RandomScat

How I determine what I charge.

2010-10-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

    I have taken it upon myself as my mission to provide production assistance, particularly PA systems, to local non-profit organizations that I feel are doing noble work in our community. This has included Venice Community Housing Corporation, Inside/Out, Venice Arts Council, Venice Ecofest, The Abbot Kinney Festival, Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Unity in Diversity Council.

I do not view this as a commercial enterprise. It is to me an exercise in helping these organizations improve the quality of their events with my gentlemanly attention to their needs, the performers needs, the requirements of the production. My goal is to be a value added proposition. I often
charge money for this on a sliding scale. My highly subjective criteria are outlined below. If I see an event spending lots of money on other event services, like chairs, tables, stage, lights, etc then I feel more inclined to charge more. However I do charge probably half of what the other local sound system providers charge.    I view the difference as my in-kind donation to their organization. Though I may be paid $300.00 for a 12 hour workday, I view it as having provided $300 in in-kind services. I hire friends to help and keep incrementally buying newer gear. This all started when I would rent sound gear, run the show, and then find I was taking the majority of the funds raised to pay for the rentals. So I bought my own gear during a good year.

    However these efforts put me in a dilemma. Local tradesmen (other sound system providers) view me as driving the price down for their services. Yet local event producers, who may not know me well, view me as another expense to their fundraiser, unless they can convince me to work for free.

Progressiveness: - How left wing is it?
Authenticity of the Cause: - Is this a one-shot general funds benefit, or related to specific actions and issues.
Charitableness:   Who benefits.
Do I like the music: Who is playing.
Do I know the Band: Are they already my friends?

Is the Organization's Founder or event producer my close personal friend:
What is the annual Budget of the Organization?:
What is the Event Budget:
How much is the event organizer being paid:

Techincal Requirements:   Extent of gear needed, possible rentals
Workday Requirements:   Length of Hours
Labor Requirements: Extra workers required?

Suzy Williams Links

2010-09-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

From Her Lit Show 2010 -

Clicking here will open a google docs folder contains 11 songs from a performance of Suzy Williams and Stormin Normin July 22, 1985

From her performance with Stormin Norman 2-22-1985

Contrarian

2010-05-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Yes I love being contrarian. Keep your enemy close. Your enemy teaches you your weaknesses. Ah but there is so much starry-eyed cupidity, it's sweet, why spoil it? I guess it still hurts. I've seen the damage that the best of intentions can do. Everything is defined with an opposite, and changes with it. Get used to it.

I hate Repuglican SPAM

2010-03-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Below, in quotes, is one of those terribly annoying Repuglican spam quote fest, claiming to quote Abraham Lincoln. Do you have a friend or relative who sends this kind of stuff? I am afraid that much of middle America get their politics from the legions of forwarders of this stuff. I don't dispute the quotes but they do show Mr. Lincoln as capable of rhetorical murder as the best.

One of our Greatest Presidents said:

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich." No need to destroy, just take their money, didin't they steal it anyway?

"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong" Unless the strong are oppressing the weak by paying less than a living wage, killing, abusing, and imprisoning the weak.

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift." It is always amusing to see the rich, who can and do buy everything, counseling thrift.

"You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down." Translation: Workers will never fare better if you pay them more, never question the profits and interests the businesses takes.

"You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred." But we can further our profits by exploiting racism, hiring a crew of immigrants, they are cheaper anyway, and then you will blame them for your problems.

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence." Notice how "initiative and independence" in this sentence are stand-ins for business interests. Translation: "Those who would claim to help the poor" would destroy character, courage, initiative, and independence.

"You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."
Translation: Helping poor people disables them.

- Abraham Lincoln

Ya gotta remember that the Civil war was more about money and economic systems, slavery was more profitable than wage labor, so it had to be crushed.

Memo from the Property Manager

2010-02-15T08:58:00.001-08:00

Dear Valued Tenants: In the last few months the PCT Engineering staff has had to remove feminine hygiene products (tampons, pads and hand towels) from the "222" tower in order to clear clogged sewage sump pumps. The process to snake the drain and remove feminine products from the sewage sump pump is extremely time consuming and takes several man hours to complete. This is Management’s *second *courtesy notice kindly asking all female employees to refrain from flushing these items down the toilets. There are containers located in each stall to dispose of these items. Please ask all female employees to use these containers to avoid clogging the sewage sump pumps. Another issue that needs to be addressed is vomiting. For the past two weeks our janitorial staff has had to clean vomit from the handicap stall partition & walls on the 5^th floor ladies restroom. Should you get sick and vomit, please be courteous and clean it up. It is unsanitary to your co-workers and requires special cleaning by the Janitorial staff (not to mention it’s pretty nasty). Should this continue, the tenants on the 5^th floor will be charged for over-standard cleaning. Please help PCT maintain the common areas in a clean manner. Thank you for your cooperation. PCT Management

Uneasy New Year

2010-01-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

My 10 Days in Nice CA, reading significant literature, has left me quite uneasy. The post-modern universe gives little comfort. I was first inspired by "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyer, but then the postmodern authors offer no heroes, only the ignorant stumbling in the social wildernesses. Conscious revolutionaries declare, and Bob Dylan mocks, "It's All Good". My zen and hermetic mind can see how unknowable the universe is, and while our plans are swept away, every moment, every atom, every thought matters, simply for being. In "Ecology of Fear" Mike Davis documents the assault upon the native LA, and the terror of LA today, both real and imagined. Armageddon is our most important product. "Upside Down" by Eduardo Galeano is a prolonged rant on the crimes and absurdities visited upon the Earth and it's peoples by the military, police, and militia.

"Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied" - Mark Twain.

The clouds parted for us as we returned to LA, except for the grapevine which was thick with fog and great slimy tentacled eyeballs.
I'll walk you backwards
A 8 hour drive from Nice CA to Venice CA
Saying Good Bye to Mom, waking Cat, eggs toast coffee, packing the car, taking pictures.
7am Breakfast of Raisin Bran and milk and coffee
Dream of Alien Armies

CSI_CriminalMinds_etc_marathon - be afraid of the criminals and the police, be very afraid.

Kennedy Center Awards. Ron Kovick salutes Bruce Springstein from the Kennedy Center Stage.

+Wheel Of Fortune + Jeopardy - America's real drugs.
Soda and Ice, a splash of the booze of your choice,
kick back in your lazy boy and root for some schmuck to make a million bucks.
Until you pass out.

San Francisco TV NEWS and Disinformation.
Homeland Security and TSA cannot catch Underwear Terrorists?

The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West.
- The characters are not heroes, they are studio workers, Hollywood wannabees, refugees.
- An old Vaudeville guy dies, a horrific chicken fight, the narrator fantasizes the brutal rape of a sweet but slutty 17 year old would be starlet.
- The foreward to this edition contrasted it to Social Realist trends (1939) and compared favorably with Joyce, Faulkner, Burroughs.
- it only shows oppression, and neither consciousness nor struggle, offers no hope.
- I lived in this neighborhood as a child of the 1950's.

Upside Down - Eduardo Galeano
- A relentless rant about all the horrors of colonialism, neocolonialism, School of the Americas style slaughter of popular movements, corruption, military, police, private security, militias, impunity of Dictators installed by the US. It will provide you with outrage-motivation for your anti-imperialist work.

You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers
- Pain sends these young defective Milwaukee men off to give away $32,000. Their mis/adventures, as they capriciously choose African and European destinations to find people worthy of their largess, ring pretty true to what would happen to such characters in such a conceit, they are often hustled by taxi drivers directly to the dance clubs/brothels. Working girls can use the cash too. Time and pain are passed and life goes on, but not for everybody.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
- I enjoyed her writing, especially her wonderful sarcasm. However in the end it is a tale of the foibles of the middle and upper class of her day. It is a modernist fantasy.

Sick or natural?

2009-06-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

So a cynic is a disappointed idealist. Which ideals? Love everywhere, and end to hatred and murdering? Certainly! But I also temper this with other ideas.

1. Hermetics: Everything happens for a reason. I take as a basic existential fact that the universe works mostly according to it's own rules. Humanity has done a fine job of discovering and scientifically describing these rules, at least a portion of them. One day we may fully understand the dynamic rules completely, except for one aspect, the vectors. The Big Bang Theory amounts to God farting one day and so grew the Universe. It explains nothing about why the diversity has developed, except for a big push. Better to find the diversity in fractal expressions. The universe expanded and manifested your mind, just as it is. Why? It had to. I like that argument, because it proves itself. The universe does not make mistakes, everything that is happened because it had to.
2. Hermetics: Everything is mental: Human ideals are ideas. The Universe has manifested our minds and ideas for us. While our species took care of itself, in day to day living, we shaped sounds to represent the objects and processes we lived by. We are the earth manifesting. Language is a program for thinking, much as genetics is the language of life. In genetics, the fractal mutations provide new programming which advances and destroys organisms. Ideas manifest behavior which will advance or destroy humanity. Ideas are absorbed by cultural conditioning. Ideas and logic have a tempestuous relationship. Logic would tell us what we can know to be true, but ideas are ruled by "common sense" which blends in much much illogic, fallacy, and outright untruths.
3. Hermetics: Everything is connected, everything matters.
4. Hermetics: Everything is in motion, on three levels at least.
Everything has frequency, resonance, based on it's composition, shape, temperature, and excitement (net inflow of energy). Everything has local motion, relative to other local objects. Everything has universal motion, its path in the universe.

The Full Energy Chair

2008-12-19T13:11:00.000-08:00

Online all day and you still have a buffed out body, how? With the Full Energy Chair you can get neuro-stim excercise while you work or cruise online. The chair is a fully supported cockpit style with footpad, programmable hydralic lifts. It's ergonomically supportive surface is covered with neuro-stim electrodes and edged with plugins for adhesive electrodes . The immersive 3D headset is completely mind blowing and our library of immersive adventures is ever growing. Medical Certificate bearers can get the intravenous drip module with thousands of prescription and global drugs available. Real Doll and and other teledildonics are available. www.fullenergychair.com

2008-12-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

out of the cosmos our lives are manifest
and yet what words do we seek
for comfort

we are a tale told by a mad universe, which speaks our life to us, and through us.

words are for us, do the stars need them, does the earth?

yes, when we hum the hymn of creation

Be careful what you wish for.

2008-03-06T21:00:00.001-08:00

Be careful what you wish for.

Los Angeles is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world.

It is possible to find ethnic subculture locales where you will be hard pressed to find someone who speaks English.

The fact is we are all immigrants, even Native Americans migrated here. Yet one's family's length of residence within national borders seems to give feeling of entitlement, or privileged citizenship.

Migration is a transformative process, caused by nature and the human economy. If the issues that cause immigration are not addressed it will continue, legal or illegal. Hungry people need money, and US businesses will give it to them. Making it illegal merely forces it into the underground economy, in the able hands of international crime syndicates...or are they underground economy entrepreneurs?

Human trafficking, drug trafficking, piracy, these are all business models, models of the primitive accumulation of capital, and a training ground for thuggery, a term I use to describe the use of violence to control anyone's behavior. Police and Military are thugs with special license from the state, and with uniforms and choreography.

Law and outlaw are relative social constructs, adopted by your clan. The moral imperative of public discourse is toward the lawful and away from the temptations of corruption. But we are fascinated with corruption because we know that we are corrupt too and the moral lectures are just hypocrisy. Should humanity be ashamed of itself with all the gun and bomb thuggery going on? Cut the moral crap, we are apes fighting over stuff, manifested as creation has seen fit, with all the angels and devils in our minds. Thuggery always leads to more thuggery as law and outlaw dance, like begets like. Moral control yields rebellion. Obsession with devils is a sure sign of severe guilt. Fear, uncertainty and doubt be gone, we must make things right. So arises the allure of total control, making the world safe for the angels, using the devils.

The key problem of computing today is identity management, which is really just like the immigration status problem. Who is this person and what privileges do they have in this domain? The security management firms of the world have the solution, well illustrated in the movie Gattica. Your DNA makes a perfect bar-code like number to establish your identity and then access all your personal records, snooped from those information monitors the Feds have installed at many of the large networking companies, and from transparent access to all your phone and credit card records, like Bush is trying to get authorized right now. This truly becomes the police state solution that even middle of the road Democrats supporting because it appears to answer their FUD. Yet we see how Bush and his allies feel they are entitled to use this information to pursue politically motivated character defamation and prosecutions. This is the corruption of power and don't think for a minute that Democrats won't do the same thing.

I am not optimistic that humanity will learn to dance to a new tune, but I can only be quiet and kind.

Dylan in Paso Robles

2007-07-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

Caught Bob Dylan friday night at the fair in Paso Robles. He opened the show with Rainy Day Woman, so my buddy and I immediately lit up. Everybody must get stoned. Then he broke into Lay Lady Lay. Busted out the acoustic guitar for Don't Think Twice (as did the basist who pulled out an unpright standing bass on a couple of other songs as well). Bob was on keys most of the night, but played harmonica on Just Like Woman. The band was solid and their was a good pedal steel guitarist. There were about 4 songs from his new album Modern Times (?) Did a Highway 61, Masters of War and encored with Watchtower.

Bob was having fun shaking his thing.

Took the ferris wheel ride after the show and they allowed me to take my beer up and of course we lit up again.

Goog times at the county fair.

Bilbo