I got into one of those "follow this link which leads to that link" surfs earlier, starting with Clicked, stopping at MetaFilter, etc. etc...

There was a bunch of stops on video featuring this tough guy named Bas Rutten. (Google him or just search YouTube.) Great guy, tougher than nails and pretty funny too. Teaches a lot of "how to demolish some idiot in a street fight" stuff.

But then I came across this story. A perfect example of how to win a fight.

Brought tears to my eyes.

A long time back I heard a collection of humorous answering machine messages that you could buy and put on your own answering machine's outgoing tape. Yeah, a long time back. One of them featured a sultry-voiced woman saying how she couldn't come to the phone right now because she was involved in her -- sound of whip cracking, a moan -- personal grope therapy. Leave a message, etc.

Since I preferred to make up my own comedy messages, I sort of filed it away in one of the dimmer recesses of the ol' mental file room and haven't thought much about it in years.

Until today.

When I read this story about the Australian psychiatrist and his patient whom he was making wear a collar and address him as "Master."

Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against such roleplay and, in fact, might even enjoy it on occasion.

I'll leave it as a mental exercise for you, gentle reader, to figure out which role I might prefer.

Poor old Jack had to climb that incredibly tall beanstalk, deal with a curmudgeonly (and hungry) giant and generally run and sweat a lot for that famous goose.

Now, thanks to the Roslin Institute in Scotland, the same folks who brought us Dolly the cloned sheep, we're going to be able to enjoy the benefits of chickens who lay eggs containing drugs.

That's right, the genetically altered hens will produce functional pharmaceutical proteins in the whites of their eggs.

Yes, I can certainly see the benefits of this as outlined in the linked article, but that doesn't stop it from being categorized as just plain weird.

"Unexpected error" my ass!

If you take the number of times I've seen that message and multiply it by all the users on MySpace, you should bloody well be expecting it.

And, if there's really a message being sent to the developers each time that error message appears:

1. Their inboxes must be bursting.
2. Why aren't they fixing it?

You can't tell me MySpace isn't making enough coin to invest in some bug-fixing time and/or improving their server farm.

This is a little something the Fallen Angel passed on to me...

I want to live my next life backwards:

You start out dead and get that out of the way.

Then you wake up in an old age home feeling better every day.

Then you get kicked out for being too healthy.

Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension.

Then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day.

You work 40 years until you're too young to work.

You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you're generally promiscuous.

Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and you have no responsibilities.

Then you become a baby, and then...

You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions - central heating, room service on tap, and then...

You finish off as an orgasm.

I rest my case.

Every time you vote for an "I know how to run your life" candidate (this would be most all of them from the two "major" parties), every time you sign a petition calling for some new federal intrusion in citizen's lives (federal "hate crime" laws spring readily to mind, but there are many more) you tell the government that this sort of stuff is ok by you.

The feds are supposed have a limited role in our daily lives, spelled out quite plainly in the Constitution and seemingly completely ignored these days (and for some time, come to think on it).

States have their own constitutions but, taking the lead from their "big brothers and sisters" in DC, state level politicos have taken to ignoring them as well.

Hat tip to Radley Balko at The Agitator. I strongly urge you to subscribe to this blog if you're at all concerned about what's happening to your freedoms, especially with the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" making such a hash of our rights, not to mention our safety. In fact, judging from some recent reports, you don't even have to be a US citizen to worry about these policies affecting you.

When I read this headline, Man kicked off flight for anti-Bush T-shirt, I thought, "What is America coming to?"

But it turned out that it happened in Australia, on a Qantas flight scheduled to go from Melbourne to London. So my thought changed to, "My, aren't we the little trend setters?"

When you couple that to the recent report of a drug raid on the wrong house (something that happens all too frequently here in the US) taking place in London it certainly gives you pause.

MADD has changed its message from "don't get drunk and drive" to "don't have any alchohol, much less drive afterwards." The founder herself is appalled at the direction the organization has taken. Their propoganda is bearing more and more resemblance to that of the folk who gave us that wonderful period in our history known as Prohibition.

And, of course, the so-called "War on Drugs" has had exactly the same effect as the alchohol prohibition. Increased crime and violence, increasing corruption in our police forces, more and more draconian measures, piled on top of the earlier draconian measures, in a vain effort to prove that the government is "doing something about the problem."

More restrictions on travel, freedom of speech, or even freedom of thought fer crissake (cf the "politically correct" movement). Less and less safety in the supposed sanctity of our own homes... not just from criminals now but from our own government.

Laws against smoking, laws against what we're allowed to eat. What's next?

It's bad enough seeing how they seem to be winning here in the States, but are the neo-Puritans really going to be allowed to take over the world?

That's scary.

Kids, you're not impressing anyone by loading your MySpace page up with so many pics, slideshows, videos and other such crap that it takes 5 minutes for it to load and it chokes the computer so badly that your music doesn't play.

Stop it!

The problem with upgrading this blog software is that I've made tweaks to a bunch of different files and haven't (until just now) made a record of what files I tweaked and where.

I just entered that last post and noticed that my little blue boxes that I use for "asides" weren't showing up.

*sigh*

Back to the ftp program, upload the altered CSS file and make a damn note of it in a little file I've started to track such things.

I'd already had to look around for the hack I put in to make sure that if you leave your email address with a comment it doesn't show up on the display (allowing all those lovely spammers to get hold of it) and then, of course, I had to remember where I changed the wording on the comment form so that I could let y'all know that it wouldn't show up.

That's not to mention forgetting to upload the nice header banner I made to replace the default one for this theme.

*double sigh*

Next upgrade will go easier though as I think I'm caught up on all the changes I made.

A little while ago I posted about a kid who was trying to get a picture of himself in SCA drag into his high school yearbook.

Apparently Rhode Island's Education Commissioner agreed with him as he's just been allowed to do so. So here he is, in his hand-knitted mail, sporting his swords and drinking mug. (Click on the picture for a popup window with the full-sized image.)

As a quick re-cap... the high school has a long tradition of letting their students choose a picture of themselves to go into the yearbook. They've had kids and their horses, musical instruments, etc., all to show what they were into as people instead of just the long series of mugshots that most yearbooks sport. But the high school decided that his pic crossed the line on their "zero tolerance weapons policy." This despite the fact that they've had pics in previous years of kids with knives, toy guns, arrows, etc. and their own mascot, "The Patriot", is often pictured with his gun.

I find it humorous that the sword keeps getting spun in these accounts as a "prop sword". Kids, that's a two-handed broadsword and he can take your fucking car apart with it if he takes a mind. But I guess you have to do what you have to do and say what you have to say in today's PC-infected nanny state. Otherwise you wouldn't get anywhere.

While testing out the recent blog software upgrade I found that the Apache server on my local machine doesn't translate the little "™" (trademark symbol, in case you're getting the weirdness too) that I use when talking about my personal fantasy™. I just get this little diamond with a ? in it.

I have no idea why this happens or how to fix it. It seems to work fine from my host server, and I'm pretty sure they're running Apache.

Think I'll just write it off as a "don't sweat the petty things" item and get on to more important stuff.

I'm happy to have found that the author of Simple PHP Blog has issued an upgrade (even though it's still a beta) for the software. This is the first post I've done since the upgrade.

There's still some things that are a problem -- like the fact that I had to manually change the time on this entry for one -- but he's also started a nice new forum and there are all sorts of fixes and patches available.

In the true spirit of open source, many of those patches are by other programmers besides the main fella and he's rolling the good ones into the "official" code for the next release.

I may just try and stretch my geek muscles a bit and contribute. As I mentioned in a comment, I really want to have the software send me a notification whenever there's been a comment posted, whether or not the commenter left their email address. As it stands, only comments where the email has been entered get sent to me, and instead of it coming from the blog, it looks like it's coming from the commenter.

Boy! That's a confusing couple of sentences. Basically, I just want to be aware of everybody who comments without having to go back and manually check all my posts!

Yesterday I was working at the Pike Place Market (and freezing my ass off in the process), set up on the Joe Desimone Memorial bridge, which has a rather spectacular view of the Puget Sound. The sun was setting and there were a number of people over on the windowed side (the one with the aforementioned view). I didn't pay much attention until the vendor set up next to me said something about how they were trying to see the comet.

Comet?

Somehow I've missed any mention of a comet viewable by the naked eye but about that time one of the other vendors yells, "There it is!"

I went over and, after a bit of searching in the general area actually saw it.

It wasn't much more than a bright spot in the sky, just above a streak of clouds that were being painted a vibrant pink by the sunset. You wouldn't think of it as a comet except you could faintly make out its coma.

It's called Comet McNaught after its discoverer, astronomer Robert H. McNaught (one of thirty-one that bear his name!).

It's supposed to be best visible in the Northern Hemisphere through this weekend. If you can't see it -- due to cloud conditions or whatever -- this article on MSNBC.com will tell you more about it as well as directing you to a site where you can check it out online.

I came across this article on MSNBC.com about a teenager in Portsmouth, RI who submitted a picture of himself to his high school yearbook wearing armor (that he'd made) and sporting a sword.

The high school refused it on the grounds of their "zero tolerance" policy on weapons.

Now, we'll just forego the rant about zero tolerance policies for the time being and point out that their school mascot is the "patriot" who's often pictured bearing arms.

A little hypocrisy with your tea?

Most of the bruises have finally faded.

One of my opponents was a longtime member who'd been knighted and was a fearsome fighter. His name was Sir Edward Zifran and, not to put too fine a point on it, he cleaned my clock.

So I'm reading the article and a little past the midway point I come across this paragraph...

Ed Morrill of New York, a regional director whose society alter ego is Viscount Edward Zifran of Gendy, called the group "a very good place for someone to come and learn something new."

I'll be damned. Hadn't thought about him in years and there he is in the national news. Made Viscount too.

See what 30+ years of dedication to errant silliness can do for you?

It's amazing to me how two things that should be equal can be so disparate. For instance, in December I had two gigs at the same club with the same burlesque troupe.

Wednesday the 2nd was a "standard" gig with the Burning Hearts Burlesque (their "Bedroom Club" show). It was my second gig with them since they moved from the Northwest Actors Studio up on Capitol Hill (where I played twice) to The Last Supper Club in the Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle.

The management of The Last Supper Club likes me (yay!) so that when Cleo, the producer of the burlesque shows, approached him about doing a burlesque show as part of their New Year's Eve festivities he insisted that I should be a part of it.

This is good in two different ways. For one, I was guaranteed a nice chunk of money rather than a smallish cut of the gate. For two, it's just nice to be "in demand", even in a small way.

The gig on the second was terrific. A nice, attentive audience. A couple free drinks. A small chunk o' change at the end of the evening (no complaint here, mind you... I only had to play about three or four songs). And I got to hang out "backstage" with lovelies like Goody Goody, pictured here in her yummy maid outfit.

And the folk sure did get their ten dollars worth of show. Besides Goody Goody, the show featured Anita Goodmann (the cross-dressing emcee), The Heavenly Spies, Rosy Cheeks, Belle Cozette from Sinner Saints, Trixie Von Mothersbaugh, Cassie O'Hara, Fuchsia Foxx, The Shanghai Pearl, Lolita L'Amore, RoRo the clown, the Bedroom Club stage kitties, an "intermission show" with The King and The Beast doing a carnie turn, a gal named Scarlet Rose singing, a fella doing his first ever appearance as a masked mentalist (magician) and me.

Whew!

Of course, part of the reason that one gets kind of a small cut at the end of the evening is often the shows feature a lot of performers, on an "off" night, with only a $10 cover but this one was an especially large bill. Generally there aren't quite so many performers during the course of the show.

As sort of a bizarre side note, Goody Goody told me on New Year's Eve that several of her friends had attended the Dec. 2 show -- the first time they'd seen her burlesque turn -- and afterward she asked them what their favorite part of the show was. They said, "That guy with the ukulele." Flattering? Sure. But with a show full of beautiful gals who sing, dance and take off their clothes, one can't help but wonder what's up with that?

I went home that evening quite happy. It was very much like being paid a bit for a nice party you attended. Sure, mo' money is mo' bettah, but making any sort of green is good, especially on a Wednesday evening (a night not especially noted for its "club scene").

So why did I go home on New Year's Eve with a vague feeling of discontent?

What went wrong?

Well, a combination of things. One of them was the fact that they were charging a buttload of money for the upstairs crowd who wanted dinner, reserved seats and the whole show. This brought in a whole different kind of crowd... one that I don't think quite knew what to make of a burlesque show.

But the main reason I just hinted at there. There are actually two clubs as part of the Last Supper Club. Upstairs and Downstairs. On both of my previous appearances the downstairs club was closed.

In fact, it was used as a very large dressing room on one of the nights.

But this is New Year's Eve. It's "amateur night" and everybody is out partying and clubbing, whether they usually do such things or not. So naturally the management is going to open both halves of the club. The upstairs at a stinking high cover and the downstairs at about half that (still very expensive, mind you).

This means that the downstairs club has to have its own entertainment, right? In this case, while the upstairs crowd was taking in me and the burly-Q girls, followed by mini KISS, the downstairs crowd were being treated to a DJ playing house so's they could dance the night away.

BTW... I just know I'm going to live to regret not hanging about to catch at least a little bit -- um, pardon the pun -- of mini KISS, but there ya go.

So... there goes all my subtle tunes (like Don't Get Around Much Anymore and Moonglow) right down the ol' crapper. No fingerpicky, chord solo-ey stuff for me. I'm pounding like a howlinhobbitl on my poor uke, leaning into the microphone and having no idea whether anyone can hear me at all. The sound man, bless his heart, was tweaking it all through the act but what can one uke and one voice do against a sound level that is actually vibrating the floor?

Please note that I'm not blaming anybody! Anytime the manager had both clubs running he wouldn't hear the downstairs music because the upstairs was so loud so I'm sure it never occurred to him. And I'm really happy he liked me well enough to shell out a nice chunk o' cheese for my efforts. Likewise I'm sure Cleo hadn't ever even been there on a night when both clubs were cooking so that wouldn't be something on her list of issues either.

Me? I was just happy to get a gig and didn't think about it at all, except to prepare the best set list I could for the time frame they wanted filled.

I guess at least I had one of those "learning experiences" you always hear about. And, WTF, the money was good.

Next time I'll know better.

On the subject of the huge backlog of blog post ideas... I'd like to give a quick shout out to Graham of A Dog's Dinner for this post.

Not only do I appreciate the PR, but as far as I know Graham is the first person -- besides me -- to link to my MySpace Page.

Thanks, Graham!

A slightly belated Happy New Year to all of you!

In order to start the new year right, I've added a new feature to my main site, howlinhobbit Hobbit's Bi-Weekly Uke Tips.

Happily, the new year began on a Monday, which just seems to be the perfect day of the week for a bi-weekly series to appear. I've already got the whole first series outlined and several months worth "in the can" and I'm alternating between finishing the tips and programming on several other promised features on my site. Hopefully I'll get the majority of that latter branch of the task list done in a bit over a week.

I made a special about page for the Uke Tips feature to give a bit more info on the plans for it.

As always, feedback is welcome!

(Oh yeah... I've also got this huge list of blog entry ideas that I'm going to try and clean out so expect a veritable flood of posts soon. Don't worry, I'll be back to my lackadaisical posting schedule soon after!)

ciao for now...