Posted on by mwhybark

Good and bad

Finally, we have higher-speed internet access: 2.x mbps as opposed to the former 256k dsl. Swapping out the access points and routers went very smoothly, thank heavens. The biggest stumbling block was dealing with the behavior of a mixed pack of Airport Express wireless networking devices. Thankfully they have settled down and give every sign of continued maintenance-free networking activity.

In practical terms, this means that Hulu is now functional.

I had a line on a near-mint large-aperture goto telescope, but in order to retrieve it I had to go to the Kitsap peninsula. After the windstorm overnight, the day was clear, warm, and bright, and I was looking forward to a ferry ride and a drive in the company of the pup. Alas, as I waited to drive onto the ferry, my car’s battery died. For the past couple of weeks, the car has had flaky electronics, and this was the last straw. On my way to the ferry, I had driven about twenty miles – the battery had received more than enough juice. It was apparent to me that if I got a jump and crossed to the peninsula, the probability of another non-starter event was very high, and so I waved off.

Tomorrow I take the car in to learn the expense entailed. That expense may very well curdle the telescope purchase.

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Karel

Last night I had an elaborate dream about my deceased friend Karel – somehow he and I had managed to obtain some sort of subsidized space in a large, castle-like building. His family was there, or at any rate my dream version of it. The majority of the tenants were from Eastern Europe and my job was to coordinate space allocation. I’m pretty sure the building was based on my experience of musicians’ practice spaces, warrens of subdivided rooms in unused industrial buildings and basements.

This building was like an armory or something and had a large greensward which was unfortunately pretty nasty – image a lawn that has been turned into an unkempt swamp and you will get the idea. The marshy area was strewn with black, abandoned shipping crates and amplifier cases, the detritus that accumulates in practice-hall corridors.

The dream was sufficiently convincing that I just took Karel’s presence at face value, only recognizing it as a gift of overtime minutes in the moments after awakening.

There was a large dog, not friendly, possibly an irish wolfhound, probably drawn from watching the Thin Man marathon on TMC over New Year’s.

The heart of the dream, however, was the necessity of billeting a large group of ethnic Russians in the building. The Eastern Europeans already settled in their spaces were dead set against welcoming Russians into the building, but they didn’t have any say in the matter as the building was some sort of transitional shelter for recent arrivals to the locale. People became angry at me because I pointed out that the Russians could not be excluded on the basis of nationality.

Karel tried to mediate, unsuccessfully, and it was about this time that I began to gain an awareness that this was some sort of dream.

It was nice to see and spend time with him again. I miss him. He was a nebbish and a sad sack, but he had a kind heart.

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The Eve of the Feast of Osiris

Recently, while conducting my annual researches into the origins of the beloved holiday legend of Osiris Claus, I had occasion to venture deep into the vaulted reaches of a dusky book-crypt. Far and far I had crept, flickering cell-phone my only source of illumination as I scanned the cobwebbed stacks in search of the rumored grimoire. Out amidst the dusty plains of the online social mediasphere, I had heard rumours – hints, really. Messages encoded in the subject lines of what appeared to be spam. Clues found in acrostics formed by the first letters of each line of official governmental press releases. Numerological indications conveyed in YouTube hitcounts. After carefully collating all available evidence with myself and my avatars in a marathon session of Google Wave, I had been directed to this particular section of a failing independent bookstore.

There! Surely THIS. THIS black-bound volume – It must be that which I had so long sought. I had come across a musty volume of forgotten Moore – Clement Clarke Moore, or so I took it to be at the time. I had long speculated that Moore was among the occult initiates of the Osiran League – a secret brotherhood devoted to reintegrating the ancient secrets of Old Kingdom Egypt into the day-to-day life of his world and time. At long last, I held in my hands the very manuscript that would prove or disprove my cherished notions of the initiate’s knowledge – the Secret of Santa Claus himself!



Opening the crumbling volume, I flipped past a number a pages which did not seem to fit my hypothesis, pulling them easily from the cracking spine of the volume and setting them alight in order to better illuminate what I sought – for there it was! What to my wondering eyes should appear, but an early draft of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” or so it seemed. The lines were crabbed and etched with strikeouts and annotations; up and down the margins were curious figures of stylized birds and feathers and such.

I was able to copy the entirety of the poem before my cell battery died but was startled by a deep coughing noise from the depths of the stacks. Dropping the book in stark terror, I ran deep into the maze. I know not how long and long I wandered, my only source of nourishment the binding glue from well-thumbed romance novels, remaindered Twilight books, and the like. I only know that when I emerged blinking into the light of day, a black man was the president, yet neither socialism nor universal health care had come to pass in the land.

I reprint the lines here, but I must caution you: some say to read this work leads ineluctably to madness! You have been warned.

Black was the night before the Feast of Osiris

not a hippo did stir, not even an ibis.


The stockings were hung in the temple with care

in certainty Osiris‘ star soon would shine there.

The children and slaves were all locked up for the night

while night-fleets of bats and scarabs took flight


The pharoah and queen in headdress and cap

had just settled down for a long winter’s nap.

When out in the courtyard arose such a clatter

Pharoah and guards sprang to see what was the matter.

Away to the gates and the walls they all dashed

as braziers were kindled and bronze weapons flashed.

The moon on the sand at the banks of the Nile

Gave the white sheen of snowfall to to palm trees and tile –

When what to those wondering eyes did appear

but a floating sarcophagus and green mummy so queer.

That wizened corpse stood, neither living nor virus

All knew in a moment it must be Osiris

Returned as each year to bridge the dead and the quick

Then he whistled, and shouted, and called them all Nick.



“Now, Nick! Now Nicholas! Now Nicky, and Nick!

On, Nik! On Nik-nok! On, Nicolas and Nick!

To the top of the pyramid, to the top of the tomb!

Now dash away, dash away, dash up past the moon! ”


As sand, dust, and leaves before the desert wind fly

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up past the mastaba the courtiers they flew,

With the sarcophagus, and Osiris too.



And then in a twinkling the pharoah he heard

the great rush of wind from the wings of that bird

Horus’ hawk eye took in all with no pause

And then lent Osiris the strength of his claws


Each year the sown mummy springs up from his box

garments and flesh stitched bloody with ashes and rocks;

his emerald skin wound in scarlets and creams

sprouts split the silt by the river’s blue stream.


His eyes – how they burned! His brow darkly beetling!

His cheeks were like mosses, his nose like a seedling!

His lips were drawn back in a rictus of death

But such vigor and motion – he surely drew breath!


A bundle of wheat formed the staff of his flail

his red and white spiral crook kept the herd in the vale

while his limbs were quite thin he shone bright as day

flashing and sparking like a spring storm on the way


Dessicated and thin, a cadaverous mummy

His green skin and scars looked rotten and plummy

His unblinking eye and twisted gnarled hand

raised high and showed all who was lord in this land;



He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work.

He filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

Bony hand at arm’s length to the Pharoah he strode

then clutching the king to his bosom he rose


He sprang to his coffin, stilling the screams of the king

And away they all flew like the bird on the wing.

he was heard to exclaim, ere he hove out of sight,

“A fecund Nile flood to all, and to all a good night!”


Posted on by mwhybark

More WTO

I looked through my blog archives to see what all I’ve written about WTO and was surprised when I only turned up this relatively short piece.

I did a hard drive search and found the letter I sent to the city council which appears to have been based on the shorter version previously posted, but which also includes the original URL of a video I found showing some of the events I saw that December 2.

Here it is. This was originally composed and sent it on December 5, 1999:

I live and work in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

I left my house after dinner and followed the circling helicopter to see what was going on. Arriving at the south end of the Broadway playfield, there was lots of tear gas and smoke in the air. Moving into the gas, my eyes welled with tears and my mouth and nose nose strung sharply. However, was as able to continue forward through the gas, although visibility was very low due to the density of the gas and its’ effects on my eyes. I crossed Pine at eleventh, using the crosswalk, directly in front of a line of the black-suited regular riot squad police who were using the edge of the crosswalk itself as a kind of demarcation line. A police gas gunner was standing in the crosswalk in front of the line and as I approached, he began to set a firing stance.

Glancing to the left and to the right, he saw me approaching and paused. I motioned that I was going to pass behind him, he stepped forward, lowering his weapon, and I passed between him and the line of riot police. The interchange was curiously polite; only later did I realize how strange and dangerous it had been.

Bars and restaurants less than a half-block from the confrontation remained open and were jam packed with happy and excited people, all glued to live tv coverage of the event occurring literally outside the windows.

I had a beer at the Comet after checking my band’s musical equipment at a nearby rehearsal space, which was of course fine. Returning to the standoff, I spoke with some Teamsters representatives briefly, and then began to seek out media people to convey to them my impression that the crowd was very largely local-to-the-neighborhood, drawn in curiosity and anger at the police presence. There were two chants that went up repeatedly – “get off our hill, get off our hill”, and “you go home, we go home; you go home, we go home”. Other chants included “shame”, and “whose streets? our streets”

Moments before the last round of gas, the crowd began to sing songs. Such hits as “Theme from Gilligan’s Island”. “Theme from The Brady Bunch”, for an incredible finale with most successful participation, “Silent Night”, in a scene reminsicent of the film “All Quiet on the Western Front”. However, there was no reciprocal singing from the police line.

I was in a group of people talking to King County Councilman Brian Derdowski when the gas was released and grenades were fired at about 2 am. A grenade exploded directly between Mr. Derdowski and myself, blinding and deafening us momentarily (about like an m-80). Then everybody ran. I was hit several times on my left leg and have big bloody welts up and down it. Running away along 11th in the playfield area, I caught up with and asked Mr. Derdowski if he had been hit and was he alright, he said he was OK, but was going home to his wife so she would know he was OK. I concurred and did the same.

This knot of folks was one of the closest to the police line, and was clearly not within the main body of the crowd itself. This contributed to the number of times I was struck in the leg by the police fire.

I heard no warning of any kind immediately preceding the gas and bullets. However, the word within the crowd was that they police wanted people on the sidewalk not on the street. Upon reflection, I realize that I was probably standing on the sidewalk when the gas was launched.

I did not see any of the extremely aggressive police behaviors being reported as having happened on Broadway in the earlier confrontation at around 8:30 or 9. I also can clearly state my opinion that the the crowd that faced off with the police and guard troops on Capitol Hill was not violent or threatening.

—

A young man with a video camera was in the group of onlookers near Mr. Derdowski – he has allowed his footage to be digitized and posted to the web. He was hit in the head with a police grenade, and discusses this in the footage. I believe that the grenade that struck him is probably the grenade that exploded directly between Mr. Derdowski and myself.

I personally have concerns that the grenade might have been actually intended to strike Councilman Derdowski, as he was clearly recognizable to the officers in the area, do to his brave and frantic efforts to defuse the situation. His back and head may have been in clear view of the police line.

http://www.aedigital.com/dec2sea.ram

at the very end when the police fire the grenades and gas, I am standing two people away from the camera.

at 8.01.2 exactly on the video I may be visible in profile in the distance on the tape. I look much farther away then I recall being. There may be edits on the tape – I remember Mr. Derdowski offering to meet with the young woman he is talking to at an office downtown. Additionally, I was on the other side of Mr. Derdowski from the gentleman with the camera, and may not appear visually on the tape at all.

Precisely preceding the sound of the gas grenades being fired, you can hear my voice saying “Can I have your name, sir?” I was hit on the leg by what I take to be several rubber bullets and have big honkin’ bruises to show for it. The bruises bled the night that they were made.

In between us was King County Councilman Brian Derdowski. He’s the guy in the suit who reappears from time to time.

There was no warning before the gas that I heard. As far as I knew, the police had been asking people to stay on the sidewalk, which is where I happened to be standing when the gas happened.

interesting perceptually for me is that the warning of “immediate arrest” heard on the video early on the tape was not heard me me at all. I believe that it was before I was there – I left and returned a couple of times. For example, i did not see the earth spiral that was made that we see in the video.

I have been told that the immediate arrest warning heard on the tape was issued at around 2:30.

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Back to the Old and Weird

Had brunch with Kineta and Demian before a viewing of the great “Old, Weird America” exhibit at the Frye. A communications snafu meant that Adrian was not tracked down to join, which seems a shame. I had seen the show a couple weeks ago while waiting for a League meeting and it knocked my socks off, especially the work of Dario Robleto.

Greg wants me to go see a collaborator’s screening tonight at around 9, I am inclined to do so. I need to spend tomorrow at the libraries, though, so I’m sorta dithering.

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Mulch and muck

Finally gave the lawn a winter haircut, mulchinated the leaves in after waiting for the whole treeload to end up on the ground.

Just before I started mowing, I noticed a bit of white plastic peeping out from an eroding bare spot in a corner of the yard that we know was used as a dump by prior owners. Usually when something surfaces from the tip I just pull it out and put it in our trash, so I pushed some dirt away and pulled out not one but two twenty-year-old real estate signs (“Better Homes and Gardens Realty”). The real unpleasant surprise was what was just below the signs. The motherfuckers had buried about six well-cracked window-sized single panes of glass and used the fucking real estate signs as a safety cap!

I dug up a good amount of the glass and realized I have a real problem: dog, meet hole in ground that will cut the hell out of your feet.

After thinking about it for a while I ended up refilling the hole with a bunch of dirt we had cleaned this summer; I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on the pooch.

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LIbrary mystery

Hey UW people!

200911251455

How are the books that line the walls in the giant Suzallo study room organized? There does not seem to be a system, and the books do not have dewey decimal tags. The spines nearest me are a jumble: “Pacific Slope Railroads” is next to the “New Oxford Book of Carols,” et cetera.

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Worried pooch

The windstorm last night freaked the dog out and since then he will not sit still until he is allowed to touch me.

Last night that took the form of rooting around until he got my hand on his head and today during the day it has meant that he has been lying on at least one of my feet. Since we are apparently in for another night of 30 to 50 mile-an-hour winds I expect to have some dog blanket later on tonight.

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Stormy

Man! That storm last night was really something. I was too tired to wake up and appreciate it properly, though. Still, giant thunderstorms are one of the things I miss about the weather from elsewhere. Haven’t walked around the house to check for deadfall yet but I bet there are some downed trees and limbs here or there.

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Not as planned

Today was a hamster wheel of falling behind.

First, I woke up at 5:30, thanks to the time change. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but around 1 pm I really started feeling it.

Then, my first-off activity in the morning is scouring Craigslist ads and prepping responses. There were so many this morning that I did not wind up until 10; I try to be done by 9. From 9 to noonish I am scheduled to work on this portfolio-dev site showcasing a local filmmaker’s award-winning doc. I have been making good progress on the site and my work objective today was to deploy a a vanilla HTML version of the site with linked nav elements before I slap some chrome and lorem in place tomorrow. Just as I started to crank, the phone rang, and it was my firewood delivery.

The wood was as promised a full cord of mostly cedar, a bit weather-wet but not unseasoned. Cords are an inherently variable measure. It’s whatever volume of wood you can fit into four feet by four feet by eight feet. Ideally the wood is tightly stacked to fit that volume, but in practice dealers can make more money by stacking loosely, so it’s common to receive significantly less than 128 cubic feet of wood. This guy stacked his material super tight for delivery and may have actually bonused me. The upshot of this is that while I had budgeted an hour to stack the wood, it took two hours. So at noon I was two hours behind on my work schedule.

Things progressed along these lines all day. Various disruptions and commitments stole another hour and a half from the afternoon, notably shipping some telescope parts, and at the end of the day I wound up with just over an hour in on one of two projects slated to use six hours. I have to tighten up!