesian well when there was nobody else there, but this time, i was the last person there: when i showed up, there were three other cars, but they left fairly quickly, and there wasn’t anybody else there for the entire time i was filling my bottles. as i was driving out, two other cars pulled in. in the 25-or-so years that i have been filling my bottles there, i have experienced a relatively small number of times that i have been the only person there, but i have experienced even fewer times when i was the last person there… i have been there at all hours of the day and night, and had to wait in line for other people to fill their bottles.
it’s apparently called Well #5 or The 164th Street Artesian Well, but, as far as i have been able to tell, the “locals” who use the well would prefer it if nobody else knew about the well, so i won’t give any more information about its location.
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect. — Salman Rushdie
me and my baby brother – 10 years younger than me. this is probably as close as anyone will get to taking a picture of us together… i haven’t seen my brother for… at least 5 years… and longer ago than that if you wanted us together for more than a few minutes…
a long, long time ago… probably 1980 or thereabouts… i had just moved to bellingham and was a student at fairhaven college, on the campus of western washington university. there was a “student market” called the “VU Vendors” on weekdays, where “professional” vendors (somewhat like what Hybrid Elephant was like, at the FSM) and students who wanted to sell stuff congregated. one of the latter vendors was a guy who had made a cape out of army blankets, which he wanted to sell because he needed some “medication” (i never asked what kind of “medication” he wanted), but i didn’t have the amount of money he was looking for, so i memorised the pattern and went on my way. about a year later, after i had gotten a job, i bought a couple of wool army blankets and made my own cape, which have worn, more or less constantly, since then.
i wore it when i went to the rainbow gathering in 1982. i wore it when i was a migrant fruit picker in 1983. i wore it when i freight-hopped to various places, i wore it when i hitch hiked places, i slept under freeway bridges, and in farmers’ fields wrapped in my cape… in 1993 or thereabouts, i wore it when i went out picking mushrooms, got it caught on a barbed-wire fence and tore a hole in it, which i repaired. eventually i modified the design a little, and cut arm-holes, which fastened with velcro, so that i could wear a backpack and still wear the cape, when it was raining. originally it had three buttons that i rescued from a pea-coat, but the buttonholes failed, so i removed them and replaced it with a metal frog that i got at OCF, where i wore it to protect me from mosquitos.
eventually, i learned that it wasn’t really a “cape”. it is actually a garment called a burnous, a traditional garment worn by Berbers… but nobody knows what a burnous is, despite the fact that it is actually a really cool garment…
it was well worn, and well loved, so it wasn’t particularly surprising when i was putting it on a couple months ago, and the frog ripped a big hole in the front, and i decided that it was time to retire it as a garment…
but i still want need a cape… i NEED a cape. it has been a part of my wardrobe for 40 years, and it’s lack has been felt intensely… so i went out and spent $250 on real wool fabric, and real lycra lining material, and made a new one. 😎
at this point, it’s about 85% finished. i put together the pieces, and sewed the neck, but i’m letting it hang for a couple of days before i finish it, because that way the lining will have a chance to “settle”… the old cape didn’t have a lining, so it wasn’t a problem. i found it rather bizarre, essentially, to have to make two capes, and sew them together inside out, so that the lining came out right.
and i didn’t realise until i hung it up, that, because of the fact that it’s made of brown cloth, it looks suspiciously like a “jedi” cape… which, naturally, means that i’ll be getting a lot of comments from tourists at OCF next year, but… oh well, i’ll deal with it…
Black men and boys killed by police. I can’t breathe. Impunity for the killers — no justice, no peace. I can’t breathe. Militarized police met peaceful protesters on their knees. I can’t breathe. Weapons of war — a show of force on our streets. I can’t breathe. Disenfranchised youth driven to violence as speech. I can’t breathe. Cynical media think this makes great TV. I can’t breathe. This cowardly Congress afraid of losing our seats. I can’t breathe. Half-hearted reform when there’s more that we need. I can’t breathe. Just thinking about the despair that this breeds. I can’t breathe. Black lives matter. Hear my pleas. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
people who send packages from india seem to have an entirely different attitude than people (including myself) who send packages from the united states… this one, for example. if i were to wrap a package, i would probably stop before i got to the pillow-case wrapper, secured with red embroidery floss.
it also had a return address that was different from the return address that i got on the “official” computer printed UPS tracking label, which was from somebody who operates a mail-forwarding service in jamaica, new york… booorring!… 😐
after carefully removing the cloth wrapping around the outside of the package (because you never know, with packages from india, whether or not the cloth wrapping may be used for some esoteric, indian purpose that won’t become clear until after the rest of the package is opened), i discovered this, which was a little bit more like how i would expect a package to be wrapped… although, in my, personal, opinion, they went just a little bit overboard with the shipping tape that covered the entire package. it’s my understanding, in this case, that it may be an “extra precaution”, since what is contained inside the package is of a somewhat sensitive nature, but that’s getting ahead of myself… 😉
this is another reason why i enjoy unwrapping packages from india: they inevitably wrap whatever is inside the package in newspaper which, depending on which part of india it comes from, is written in hindi (devanagari), or tamil, or sinhalese, or punjabi, or urdu, or something other than english american… it’s really interesting to me to try to read the articles (i usually fail miserably, because i only know sanskrit, and not very much of that), but i can usually make out ayurvedic terminology, or dates — in this case अक्टूबर “akṭubara” or “october”…
it takes so little to amuse me… 😎 i haven’t even gotten to the contents of the package…
this is the contents of the package: a parad mala. i know that the main component of parad is mercury, and i’m aware of the fact that there is some mystical process by which they turn liquid mercury into a solid object (Mercury mouth closed with Aghor Vidhya, Murthi-Badhha/Agnibadha — sustain the heat) but i’m not exactly sure how it’s done, although it is my impression that it is mixed with herbal substances and strained through a cloth mesh.
generally you don’t get such exciting, exotic packages from the united states… 😎
i played with the fighting instruments of karma in mt. vernon on friday, olympia on saturday, and vashon island on sunday. i left my top hat in mt. vernon, but i didn’t notice it until saturday, when i was in olympia and getting ready for the show… so i had to go to mt. vernon to pick it up today. for all the time i lived in mt. vernon, the first time i have ever been in the lincoln theater was friday…
on vashon, i arrived very early… we caught the 9:10 ferry, and we weren’t actually supposed to show up until 12:00, so i got a chance to wander a little bit on vashon, and i found a whole bunch of amanita muscaria… truly a cup of wonder… i took a bunch of pictures…
i’m seriously considering applying to go on tour with the chautauqua next year. it starts with performances at the oregon country fair, and (this year) procedes to southeast alaska during the three weeks immediately following the fair. it sounds like A LOT of fun, and it would be a great way to re-connect with a bunch of people from my karass with whom i have been out of contact for far too long… 😎
i went to bellingham saturday, and came back today. there are a number of interesting developments that came about as a result:
apparently there is a “bullet shuttle” that runs from downtown bellingham to downtown seattle and back, that only costs $11… which means that there’s a good chance that i will be taking it to bellingham, and/or whitley will be taking it to seattle more regularly, for the purposes of, basically, getting And More back together. along the same lines, whitley and kamalla have offered to house my keyboards in their house, which means that when i go to bellingham, my keyboards will be set up and ready to go, and when i’m not there, other people will be playing them. the piano (which is missing three tines) has been packed up in a box and sitting behind the couch for about 7 years, and before that it was in a box in the hallway… i haven’t actually had it set up since we moved in to this house… so putting it to good use again is most desirable, and this seems like a prime opportunity.
while i was on my way to bellingham, yesterday, i took sort of a detour through mount vernon, so that i could go by the places i used to live. while i was in mount vernon, it started to rain, and then, quite suddenly, it started to rain so hard that, after slowing down, and slowing down, and turning my windshield wipers to their highest settings, i still could not see, and was forced to take refuge in a parking lot for about half an hour, until the rain let up. as i was pulling out of the parking lot, i saw a building across the street that was, literally, pouring water, tens of gallons a minute, from all of the downspouts… and the streets were flooded in several places, to the point where, when i had to drive through a flooded part, i was concerned because it was over the floorboards of my car… i haven’t seen it rain that much in that short a period of time more than once or twice before in my entire life.
the main reason i went to bellingham in the first place was that kenyth’s 80th birthday was last week, and i went to deliver a birthday present (Operation Mindfuck) on monday. while i was there, i heard that there was going to be a music jam (which is what they’re calling the stairway jam these days), and it was suggested that i come up for it, so i did. another thing that we discussed while i was there was the fact (in my opinion) that kenyth really needs a wikipedia page… a fact that is complicated by the fact that kenyth has kept absolutely ZERO archives of the work that he has done, class notes from classes he has taught, personal correspondence, and that sort of thing, and further complicated by the fact that, to be a wikipedia page that isn’t deleted immediately, a lot of the information posted has to be backed up by stuff that is publically available from internet, which, in this case, would be practically impossible in anything like a realistic way. the upshot is that i am going to help the community of people who want to see this happen, by registering a domain (how about http://KenythFreeman.dance/ or http://JosephPFaddlefum.name/ or something like that? 😉 ) and pointing that domain name towards a blog that i can set up, and then give to the people who actually know what content there is, and can organise it the way it’s supposed to be.
on my way back, today, i mostly took surface streets, and only hit the freeway once or twice. i was north of burlington on what i think was Highway 99, and i found the new location of “The Music Shoppe”, which was a place i worked a couple of times a VERY long time ago: the first time was right after i graduated from the tech school, and ended when i got fired for telling sam, the owner, that the “chemical tank” that he bought, ostensibly to “dip musical instruments”, was full of the chromic acid that he bought and then discovered he couldn’t use because it’s carcinogenic (and, generally, only used as a “bright dip” for brass instruments before they are buffed and refinished), and it was beginning to leak, because it wasn’t really a “chemical tank” but, rather, a stainless steel dairy tank with a bright brass stopper… and the chromic acid was dissolving the bright brass stopper, because, well… chromic acid dissolves brass… 😐
anyway, the second time, he actually subcontracted my musical instrument repair business to repair musical instruments for “The Music Shoppe”, and that ended when he refused to pay me for an instrument that i had fixed, that his customer had refused to pay for. basically i said that, until i got paid i wasn’t going to fix any more instruments for him. he said that he hadn’t paid me because his customer hadn’t paid him, and i pointed out that his customer was HIS customer, and that MY customer was him, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. they apparently moved from their shop in the fountain district in north bellingham, some time in the past, and they are, as of 1st november, moving in to burlington. i left Operation Mindfuck in the front door for them to find when they open up tomorrow. 👿
unfortunately, it’s not how to delete it. because of the fact that it’s “in the cloud”, it doesn’t necessarily take up space on my device, but i can’t immediately delete it using any of the methods recommended — using iTunes on my computer doesn’t even show that i have a U2 album, so re-synching my device doesn’t do anything, and there’s nothing to un-check, and you can only delete something once you have downloaded it from the cloud…
i don’t use twitter, but i am outraged, and i reflect that guy’s twitter: Apple: take this fucking U2 album off my iPhone, NOW. I do not want it, I did not ask for it, it takes up space, it’s my device. Go to hell. 😡
the typewriter has been left in the capable hands of the guy who is either going to fix it and give it back to me, or take it and sell me another one at a discount… and, honestly, i hope he wants to take it and sell me another one at a discount, because he’s got an underwood manual typewriter that doesn’t require electricity, and that’s what i really want… if there’s no electricity, an electric typewriter is an expensive door stop, but a manual typewriter works anyway… 👿
almost finished, and it glows in the daylight as well…
this is the latest incarnation of Operation Mindfuck:
imagine you’re walking down the street in downtown seattle, pushing a baby carriage and probably thinking about going shopping at the pike place market. as you are crossing the street you encounter a strange guy going the other direction, who hands you this tiny envelope and then walks off…
THIS is Operation Mindfuck… 👿
within the next week or so, i AM going to manifest a typewriter, which i intend to use to write cryptic messages on the outside of the envelopes.
okay, this is probably supposed to say “crip”, but it’s my impression that it says “chirp”… woo… i’m really afraid of the illiterate gang-member-wannabe who imitates birds that lives in this remote “suburban” neighbourhood… woo… 😐
this is a picture of a sign. the sign is a picture of the front half of a car towing away the back half of the car, right?
thought so…
Ebeneezer Q. Squeezer The Second — The Apprentice Holy Snake
moe on the bill at the national veterinary conference in kansas city, missouri, this weekend! woo hoo! my wife is a nationally recognised animal behaviour specialist! 😎
yes, it was almost a week ago, but, whatever… it’s done, and i got the screens for the two big windows today, so that part of the house is FINALLY finished…
of course i still have to replace the trim that’s rotting off, and paint the whole thing again…
“after” is actually an intermediary step. friday we’re having a new deck/porch installed that will be a lot more what we want, and not so much what the previous owner wanted.
i arrived at the fair on tuesday, 140708 and returned home yesterday, 140714, which is also the 11th anniversary of my brain injury.
needless to say, i did not have another brain injury.
this year, as far as it concerns me, everything went right enough that i can consider this year’s OCF experience one of the best vacations i have ever had. things didn’t go 100% right all the time: i lost my sunglasses, there was some controversy about a new part of the theatre, there was the usual tensions regarding whether incense smoke or the odour of porta-potty was more preferable, the booking representative from the ritz didn’t communicate with me directly regarding our tokens… and it rained… but it all worked out in the end: i found my sunglasses immediately after arriving at home, the part of the theatre that was causing the controversy (a place that i called the “wheelchair-exclusion zone”) was summarily dispensed with, next year they’re going to expand the theatre (AGAIN!! 😀 ) and move the porta-potties farther from our noses, we received our tokens anyway, and it rained for almost exactly an hour, before the fair actually opened, and it was cool and cloudy all the rest of the day.
morningwood is now a permanent, year-round installation, rather than having to be taken apart and stored elsewhere during the off season — much to the relief of simon, who now gets to arrive and NOT have to spend a month moving pieces, sorting them out, and building the stage from scratch. as a part of the approval for making it permanent, there were a number of archaelogical digs in the area, and a lot of investigation into the prior use of the site. i got to participate in martini hour with some of the high-up bigwigs from archaeology, who have proved that where morningwood odditorium now stands has been a gathering place for humans for at least 10,000 years.
the dress rehearsal on thursday night, according to tradition(?), is the first time the show is performed in its entirity by a majority of the cast and band, and this time was no exception… what was the exception is that, for the most part, it was a much more complete show than it has been in the past. two years ago we substantially modified a significant portion of the script on friday, after the first day of performances. this year, it was, more-or-less, the same show on thursday as it was on sunday. the primary difference was that there were more lines that were forgotten on sunday than there were on thursday, which is about the least amount of hassle for the amount of entertainment we got out of it that is possible, under the circumstances. there will have to be some re-writing of the parts before december, to remove the OCF-specific references: lines like “lets go to the barter fair! best shopping at OCF!” and references to “flower children” and the ritz will have to be changed in order for our seattle audiences to make sense of the plot
sunday afternoon, after the last show, i was in the ritz, and a guy was leaving. he walked to the bottom of the stairs, and kept on going down. somebody asked him if he needed help, and he mumbled something which could have been “yes”, “no” or “potato”, and two or three people gathered around him. i came down from the top level, and asked if he was diabetic, to which he responded “no, well… yeah”. at that point a couple of the people ahead of me took his shoulders and started guiding him out of the sauna. we got him outside, and sat down on one of the benches outside of the sauna, and he started coming around. he said that he had been “voluntarily” lowering his blood-pressure (it sounded a lot like the kinds of things the PHBFH used to say) and that the “chanting” had put him into a “mind-space” from which he couldn’t recover… i was concerned that he may have been having a heart attack or something. i left him when the ritz’s “certified medical professional” showed up. i went by about a half-hour later and the guy and the “CMP” were still sitting on the bench, talking, but i didn’t hear any sirens or anything that might have implied that he was taken away in an ambulance. i imagine that they have pretty regular medical “emergencies”, especially considering that they let pretty much anybody in to the sauna, regardless of how drunk, high, handicapped or screwed up they are, so they must, either, be pretty good at dealing with these emergencies, or are even better at covering them up. considering that it is OCF, either one is a good option.
140709 Simon and Keith Neale, unknown martini-drinker, and the guy who taught the horse’s ass to tap-dance… no, really!
there are more pictures, which, if i get around to it, will be posted on flickr.
my mother-in-law instructed me to give my cell phone to someone and have them take my picture. this is what my camera had in it after i did what she asked:
the other guy is my very good friend karl meyer, who i have known from bellingham for 35+ years… he is also very tall.
my friend david bought a really expensive curved soprano saxophone on ebay recently — like $1200 expensive — because it had been “cleaned up and completely repadded” by… um… someone.
then he contacted me to find out if he had actually gotten a good deal or not.
on the surface, it appeared that he had paid a little too much, but not anything that couldn’t be fixed with $200 or so of competent repair work. he informed the seller, and actually got $250 back, making the instrument worth $950… still a bit too much, but it appeared that it could be rescued, so i took on the job.
the first thing i did was remove all the keys… which is the first thing you do when you get a sax that needs to be put back into playing condition. i quickly discovered that all the keys had not been removed when it was “cleaned up and completely repadded”.
in fact, on top of the 4 keys that i knew about that were composition cork (instead of the standard leather that most saxes have), i found two pads that were so poorly installed that they probably can’t be rescued. on top of that, i found two springs that were installed in a “haphazard” way (they were installed backwards), one of the clothes guards is missing and another one only has two of its three solder points made solid, and the neck cork needs to be replaced. also, because of the fact that it’s an old curved soprano it has D auxilliary key (modern ones don’t have it), and because of the fact that modern ones don’t have it, people who don’t know any better will block the key closed, so that they don’t have to regulate it… but that also has the unfortunate side effect of making the instrument play out of tune… which is exactly what happened in this case.
which drives the “fixing it” estimate up to $500 or so… and that’s not to mention the two top tone-holes which have been drilled out and replaced with brass tubing…
this is why you have to be REALLY careful about buying old curved soprano saxophones off of ebay… he could have bought a brand-new, FUNCTIONAL curved soprano sax for $800… and he probably will do that once he decides what to do with his $1200 instrument that needs $500 worth of repair before it can even be played.
once again, we’re in heppner, oregon — 45° 22′ 15.1314″ N, -119° 28′ 49.3062″ E — for a sheep dog trial, which means that moe got up and left at about 6:30 this morning, and i am left behind, at a “rural hunting lodge”, to fend for myself for the day… which means that i woke up at 9:00, took a shower, ate breakfast, and now i am looking at the choice of either wandering around in the middle of now here for a while, or playing with caustic on moe’s ipad (the fact that she’s running sheep dogs means that she can’t use the ipad, and i can)… and, despite the fact that it looks like it may rain, i’m thinking of going out anyway. last year i heard the voice of God and i want to hear it again. there’s too much extraneous noise in the house.
after the sheep dog trial is over, we’re going to Tokeland for 5 days. there is no telephone and no internet access, so i’m going to give my luddite streak a run for its money… and fly kites (and “other things”) on the beach.
ETA: well, i went out to now here, and, as expected, i heard the voice of God again. it was far more silent than i have experienced just about anywhere. there was the occasional sound of the wind, and, even more infrequently, a bird would chirp… but it was totally silent. and i heard the voice of God… Now Here – click to embiggen
i built a small marker, about halfway up the hill: you can barely see it from the lodge with your naked eye, if you know where to look. you can see it clearly with binoculars, again, if you know where to look. it’s practically invisible, but it marks approximately half-way from the lodge to the fence.
once again, i’m digging through boxes of stuff that is left over from a time before internet… and i’m coming up with definite reasons why some of things should not be forgotten so quickly.
like this:
by the way, it’s remotely possible that you can comment without being automatically spam-filtered… unfortunately, i don’t have any way to test it, so you’re going to have to do so, and report back to me if there are any problems.
those of you who may be waiting to comment, but can’t, i haven’t forgotten you. unfortunately, the problem is two-fold, and in order to address the first part, i have to be able to back up the blog… but i can’t, because of the server configuration being run by my host, EZPZ… they’re not going to change, and i can’t back up because of the fact that they run something that is incompatible with my being able to back up, and until they fix it, there’s nothing i can do.
it would be time to investigate other hosting possibilities, except they have informed me that they’re going to try to address this problem within the next few weeks, and told me to wait… and considering how many times i have done so in the past, i am not too fond of the idea of packing up and switching hosts, so i’m going to wait and see what happens.
it’s been a week, and the inside of my car is looking a bit more like an art car, but the outside is still just plain black. it is NOT going to get a “vehicle wrap” unless i can find a professional that is willing to do it for $1000 or less (the quote that i got yesterday was for $2,500), but if not there are other, less expensive options that have presented themselves… but it may also mean that i’m going to do some of the work myself, with actual paint much to the chagrin of moe… and i sort of see her point. this is a much newer car than i have ever had before, and there’s no telling what will happen to it five, or ten years from now.
i’m currently trying to figure out how to colour the black-and-white sticker model that i made for the hybrid elephant logo a few years ago, because if i can figure out how to do it, i may have that put on the hood of my car… 😉
moe and i moved two enormous piles of wood, today, from where they were more-or-less randomly piled after having been cut up (some as long as two or three years ago) to a place where, when summer comes and the hornets make nests in it, won’t be so close to a gate that people have to go through all the time.
now i’m tired.
tomorrow we’re recording the songs from the panto, and i’ve got a xmas party to go to for moe’s work in the evening.
i’m still kind of dazed and confused… i didn’t expect to have to buy a new car for… oh, i don’t know, a year or so… it’s not as though buying a new car was completely unexpected, and it’s not as if i couldn’t afford it (thanks to my grandmother, who has been dead since 1988), but…
okay, my old car died — they thought it was the fuel pump, but that was two days ago, and they were supposed to call me with an update, but didn’t — and in the mean time, moe and i went down to salem, oregon, where monique is friends with the people who own Withnell Motors, and, thanks to my grandmother, i bought a “new” 2009 Hyundai Elantra Touring, which qualifies as the newest car i have EVER owned (with the exception of two literally brand-new cars that i bought with moe, which were “our” cars)…
i have four panto performances coming up in a few hours, so i’m not even going to be able to BEGIN processing all this until monday…
i have owned ebeneezer dot net and ebeneezer dot org for many years… like “more than 12″… when i first bought ebeneezer dot net, ebeneezer dot com was owned by somebody else — it may have been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s organisation, but i don’t remember — anyway, it was for sale, but i figured i didn’t need a “COMmercial” address for a church, so i turned down their offer of $5,000 to buy their domain.
a couple of years later, i noticed that ebeneezer dot org had become available, and i purchased that, as well, and moved my “dot net” domain to a domain — “dot org” — that was more suited for a church anyway. at that time, i noticed that “dot com” was also available, from the company that hosted it when it was in use. i still wasn’t interested in a commercial address, so i didn’t even bother looking up the price.
today, just for a laugh, i looked up ebeneezer dot com again. this is what i found:
Ebeneezer.com — The Leading Ebeneezer Site on the Net
dot com is now owned, apparently, by frank schilling. if his marketing department is to be believed, all i have to do is register “dot com” and the money will start pouring in… all i would have to do is pay frank schilling’s price… which, i guarantee is going to be a hell of a lot more than $5,000…
as the current, and past owner of dot net, and dot org, i sincerely doubt that is going to happen… even if i did have the unreasonable (given that i registered ebeneezer dot org, AND dot net for free 😐 ) price frank schilling is, undoubtedly, demanding for it.
also, it just occurred to me… it could very well be that the fact that i own dot net and dot org contributes to the fact that dot com is probably never going to be purchased by some upscale retailer or restaurant… i mean, who would want to be accidentally confused with this kind of nonsense… my name could be frank schilling’s curse… although, given that “His registry, domain marketplace operation and assorted name-holdings are estimated to be valued in the vicinity of $500 million”, i kinda doubt it.
i think i know too much EVER to be enticed into thinking that i can make money, solely by owning a piece of “property” on the internet. it may have been possible once (although i kind of wonder, even about those people who have made their fortunes on the net), but it’s certainly not possible any longer.
i am in the process of putting together an old-school component stereo system. a long time ago, i had an old-school component stereo system, but it faded away over the period of a number of years, and has been entirely gone for some time now. but this is a new era. i have recently obtained a marantz amplifier: and a pair of real “Realistic” speakers from the 1970s — 36″ speakers in solid wood cabinets — which i add to my already existing sony turntable and cassette player… and, unlike 30 years ago, i paid less than $300 for the entire lot! soon (like, hopefully, tomorrow) i will receive a mini-stereo-to-RCA cable, and 100′ of pure copper speaker wire, and i will put together the most KICK ASS stereo i have owned in a number of decades.
Charlie passed away a few weeks ago. he was our final cat. after that, we didn’t have any cats at all for a few weeks… until this past weekend, when we got a new cat.
his name is Frank Zappa, and he’s a mighty hunter… 😎 he is also the first cat i have ever owned that wasn’t a tuxedo. yes, i know. in the past, i have been associated with other cats which weren’t tuxedos, but they were all “other peoples’ cats”. they just hung around me all the time. what did you want me to do? chase them away?
a long time ago, when i was a software tester for a living, i worked on a project where the software we were testing was called 3D Castle Creator, so, naturally, i built a model trebuchet with which i flung tennis balls into the far reaches of the cube-farm that was my office… but it was a simple medieval trebuchet.
the one i got today, is a modern “floating arm” trebuchet, and it can do a lot more with a lot less, let me tell you… 😀
i haven’t tested it yet, but the previous owner claims to have lobbed a golf-ball over 200 feet on a regular basis. 😎
i got a new bottle of cork cement. this is about halfway through. it looks together, but it still doesn’t play completely. now is the time i take a hammer to it, to whack it into shape… really… 😎
through an interaction with someone i didn’t know on the south king county freecycle, i found out about this gemeinhardt flute for sale for $15 on craigslist…
so i went and bought it.
it was made for me… 😎
i can repair it for probably under $10 (not including my labor, which i’m not charging myself for anyway) and turn this flute around for between $80 and $120… maybe as much as $150 to the right person… 😉
flute pieces — all present and accounted for!
only i gotta buy some new cork cement, because the last bottle i had is about 2 years old…
i went out with rick to various dispensaries today, and came home with this, ENTIRELY LEGAL haul for under $100: 3 “preroll” joints, 3.5 grams of “Chernobyl”, a gram of “Kryptonite”, 3.5 grams of “Maui Skunk”, a gram of some unlabeled stuff, and about 2 grams of “RSO“…
apparently i got a call from gliz about business cards when i was out of town a while ago (when i went to heppner, possibly?), but i had never done them, and forgotten about them, so when i got a call from gliz this morning about “where are my business cards?” i was a bit taken aback… but i believe i handled it very well, starting with an apology for spacing out on them whenever it was that he originally called about them, and then making arrangements to have them printed post haste…
i must take a REAL camera to OCF next year. this year i only took my phone, which was a big mistake: lack of disk space, weird focusing rules, practically no control over the shutter speed and no tripod mount are the primary difficulties… i got some decent quality pictures, but nowhere near as many as i would have if i had a real camera.
in fact, it’s nifty enough that i can overlook the characterisation as a “singer” (the fact that “Fremont” is misspelled i’m going to attribute to an oversight, however)… i’m a tuba player, and proud of it, but that can definitely be overlooked in this instance… 😉
i was expecting a package on friday. friday came and went, and there was no package. apparently the postal delivery person wasn’t our “regular” postal delivery person, who knows that packages get delivered behind the gate, because we got a slip in our mailbox when we got home, that said that the package was available for pickup at the (third-most distant) post-office after saturday…
which was okay, because we were at the beach until saturday anyway, so i went down to the (third-most distant) post-office today and picked up the package. it was fairly large, which was exciting, but it was suspiciously light, which could mean a number of things, not the least of which were it not containing what i was expecting, or the fact that what i was expecting was made out of expanded polyurathane foam… neither of which turned out to be true, strangely enough.
i opened the package… to find a smaller package and a whole bunch of air-pillow packing doodads… which is actually really cool in itself, because i use air-pillow packaging materials when i send out packages of incense, and the air-pillows are the small variety that i use all the time. inside that package i found more packaging materials, and another box… which was really jammed in there solidly. it took several minutes and a great deal of cursing to get it free without harming the inner box…
which contained… an expanded polyurathane foam insert that was also EXTREMELY difficult to remove. the urgency for removing it carefully was emphasised by the cryptic japanglish note that said
TO AVOID DAMAGE WHEN UNPACKING PLEASE HANDLE THE MAIN BODY OF THE ITEM DO NOT PULL THE ITEM OUT FROM THE FRAGILE PART PLEASE UNPACK WITH CARE Please unpack the product with care to avoid damage and injury. The product is packaged: ☐ With ______ pcs of accessories ☐ Without accessory
the result?
a 5½" x 3½" x 2½" statue out of a 9" x 9" x 18" box.
it’s a cold-cast bronze, hand-painted statue, and it is exceptional quality, but it came with 96.7% packaging and only 3.3% product…
busking for the first time this year yesterday. there was no drummer, but there was a violin player. we played for around 2 hours and made around $20 a piece, which is not too bad. i would have stuck around and done another 2 hours, but i had an appointment with rick and the “world famous” tacoma cannabis farmers’ market again. this time there wasn’t the chaos and uproar at the outer door, primarily because of the fact that we showed up later in the afternoon.
also i was a little less awestruck as i was previously, which meant that i was better able to pay attention to what was being said to me (which was still rather difficult, as there is A LOT of ambient noise, music playing, announcements being made over a loudspeaker, and hundreds of people in a warehouse) and i bought two eighths, one of “skunk“, and one of “purple destruction” which is an indica-dominant variety. i am somewhat surprised to discover that i like the sativa better than the indica, despite the fact that, medicinally, indica is supposed to be a better antidepressant…
but it all gets me stoned, so i’m definitely not complaining… 😎
i have performed three times in the past few years, at the king street station in downtown seattle. the first time was a few years ago, and it was also the first time i performed with the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. i was the only trombone player, there were supposed to be two others, but they couldn’t make it. we performed outside, on the platform where passengers board and disembark the trains, and despite the fact that i was the only trombone player, it went fairly well. at that time, the ceiling had been artificially lowered, and completely covered by an “accoustic” ceiling which was supposed to save money by giving the city less space to heat. there were a couple of ceiling tiles missing, and you could see a tiny glimpse of what used to be the ceiling, several stories above, but most of it was hidden.
the second time was also with the BSSB, but it was out in front, on jackson street, for the opening of the renovation of the king street station, about two years ago. we put our cases inside the upper level, which was in the process of being renovated, but it wasn’t open to the public yet. there were open beams, brickwork, and lots of dust inside, but we were actually playing outside, so it wasn’t really an issue. where we put our cases was right at the level of the “lowered” ceiling, and you could see above it, but it wasn’t much to see: a lot of cobwebs, 50 years of dust and grime, and the underpinings (overpinings?) of the suspended ceiling which was put up without concern for the artistic nature of the real ceiling.
the third time was this morning, and it, too, was with the BSSB, but this one was the “grand re-opening” of the totally refurbished king street station. they totally removed the old “lowered” ceiling, and restored the station to the way it looked 100 years ago… only with totally new electrical, mechanical, plumbing, a seismic retrofit, and a new roof on the bell tower. this time we played in the big waiting room with the new three-story-tall ceiling… which made the room uncomfortably “live” but we did admirably well in spite of everything.
i accompanied my friend rick to the “world famous” tacoma cannabis farmers’ market today…
rick is an “authorised” cannabis patient, but he can’t get around, because he is confined to a wheelchair, currently, so he calls me, and i go and rescue him. because of the fact that he is more-or-less permanently disabled, he gets one of those placards that people hang from their rear-view mirrors, which goes on my rear-view mirror when i am driving him around (exactly why he gets one and i don’t is another story entirely, and one with which i am not totally satisfied, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the current diatribe)… except that it wasn’t there yet, because i was driving (you’re not supposed to put them on the rear-view mirror until the car is no longer in motion, because they block your view). the cannabis farmers’ market has a parking lot in front of the building that is for disabled parking only. the guy that waved us into the parking lot saw that rick was holding the placard and waved us in, but the (EXTREMELY stoned-looking) guy who was handing out paperwork at the door waved us away, because he didn’t see the placard. i continued to park, and he continued to wave me away, and finally i got out and explained to him that we were authorised to park there, at which point he started to argue with me, until he saw that rick had put the placard in place while we had been talking. there was a line of people waiting to get in, and so we got in line, and the same EXTREMELY stoned-looking guy gave rick some paperwork to fill out, which he did. by the time rick got his paperwork filled out, we were at the front of the line, but there was a step, and no way to get the wheelchair over it with out raising more chaos with the already-noisy crowd that was now behind us… and then it turned out that they wanted paperwork from me as well, which included me signing a piece of paper that said i am a legal medical marijuana patient… which i am not. i told the guy this, and he said that he couldn’t let me in. so i went and sat in the car while the extremely-stoned-looking guy pushed rick into the building. they came out again a surprisingly short amount of time later, and rick explained to me that we should come back at 2:00, when there would be less chaos, and then we could both go in, so we went to another couple of dispensaries and perused the (now legal, despite the federal hissy fit that’s going on currently) varieties, and the ranges of raw bud, and edibles, and tinctures, and sodas, and topicals, and…
and, because of the fact that the dispensaries we visited were all in store-fronts with a dozen or so varieties, i thought i knew what to expect. i was wrong.
the “world famous” tacoma cannabis farmers’ market is, conservatively, 150 different vendors each of whom is selling anywhere from two or three, to as many as 25 or 30 different strains, plus the same wide variety of hash, and the edibles, tinctures, sodas, topicals and so forth i saw in the other dispensaries multiplied by 100.
this is what a farmers’ market should be like… and it was “foggier” inside than it was outside. there was a dense “medicinal” cloud that permeated the building. i understand where the extremely-stoned-looking guy was getting it from, now. i did notice that there was an “emergency” door that had been blocked open (so much for the bureaucratic foofaral at the door, just go around to the side) where people could go to get some fresh air.
EXTRA BONUS!despite the fact that i am not a medical marijuana patient, was able to legally purchase a bottle of honey-hash tincture for $15, and two grams of hash for $25. i traded a gram of “medicinal grade” bud and two joints from rick for the honey-tincture, because he’s not allowed to smoke at the facility. i also bought a cute little bong for $12… at that rate, i’m going to have to re-adjust my thinking about the beer-bottle bongs…
there may be some more final details, but it’s 99.98% finished at this point. the keyboard that is currently a “stand up to access” is going below the desk, but i’ve got to buy the drawer sliders separate from the desk, and install them myself, because they don’t make an under-desk slider for the desk i’ve got.
so i found a way to make QR codes fail to work… ETA: almost immediately i discovered that, while it didn’t work when i tested it locally, for some unknown reason, as soon as i posted it, it started working… weird… i’ll have to play around with it some more… 😐
so i went out for a walk the other day, and when i had climbed the side of the hill to the point where i decided that it was far easier to go up than down, and if i didn’t start heading down soon, i would probably be travelling in the dark, which would have made going down that much more difficult…
i realised that i had only reached about the middle of the hill, and i deliberately took the least steep grade possible, but still, a lot of the time, it was much easier to scramble on all fours rather than trying to walk upright…
anyway, i had a fairly decent quality camera with me, that wasn’t my iphone, so i started taking random pictures, most of which are going to make excellent wallpaper pictures… this is a fairly good example. i took it more or less at random, picking out features that i figured would be interesting, but not too distracting, because i figured that they would be used as wallpaper…
then i looked a little more closely, and discovered that i had taken a picture of… a flock of deer. 😎
i went out for a walk today. it was the middle of now here. to give you an idea of how far out in the middle of now here we are, i submit this photo, without further comment: it was during this walk that i learned what it is to hear the voice of God as the wind blowing through the grass.
many, many years ago, before my son was born, i discovered The Tree Of Being, a tree whose existence justifies the exitsence of everything else on the planet. at this point, i don’t remember exactly where it is, but it is on the west side of sehome hill, and i’d know it if i saw it. this was a very similar experience. as i sat, meditating, in the middle of now here, i heard the voice of God as the wind blew through the grass. all around me was the voice of God. i didn’t have to try to perceive it, because i was in the middle of it, and it was all around me. i would have had to try not to perceive it, and if i had, i would have failed, because it was the voice of God.
and it said, “I am Tina Chopp!” 😉
ETA: some of what i say is a lie. like aleister crowley, i have realised that if i don’t say that some of what i say is a lie, some day people may read what i have written and assume that it is all true. this is a warning to those people. don’t take some of what i say seriously, because it is a knowing falsehood.
it’s a “hunting lodge” in the middle of nowhere. just to the left of the fence, in the center of the first picture, is what we can expect to see directly outside our house.
monique is going to spend the next couple of days at a sheep dog trial. i’m probably going to go exploring with a camera.
acetocella is the company that made Acqua della Madonna, a sparkling water that came in a gorgeous cobalt-blue teardrop-shaped bottle that i have been wanting to get more of, ostensibly to make bongs. the water is just sparkling water, nothing really special, but the bottle is a work of art…
although, if this photo, gleaned from googlemaps street-view, is any indication, acetocella may be out of business. i don’t really know what makes a place “no longer in business”, particularly in a case where that business is located in another country. if any of you out there have experience with this sort of thing, particularly in italy, could you tell me for sure whether or not this business is still in business, or whether it is an abandoned building that is being used for storage…
i don’t hold out much hope. i wrote to their “info @ acetocella dot com” address and it bounced almost immediately with a “sorry, no mailbox here by that name ” message, which is not a good sign…
today is the fifth anniversary of my starting this blog. for the record, i’m stillSO GLAD i got away from LiveJournal, despite the fact that i have a lot of friends who still use it.
i haven’t switched out the system on my computer yet, primarily because, after flipping out yesterday, it has settled down again, and isn’t producing the kind of errors that were making me think about switching distributions… but i’ve still got the debian live disk, and i’m just waiting for an excuse to wipe the whole system and try another one.
i’ve spent the past couple of days cleaning up my workshop. i have a lot of empty glass bottles waiting to be made into bongs on my main workbench, and a whole bunch of painting stuff left over from the summertime on my jewelry-making workbench, which i cleaned up to the point where i can actually work on both workbenches. i’ve got a whole bunch of things that could be made into earrings or pendants, but no real motivation to make anything out of them, despite the fact that the holidays are rapidly approaching.
also, after having a number of difficulties getting emails to and from the lady who actually did the work, i now have 10 Big Boys With Poise jacket patches which i’m going to distribute to the other Big Boys (and other people) at monday’s rehearsal.
i went out today, and when i arrived home, i discovered that the mail delivery person had been there, and left me a note that said i had a package that was too big to deliver, and that it could be picked up at the post office (that is the 3rd closest to our house, but that’s another matter entirely). so i went down to the post office, where the korean person i talked to behind the counter informed me that, because of the fact that i received the notice today, the probability was very high that the package wouldn’t actually be ready for pickup until friday.
meanwhile, i could actually see the package on the shelf behind her… i mean, usually a package from india is pretty distinctive, and this one had bands around it that said “INDIA POST” in large, distinct, english and devanagari letters…
i said why didn’t she go and take a look anyway, and, so she went back to the shelves where the packages were, and, after staring at the package for about five minutes, she realised that it was mine… and then she spent another five minutes checking the serial numbers on the package against my drivers’ license, and having me hand write my address into their little touch-screen pad (which i deliberately made as illegible as possible), before handing over the 40-pound package.
which, naturally, was full of really high quality incense from india… 😎
with my logo printed on them! (yes, it’s on purpose)
the real, authentic Aparajita Special Herbal Durbar, made by Sri Satyanarayana Parimala Factory
so i finally got in touch with someone from mavana regarding where to obtain authentic aparajita on this side of the world. they wrote me back and directed me to Wonder India (they have a couple of different URIs, but nothing is there), and they sent me a bunch of samples, including, most significantly, a box of AUTHENTIC aparajita special herbal durbar manufactured by mavana, doing business as the Sri Satyanarayana Parimala Factory in mysore.
notably, they are NOTcauvery, and have nothing to do with them… which makes me really wonder what is the situation with intellectual property in india, because the incense i got from mavana, today, is, substantially, the same incense that is produced with the same name by cauvery as well… 😐
however, and this is the big difference, this company is located in the united states, and has a relationship with mavana/sri satyanarayana parimala, and they CAN get, essentially, unlimited quantities of real, authentic aparajita!
and they are a lot less likely to rip me off, send me less product than i ordered, talk in some weird, foreign language, and all that other stuff that has frustrated me so much in the past.
i went to port townsend for a New Old Time Chautaqua benefit show (which was held at the Legion Hall, on the corner of Monroe and Water) yesterday. because of the fact that i have spent a relatively huge amount of time in port townsend over the years (and it’s a beautiful place to spend time), i went early and poked around at fort worden, which is where i spent a majority of the huge amount of time that i spent there.
there have been A LOT of changes since i first came there, and a majority of them have occurred within the past few years, when i was not paying attention. they had the coastal defence command station on battery hill open for the first time since i have been comming there, and i actually got a chance to walk around inside a part of the fort that has been blocked off, sealed up and posted with big signs warning of nasty things that happen to people who ignore them, since i first started coming there. they have also done a lot of “re-landscaping” which includes cutting down a lot of the undergrowth and trees in the main part of the batteries, which were practically invisible previously. under normal circumstances, i would have a problem with state park people just randomly cutting down trees, but it was really interesting to see a lot more of the fort as the people who inhabited the place 100 years ago saw it.
of course, i went to the entrance of the cistern, where Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel was recorded. the first time i went there, it was totally covered by trees and undergrowth, and there was a brick “chimney” that came up out of the ground, with a manhole cover on top of it, and it was really easy to “break in”. a number of people already had, and the cistern was full of “satanic” grafitti and garbage, but the accoustics were AWESOME, and i resolved to get back in. several years later (mid-1980s) i took The Stairway Jam to fort worden, but by that time they had covered the entrance with the two huge, rusty metal tanks, and we weren’t able to get in. the tanks are now placed to either side of the chimney, which has a concrete lid, a steel door and a lock on it: considerably more difficult to get in, apparently the tanks were not enough of an impedence for people to get in and trash the place. fortunately, there are other places at fort worden that also have incredible accoustics.
for the record, i have played my trombone, my orchestral flute and my didjeriflute in various underground rooms at fort worden, and i know of no other place in the world with accoustics like that. it’s incredible. 😎
then i went into port townsend proper, to the legion hall at the corner of Monroe and Water, and found The Bald Man… if i didn’t know where the bald man was coming from, i might be a bit confused, dismayed, or even paranoid, but because of the fact that i know that the bald man is a direct offshoot of stuff that i did, personally, i find it rather amusing… and i know that my son will probably keep doing this for as long as he lives, as well, which gives me a small amount of immortality. 😉
i know i have mentioned it before, but i’m really amazed that i am actually a part of the New Old Time Chautaqua. these people truly ARE my “karass”, and it is just driven home to me even more forcefully every time i play with them.
it was REALLY strange to be finding, and picking mushrooms with other people, doing other things, in the same field… usually, if there’s the first hint of other people in the field, i usually take my mushrooming activities elsewhere… this time, moe, and the actual owner of the field (whose name is jim) were also in the field, talking about sheep… it was really difficult for me to continue (despite having found a hoard of mushrooms) and not walk, slowly and deliberately, in the opposite direction…
this is the first Public Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice i’ve held for a while, and because of the fact that it’s going to be part of the Trolloween celebration (the Fremont Troll was unveiled on halloween in 1990), it will be an abbreviated form of the ritual, in which the public will not be given the opportunity to sacrifice their own vegetables… until later…
i’m going to have to make sure to remember to mention that when i am doing the public reading, before the actual sacrifice… that’s a really good point…
this year i’m making a slight change in the sacrificial victim, as well. because of the fact that i am going to be sacrificing it with a sword, instead of the more regular gravity and ground, and because of the fact that i will be surrounded by people, i have actually filled the pumpkin with halloween candy, rather like a piñata, which i intend to spread as far as it will go. beforehand, i’m going to read a passage from The Book of Randy, which is Book 11 of the Books of Tina Chopp, in honour of Rev. Osiris Ranebo, although i doubt too many other people will recognise that fact.
they’re really desperate for people to help with crowd control – last year the parade included 150 to 200 members of the public, and the parade crosses two major thoroughfares, and according to the most recent email that was sent out, they’re still short 6 people. i tried to get ian interested, but he’s doing something else that involves a family that is staying at his house while they try to get into emergency housing.
THE PUBLIC IS ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND!
ETA: i just found a sermon that i delivered at a vegetable sacrifice in 2001 which i totally don’t remember giving at all… it’s too bad, too, because i would really like to remember having that dream… 😐
Sorry to say that my dad, ManWoman, is not faring well. He has a kind of cancer that causes his bone marrow to cease making blood. The technical name is Refractory Anemia with Excess Blasts. In short, without new blood, it is impossible to breath, fight infections, or clot and stop bleeding.
He had been receiving transfusions of blood and platelets, but there is no cure for this kind of cancer. Not chemo therapy. Not bone marrow transplant, because he is old and weak. In any case, ManWoman does not wish to endure weeks of traumatic medical treatment, when the potential time gained is so very small.
ManWoman has made the decision to pass peacefully — and with Dignity — in the comfort of his own home, surrounded by family and friends. No further transfusions or treatments will be made — except medication for the rather intense pain. When the blood cells from his last transfusion are gone, well… The clock is ticking. There is no exact prediction how much time is left. One day or a few days — probably. A week or two — maybe. Months — not very likely.
I wish there was better news, but there isn’t. It will be a sad day when he passes, but he has left the world an enormous and inspired body of work. He will not be forgotten by those who love him. We will always carry a piece of him in our hearts.
so the idea that i had for art the other day has taken on an entirely new, and monitarily positive aspect…
but i should start from the beginning, since this is being told for the first time.
i was sitting in my workshop the other night, and i had just finished a beer, and i realised: i have diamond-tipped drill bits, and a bench motor, and i know how to use them: it wouldn’t take much to take this otherwise useless empty beer bottle and re-purpose it for my own, moist, innermost desires… so why don’t i modify this beer bottle, and make an entirely new, “useful item” out of it.
so, i drilled a hole in the bottle, and rumaged around in the boxes of miscellaneous bits and pieces i have (quite well organised, mind you) until i found a glass pipe stem and a collet that the pipe stem goes through, that was left over from a water-pipe from years ago, which didn’t make it…
and i quickly discovered that i had drilled the hole in the wrong place, so, of course, i had to drink another beer, so that i could try it again. 😉
once i got it right — and verified that it was, indeed most exactly correct — i started casting about for empty bottles likely candidates, and quickly came up with the first idea, which turned out to be an empty bulleit burbon bottle… which is part of the hoard of empty whiskey bottles i have been inexplicably saving for about a year and a half, not knowing exactly why i was doing it…
now i know… 😎
i figure i can easily retail devices like this for $25 to $50, or wholsale them for $10 to $20 a piece. so, i went to the pike place smoke shop and told them that i could drill holes in bottles, and wondered how much they would pay me for finished beer-bottle water-pipes. they were very excited to learn this, and it turned out that i don’t even have to hand over finished water-pipes. they are just as happy to receive bottles that have holes drilled in the right places, so that they can put in their own doo-dads and mark them up the way they want. they said they would pay me $10 a bottle, for regular ol’ beer bottles, and left the door open for negotiation on “specialty” beer bottles… which i am assuming includes the antique grolsch bottles, the “Arrogant Bastard Ale” and the “Dead Guy Ale” bottles…
and it also means that the really fancy ones, like the bulleit bottles, and the fancy italian water bottle and stuff like that can be finished and retailed at my own web site for whatever i think i can get for them. 🙂
so i dug around and actually produced 10 “regular ol’ beer bottles” — although i’m not certain that they won’t take the “new” grolsch bottle and the “Hobgoblin” bottle as “specialty” bottles (to be honest, if they do, i DON’T CARE) and drilled holes in all of ’em… i actually drilled holes in 13 bottles, but i broke three of ’em, because i was being impatient and working with tools that were almost worn out… diamond-tipped drill bits wear out really fast when they’re used for a project like this. i figure ⅜" and ½" diamond-tipped drill bits are going to become sort of like #2 jewelers’ saw blades, in that i will always have a whole bunch of them, and about half of them are going to be worn out, or almost worn out.
now all i’ve got to do is alert my beer-drinking friends to save their bottles for me… 😎
i got a notification from the letter-carrier yesterday, indicating that i had a package that they hadn’t delivered because i wasn’t home, and the package delivery required a signature… naturally, i wasn’t home, so i went down to the post office today to pick it up.
it’s really bizarre to me, because of the fact that we live so close to the border between king and pierce counties, that the post office to which i had to go to pick up my package, is the third farthest post office from my actual location: the first is in milton/edgewood, but that “doesn’t count” because it’s in pierce county, and the second is in federal way, which is in king county, but it’s on the “wrong side of the freeway” from where i am…
anyway, i went down to the post office, wondering what it was, because i wasn’t expecting a package. when i got there, they took a lot of information from me for a “normal” package – signature, printed name and street address – and the lady went back to retrieve the package… and it turned out to be from india, which i was totally not expecting at all. of course this made me wonder even more what it was, and i opened it up as soon as i got out to my car… after all, it isn’t every day that you get an unexpected package from india… 😎
i seem to recall, a month or so ago, corresponding with a “mr. sriram” from india, regarding the possibility of my doing business with his company, and it may have been that i asked him if he could send me samples, but it was long enough ago that i don’t remember…
but the incense smellsOUTRAGEOUS!! it smells like the kind of incense that i remember getting in the early ’70s when it’s not lit, and lighting a stick immediately transports me back to when incense actually smelled good, and not like it does today, which is like a chemical factory… the paperwork that came inside the package doesn’t have an email address, so i’m going to have to hope that my recollection is correct, and that i have an email address somewhere for “mr. sriram” at srinidhi solutions… ’cause their incense is AMAZING! 😎
between 1982 and 1984, before i went into the tech school, i had a “job” as a cookie baker. part of that job involved making halvah, a yummy treat made of sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, cocoa powder and other goodies, stuck together with honey or maple syrup. the reason i called it a “job” was because, as far as i knew, i was the owner of the business, and more-or-less it’s only employee, which may have actually been the case, although i never found out. i got the “job” from the PHBFH when she got pregnant with ezra and couldn’t work any longer, and when the “job” ended – when i went to seattle to start attending the tech school – i “gave” the business, called “Celebration Cookies”, back to the guy who had originally started it as a restaurant called “Celebration Cookery” several years before… but i never worked out of an “approved” kitchen, i never paid B&O taxes, i never had a health-department inspection or any of that “real business” stuff that normally goes on, so i don’t know for sure whether or not it was a “real” business, and thus i don’t know for sure whether or not it was a “real” job…
and, after i gave it back to the guy, i probably shouldn’t have worried about whether it was a “real” job or not, because, while i tried (and mostly succeeded) at making it a profitable use of my time, the guy i “gave it back to” was out of business within two months: he went out and spent the entire bank account on two ingredients that we used only a very little, and when he needed more of an ingredient that we used fairly regularly, there was no money in the bank account for it… so he went out of business… oh well, i’ve never looked back.
after having baked anywhere from 25 to 100 dozen cookies a week for a short period of time, i got to the point where i stopped eating cookies all together, except for the gingerbread cookies, and the halvah, because they were both yummy enough that, despite the fact that i had experienced the raw ingredients up to my elbows (and in my hair, and pretty much everywhere else), i still wanted to experience the finished product. eventually, after giving up the cookie business, i still made halvah, because the grain grinder was the only part of the business that i didn’t give back to the guy… because he didn’t ask for it back, and because i wanted to keep it so that i could continue to make halvah, because it wasIS so yummy… 😎
i even modified the halvah recipe to make it more yummy, because… well, that’s what you do with recipes for yummy treats… 😎
the last time i remember making halvah was before we moved into our current house. the grain grinder “disappeared” around the time that we moved, and i didn’t notice it until several years later. i tore the house apart looking for it, and couldn’t find it anywhere… it was because i wasn’t looking in the correct place, of course, but i didn’t find that out until i had given up looking for it, and had considered it a lost piece of history for several years.
until yesterday, when i looked in the correct place, while i was in the process of looking for something else… i suppose i should have looked for something else in that place before last night, but it was behind a whole pile of other stuff, and the cabinet that it was in was full of a whole bunch of other stuff that is “too cool to throw out, but otherwise useless”, which was put back in the cabinet and had stuff piled up in front of it, so it isn’t too surprising that it was overlooked…
but, the upshot is that i found my grain-grinder. so, i decided to make halvah. 😎
and it still is as yummy as i remember it. 😎
i only made half a pan, because i wasn’t sure if i remembered the modified recipe correctly, but i did, so now, as soon as that’s finished (likely within the next two or three days, depending on how yummy moe thinks it is), i’m all set to make a full pan. 😎
i’m hoping that this will be the only political post for a while, because the political news that has been coming across my RSS agregator has been universally driving me crazy. sometimes (well, more times than not, actually) i think it would be better for everyone if we eliminated all laws, as well as all national borders, and be done with the whole thing. 😐
i finally got around to adding sanskrit to the other side of the car, but i still haven’t decided what else i’m going to put on it… it has a lot to do with the hood and the roof, which need to be sanded and have a new coat of gloss black applied before it gets anything else… and i’ve got the gloss black paint…
the sousa band has become the local “go-to” group for centennial celebrations. we’ve done a dozen or so centennial celebrations for various groups and organisations since 2007… it’s really an honour to play music that was written 100 years ago, for people who are celebrating 100 years of some thing or another, because we know that people who were celebrating 100 years ago were, very likely, listening to exactly the same music…
it was “victorian day” at volunteer park, as well, which meant that there were a whole bunch of people in old-fashioned costumes, and, incongruously, a guy with a cell-phone and a penny-farthing…
there was a really interesting musical/kinetic sculpture in the conservatory, that i haven’t seen before, called “Over ‘lyre”. after examining it a little bit, it appeared as though there were speakers that had the cones pulled out of them, and had anchors attached to wires, which, when the speakers made a low-frequency rumble, jiggled the wires, which had pendulums attached that struck little bell-like objects. the really cool part was that i figured all of this out before i read the little blurb about the installation (which was “hidden” in plain view, right below the sculpture), that explained, in detail, exactly what i had figured out was happening… 8)
the problem is that, in spite of the fact that it’s generally accepted that these things do not matter, there are still significant numbers of people who still believe in the bogeyman, and that people should not be left handed…
trust the cartoonist to show the rest of us how stupid we are being…
and, also trust that, because of the fact that this information is being shown to us by a cartoonist, nobody will take it anywhere near as seriously as it should be taken… 😉
i screwed up my leg immediately before the fair, so my original intent of going down to help with the construction of the stage was pretty much shot before i even started, but i went on tuesday anyway, basically, as i said, because i can, but also because i knew that i would have an easier time actually making it to camp on tuesday than i would on wednesday, and i was entirely correct. i didn’t have a vehicle permit (they cost $20, and allow one to park in the SCOF lot, but they don’t go on sale until wednesday), however i talked my way into a “full load teddy” which is a document that allows you to drive into “the eight” (or, in my case, into chelamela meadow), so i didn’t have to unload my gear, load it onto a “gator”, and then unload it again at the stage (which is what you have to do if you don’t know how to wheedle a “full load teddy” out of the hippies whose job it is not to give you such a document)… having an obvious limp due to a recent leg injury definitely helps. i unloaded at the stage and went out again and parked my car in the lot called “miss piggy” (there is also a lot called “kermit”). wednesday i got up early and went to get my wrist band cut off, and to buy a vehicle permit, which got me into SCOF lot a lot easier than the lady who sold the permit to me said it was going to be… 😉
tuesday and wednesday i basically spent taking it easy, setting up my camp, and walking slowly, with a pronounced limp, which had gone away by the time thursday came around.
when i finally got unloaded and back to the stage, i was in for a major shock. the oregon country fairgrounds had experienced a late snowfall last winter, and it had brought down a whole bunch of trees in our camping area, which meant that (oh, horror of horrors!) i had to find a completely new place to camp this year. not only was what was left of my campsite already taken, but the rest of it, and two or three other camp sites adjacent to what used to be mine, were completely filled with tree-detritus, or actual fallen trees. simon and kenny took up what used to be my camp site, and i was forced to find camping in “new jersey” (which is the camping area in front of the stage). i did manage to find a spot that was enough like my previous place that i was able to pretty much duplicate the camp site from last year, with a few differences — the overhead was a little higher, and the path to my camp site lead through a bunch of other camp sites, and was separated from the path by a rope on which curtains and blankets had been hung, to obscure the camping area from casual view.
it was a much more subdued fair this year, without anywhere near as many twinkly, sparkly things as in previous years. i’m sure at least part of it was because, prior to the fair, some of the fair “big wigs” were taking a joy ride, thanks to a pilot who was apparently “one of them”, over the fair, and were involved in a plane crash in which everybody was killed. i didn’t know any of them, but a lot of people knew at least one, and some people knew more than one of them, so i understand why things were more than ordinarily subdued.
the shows were… interesting. we did a mashup called “Sleeping Beauty and The Magic Pea”. they were all, very definitely, good, even the ones where nobody could remember their lines and all of the music cues got screwed up. apparently none of the fair-going public noticed… which is to be expected, more or less (after all, the audience doesn’t know the show ahead of time), but the first 3 shows were definitely more rough than the last 3 were. this is primarily because norma (who wasn’t in the show this year), essentially, publically shamed simon into learning his lines (her specific words were “simon, you need to learn your lines, because it’s making everybody else look bad”). i understand that simon has been having quite a few personal difficulties the past few months, but we’re a more-or-less “professional” theater group, and “the show must go on”… once everybody (and it very definitely wasn’tjust simon) learned their lines, and the music cues were straightened out, it turned into a finished production very quickly, and, once again, i can say that i’m proud to be a part of the crew that turns out shows like this. 8)
i sought out Lem, who is one of the guys responsible for booking acts for the Ritz, early in the fair (i think it was wednesday or thursday) and he said that he would be sure to book the philharmonic for saturday at 7:00 pm… which actually happened! we finished our 3:00 show (at 4:10, as usual) on saturday, and i threw all of my stuff together, lashed my tuba to a convenient set of wheels (actually, moe gave me a collapsible hand cart a couple of years ago, which works perfectly for an instrument of this size and girth) and made it up to the ritz by 4:30, where i proceded to sauna until it was time to perform. then, when it was all over, i put my gear away and had some more sauna, and still got out of the ritz before it became crowded. i got 3 tokens this year: one that i bought, one that i earned for playing at the ritz (which was a brand new one, minted this year), and one that i earned as “hat money” after the final show. i now have a “pirate stash” of ritz tokens… 😉 an average of two per year for the past 9 years. the ritz has a stylised eagle sculpture in front, and this year someone had put a stuffed rat in its beak… which was amusing in a vaguely disturbing way.
and, once again, playing “Il Ballo Di Qua-qua”, naked, for a bunch of naked hippies who were all doing The Chicken Dance, was one of the major highlights of the entire weekend. i would pay to do a performance like that… seriously! 8)
the “new” tuba was an interesting experience. because of the two or three rehearsals that we had pre-fair, i had a reasonably good idea of what i was in for, and busking before the fair also solidified my confidence, but there were a couple of instances where i KNEW that “the information is in there” (pointing to my brain), and all that is necessary is for me to re-establish the connectons that got screwed up when i had my injury. there were a couple of times, specifically, where i was asked something about transposition, fingerings, and my tuba: i answered without thinking, and at the same time, i was thinking exactly the opposite of what i just said… i thought about what i had said, and considered it against what i had just been thinking, before i decided that what i had said was actually correct, in spite of the fact that what i had been thinking at exactly the same time was incorrect… it happened one time, i noticed it, and figured that it may have just been a coincidence, but then it happened again within a 24 hour period, and that convinced me (if i needed convincing to begin with) that “the information is in there” and it is my job to re-establish the connections so that information will be free again.
other stuff happened, but i will probably write about them some other time.
i left on tuesday, and returned on monday. the week went way too quickly, ended much too suddenly, and left me with major withdrawal symptoms. more pictures can be seen here.
it’s never going to happen, of course, because the 1% are too conscious of their controversial positions in society, and are well aware of the fact that, if they agree to the 99%’s “recommendations”, their power will vanish, but it’s even more strange to me that i am somehow related to the bohemian club, through hokum… was hokum a full member, or was he one of the “associate” members, whose sole purpose is to provide entertainment for the bigwigs?
Mr. Robert J. Boesch President San Francisco Bohemian Club 624 Taylor Street San Francisco, CA 94102
Dear Mr. Boesch,
Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored has joined a coalition of some twenty-five social justice organizations and occupy groups to protest the San Francisco Bohemian Club’s practices at your annual summer encampments.
We are holding an Occupy Bohemian Grove protest in Monte Rio on July 14, 2012. For publicity and information on this event see: http://www.occupybohemiangrove.com/
Occupy groups from five cities are involved in protesting your annual summer encampment of the rich and powerful 1%. Given that it takes $588,000 in assets to be in the top 1% of the world richest people, we believe that a significant portion of your members fit this category.
Our group has attended the planning meetings for this protest, and want to inform you about the days events and make some policy recommendations for the Club to consider.
The Occupy Bohemian Grove coalition is planning a four hour public assembly from noon to 4:00 on July 14. During that time there will be speakers, music and a creation of care ceremony in opposition to your cremation of care and private talks by policy elites at the Grove. KPFA radio will broadcast live from Monte Rio, No Lies Radio will video feed the proceedings on the internet, and Russia Today TV will be filming and interviewing activists.
We are not planning or promoting civil disobedience or trespassing on Grove property as part of the protest. We are not organizing a march on the Grove, as has been done in the past. Some curious participants may walk up the Bohemian Highway to see your gates.
Recommendations to the San Francisco Bohemian Club in a time of Occupy the 1%.
Whereas:
The 2,000 acre retreat, now privately held near Monte Rio, California, is in part an ancient old growth redwood forest with trees over one thousand years of age and;
The San Francisco Bohemian Club continues to exclude women from membership and;
Significant public leaders in the world give private keynote addresses (chats) on a daily basis on important policy issues, and;
The private happenings inside the summer retreat boundaries face continuing unproven rumors regarding nefarious behaviors and insider deals made by powerful elites.
We Recommend that:
1. The Bohemian Grove recognize the rights of humankind to enjoy a fair share of the common heritage of the ancient redwood forest by opening the Grove to tours on a regular basis when club members are not assembled—
2. The Bohemian Club begin a policy of admitting women and arranging the Grove to accommodate both genders—
3. The lakeside chats and other addresses by key policy officials be made public on-line and transcripts prepared and published—
4. The Cremation of Care ceremony be transformed into a building of unity of care in the world and the ceremony be made public on-line—
5. The Bohemian Club set up an on-line live feed from the main stage and field circle, as events are occurring.
We strongly believe in full transparency of public figures giving lectures to a select few men and we believe that the privacy of your events is unnecessary in a time of increasingly inequality between the 1% and the 99%.
We think that the San Francisco Bohemian Club can demonstrate a belief in an open transparent democratic society by simply changing a few of your historical policies. As symbolic representatives of the top 1% in the world, it is time for you to exercise a responsibility to help build a fair sharing of the world’s resources starting with your own Club.
This letter has been publicly released. We trust you will take our recommendations seriously.
we had our second rehearsal with about half the cast for the panto last night. the other half either weren’t there because they have already left for the fair, or they had “other obligations”, but one way or the other, it’s evident that we’re basically going to do the same thing this year that we have in past years, which is NOT have a show ready when we open at the fair. other people have taken to referring to it as the “oregon country theatrical workshop”, because basically we have made a habit of going in to it with sort of a half-baked idea for a show, and coming out of it with a more-or-less fully realised show.
what makes it extra scary exciting for me, this year, is that i am, essentially, learning a new instrument. it’s an instrument with which i am fairly familiar, and if left to myself, i can play it quite well, but, when other people are involved, the fingerings are all screwed up, and i have to learn new fingerings. unfortunately, it’s not a “logical” transposition (i.e. “up a fifth” or “down a fourth”) it’s “down a full step”, which means that Bb is equal to Ab, and C is equal to Bb. it would be a lot easier if i were to have “transposed” parts, but tubas aren’t supposed to be transposing instruments, which means that i have to learn the fingerings, rather than having my parts transposed for me (as i have in the past, with my Eb tuba). it’s better for me in the long run, because once i learn, i’ll be able to play music with anyone, but in the short run (meaning “at the oregon country fair”) it’s going to mean that i’m not going to be able to play anything like as well as i can, and want to… 😐
needless to say, i WILL NOT be playing Rubber Duckie at the ritz this year… 😐
they’ve been threatening to saying that they’re going to modify chela mela meadow for the past couple of years, to give us more of an actual theater space, and less of a “roadside attraction” with thousands of non-audience-members wandering past our audience, while we are trying to distract the audience. they haven’t done anything yet (meaning, within the past couple of years), but there’s a very strong possibility that the morningwood stage with which we are so familiar will be moodged around in some way or another. there’s also a fairly good possibility that nothing, whatsoever, will have been done since last year, and everything will be exactly the same, but i don’t know.
after busting my balls trying to find another passenger who need a ride to the fair, it appears that both of my “very strong possibilities” have decided that they’re going to drive themselves this year, so i am driving myself (boo!), which means that i’m leaving on tuesday (yay!)…
because of the fact that i’m taking, essentially, two-and-a-half times as much tuba, i’m not sure whether i’m going to take all of my sound effects… they’re all in a shipping-sized box, so taking only some of them would be a little more difficult than taking all of them, but taking none of them would be orders of magnitude easier… i don’t know if any of them will be used, however (sort of like how they weren’t used last year), and with that much more tuba, it’s questionable whether or not they’d even be missed.
i’ve settled on the place that’s going to tint the back windows of my car, but because of the fact that they’ve had not-professionally-installed tint on them in the past (which was removed before i bought the car), the back windows are all skundged up with glue residue which will have to be completely scraped off before new, professionally-installed tint will adhere correctly, and if the back windows aren’t scraped clean, the new, professionally-installed tint will not adhere correctly… which means that instead of getting my car windows tinted before going to the fair, i now have to wait until after the fair, and pay an extra $100 to the people who are going to clean the windows before tinting them… and all of this because i keep my tuba in the back of my car and i don’t want it to wander off with someone who sees it there while i am off doing something else.
okay, it is actually indian incense and shipped from kalimpong, but it was made according to tibetan traditions, with tibetan ingredients and under the supervision of a tibetan guru who was instructed by the panchen lama. they’re all available online, under the "Dakpa Tamdin" label. so far, my favourite one is Meenling Surpoa.
yes, that is, in fact, three different live feeds of the transit of venus, from (left to right, top to bottom) ustream, the australian broadcasting commission and NASA, all on the desktop of my secondary computer…
which is not to say that i don’t believe in the eschaton — i know that it’s coming, sooner or later — i just don’t believe in any of that religious crap, about the select going to heaven and everybody else going to hell, or whatever they believe. when the eschaton comes, we’re all going to burn, there will be no “chosen people” or “elect of god” or anything like that.
It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I’m wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right. Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are? — Frank Zappa
we just found out (so, sorry for the short notice, it couldn’t be helped) that we ARE going to be on the America’s Got Talent “Rejects” edition, TOMORROW.
anybody know how to digitally “tape” a television show? if you do, send me email. the sooner, the better. 8)
this morning, i got up and took ganesha the car to the place where it’s going to get its brakes fixed. i took my bike, and rode most of the way home. along the way, i was a terrorist and took pictures of the massive sculpture at the north end of the runways… seriously, i was expecting some jack-booted thugs at any moment, despite the fact that i was well outside their "security theater", simply because of the fact that i was taking pictures of the runway. but the important part is that, while there was some coughing, it was directly related to my inhalation of burning cannabis, and wasn’t because it was happening randomly. now, i have to admit that i didn’t ride all the way home, i did ride the distance between burien and the south-east end of tukwilla, international boulevard – about 5 miles – where i got on an "A route" bus, which i rode to the federal way transit center, and from there, i rode home – another 6 miles or so. it was close enough – i actually rode past the station on my way to 170th, where i got on the bus – that i seriously considered the option of taking the train into downtown seattle, where i would probably have ridden out to mercer island and gotten a ride home from my sweetie, but then i realised that i had a dog that needed to be let out waiting at home, and monday is the day moe goes to classes after her work, and doesn’t get home until later, so i decided on a more direct route home.
but the important part is that i was able to do it without feeling more than ordinarily exhausted, and without coughing. it’s a good sign. 8)
on the left, i’m playing a B-flat tenor horn, manufactured by John Distin and stamped with the J.W.Pepper logo, from around 1900, in the middle, i’m playing a nominally Elkhorn E-flat tuba that i have no idea when it was made, and on the right, i’m playing a Conn C tuba, made within the past 25 years.
if we had a longer couch, i could probably get in a double-B-flat sousaphone, as well… 8)
on the right, my, nominally, Elkhorn three-valve, E-flat tuba, which i have been playing regularly (as in, ‘almost daily’) for 12 years.
on the left, the new-to-me Conn four-valve, C tuba which is my payment for the ugly sousaphone project.
i also got a vincent bach mouthpiece, a hard case, and a soft case. the fact that it is a C tuba is a little bit of a frustration for me, because i thought it was going to be a B-flat tuba, for which i know the “concert-pitch” fingerings… it’s also going to be really confusing being a transposing instrument that is not in E-flat, unless i either get transposed music or… learn the C tuba fingerings…
the thing is, it wouldn’t be SO frustrating for me if it weren’t for the fact that i both knew the C tuba fingerings, and could transpose, on-the-fly, in my head… PRIOR to my brain injury. 😛 that’s one of those bits of information which i am convinced still lives in my brain somewhere, and i just haven’t figured out how to connect to it again. 😐
but i got a real tuba! i’m a real tuba player now! 😀
i’m FINALLY done with the ugly sousaphone! it’s not any less ugly — in fact, it’s significantly more ugly in a lot of ways — but the important part is that it is, now, one contiguous piece of tubing from one end to the other, and it will play and sound more-or-less like a sousaphone is supposed to sound.
i have to thank craig from allied supply, who built the new lead pipe, and david cole, a repair technician at kenelly keys who provided advice, encouragement and a few spare parts that i didn’t have… but that’s why i prefaced this entire project with the comment that i probably couldn’t do it all myself.
tomorrow, i deliver it to an anxious thaddeus, and he will pay me with hokum’s B-flat tuba! i can hardly wait! 8)
i added the last piece, which is the mouthpiece-receiver pipe, to the narrow end of the ugly sousaphone, and cleaned up the tons of old solder left on the instrument. now it’s just a matter of patching the split 3rd valve tube and installing a water key, and it’s a working sousaphone, once again…
i was able to cover the water key hole with my finger, and get the instrument to play… as long as i didn’t use the 3rd valve… 8)
it’s good that i was a little nervous… it prevented me from doing stupid things like picking up hot metal with my bare fingers on more than one occasion… but it also was primarily because of the fact that, apparently, i can’t do things like “sweating” stuff like i used to be able to… it appears to be one of those “use it or lose it” skills that i haven’t kept up on… 8/
oh well, it’s airtight, and that’s really all that matters, when it comes right down to it.
the new lead pipe arrived! all that’s left now is to put it all together…
and address the other split, leaking tube, and replace the missing water-key… but my impression is that they’re going to be much easier projects than replacing the lead pipe was…
which means that i’m that much closer to an actual, concert-pitch tuba! 8)
just back from san francisco. exhausted, but satisfied. more in a different post. 120225 salamandir, macque, tricky bunny and adam christopher at Haight and Ashbury
i’m not sure whether i should do this or not… not because i don’t want anyone to know about this, but because of what my friends, particularly, will think…
i dug out (literally) a recording of the first time i ever “improvised” a solo with a jazz band. this is from 1973, and it’s pretty obviously a middle-school band (junior-high, for people who live on the west coast), featuring me playing trombone.
now this was before i knew what it was to “swing” (and, apparently, the drummer and a few other players were similarly clueless), and i had help writing out an “improvised” solo, because i didn’t know how to improvise, but even taking those things into account, i think i did a pretty acceptible job…
i am fairly bizarre… maybe you already knew that, but if you didn’t, there it is. one of the ways i am bizarre is that i have worn exactly the same style of shoe, more or less, for the past 30 years. when i was born, i had some congenital difficulties with my legs and feet. i don’t know very many details, but i do know that i had my right leg in a cast from the age of 6 months or so, until i was about a year old, which meant that, among other things, i didn’t crawl: i went straight from “creeping” to walking, and, thus, didn’t get the crawling that is so necessary to a normal baby’s development. i also had to wear “orthopedic” shoes and a brace at night, to “help straighten out” my feet, and i was forced to do pointless excercises (stand facing a wall, and do “push ups” against the wall, while keeping my heels on the floor) until i was about 5 or so. even with all that “help”, i managed to destroy just about every pair of shoes i owned, by “running over” them on the outside, until i found the birkenstock athens.
when i find something that works, i tend to stay with it until i have to change… that’s why i’m bizarre.
i have owned three pairs of athens sandals, one pair of brown, and two pairs of black, in the past thirty years. i have gotten them “recrafted” — which, in “birkenstock terminology”, means grinding off the rubber sole, separating the leather uppers from the old cork footbed, and putting on a new cork footbed and covering it with a new rubber sole — uncounted times. the brown pair finally bit the dust last year, when the leather straps broke. then one of the black pairs came back as “un-recraft-able” from the birkenstock repair guy, and i was in a quandary…
i had known for some time that birkenstock had officially stopped making the athens style sandal a number of years ago. in fact, the 2nd pair of black ones that i bought, i had to order them from europe, because they had discontinued the style in the united states, and that was almost 15 years ago. so when my second pair of birkenstocks came back as “un-recraft-able”, i jumped into action.
first, i called birkenstock central to make sure that they really don’t have any more, and while i had them on the phone, i asked them about making my own, using an “un-recraft-able” pair as a template. they had never heard of such an idea before, but definitely encouraged me to see if i could do it… of course i already knew that i could, but that way they can’t complain… 😉
i went to mcpherson leather supplies in the international district, and bought enough leather for three pairs of sandals (and spent all of $36… if this works out the way i think it’s going to, i’m probably going to go into the business of making obsolete birkenstocks for bizarre people). i also had the “un-recraft-able” ones traced by the birkenstock repair guy, so that i had a template.
then i cut out mirror images of the template (one for right, and one for left), which i intend to take to the birkenstock repair guy, who will put the cork, footbed, and buckles on for me, and voilá… a new pair of “athens” sandals. 8)
Big Bois With Poise, preparing for an audition
BBWP had our audition for America’s Got Talent this morning at 9:00 am at the downtown sheraton…
before i say anything else, i would like to point out that this is the third time this week that i have driven, and parked on the orange level of the WSTCC parking garage. i know that some people park there every day and it’s no big deal, but i used to live, literally, right across the street from the WSTCC, and i used to walk through it every day on my way to and from school and work, but now i live in a different city, almost in a different county, and it has been, literally, years since the last time i was in the WSTCC, much less parked there… it’s bizarre.
anyway, we parked and walked a block to the sheraton in our dongy-hats but no buckets, which raised quite a few eyebrows, and generated some really interesting comments from passers-by… “is this a video game??”, “what are you doing?”, that sort of thing. then we got to the sheraton and went up to the third floor “metropolitan ballroom”, checked in, and finished up our costumes, including getting up on our buckets. because of the fact that the audition was held inside, they didn’t want us to bring fire toys, so we all got zunis (i have been calling them “zoomies” for years… 😳 ), and they had a strict limit of 90 seconds per act, so we did a “cut down” version of the big bois chant.
then they talked to us for a few minutes. the “celebrity judges” weren’t there at all (big disappointment), there was just a guy running a camera and two “non-celebrity judges” sitting behind netbook-style laptops. the 90 seconds of our act started off with krissy doing her “monkey call”, which is quite loud and took the judges completely by surprise. they asked what we do for “real life” jobs (i said i’m a tuba player… it’s more or less accurate. i put down “professional freak” on the paperwork that we had to submit) and how the act developed, and a few, superficial things…
then they started talking about what we should plan on if we get to the next round of auditions. obviously the guy couldn’t say “you’re in”, but from what he did say, i’d guess that there’s a better-than-50% chance that we’re going to “pass” this audition and get to the next round, simply because what he was saying had a lot do do with the logistics surrounding doing our act with fire — which, apparently, for the 2nd round of auditions, will, actually be happening… but the next round of auditions is happening february 23rd to 25th in san francisco…
yes, adam, it’s likely that i will be coming to san francisco later this month. we should definitely plan on getting together while i’m there… 8)
my understanding is that they will be emailing chris within a couple of days to confirm…
bush collapsed, tree down, driveway blocked… 😐 closeup of the collapsed bush… every single needle was encased in about half an inch of ice. in our back yard… the chainlink fence and weeds encased in ice the bush, free of ice, for comparison.
i’ve mentioned hobo nickels before, but i figured i’d give you an idea of how they are made, since one of the first things everybody says to me when i give them one is “oh, did you make this?”
this is how i made them. enterprising people among you who may not be willing to risk my not giving you a hobo nickel myself (which, itself, is, actually, fairly rare) can use these instructions to make your own, with the full and complete assurance that i don’t care, although i do think that anybody who goes through this much effort for such little actual payback is kind of loopy.
also, i apologise in advance for the poor quality photos: it is difficult to use a hand to steady the camera and take pictures when you have to use two hands to hold up the tool and the piece you’re working on, so that the light shows through the kerf just right… look at it this way: 50 years ago, you wouldn’t have photographs this good, and 100 years ago there wouldn’t be any internet to read this on, so the poor quality photos are pretty good in comparison.
1) get a jewelers’ saw, a good supply of #2 or finer blades, a hand-vice, and a whole bunch of nickels. the newer and cleaner the nickels are, the better the end result will look, but it really doesn’t matter. #2 blades are fine enough that they will cut without jamming, but remove material at an acceptable rate. larger blades remove more material, but they also break more easily and don’t twist as well. finer blades don’t remove as much material, but they offer more control, especially in tight corners, although they break way more easily, and don’t last as long.
2) get a solid workspace, with a way to solidly anchor a hand-vice. i use my bench vice with the jaws separated about 2 inches, and hold the hand-vice so that the jaws stick out over the end of the bench-vice jaws. adjust the hand vice so that the nickel slides in easily, and can be gripped easily, but releases when you release the hand-vice. this is important because when you are cutting, you have to adjust the orientation of the nickel without putting the saw down, which would require an extra hand with which human beings are not, sadly, equipped.
also, i work sitting down, but which ever way for you is most comfortable to work, be prepared to take breaks, because cutting is exacting work.
3) drill a hole in the nickels with a drill bit that is small enough that it leaves both the bust of jefferson, and the edge: this is the place where you insert your #2 saw blade, before you clamp it into the saw… yes, you cut the background out from the inside… ingenious, isn’t it? 8)
4) cut all the way around the bust of thomas jefferson as close as you can, hopefully without cutting into thomas jefferson, or giving him weird facial appendages… unless, of course, you want to make the writer of our declaration of independence into a deformed frog-elephant. if that’s what you want, i have no control over what you do, and, as i said before, i truly don’t care…
5) this is the difficult part: when you have cut all the way around the bust of jefferson, go back to the original hole, and cut around the inside of the nickel. the reason why you do this isn’t immediately obvious, but once you’ve tried to cut around the inside of the nickel from the other side, you’ll know why. basically, it’s because you have to have some way of stabilising the nickel while you’re cutting, and if you start from the other side, all you have is the rim of the nickel, which isn’t very much, especially when you start cutting it out. the only way to avoid this is to be ambidexterous enough that, when the time comes, you can just switch hands (which, obviously, means re-orienting the hand-vice as well) and do it right handed. if you can do that, then you can ignore this step, but even before my brain injury, when i really was ambidexterous enough to do that, i still couldn’t get beyond taking a few strokes with the saw and having to replace the blade because i broke it again…
6) rejoice, ’cause you’ve done it too!
be prepared to break A LOT of #2 saw blades getting started… for that matter, be prepared to break one or two blades per nickel for a while. it’s tough getting your fingers trained to cut in the right place without twisting or flexing the saw enough that the blade breaks. fortunately, they’re not expensive. 😉
after the panto ended for 2011 (it starts again on saturday, and runs for two weeks. get yer tickets now ’cause they’re selling out fast!) i got started making some hobo nickels. they’re not classic hobo nickels, of course, but they’re in a similar vein… and, hey… they’re only a nickel… and, as long as you don’t try to use the result as “currency”, they’re perfectly legal. 8) i broke most of my jewelers’ saw blades on the first couple of them, getting the technique right and re-adjusting my fingers. i went out to tacoma screw, to get more jewelers’ saw blades, and they didn’t know what i was talking about. i went to rockler, and they had them, but i’m not sure they’re the right ones, because they say they’re only for wood… and they’re 28 teeth per inch, and i’m pretty sure that the ones i need are more like 35 to 50 teeth per inch… i’m pretty sure that if i made the trip to hardwick’s, in seattle, that i’d be able to walk in and say i needed extra-fine jewelers’ saw-blades and they’d point me towards a bin of ’em… i went in there one time, and i said i was looking for a vice, and the guy asked me if i had considered smoking… 😉 i made nickels like this A LOT, between 1986 (when i got out of the tech school, and realised that i could make them) until 1994, when i started having to limit my workshop space because of where i was living. they just kind of faded into past memory, and were only re-realised a few weeks ago.
i put in the order for another 20 dozen aparajita on the 15th. i still haven’t heard anything, but they are making the incense to order (SQUEEEEE!!!) so i’m not being as paranoid about it… i’m still being paranoid (after all, it’s sort of a natural state of existence for me), just not as much. i’m probably going to email again on friday if i still haven’t heard anything by then.
i got this good-luck token in the mail the other day. it’s a little bit bigger than a US quarter, or a little smaller than a US half-dollar. i didn’t remember where it came from, at first, and because of the fact that i bid on it at ebay, it didn’t come from anybody i knew, or from an address with which i was familiar, which was pretty exciting, until i remembered where it came from.
we spent christmas eve driving: we got up around 5:00 or so, and drove to salem, oregon, then we drove north and stopped just south of portland, then we drove into portland and visited a couple of different places before heading back, around 7:30 pm… by the time we got home, i had had about as much driving as i could stand for a while, so i spent most of the rest of xmas at home, being a hermit-crab. we took our annual trip to double-bluff off-leash dog-park on new-years’ day, and got there just as a polar-bear swim was getting over, which was kind of odd, because normally we are the only ones there on new years, and this year there were huge crowds of people, and music blaring… and an ambulance…
people generally (in this area, at least) don’t seem to mind me wearing or displaying swastikas as long as they’re not obviously “hakenkreuz” related (i.e. they’re “different” colours than were used by the not-zees), but my new shirt will challenge those preconceived notions about colour somehow being related to meaning…
maybe i ought to make some flash cards that say things like BLUE and YELLOW to illustrate my point even further for those who still don’t get it (and i’m positive that there will be a few of them)…
Gauri Shankar Rudrakhsha have been an interest of mine for some time, and i actually own a 7 mukhi gauri shankar bead
so i was sort of amused this afternoon when i was out for my walk and i passed the abandoned house up the alley from our place, where i discovered an abandoned gauri shankar pumpkin. this was not growing, but apparantly had been deposited there, probably by teenaged doodlehums who frequent the area, and had smashed a few pumpkins a little further up the street.
a small collection of pictures of trolloween i was able to take in between actually being a musician, is available for those who are interested. there aren’t many, and some of the low light ones leave a lot to be desired, because of my camera’s lack of low-light shooting ability…
now i can post a picture of my halloween costume without the possibility of anyone recognising me…unfortunately, there wasn’t any public ritual vegetable sacrifice, but i’m quite positive that there was private vegetable sacrifice… 😉
okay, so i’m working on some new web pages for the fremont players. i’ve got a REEEEAALY simple CSS file, that basically sets margins and text alignment:
body {margin-top: .25in; margin-left: 2in; margin-right: 2in;}
.center {text-align: center;}
and i have an equally simple HTML file that’s going to be my index page (when i get this ☢☹‼‽⁂@#* “difficulty” worked out) which looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="index.css">
<title>The Fremont Players</title>
</head>
<body>
now one would think, just from looking at the code, that the words “The Fremont Players present” would be centered, a quarter of an inch below the top of the page… but…
and it looks the same whether i’m using firefox, safari, or opera… which means that SOMETHING is WRONG…
yesterday we had a fez-up (left to right: Fez-Monger, Howlin’ Hobbit, yours truly, and Henrik Van Tiki who was visiting from hawaii) and the few days of not having anything specific to do gave me the time to do some research on where to get the next step of turning ganesha the vehicle into an actual vahana for ganesha, which resulted in my getting the stereo installed today… seriously, the people at car toys wanted $400 to install it, and the people at Foss Car Audio did it for $250, but it took me three days of calling people, driving around and getting estimates… anyway, the next step is getting it ready to paint, and getting the windows ready to tint.
also, there are some photos of my wanderings in tacoma, while i was waiting for my car to be done. the photos are from my telephone, so they’re not as good quality as i’d like, but… 8)
somehow, the artists at 0100101110101101.org invaded a rather up-scale art exhibit with art that wasn’t what the up-scale art exhibit’s curator thought it was. “The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its authenticity or worthiness.”
Dieter Roth never made this work, it’s a fake. We invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet: an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.
i got up at an unreasonably early hour this morning and went down to the FSM to busk.
while there, i found one of the vendors had a hat for sale for $10, that i couldn’t resist. it’s not a costume hat, it’s a real, authentic, merchant marine hat, that probably belonged to an officer. inside the hat was a little printed card that said “Return this Bernard Cap to:” that had the name, address and phone number of someone who was completely unknown to the person from whom i bought the hat.
i googled the name, and came up with some confusing results. googling for Jon H. Stebbins – the name as it is actually written on the card – gets no results, but it asks if i meant to type “John H. Stebbins” and gives a lot of nautical and marine references for that spelling. the one, glaring exception to this is the record of the courts opinion in reference to the case of U.S. versus Stebbins, from 2005, in which John H. Stebbins, Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, raped his 6-year-old daughter, was convicted in a military court, and was sentenced to life without parole, plus a $75,000 fine. the opinion of the court was that he deserved everything he got…
i’m not sure either one of these is the Jon H. Stebbins that previously owned my hat, but if that’s the sort of people i’m going to find when i search for him, i think i’ll give it a miss…
it’s a cool hat, though… 8)
busking went really well, despite the fact that we were a trio (sketch had another engagement). we got a lot of really positive feedback from the people in charge, and made a fair amount of money at the same time. i could get used to this… 8)
thanks to the people at edgewood tire showing off their fancy business cards, i got a business card order from this guy named lamar, who wanted his cards to say $$ CASH $$ FOR JUNK CARS & TRUCKS with his name and phone numbers. i didn’t actually talk to lamar, but he wrote down what he wanted on a napkin and the people at edgewood tire put in the order for him.
this, needless to say, is not the way i have done business with people who needed printing in the past. usually i’ve found that when people write something down on a napkin, that some time has to be spent figuring out exactly what is needed. i told sally (one of the owners of edgewood tire, i think) that, and she agreed that it was not exactly the best idea, so i left my phone number and told her to have lamar give me a call.
days passed by, and lamar didn’t call me.
i stopped by edgewood tire again, and sally said that lamar said (already you begin to see why i was leery of doing this) that what was written on the napkin was what he wanted, and that i shoud just go for it. i still wanted to at least talk to the guy before i typeset something, but when i called both of the numbers he gave, and asked for lamar, nobody had any idea who i was talking about, so sally actually called lamar while i was standing in her office, and then handed the phone to me. it didn’t take long. he gave me the impression that he wanted them in a hurry, and suggested the word CASH should be in red. i asked him if he wanted any artwork, and he said that the words should take up the entire card… in fact, he said “if there is any room left on the card, fill it with the words i gave you.” i asked him if he needed to see a proof copy before i sent them out, and he said no (which is another BIG RED FLAG in the “normal” printing industry). i said i would see that his need for cards was met, and that if he needed any changes, we could talk about it for the next time.
so i whipped out a card that filled as much of the available space as possible with words. and sent them off with faster than normal delivery service… which was a mistake, because UPS couldn’t find my address (which is a down side to living in the “unincorporated” part of king county) and the day they were supposed to deliver it, the status suddenly changed to “we don’t know where you are, delivery postponed indefinitely” and i actually had to go down to the UPS package center in pacific to get it.
armed with the business cards, i, once again, tried calling both of the phone numbers on the card, and got the answering service for pacific auto glass, who didn’t know who lamar was. i began to think that i may never see payment, but i took them to edgewood tire and said that lamar could pay for the replacement gear that my new car needed, and sally said that was an acceptable arrangement, so i left the cards with her.
but i got to thinking… i actually have a junk car that i need to get rid of, so i tried calling them again. this time, there was an answering machine that said that if you need a new windshield or have a junk car, leave your number… so i did.
this time lamar actually called back. we made all of the arrangements for him to pick up(!) the old ganesha the car before he asked for my name and phone number (heh heh). when he found out who i was, he immediately put in another order for 1000 more business cards. he really likes them, and says that the word “cash” is exactly what he wanted…
i’m indirectly responsible for this… at least for the first one…
i originally heard The Bobs song “Elwood Decker” in 1996 or 1997, thanks to my my beautiful wife (who is THE Bobs fanatic), and immediately wondered who the hell he was… so i proceded to find out.
after some preliminary internet searching, i wasn’t able to find much about elwood, but i found a connection between elwood and a guy to whom i may be related, norm hammond. it turned out that norm hammond posessed all of elwood’s paintings, and it turned out that they had just hung a gallery showing in the old train station in oceano (the bobs changed it to nipomo, which is in the same neighbourhood, but more euphonious) of elwood’s paintings. norm sent me a bunch of reproductions, one of which is currently hanging on the wall behind me. i suggested that elwood really should have a web site, and norm said that he was working on several avenues to publicise elwood — at the time he was in the process of writing a book about him — but that he had never even thought of a web site. i suggested elwooddecker.com and (although i hadn’t expanded the business to the point that it is now) suggested that i could register it for him and build a web site. he said that he would think about it, but he was more interested in writing at that time. i haven’t heard from norm since then, but that’s okay, because it appears that elwood got a web site anyway.
i also put together a one-page biography of elwood, with one of the pictures of him that norm had sent me, and gave it to richard bob at the bobs christmas show, the last time they did the show at jazz alley (1997? 1998?).
of course that was some time before i got involved with the cirque de flambé and the fremont philharmonic, which would, eventually, get me to the point where i am friends and colleagues with matthew bob… 8)
so i went to bellingham yesterday. it has been a long time since i’ve been in belligham, and it has been even longer since i have seen the… crazy hippy freaksunique crowd that was there for kenyth’s 77th birthday party last night.
kenyth was my advisor when i first started college, and i started college during the latter part of the last century, but that comes later.
first, i drove through mt. vernon and saw many cow-fields adjacent to the nookachamps river that are going to be ripe for mushrooming in a few weeks, and, basically, i’ve decided that i’m going to take at least one weekend day and do exactly that… because mushrooms are my second favourite drug (the first is hashish, but that’s a separate story).
it took me about an hour longer than i thought it was going to, to get to bellingham, which still puzzles me somewhat. i went to ken & kamalla’s place, but nobody was home, so i then went to the madhouse, which is where i spent the night last night, and talked to darol and the lady who lives in the cabin (which was my space, 25 years ago) for a while, then i went out to wander until it was time for kenyth’s party.
the first place i went was the lake whatcom railroad trail, near where i used to live on valencia street, where i walked east (up hill) on the trail to this spot, where i found this: it was somewhat strange back before everything got developed, but it is somewhat stranger now that it’s the only remaining evidence of a railroad line that used to go right through the middle of what is now a shopping mall and a fairly populated neighbourhood.
i then continued wandering east on the old railroad grade until i found a place that was built about the same time i lived there, which is a dam which funnels all of the water into a creek. a long time ago, shortly after the dam was first built, i used to go there and hide in the tube at the south end of the dam, and grafitti the inside of the tube. at one point, i even took a couple of sheets of plywood down there, so that i didn’t have to worry about getting soaked while i worked. i cleaned debris and gravel out of the tube at least twice, and i had a cozy, invisible little camp/hidey-hole there for a couple of years. now you can still get into the tube, but there’s a sizable pool at the bottom of it at this point, so you’d have to be a spry 20-something to get in there… i imagine that i could probably get in there now, but i imagine that if i wasn’t careful, i would get wet, and i didn’t want to do that yesterday, because it was threatening rain, and i didn’t have a change of clothes handy…
then i went down the tracks a little further, until i got to whatcom falls park, which is another place i used to live eons ago, when ezra was small. this is the place where the PHBFH lived, while i lived in the madhouse (when the PHBFH was living up to her acronym, which was about half of the time), when we went to vancouver BC to see the opera, when ezra was a tiny baby, and there were several old lady opera attenders who looked down their noses at us because we had a “babe-in-arms” at the opera, and everybody knows that babes-in-arms disrupt civilised things like opera… and they didn’t even notice when ezra went to sleep, shortly after the opening chorus, and slept all the way through, without making any noise at all. then, when we got home, very late at night, it was raining, so i parked the car while the PHBFH got out to open the door, so that we could avoid having ezra out in the rain for too long… except that the PHBFH wouldn’t open, or go anywhere close to the door, because it had a teensy little frog, smaller than the diameter of a dime, sitting on the door handle… 8)
then i went back to ken and kamalla’s place, where there was someone home this time, although it wasn’t kamalla, because she was apparently in california visiting her grandkids. i engaged in geek/music and/or music/geek talk with ken until it was time to go to kenyth’s party… which, coincidentally, was in the same dance studio where ezra took lessons from the time that he was 5 until he started at the pacific northwest ballet school, which used to be the nancy whyte studio, but is now called the “Presence Dance Studio”…
as i said previously, kenyth was my advisor during the time that i was at fairhaven college, which was 1979 through 1984, and again, on and off, from 1986 to 1989. prior to my arrival at fairhaven, kenyth was actually the dean of the college, but by the time i got there, he was “just a professor”. his two “specialty” classes were “Introduction to Personal Philosophy 101” which was informally known as “the fly in the flybottle” or simply “the flybottle class”, and “Awareness Through The Body”. when i first started at fairhaven, you could take body awareness as many times as you wanted, but you could only take the flybottle class once… however, it had such a powerful effect on me that i actually took it twice (with kenyth’s approval) – although i never took body awareness at all (which is kind of a shame, now that i think about it).
before i met kenyth, i was a child from bellevue, a place which is, like it’s new york namesake, an excellent place from which to escape. kenyth introduced me to the person i would eventually become. he did this by allowing me to be me, gently, uncritically and with a great deal of humour (as well as various other things), and by not requiring me to be anything which i was not. it didn’t take long for me to realise that i acutally amanother person, one who is 180 degrees different from the person my parents wanted me to be (who was boring and had no life).
and i saw a whole bunch of crazy hippy freaksunique people whom i haven’t seen for quite some time. i saw: douglas drake and joni papp, who i saw at burning man in 2008; karl meyer and stephan freeman, who i see at the moisture festival every year; sally peyou, who i got email from last week, but haven’t actually seen since 2007; yoav and yael yanich, deirdre morgan, kathy veterane, darby freeman, lisa carderelli, dani cutler, jamie jedinak, and a lot of other people whose names i am already forgetting again… all of whom i haven’t seen in at least 20 years… i got email addresses for the people i’ve been thinking about, and wondering what ever happened to them…
i went to sleep, and woke up in the madhouse for the first time since 1989 and it felt so right… if i ever have the opportunity to move back to bellingham at any point in the future, you can bet that i’m going to jump on it in a second. 8)
snake suspenderz played a 90-minute gig at Davis Wright Tremaine law office, on 3rd avenue in downtown seattle the other night. it was kinda weird, because there were a huge crowd of people, but they were not listening to us… seriously, we got more compliments from the wait-staff that were hired caterers than we got from the law-office-related people, and we didn’t get that many compliments from the caterers… it’s really strange to not get confirmation that we’re doing a good job… they paid us $400 in advance, and from what little i gathered, they were more than satisfied with the job that we did, but they didn’t say anything specific, and they didn’t say they were going to hire us again… which the guy whose party we played at last week, did…
the law offices occupied at least 5 floors of the office building, but we played in the entrance lobby on the 22nd floor, which had a classic view of the sound, and i couldn’t resist taking a few pictures… 😉
not, needless to say, a NEW new car, but a new-to-me car. it’s a 1995 honda passport EX 4×4, which is significantly smaller than the humongous ford F150 pickup that i’m driving currently, but it’s still far and away the largest car i have ever owned. and it maintains my record of never owning a car that is newer than 15 years old. i’ve got to return the pickup tomorrow, so thaddeus and i are going to pick up the new car tomorrow, and then thaddeus is going to drive the humongous truck back to the issaquah highlands, where i will pick him up in the “new” car and drop him at home, hopefully before noon. meanwhiles, take a gander at the pictures of the new car from the craigslist ad:
stanley got a new toy today. it’s small enough that we have to be careful not to let the dogs get hold of it, but we’ve got a whole bag of tiny, solid “rubber duckie” toys, and stanley really likes them.
we have a border collie, lucy, who is obsessed with things. when we first got her, she obsessed about the cats, who were not amused. then, when we got stanley, she obsessed about stanley and forgot about the cats. then we got mango and it was as though stanley never existed…
mango has started staying at monique’s work over night, to cut down on the amount of travelling he has to do – and he was intended to be the “clinic bird” anyway – but lucy still obsesses about where mango used to be…
it has been 8 days now, and she’s still obsessing about mango’s empty cage…
if it’s possible, she’s obsessing more since he’s been staying at work…😮
moe just got home. she took mango to work with her today, in a travel cage.
lucy (the dog) spends most of her free time – and a significant portion of time that she should be doing important things like eating – staring at mango. before mango got here, she stared at stanley. now she stares at mango. before stanly, she stared at the cats. it was actually kind of funny when she tried to herd them… she was almost successful, but that is another story. now she’s staring at mango, in his travel cage…
except mango moved to his perch when she was outside… nevertheless, for about 10 minutes, she was staring at an empty cage…
unfortunately, something alerted her (perhaps mango chirped, or stanley said something) and she realised that she was off-target…
actually, i’m kinda disappointed. if she stared at an empty cage, we wouldn’t have to tell her to leave it all the time, and it’s almost getting to the point where that’s all we do… oh well…
there’s only so many pictures i can take of essentially the same thing… except for meadow lights. i could take endless pictures of them, because they’re all different in some way or another. i suppose you could say the same thing about two pictures of anything else, taken a year apart, but i’ll ignore that, for now. animated Maque, with Lindsay, backstage at the Morningwood Odditorium, OCF, 2011i left on tuesday with myron and marilyn, and stayed with marilyn’s daughter, son-in-law, and their two kids, in their HUGE house in portland. siri (marilyn’s daughter) is a cello player, and her husband (whose name i don’t remember) is a music professor at one of the colleges that is not Reed, in the area. their house has at least 3 floors (they may have a basement, i didn’t check) in a very nice area, in the eastern part of town, near a catholic school/convent (for monique, who doubtlessly knows where i am talking about). we had breakfast at the Cadillac Café, and hit the road around 10:00 or so, which meant that we arrived at the fair around noon on wednesday.
there was the standard, and expected “hippy ineptitude factor” in play at the gate, but they actually had me listed under the correct spelling of my name this year (which is a miracle!), and, apart from waiting in line for an hour or so, it was nothing out of the ordinary… and we didn’t even need a “full load teddy” to drive in to morningwood, even though, technically, we had to have one (reminder for next year: get a full load teddy after getting wrist-banded, and before heading back to the car. grumpy said so.). wednesday and thursday were somewhat of a blur, because there were the “traditional” things; getting my camp set up, making runs to various cars to get things that had been forgotten, building up the last bits of backstage that hadn’t been done yet, finding out which showers were open (the ritz was open, but very crowded because only the showers in the front half were accessible), and that kind of thing, along with the mental adjustments necessary to go from the “normal” world to the “fantasy” world, and having to figure out how to deal with the unexpected things, like the baby robins that were not quite fledged, and nesting in the tree right next to the bandstand that we didn’t want to scare. seriously, they were cheeping and flapping around more or less effectively in the tree on wednesday, and thursday, and we were not sure what was going to happen when thousands of people and an amplified sound system started working right next to their nest, but all three of them were out of the nest by the time the gates opened at 10:00 friday morning.
we had a final dress-rehearsal on thursday, which was more like a “run through”, that was about as raw and unfinished as anything i’ve ever seen from the group, and despite the fact that we had all the music, we ended up cutting one of the songs, because the actor who was supposed to sing it hadn’t learned the words (no names – you know who you are). but despite the fact that the dress rehearsal well and truly SUCKED, it had come together surprisingly well by noon on friday… so well, in fact, that several people in the group (including me) expressed their extreme relief that the “run through” on thursday hadn’t been an indication of what the show was really going to be like. and it just got better from there. i remember saying that last year’s show was the best we have done so far, and that is what i say about this year’s show as well. not that all of the parts were totally memorised, but those that weren’t were skillfully covered, and nobody noticed. the jokes were as funny, and as fresh as ever, and there was the expected, and the unexpected in the proper quantities to make it easy to riff off the stuff that we didn’t have quite down yet, and easy to learn the stuff that we didn’t have quite down yet.
of course there was also the standard “horseplay” or “messing with peoples’ minds” or what-have-you, which included the dozen whoopie-cushions that i brought and distributed, and the “hippy fishing” that i participated in — after sunset, take a glow-stick and tie it to some black rigging twine, and toss it out into the path. when some stoned hippy tries to pick it up, yank on the string. — as well as four days, one more than the actual fair, where i went out and “hid” somewhere along the path, at night, with my cape, so that people couldn’t immediately tell that i was a human being, and played my long flute… which, i have more or less decided, with the help of those people who noticed me, in spite of the fact that i was “hiding”, is called a “didjeri-flute”. i met a whole bunch of musicians, some of whom i have met before, but none of whose names i remember. there was the guy with the bright red sousaphone from the fighting instruments of karma, who is not the guy with the bright silver sousaphone from the fighting instruments of karma that i have run into in previous years. the bass player that i met at the ritz, and “fossil fool” the rock-the-bike rider/rapper were also memorable. and there were stories of famous people like steve weber from the holy modal rounders (stuart was out wandering around and he came across a band playing in the path, and a guy walked up to him and, forcefully, told him to take his guitar out of the case and play. it turned out that the guy was steve weber), and chris chandler, and bill kreuzmann, and a famous oud player being at the fair this year.
the ritz was kind of a trip this year. i was there on thursday evening when simon contacted lem, the guy in charge of booking acts for the ritz, and i told them that we wanted the saturday, 8:00 or 9:00 slot. lem took simon’s phone number and said he would call, because the staff at the ritz was really anxious to have the phil play there again this year. however, friday came and went without any word from lem. saturday, we were informed that we had been offered the midnight slot at the ritz, which was then changed to 6:00. we jumped on 6:00 and they said they’d get back to us, but when 4:30 came around and we hadn’t heard anything, we decided that we’d better go up to the ritz, just on the off chance that we actually had been scheduled for 6:00 and they’d forgotten to tell us (which would not be out of the question by any means). we got there and discovered that we were expected, which was a relief that was quickly dashed when another band showed up and it turned out that they were also “expected” to play at 6:00. after about a half-hour of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, kim from the sauna, the person who is actually responsible for booking bands at the ritz, showed up, and it was decided that we would play at 6:00 saturday, and the other band would play at 6:00 sunday. the upshot is that i gave kim from the sauna my phone number, and talked with her extensively. she said that, primarily because of the fact that we played “Il Balon di Qua-qua” (otherwise known as “The Chicken Dance”) they were really anxious to have us back next year, and she actually said that we would be in the 7:30 saturday slot next year, and that she would call me to confirm that closer to the actual event. i got four ritz tokens this year: one that i bought, one that i found on the path(!), one that i got instead of “hat money”, and one from playing at the ritz. i now have 15 tokens. 8) yeah, i know that i could use them in the sauna, but i like keeping them as souvenirs instead.
saturday afternoon, i was sitting on stage next to my tuba, before a performance, and some guy came up and handed me a laminated card — similar to the “photo id” card that some people (including me) wear instead of a wrist-band — and said “i think you dropped this”. i took it and looked at it, and it was clearly not mine, so i said “no, i didn’t”, to which he replied “well, you have now…” and walked off into the crowd. the laminated card had the “Pre-Post Sideshow Circus” logo that i had seen on a number of the “security” peoples’ t-shirts prior to that time, and the other side had a picture of a sousaphone player. i subsequently learned that this was a souvenir as well, which would explain why the guy who gave it to me seemed to have about 50 laminated cards on the lanyard around his neck.
the fair ended on sunday, and we left on monday. sunday evening was full of whoopie-cushions, hippy fishing, playing my didjeri-flute, smoking a lot of cannabis, wandering and hanging out with my friends. monday morning i got up, broke camp and helped them take down the stage. we left the fair around noon, and i got home around 6:00. sasha and stuart showed up with my two “heavy” boxes yesterday. the weather clouded up on the way home, and it has been raining on and off since then… it’s probably a good thing i came home when i did.
this may be what a “meme” looks like when it is in the early stages of formation…
i have seen references to giant metal chickens in three different places around the web during the past couple of days. while i am pretty sure that two of them aren’t, one of them may have been in reference to a band called Giant Metal Chickens, but i’m not sure, and i can’t find the link now, which, in itself, is enough to raise my suspicions. and one of them was a client and friend of mine, who posted pictures of a giant metal chicken which may or may not have been her own personal giant metal chicken, in high point north carolina…
bizarre…
which brings up another story…
my first semester of my first year of college was spent living in the dorm, first with a guy named josh, and then with a guy named joe. around the end of that first semester, i found, not a giant, but certainly much larger than normal chicken, made out of aluminum foil – for all intents and purposes, a “giant metal chicken”.
of course this chicken ended up in my dorm window, where it was the object of much amusement and derision from the other people who lived in the dorm, and at the end of the semester, joe asked me if he could take it home with him. he assured me that he would bring it back at the beginning of the next semester, and, as we were all moving out of that particular dorm anyway, i figured that if he took it, that would mean that i wouldn’t have to explain why i had a giant metal chicken to my parents, who were already under the impression that i was more than a little strange anyway.
naturally, when the next semester started, joe didn’t have my giant metal chicken. apparently his dog ate it.
the show at the can can last night went exceptionally well, but i think that the exceptional parts were more because of disorganisation and lack of planning than anything else…
the can can was STUFFED with people, which was a good thing from our point of view, because our “take” was based on sales at the door, but i suspect that a large part of the reason why the can can was STUFFED last night is because we opened for baby gramps — which was a complete surprise to us. i had been lead to the understanding that we would be opening for He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister, and, indeed, they were there, and played after baby gramps. the main objection we had was that nobody had told us that we were opening for baby gramps… we had discussed an apparent discrepancy in what the booking person had told us compared to what they had announced on their web site – which was just us and HMBSMS – and we had prepared for the possibility that they had just been disorganised (the can can has just recently moved back in to their original location, after having temporarily relocated across the street to accomodate a construction project). and, apparently, when gramps was called by the can can (he does shows there on a regular basis), he was under the impression that it was as a favour to someone, but he didn’t know who…
but if someone had only told us that we would be opening for gramps, we would have talked it up a lot more than we did… which, for us, was pretty extensive, but if people had known that gramps was gonna’ be there, more people that we told would have actually showed up…
and, as an added bonus (for me, anyway) was that accompanying baby gramps on toy pianos was my friend truckin’ dave – this guy – who i have known since the early 1980s, from bellingham (a “bellinghammer”)… i had no clue that this guy knew baby gramps, although gramps introduced dave as “my friend from the ’60s”, so the whole evening was full of surprises for me… and it’s close enough that it could actually be considered a birthday present… 🙂
i went out to get the spare tire fixed that moe blew out on the freeway last weekend, and i also went around to various different places to find a chair to replace the one that i’ve been using for 10 years or so, that has taken its share of abuse over the years and isn’t really a chair any longer… moe told me that they have them at walgreen’s, but they only have folding camp chairs with arms, and i need one without arms, so i went to sportsmens’ warehouse, and they didn’t have ’em either, so i went to REI, because i know they’ll have them there… and while i was at REI, i decided to look at the vibram-soled barefoot shoes that i saw at SACBO last weekend, and, lo-and-behold, they actually had them on sale, and they were doing a "backyard camp-out deal with a 15% off coupon for one full-priced item… so, i bought a new folding chair (it’s actually a stool, because it only has three legs, but it does have a back rest) and new shoes for the first time in twenty years or so.
it’s really difficult for me to buy new shoes, because, if they’re not made right, i have a tendency to “run over” them really quickly: the sole of the shoe doesn’t match my weird arches, and i end up either walking on the inside of my feet, or the shoes give me massive blisters, and, one way or the other, i end up wearing holes in the sides of the shoes within a couple of weeks. birkenstocks seem to be the only decently made shoe that i can wear for more than a day with out getting blisters, and that’s been the way it is pretty much ever since i started buying my own shoes… but these are amazing… they’re like being in bare feet, except that they’ve got an extra layer of vibram in between me and the ground, and they’re practically impossible to “run over” because they fit so well… 8)
i’m really jazzed, and can’t wait to “try them out” on a long hike, or a trip to the beach or something… wait! i’ve got OCF coming up… that should do it… 8)
a whole bunch more pictures from SACBO are posted, and things are a little more organised than they were before, but i’ve got to go do a bunch of other stuff and so i can’t spent a lot of time writing about it. maybe it’ll happen, eventually, but who knows.
i expended A LOT of spoons last weekend, because it was the solstice festival, and snake suspenderz played both days, apart from the caravan on friday. i’ve uploaded a whole bunch of pictures, which i haven’t yet got all sorted out, so there’s very likely going to be more pictures uploaded eventually. of course, the fremont “solstice” festival actually didn’t occur on the solstice (something for which i’m sure our ancient ancestors would decry with loud voices), but that’s because us “modern” folks have to get up and go to work on monday… a tradition which, despite the fact that it recently included me, i have never been able to figure out…
but today is especially important, because it is also our 13th wedding anniversary, which means, traditionally, i’m supposed to give my sweetie lace – which would be nice and i’m sure she would appreciate it, but it’s also impractical and i’m not sure she’d ever use it for anything… the “modern traditional” gift is textiles, and we just got a new bed-spread recently (with zebra stripes), but i’m not sure what other textile items we actually need at this point – i’m sure clothes are on the list, but i’d really rather give my sweetie something more romantic than clothes…
and i’m more convinced than ever that the decision to get married was one of the smartest decisions i have ever made in my life, but that’s only because of the fact that i decided to get married to moe, and not someone else.
the picture on the right is from a collection of famous people hanging out with their vinyl. this particular one is deborah harry and chris stein, but what’s important is the vinyl that’s hanging above their heads. among the albums is Cluster II, an album that has been in my collection, in one form or another, for quite a number of years…
it’s actually kind of strange, because i don’t know who chris stein is at all, and i only have a vague notion of who deborah harry is, but i recognised the cluster album right away… oh well… 😉
the scary part is that the guy in frame #2, and the technical recruiter that i dealt with for a few years when i was working in the computer industry, bear a frightening resemblence to one another…
there have been a lot of ’em around this year. pretty regularly i see them early in the mornings or in the evenings, but this guy was out at 10:00 in the morning, and didn’t run away when he noticed that i was watching him… he was also about half as big as the “normal” ones i usually see, so he may just be a baby that doesn’t have his “rabbit sense” entirely clued in yet…
so far, the rapture hasn’t happened… i’m preparing to have a big ol’ laugh at harold camping’s expense when the day is over… 8)
in other news, i got a new unauthorised authorisation dialogue, like the one i got back in august of last year, but it’s for a different site… the site, LEAP.cc, is the site for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which i have visited a while back, but there currently is no site there, and, instead, it asks for an authorisation (which i have NEVER provided), so i’m thinking that either they’re not in business any longer (not very likely) or someone has hacked their site. needless to say, i didn’t enter anything into the fields, and it’s acting pretty much the same way as the twitter dialogue that was coming up last year, so i’m going to guess that it’ll go away eventually.
the rapture still hasn’t happened… i’ll let you know something else comes up… 8)
i have been getting water from the artesian well for around thirty five years, and i can count, on the fingers of one hand, the times when there has been nobody at the well except me… but it happened this morning, for the first time in about 15 years…
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has announced he is to marry for a third time, this time to legendary Python star and himself three-time divorcee John Cleese.
While the details of the service have yet to be worked out Sir Paul confirmed that ‘Eleanor Rigby’ would be played during the ceremony, and when it gets to ‘All the lonely people, where do they all come from?’ spouse-to-be Cleese has promised to walk up the aisle in an appropriately spectacularly silly way.
The happy couple first met at a Divorcee Anonymous meeting, and found that they could share their desparate experiences of lost marriages and an unfulfilled search for a love to match their first betrothals, a quest each has embarked on for many years without success – until now.
The service will take place in New York, with Terry Jones giving the reading in a screeching harridan voice, Ringo Starr conducting the choir, who haven’t yet quite got used to his unique brand of syncopation, Stella McCartney providing decorative pineapples and Eric Idle singing a eulogy, which will be based on such delightful puns as ‘Always look on the bride side of life,’ something which both Cleese and McCartney have agreed to vow in church never to do again.
With both men contentedly well off, and with the wisdom of old age it seems like a marriage set to last although, just in case, the pre-nup runs to one hundred and forty pages.
i’m feeling very pleased with myself, because i have recently figured out (on my own, mind you, without any help) how to add shortcut icons, or “favicons” to my sites… they’re the little tiny icons that appear in the address bar of your browser, next to the URI: like this
i had to take the piccolo i repaired back to its owner. i also had an appointment with ned. they were separated by four hours, but i decided that it would be best if i drove, parked and made a day of it. i delivered the piccolo, and then i went to laughing buddha and bought two new ear plugs. i do this instead of expanding my ear ‘ole (which i would do in a cold second if i could: it’s terrifically addictive…), because my beautiful wife doesn’t like it, and it’s not a good thing to do things that my beautiful wife doesn’t like. 😉
then i wandered and took pictures. they’ve completely destroyed four blocks of capitol hill, right across from dicks and the place where my acupuncturist’s office used to be, walled the entire four-block area with 18-foot walls, and dug an ENORMOUS hole, rather like the one that they dug in downtown seattle back in the ’80s. then i went to west seattle and wandered a little more. there are the obligatory pictures if anybody is interested. i found out that my blood pressure is higher in the morning than it is in the afternoon, and if i record my blood pressure in the morning, it looks a lot worse than it actually is… which is a MASSIVE relief, because for the past five days it seems to have been getting higher and higher… but it’s because i was checking it in the morning. if i check it in the afternoon, it is apparently a lot more reasonable… i.e. diastolic 115 in the morning and 85 in the afternoon.
so i just found this software called Brain Explorer, which uses the Allen Human Brain Atlas and displays an interactive, 3-dimentional brain from two different donors, with the gene expression information for each brain…
probably essentially meaningless to most of you, but the fact that i experienced a burst AVM in my brain makes it especially interesting for me, because i can actually see, in 3 dimentions, exactly where my injury occured, and the approximate effects it had on my brain…
the moisture festival has actually been going on for a week, now, but tonight is the opening night of comedie/varieté at the palladium featuring the fremont philharmonic. we’ve settled on “whatever is your take on ‘formal'” for the uniform-of-the-day, and this is what i’m wearing:we’re supposed to show up around 5:00 pm, i think doors for the first show are at 7:00, and doors for the second show are at 10:00… which means, conservatively, that we’ll be finished around 12:00 or thereabouts… which means that i won’t actually get out of there until 1:00 or so, and it usually takes me around 45 minutes to drive home, so i won’t be getting to bed until around 2:00 or thereabouts… and i’ve got the same schedule again tomorrow, only it starts with me getting to the palladium at 1:00…
busy, busy, busy…
by the way, for those of you who are wondering (and i know you’re out there), the altar cloth behind me is tucked up behind the box to keep it away from the puppy. there have already been several “near missmesses” that have involved the puppy, who wants to tug and chew on everything that hangs down, and the altar… i keep telling myself that he’ll grow out of it, but i keep wondering if he’ll do it before or after destroying my altar… 😐
this is ezra kirby, my great granduncle, age approximately 25 at the time of the portrait. he lived from 1872 to 1939 and he spent his entire life as a farmer in champaign county, illinois.
…
is it just my imagination, or does that photo look an awful lot like my own son? … who i named ezra, not even knowing that i had a great granduncle with the same name…
okay, i think i’m going to put this project away for a while. it’s getting scary.
as you know, if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, my second favourite band is The Residents (my first favourite band is anything with Frank Zappa in it, but that’s another, entirely separate story). the residents played a concert at Neumo’s on the 18th of march, and i was there.
it is physically impossible to give you an idea of what it sounded like, because for 40 years, the residents have never played the same song twice and had it sound the same way each time, which is one of the reasons i find their albums a little iconoclastic, but it’s better than nothing. there is a lot of their music out there, in one form or another, on the intar-toobs, which saves a lot of disk space for me, because i don’t have to post them myself. they played a few songs that i recognised the words to, but even the lyrics were heavily electronically modified most of the time, so it was difficult to determine what they played… although i was kind of amused to notice that the read-out on randy’s (the vocalist) processor unit had names like “snake” and “old lady” and “rubber” and other things that seemed to indicate not only the sound that it made, but the title of the song as well.
i found a spot in the balcony, above stage right, behind “chuck”, the keyboard player, which was very interesting, because i got to watch him manipulating his instruments fairly well, in spite of the lighting. he had a 15″ mac book, with software i’ve seen before, but can’t immediately identify (something like digital performer, i think), a short keyboard with some sort of internal computer, an iPad with some software with which i am totally unfamiliar (having a considerable amount of disdain for the ipad in general probably doesn’t help the matter much), and a vaguely squashed-spheroid device with a use i was never able to figure out.
as an aside, i had temporarily forgotten that i now have a – TOTALLY FREE – G4 tower with a motorolla processor, capable of running OS9 and all of the goodies that i never thought i’d see again when i gave away my own mac a couple of years ago… time to get that up and running again… 8)
the thing that really surprised me was that there were only three of them. apparently “carlos” decided, after nearly 40 years in the music business, that the rock-and-roll lifestyle wasn’t for him, and he returned to mexico to care for his aged, ailing mother… or something like that. nobody’s really sure of anything, since the residents have kept their real identities a secret since they started out, and have appeared in disguise for their performances. so now there are only three residents, “chuck” on “keyboards”, “bob” on heavily processed guitar, and “randy” on vocals, but it’s okay, because “carlos” – the drummer – was prone to taking extended drum “solos” at awkward points. i didn’t really notice the difference, because i’ve only seen them live one other time, and that was before my injury, so i don’t remember it that well.
they played for two hours, and then did a half-hour, three-song encore, and i came away with their new album, Dolor Generar. i was under the impression, when i downloaded the bittorrent a couple of years ago, that i had fairly close to all of their released work, but apparently i was wrong. the fact that it’s the residents to begin with makes me sort of wonder what the person who made the bittorrent was thinking when they labeled it “all of the residents released work”, but it’s the intar-toobs, so i probably will never know. i took a whole bunch of pictures, but only nine of them made it to flickr, because the rest of them are redundant, out-of-focus, or are otherwise defective.
the photos may have been defective, but the concert was outstanding. 8)
we went to the beach for three days of doing nothing except exactly what we wanted, when we wanted to do it. here are pictures:
this was right outside our back window. the feature, of course, was Rye, also known as “sheep dog in training”… (more photos by clicking) one of quite a number of shots i took that wasn’t one or more dogs looking somewhere else, or the shot being interrupted by moe, or other things…
the week then continued with my trip to a concert by The Residents, which will go in another post, later on. 8)
Thursday, Mar 17 at 08:00PM
Friday, Mar 18 at 08:00PM
Saturday, Mar 19 at 08:00PM
Dancer/choreographer Ezra Dickinson and musician/sound-artist Paurl Walsh create a visual and sonic environment that is directly and kinetically linked to the performance onstage. Employing new technology, Dickenson’s movement becomes the instrument through which Walsh’s sound is created. Together they build an exciting story that explores the making of the work itself. Dickinson has worked with Maureen Whiting Company, Dayna Hanson and Zoe Scofield; Paurl Walsh has worked with Implied Violence, Degenerate Art Ensemble and X-Ray Press.
About the Performers
Ezra Dickinson was born in Bellingham Washington; he began dancing at the age of four. Ezra received training from Pacific Northwest Ballet for twelve years on full scholarship. Ezra earned his BFA in Dance with an emphasis in choreography from Cornish College of The Arts, while at Cornish Ezra was the recipient of The Merce Cunningham scholarship in Dance, The Kreielshimer scholarship, and The Presidents scholarship in Dance. Ezra has toured across America performing at venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, Bates dance festival, The Baryshnikov Arts center, Danspace, The Southern Theater, ODC Theater, PICA TBA, and The Sitka Fine Arts Camp. Ezra’s work in choreography, and movement installations have been on display in 12min Max, Northwest New Works Festival, Gallery 1412, Chop Sue, Act Theater, Gallery 154, Move, Ten Tinny Dances, Moore Inside Out, Heathrow Airport, Henry Art Gallery, 911 media arts center, Next Fest Northwest, SAM Remix, Art Zone, and The Northwest Film Forum. Along with being co-artistic director of The Offshore Project, Ezra is in his fifth year of dancing for the Maureen whiting Company, and is a member of The Castaways.
Paurl O. Walsh graduated from Cornish College with a degree in Classical Composition and Electro-acoustic music. He is an active composer of electronic music (including large-scale surround sound performance installations), modern classical chamber music, music for dance and theatre, and good ol’ rock and roll. Writing and performing throughout the US and Europe, he has been a core member of the hyper-experimental performance art/music group Degenerate Art Ensemble, designed and produced music for the theater group Implied Violence, and can most often be seen performing in the prog-punk outfit X-Ray Press. He also runs ExEx Audio, a creative recording studio centered around working collaboratively with artists to help them better express themselves through sound.
i’ve been spending way too much time futzing about with the computers, and need to do something else some of the time.
to that end, i’m probably not going to spend more than a couple of hours or so in front of the computer today, because of the fact that i’ve got a bunch of stuff to do. i’ve got to drive to marysville (approximately 1½ hours each way), to pick up business cards from the printer. i’ve also got to take the empty water bottles up to the artesian well to fill them, which is in between here and marysville, so it’s convenient to do both at the same time. then i’ve got to package the cards and ship them to the guy who ordered them.
then, later on, i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal, which usually gets out at 9:00. the moisture festival is at the end of the month. counting today’s rehearsal, there are only four rehearsals left until it opens, which is cutting it really close, especially considering that pam, our clarinet player, quit earlier this year.
the puppies start going to their new homes tomorrow:
they’ve been a challenge, and i’ll be really happy to be down to a “normal” number of dogs again… even though 4 could be considered a bit extreme by some people…
Call it the latest piano bar, a large-scale mystery, or a whole new set of Florida Keys.
In Miami’s Biscayne Bay, a grand piano has appeared — perched on the highest point of a sandbar.
“We don’t know how the piano got out there, we don’t know who’s responsible for putting the piano out there and at this point it’s clearly a mystery,” said Jorge Pino of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
And for now, it’s staying put. Authorities told CNN they have no plans to remove it.
“What will probably happen is that the piano will just disintegrate because of the salt water and the salt air,” said Pino, adding that it will not harm the wildlife.
The finding has struck a chord with residents and tourists, inspiring some to board their boats and check it out. But if they’re planning to perform a concerto, their hopes will likely fall flat.
“This piano’s so banged up you can’t even bang out any tunes on it,” reported Andre Hepkins of CNN affiliate WSVN, as he stood on the sandbar attempting to tickle the ivories.
The Miami Herald first alerted Pino to the mysterious piano last week, Pino told CNN.
As word spread, theories took off. Was it a publicity stunt? A music video gone bad? A frustrated musician? A jilted lover trashing an ex’s instrument?
A Miami New Times blog offered explanations such as “The Little Mermaid was not a work of fiction” and “the powers that be are trying new tricks to get your attention about the end of the world.”
Pino has his own ideas. “The person who did this obviously did it as a prank in my opinion,” he said, “and they are getting exactly what they wanted to get, which is the notoriety of knowing that their story went viral.”
It is illegal to dump things into those waters, Pino said. “If you’re caught doing it, you can be arrested.”
But for now, the Department of Environmental Resources Management has not begun an investigation, spokesman Luis Espinoza told CNN. “We’re keeping an eye on it, looking into how it might have gotten there,” he said, adding that an official investigation is “possible.”
In November 2008 a piano was mysteriously discovered in Harwich, Massachusetts, by a woman who was walking a trail in the middle of the woods. That piano — an upright, not a grand — perplexed authorities. A CNN call Wednesday to Harwich police to find out if that mystery was ever solved was not immediately returned.
Biscayne Bay is home to commerce and tourism. The National Park Service describes it as “a shallow estuary, a place where freshwater from the land mixes with salt water from the sea and life abounds. It serves as a nursery where infant and juvenile marine life reside.”
Pino said the piano was found on the sandbar well out into the water, less than half a mile from the shore. “It’s amazing that somebody would go thru the trouble” of hauling “a 650 pound piece of equipment” out that far — even one that’s “not in good shape,” he said.
Still, Pino said, “there’s a lot worse things in the water.”
“We know of a car… that somebody years ago dumped into the water, and the vehicle stayed there. And, as it turns out, the vehicle is quite the habitat for lobster now.”
Pino added, “There’s odd things in the water all the time — shopping carts and tires and all kinds of stuff that people just decide to dump out there.”
this is what happens whenever the puppies and i interact. they mob around my feet, chewing everything, tugging on everything, and basically making it so that if i take any further steps i risk stepping on a puppy.
it seems to me that this batch of puppies is a lot more bite-y than the previous batch, but it may be that time has dimmed my experiences…
yeah, they’re cute, but at this point, the only reason i put up with them is because i know that it’s going to be a relatively short period of time before they go away.
the pooples are growing like pooples, and have gotten to the “chaos with teeth” stage, where they’re enthusiastically biting everything that they encounter, whether it is food, toys, doggie boobs, feet, hands, or what-have-you. they mob around my feet with their sharp little teeth whenever i go into their enclosure to feed them, or change their potty-pad… moe sez there’s two more weeks before they go to their new homes.
the black one has an official name. they all were called a name beginning with the letter R to help keep them separate when they were born, but the black one is now named Dash (he used to be Rave). the other ones are Reba (the only female), Rob (otherwise known as “the foot savage”) and Roy or Ray or something like that (Rye), which i call “Plug” because he was the one that was plugging up the works when they were being born.
only two more weeks, and then we go back down to a “normal” quantity (i.e. four instead of seven) of dogs again… 😉
in other news, i went to the fremont sunday market last sunday and renewed my membership, which means that, tentatively, i will be going to the FSM for real on the 6th of february, but i haven’t ruled out the 30th of january yet, or whenever the weather is nice enough to vend without getting too wet and miserable. i’ve made some minor changes in the way i present myself at the FSM, which, i’m hoping, will mean that i will actually make more money than i have in the past, because, now, people walking by will be able to come in and browse the products without having to ask me for a price for everything they pick up… or, conversely, they will be able to browse the product and not walk away so quickly because nothing has prices on it… i’m really excited to go to the FSM and try this out, but i’m also aware of the fact that, if i don’t grok the weather correctly, i will probably have to set up, tear down, or both, in the pouring rain, which would very definitely not be good for my product or my disposition…
so i was sitting at my computer terminal today and i heard this sound that sounded like puppies growling, so i got up and grabbed the camera and went to make sure they weren’t ripping each other to pieces, or something like that…
this is what i discovered:
of course, after five minutes or so they were all asleep again… 8)
this was taken from inside the house and through a window… if (as i have planned pretty much ever since we first put up bird feeders here) i set up a blind, i can get a lot closer and take photos of the pileated woodpeckers and the red-shafted flickers that show up around here on a regular basis… 🙂
i woke up this morning and this was outside. it’s already above freezing, so it shouldn’t stay around for long, but it looked nice, if nothing else.
also, moe got a new camera (to replace her old one, which was dropped and stepped on at a dog trial) and so she’s been going nuts taking pictures of the pupples which are growing at an alarming rate. have fun… 8)
I have been reading from Himalayan Academy and their various sub websites, almost regularly for the past few years and the information available is simply amazing. The monks keep updating it on a regular basis. You can follow their daily blog which they call TAKA on the below link:
http://himalayanacademy.com/blog/taka/
For Modern day Mystics who want to know the significance of this Giant Crystal Shivalingam ( also known as an Earth keeper Crystal), they can follow the below links,
i met almitra during the time that i was working for the advertising company in bellingham and doing work “on the side” for an esoteric book store. the owner of this book store put me in contact with someone who, she said, was “opening another ‘esoteric’ book store” in a different part of town. that person was almitra, and i worked with her until i moved to seattle, doing sign painting, making labels for the book shelves, designing and printing flyers and pamphlets and doing advertising design, including a number of advertising magazines, as well as artistic design for these crazy cards that she wanted me to print for her in 1992, which had her “intuitive” meaning for the individual letters of the words. they were actually sort of hillarious, in a sad kind of way, because her “intuition” frequently told her what words meant, but only if they were spelled in her own “intuitive” way, and i had to inform her on a number of occasions that a particular word wouldn’t work, because the dictionary disagreed with her “intuition” and if i spelled the word the way she wanted to spell it, she would end up looking like a pompous, uneducated moron.
she never actually paid me with money. she gave me a fairly large african drum, and a lot of promises, but it was only after i told her that i wasn’t going to do any more work for her that she offered me the computer that she had bought to do the design work that i had been doing for her. it was an acceptible offer to me, since i was in the business of doing typesetting and design work, and, for the time, it was a pretty attractive computer – a Mac LCII. in return, i completed one more magazine for her, and then informed her that i was now living in seattle and couldn’t do work for her any longer.
shortly after i moved to seattle – once i had actually got an apartment of my own – my former-friend jim came to visit for a couple of weeks, ostensibly because he wanted to “get straight” after pretty much losing most of his life to bottles of cheap, fortified wine. i later learned that he was working with almitra, and one of the reasons he came to “visit” me was so that he could get a copy of my key, which, after i realised that staying at my apartment wasn’t going to help jim “straighten out” and threw him out, he proceded to go back to bellingham and give to almitra, who used it to break into my apartment and steal my computer back… and then he had the gall to email me a couple of weeks later because he couldn’t break the password that i had set to restrict access to the computer and he had to ask me if i would give it to him… which, of course, i wouldn’t, and laughed at him for his delusion that i would… 😐
apparently, she’s got a web site (designed by her son, who was approximately 4 years old when i was working for her), and she’s actually selling the "Words Of Power" cards in an online revival of the original central sun brick and mortar shop in bellingham – she says that it also operated on kauai before that, and it well may have, but if it was, it was very likely a "hippie tarot readings and esoteric doodads at inflated prices" shop run by a post-adolescent psychotic who thought she was a healer, because that’s pretty much what it was when i worked for her in bellingham.
these people must be members of my karass, because as hard as i try to get away from having to associate with them, they keep on showing up, whether i like it or not…
after 12 hours labour and an emergency c-section at 8:00 this morning, we have four healthy new puppies and everyone is resting peacefully after a very long and busy night. lucy should be okay, but right now she’s still under the influence of some pretty heavy pain medication.
lucy’s due date is tuesday, so i’m on puppy-watch. i know that the due date is just an approximation, and that they could come any time between now and two or three weeks hence, but i’m hoping that it will be sooner than later, and i imagine lucy is as well.
i bought the cats some fresh catnip today. they haven’t had any for a while, and have been having to fall back on the aerosol “catnip” spray, which has been running very low for quite a while. i’ve always wished there was a drug that all i had to do was be around it, that would do the same thing to me that catnip does to cats.
Minn. Pol With Gun Outside Abortion Clinic Says He Was Just In Area ‘Checking On’ His Girlfriend – this is how one married, republican politician justifies potentially unlawful behaviour: it’s all a “misunderstanding”, he was just “trying to check up on her”… with a loaded gun… of course if he had been a democrat, or an ordinary citizen, he would have been put in jail, and there would have been no story…
Clueless Patsy Set-up by FBI in Christmas Tree Bombing Plot and FBI stopped Portland bomb suspect from taking job before sting – the FBI has been up to their old shennanigans again: finding a mentally disturbed 19-year-old kid, preventing him from getting gainful employment, building him up to believe that he’s serving a greater purpose, convincing him that he’s building a bomb (complete with a real test explosion in a remote area), and then arresting him and claiming that they’ve caught another “terrorist”. if they actually had a terrorist, my guess is that nobody would recognise him… 😐
TSA Glass Box Mother Over Stored Breast Milk – she’s a mother, and pumps breastmilk for her infant. she doesn’t have a problem, until one day she’s held up because the TSA doesn’t know their own rules, so she files a complaint. the next time she travels, the TSA is waiting for her and makes up rules to prevent her from making her flight. the reason they get away with it…?
this was actually taken on monday, but i’m just getting around to downloading the photos from my camera. i tried to bring out as much light as i could, but there are actually a couple of big buildings, right in the center of the picture, which are lit up, but because of the fact that the individual lights are so small, only one of them barely shows up, but you can’t see the whole building. i know that photography that would capture that amount of light is possible, but apparently not with my digital camera. perhaps with my analogue camera, but that takes a lot longer to set up, which is not very conducive to taking pictures by the side of the freeway, with cars whizzing past you.
the rules (to which i contributed) state that this shouldn’t be done, but rules were meant to be broken from time to time. not only that, but i think this is a very good example of why i’m perfectly happy using the operating system i am using, which is kubuntu, rather than either mac or windows… although, to be honest, i’ve experienced essentially the same thing on a mac, but at this point, my impression is that macs have turned into expensive toys for geek-wannabes with too much money.
anyway…
i got three spam messages that made it through my principle spam filter. of course, the spammers didn’t count on my having a secondary spam filter, and they still ended up in my waste messages bin without even hitting my inbox, but that’s not the point. the point is that one of the three messages was in arabic text, and it rendered correctly on my machine. keep in mind that arabic is written right-to-left, and english is written left-to-right (which is why i didn’t copy and paste the text: wordpress, for all of its advantages, doesn’t deal well with LTR and RTL languages and non-standard text – i.e. not unicode – in the same post). i took a screen shot of it, though, and here it is:of course i reported it to spamcop, and deleted it without replying, but it’s not often that a spam message makes that much of a positive impression on me. it wasn’t the words themselves, but the fact that my computer knows enough to be able to differentiate between RTL and LTR text in the same message without some kind of special prompt from me.
i had a gig last sunday, a rehearsal monday and wednesday, another gig yesterday, and a gig today. i get sunday off (because our usual rehearsal space will not be available this week), then i have a rehearsal monday, tuesday and wednesday of next week. the gig yesterday was for the dio de los muertos celebration at the seattle art museum. unlike most of the previous banda gozona performances i’ve been to, this one included my camera and i took some really cool photos, not all of which are related to dio de los muertos. but most of them are… the gig today is the ballard sedentary sousa band’s “Sousa Bash” for john philip sousa’s birthday. unlike previous years, when we have had an outsized saxophone and a standing-room-only crowd, or last year, when there was a major storm, the bridge closed, and we had to start a half-hour late because most of the band wasn’t there, this year promises to be relatively tame… although that was said before the performance, and a lot could change between now and 6:00 pm. the philharmonic is into full rehearsal mode for the december panto, which has been extended to four weeks this year.
this was taken at approximately 6:30 in the afternoon, on state highway 99, south of the duwamish river, looking north.
here is a krampus fez if any of you out there are interested in getting me a xmas present. also i still haven’t gotten the abraham lincoln top hat that i was lusting after in may. either one (or both) of these would earn my eternal gratitude, and whatever i make or sell of equal value in return… just mentioning it… 🙂
speaking of fezzes, this is #FezFriday for @fezmonger who, of course, won’t be able to find the hashtag, because it’s not on twitter, or whatever infernal machination is in charge of that sort of thing. nevertheless, Fez Friday this week is augmented by Zora, the Queen of Cute, and the Fourth Fastest Dog IN THE UNIVERSE, which will, hopefully, further influence the arbiter of such things to decide in my favour when awarding a 50% off coupon for a fez order, later in the month.
so ¾ of Snake Suspenderz went out to Cholmondleigh-land (his actual site is here, but he’s got some sort of infernal device on his site that keeps crashing my new version of firefox – konqueror does okay, however, which makes me wonder what is really the problem). all in all, a quite enjoyable evening, although the hippie ineptitude factor seemed to be working overtime: we were consistently running late, and it wasn’t until 10:00 or so that we managed to get the live show over and start on the films. i managed to be able to break moe away from her homework and brought her along as well, which made the evening all the more enjoyable. we were joined on stage by the inimitable master payne and, of course, the reverend himself, although he didn’t “ascend a stairway of machetes, barefoot” because somebody ripped off all his machetes, so instead he walked a pathway of broken glass, barefoot. since the last time i was there, he has actually finished the rail-pup (a self-propelled closed-circut railway) which was even more fun in the dark – you’d be barreling along blindly, cranking to beat the band, and the track would suddenly curve and you’d be riding on two wheels trying not to fall over… not like the last time i was there, when the track wasn’t finished yet, and if you didn’t watch where you were going, you’d plunge off the end of the track into the undergrowth…
chumleigh and i have been doing what we do, more or less, for 35 years or so: in 1978 i was playing with a dixieland band, and we were playing for the last official “Fat Tuesday” celebration in seattle. unbeknownst to us (at the time), there had been a major riot in pioneer square the night before, so there were mounted police in riot gear everywhere, and most everyone else was sticking to the edges of pioneer square, and acting very dodgy, and here we were, this small band of incredibly young musicians playing happy music in the square, very surreal. then this guy came up to us and introduced himself as reverend chumleigh, and wondered if we had a job or worked anywhere, and offered us a job playing at the alligator palace in la conner. i was the only person that had graduated from high school at the time, but i didn’t know where la conner was, and ended up in bellingham. i didn’t actually meet him again until much, much later, in 2008. in the mean time, i worked as a fish packer, a migrant farm worker, a typesetter, spent two years in a tech school, and then worked as a musical instrument repair technician, as a typesetter (again) and as a computer geek before i had a brain injury and realised that what i really wanted to be doing all along was music, whereas chumleigh was playing with the flying karamazov brothers, being involved with the beginnings of the oregon country fair, and building a reputation as one of the biggest names in vaudeville…
definitely makes me wonder what would have happened to me if i had known where la conner was, back in ’78…
ETA: in poking around, looking for links to the alligator palace, i found this article from Frog Hospital, about fishtown, a place that i visited in the early 1980s, and another article, about robert sund, whose cabin i stayed in the first time i visited fishtown… which, while it doesn’t have much about chumleigh, brings back a whole bunch of memories…
everybody is jumping on the bandwagon, which is normally something that causes me to examine my preferance towards something a lot more closely, but in this case, i think it is justified: doonesbury’s 40th anniversary.this was one of the first appearances of a character that i haven’t seen in a loooong time, named Bernie. i don’t know what ever happened to him, and as far as i can tell, there isn’t any mention of him at Slate (which is what you get if you type in www dot doonesbury dot com), but Bernie has been an example of what i wanted my life to be like ever since i first encountered him.
mark slackmeyer and i had a rocky relationship at first. when he appeared on the scene, i was around 10 years old, and i was intent on not becoming one of those long-haired drug-taking hippie-radicals that were all the rage in the 70s… but then, a few years later, i went to college and my parents rented out my room, which meant that, when i came home between sessions, i had to sleep in the garage – mark slackmeyer spent at least one summer in his parents’ garage, for similar reasons. and as i got a couple of years into college, and discovered cannabis, LSD, and other “drugs” there came to be even more similarities between me and mark…i have all of the original doonsebury books around here somewhere… these two were scanned from the second one, called “The President Is A Lot Smarter Than You Think”.
i’ve been carrying around a looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS” ever since i graduated from the tech school, in 1986, which contains all of the class notes, handouts and other printed materials for the brass repair sections that i completed when i was in training.
because of the fact that, for 25 years i have focused on the repair of woodwind instruments, i have actually never looked in the looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS”, and it has langushed in various places, including currently on a shelf in my workshop with a bunch of other looseleaf notebooks.
but last night, i took down that notebook, and turned to the exact page that had the answer that i was looking for, which was techniques for freeing stuck tuning slides.
i mentioned to moe last night that i had never even opened this notebook since my tech-school days, and she commented that i had carried it around with me for all that time without ever being used. however i would carry it around with me, unused, for another 25 years if i could be guaranteed that, the next time i open it, i would find exactly the information for which i am searching.
Future Chaos: There Is No “Plan B” – sooo… have fun while you can, i guess, ’cause if plan A fails, there’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of chaos, almost immediately, and there’s nothing you as an individual, and not much you as a group of well armed and well prepared people can do about it… 😐
and this is for those who think that the budget crisis that we’re currently in the middle of is the fault of the democrats: Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show – and we’re still losing to these morons?!? 😐 admittedly the democrats are nothing to write home about, but they’re not the source of the current problems, and i really wish the republicans would remember that when they put all these ads on TV about how evil the democrats have been recently: we’re still recovering from the bush years, which were principally republican, and we will be for quite a while yet, so just cool it.
Microsoft’s search engine will mine Facebook data – another reason not to use either microsoft or facebook. i have placed a directive in my robots.txt file that specifically denies microsoft’s search engines from indexing my site (while allowing everyone else), and i don’t use facebook… but my wife does…
Can a Person Be Moral without Being a Christian? – hint: his answer is no. “[I]f God is not your god, you will serve Buddha. Or, if not Buddha, perhaps Allah. Or, if not Allah, perhaps Baal. Or, if not Baal, perhaps Confucius.” let’s see: buddhism, confucianism and islam are recognised, but i don’t know of any modern baal-worshippers, except for jews, and, by extension, “christians”, who worship בעל (ba’al, or “lord”)… and he apparently doesn’t recognise hindus, or jaina, or taoists… maybe i shouldn’t expect so much. i keep this guy in my regular news feed primarly because he is so absurd. he gets more absurd with every new post. maybe he’ll follow the pingback to my site and learn how truly absurd i find his views. maybe not. who knows…
no story about how i met him once, because i didn’t. but you know who he was anyway:
The Mandelbrot Monk is an article about the fictional monk Udo of Aachen who did not discover the mandelbrot set 700 years earlier. isn’t internet wonderful? 😐
the last time i fed the snake, i went down to the place where i buy live mice, and they were in the middle of packing up, in preparation for closing their business down permanently. they told me that they were still going to be in the business of providing rats, mice and other vermin for feeders, but they couldn’t afford to keep the business going. they gave me a phone number, which i labeled “feeder mice james”.
i called the number yesterday. there was no answer, but a message said that if i left my number, they’d call me back. they never called back. this doesn’t look promising.
i called again this morning. someone answered, and they knew who i was, which is as promising as i could have expected. they said that i should come over and get mice, so i did. i went over to this random house that i have been driving past on a more-or-less regular basis for about five years, and picked up three adult mice. so far, so good.
i get home and put one of the mice in the tank with the snake. he hisses at it, and strikes at it, but is obviously not interested in the mouse as food.
currently, the mouse has taken refuge on top of the thermometer in the tank, which is probably not the best place for hiding, but who can say what goes through the mind of a prey species when they are hunted in a closed environment.
he may be interested later. one time it took four days to convince him that mice were, actually, food. once the first one goes down, the others usually follow fairly quickly. however, there is, always, the possibility that he is just not hungry, in which case he usually develops a relationship with the mouse, and they end up sleeping together. at that point, i have, in the past, just returned the mice to the store, and come back for them in a couple weeks. but because of the fact that i am now purchasing the mice from some random person, i wonder what his policies are, on accepting “returns” of “uneaten mice”. 😐
there were three blue jays arguing over the fresh suet i put out yesterday. i was only able to get this, more or less clear photo of one of them before they were chased away by the hummingbirds, of which i was not able to get a clear shot. we have a whole herd of hummingbirds that live somewhere around here, and they’re territorial little buggers, even taking to dive-bombing me, on occasion.
these are a couple of contestants from the 2010 European Beard and Moustache Championships.
if that “god” is not unchanging, limitless and eternal, that “god” is not a God at all, and we have no need to worry about creating a “bad report” for him.
if, on the other hand, that God is unchanging, limitless and eternal, then nothing that we, as human beings, can do will ever affect that God, and His love (or whatever you may call it) for us will never be affected by anything that we can do, regardless of how “blasphemous” it may seem to be.
therefore, it is my opinion that “blasphemy” means “something that can get you in trouble with another human being”, and it is, therefore, more-or-less meaningless except when used as a way to keep people under control, and then only when the people are scared enough to believe it is actually possible for “god” to do bad things to them.
i am not that scared.
for “christians”:for “muslims”:for “jews”:
for buddhists…? hindus…? anyone else even have the concept of blasphemy?
