busybee fluffy rambles

I’ve been having another major pain flareup, or rather the pain flareup that started a few weeks ago has continued to get worse, and it’s super difficult for me to do anything right now. Typing hurts, my brain is in constant fog, and there’s no freaking way I can work on music or art right now.

I’m super frustrated by this, of course, especially feeling like I’m so close to being done with Transitions as well as my new music website, but I gotta take care of myself so that there’s still a me to do the things I want to do with.

I ended up handing off one of my video editing projects to someone else so that at least takes some pressure off, and I’m just giving myself permission to nap, a lot, which my body has been craving.

Pretty much I only have the spoons for basic self-care right now, and that’s gonna have to be enough for a while. I’m also pretty much stuck at home because I don’t feel comfortable driving (or leaving the house, really) and even if the stuff I wanted to do were accessible by transit, I definitely don’t have the spoons to manage transit right now.

Also today I realized it’s been a year and a half since I started my disability claim, and it just keeps on getting blocked by bureaucratic nonsense.

John Oliver’s overview of the situation only scratches the surface of what I’ve been having to deal with.

So, I’m in a bit of a frustrating situation right now.

I’ve been releasing music as “Sockpuppet” since 2006, with my first album under that name released in 2009. From everything I can find online, this firmly establishes me as having “common law” trademark status; for example:

• Gerben Law: An Overview of Common Law Trademark Rights
• LegalZoom: How to Establish a Common Law Trademark
• Stan Soocher: Big Legal Battles Over Rights in Bands' Names

• Secure Your Trademark: Trademarking a band name

  The legal advice is in; the mega pop star can’t force you to drop your band name because, technically, you arrived on the music scene several years before she did. But from now on, when you mention the name of your band, people are probably going to start humming “All About That Bass.” Here, the degree of trademark protection you missed out on becomes evident.

  […]

  Key Takeaway: When two or more non-trademarked bands share the same or a similar name, the one with the highest seniority usually wins and ends up with trademark protection.

• USPTO: I Received a Letter/Email…, particularly this excerpt:

  Federal registration is not required to establish trademark rights. Even if a trademark registration expires or is cancelled, the trademark owner may continue to have “common law” rights in the mark. Common law rights arise from actual use of a mark for particular goods or services and may allow the common law user to successfully challenge another party’s use in court.

Anyway, back in 2021, I decided to try registering for a federal registered trademark on the name Sockpuppet, but it was denied because of an existing trademark on the band name “Sock Puppet Parody” which they considered to be too similar. So I decided to stick with my common-law trademark status for now and figured I’d only move forward until something came up.

And, well, something came up.

Grab-bag of stuff going on for me, apologies for my usual unstructured rambling

Seeing this post made me think I should also list my computers and their purposes/vague specs. Because I’m that kind of a nerd.

What counts as a “computer” for this list is subjective. I’m not including pure video game consoles (I’d be here all day if I did) or phones (big same) but I am including things like tablets, but only ones which feel computer-y, if that makes any sense (like, no Android tablets, and I’m leaving off an ancient iPad named fluffysaurus).

Sadly I don’t have any proper vintage computing stuff anymore (unless you count a couple of neat old PDAs, anyway).

November 4, 2024: Updated some things

November 29, 2024: Updated more things

Here’s what’s currently going on with my music things.

Wednesday night I had a massive pain flareup towards the end of choir practice, due to some stressy situations that were developing all at once on top of my continued lack of sleep due to working on Transitions. This had me basically incapable of doing anything for several days, and I spent the next few days mostly just lying on the couch and smoking weed.

Yesterday as I was coming out of that haze I learned from my next-door neighbor Joe that my back-yard neighbor Rick died, also on Wednesday night.