June 2003 Archives

someday, if i'm ever kinda bored:

push car into gas station, up to the pumps. get out. wash entire car with that squeegee thing. thoroughly. get in car, start car, drive off.

Some will die in hot pursuit
In fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain

out of the blue i remembered pepper. oddly enough i remembered the album was called electric larryland before i remembered pepper. but i have a weird mind.

after a quick download, it struck me how similar the song is to people who died. so i'm going back and forth between the two songs -- death in texas vs. death in new york. and i'm diggin' it.

in other news, there was a guy in vons at ten o'clock at night in a tshirt and a towel.

mommy? what's go, with a p?
oh, that's GOP -- it means grand old party
oh a party!
no, no, it's not a fun party. it's a political party. republicans.
publicans? what are publicans?

* * *
sheesh. couldn't he have asked me where babies come from, or where we go when we die? how do you tell a little kid about ... republicans?

so, i was just a weeeee bit late with the car insurance. hours, really, i was trying to stretch it to the last minute and forgot about eastern standard time. but i paid it! like three hours late. and i'm supposed to be insured again by now, dammit, it's been a day. but no. and so i'm stuck working from home. on his day off. and he's cleaning. pointedly cleaning. in a very spazzy manner. there are little grunting sounds and heavy breathing involved, much of which seems to be exasperated sighs, to accompany his occasional pointed glances my way. he's cleaning at me.

if i believed in hell, i would no longer fear it.

your honor, the suspect had the means and the opportunity, and maybe even a motive, but for the life of us we cannot figure out what the hell he was thinking.

some time ago, i started getting newsletters from gay.com. not spam! this is not a site that would spam. no, someone signed me up. didn't pay it much attention and didn't bother to unsubscribe, every once in awhile i'll click a link in the newsletter -- no problem.

well, today's subject line about national HIV testing day (which is tomorrow incidedntally) caught my attention, and i ended up poking around a bit. started wondering who signed me up, and why. i seem to be a member, but of course i lack a login; i checked the email headers and it's being sent to "kissmy @ (myoldurl).us". now that doesn't have a vicious ring to it, but it's not a friendly practical joke, either.

now i gather from the lengthy, apologetic unsubscribe info at the bottom of the newsletter, that this is a fairly common prank among the repressed homophobic jerk idiot portion of the populace. and this makes me sad. must make being a site admin a rather nightmarish job, no doubt involving having to respond to all manner of abusive responses from inadvertent subscribers.

sometimes we lizards just don't understand humans atall.

do you want to compile apache with phpsuexec? highly recommended.

highly recommended my fat white ass. look, i know i'm new at this. i chose the option for beginners, the one that says it's for beginners, the recommended one. and what does it do? changes the way PHP files permissions work on every PHP file on the entire fucking server. gee thanks you clueless geekwad fuckwits, i really enjoyed the two hours of sheer unmitigated panic. how lovely that in your little world everyone writes scripts that set flawless permissions in order to comply with a server software THAT IS IN GODDAMN BETA. sure, yeah, i've got what maybe a hundred people with sites on this server and of course they'll all know just what to do, they're all fluent in command line and i'm sure they are well-versed in the wonderfully strict new rules for CHMOD'ing PHP files, simply everyone's talking about it dahling.

i'm actually shaking mad about this.

and now i really am going to go get beer. i've recompiled the apache and all should be well. i'm sorry it took so long, but i had to look everything up. while answering emails by the dozens. and getting reminded how i need to go to the store and we're out of this and and and and.

beer. and aspirin. i'm on it.

tembak. that's a bad thing right? all google has is stuff in (possibly) malaysian? but certainly has a familiar, rather sinister ring to it. and the 95% server resources it was hogging didn't make me feel real fuzzy towards it either. but in order to kill it, i have to find it. it's a big server.

i was going to go into how exactly much i don't know about this, but instead i'll get back to scowling pensively at the various server administration thingys i have open.

* * * * *
oh.my.god. so i ran the apache upgrade because it said it was insecure, and because tembak is a malicious somethingorother, being run from two different IPs i traced to Jakarta, Indonesia. so i upgraded. and apache crashed, ftpd crashed, mysql crashed, and ... right, exim. so, the server was fine except for not having database access, email, ftp, or the ability to serve pages to a browser. full reboot got apache started well enough to be able to deliver some lovely error messages. restarted mysql, restarted ftpd. exim is taking its time.

how were the goddamn indonesians running tembak on the server? i need some tequila.
* * * * * *
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE
the upgrade of apache is won't run PHP files CHMOD 777 which is like, most of them, because it's world writable do you have any idea how many fucking PHP files there are on these goddamn servers?

so i finally figured out it's
find / -name *.php -exec chmod 755 {} \;

otherwise i think i might have had to do something drastic. goddamn motherfucking piece of shit computers.

* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKING UPDATE
i can fix 'em all i want but one MT rebuild sets 'em back to 777 and kablammo. fuck.

know what? i'll be back. i need to go get beer.

if i ever lose it, i mean fully completely absolutely no doubtaboutit lose it, it'll happen in the grocery store. what is it with the grocery store? no matter what mood i'm in when i hit the front door, by the time i hit it again i'm hanging on to sanity by one handle & there's a big hole in the bottom of the bag. maybe it's the subliminal whinefest of the muzak, which i'm sure is a well-researched whinefest indeed, designed to make ninety-nine % of the population buy shit they had no idea they wanted, while i, as always, inhabit that other %. or perhaps it's the overwhelming bombardment of marketing messages, which taken as a whole take on a quality of desperation, triggering my codependent tendencies - could it be i feel bad about not buying the ninety nine thousand nine hundred forty seven things i don't buy? and there's no way to say there, there, i'd buy your cleverly packaged nonsense if ... ok, i wouldn't, but it's not you it's me, nice work though, *pat pat*. or it might be because i can never entirely remember all the reasons i'm there and so failure seems more or less inevitable - once for a month straight i forgot to buy butter. the toast sucked that month.

i mean, i don't know if it's just me -- does everybody get asked by at least five different courtesy clerks in that earnest, courteous way they have, if i'm finding everything i need? or am i wearing an expression that screams helpme helpme heeeeelp me? and how exactly would i find what i need in the grocery store, when my needs are ... aha! it's the clerks. they should stop reminding me about my needs.

the clerks bagging at checkout are also the way i gauge the extent of the damage of any one shopping expedition - how many times do they ask me if i need help getting my poptarts, coffee creamer and tunafish to the car? once, ok. but if they ask me three different times, like, are you sure? obviously at that point i'm the walking wounded, and it shows.

today the clerk, who was 20 years my senior if a day, only asked me once. i can't imagine having a working retiree carrying my groceries, but apparently the working retiree could.

really, i'm fine. but i sure wish that online grocery ordering service hadn't gone under.

... because severely phobic people are just so entertaining.

yesterday, napping on the couch, he comes home. he says, hold out your hand. and i do. and he puts the thing in it. my eyes are blurry can't make out what it is, so i ask ...

it's a bug.

scream. fling bug. scream again. cry. sit there feeling the afterimage of the feeling of the bug in my hand, for a good twenty mintues afterward. fixing up those pictures, had me at least half as freaked as the incident itself -- it was in my hand. in my hand. that thing. my hand.

listless as the day passes, a series of vintage cartoons contributing to an overall feeling of age but it's more than just that. i don't mind my age, what bothers is the slippage. and it's not that the slippage is inevitable, it's just that i let it slide all the time, it's what i do. motivation isn't the question here -- some things that can be done, can't be done by some of us, and i'm one of them. at least i am right now.

it doesn't matter that the things i'm thinking i'm mourning right now might not really be over and gone from my life, only that it feels like they are and for the moment, this loss is as real as anything.

and the things i've considered settling down & settling for this morning & the things i'd have to give up to get there, these are not thoughts to take too seriously. it is a solid pattern of mine at times like whatever these are, to consider divesting myself of everything i want and letting the things that want me have me, take me away from me. live in some grim postmodern cinderella work ethic where selfless sacrifice replaces the searing fierce longings which, quite frankly, have about consumed me. again.

probably it'll pass. meanwhile, back to bed seems a logical next step.

had an email conversation with a friend tonight about the best days of my life. i mean days, a series of them, sunday afternoons in which everything was perfect. perfect not the right word here - perfect is an absolute state, this was not anything that could be assigned an absolute, because it was transcendent. i am talking about this exquisite music that perfectly defined the essence of sunday afternoons at the banana belt cantina on the beach in ventura california. the air, the heat, the dancing, and the music -- the music. you couldn't not love the music. Jonathan Raffetto Band, if you're wondering.

each sunday we went, no matter what. each sunday was its own peak experience, three hours in a heaven so far beyond what any sunday school teacher ever dreamt of. i miss the days, of course, but i will always and forever be thankful that every sunday one late spring to early fall, my daughter and i went down to the beach, had some beers, and danced and sang and laughed and it was pure joy. pure joy.

so i have a picture of happy for you, if you'd like to see what it looks like. i really needed the reminder tonight.

i've had tears streaming down my face the whole time posting this. it's a good thing, really, it's mostly the intensity of realizing just how fortunate i am, to have had such summer sundays, almost two dozen of them (it's almost always summer here) such a convergence of time and place and circumstance, how easily i could have missed this, and i would have never known the feelings or even suspected them possible. i would have never known. and this is a sustaining warmth, a faith based on the fact that yes, it can be perfect. no, no, not perfect -- it can be transcendent. it is possible. see? i have a picture.

oddly enough i haven't given up on the ... book thingy. the anti-novel, as i like to call it when i'm speaking to it, is stubbornly refusing to follow anything anyone would consider an acceptable format, suitable for ever being anything but my own little indulgence, however it has some appeal. which considering what a narcissistic little so-and-so i've become, should be taken with some tums and a xanax, if ya got one. and all my life i've written or attempted to, and at no point has viability for publication been a concern. i write for me - and i appreciate my efforts in that area, we have a symbiotic relationship, the writer and i do. so i don't have to Write a Book. i can just express this -- thing -- which both deserves & needs to be expressed, and maybe only ever a half dozen people, will 'get it', maybe not even that many, it would be a difficult thing to say, here read this. and that's not why i write. i write because i am the only one capable of the understanding that leads to healing, i can't be helped otherwise.

besides it's extremely extremely personal. painfully personal. i had to take a day away from it & do the barbie battlebots design, i was in over my head.

then i decided i needed a content management system. i know what you're thinking -- MT! um. no. no, that i could have had running in minutes. instead i seem to be building it its own custom made single-purpose CMS. i think of it as writers block insurance - i can always obsess on the code when i spin out on the words, and spin i will, yes.

songs keep spilling out of my unconscious, complete & preserved perfect like ... like bugs. dead bugs. in amber. there's your analogy. me & my bugs.

this is so not my fault. "make a barbie battlebot skin" he says. then he says it again, there was definitely repetition.

and then it happened. the dreaded *idea*.

it's not so much a barbie battlebot skin, as a question: art or artifice? (at least that's what it was saying circa four a.m.) (it is much less serious now in the light of day). what do you think?.

* * *
incidentally, here's the original of the left side bottom image:

um. you didn't see anything, ok? either did i. there, now, that never happened.

before i got another bottle of that brightbright orange stuff , i had to grocery. and sometimes when i grocery, well, i just have to wonder.

crack for breakfast?

energy? does it need batteries i wonder?

the checkout counter proved the highlight of my shopping expedition. look -- how romantic:

how is it that i can forget a song i mean, forget it existed forget i loved it forget all about it - and then accidentally stumble across the title and not only remember the lyrics but (like most songs) actually almost-hear it in my head, (it's just like it's very far away, and it isn't hearing exactly but it is, i can't explain the song-memory-audio thing very well at all). anyway. how could that happen?

shoot high aim low

we hit the blue fields
in the blue sedan we didn't get much further
just as the sun was rising in the mist
we were all alone we didn't need much more

so fast this expidition
so vast this heavy load
with a touch of luck and a sense of need
seeing the guns and their faces
we look around the open shore
waiting for something

shoot high break low
aim high shoot low
break high let go
shoot high aim low

this was to be our last ride
with the steel guitar and the love you give me
underneath the skin a feeling, a breakdown
well we sat for hours on the crimson sand

exchanges in the currency of humans bought and sold
and the leaders seem to lose control

shall we lose ourselves for a reason
shall we burn ourselves for the answer
have we found the place that we're looking for
someone shouted 'open the door'
lookout

shoot high break low
aim high shoot low
   feeling of imagination
break high let go
shoot high aim low

shoot high aim low
   nothing you can say
shoot high let go
   takes me by surprise

shoot high aim low
   who says's there's got to be a reason
shoot high let go
   who says there's got to be an answer

   we were all alone, we didn't need much more
shoot high aim low
   the sun's so hard on this endless highway
shoot high let go
shoot high aim low
   i've heard the singers, who sing of love
shoot high let go
   in the blue sedan we never got much further
shoot high aim low

~yes

(my god it's an amazing song)

* * * * * * *
ok, so i thought about it. it's like i just needed the filename, right? because as soon as i had the title my mind found the whole file, just like that. it was trippy.

my barbies were always such tramps. if they wore anything at all, their outfits would resemble your standard central casting hooker ensemble, circa 1970, however they generally didn't bother with clothes, spent most of the time naked & drunk in the dreamhouse. middle class suburban preteens staging play orgies, perfectly normal around my neighborhood, nothing unusual atall.

[wavy line scene switch; we are now in the very near future]

but have you ever asked yourself, what if barbies built battlebots? and did you answer yourself with something along the lines of, 'glittery little blatantly phallic dealymathingys'?

well, here you go:

i am going to go get more beer. rare enough an occurance, therefore figured an announcement was in order.

been writing stuff. not a lot, but some.

so i figure if this blonde stuff wrecks my hair, i can just cut ... some ... more ... of it off. fortunately, i have the sort of hair which can be cut unevenly & actually look better that way.

and it gives me something to do while i'm waiting for this itty bitty table thingy made out of a micronuked mini-cd with an elizabeth arden bottle sticking up out of the middle, and arms for legs, to dry.

this blonde thing has turned out to be such a bad idea. nothing like a good bad idea, i always say.

well, it is lighter. and more even. it is, however, still nuclear mutant carrot.

and you know geeking out heavily is a good sign, right?

so i did the skins, & yes, the beach is back.

in the process, i rediscovered how much it annoys me to have all the cgi pages unskinned -- the trackback popups, the comment preview & error templates, & the search pages. out of sight, sure, but not out of mind. not out of mine, at least.

so i searched, and i searched. none of the usual suspects had anything on this, but with all the dynamic template object plugin fanciness going on out there these days, well ... it's both quaint & archaic that i've gone & solved my old skinned cgi page problem now, isn't it?

i don't know why i didn't think of this long, long ago - the skin is a cookie, yes? cookies work in cgi pages, with javascript they do, yeppers. so it was as not-so-easy as grabbing the cookie-getter script off the comments popup page, telling it to go find the skin cookie, & then writing ugly annoying document.write(' ... ') statements (badly - this is something i do badly) wherever something needed skinning.

i've included an example, just for the heck of it.

if taking hostages & calling this list my demands would help, well, i'll see if i can work that into my schedule. in the meantime, i'd like to call the universe's attention to the potential benefits of cooperating in advance of any desperate measures on my part, not the least of which would be the cessation of all this whining. aha! i see this appeals to you, i knew you were a reasonable sort of universe.

and i am a reasonable girl. my needs are ... simple things that i've managed to transform into wildly twisty complexities of monolithical proportions, some of which have actually developed a weak gravitational field, making them ideal venues for some of the more spectacular leaps of logic i like to take.

& this is not one of those - in fact i would asseverate that there is a solid basis in something somewhere which supports ... ok, i'll cut to the chase: what i want is to meet (ok, meet being a euphemism here, we know what i mean, yes?) the person i wrote this for. yes, there's been some progress in this area, however there are times i think i was better off when i thought it all impossible. now it's just highly fucking unlikely, which is an infinitely more conflicted scenario. i'm a mess these days, between the outbursts of uncautious optimism & the spasms of certain sniveling doom which can & do coexist within a single breath, they are in fact doing so right here & now, which of course is neither there nor anywhere, at least as far as relevance to whatever this is & therefore i will trail off appealingly & give you those oblique up-over-the glasses eyes & leave it at this, with just one small suggestion, nay, a request, & a gentle one at that: i would ask that the expression in question be considered on its own merit. which i believe is not insignificant. thank you.

*ahem* now, i am willing to be patient on this issue, however some hot nasty sweaty sex just for the fuck of it would make the wait a lot less stressful. i'm willing to be real flexible on this, age & gender are far less important than enthusiasm & stamina & the sooner the better ... yes, i'm as shocked as you are to hear this, so i'll add a dismissive gesture & this wide-eyed guileless smile so i could be kidding if we need me to be.

and you know, i guess that's about it, really. seemed like such a huge batch of need, which it is, it really is, i just thought there was more to it than just the whole soulmate thing. and let's not forget the bottom line here, is silence -- just imagine getting me to stop constantly saying please. it would be like stopping hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, or pretty close. think about it, hmm? i'll be waiting. audibly. over. & over.

although i generally disapprove of the usage of the special characters on license plates, i'd make an exception for these (which appear to be available, amazingly enough, maybe i'm the only person in california that feels this way? naah.)

if i did not already have the most outrageously cool license plates, i'd be sorely tempted to run down to the DMV this morning.

do you know at the same time i got HTTP WWW, i almost got LIC PL8 as well? sigh. cool plates are just ... cool.

i don't mention the meat puppets often enough, but believe me i think about them. driving to work with a good pups cd blasting is like riding with your ass plugged straight into the mojo socket, all brilliant quirky energy & rapidfire freeassociative lyricpictures from otherwhere. very, very other, matter of fact.

twenty-one little pink salamanders pass me by tonight
twenty-one little red tongues are flickering in my sight
amphibious thoughts are flowing with the salamanders showing
of the "touch of evil" tinted black and white
seventeen fat ripe rats hold stacks of juniper pie aloft
thirty-four clever rat hands are juggling tarts on high
these rodents know the craving for a slice, a sliver or shaving
no request for satisfaction is denied
open wide, open wide

wide open, minded, twisted, thrilling silly on one level, but listen for the logic, it's intense & also it tickles. all these lies have got me thinking / maybe this is just a thought / soon my ship of thoughts is sinking / slipping through the thinking knot ... a person could seriously fall back in love with at least an abstract concept of her life with such a soundtrack as this.

imagine my delight, a few years back sitting enjoying some liner notes & realizing -- hey, cris & curt kirkwood -- my son kurtwood? yep, subliminally named after the meat puppets. which is perfect.

music is important, have i mentioned that?

* * * * * * *
update: i'm quite fond of this & may place it permanently in the sidebar or somesuch.

first of all, major thankings all around, for all the love & support. & apologies for not updating more, i suppose the worst bit had to do with the fact i seriously regret posting that. seriously.

in any case, things immeasurably better around here & no, i don't know what the answer is, i feel that things will move at their own pace towards their own conclusions, & in the meantime, i've been crazy busy.

spent the day home working my ass off on work-work. just now saw daylight on the thing, just. now.

onward.

beer permitting, i will have this thing skinned shortly so those of you who wish to stay with the mellow beachified version may do so.

random observation: some things cannot be disassembled in an orderly fashion. some things just have to break. i'm not talking about websites here. i'm talking, two months. i'm good with two months. am i being deliberately obtuse? yes i am. it's ok.

so the layout will last, but the pictures will change, probably sooner than later. why? because i said so that's why now put that down you could put somebody's eye out.

so should i really post this? should i? it's so ... it's ...

& that will have to do for now, workworkwork & all. gotta get the workworkwork done 'cause krix & co. will be passing through like a whirlwind sunday night, & it would be good to not be glancing nervously at the computer the whole time they're here. so i have to get some stuff done. & oh you know that elebendy kabillion page report on strategic internet strategies for internetting or whatever? it was good. and it was basically unedited & done in the time it took to type, so, ... i figured i'd brag. see above image for clarification.

i have so much too much to do. this tends to leave me paralytic & twitchy & overly prone to outbursts, loud & profane, signifying frustration at even the simplest slightest things, for instance the way the the mouse becomes harder to use the more frustrated i get and of course this would be operator problems, in this case my tendency to clench when stressed, which affects fine motor skills. it also causes run-on sentences.

one thing at a time? are you mad? any less than three things at once & i'm overwhelmed with the things i'm not doing. as it is, at any one moment i'm not doing at least a half dozen things that are needs, absolutely. inefficiency in the face of the sense of impending doom cycles around to push things another measure closer to panic, which even the slightest perspective shift shows is an utterly illogical way to respond to any of this.

i did get two things done, if done can be taken to mean hacked into an incomplete but miminally acceptable state of not being entirely undone. one of them was an elebendy kabillion page report about strategies for internet somethingorother. the other one is this right here. two other things which if done would result in the ability to send out actual invoices, and of course that bit about the housecleaning and the getting paid for that, remain almost completely and utterly unstarted. various other sources of panic all involve things financial in nature, imagine that. or don't, i mean, it's not pleasant.

i just realized i forgot to eat anything today. i'll get to it eventually i'm sure. if not, there's always tomorrow.

you may know there is a google interface in tlhIngan Hol? yeppers. so if you knew that, you probably know that you can read hamlet, much ado about nothing, and various sonnets by the great klingon playwright wIlyam SeQpIr, as they were intended to be read, right? .

they don't have my favorite sonnet, which is a khesterex thath, don't you think? i mean Q'est.

all sudden-like, it hit me. alone. i'm here all by myself. quick-like, i check all the locks even the window locks. locked. check. then i thought, ok, weapon. i should find one. then i thought, ah! maglite. checked chris's room, only ordinary plastic flashlight in maglite place. realized, oh, maglite would be in the car. old taxi driver habit, always have weapon illumination. fine. need different weapon. but what? think. no baseball bat, no potentially lethal sporting goods of any kind. fishing pole? i might be able to annoy a prowler with a fishing pole, but that's about it. aha! i see a big big red candle, foot tall 4" diameter in a glass jar. weight: at least a pound, compact, fits hand, can be thrown or just used to inflict potentially serious headwound. fine.

sit back down at computer, wonder if the whole not wearing any pants thing is wise, i mean, would it interfere with any intruder-candling i might be called upon to do? decide it would most likely work in my favor, like, "huh?" & there's my opening, bash! candle to the head, knee to the nads (providing intruder comes so equipped, if not, just deliver repeated two-arm candleblows until intruder hits the ground), kick until meat is tenderized, then top with big, ugly chair.

i am prepared.

i am sitting here, gazing blissfully at my lyrics database. at http://localhost/list.php. mmhmm. i have apache. i have php. i have mysql. and i have them running on my sweet lil' win2k box, right here. it's unbelievably sexy.

ok i need to go geek out heavily.

i think such shameful thoughts sometimes. and there's no excuse.