i have just been forwarded a very disturbing message. comcast blocked messages from riseup.net mailing lists for a few days, and is treating customers who complain very rudely. if you are a comcast cable internet subscriber, please call them and cancel your service, and tell them you are switching to dsl because they blocked messages from riseup.net and issued no apology. here's the e-mail message that was forwarded to me:

Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:50:50 -0800
From: Carrie Lybecker <...>
To: OMJP <...>
Subject: [OMJP] Comcast blocking list email again

Comcast has again blocked the email messages of its customers to and from this list. If you have a Comcast email address, you are affected.

At least 28 list subscribers with Comcast email addresses including me were affected over three days, as was TJ Johnson via scattercreek.com for some reason, and possibly others. Comcast subscribers were blocked from receiving or sending list email Dec 7-10. The problem now appears to be resolved--for the moment.

I called Comcast. The person I talked to didn't know what she was talking about--tried the time-honored ploy of misdirecting attention to my email program, Thunderbird ("We don't support any email program but Internet Explorer"), when the email program is NOT the problem. When pressed, she became quite rude.

After she was compelled to consult a real tech person, she came back and with even greater hostility said (framed as an accusation) that Riseup has been "blacklisted" by Comcast for a reason she refused to identify and that I should contact Riseup, let them know about our list problem, and that they would know, she emphasized several times, what the issue is and what "they needed to do" to resolve it.

I emailed Riseup. A response may take several days.

I think this is something we should be concerned about.

Riseup is an awesome collective of tech experts dedicated to providing progressive activists, especially the most oppressed and marginalized, the means to communicate and organize electronically, for free. They've been at this since before Seattle WTO in 1999 and are now a worldwide network. See http://help.riseup.net/about-us/.

Drew has just come up with a doosie of an idea: outlining the portion of the sidewalk on which it is not permitted to sit in downtown Olympia between the hours of 7am and 10pm. Everybody down here at the Brotherhood likes this idea. We think we should go along with a chalk marker (like you see at the baseball games). Phil adds that on one side of the line we could write shoppers and on the other side we could write loiterers. Drew says we should just abbreviate that to "rich" and "poor". I say we go with paint -- more permanent.

Headin' to that sacred place called the Broho. See all you crazy cats there.

In Spring of 2002, I met David George at TESC. He was trying to resurrect a publication he started back in the 80's, The Evergreen Free Press. David appeared to have detailed knowledge about prominent individuals in the Olympia community who were involved in occult crimes. Some of his information dovetailed with what I knew, independent of his sources. We spoke extensively about the controversial Paul Ingram and Kiwanis Boy's Ranch cases, involving alleged ritual and child abuse. Yes, David was a bit paranoid at times - maybe due to his excessive drug use or maybe he knew too much, or, both. We were working on a book transcript written by a survivor of the government MKULTRA mind control program, and, whose father was part of the pedophile perp ring from Nebraska as mentioned in the book, The Franklin Coverup. David was editing my friend's transcript and I was to publish it. In the Summer of 2003, I returned from a family vacation to hear that David had been murdered by two young men, because he apparently owed money for drugs. This explanation never did set well with me, especially the ritualistic way he was dismembered. The book transcript was not found with his belongings.

As you can see I'm logged in and posting a blog entry. Yet if I go to the front page it shows that I'm logged out, inviting me to login or register to leave a comment. This despite the fact my name's in the Who's Online box.

I was logged in and posted just fine this morning.

It's a bit frustrating as I only have a few minutes left of my lunch hour and I had two cents that were burning a hole in my pocket.

My cookies and cache are cleared.

Has anyone else experienced this? And are there any techies out there that might have a clue why this is? This has happened on different computers at different locations, it's happened on PCs and Macs and WebTv, at Evergreen, home, and other people's homes.

The OCS concerts were a great success.  Between the three performances we had about 2200 people - so a full house all three shows!  I am not going to talk about how much money we raised until Terry gets a chance to talk to Rosalinda and Chandra about it but I think they are going to be really, really happy!  =)  I know we are.

(And thanks again, Norm, for coming!)

From the Olympian:

OLYMPIA - The list of possible sites for Olympia's Hands On Children's Museum has narrowed from 13 to four, and a final site could be announced next month.

The Olympia City Council last week allocated $750,000 in public facilities district money to start the project.

It all means that 2007 is shaping up to be a big year for the museum project, which will cost about $13 million and give the museum more than twice as much space as its current facility at 11th Avenue and Capitol Way.

After three years of work putting together the financing, "we're talking about a real museum," said Patty Belmonte, executive director of the museum. "This is the fun time."