i remembered my friend, a real “natural-only” type of person, had done feng
shui on her house. i didnt know much about it other than it was about putting
like stuff together.

so i looked up quite a bit. the “official” ways involving astrology, charms,
and other creepy stuff, which involved the earth’s magnetic poles and was
more about construction of the house rather than decorating and arranging
furniture, making claims that stuff like cancer clusters are caused by “bad
feng shui” rather than pollutants.

what i was referring to were two “western” ways.

the most popular one was called “BTB” and was developed by a new age cult
leader (Black Sect Tantric Buddhism) in the 80s. it laid the room out like a
grid, with stuff based on the front.

There was another one, similar to “BTB”, called “eight aspirations”, but rather
than a grid, it lays out a room like the tai chi symbol and the areas are
based on the earth’s magnetic poles. i thought that was a lot cooler, and with
two exceptions it isn’t a problem for me. it also involves a color scheme, so
that things don’t look out of place.

i kept in mind relics from school and what my mind might interpret souvenirs,
and stuff like that which hangs around, and was able to for the most part
organize my room according to the tai chi symbol. (my window faces almost
exactly west, and certain times of the day i can’t use the computer because
the sun is in my eyes). i cleaned up lots of crap, put lots of stuff away
and have two boxes of stuff to throw away whenever.

this took me two days or so, and i still got a bit to do, but for the most part
keeping things separate and themed seems to be making me less depressed. (that
and a messy room too)

–

i’ve also been busy this month with other things. i got the “easy” stuff done
and have the rest of the month for the “hard”.

–

and with all this, until writing this blog entry i have completely forgot about
fly papers volume ii. don’t worry, i just need to put in may and june (from the
output of the mediocre wordpress plugin i use) and clean things up for the
final book. but then volume iii starts, of course.

–

my dvd drive finally went. i have another one on the way from newegg. it has
lightscribe and wasn’t too much money. i have two dvd drives but the one
that broke was the first computer part to break from my current 3-year-old
dell machine. the machine consists mostly of parts i added myself, and
i’ll probably go back to building computers again. i know a bit more and
will probably get the heating stuff right this time.

–

off to dalnet and/or freenode. l8rz

time to pack my books
another semester’s done
lots of hope ahead
don’t be late, let’s go!

it’s the college winter games
skating, sledding, skiing
snowboarding, hockey on the ice
lots of fun to be had!

but the skating rink is empty
lost my tickets to the sledding
and skiing’s lost mine
snowboarding’s just too busy
and hockey just don’t care

another crappy christmas
another shitty new year
terrible fucking snow
spring is on its way
i’ll just have to wait for the summer games…

Actor Mark Ruffalo has been placed on a terror advisory list by U.S. officials after organizing screenings for a new documentary about natural gas drilling.

…his efforts to raise awareness and demand a stop to natural gas drilling reportedly attracted the attention of officials from Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security – and he recently discovered it had landed him on a terror alert watchlist.

He tells GQ magazine, “(It’s) pretty f**kin’ funny.”

Lew Rockwell’s David Kramer adds:

So let me get this straight: Under a “liberal” Democratic Administration that claims to be really, really “concerned” about the environment, a liberal supporter is now considered a possible terrorist because he is promoting a film that is concerned about the environment. Still believe that big business only controls the Republican Party?

I heard about this YouTube video from Urban Dictionary‘s chat room on Freenode:

(via YouTube)

BTW that’s not what the word means, it’s more than just “smelling”

A senior at North Dallas High School who was born a boy but who ran for homecoming queen did not make the cut.

Andy Moreno has identified herself as female for the past year. She looks and acts like a girl.

“…I don’t feel comfortable with because I identify myself as a woman and not as a male, and a king is a male,” she previously told FOX 4.

She believes it was discriminatory, she said.

The Dallas Independent School District said in a statement there was no change in the principal’s position to allow only male students to be eligible for homecoming king and female students to be eligible for homecoming queen.

From FAILblog:

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

see more EpicFail

Now it appears the same thing is occurring with STP. This band has existed since 1992 (1991 if you count the non-grunge Mighty Joe Young demo material)

Their first album in 1992, the grungy Core, has lots of hits played on classic rock stations, including “Sex Type Thing”, “Plush”, and “Wicked Garden”.

1994′s Purple (incorrectly considered self-titled as the word “purple” is written in Chinese) is very 70s rock sounding, Led Zeppelin-like. Two hits from Purple are frequently played by classic rock stations, “Big Empty” (also used in The Crow) and “Interstate Love Song”. (A heavier hit, “Unglued”, is no longer heard on the radio)

I was a fan of this band since I was in 6th grade. This was 1996, after Tiny Music was released. This had a more messy sound, wasn’t always heavy, and sounded similar to the Beatles at times.

In 1999, after a brief break-up (including terrible solo work by singer Scott Weiland), No. 4 was released. It was very heavy, kind of like Core, and there were a few softer Tiny Music-like songs, but also very messy, as there were psychological issues at the time, including Scott Weiland’s drug addiction.

Shangri-La Dee Da, released in 2001, was mostly acoustic. I didn’t like it and found it boring, but others disagreed with me. There were frequent obvious references to Courtney Love (Hole like most others had “sold out” at the time), including the hit “Hollywood Bitch” and the conspiratorial “Too Cool Queenie”

(note I can only find a session recording, if you are interested in the conspiracy theory click here for the lyrics)

A greatest hits album, 2003′s Thank You (from which the above video came from, as I am told, I do not have this album). The buy-this-anyway-hit was “All In The Suit That You Wear” (sounds kinda like a cross between No. 4 and Shangri-La Dee Da):

After another break-up, Scott joined members of Guns & Roses to found Velvet Revolver, which I didn’t like (nor do I like Guns & Roses). The rest of STP joined Filter’s singer Ray Luzier to form Army of Anyone, or, “The Rest of Shangri-La Dee Da”.

A few months ago, they came back with their self titled album, Stone Temple Pilots. This album was just plain excellent. IMO Shangri-La Dee Da is no way to end a career unless you’ve given up on music. The radio hit “Between the Lines”, which will probably be locked away in the ClearChannel vault, is heavy yet polished, with the bridge lifted from Nirvana’s song “Stay Away” Hopefully they will continue to release records and not break up with another Shangri-La Dee Da Here are some songs from the new album, and the Nirvana song for comparison:

Having heard all these songs, go check out the reviews on Amazon for Stone Temple Pilots’ new 2010 self-titled release. All of the negative reviews say “This isn’t Core or Purple“, as if this was STP’s third album released 10 years after being a one-hit wonder.

To put it another way: as classic rock and modern rock radio have become merged over the past 5 or so years, too many songs were lost, reducing great careers into one-hit wonders. Pearl Jam for instance had dozens of releases on old modern/alternative rock stations. Less than 5-8 of them are played now.

A show I used to watch when I was little:

Pointing out the emperor has given a lap dance to special interests has resulted in things ranging from angry personal attacks to invented hacking reports to my ISP! But now, from talking to the same people, I think more and more people are starting to accept this as truth. It still doesn’t have mainstream acceptance, but I have a feeling it will be. I believe that Slackware Linux and the similar operating system OpenBSD are currently the least tainted with espionage and corporate interests. But Slackware Linux is still Linux, and OpenBSD isn’t very supported, though I don’t condone any corporate or government funding of any kind to OpenBSD, to maintain its purity and reputation.

I’m hoping that more people finally wake up and realize they have been ripped off and sold out by nonprofits which are no different than the corporate counterparts they supposedly oppose.

On June 30th, 2009, 2:21:01 AM EDT, the first post to the “Azz Pizz Institute” blog was made. This predecessor to the “X-Cop Fly Company”, this blog was named after an inside joke. It was a personal journal coming from an immature humor perspective – a major step “down” from my past political blogs, such as “Life, Liberty, and Property” (a Blogspot blog which lasted a very long time and was once cited by a minor news source). At that time, “Azz Pizz Institute” was hosted on a subdomain of a file archive (which is currently a parked domain redirecting to xcopfly.com).

On July 27th, 2009, 5:02:53 AM EDT, a post entitled “Something Big Is Coming To A School Near You…” was made.

On July 28th, 2009, 5:58:14 AM EDT, a post revealed the purchase of a domain name and work on a new site.

On August 7th, 2009, 2:04:25 AM EDT, xcopfly.com was revealed to the public – “The X-Cop Fly Company”, another inside joke, would both supplant “The Azz Pizz Institute” as well as be a pseudonym to develop software for the TI Calculator (later canceled after lack of interest, the inefficiency of the TI-BASIC programming language, and disgust over legal actions taken by Texas Instruments.)

On August 25th, 2009, 10:52:31 AM EDT, an intention to obsessively and unnecessarily have xcopfly.com comply with all sorts of Web standards was announced, and changes were made for this purpose.

On November 13th, 2009, 10:42:20 PM EST, a post was made announcing an X-Cop Fly Company-owned server for the game UrbanTerror. (It was canceled later due to lack of use.)

On January 28th, 2010, 4:10:56 AM EST, I responded to comments of the “gross” photo of a brown gnat – by painting one myself! Made with pastels and charcoal pencil, the logo exists on the top right corner of xcopfly.com to this day.

On May 18th, 2010, 5:35:54 AM EDT, I took a brave, countercultural, and definitely unusual stance on Internet copyright licensing issues. With my other option being special-interest-controlled legal traps like Creative Commons, I released most of this blog’s text content into the public domain! And I’m not talking about the Creative Commons “CC0″ and “Public Domain Dedication” waiver trickery (see link for important updated information on this)

On May 26th, 2010, 8:11:52 PM EDT, a separate stylesheet was created for xcopfly.com for compatibility with mobile devices, TVs, and older browsers.

Thank you all for reading xcopfly.com!

Rain Makes You Sleepy

You tend to move extremely slowly. It takes you a long time to adjust to change. You tend to have your head in the clouds. You are a bit absent minded, and you’re often lost in your thoughts. You find it difficult to be comfortable, and you are often shocked by your surroundings. You prefer to be around people who are sweet and caring. You have a low tolerance for meanness. You find peace when you are able to escape a little. Getting outside of yourself helps you find perspective.

Blogthings: The Rainy Day Test

Rather than go on a standard political rant about this issue like any other blogger would, I thought I’d apply this to each amendment in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

(Note that the content in this article may not apply to blogs hosted on major “community” sites such as Google and Myspace. Since they are run by major corporations, with Myspace owned by the parent company of Fox News, they may be subject to the same/similar issues as Twitter and Facebook.)

1st Amendment: No Establishment of Religion (basis for “Separation of Church and State”), Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Peaceful Assembly, Right to Petition the Government:
Blogs have empowered the people more than ever, as they expose media bias and blackouts, political scandals, and more corruption you would never find out about on TV or radio. Information about diverse religions and philosophy available on the Internet is discouraging many parents from vaccinating their children by temporarily changing their religion or claiming an exemption. Some religious issues reported by Media 1.0, such as sexual abuse issues in the Catholic Church, have been subject to further debate on blogs – for example, the role of the vow of celibacy required by most priests. Material critical of Islam, such as the movie Fitna and depictions of Muhammad, freely spreads through blogs, causing Islamic theocracies to play whack-a-mole, banning entire Web sites and threaten to execute their owners. As a means of news, blogs containing audio and video, such as embedded material uploaded onto YouTube, have enabled individuals to “broadcast”, regardless of archaic laws. Broadcast licensing was originally designed to prevent interference according to issues not present in the age of GPS, satellites, digital transmissions, and “simulcasting” (the ability to put multiple channels in a single frequency, such as with Digital TV and HD Radio). However, they eventually became a means of media control. It took many media blackouts for obscure anti-establishment politician Ron Paul to gain media exposure in 2008, and in the 2004 Democratic primaries an antitrust-minded man named Howard Dean was mocked out of the race over a pep rally. Many grassroots campaigns, spread via blogs, have been highly successful. The Internet has made it easy to send e-mails and faxes to Congressmen and -women, as well as make laws and transcripts available for full viewing.
What gives blogs the advantage with all of this over Twitter or Facebook is the fact that if you own or lease the hardware running your site, you have much more freedom, since the less contracts there are, and the more privacy rights you have (Facebook is notorious for a mysterious “selling out” on the importance of privacy rights some time ago), the freer you are.

2nd Amendment: Right to Bear Arms:
In a world of liberal and neo”conservative” media, true conservatives and libertarians have grown due to blogs. Efforts such as the “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign of 2008, the successor group Campaign for Liberty, and Tea Party protests owe the Internet their success. In opposition to these efforts, bog-standard left-wing charges of “violent racists” and “angry white men” fly at innocent Republicans who now have a new opportunity to speak their mind. And unlike Twitter and Facebook, which respond to any one complaint by banning the user or material immediately, so-called “hate speech” and “harassment” accusations by the left-wing establishment can be resolved more easily and fairly with a hosting provider, even if similar bans are in their contracts.

3rd Amendment: No Quartering of Soldiers:
Many blogs, such as the anarcho-capitalist LewRockwell.com and Justin Raimondo’s Antiwar.com, frequently criticize wars, foreign policy measures, anti-terrorism laws, and the actions of the US military (in fact, LRC is banned from offices of US intelligence agencies). No longer are complaints about the military or government limited to our minds or homes – while none of us, whether criminal or peaceful, are anonymous to authorities in any way, blog pseudonyms enable us to publish all kinds of crazy ideological arguments without our families and friends even knowing. Again, Facebook and Twitter will shut anything “hate speech” down immediately.

4th Amendment: Search & Seizure, Warrants, Right to Privacy:
The establishment has grown very successful in defeating the protections of this amendment. Laws such as the Patriot Act have eroded this right, and social networks and search engines have become goldmines for both private industry and government agencies. Facebook and Twitter are no exception – those sites store backups of your actions even if you delete your account. Web hosts have their own privacy policies and law enforcement measures which may be much less invasive. Other laws, such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, have granted these same broad powers to copyright holders, though in some cases they are used for purpose of censorship or forming trust-like “holding” organizations rather than copyright infringement.
And while Media 1.0 will censor or twist anything that reflects badly upon its own industry (or any other industry for that matter), and Facebook has “mysteriously” reversed its stance on privacy rights recently, blogs such as Slashdot have risen to fill in the blanks.

5th Amendment: No Double Jeopardy, No Self-Incrimination, Right to Life, Liberty, and Property, Eminent Domain:
6th Amendment: Right to a Speedy Trial, Nature of Trials:
7th Amendment: Right to Trial By Jury:
Acts which threaten the establishment have led to intelligence agencies and copyright holders to engage in dealmaking which is slowly trending towards entire leasing of your machine. Blogs have been reporting these efforts by Microsoft, Apple, the MAFIAA, and others, as well as reporting hacker attacks on remotely-stored personal data, which is sometimes marketed as “cloud computing”. After eminent domain laws were extremely loosened to allow seizure of property by Wal-Mart, bloggers not only reported the story, but debated the consequences. Trial by jury is being threatened through the expansion of forced arbitration, mandated by a federal law irreversible by states, including to Web sites about cartoon characters, rapists, neglectful murdering nursing homes, and consumer electronics purchases, but people are getting together and fighting the law, and some arbitration companies have left consumer dispute markets. The banking industry’s role in the current recession, reported by bloggers with an anti-establishment bias, has helped with this issue as well.

8th Amendment: No Cruel or Unusual Punishment:
Information regarding foreign wars have been reported by bloggers, with Media 1.0 dishonesty even being videotaped. Torture and other events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would be easy to hide if blogs didn’t exist, and there would be less questioning the claims made by the President about national security and foreign dictators. The use of pseudonyms have encouraged people to discuss and debate the Israeli lobby without fear of being publicly labeled an anti-Semite, even if they secretly are one.

9th Amendment: Rights Not Limited to Constitution:
As rights such as copyright protection have been broadly expanded in length and scope, bloggers have been making use of Creative Commons licenses to waive such rights for the benefit of themselves and others. This even includes musicians who rely on a cult following and touring, such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who have left major labels and still kept their fans. Some have gone even further and released material entirely into the public domain, as controversial creationist figure Kent Hovind once did. I myself have released much of this blog’s content into the public domain.

10th Amendment: States’ Rights, Other Rights Belong to States & People:
Due to dissatisfaction with the establishment, fueled by blogs and the Tea Party movement, many libertarians have started a “Tenther” movement, proposing that the US become a confederacy where states have nullification rights over an ever-expanding federal government. Many want to repeal other Constitutional amendments associated with infringing on states’ rights, including parts of the 14th (birthright citizenship, bill of rights applies to states), the 16th (direct federal income tax), and the 17th (senate popularly elected like the house is, something I want to see repealed). Twitter and Facebook, once again, will shut down anything after somebody points the race card.

27th Amendment: Limiting Congressional Pay:
(part of original Bill of Rights, but not ratified until 1992)
Bloggers have been able to monitor Congress like never before, including not only laws and transcripts in their entirety, but also exposing financial and sexual scandals, ties to various lobbies, and other forms of corruption Media 1.0 would never report, and would be extremely difficult to spread via Twitter.

You Are a Thoughtful Artist

You may be creative, but there’s nothing messy about your approach to art. All of your art is well thought out and planned. You art ends up being close to how you initially imagined it. Your work tends to be quite deep and complex. You know how to produce something that appeals on many levels. Your art may take a long time to create, but your patient. And as a result, you tend to love everything you make.

Blogthings: What Type of Artist Are You?

You Are A Creative Dreamer

You dream big, and you often are willing to think of ideas that others wouldn’t dare dream about. You don’t just think outside the box – you’re not even aware of the box being there! You can solve problems that other people think are impossible. You always explore all options. Where others see nothing, you see possibilities. For you, the world is rich with potential.

Blogthings: What Kind of Dreamer Are You?