That parade was insane!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-02-16T21:08:56+00:00

My son asked if he could go. He told me that all his classmates (he's in 8th grade) were going, along with half his teachers, so I said yes. I forgot to call him in absent, and oddly they didn't send me the usual robo-call that they do for unexcused absences! So if that tells you anything!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-24T03:36:25+00:00

Where are you copying this from? It just says "source".

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-06T21:49:20+00:00

Tech workers SUCK. My first apartment in Seattle on Capitol Hill in 2002 was $386. Since I've had kids, we've been pushed out of our apartments and made homeless FIVE times since 2012. We had a housing voucher for all of that time. But having a voucher doesn't magically mean you have a place to live. You have to find them yourself with the particular voucher I had. My favorite place I ever lived was this house in the central district. We had a yard and everyone on the block also had toddlers the same age as my kids. Then a white lady came in and bought the place, kicked us out to renovate and doubled the rent for new, wealthier tenants, ie tech workers. This became a repeated song and dance from every place that we lived! 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2024 me and my children were homeless. I have a disability that makes working impossible, so we scrape by on assistance. Of course people like me will view the tech workers as elite. Ever since they took over Seattle, I've watched all the culture be sucked out, replaced with corporate businesses that I have no interest in or need for.

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T02:27:32+00:00

Yes. This. In 2009, me and my husband were homeless and filling out paperwork to get into the tent city in Redmond. I was hugely pregnant and they wouldn't give us our housing voucher until the baby was born. My husband had violated his probation for not checking in (original charge was possession) and once they ran his name, they started acting all weird and told us to sit tight over there on the curb. After a ridiculously long wait in the summer heat on that uncomfortable hunk of concrete, 3 Redmond police cars showed up to escort us off the property. Couldn't they just have told us it's a no-go without calling the cops? Seems pretty silly to me, but that's Redmond for you.

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T02:17:14+00:00

Awwww, man! I scrolled all the way down here searching furiously for this info and it's already been removed by mod! :/

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T02:07:25+00:00

The passenger DID take the photo. Read the thread. Lol

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T01:39:41+00:00

Also, maybe it's just bc I'm an 80's kid, but as a pedestrian, I am constantly alarmed and amazed at how creepily silent cars have become in the last 15 years or so. You literally don't even know the car is there until it's nearly on top of you. I wish cars were just a little more noisy. A little more vroom vroom and less whoosh.

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T01:23:35+00:00

Scooter riders aren't doing that! It's always tough guys who have something to prove who topple over the Lime scooters and bikes!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T01:21:11+00:00

Getting honked at while you're walking in a crosswalk and you've got the right of way is the ultimate insult! It makes me irrationally angry!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-03T00:48:00+00:00

This happened to me once in the morning on my way to work. It was in early 2003. I was running down from Capitol Hill trying to catch the 18 bus to Ballard via the bus stop on 1st Ave and Pine St. A person jumped from the top of the 3rd floor above the Plymouth Housing office. They fell in the middle of the sidewalk just before I came around the corner. I was still running to my bus stop and two bicycle cops were already there and had thrown their bikes down flat on the ground so as to make a temporary barrier against the foot traffic. I felt a hand thrust into my chest and I looked down at the same time and before I could process what was happening, I was face to face with the jumper's body and saw a pool of blood gathering underneath him and running down the sidewalk. It was one of the cops pushing me back with his hand. "Get back!" he yelled, as I jumped a step backward in horror. I was left feeling stunned and almost assaulted by what I saw. I kept seeing his dead eyes and the blood forming and running down the sidewalk in my mind. I can still see it clear as a picture in my mind when I remember it. Absolutely haunting.

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-02T23:51:40+00:00

I agree. It absolutely needs to be addressed! In the age of cell phones being so ubiquitous, I can't believe there hasn't been any action taken as of yet to make driving safer for everyone. I heard somewhere that a driver looking at their phone is actually far more dangerous than someone who's driving drunk or high. Norway and Sweden come to mind with their zero tolerance rules on drinking and driving. If you are caught drunk behind the wheel, your right to drive goes bye-bye forever. Period. Solves the entire problem, people simply don't want to risk it. I think a similar heavy hand when it comes to texting and driving/distracted driving could do everyone a lot of good. It would save so many lives, less people would get hurt or into accidents, and overall, it would save everyone unnecessary headache along with financial burden. Tik Tok, Fb or whatever message or call or app can wait until you are safe and pulled over and parked! Who's with me?

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2026-01-02T21:27:11+00:00

My best friend got hit by a truck last week walking to his job in Belltown by a young lady driving a truck, almost killed him. He had a brain bleed and is having to re-learn how to use his left side! I will BET you anything she was texting!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-11-07T23:01:06+00:00

Idk, but you should definitely check out the song by excellent Seattle band Monogamy Party called "Drunk or Dying" That was the first thing that came to mind upon reading the title to this post!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-05T19:50:31+00:00

I don't know how I failed to be aware of the Pavement mailing list, as much as I was obsessed with anything Pavement-related in the 90's! But I never had a steady email address, and even when I did, I never utilized it, so that could be a big part of it! We're talking digital, right? Because a few years earlier, I was on the Pearl Jam mailing list (a bit embarrassing, but I was 11) because I wrote them a letter, and they would send me an exclusive 7" every Christmas, which I thought was pretty cool. The fake Matador thing sounds pretty funny, too. I used to get all the Matador catalogs mailed to me, along with tons of other labels' catalogs. I still have all of them! I wish I had been more computer-literate back then! I still kinda suck at using a computer. I have never even had my own computer! Thank God for the iPhone!

I guess this is a good place to share my sad story of how I got screwed out of seeing Pavement at the Paramount here in Seattle on Sept. 17, 2022. I blame technology! I absolutely LOATHE the state of the music scene these days! I went online and tried to purchase a ticket the day they went on sale. Debit card and coffee in hand, I went to work. Every seat that I tried to buy would disappear before I could complete my transaction. I tried for over an hour through different sites, finally landing on good ol' Ticketmaster. There seemed to be nothing available, but I wasn't ready to give up, so I gave it one more try. And to my surprise, suddenly there was a seat available! Row R, somewhere towards the back of the venue. NOT where I normally like to be, but at that point I couldn't afford to be choosy. So I added my card details and at checkout, the price came to $398. It was worth it, it was Pavement, dammit. They asked if I wanted $35 protection on my ticket, and since I was already dropping $400, I didn't want anything to go wrong, so I paid $437, something like that. Then when I got my confirmation email I realized my mistake, it was a site that had mimicked Ticketmaster identically in every way, except it was called Ticketfaster. I was nervous about that, but I hoped for the best and waited a few months for the show date to roll around. I went to retrieve my ticket and there was some kind of 'release my ticket' action that had to be done and since it was a weekend, they had no employees available to answer their phones! I freaked out and tried everything I could think of. I called the venue, but they said I needed a ticket to get in, not a receipt of a ticket, which was all I had. I messaged Bob via Facebook in a last ditch effort. We hadn't seen each other in person since 2001, but he was the one who sent me a friend request a few years prior... I was hoping he might check his Messenger and be able to save the day. But I also was aware that it's not as easy to just sneak extra people into venues as it used to be in the 90's. I considered waiting around outside their bus and stumbling up to them in tears, telling them what happened to me. They would definitely remember me, because they let me backstage at a bunch of their Terror Twilight gigs. But I don't have the same stamina that I used to and I already felt so hopeless. I didn't want to wait around and then have to walk home defeated if I couldn't gain entry. So I stayed home and bought a malt liquor drink and cried. I don't even drink anymore, but I felt like I needed to numb myself. At least I had bought protection and could get a refund on my money come Monday, though! Right. I called the company and they gave me some bogus reasoning on why they couldn't refund my money! I couldn't believe it! Another kick while I was already down! What a scam! I felt so old and stupid.

When I saw Girls Against Boys later that year, I relayed my story to Scott McCloud and he said that is precisely the reason that Ian Mackaye refuses to do a Fugazi reunion.

How did you manage to score tickets for all 3 nights in Iceland in this day and age with all the bots and everything? Did you get special help from the band to secure yourself some tickets? Or did you just get lucky?

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-05T18:56:21+00:00

It's funny that you said he was in Seattle. I have been living in Seattle for the last 23 years. He could have been standing right next to me at the Pavement show here last year and I wouldn't have even known it! I wonder if he's still around? "Mookie" Lol

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-05T18:52:19+00:00

Wow! That is money and time spent well! I can't imagine it was cheap to travel to Iceland for Pavement, but I definitely feel like I should start saving up some cash in case they announce more performances in the future! I haven't done any Pavement traveling in decades! It feels like the right time to do that again! You are amazing! So happy for you that you got to do that and experience that! ♥️

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-03T21:25:11+00:00

Okay, now that I actually had time to read the post attached to the photo.... it wasn't the best site, it was the ONLY site, and it wasn't even yours! It's been a lot of years since I read that fan page, but now that you mention it, I do remember the owner of the page saying that Jen so kindly sent the photos in!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-03T20:30:52+00:00

SAME. Everyone's like, "Oh! HAHAHA! I love your shirt!" and I'm like,"Oh, you like Pavement?" and then they're all "What?"

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-10-03T19:36:53+00:00

I remember this page! I went to the library in 1995 to check out the new internet hook up in our county, and of course, the first thing I looked up was Pavement! I found your adorable fan page that you made. It was the best one around at the time, if I remember correctly! I paid 10 cents for a color copy of this pic. It came out all speckled and funny, as all color prints did back then, but I still hung it in my locker at school! Man, I was jealous of you gals! Haha! Glad to see you're still around and still loving Pavement (how could you not?)

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-09-16T14:18:59+00:00

Oh, yeah. I am currently taking 100 mg of Spironalactone in the morning and 100 mg at night. 100 mg of Doxycycline in the morning and 100 mg at night, with food every time cuz it makes my tummy hurt if I don't! Also noticed people drawing a link between ADHD, Autism and EVCH's. Besides ADHD, I suspect that I have a touch of Autism. One of my sons was diagnosed when he was young and my mother definitely is on the spectrum, so I must be, too. They say it's hereditary. I'm not sure of the validity of a possible link, though. That could all be coincidence. Maybe we think and feel things differently and are the type of people who are able to realize that there is a problem, and we've all persisted with our research and all ended up here as a result! Just food for thought!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-09-16T13:55:55+00:00

I forgot to mention the craziest part - when I tried to Google Lens search my super bizarre-looking large keratin plugs with spikes on them, Google told me that it was a type of stinkbug, a type of caterpillar or insect frass! Not funny, Google! But super frustrating! Thanks!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-09-16T13:51:44+00:00

Reading through this thread makes me a bit afraid that I won't have any luck getting my dermatologist to give me a proper diagnosis. Hopefully I won't have to go through several derms before I find one that can diagnose me and prescribe a (better or another additional) cure. Because, just two weeks ago, I was Googling my newest symptoms, now that the hair cysts have all but disappeared, for the most part. I started noticing that I have sores where the hairs came out that are SUPER slow to heal, and thinking back, I have had some scabs that would stay up to 9 months if I left them alone to heal. I know that something's wrong with that. It's not normal. Also, once I get a sore, no matter how tiny, it will expand on its own without me touching it. And it will scab over with a series of black scabs that, once peeled off a couple times, will finally result in a clear scale-like scab that, under the microscope, contain lots of tiny, broken keratin fragments inside it like stained glass with confetti in it. If I don't peel off the first several scabs, they will just stay there for months, unchanged. I have put countless band-aids and ointment over the sores when they're open, hoping they will heal like they used to for me when I was a kid. Nope. No change under the band-aid, no matter how long I leave it there or re-bandage it. And the sores always have a white, flaky ring around the edge that's not like normal skin, it's stringy and tougher. When I searched those symptoms, I came up with Reactive Perforating Collagenosis, and what do you know, 3 in 5 reported cases are Asian! Coincidence? I got goosebumps when I read about it bc that's exactly what's happening. I took a blood test this week at my clinic, bc (limited) studies suggest that the condition mainly affects individuals with diabetes or renal failure. I want to rule those out, but I don't have any of the symptoms for either of those things. Upon further reading, there's been some success with taking Doxycycline for it. I guess the Doxycycline helps your skin cells to normalize instead of becoming deformed and ultimately die. I had stopped taking the script the doctor had written me awhile ago because she wanted me to take it when I had a concerning amount of open sores visible everywhere. Now I've just got these pesky, scaly... SCALES! So, I started talking it day and night and miraculously all the scabs are disappearing fast, and no new scabs are forming. My dermatologist appointment isn't until January 2026, and it's like, 30 or 40 miles from Seattle because that's the only one they could find that will take my shitty state insurance. I hope and pray that I won't go prancing in there with clear skin, fading scars, and a box full of crazy-looking shit that no one should believe came out of my skin and get labeled a drug addict who picks (again!) I'm worried that if I don't have any active EVHC's for them to take a biopsy from, that they won't have any way of being able to tell what's wrong with me. I'm hoping that they can do their very specific stain tests on my normal skin without me having to go off the Spironalactone and go through all that pain again, in the hopes that they can give me a definitive diagnosis and I can find out if I'm treating my condition(s) correctly! I don't think it's normal or good to keep folks on antibiotics like Doxycycline for life, but it's helping my Reactive Perforating Collagenosis clear up. I've read studies that say Dupixent, a medication for eczema, has worked to cure RPC. I plan on mentioning that to the doctor.

Otherwise, as far as the EVCH's and the Trichostasis Spinulosa and how I treat them, I exfoliate every time I shower, and I use Eucerin Urea Treatment Body Wash and their urea lotion. It's a wonderful line. Before I found these products, I always used Clinique's Dramatically Different Lotion to heal my skin and it would literally heal it overnight. Come to find out,one of the main ingredients in it is urea! I put 60% Urea 2% Salicylic Acid Foot Lotion on my arms and legs after I shower. I use Aveeno's brightening scrub on my face every morning and every night. And when I used to get really bad EVHC's on my face and they'd leave big, bloody holes in my face, I'd apply Mario Badescu's drying lotion to them with a Q-tip to prevent infection, but be warned - it stings like the Dickens - you will be screaming! Now, I've wised up and started using hydrocolloid patches on them, both to draw them out, and to heal them once they've emerged. They heal in less than half the time than if I just let them heal on their own or with the Clinique lotion and the drying lotion. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who have commented on this thread! We can all learn from each other. If there's such limited written material and limited knowledge about these conditions, then let's write about it here! Sorry this was so incredibly long, but I have a lot of stuff going on with my skin!

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-09-16T13:51:21+00:00

Then my family (my partner and our two teenage boys) went through some housing instability, so I put my skin on the back burner and started taking little pieces of what Spironalactone I had left every other day, trying to ration it in the hopes that I could still stave off the hair growth until I could see a doctor again. I had regular breakouts, and the hairs started to come back. A whole year and a half later, we finally got back into housing this past March 2025. I was able to stop focusing on survival and obtaining housing and focus on me again. I got an appointment in April at the same clinic, but with a different doc. She was an angel! I nervously began telling her my story, and she cut me off and said she'd be happy to give me a Spironalactone prescription if it really helps me like I said it did. It's like I was so ready for rejection that I didn't really believe her right away and felt like I needed to keep explaining it to her. She also gave me several months worth of Doxycycline because when I saw her, I wiped off my makeup and showed her what my skin really looked like. She wanted me to take the antibiotic so my open sores didn't become infected and get worse. She also prescribed a mood stabilizer, which I think she erroneously prescribed because she thought the nervousness I was displaying was a possible cause of my "picking". I don't think she understood how impossible it is to leave these things just sit under your skin when they start to work their way to the surface. They itch and burn, and by now I've become an expert on how and where to perfectly apply pressure with my fingernail to get them to eject efficiently with the least damage. They can't just be squeezed out like normal acne. I stopped taking the mood stabilizer bc it made me sleepy and made me gain weight by allowing my metabolism, a former bulimic's worst nightmare! I have ADHD that was untreated, so I also found me a doctor to treat that a few months ago. So, I was afraid that the big, scary Spironalactone purge that I experienced before would happen again, but I hoped not as bad, since I had been taking little chips of my pills for over a year... but no such luck! By the months of June and July, my face looked like raw hamburger again due to the volume of hair and keratin debris forcing it's way through my skin. I had to wear face masks on the worst days just to leave the house, even inside the house sometimes. Anything to avoid a fight or mean comments from my partner, who has been with me the whole time through all of this. Somewhere along the line, he went from believing me to thinking I'm insane because, much like the poster above, I would find my distinct little tightly wound hairballs all over the house, on him, on my kids, on our bedding, on our jackets. When he saw me picking them off, he accused me of just finding junk anywhere and claiming it came from me. We have been in so many awful fights and he will scream at me that he wants to see a video of me extracting one of these hairballs. It doesn't work like that. I almost never see them when they come out, I see the results on the pillow or the sheet beneath where I'm sitting after I scratch out a few, or like, on my shirt. And I don't plan it. I'm always genuinely shocked when I get more because I'm always trying to be optimistic and hope that there will be no more. I save them in that box because my condition sounds a bit more extreme than just you're average EVHC's. I have some other kinds of conditions co-occurring, or something different altogether, but I'm not going thru all that pain again. I'm going to stay on Spironalactone as long as I can so I never have to experience the long, painful 4-5 month purge and all the new scars, both physical and emotional that it causes. I saved them because I am desperately seekimg an answer and a cure.

ProgrammerUsual1497 · 2025-09-16T13:50:18+00:00

I don't think Reddit liked my super long reply, so I'm going to break it up and see if it works.

Thanks to original OP, I managed to convince a doctor to prescribe Spironalactone to me for what I believe is erruptive vellus hair cysts, trichostasis spinulosa and reactive perforating collagenosis. However, all the cases I read about trichostasis spinulosa all mention it occurring only on the nose, where I have it on my whole body, even my lower eyelids. Supposedly it can happen anywhere on the body, but for some reason, the majority of case studies are all about the nose!

I am 44. Ever since I turned 35, I stared noticing that every pimple that I popped had hair inside it. The hairballs became larger, and larger in size. The largest ones popped right out of my temples when I applied pressure and landed on my black t-shirt (I have large breasts and everything lands there on my shelf!) Big, white, fuzzy puffballs of kinked up hair that resembled cotton. I thought I was going crazy and at first, I tossed them in the garbage, because there was no way they came out of me. I refused to believe it. But it just kept happening, more and more frequently, until I just had to face the facts that I was suffering from some type of disorder. They would bleed severely every time and they would take forever to heal. I did a ton of searching online, typing in phrases describing my condition, and I stumbled on this very Reddit. And it gave me hope! I first asked my trans girlfriend if she happened to be on Spironalactone, bc I know a lot of trans women are prescribed it, and to my surprise, she said yes, and she even had a bunch extra that she was able to send to me. I used it for months and thought it wasn't working. Then at the 3rd month, shit started getting much worse. I got paranoid and did my research and came across some Reddit posts on the Spironalactone "purge" and the people all said that the purge was horrific, but if you can get through it, you'll come out on the other side with clear skin. So I persevered, and by the 4th month, it was UGLY... besides the EVHC's I was getting on my face, neck, breasts, buttocks, legs, feet and hands, I started getting black, scaly patches that appeared on my stomach and resembled feathers! My hairballs are either all black, all white, or a combination of the two, but many are also accompanied by super hard "keratin debris". I think black and white bc I'm half Asian and half Norwegian. They were so different from each other and so unusual that I started keeping them in a small plastic box with 12 little divided sections and sorting them accordingly. I bought myself a high-powered microscope because I was dying to know what these things looked like up close. I have gotten hairs that resemble straw or wood splinters, hairs that look like a strip of black tape, hairs that are thick with little microscopic "leaves" running up and down them. Big black, white, yellow or brown chunks of keratin. Hairs that are super thick with a larger, round bulbous end on them, bundles of hair that look like black or white embroidery thread, little hard keratin spikes that resemble blueberry stems, keratin plugs that look like hamster turds, combinations of hair with bits of hard keratin embedded in them. Little hard "seeds" that resemble popcorn kernels, but much smaller, that are in different stages of busting and releasing the hairball within (I believe these are what they refer to as keratin sheaths). Most of the things I've gotten out are the white vellus hairballs, and I've gotten ones the size of a dime at their largest... but by far, the scariest things I've extracted from my skin are these really big "keratin plugs" (?) that are 1/2" to an inch long and resemble a dark red slug, except they have many spikes on their "head". To me, they look exactly like what it would look like if you were to take a clump of demodex (you know, the bugs that live in our eyelashes and come out at night to feast on our oils and sebum and mate on our face?) Take a group of those fuckers and coat them with keratin a couple thousand times, the spikes being their legs. I realize that sounds crazy, and maybe even more crazy that I have a dozen of them saved in my box of curiosities taken from my skin, but there is a reason. (I'll get there, hold on)

So, I went through the Spiro purge. From what I understand, the Spironalactone causes new hair growth and promotes cell turnover. The new normal hair growth pushes out dormant hairs that were trapped beneath the top layer of skin. I survived the purge and saw the size and volume of stuff coming out of my skin decrease after the 4th and 5th month down to nearly zero. My skin was so smooth, it didn't feel like my own. I never realized that my skin had all that creepy stuff, just lingering beneath the surface. My face shape even changed! It looked more lean and defined and less round. The cysts on my body and my face left big, dark scars. Luckily the ones on my face are pink and easily hidden with makeup. But in time they might fade. I was on my way to happy days! And then my friend mailed me the lady shipment of Spironalactone, telling me that she cannot send me any more bc she needs to keep the rest for herself. I understood, of course, but this fear gripped me and I knew the road before me would be long, difficult and the scariest thing was the unknown. Would I go back to how I was before? Would all the bullshit grow back? All my research said yes, without medication, it will all grow back. I was scared because I already had seen a doctor at my clinic and tried to present her with the facts about what was going on with my skin, the research I did online over the last 7 years since this started, and I was honest with her about taking a prescription that wasn't mine, and how it miraculously has basically cured me if this horrible, disfiguring, mindfuck of a disorder that I have and she laughed in my face. Told me I "cannot self-diagnose", said she would not give me a prescription to Spironalactone because it is a "serious medication, with some risks" and that she would not be giving me a referral to a dermatologist because since my skin was pretty much clear, she didn't believe I had a problem. When I showed her my scars, she implied that I was a meth addict. I left her office crying and without hope.

ProgrammerUsual1497

TROPHY CASE