Orthodox Discordianism

I am leaving the Internet.

I've canceled my Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts. I am having text messaging removed from my phone. This account is getting deleted in 48 hours.

hollyking, I need you to run the Unhallowed Seattle game. I will be unable to attend from here on out.

I will not be monitoring my cell phone or personal email. I will be reading my professional email and checking voicemail on business days from 8AM-10AM. If you need me in an emergency, you can contact sugar and ask her to pass me a message.

Edited: I will not be using instant messengers anymore, either. I am severing my connections to the 'Net as much as I can.

Hee! April 27 marks the 27th anniversary of sugar's emergence into this plane of existence

Pursuant to that frabulous joy, and seeing that it's a school night, we're having a party on April 25

The "deets":
April 25
10:00 PM
The Vogue at Neighbor's Underground
1509 Broadway, Seattle
21+
$8 cover

The Vogue is Seattle's premiere Goth/Industrial/80's New Wave club night. My very good friend DJ Eternal Darkness is one of three tremendous local DJs

Dinner beforehand is certainly going to happen, but there are no plans yet.

Please please please come and party with us!

Sugar will make the sadface if you don't!

So, who's in?

OH MY FUCKING GAWD!

I went to the Seattle U pool last night to join the Northwest Underwater Hockey League (no website, sadly) in a night of... laying hockey on the bottom of a pool</a>. It was sheer unmitigated raw awesome fun.

How to explain it.. you take a 3-pound puck, put it in a pool, and then dive after it, trying to push it into the opposing goal with a little stick. The majority of the game is on the pool bottom, you come up for air and repositioning only.

I'm a fat, out of shape son of a bitch. I used to SCUBA dive, but that ended up only helping me use the fins. I'm proud of myself- I only played for 5 minutes, but I stayed in the pool for an hour-forty.

I inhaled water. I nearly drowned. I took a chunk out of my knee on a pool tile. I forgot how to snorkel (SCUBA muscle memory screwed me). I panicked once or twice. I was so tired that I couldn't lift myself out of the pool.

I dove too deep too fast and fucked up my bad sinus. Being a good, smart diver, I blew my air and ascended... unfortunately, that's only the right procedure for SCUBA - I hit the surface and didn't have enough air to clear my snorkel, and ended up taking on water. Ah, well.

I played in the water for an hour and forty minutes. I played in the water till I was wrinkled and cold (but I wasn't the first one to get out of the pool!) and then I showered, sat in a sauna, and went to dinner/drinks with the team

It was sheer unedited joy the whole time. Even when I was exhausted, bleeding from the knee and clearing my lungs, I was having a great time. I can't wait till next week to do it all again.

though I'm thinking about registering for a swimming class to get some pool time in. Man, that was a fine workout.

Seriosuly, I think I'm going to start hating my parents.

( Latest News )

Today (28 Feb), Don will reappear in Arizona and begin shutting everything down. I have moved into Gwen and Duane’s house, a really nice tri-level with two bedrooms and a bath downstairs. I have appropriated bedroom number 1 until April 1. Don will be back, and we will move into our house in Jolly Harbour.

( read the rest! )

OK, not really, but my mom sent out pix of the island. Enjoy!

( The Island )

( Their House )


( Staving off the blues )

Havne't done this for a while, but I've had some things churning in my rich brain stewmeats that need to be let out to play.

First off, I'm still in therapy. I haven't been cured of anything yet, but my psychiatrist is encouraged. I just started taking 150mg of Lamictal for the bipolar, then in two weeks I'll step up to 200mg and stay there till... I'm not crazy, I guess. I'm going in for my next appointment on March 08, when I'll get another med to add to the mix, Vyvanse, which should start helping me get a handle on the ADHD.

I'm still getting used to the idea of having a real, official bipolar diagnosis. In all the years I've been dealing with the noise inside my skull, Inever considered that this was even a possibility. It's somehow "worse" to me than the clinical depression that I thought I had (in addition to the ADHD). Fortunately. the Lamictal is helping a LOT - I feel more centered, happier and more content with things. I'm not as quick to anger or frustration, and sugar tells me that I'm a lot sillier, and a lot less of a dick. These are good things, I think, and encouraging. I'm finally taking control of my life.

Retreading old ground for a moment, my parents are safely on the island of Antigua and happy as clams at high tide. As you may have read in previous posts, they love the island and its rich life experiences, and are likely not going to give it up for anything short of one of their kids having a major trauma. Mom sentme some pictures from/of their current residence, I'll post those later on.

I'm hella excited for them and a little envious of their opportunity. I'm looking forward to exploring options like that with sugar. If we don't seek them out, they'll never happen. We need to go ahead and put things like "get out of debt" "go to Thailand" and "Burning Man" on the calendar, and work towards those goals.

It's nice to be talking about "the future" and "goals" and not have it feel like it's some kind of joke. I'll actually get there some day.

Got into a not-insignificant bit of trouble at work. I'll find out later this week how serious it really was. Details later. once it all shakes out. Not sure how secure my employment is at this juncture. I'll worry about that later. I worried enough over the weekend

Speaking of over the weekend, had a lovely one. Went to the Six Arms with sugar and met up with the Seattle Steamrats, we had a pretty good time. Except for that one guy who was a Chatty Cathy Who Knew Everything Better Than You. But once he went home it got a lot better. Dude, for serious, you don't need to explain to me what "billeted aluminum" is, or expound on "How Steampunk Things Must Be Functional, and Nerf Mods Are For Shite." Aside from that, it was lovely and I look forward to the next one

Been thinking that I don't think enough lately. I havne't read too many books in the last year, I have been following news and politics, but I haven't formed clear opinions on anything. I feel like I'm falling behind in my potential to be a real-life griefer.

I feel like the Obama's "New New Dealio" is both good and tragic. We might not have enough information about what the extent of his plan is, but I'm all for having our nation's infrastructure rebuilt and overhauled. America's come to live with a number of problems with almost everything we come in contact with, it'll be nice to have shiny new roads and power grids and telecommunications networks. The hopeful upswing in job creation will be a great bonus as well.

However, it's going to cost us almost a TRILLION dollars. In addiiton to the TRILLION dollars that Prez Bush signed into effect a few months back, we've been told we're pumping the lifetime earnings of a million Americans into an economy that's broken at its most funadmental levels. How are we to trust the system that got us into this mess with making sure that our efforts are not wasted? Obama's promised a transparency of government (but seems to pick cabinet members that can't pay their taxes...), but how will that translate to business? Do we as a body sieze control over companies receiveing bailout money? How will the stimulus funds be doled out? Who picks the projects and the contractors?

I'm having trouble having faith in the system.. but I still have the hope I felt when the election results were tallied.

In the end. I don't know how I feel about it all.

That's about all for now.

Got another email from my mother - yeah, it pretty mcuh sounds like I lost 'em forever

( Jolly Harbor )

In sadder news. I got a call from my sister on Saturday.My dog, Madeline (who lived with my parents because I couldn't take her up to Seattle) had a stroke early Saturday morning and was put to sleep about 8AM. It was less distressing to me than I expected, but still made me sad. I knew that when I was in Arizona a few weeks back. I'd never see her again. I just didn't realize that "never again" was going to be 11 days. She was 13, and was a Christmas present from my folks in 1998 - we rescued her from a local shelter. I felt terrible for my sister, who had to call me early on a weekend to tell me that my grandmother had to have my dog put down. I assured her that I appreciated it, and that she hadn't completely wrecked my day. I snuggled Terra a little harder.

Back to your regularly schedule YouTubery... I think the next one will be Brainy British HipHop

( Emails from the Island )

I adore them and their sense of adventure and I'm more than a bit jealous of this opportunity - I am going to have to think about where I am and where I want to be.

Good luck, Mom and Dad. Love you, miss you

OK, I made a new community, craftpunks

For those of us who work in many different mediums. Come join us, show us what you've got

Just a reminder, First Saturday Club Night is in a few short weeks, we're hitting up Vogue NIght at Neighbours Underground. Come on down and play with us!

So - I know you guys are doing stuff out there. I see you! You, there, with your knitting needles! You sew and knit and bind books and make stuffs! You fiddle with clocks and build book cases and do super coolio stuff out of the dust bunny fluff you find over your bed!

Well, there's lots of crafting communities, and they all seem to have their own special bent, but I want one where you can do anything. Any type, any reason, any skill level. Macabre or traditional, edgy or normal. I don't care. I just want to see what you're doing! Tutorials are cool, showing off is fine, questions asked are groovy. I'm guessing I'd have to add "no sales" just because if the LJ world at large gets wind of it we'll be inundated with Etsy posts.

What do you think? Want to play along? I want to know what you're knitting - even if you're using steel links to do it. :)

Last night was OMG awesome

The concert was rad, the halftime show came off really well and everybody was super awesome. Love it

Got to chill with the club owner. who was my emcee - he loves the steam/goth crowd. We're aparently the most polite scene he's gotten to deal with. Thought that was kind of interesting


Oh, and a huge huge thanks to djeternaldarkne for stepping up and DJ'ing the whole show, not jsut the fashion show. Thanks, man! I hope they tipped out out or something.

My boots were sexy awesome win. Unfortunately, I suffered for fashion - they were too high, too tight and the backs of my knees are pretty torn up and painful. Ah., well. First run, I can fix 'em

Ran across this link last night, it's completely awesome

I can't read Russian, but the jist is that someone took a bunch of WWII photos of Leningrad (Now St Petersburg), mapped out the location they were shot from, took a modern picture, and then merged the two pictures. It's... incredible to me, how it's changed, how it's the same, and how a city under siege looks when reflected against itself.



Pretty pretty!

The incredibly talented and funny Benjy Feen has long been one of my favourite non-fiction writers. His essays on geek ephemera and aspects of the IT industry are insightful and clever and have made their way into the stew inside my brain, imparting a critically important flavour and they've shaped the way I view my career.

Sadly, Benjy hasn't written anything new (on that site) in about 4 years now, though I did recently discover him on Twitter. One of his last essays was a design document (for lack of a better term) for a communications protocol referred to as the "Peep Protocol"

Quoth Benjy:

It works like this:

Person A ("Billy") is a friend of Person B ("Sarah"). Billy doesn't have anything to actually say to Sarah right now, but wants to affirm their mutual connection in an undemanding, content-free way. So Billy sends Sarah a peep: an instant message, SMS, email, or other asynchronous message, as follows:

Billy: peep

If Sarah sees Billy's message and has anything to say to him, she can reply in detail:

Sarah: Hey, want to go out for sushi tonight?

However, if Sarah is too busy to actually reply in any meaningful way, she can still return Billy's affirmation of mutual connection by replying:

Sarah: meep

And that's all it takes to complete the transaction.

Furthermore, if Billy himself is too busy to risk getting engaged in a conversation, but wishes he could flash her the equivalent of a quick smile across a crowded room, he can still send her a quickpeep, abbreviated qp:

Billy: qp

Sarah knows that Billy hasn't time to chat right now, but that he is there and that he wanted to affirm their connection. She can either reply with a standard meep, or she can send him a reply written in such a way that it doesn't beg an immediate response:

Sarah: Going for sushi at Midori Mushi at 8 with Joe and Kris, hope you can make it.

And that's the Peep Protocol.

Special thanks to Jp Polk for her work as my equal contributor in developing this protocol.

So, hey there flist.

Peep

Gleefully yoinked from hollyking

Also,fuck yeah Dr Steel!

Huzzah!

The tickets for my super-great Steampunk fashion show (with Abney Park opening for me) are now on sale!

Come out and see my first-ever fashions show (that I'm running, not that I'm displaying in) at the uber-fun Club Heaven in Seattle's Pioneer Square.

This was just TOO amusing to not post.

(08:25:18 AM) ebtbmb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/
(08:25:22 AM) ebtbmb: CANNOT WAIT
(08:27:59 AM) me: That looks so hot
(08:29:53 AM) ebtbmb: has tim burton ever let you down?
(08:32:53 AM) me: He stood me up for a date once, when I was a sophomore
(08:33:16 AM) me: I waited all night at the bistro for him. The staff took pity on me and comped my iced tea
(08:33:28 AM) me: In his defense, I dont' think he ever knew about it
(08:33:33 AM) ebtbmb: lol
(08:33:36 AM) ebtbmb: that's a sad tale
(08:34:58 AM) me: I know. It's tragic.
(08:35:07 AM) me: I even wore my best Cure t-shirt