Just in time for Halloween: ZOMGies!!!1

(LRR makes me happy.)

Meanwhile…. There’s a big problem in Oaxaca.

And Bush bought 100,000 acres in Paraguay.

Consider: Why would a sitting US Presdient buy 100,000 acres in Paraguay shortly after Paraguay changed its laws to grant immunity from the International Criminal Court for US soldiers? Are things really that fucked-up, that we’re all now living inside a Robert Anton Wilson novel?

A really nice nerdy site called Central Washington Native Plants. It’s a catalogue of plants native to the shrub steppes of central Washington, with ethnobotany information as well. I got to it through this excellent tour of the local ecology.

Also: I wasn’t aware that the Wanapum people developed a religion called Washani (dreamer). They believed that if they prayed hard enough, the white people would go away. Margin by margin, the Wanapum ended up living in the last undammed area of the Columbia, near Vantage. And then, in the 50s, that area was dammed to form Wanapum Reservoir. Now most of the remaining Wanapum are housed and employed by the Public Utilities District. Some still practice Washani.

“It is the water of life, our water, and it flows now on the dry land across the river in our old horse range. The White Man has torn deep gashes in the Mother Earth, making her bleed. There is nothing we can do about it, nothing. Perhaps there is nothing we should want to do. Perhaps the Watcher wants it that way, because the earth freely offers her gifts to be shared with everyone.” -Puck Hyah Toot, Smowhala’s nephew and thhe last prophet of the Wanapum People, on the building of Priest Rapids Dam.

Part of the deal with living here is that I have to park my van on a little strip of land next to the road.

The road is a one-and-a-half-lane windy back road that only the neighbors ever drive. Our house is on what’s called a ‘flag lot,’ which means there’s an alleyway from the road to the front door of the house.

The driveway in front of the house has room for two cars. The landlord gets one, and whoever has senority in the house gets the other. I have the seniority, but I also have a van that leaks oil a little bit, so I have been banished from the second spot.

Thus, my van sits on a little spot of land at the end of the alley, on the street, with just enough space for two cars.

In the past, every car to be there gets broken into, and last night was my turn.

They stole some MiniDiscs, a weather radio, and the carpet from the back of the van. That’s it. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools they didn’t find, or perhaps didn’t want to carry. They left the in-dash radio; didn’t even steal the faceplate. Just some MiniDiscs, a hand-held radio, and the carpet

So I’m trying to figure out how anyone could go through the glove box in my van and decide they wanted MiniDiscs. I mean, if they have a player, then yay. They get to listen to Neil Finn and Sigur Ros. The carpet was $7.99 and was in crappy shape anyway. Replacing the weather radio isn’t such a big deal, either. And I always have to wonder: Why doesn’t anyone make an in-dash radio that picks up weather bands?

Anyway. Feh.

I’ll have to get that oil leak plugged up and reclaim my Parking Space of Power. The Lord Of The O-Rings: The Return Of The Van.

The other gripe I have today is that the road parking space is fine if you have a lightweight vehicle, but with a heavy one like mine, you end up getting stuck. My van gets stuck in the mud. It wouldn’t be much problem, since it’s on an incline, but someone always parks in the downhill space, leaving me to lose traction and worry about ramming into that other car. So today I’m kinda trapped because I can’t move my van.

Makes me want to rebuild the transmission with positraction.

Ever since I moved here, I’ve been looking for a book of mine. I knew it was in one of the boxes in the basement, but whenever I looked I could never find it.

Today I found it, and it’s just so amusing. It’s ‘Shen-Ku: The First Intergalactic Artform Of The Entire Universe.’ It’s basically a almost-tongue-in-cheek new agey how-to-do-anything book. It’s got pages on how to pilot a boat, how to do Chinese monastic breathing exercises, how to tie knots, what to do in case of nuclear attack, aromatherapy guidelines, recipes, accupressure, Morse code, sewing, aikido…

And every page is in a comic style. So it’s not just how to tie knots, but it’s drawings of how to tie knots. Basically it’s a 300 page comic book on how to be badass at anything and everything. Click through to the Amazon page for it and browse through the index.

“SO PROFOUND AND INTERGALACTICALLY RELEVANT AS TO BOGGLE THE IMAGINATION”

I’m so glad I found it. I was worried it might have gotten tossed.

I’ve been reading Gadling, which is a nice travel ‘blog. It’s about things which are sort of *around* traveling, rather than being travelogues or tourism hype.

I wanted to link to something they linked to: A Google video about Utah’s (proposed) Red Rock Wilderness. Some nice scenery, and an exhortation from Robert Redford to protect southern Utah’s natural wonders.

This is the inside of a leaky valve cover for a 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon (2.1l 4cyl):

Why is it leaking? Well, at first glance, we see this gap where the gasket hasn’t been making a very good seal:

Seems pretty obvious. But wait… That’s not where the oil has been leaking out. It’s been leaking out at the bottom. Right here:

See the bulge on the right? Let’s clean it out:

From this angle the deformation doesn’t look that severe, but it’s a bit worse than it looks. Nothing to make you give thanks to the gods that keep your van together despite its problems, though. The varnish chipped off during cleaning, obviously, which isn’t a good sign.

How does something like this happen? My best guess is that pressure built up in the engine when the catalytic converter plugged itself up. It doesn’t seem like there’d be enough pressure to dent a valve cover, but this specific leak (as opposed to the *other ones.* Har!) developed right after the catalyic converter problems. It could also be a clogged oil pathway in the engine, which we really really hope it isn’t. Or someone could have dropped it in the 19 years I *didn’t* own the vehicle.

I replaced both valve cover gaskets with new ones, so I’ll drive it a little while and see if the leak is fixed. If the leak is stopped, then the only reason I’d need to get a new cover is for my own peace of mind.

A couple days ago I went to Scarecrow Video because I wanted to get something funny. Something really, really funny. And when I got there, the choice was simple: SCTV Season 3.

Season 3 is when they got picked up by NBC. Previously they’d only been in Canada. And the reason I chose it is because there was one bit I for sure wanted to see: Mrs. Falbo’s Tiny Town (a children’s show) goes to visit the inmates at a prison.

Watch it now (remember that this was on NBC, at a time when Saturday Night Live was totally floundering):

I remember seeing this sketch when it first aired. I didn’t know there was an SCTV, and I turned on the TV in the middle of the night. Suddenly I was watching *that.* It was the funniest thing I had ever seen, in no small part because I wasn’t expecting it.

So I’ve been in SCTV-land for a couple days, putting it on while I sort laundry and that kind of thing. Also just watching it. It’s completely hilarious, even having seen most of it before. They’re masterful at taking every little detail and making it as funny as possible, even if it’s not all that funny in and of itself.

Well worth seeing if you were born after 1980.

Every day should begin with throwing something out.

Each morning, awake thinking about what you’ll toss. Take a piss, pull the consciousness into your mind with some coffee, have a bowl of cereal, and then throw something out.

Something good. Something you didn’t think you’d throw out.

Taking out the recycling, emptying the compost jar in the kitchen, deleting old emails, anything counts. But the real bonus score comes when you put your favorite books in a free box by the curb. When your favorite old LPs end up at the used record store. When your 5 dollar bills are stapled to the trees in the park. When you’ve given away all your change to the guy begging on the freeway entrance. When your cherished memories are ‘blogged so you can forget them.

Awake. Drink coffee. Toss something. Then go on.

Cultivate the habit of the ending of refuse.

Ars Technica tells you how to steal an election.

A very basic technical walk-through with suggestions on how to change things.

Scary quote:

In other words, you know how Apple just accidentally shipped a few thousand iPods with a Windows virus embedded in them? If you replace “Apple” with “Diebold” and “iPod” with “AccuVote,” then you’ve got a recipe for wholesale election theft.

Think about that for a moment, and let it sink in.