The falling leaves are driving my cat Yuri up the proverbial wall. He's out on the balconette -- which I'm sure he's going to miss more than me -- trying to catch them as they fall.

We have some plastic gridding (hardware cloth) up on the iron grillwork to keep kitties from becoming road pizzas and there was one stuck to the outside, just out of his reach. While he's got his paw stuck under the gridwork some guy walked by on the sidewalk, saw what was going on, pulled it down and put it under the grid for the cat.

I'm sure Yuri was grateful.

I think I found this essay via Clicked the other day. It's very interesting (if somewhat longish). I'm wondering what you all think about it. Is the internet becoming the next "vast wasteland" or is there hope for it yet?

Talk amongst yourselves. Go on... click that comment link.

Apparently Hell.com got a cool reception at auction the other day. Might have been something to do with the cool $1,000,000 they were setting as a reserve price.

The Fallen Angel would be so disappointed if she knew about this, but I can't figure out if it would be because of the cool reception for a domain she'd probably love to own or because of the price tag.

Shhhh! Don't tell her!

What would you say (besides "ewww!") to the story of a chicken who lived for 18 months after having his head chopped off?

Well, you can go here and find out.

Complete with his story, pictures and details of the yearly festival in Fruita, Colorado celebrating his unusual will to live.

(hat tip to 112 in the shade... and PhonoFred from the Ukulele Cosmos board.)

I posted last week about a last minute gig but have yet to get around to reporting about it.

On Saturday the 21st Snake Suspenderz went down to the University of Puget Sound and played at their "pumpkin carving party." It took us less time than anticipated to get down there so we had plenty of time to get set up and relax a bit before going on.

There were probably only a couple dozen people there at its most crowded, but they enjoyed the tunes, came up afterwards to say so and were extremely gentle about the somewhat farcical first appearance of the Humbone.

Note to self: Don't use the Humbone in a mike'd situation again until you've worked out the kinks in placement and such.

He made sure we got some food and drink from the cafeteria in the building even though it was closing up as we got there. He tossed in some extra loot to cover gas, so I should be receiving half of the original fee -- instead of half of what's left over after taking $$ off the top for gas, which is me and Thad's agreement on the subject.

He also seems to want to hire me solo to do a service at the Unity Church in Tacoma. Thad says it's a good gig. I hope that Serni follows through but I may just have to cop his email addy from Thad and give him a gentle prod about it.

Thad says that Serni has been a big supporter of Amber Tide over the years. Hope he can add Snake Suspenderz (and maybe even me, solo) to the "big supporter" list.

Wish all my gigs were this pleasant.

No, not that George!

I've never been much of a George Michael fan, but I got to give him props for publicly standing up for his thoughts on the herb.

Sane, indeed.

I read recently how RIAA -- Recording Industry Assholes of America, I believe -- have decided that simply suing 12-year-old girls and grannys who don't even own computers isn't enough. Now they've convinced the LA area Boy Scouts to issue a badge for spewing back der party line about the "evils of copyright infringement."

I'm pretty sure you won't get any extra credit for pointing out that this is to protect their bottom line nor will any kudos be given (much less another patch) if you relate how the RIAA member corporations have been ripping off artists for decades -- at best -- and how the CD and other physical mediums for transferring music is rapidly going the way of the dodo. The only reason that folks want to buy a CD anymore is the souvenir value and they're likely to be doing so right at a live performance.

They've also just launched another huge batch of lawsuits.

Christine Lavin has this lovely rant where she touches on both the merit badge issue and where the music industry is going. She chalks it up to a generation gap.

But the real loser in all this brouhaha is you. While the suits go around threatening any and everybody for perceived infringement -- even in cases where fair use is in play -- and relying on their deep pockets to scare folks into complying we end up losing stuff like this blog post speaks of, maybe forever.

If the corporations (I'm looking at you, Walt Disney) in their quest for more control hadn't screwed up copyright so badly it's almost beyond recognition I might be more on RIAA's side in this issue.

But, in their capacity as gatekeepers, they've locked out people like myself and other indie artists. We have to find alternative methods to get our stuff out there.

Frankly, I'm worried less about piracy than I am about obscurity and I think that the megacorp music folks should worry more that their music ain't worth stealing than try to lock it all up with DRM and such.

I'm no expert... I'm just saying...

I got an email last night from Thaddeus. He'd forgotten to check with the promoter of our last minute gig today as to whether the 10:00 to 12:15 was am or pm. He sent a message asking for clarification and told me he'd get back to me as soon as he knew.

Thinking that I'd have to be leaving at 8:30 in the ante-meridian I got up at 6:30 (aka O Dark Thirty hours) and started a pot of coffee. Then I checked my email and found that it was the pm thing.

Ah well.

I'd go back to bed but I seem to have a list of tasks that require me to be conscious this ack emma.

To add the proverbial insult to the injury, it turns out this is one of those gigs where you perform now and they pay you later.

Feh. It ain't all glamor, kids.

Kevin Tillman, brother and friend of Pat Tillman, wrote a great piece called After Pat's Birthday.

Kevin was there at the pointy end of the stick in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He's not just talking through his hat, or from the comfort of his deluxe DC digs when he says, "Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground."

This is required reading.

(Hat tip to Ebeneezer's Grove of Vegetables)

According to MSNBC.com the Supreme court has given Arizona the OK to require photo ID at polls.

The Arizona state law "requires voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo IDs when they go to the polls. The law was meant to make sure illegal immigrants weren’t casting ballots."

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for a citizen's voting right only being given to, well, citizens.

I do not believe that these others are "undocumented workers." They are illegal aliens. Should they have a chance to come in legally and work? You betcha. But the process to do this correctly is not in place and as long as they opt for the "sneak in" method they're illegal aliens and shouldn't have the right to go and vote for folks who're advocating letting them take advantage of our (dwindling) social safety nets and such.

All that being said... It seems to me that simply being on the voter rolls (and having your little voter registration card) should be sufficient. I don't know about where you live, but when I went to register here in Washington I had to show my photo ID right there.

Lawsuits are pending because opponents say that "it discourages some people from voting, including the elderly, poor and disadvantaged who don’t always carry IDs."

You're damn straight. And being required to have your ID on you all the time is simply wrong. If I'm not driving, going to be buying liquor, tobacco, porn, guns or something of that age-restricted nature I shouldn't have to have my ID on my person every time I leave my residence.

I don't want to live in a society where there are roadblocks where you must "show your papers" in order to travel. Or be out and about at night. That's the path we seem to have committed ourselves to.

But if you go to register you remember to take some way to ID yourself. And when you go to vote you pack your voter registration card. Simple.

Anything else looks to me like another attempt to keep the voter count down. It's much easier to keep the "right sort of person" in office if there's a limited amount of people voting for them.

(PS: Are you a registered voter? Then get your ass out and vote in November. You're not registered? Go. Now. And. Register. If you don't vote, don't whine about the gov't you get.)

OK. I did have other plans, but dang, a C-note is not to be sneezed at!

So between 10am and noon tomorrow, Snake Suspenderz will be playing at a "pumpkin carving party" at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA.

Now let's step back a few days...

The Fallen Angel is up to her nipples in sewing the piecework she takes in and asked if I'd nuke her up some scrambled eggs. I decide that, since I'm hungry too, I'd make a largish batch and we'd both eat. But I wouldn't just nuke up a few eggs, oh no! Hate 'em that way.

So I look around... hmmm... 5 eggs left, a tablespoon or so of bacon bits (the real kind), some genuine pre-grated cheese and a bag of pre-chopped red, yellow, orange and green bell pepper in the freezer. We're in business.

The FA will buy bell peppers at Sosio's in the Pike Market when she can get a really good price and then chop 'em up and freeze them for later use. But she likes to chop them into biggish pieces and I don't want that large a chunk of peppers in any given bite of scrambled eggs so I whip out the chef's knife and start re-chopping. But, they're frozen so I'm getting frost bits all over the place. A particularly large bit drops off and I pick it up in my left hand and casually toss it towards the garbage. In the process I cleverly run the crotch of my thumb -- of my left, aka "fretting" hand -- down the knife blade.

Luckily it's not too deep but, since my knives are sharp it stings like a damn paper cut.

A dull knife is an offense to the gods.

It's healing fine but still sore.

But wait! There's more!

Remember, I'm heading back from dropping of the stuff at the new place. The FA had sent me a text message asking if I'd pick her up at the Pike Place Market -- where she's working today and tomorrow -- at 5pm. No prob. I arrive early, hang around yapping with folk and when she's done packing up the cart we head to the car. I'm carrying one of the big plastic tubs that our shared boss uses to send stock down from his home to the north. The FA wants to borrow a couple of them briefly to pack clothes in for the move. A vast improvement over our last move where much of our clothing basically got the "hurled into the van" treatment.

I open the back door of the car and toss the tub onto the seat, cleverly scraping a chunk of skin off of a knuckle on both the index and middle finger of... you guessed it, my left hand.

Great jumping jaysus! I'm usually a lot more careful than that.

I'll be able to play but I really have to start paying closer attention, no matter what else is on my mind.

This evening we moved the first bits of our stuff to what is going to be our new residence. Mostly we took books and bookcases. We have lots of the former and not quite enough of the latter. Luckily, at least one bookshelf unit comes with the place.

While we've enjoyed the little downtown studio -- it was, after all, the first place me and my Fallen Angel ever had that was "just ours" -- we've definitely outgrown it and when we got this opportunity for a massive increase in space we went for it.

We still have some major hoops to jump through, but we'll make it.

From my point of view the best part (besides just more space) is that it's in a quiet residential area. I'll be able to record pretty much anytime I want.

I won't bother any neighbors either. It's a house (actually, the first floor of a house) but our "landlady" occupies the mother-in-law unit in the basement and she's most often over at her sweetie's place.

It's late, I'm tired and I have to get up in way too few hours. I'll keep you posted on the progress and, of course, you'll hear about it just as soon as I turn out my first recording over there.

Good night.

Having gotten tired of waiting for Blogger.com to get with the program re: categories and having gotten really tired of Blogger hanging while publishing posts I finally looked up a blog software that I can just install and run on my own server.

This was harder than some might expect as I did not want to pay for the software nor did I want to pay extra to my hosting service to have a mySQL database.

Luckily there is Simple PHP Blog. Not only can I configure it the way I want but I can actually go in and tweak the code myself.

I was even able to pretty quickly ascertain how to do my famous "asides" boxes. And it's way easier than with Blogger.

There's still some work I'd like to do on it but for now it's up and running so I'm going to publish this very first post and then fix my site to point to it instead of the Blogger version.

Then I guess I'll go and do a last post at my Blogger account pointing everyone here. I'll leave the link up (in my sidebar there) for anyone who discovers this blog and can't get enough of my sparkling prose.

Comments are on. Join the fray. Let me know what you think about the new setup and look.