errantember

So I had these coins.

These *dirty* coins.

I left a syringe of expoxy in my car after an abortive repair attempt. And it leaked. Not the hardener, mind you. Just the resin. It leaked directly into my change compartment, coating all my change in a sticky, gooey, Gieger-esque mass.

I tried to clean them. With soap. And shaking.

*Lots* of shaking.

But to no avail! They remained slimy enough to be useless. I was going to just ditch them. Leave then on the street for those less fortunate than myself, lonely and forgotten. They were so bad I had to spit polish them with a dirty napkin just to use them at Taco Bell.

Really! I had given up.

I had given up, until the city of Austin changed it's fucking downtown parking regulations to include Saturday nights until fucking *midnight*.

I'm not fond of paying for parking.

Until now. :)

I've always hated SXSW. Maybe it's all the Intruders. Maybe it's being unable to actually experience my beloved city without a fucking high-priced douchetag. Maybe it's because I've never once actually, you know, *listened* to any of the *music*. But this year, *THIS* *YEAR*, I have my revenge!



There's lot more where that came from, and don't miss out on the comments, or you will miss out on the HATE!

Click for More


I had a *blast* at OrFunner 2008! Thanks to everyone who made it happen!
OrFunner seemed a little bit less well-attended than Decompression, I'd guess about 350-400 people. We had two larger sound systems, the stage and the Blue Moon Roadhouse, as well as several smaller chill venues. Tink make an appearance, as did the LED balloons and five or six firedancers, including me.

Click pic for more

After getting my filter for doing visible-light-only photography, I found myself wandering around downtown taking, shockingly, *pictures*.

Whining about a few truly idiotic feature choices aside, the new camera *rules*. The only regrets about buying it will belong to the offspring of the design engineers.

In what's probably the most exciting concert experience of my life, Information Society will be playing Elysium on Friday, January 18th! Tickets are on sale at Secret Oktober.

If you're not there, you're not me!

My main complaint about my hotel is the fact that the wireless internet access has been out for two days now, and only *might* be fixed tomorrow. This makes planning and navigating in San Francisco much more difficult. The fact that the tub doesn't drain and the phone doesn't work were remedied by yet another room change. Internet access is likely to be sporadic for me for now. I'm currently at one of the few places that offers free wireless, which isn't ubiquitous here in SF like it is in Austin.

I attended Death Guild at the Glas Kat last night, which was great, and look forward to debuting my new leather pants and vinyl outfit there at Bondage-A-Go-Go tomorrow night. Tonight I have no specific plans, so I'll be heading down to the Fulsom/Castro area and cruising around for a party.

First I went Wednesday evening to H(o)abitat Suites, a local all-organic hotel that is generously loaning us space for our free permaculture classes, to see a presentation by Andy Erwin, formerly of Boggy Creek Farm. It was all about ways to succeed with small-scale farming in Austin. He mentioned countless plants, tips, website, and other information and was very driven and inspirational. I definitely plan to tap him as a resource regarding future home farming efforts.

So after including a lot of trellised walkways in the design for my yard, I decided I should return to Construction Site X around midnight to take advantage of the big-ass pile of ash juniper that had been massacred I saw on my last walkabout there. After getting lost for a while, I discovered the Big Fucking Pile where all the topsoil for, evidently, the entire development is being kept. I climbed a small mountain of dirt, rocks, roots and twigs in search of decent sized pieces of juniper to take home. The tree pile didn't show itself. In the meantime, I pulled and sawed a few pieces I found sticking out at random. I also collected a few interesting root clusters that could make lawn ornaments and good habitats for wildlife. I finally located what was left of the tree pile, and about doubled my juniper find there. More importantly, however, I discovered where the trees had gone. Next to the big mountain of dirt, there was small mountain of wood mulch. The timing is perfect, as I just returned a shitty $30 wood chipper to Goodwill largely because it was too noisy and dangerous for my lot. I've been meaning to find a way to utilize the entire bed of the CR-V for such cargo, and I think I've an idea that will work. I'm going to duct tape together a bunch of contractor bags to cover the entire bed as high as I can attach it. Then I can go forth with a wheelbarrow and a rake and, as they say in investing, "back up the truck." I heard from a local source that they often have to pay someone to take the mulch away, so the small amount I can nab will be doing them a proportionally small favor. I may also be sneaky and transport my trash lumber to their pile so they can mulch it for me.

Not that I'm routinely a sneaky individual.

In addition to the above booty, I also nabbed several limestone rocks with the holes in them. I may also pick up a few more next trip, as all the limestone I've gotten so far has been hole-less.

The infra-red remote for the camera I'm using in my Foot Photography Booth for Burning Man is very small. When you decided to immortalize your $300 go-go boots/playa-ravaged feet/contorted gonads for some random perverted stranger, wouldn't *you* rather press a BIG button than some chumpy little circle? So I went to Frys and bought a memorizing remote, tried it with the camera remote. And it worked! So I programmed all 9 numeric keypad digits to transmit the FIRE! signal, and I'm going to make a big, fat rubber button that fits over all 9 of them at once. I'll still need to do some testing, but I think I can write this major milestone off my checklist.

As a brief aside, I was fucking *starving* and on deadline at Frys, so I ordered a sandwich. I didn't realize they would assume it was a "for here" order, so I when I went to check out I slapped this roast beef sandwich onto the counter. The checkout girls smiled and said "Wow! No one has ever brought us lunch before!"

Right at this moment, one of the most important moments of my life, years of discipline and training paid off. Had I not reached my current level of maturity, had I let the headrush of flirting overcome my good sense, I would have said:

"Would you like Frys with that?"

At which point I would clearly have been struck down by God with enough force to annihilate all of Round Rock and a substantial portion of North Austin. Obviously, other than killing Ryan, no major loss to Austin at large. However, becoming a faint burn-shadow defining the center of a 10-mile blast crater gently adrift in the powerdered bodies and broken dreams of a minor municipality was not part of my plans for this particular Thursday.

Instead, I said *nothing*.

Nothing.



"And baby Jesus smiled."