Never been one to let the carrier drop

I encourage you all to check out the OkCupid politics quiz. It’s pretty nifty.

I’m apparently right on the line between democrat and socialist, which sounds about right. It is scary to note that the okcupid community has almost as many people voting for Bush as Kerry.. And, one would hope that this would be a reletively young and informed demographic, which would make one think that there’d be more Kerry supporters in there. (not that Kerry is exactly that great a guy either.. a friend of mine the other night was wearing a button that summed up my feelings pretty well: ‘Bush and Kerry both make me want to Ralph’. Not that I will, because WA is a swing state and I very, very badly want Bush to be just a bad 4-year footnote in the annuls of history.

Or, as another friend of mine observed, ask not what your country can do for you, ask how embarrassed you’re going to be about it..

I’ve now discovered another activity that I can do to help me get over my stage fright (which, thankfully, is getting much better – anyone remember a year ago, at EMP, how scared I was? ;-))

Karaoke.

Surprisingly frightening.. worse than doing keys, because it’s something I’m not by any stretch of the imagination good at – but yet, it seems to be permissable to be bad at it. And it’s entertaining in any case.

Tonight I met a new friend [I don’t know if it’s something about Seattle, or something about me – but lately, I’ve been finding friends all over! Ravers, geeks, hippies, good people all. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Seattle?] and went out, sang ‘Everybody hurts’ (which I massacred somewhat, but only somewhat) in a smoky karaoke bar. I wonder if the iSchool people will ever have a iSing night.. heh heh…

It was, as Alex is wont to say, a fun time.

Tomorrow night I fly to SoCal to see Tears For Fears and Billy Idol. I’m excited, a bit, yes..

Work problems are all over the place lately.. I find myself torn – because I’d like to keep getting the money for the parking meter project, but at the same time, I’m soooo tired of parking meters, and so over parking meters.. I need to find a new job. I really do. I don’t love what I do any more.. I’m not even sure I like it very much. I don’t believe that what I’m doing is for the good of mankind – I’m starting to think it’s rather the opposite.

Maybe I should call up Craig and see how serious he was about that job at a video game company – at least that’s work I could be proud of.

And of course there’s still that part of me that dreams of the band taking off and making enough money to pay for my existence. Realistically, though, I know that generally just doesn’t happen.

Okay, so, you all know the drill. It’s audiance participation time in the comments

1) And the destination’s clear: Anywhere but here

2) When we’re free to love anyone we choose – when this world’s big enough for all different views – when we all can worship, from our own kind of pews.. we shall be free

3) There were future power people throwing love to the loveless – shining a light because they wanted it seen

4) We were so in phase / In our dance hall days / We were cool on craze / When I, you, and everyone we knew /
Could believe, do, and share in what was true

5) Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear? Refuse to hand it down – the legacy stops here.

6) Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind..

7) If you want, then start to laugh / If you must, then start to cry / Be yourself don’t hide /Just believe in destiny. / Don’t care what people say / Just follow your own way / Don’t give up and use the chance / To return to innocence

8) Right here, Right Now / There is no other place I want to be / Right Here Right Now / watching the world wake up from history

9) I may not know a thing about you. You don’t know a thing about me. May not know a thing about you – but if we really see, we’re alive..

10) So I thought about her as I sang that night, and how the circle keeps rolling around – how I act when I’m facing the footlights, and how she’s flying with both feet on the ground.

Bonus Track: [by same artist as #10]:

11) “And as he stands there saying ‘We’re just two of a kind’ / It hits me like a thunderbolt exploding in my mind / As I look into his leering, aged, wrinkly mirror of my own face / He laughs and says ‘Of course dear son – where do you think you came from in the first place?”

So, this morning I walked outside to find that a used ion laser I’d purchased was sitting on my doorstep.. packed in a regular cardboard box with

A: No cover on the laser tube assembly
B: a 20 lb power supply directly under the laser assembly, and flopping around loose
C: a couple of foam peanuts.

Now, a peice of background information – a argon laser is a plasma tube, and in order to protect the inside of this tube, it’s coated with berellium oxide. This substance, when it meets with water, turns into a extreme nasty so extremely nasty that the suggested action if you break one of these tubes is to cover it with a dessicant, and call the hazmat people. Yes, really.

[It strikes me that if I were a terrorist, I might just break open a few of these tubes, scrape the powder off, and mail it. Be a lot more effective than anthrax, for sure. Easier to get, too..]

Anyway, so I left him some stunningly negative feedback [I was a little upset by this somewhat reckless endangerment of my life, for some reason], and discovered ebay’s latest addition to the auction community: private feedback. Now you can opt out of the public feedback system, at which point users can no longer read your feedback. But they can still tell he got a negative one. Wonder if he’ll give me negative feedback as revenge?

S.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040912/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_explosion&e=1&ncid=

Okay, so, yes, that’s news. I love how we’re downplaying the possibility that it was nuclear.. what else causes a 2.5 mile mushroom cloud, exactly? That’s a little big, don’t you think? Okay, so, now we know where the weapons of mass destruction are. In the hands of a genuine, certifiable nutcase.. [do you get the feeling I’m not totally impressed with the leadership of North Korea?]

I wonder where the next one will detonate.. and what Our Fearless Leaders will have to say about it.

I also wonder why I’m not hearing more about this event…

I do not live in the united states of america. I live on planet earth.
I am not black, white, mexican, korean, or japanese. I am human.
My earlier post about 9/11 was largely caused by [aside from personal depression, which is another issue entirely] my being upset that 9/11 has turned into this media circus, while we completely ignore the anneversery of the day we levelled chunks of baghdad, based on a lie.

I’m sorry, that upsets me. It always will. Ours are not better than theirs. We are not more valuable, we are not more important, we are not god’s chosen fucking people, okay? EVERY human is equally important. When you hold a media circus for every other tragedy that caused great loss of life that has happened in the last four years, then I won’t complain so much about 9/11. But until that day comes..

.. I still won’t be watching any television. And I’ll begging the rest of you to turn yours off.

I do regret the events of 9/11. While I respect the brilliance that went into the attack, I do not and can not condone attacks against innocent people, _ever_. Those attacks were just as wrong as our attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand what motivated them – or at least, I think I do, although Osama, if you’re listening, next time we need a note.

I also understand what motivated ours – or at least, again, I think I do. I suspect the full motivations may never really be understood – it’s just too big and complex.

So yes, I’m sorry for all the innocent people who died in 9/11. But I’m not any more sorry for them [or any less, for that matter] than the innocent people who died in any of our wars.

Come on, humanity, get your shit togeather. Please.

[coming from one human who can’t even remotely claim to have his shit togeather, yes, I agree that’s rather funny. I’m a bit like Harry Chapin in the 60s.. (difficult reference to explain, but I’ll know what I mean when I look back over this which is probably allt hat really matters)]

S.

Who else thinks that Seal might have been to the odd rave?

I refer you to Future Love Paradise..

One of the 450s was a infant mortality.. I hope that Petosa will just swap it for me instead of making me ship it back to Mackie. They *better*, since they were floor models.. someone really should have tested them before packing them back up..

It’s a weird failure mode, too. Power supply checks out okay, power stage is still making watts, but preamp is beyond toast.

S.

This 9/11 – the annversery of the ‘national tragedy’ (and I’m sorry, but I can’t even say that without my voice dripping sarcasm any more) – I sat and contemplated, for a few minutes, what it would have been like to be in Iraq. We got two towers and the pentagon – they got most of their city.

I won’t go on on a long political rant. Instead, I’ll just say that I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop the war, and I’m even sorrier that it turns out that every ‘viable’ option on the ballot is someone who thinks that the war – which we now KNOW was over ficticious things (not that we didn’t have a pretty good idea before) – was a good idea.

Can’t we just throw the lot of them in jail and start over? The CEOs who make millions while their workers starve or have their pensions robbed, the leaders who would start wars to make money, can’t we just overthrow them.

Yes, I know, revolution is bloody, and I hate blood and violence and all things similar. But couldn’t someone figure out some way for some _evolution_ to occur?

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Lately, it seems like ebay has been indulging in more and more untrustworthy behaviors that enable sellers to, with a minimum of effort, get you to pay your maximum bid amount.

Two obvious ones:

1) with a shill bidder, have the bidder put a very high bid, and then retract. When a bid is retracted, the high-water mark does not move down, as it should, but stays at your maximum bid amount. handy for ebay, since they make more on auction fees, _really_ handy for sellers.

2) ‘Second-chance auction’. This one is beyond bizarre. You can sell multiple identical items, using a second-chance auction, for the same amount as your maximum bid.

In general, I think ebay is waning seriously in my list of ways to buy things.