Lurking, and not very often

Once, there was Friendster. And it was fun to see all your associate's profiles, in a organized manner (not like a 1997 Geocities page). And you could see the connections. And you could follow them. But there was no way to associate people by groups. So we made fictitious person accounts like "Burning Man." But there was still no way to communicate in discussions. Then they started to run out of bandwidth and I had to seek out another online outlet.

Then came Tribe. Suddenly we had all the profile pages and connections of Friendster, plus the ability to join groups and public discussions. Plus, they let us get away with grown-up stuff. But I never realized one thing: all this time, Tribe was limited to the High Tech world, San Francisco, and Burning Man. That was about it. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation got their first representation on MySpace. I tried it, but "eeeewwww!" I couldn't deal with the vomit backgrounds and embedded music that hit you like finding a dildo in the fridge.

During Tribe's six-month lack of bandwidth, I got dragged into FaceBook. Sure they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar a few ttimes, and slapped on the wrist. But it's starting to look like they're trainable. It was really weird to be found by people I knew in Hight School, but it's turning out to be addictive to watch everyone's news twats™, and to comment on every little thing that happens in a person's day.

So now I'm down to just occasional check-in here on Tribe. I've cut my associate list down to just about 100 locals. See you in the next network (and the next, and the next...)!

A Separation of Marriage and Legal Status

The seeds of my proposal for... California? Congress?
For General Practice, Regardless of Government Policy?

shamanrandal.com/smls.html

How do we make it legal?

Scheduled uptime

Maybe Tribe could tell us when it will be up for limited times. We could either all sign-in at say... 8-10 PM on Thursdays, or maybe alot the bandwidth by first name: A-H will sign-in from 9 AM - 12 and J-P could sign-in from 12-4... that sort of thing

080814 dream journal

10:00 AM

dream: mysterious, symbolic, ultra poignant

Part I: CULTURAL MUSIC SESSION
- Eastern-European/Mediteranian people, sometimes with epicanthic eyes.
- Draped clothing on the waist and around the head
- Musical instruments; flutes, stringed instruments like lutes, voice
- The food was hand-dipping dishes, like pita and hummus
- This culture had a period where women were not allowed to perform, so the female musicians wore fake grey beards--the kind that wrap over the ears with wire

I said aloud that this reminded me of a Monty Python joke, and people politely smiled. They were being hosted by a friend of mine. I was wearing in the dream what I wore in my sleep; t-shirt and underwear, plus the draped they were wearing. The fabric was mostly white with a colored woven border, like Indian dhoti.

There was something conservative about the gathering. It was tea time; from 3 until 6 PM. I knew there were things I shouldn't talk about in front of these people. It was very cultural; there were children and adults. Yet people were apparently dressed casually, like what you would wear around the house. The clothing was cool and covered very little of the torso, though the head was covered by the same drape which went around the waist. The knees were visible.

I don't remember any music. They players were primed, but the music hadn't started yet.

Part II: BIRD OF PREY, EXTERIOR, PALO ALTO
I was waiting outside on a park bench in a wide sidewalk setting. There were planters cut out of the pavement. Young trees on stakes. Jasmine ground cover. I arrived there via transition from the previous setting, which I can't remember.

I don't remember how, but among the pigeons, there arose a bird which perched on my outstretch two fingers. I easily accepted it as a tame pigeon for a while, but I soon realized that this was a bird of prey. It had a hooked beak, and forward-facing large eyes. He made excellent eye contact with me. He related very well. I made sure he was OK with perching there. I started to wave my arm up and down to let him feel the gravity. I spun around slowly. The strange part was that people don't perch hawks on their fingers. The talons dig in. I know they have to wear gauntlets.

The bird's coat was near white with black specks. But the head area was also patterned with a gradient patches of lemon-yellow or light green. I must find this hawk or falcon. Possibly an owl or vulture, but probably a hawk.

My search:
google: Inquisitor: search:
"yellow hawk" Yields:
- www.yellowhawkcellar.com/ a winery in Walla Walla
- www.yellowhawk.org/ a tribal health center in Umatilla Indian Reservation, Pendleton Oregon. The third headline on the page (and the first link) is "Extreme Heat Information". Hmm, that might be useful coming up. www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/...eat/faq.asp

Ah!! Here we go:
symbolic-meanings.com/2007/12...comments

1998 Was the End of the World

[reposted from 2004-June-5th]

I'm brushing my teeth and looking in the mirror. I'm looking at someone whom I met at the Rainbow Gathering and fell in love with. Not my present self, but a Faerie I saw at the festival–I've spent all this time emulating his adornment.

The Rainbow Gathering was in 1998. That was… …six years ago. My aesthetic is frozen in time. My answer to all things fashion is fixated on 1998. I have found no more recent reference for pertinent visual designs.

Hippy fashion, urban fashion, piercing and tats, graphic design, web site layouts, India-mania – I always rely on things that date back to that period.

Right now, in my head, Madonna is singing Drowned World from the special edition copy of Ray of Light with the pearl-o-graphic cover that matches the underside of an iMac mouse. She sings Substitute for Love to remind me of the underwater-like sensations I felt on my first trip to Black Rock City. I remember gliding through the valley of Pyramid Lake in the moonlight with Craig & Wendy in the borrowed SUV, seeing the desert as an ocean with its life underground. The title track on Ray of Light reveals the lyric, "and I feel, like I just got home, and I feel", while the video for Frozen introduces us to a shape-shifter in pseudo-Indian costume on a dry lake bed. I really experienced a harmonic convergence with Madonna's album. That was in 1998. "This is my religion." Is "Ray of Light" intended to be a homonym for "Rave Lite?"

Is this what it's like to get old and set in one's ways. "Oh Randal, you're wearing long hair with Lenny Kravitz chops and you've pierced your ears with a large gauge. That so 90's." I've resurrected my hemp-and-ball-chain necklaces from the depths of my jewelry drawer. I'm delighted with the case design of my new 1999 clamshell iBook. I've been re-living what I missed in the last years by buying used Macs.

Last Picked: another flashback

Along with my reigning title of Best Artist in the School, I carried the complimentary title of Always Last Picked in sports. Not always last, but the last boy--and sometimes even placed in line after the Jehovah Witness girl with glasses. And this goes all the way back to Kindergarten when I first got the reputation of being "uncoordinated" because I couldn't skip. Imagine being called 'gay' because you couldn't skip. Sure I played on the pull-up bars with the girls and learned cherry drops and all that, but the standing around and hitting things involved in sports was always beyond me.

Let's start with Baseball. It's 4th Grade and since I'm about 40 now, the year was like 1977. I know this is baseball because there's a bat and a small projectile they call a 'soft' ball which is actually a leather-covered sphere of oak that could totally brain you if it hit your face. OK, I'm guessing here. I've never actually held one of those things for more than 5 seconds, and only as a study for a pencil drawing in art class. But it's a lot harder than a kickball, which I hate getting hit with in dodgeball because I'm likely to hit my head against the big wooden wall behind me.

I have no idea what this game is about or why they keep referring to it as exercise. For some enthusiastic few at the core of the game, there's some running and catching things for about 10 seconds, and that's only every five minutes. This is the school board's idea of forcing physical activity upon students while ingeniously disguising it as something 'fun', but I know I get more of both while playing a retarded Sleestak and dodging invisible exploding crystals at recess.

But it's not recess. We've left a productive day in the classroom to come out and waste a sunny day standing around on a lawn. How much time is that? I have no idea because it goes so slowly while talking to the girl next to me behind the backstop. Meanwhile, boys claw the chain-link fence and shout things. I'd really rather not get so close to that fence because it has a tendency to unexpectedly pulsate at your face when the ball hits it. Sometimes, the last-girl-picked and I can get away with sitting in this long line and hiding below the wooden part of the backstop.

But if this session goes long enough before switching sides, I risk having to hold the bat at the plate. And once again I'll be instructed that if I don't switch hands, I'll break my wrists when I swing. And then they say "choke-up on the bat". And although my stomach is queazy, I can't imagine vomiting on a piece of school equipment. Eventually, the pitcher gets the idea to throw the ball right at the bat, so that it bounces off and onto the ground in front of me. This results in an "RBI" or a "sacrifice" or a "Walk". I can't remember, but the butch guys all thank and encourage me for some reason when this happens.

Let me make this perfectly clear: By high school, I had still never learned this important game. Because I have a Nerdy dad, and my brothers are much older, I've somehow slipped through the cracks and never got the basic information on how this is played, or why. At this point I'm guessing that it's something that only real boys just know inherently, like pissing in front of other guys. And all the girls who know sports must have brothers their own age. My brother had to explain to my mom the importance of knowing sports for boys. He told her, "Not knowing sports is like being 15 and not yet pubesced." My mom said "Oh my god, I had no idea it was that important." But by then it was too late and there was nothing to do about it. It's like sending an 11th-grader to remedial reading class; recognizing the problem might do more damage through stigmatization. It's easier to keep it on the down-low.

But it's not like I had any inclination to learn either. From where I was standing in left field--kept at least 10 feet from the girl with glasses so we couldn't talk--It just didn't look like fun. All I could read from the boys who were into it was a frustrated aggression. We didn't even have fun outfits: none of the kinky padding in the crotch or the calf socks that make your legs all knobby. This was Star Wars era in Orange County and most of the boys and girls are wearing some kind of western plaid shirt or funny-car T-shirt with bell-bottom corduroy. There was always one guy who wore that helmet which resembles the collector's edition item that Slurpies come in, except without the Anaheim Stadium logo on it.

But somehow the ball got hit straight up into the air over left field to be lost in the glare of the sun. And right about now I'm wishing I had one of those leather oven mitts to shield my head as I run from the ball so someone else can get it. This episode ruined a completely valid session of daydreaming about Sleestak. And it's been replaced with another opportunity for ostracization. I want to go home and do something important, like make shadow boxes of geishas among cherry blossoms.

Still on the housing search 750

OK guys, help me out here: I really need to find housing through my friend-base. When I represent myself online to strangers, I end up looking like I'm too snooty or homeless or a Scientologist or some kind of weirdo. My profile makes it really easy to weed me out of the 300 responses to CraigsList. It's much better if I get recommended by humans as an introduction.

Militantly anti-nicotine, max $750, Mission/Castro, maybe Emeryville. Some place I can get clients to come over easily.

Did you know the new cool thing is to say "No Burning Man types"? I'm going to be unapologetic. I like to walk to the bathroom naked in the morning. I hate it when dishes sit in the sink overnight.

shamanrandal.com/housing.html

seeking a room in Mission or Castro - 700

[listing function fails, so I'm trying my blog function]

I'm a freelance photographer and web technician with interests in costume culture and healthy cooking. I'm looking for a place that's safe and comfortable with good people so that I can do my projects and live my life without undue drama. My shyness can be mistaken for aloofness. So it takes some time to get to know me.

Things people like about me
- good natured / ethical
- creative / artistic
- good taste
- clean
- honest
- responsible, yet fun
- naturally sober [not recovering]
- I can patiently teach anybody anything

Things people like about living with me
- housebroken
- nice food / generous chef
- no pounding music
- curfew at 10 respected
- interesting projects
- small footprint / neat in common areas
- no addictions

Controversy
- work at home
- cook at home
- live at home
- might have sex at home
- costumes and projects

Things I want in a house
- functional utilities
- DSL
- grounded outlets
- working doorknobs and all that
- normal sleeping possible
- space for more than a laptop and a hamper
- no addicts, paranoids, violence
- conversational, but no social commitments
- real people

people.tribe.net/furtographer
furtographer.com/
shamanrandal.com/

--randal
415-335-3293

freedom safe

Freedom is actually a safe thing for people naturally endowed with ethics. "Would you rather eat your vegetables or stab your mother?" For an ethical person, this is an easy question.

The bible codes were written with the mind of a criminal. For the morally bankrupt, it's necessary to set guidelines about how you treat other people on this planet.

Unfortunately, this minority is very vocal and visible because these people are always attracted to positions of power and have no qualms about stepping on others to get there.

The Story of Stuff

A great little film to remind us of what's happening every time we eat ice cream or buy new shoes or turn on the TV.
www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

Don't feel guilty, just do something about it.