Author: jae

Beatles fans should pick up the Feb 20 issue of Rolling Stone. for once, it’s really, really good. (especially the sidebar about a visit from Peter Sellers with much jive drug talk.)

well… the one article is, anyway.

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at this moment, “President” Bush is just down the street from my old apartment… he’s at Mayport Naval Station, literally within a few blocks from where i lived in the ghetto of Atlantic Beach, FL.

what i wouldn’t give to be there right now.

speaking of Colin Powell’s IRREFUTABLE presentations, i also have unquestionable and absolute proof of my own to share:

everybody go rush out and find the latest issue of CMJ‘s New Music Monthly. do whatever it takes to get your filthy little paws on this one. it’s got TWO FULL CDs in it this time… 38 songs!!! and every single one is killer! the only “mainstream” music, as always, are the first tracks: one by Audioslave, and one by Johnny Marr‘s new band (btw, he’s up to his old, great guitaring; it sounds like classic Smiths, only with a Bono-wannabe for a singer (meh.)) …the rest is REAL alternative music (though not QUITE as diverse as usual)… it sounds like the CD version of 97X!

anyways, yeah… it’s real horrorshow!

my way of thinking is stupid.

regarding a post from yesterday:

it’s like that first day in Spring, when the snow is melting on the ground, and it’s somewhat warm out, and the sun is shining; you can smell the snow, but sense its impending lack.

just occurred to me to wonder

1) why nobody responded to my last mass email re: my new (as of January) site redesign (esp. since i so rarely ever do mass emails anymore, and most of the recipients haven’t heard from my ass in ages),
and
2) why none of the x-mas packages i sent seems to have reached their destinations (!!!??!!?!).

it’s not like i really need validation (per se) so much, i’m just starting to wonder (literally) if i truly exist? it’s like if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody’s there to observe it…

the weirdest thing is that i get more response from people i don’t even know at all. mind you, people i WANT to know, very much in fact (talking ’bout all of you on my friends list, etc., who i don’t know in real life). but still. anyone who knows me has just pretty much given up. i wonder what exactly that indicates? i could take The Easy Way Out™ and just assume that i’m a loser who shows his ass worst in reality, but shit! i show my ass here more than i do in real life! i dunno.

also, i wanna apologize (yet again!), because i’ve been neglecting commenting in YOUR journal. i don’t even reply in mine anymore these days. i don’t know why. i guess i’m just tired of the whole internet experience, or something. anyway, i love all you crazy, beautiful freaks, just so you know.

Amiri Baraka* RULES.

(EDIT: Amiri Baraka FUCKING rules.)

Bill O’Reilly is an ASS. (see also here and here)

(the poet -Poet Laureate of New Jersey, in fact!- (grin), formerly known as Leroi Jones, author of “Preface to a 20-volume Suicide Note” (etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.), and one of my favorite Beat writers… oh yes, and one of those “Dangerous” Black Men all you white folks scared about! haw haw!)

How evil are you?

(thanks to theredheaddiva for spotting this)

oh yeah. who rules?

i didn’t write the template, i just modified it a little. mainly the images. it used to look just like this before i got ahold of it.

you’ll notice, no doubt, that the top images align well over various resolutions and browsers.

and now, i am The King.

here’s Yet Another Thing Wrong With America™:

i was out with the snowthrower today (and don’t think the gout in my finger didn’t appreciate that, what with the freezing cold, the humidity, and the giant block of vibrating aluminum shaking the will to live right out of me), and as soon as a puff of wayward snow hits me in the face, my eyes started to burn.

burn and sting.

it wasn’t anything fuel-related. couldn’t be. there’s no breach in the plastic casing that houses the engine. it’s a brand new snow-thrower. the snow that gets thrown up and out of the front of the thing is about as clean as it goes in.

and those goddamn lousy moronic Rush-dittoing conservatives, all they wanna do is piss and moan about how we treehugging liberals “whine” about the environment and pollution. stupid lousy fucking bastards. i hope their eyes are stinging and burning right now, too. buncha piss-asses.

to anyone who is registered on terrible society message boards:

please delete your cookies. it should be called “phpbb”somethingorother and the domain is www.meat-thing.com – failure to do so will result in not being able to log in or out. go figure, they actually call it a “feature” of the upgraded version.

AFAIK, you shouldn’t have to do it over and over and over again. at least i hope not.

PLEASE let me know if you find any bugs… i’m sure they’re lurking, and my Stark Fist of Removal has been itchin’ to do some REMOVAL, if you know what i mean.

also, it wouldn’t hurt to post a message now and then *kicks you under the table*

so George II is giving away free tax money, which actually means that the extremely wealthy get millions in savings this tax season, while Average Joe gets about $3 (i actually saw those numbers somewhere, i think it was on PBS)…

and here in Ohia (and i’m guessing -wild fucking guess here- that this is really just part of some kind of Big Plan, and that YOUR Republican governor is doing the same thing…) Governor Taft, that senseless MORON, is taxing the living daylights out of anything he can think of that generally applies more to poorer classes… things like cigarettes and alcohol, fuel, sales tax, etc…. and what it all boils down to is that They (conservative Republican fundie right-winger elitist fuckwads) are trying to widen the Class Gap so that poorer folks like you and i have less and less economic power to spend fighting them, or even to keep them in check… they are essentially slowly robbing our power and making themselves filthy rich in the process… and we are made to pay. ladies and gentlemen, we are slipping into oblivion.

so where will you or i be in thirty years? my best guess: the Y. the plasma center. (btw, did you know that for the $20 or so that they give you for that big goddamn vial of YOUR FLUID, they turn right back around and sell it to cosmetics and tire companies and make anywhere from $150⁰⁰ – $1000⁰⁰ on it? i’m dead serious.) the soup kitchen. the unemployment line. the welfare office (and still they whine and piss and moan, ever louder, about us collecting THEIR goddamn tax money?!)

…so the next time you see some cheap joke on TV or in the latest Eddie Murphy-Owen Wilson action/comedy buddy flick about “‘The Man’ keepin’ us down,” don’t laugh, brothers and sisters, ’cause this ain’t comedy.

here’s a word i think we could all do without: foreign, -er

you see, FOREIGN places are where FOREIGNERS come from. and that’s just gross. FOREIGN soil is crawling with bugs, and FOREIGNERS are covered head to foot with FOREIGN bodies! EW!! just think of it! they talk different than us, they act different from us… why, they even WALK different from us! well, i say this menace needs to be stopped. that’s right, we need to all band together and put an end to this insidious horror. first point of attack: the dictionary.

terms like this only lead to xenophobia, and regardless of what a great arcade standup that was, xenophobia itself only leads to RAMPANT xenophobia. and there is simply not a god damned thing good about that.

if anybody can give me one good reason why the terms FOREIGN and FOREIGNER should be kept around, i’ll shut up. otherwise, i say we boycott the fucker and get a petition together!

also, i think i’m getting Xenobiaphobia :P

With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.

The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. “I guess you’ve been wondering, but you are ‘go’ for the deorbit burn,” Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute.
(this means that the “quote” was generated mere minutes before every news agency in the world was going crazy getting that next infamous and tragic bulletin out… did the “reporter” have enough time to type this, send it in, have it pre-edited, get it broadcast on ticker, and finally get picked up by ABCNews and uploaded to their servers? just a passing thought.)

Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel’s air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia’s Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

“We’ve taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly,” said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.

Columbia’s crew Ramon and six Americans completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee and spider behavior in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras.

The 13 lab rats on board part of a brain and heart study had to face the guillotine following the flight so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets.

All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the-clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued aboard the international space station, researchers said. The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired.

Some of Columbia’s crew members didn’t want their time in space to end.

“Do we really have to come back?” astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home.

NASA’s next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.

hahahahaha! just when i’m all ready to start in on my web crap, i get this really killer groove in my head! now i’ve got to get to my PSX and get it all recorded on Music Generator so i’ll have it for later work.

somebody buy me one of these (or at least one of these) so my music‘s not so damn cheesy!!

so, tonight i take on the daunting task of restoring my database and upgrading my message board.

daunting, because my database name and password got changed, and i’m running like a million PHP applications from it (CONA memberlist (actually a modified guestbook), terrible society bbs, b2 blog, and something else i forgot), so i’ll have to manually reconfigure a whole slew of files. and with upgrading my board, it’ll be a bit of a pain in the ass.

and, let’s face it, i can’t code worth a shit. oh, i do alright with HTML and CSS (though i’m real sloppy and my code rarely, if ever, validates to even 75% – even taking into account that the w3c‘s code validator sucks ass), but this PHP/MySQL shit is too much for my poor little brain cell! all i can really do in PHP is set a few variables and call up includes. i can’t even write [much] JavaScript!

but hey, i’ve done okay, considering i only just taught myself all this crazy shit a little over 2 years ago. and i can always hack the holy livin’ hell outta the simple shit.

dammit, i’m just stalling. *si-i-igh*

i don’t even know where to begin.

let’s see…
first, run 01.19.03’s SQL locally, send to phpBB2.0.3
then, uh… okay, output SQL WITH drop tables and full inserts
then, ummm… alright, then i have to… uh… overwrite local copy of phpBB2.0.3 with phpBB2.0.4
wait… BACK UP FILES FIRST…
and then, run upgrade script
then, edit all config files with new db name/password
wait… should i wait and output SQL after i rename stuff? no, i’ll just edit it manually…
after that i should test fly phpBB2.0.4 to make sure i have no problems locally
then, upload edited (new db name/pw) NEW SQL to remote host
make sure i BACKUP FILES!!
run upgrade from phpBB2.0.3 to 2.0.4
make sure everything works okay
then, edit every single config file for new db name/pw
after that, test every gadget i’m running for buggies
then, bang my head when nothing works right
then, spend about 3 hours debugging everything remotely
more testing… again…
then, masturbate (if necessary)
finally, finish my beer and go to sleep

(EDIT: output final full SQL AFTER upgrading board because of stupid lousy minor db structure changes)

jesus, i hope i can remember all that, IN ORDER.

wish me luck!

why won’t chickawangs settle down? settle down, you ol’ chickawings! ‘a-fore i hafta eatcha all up! i’m-a hafta eatch’all up anyway, you ol’ chickawings, so you may as well just setta down! crazy ol’ chickawings.

as in a swarm of bees,
everything in the Universe is moving and changing,
in order to facilitate life, and its processes,
which itself is in a constant state of flux.

thus, in this way, all things must pass…

good and bad.

CYBERSPACE– so my website is finally back up, albeit only partially… seems the server went honky tonk and they had to move all our stuff over to new boxes… which is nice, but it took a few days. i’m told this kinda thing won’t be happening nearly as often… and yet again, i have to reinstall things like phpBB and reupload the SQL all over again, an older database file because i haven’t the common sense or wherewithall to backup my own damn database except for once a month, if that… so that means newer things are lost forever, etc…. but i did get upgraded to the next plan, apparently, so that’s cool too… except for the fact that i don’t know where that leaves me in march, when i renew. i’ll have to axe about that. anyway… it’ll take a while for me to restore everything in its entirety, since i’m just not motivated HTML-wise lately. (what a pain in the ass.)

CULTURE– also i must mention a few things, mostly concerning queerness, etc.: 1) i am becoming religiously addicted to the PBS show “In The Life” (check your local listings!), to the extent that i actually forgo my beloved SNL just to watch it, even though it’s often reruns… but SNL is usually reruns anyway, and i only have to miss the first half hour, too. 2) i love Harvey Fierstein and Nathan Lane, who are two of the best, most positive [male] gay role models out there. 3) i need to go back to college soon, just so i can network with people and become active and involved again. (side note: i still haven’t been able to find the pic from the Dayton Daily News of me at the WSU protest against Gulf War I, where i was the most prominent protester in the foreground of the pic, with my game face on (and afro) and everything, one of the last 7 holdouts trying to argue for peace against a growing crowd of warmongers.) 4) i so love women musicians, especially gay or bisexual ones. i am so much more interested in hearing what a woman (or really anyone who is not so much like me or the vast majority of people i know) has to say than some dull, boring WASP. and girls just rock, and can do the whole DIY, indie-rock thing so much better than the guys can, IMHO.

LIFE– my sweet friend Melissa called me today… when i told her about the shuttle, her voice got all soft and she asked me if i was all right… how sweet and empathic she is, at all times… anyway, she is pregnant, which is really cool… although the father seems to be more than a bit on the loser side (that’s not just me being jealous, hehe), but i know that things will work out, and i think she’ll make a wonderful mommy. plus, having a child to raise will give her something to really live for; a reason to take care of herself a little better. (sometimes i worry… see, she’s one of those people who feel too much (like moi), so sometimes life can be kind of hard on the senses; especially when it involves the endless suffering all around us, the sufferings of our friends and neighbors, that steady, heroic climb uphill that is the theme of everyday life for each of us [who are not born rich that is]. she just cares so much, which is why i love and revere her (like an angel) so.) so yeah, big ups to her for having a baby (her first) this coming August/September!!

SPACE– few people realise what true pioneers astronauts really are. as mankind takes its first primitive and awkward baby-steps into the deep waters that fills the ocean of the Cosmos above our tiny heads, we must remember how valiant and heroic a thing it is to be any one of the first few thousand human beings to take such incredibly daunting and very risky tasks and make them their primary focus… to learn how to swim for the rest of us, as it were (because god knows someday we’ll need to abandon our poor little polluted blue-green grain of sand and make a pilgrimage toward calmer shores)… to take these measures as the first, most hopeful steps that Humankind can take toward a positive and tangible future; one where we exist as a real, active part of a vastly larger Whole; where we must make ourselves purposeful in the Universe; to co-exist in harmony with the gods in the heavens above, or at least with some other kind of flora and fauna that make up our sky-neighbors…

these people are the ones that future generations will look back on with an almost religious reverence and awe, just as we do today with the Ancients, those Greek Sophists and Egyptian doctors and astronomers, builders of the foundation we have built our humble house upon. these are the bravest of the Brave, who venture forth blindly into the coldest fires, knowing that some of them must inevitably get burned for the greater good of the rest of us. these are the founders of a brave new world; the sailors in the deepest seas there can ever be… how fearful was ancient human of the great Neptune, who swallowed whole shipfuls of men and women who dared sail past the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) for thousands of years before humans finally learned his great secrets? and now we try to be the Kind Vikings of the Skies, only we still haven’t been quite brave enough to wade out into the Greatest Ocean herself, just to dip our feet into her waters for a little while, testing her and ourselves before we make the plans that will bring us into the Universe as a proud citizen of the Cosmos… these people are actively unfolding our true human Destiny right before our eyes, meeting the greatest and most adventurous challenge that has ever faced humankind in all of history.

so yes, i wept for seven great Heroes today.

FILM– Woody Allen day today. Manhattan and Radio Days were on PBS tonight, and then at the grocery store, i ran into Annie Hall, so will watch that later.

R.I.P. Columbia crew.

Commander Rick Husband
Pilot William McCool
Payload Commander Michael Anderson
Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla
Mission Specialist David Brown
Mission Specialist Laurel Clark
Israeli Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon

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