The worst thing to happen to LJ since anonymous

I never call, I never write.

But I have an important question for those musicians among you, Friends List.

I have an old Applause acoustic guitar. It originally had a pickup, but that's broken. It's super narrow and has really terrible sound (no bass tone at all). And it's covered in dumb stickers, like "Nixon's the one".

I recently bought a really nice acoustic, and as such I plan to retire the Applause in some way. I don't really see giving it to anyone as an option (in the same way as I wouldn't give anyone a water damaged Stephen King novel), so I had the idea to modify it.

Some ideas I've had (from mundane to... not so mundane):

1. Reverse the string order, and learn to play left-handed.

2. Other alternate string orders, string counts (bridge/nut modifications) and so on.

3. Mount a slide (either a custom one arched to match the string arch, or on a pivot) onto some kind of contraption that can be slid up and down the neck; mount a "magnetic bow" above the sound hole, on some kind of contraption that can let it connect with the strings at a fifth note from the bridge, and pivot for tonal variation; some kind of new pickup system so this can be played through various effects and whatnot.

Of course, the last one sounds really neat, but it sounds like a good project to never finish or get quite right. But I'm willing to give it a go if I can figure out the hardware needed.

Friends List, what ideas do you have? What would you do to a junk acoustic guitar to give it new life?

Obama bombed Pakistan yesterday.

I know I promised I was going to write some boring diatribe about bipartisan snake oil, but I'll have to come back to that later. For now, I have a truly inspiring story to share.

leth: dude
leth: wachovia charged me a TWO HUNDRED FIFTY dollar overdraft fee
leth: i'm on the phone right now about it
leth: they're being assholes
leth: they're claiming this draft for my car insurance
leth: that i knew wouldn't clear
leth: and called about
leth: happened 3 days before it happened
leth: they're saying it was a weekend charge
leth: I'm saying I have a bill from said insurance
leth: indicating the 15th
leth: not 3-4 days before the 15th
leth: so they can suck my cock
leth: AND
leth: I can view my holds online
leth: date of the hold?
leth: THE FUCKING FIFTEENTH
[...]
leth: they gave me...
leth: 70 dollars off the fees
leth: i almost asked if they had offices in greece
leth: i got as far as
leth: "does wachovia have offices in... you know what? nevermind. bad idea'
leth: i can't believe i'm calling back
leth: just to bitch
[...]
leth: lol dude
leth: instead of calling and bitching
leth: I called customer service
leth: and explicitly said
leth: I'm angry but not at you
leth: so instead of yelling at you
leth: I'm going to have a nice chat with you about why banks are usuristic parasites
leth: and you can get paid for not having to do any work
leth: I also suggested she organize her coworkers
leth: and take control of the bank
leth: ousting upper management
me: ROL
me: how did she respond to the whole thing?
leth: She had a grand old time
leth: and she let me know that all calls were monitored
leth: so I started talking to them
leth: you don't trust your employees?
leth: you have t listen to ever call your employees make?
leth: You fucking gestapo, you fucking pinkertons.
leth: lol man I went off
leth: and went
leth: wait they're listening?
leth: have you heard about the riots in greece?
leth: they're burning banks down.
leth: too bad wachovia has none there
leth: also best part?
leth: end of the conversation she told me that the half an hour of no work
leth: was the best x mas present she's going to get
[...]
leth: I also explained to her how banks make their money
leth: which she didn't know
leth: I was like
leth: You know, Claire
leth: I hate banks
leth: and she said I don't hate them, why do you?
leth: so I explained that they take our deposits and loan them out at 100x the interest they pay us
leth: and that's how they make their money
leth: and she was like
leth: "that's... interesting. i didn't know that."
[...]
leth: i was also making like
leth: absurd small talk
leth: what's your favorite ice cream?
leth: oh you're lactose intolerant? what do you eat instead?
leth: pie! that's great i love pie
leth: what's your favorite kind of pie?
leth: apple? that is a fantastic choice

Dear Livejournal,

Tonight you get to be my notepad. I want to flesh this out into a whole argument with lots of supporting evidence and maybe some great illustrations and figures and whatnot, but for now I have to eat dinner and just want to jot it down so I remember it.

Basically, the argument goes: with approval ratings of the Republican executive and the Democratic Congress have-beens hitting record lows, it seems to me that the would-bes realized that neither of their platforms were digestible, so they invented a problem to blame, and sold Bipartisanship brand snake oil as a cure. Somehow the answer to problems with the Republicans that even Republicans can't tolerate, and likewise problems with the Democrats that even Democrats can't tolerate, is to "reach across the aisle", and the way to "go against their own parties" is to work with the "opposing" party. In other words, after ages of demonization of one another in pretense that they are even politically distant, their solution is to "put aside their differences" and "work together" (as they have always done), and this is a "new kind of politics". A few key phrases aside, McCain and Obama ran almost identical campaigns, and were falling over each other to be more the same as the other than the other.

The problem is "divisiveness" and the answer is "unity".

Watching people praise Obama as some kind of departure from anything as he stacks his administration with neoconservative Republicans (who are, go figure, RINO liberals) is just astounding.

Meet the new boss, more the same as the old boss than ever.

Fuck hope.

What is cowardice?

I seem to have a different understanding of it than the rest of this country. Can someone explain it with the subtlety I'm missing?

So I got "tagged".

( Don't even bother reading this )

I'm not tagging people. Eat it.

I'm either extraordinarily stupid or my genius is so great that even I can't comprehend it. I hope someday I figure out which is true.

Report: strong feelings about US election makes you an asshole^[1]

And that includes you. And that includes me.

^[1] The Internet

In the last few months I've had some time to think through some things. I guess in some ways some of what I believe has softened, so to speak. For instance, I don't think it's entirely impossible that something resembling civilization could have been saved for quite a long time, given a lot of preparation and some really strict boundaries. But I think the time for that has probably passed.

The problem with the various, scattered, almost schizophrenic efforts to evade collapse is that they lack (in this order) focus, power and a basis of understanding that an infrastructural collapse of this sort won't come on a linear timeline, but an exponential one—that it's probably a lot nearer than it looks based on a purely material analysis. To put it more clearly: especially where the entire economy and system of production depends on a finite fuel source, when its supplies start to run out fuel shortages compound food shortages, which compound seemingly trivial inefficiencies, which compound human emotion and suffering and thus social unrest, which compounds all of the above.

It wasn't so many years ago that the idea of oil running out and food shortages was the domain of survivalists. And it was an even shorter time ago that the culture of conspicuous consumption was unquestionably sacred, in the west anyway (sadly, this culture is taking hold in China's middle class, a population so large that it alone could surprise us chicken littles with how much things can accelerate). Today CNN, not a particular hotbed of collapse fetishism, is airing reports discussing (in my words, not theirs) massive disruptions in the food supply chain—crediting biofuels as a primary culprit.

And while this food/fuel contradiction could be mitigated by a change in strategy—after all, biofuel isn't exactly the best answer to oil on any timeline—the problem thus becomes one of preparation and focus as much as a problem of scarcity. While switching to biofuels is a relatively painless process (for those consuming it, say nothing of those starving as a result), more sensible transitions would take... let's be honest, decades, with the full weight of capital and empire behind it. Instead, we have a hodgepodge of ideas ranging from bad to worse than the current situation, all competing for a commitment from power that power is too delusional and arrogant to lend even if there were a clear solution.

And even if the standard radical left solution (taking the power of production into popular control) were a solution—and I'm not convinced it is—the radical left, at least in the dominant culture, the culture responsible for this situation, is basically powerless to the point that we'll likely never see how its plans would unfold before a collapse takes place.

Like I said in opening, I've had a lot of time to think through these things. Whatever hope or potential I saw in people's ability to make something positive out of a collapse of industry is clouded now by the obvious fact that all of the chaos I've talked about above isn't going to vanish, and probably won't be resolved in any real way for at least a generation after we wake up and realize the collapse already happened. From where I'm sitting, things are looking really grim for the next few decades.

... that my first time back to my Friends page in months upon months, there is a midi of Rick Astley. I hate you, Internet, and most of your memes.

Things that I've been up to:

- Nothing important:
Seriously. It's disgusting.

- Making music (as Keeping Up With the Jonestown Massacre):
Sketches (For Jonestown) This was supposed to be an album for the RPM challenge, which I failed, probably due in part to other items on this list, but also due to the fact that I made the challenge a bit harder for myself: I decided to record a song of 1-2 minute length each day. It's hard enough to fit anything worth a damn into 1-2 minutes, much less do it on a daily basis.
This other thing... This is just starting. (Temporary song titles courtesy Nine Inch Nails)

- Making beer:
Some barleywine. Some abbey ale. Some dopplebock. Some mocha porter. Pretty humdrum stuff. Oh, and a particularly "special" beer that apparently makes for great fun.

- Selling out:
So, I totally tricked this poor innocent web development startup into not only hiring me, but paying me (what I consider) obscene amounts of money and even to giving me 1/3 of their company.

- Lurking on LJ for the last few months either anonymously or with a variety of sock puppets. But a bunch of you know that already.

I'M BACK

Due to some things I don't want to talk about, I am quitting LiveJournal. I'm screening comments on this post. If you don't know how to get in contact with me and would like to, respond with your email address. If I want you to be able to contact me, I'll give you my information.

I'm not sick and dying, and it isn't an emergency. This is something I should have done a long time ago. Take care of yourselves.

The new Laibach album is amazing.

Seriously, it is a whole album of musical genius.

No, really.

Comment with the words "Top [integer]", and I will reply with a subject for which you will generate a top [integer] list. Post the list and instructions in your own journal. (I edited these instructions because I'm a dishonest intellectual.)

Top two anarchists:

1. tcpip. This guy makes fascism look libertarian. By singlehandedly representing nearly all of the worst stereotypes of anarchists (with the exception that he's not an alcoholic squatter punk), he's helped reinforce my view that anarchists are not to be trusted or taken for granted as "on my side".

2. revengeofcleve. He's not an LJ hero crusading the most asinine communities and filling them with crap, he's just doing it at random. But his random path led him to anarchists, twice, and one time he brought the entire community into chaos at a time when it was... well, more asinine than usual. What do anarchists think of Cleve?

Honorable mention goes to: notnotnevinzehr, xmobiusx, beeblism and a variety of other people (a lot of you are on my friends list, you know who you fucking are) whose rare contributions don't actually make me want to claw out my eyes.

According to my spell-checker, underemployment is a word, but overemployment is not.

Venereal Day!

Hey, everybody, look at me, I'm a tiny little baby who lets winter cold and an hour or two of extra darkness keep me from functioning. Boo-hoo, I've got seasonal affective disorder. All I feel like doing is sitting in my apartment, eating, and going beddy-bye because my hypothalamus can't cope with the decreased amount of daylight.

Boo-hoo, I have fewer melanopsin proteins than regular people.

Poor me, every morning I have trouble getting out of bed because it's still dark outside when I leave for work. The gray clouds and the icy slush and the brutal cold and ever-present darkness remind me of my impending doom. They magnify all my latent fears and feelings of hopelessness. Whine!

More...

Well, laughing at SAD is more fun than SAD alone!

I am filled with you.
Skin, blood, bone, brain, and soul.
There's no room for lack of trust, or trust.
Nothing in this existence but that existence.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.


He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

You are being watched
Debt relief is on the way
You've already won.

OMG 2007 IS COMING AND IT'S PISSED. MAKE SURE TO GET PISSED TOO.

These are the tabs that were open in my browser before I went to bed:

Gmail
Mario Adventure: The Best NES Game Hack of All Time
BrewBoard -> Beer
George W. Bush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm writing with regards to your recent open letter to Bound Together Books, an excellent example of divisive passive aggression and defensive egotism used as a substitute for communication and problem resolution.

While the terms on which the bookfair was expanded might be problematic, it seems to me that those who value the bookfair as an "anarchist activity" (to borrow that phrase from your open letter) would see this expansion as an overall success—perhaps a cause for celebration—and an opportunity, rather than cause to rally uninvolved people around the world into side-taking (which, if my experience as a radical is any indication, is the most likely overall result), apparently without ever having attempted to resolve the problem privately.

Open involvement and accountability doesn't mean that every disagreement needs to be aired publicly, much less in this manner. Your prose reeks of hurt egos more than any kind of air of concern for the advancement of anarchism, or justice, or anything really besides your particular organization's particular event.

What really strikes me is that your organization has evidently done some brainstorming about how to make this change work, perhaps even to the advantage of both your event and the bookfair. But you have precluded any such cooperation or adjustment on the basis that your collective feelings were hurt. My initial reaction was to respond, "move your event a day later and get over it." But I felt this obnoxious response might make my point better.

Has Bound Together refused to communicate on this issue? It's strange that your open letter falls short of making such an accusation, but leaves it implicit between the lines. It would seem, to a reader who isn't careful and suspicious, that BASTARD has attempted to communicate with Bound Together and resolve your outstanding objections, yet nowhere in the open letter is this explicitly claimed. In fact, such a refusal to negotiate is somewhat implicit in the tactic of an open letter—a tactic intended to reveal, to a broader public than is immediately involved in a given affair, that the target of the letter is stubbornly blocking some sort of compromise in that affair, where the target would be swayed by such exposure and resulting response.

Ironically, your letter ends with a somewhat inspiring quote, at least within the context, that contradicts the spirit of your letter itself. Instead of bemoaning the apparent malicious exclusion of BASTARD from planning the bookfair, it praises Bound Together (and others) for doing the necessary year-round work to make this expansion possible. What a shame, indeed.

(Here is the original letter)