"UPDATE ON REALITY: 10 Aug. 2019" by Richard F. Yates

[The image above is a digital drawing over a photo of my shadow taken while I was wearing a sombrero. You didn't really need to know that, but I think it's funny when I wear that particular hat---and it keeps my face and neck from getting sunburned. 2019.]

Hey folks, I'm buzzing and smuzzing and whizzing and whuzzing today, trying to get a bunch of gunk done before 1:00 P.M. (Pacific Standard Time). At 1:00, I have to start getting ready to go see GEORGE CLINTON!!!!!! I've been trying to go see Parliament / Funkadelic since my wife and I went on our honeymoon (21 years ago) and she (accidentally) forgot her I.D.!!! Finally, we'll get to see George tonight at the Portland Zoo. In addition, FISHBONE is one of the opening acts, and I LOVE Fishbone! ("Party at Ground Zero" is one of the best songs ever recorded...) Look for a post about our trip to the show sometime in the next few days...

Meanwhile, I've been up and moving since 6:00 A.M. I updated NON-COM-ARTS, adding a full REVIEWS page and tweaking the home page so that it works better... AND I thought I'd mention this horrible thing that I discovered a few days ago: WORDPRESS censored my attempt to add a "STEEM" tag to a post!!! I've had this type of thing happen before, for instance the site, MIX (which I loved when it was called StumbleUpon---R.I.P.), erased ALL of the Steemit links that I added to my page. Just GONE. When I realized that was happening, I stopped using MIX. But I've never had a problem with WordPress before, and I've been using "Steem" and "Steemit" as tags for cross-posts on WP since November of 2018, when I first discovered Steemit and signed up for an account. But a few days ago, for the first time ever, I tried to publish a post with "Steem" as a tag, and I wasn't allowed to do it. As soon as I removed "Steem" as a tag, the post went up with no problem. WTF??? I've also heard from friends and family members on "Faceboot" that they don't SEE very many of my posts. One good friend of mine said she thought I'd quit using Facebook because she hadn't seen anything I'd posted in weeks!!!! I told her that I posted every day---because I had---and she had to go to my PROFILE just to see what I'd been doing. (What I'd been doing was posting EVERY DAY on Steemit, then sharing those posts, EVERY DAY, on Faceboot... BUT very few people, apparently, had even SEEN them... Shadow banned, I guess...)

So there REALLY IS an effort by several of the Big Folks to suppress Steem and Steemit! (Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean no one is plotting against you!!!) This COULD be an encouraging sign, as the BIG BOYS recognize Steem as a threat to their livelihoods, but it also makes CONNECTING with folks quite a bit more difficult if the efforts to spread the love are removed, blocked, and suppressed at nearly every turn!!! We've just got to keep pushing, I guess...

In other news, I have to DJ a wedding tomorrow...even though I've been TRYING to retire from DJing for about SEVEN YEARS. However, when you have DJ gear, and people KNOW IT, they always want you to DJ their wedding or party or whatever---for FREE---and I'm usually too nice to say no...) So that's what I'm doing tomorrow. Meanwhile, TODAY, my wife (Mariah) is helping out at a Relay for Life event in Kelso, Washington. She's a good person. I stayed home to work on writing and art and updating my website stuff---and I need to make a new car CD for the drive to tonight's concert. It will be entirely George Clinton, Parliament, Funkadelic, and Fishbone cuts! Sounds like a good mix to me!)

Speaking (writing) of car music, my brother and I discovered something that MOST people probably already knew: YOU CAN PUT A BUNCH OF SONGS ON A JUMP DRIVE AND PLUG IT DIRECTLY INTO MODERN CAR STEREOS! I've been playing CDs in my car for years, which are great, but you only get an hour and 18 minutes worth of music at a time. With a JUMP DRIVE (16 gigs or so) I can get somewhere around 1,500 to 2,000 songs (maybe more) on one little device. The trick (if you don't already know how to do this) is to put the mp3 or mp4 files directly onto the drive with no folders---just SPLAT, right onto the drive. Make sure there are no LOCKED files (if you bought any tracks from iTunes back in the Bad Old Days when they tried to be proprietary and locked all their content so it only played on iPods and iTunes related products...) or it might not play. Using these simple techniques, I've compiled jump drives now for my brother (who likes mostly house, techno, hip hop type stuff---although he's also cool with Monty Python and Weird Al) and my Uncle Randy (who is more of a Black Sabbath, Blasters, Black Oak Arkansas fan---basically any band with a name that starts with "B"---I joke. He also likes Led Zep and The Cramps and Johnny Horton...) and I made a jumper for ME, which has techno and punk and new wave and industrial and 50's cuts and psychedelic rock and synth-pop and goth and ska and reggae and dub and novelty songs and blah blah blah... I like a lot of different music. (Maybe this is interesting to you---maybe it ain't. Sorry if it ain't... Let's move on...)

So let's see, I've mentioned the concert tonight, the wedding tomorrow, the music junk, Mariah at the Relay for Life event (it's a great, grass roots movement---but it's too sad for me to be comfortable going---I'm a softy), the Steem suppression junk, the fact that I've updated my Non-Com-Arts site and added a Reviews page... (Do any Steem front ends let you make PAGES besides just the blog???) Uuuuuum.... Did I mention that I updated my AUTHOR PAGE on Amazon, yet? I did THAT as well. (If you didn't already know that I've self-published a bunch of books, I HAVE. I've done a book of poetry, a conceptual art book, several anthologies (as both editor and contributor), an ART ZINE, and a weird science-fiction satire about an art collective who are trying to save the world from killer robots and evil corporations... Check out my author page for links to most of that stuff... I'm also just about finished editing a book about my STEEM EXPERIENCES! I'm hoping to have that done and out sometime in September, if not before...)

Is that it??? That might be it for today...

Okay. Thanks for stopping by! Now I've got to get my drive CD ready, eat some lunch while the disc is burning, then take a shower and get ready for this evening's adventures! Have a great weekend everybody, and BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER! (Wyld Stallyns rule!!!) Later skaters...

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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