viking kittens: http://www.rathergood.com/vikings/

Christi's grandpa is allergic to vicadin. Really allergic. So what happened to him a couple of days ago is that he went iinto allergic shock. So he's going to be ok, provided he avoids vicadin in the future. He's going to have to get one of those bracelets that says he's allergic to it, so he doesn't die if gets in a car crash and they give him painkillers or whatever. Anyway, he's ok, but Christi is visitting him as I type.

Concert Review: Women's Looping Festival

The concert started at 7:00, which is a sucky time, because you don't really have time to eat before then on a weekday. So imagine my surprise when, after paying the $7 admission, I saw the buffet. The concert came with food. There was a lot of meat, but also salad and hummus, the vegan standby. It was pretty good. There was alos a bar where one could purchase alchoholic beverages (probably non alchoholic ones too) and bring them into the show.
So I got to the show on time, but got distracted by the food and missed part of the first act. The music was in a long skinny room, with the stage along a long wall. It's an intimate setting, but there was a pretty good group of people there. The first woman was mostly doing stuff with prerecorded tracks and echo/delay fx. She was talking about her cats and then about Saddam Hussein (she was pro-peace). She had some peaking problems with the mic and hasn't quite figured everything out yet. Later I heard her say that it was her first show. So it was great for a first show. I think she was called Audio Goddess.
The second woman did world music stuff. She sang some traditional folk songs, harmonizing with her own voice through looping. She's still learning the technology, and was explaining about how she has slightly changed her vocal technique. She has not yet found her voice for looping, but is very promising. Her music was entertaining and good. She had slight timing problems, but they'll smooth out as she figures out the technology more. And I doubt non-musicican types heard any timing problems or anytthing at all beyond a good set. She was Unity Nguyen.
The next act was into ambient. She had a ton of percussion equipment, but mostly used her voice. Since she was ambient, her work was very static and I foudn my mind wandering, so I don't know if she used any of her equipment or not, except I saw her bowing a cymbal. I think she could have used some more resin on the bow. She was heavy into echo fx and apparently didn't turn down her percussion mic when she was recording vocals, since she ended up with a recording of her voice making a snare drum hum. I was too far away to see, so there may not have been a snare drum, and it certainly could have been on purpose. She did two or three songs. They kind of sounded the same to me. She has a CD out. I was not super-impressed, but my companion thought she was great. Ambient is not my favorite genre to lsiten to, but I can be fun to create. Some of her stuff sounded like it was decaying as it looped (that's a good thing) and making space for her new tracks. That's a cool fx (is it effect or affect?). Her name was Dark Muse.
The next person did some very light elevator techno with electric guitar over it and spoken words, but I think her mic was turned off. This was either her fault or a poor sound check. She used a e-bow thing for the guitar. So did the person previous to her. It seems to be the thing for ambient people. She also did some straight guitar stuff. She was heavy into fx. One of her synths seemed to be a guitar synth, so it made it more difficult to tell exactly what she was playing when, although certainly the sound is the most important thing. She has some wacky controller that worked like a theramin. It was set up to play discreete notes (for instance, through the guuitar synth) instead of continiuosly varying a frequency, like a regular theremin. Her work was also very static, but the songs sounded different. She travelled from someplace far, like Boulder, to play in San Jose. I think she's blind. Her name was CQ.
Finally, Amy X Neuburg, the headliner came on. Amy X is a master of the technology. Her timing is perfect, the knows how to use a microphone and her songs are all different from each other and entertaining. Also, she has a mastery of her voice and has a wide range of pitch and style. She has a lot of experince using her set up and has a lot of practice. Her songs were often funny. They were very multilayerd. They were also multi-parted, so she would start with one theme, leave it and then come back to it. She had one song about her Neuroses that listed things she forgot to do and included "Oh no, I forgot to have children." She laos talked about going to the grocery store at 3:00 AM while stoned and how messy her apartment was. It was the best song of the set, although the others were good. At the end, she received a standing ovation, so she came back to end with a song called Finnish, which was in Finnish.
Amy X is really in a different league than the other artists, but I think it's a good idea to have people of varrying success and ability play the same show. Punk rock shows do this all the time, where they put on inexperienced bands, who may need more practice but show promise, on first and close with a great act who plays with mastery. New music shows (or "festivals") typically instead borrow from the classical tradition where people of equal talent are grouped together. So an artist's first show might have only freinds and family present. With the punk rock/San Jose Museum model, the person playing her fiorst show had a crowd of 40 people or more. Also, people can trickle in through out the evening and know that the best is on last. More new music shows ought to be run this way. Also, maybe because it was in San Jose and culture there is sparse, it was a really well-attnded show. the same show in the City or the East Bay would have had far fewer people in attendance.
Anyway, I was wondering how to send a tape to the organizer when he came on stage and announced the next festival, which he would be performing at, playing day-glo green plastic. Everyone around me (who had been to Woodstockhausen) gasped. Woodstockhausen people are everywhere!
Media reference: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/entertainment/music/4198158.htm

Christi has left me her laptop, so I am lying in bed and updating my blog. I used to day dream about doing things like this. I have Christi's previous castoff laptop as my very own now, so I could do it, but that one has a terrible keyboard. Also, it got upgraded until it was too slow, so I's need to back up to System 8 to get decent performance out of it. Anyway, with Christi's shiny new not-yet-over-upgraded laptop, I can lie in bed with a good keyboard and slack away, totally prone. Not totally, prone cuz then i couldn't see the keyboard, and i'm not any sort of touch typist, especially with these nice but tiny keys. I've got her laptop so I can try out her score notation software. You enter in notes into whatever type of score you've picked up (I've got a percussion score open) and then you can play them back and hear a good midi rendition of the instruments you've chosen. I know, welcome to the 1980s, this is not a new thing. But it's new to me. First of all, the MIDI sounds actually sound good. Secondly, I never quite got my notation software working. It's mostly designed for people who want to do MIDI pop songs, so it uses that piano roll method of showing notes and if you get into score mode, it's a pain to edit the notes. And it's more designed for people to play something into the program then painstakingly type in each note. But Siebelus is aimed at composers. It's aimed at composers who want to spend a lot of money and then only be able to install on one computer. So this is Christi's software on her computer and not mine. Also, it's got the best splash screen of any program. I like to start and restart the program so I can hear the violin line do that great tension/resolving thing. yikes.

Christi is gone and I am all alone until Sunday night. If I was smarter, this could have been better planned. We could have gone to see my mom in the morning today and then again sunday evening (after leaving a bit early) and I would have just taken my regular day off and instead I will be all by lonesome. Christi's grandpa has suffered some sort of major medical event. One moment he was talking to matthew, the next he was on the ground, sweaty and cold with no discernable breathing or pulse. Matthew called 911 and attempted to fake CPR. (hey people: go take a CPR class. Your work may offer them for free. And if you're not working, well then you have time. It doesn't take that long to learn and it's clearly a valuable skill.) Anyway, due to Matt's fast acting, Grandpa was transported to the hospital and revived. Last I heard he was complaining that he was in the hospital. One second he's talking to Matthew, next thing you know he's in the hospital. Why did they do that? He whines a lot about disruptions to his schedule. So he sounds ok, but I don't know. Christi was on the way to Riverside to visit Tiffany, but now she's going on to San Bernadino to see her grandpa too. Hopefully she will call with updates as to his health. I'm all out of my own grandparents (lately not doing so well with parents either), so I made an agreement to borrow Christi's. I'm not in favor of this death thing. I'd like to speak to the manager. Somebody better tell me what's going on with Grandpa. Christi's cousins all beleive him to be immortal as he seems so old and yet also seems to be as healthy as a mule. We'll see. Last time I saw him, he seemed to be as stubborn as a mule. He had a hernia operation only a couple days ago, which this seems like it's related to (at least to me) and I think that operation wouldn't have been done unless he was pretty healthy going into it or the hernia was really really bad. Anyway, I should head south. Last couple times I saw my mom, she was doing terribly, but my brother came wich is a minor miracle, I guess. Today I am wasting massive amounts of water on my little container garden. some of plants have started looking yellowish, maybe because they're at the end of their lifecycle, but they are suppossed to flower more before they go. I have a brown thumb. Not good with plants, animals or people.

I heard a shout down the hallway, "Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!"
"My god, is it the borg?" I asked.
"No, my darling," Shiela said, trying to assuage me, "it's the new homeland security forces working with the INS to process green card applicants."
"How archaic!" I looked around, "We must have made the wrong turn and gotten into the federal building."
"Oh no, my darling," she said in a voice that filled me with apprehension, "they work everywhere." Shelia could stand to be more articulate at times, but she does know what's going on and besides that, she dresses up my arm very nicely. I motioned that we should duck into a sidehallway. There are some standing warrants for my arrest and an aprehension was not on my agenda for the day.
"We should move from here, my darling." shelia whispered in my ear. I misread her ardor and kissed her passionately, when I was suddenly assialed from behind. I was out faster than an incandescent lightbulb in a power surge, but apparently Selia put up quite a fight. I came to in a bare concrete room with a bare lightbulb overhead, the very image of asperity, but there was more in store.
"where am I?" I asked, before I got my bearings.
"Ah," an unknown voice said, "your antipathy toward the law finally caught up with you, Mr. Anderson."
I sat up. "Look, you've got the wrong guy. I'm not even a guy. I'm just Jane Smith, like it says on my drivers liscence."
"One of you many aliases, Mr Anderson." the voice spat out with heavy antagonism. I could just make out the speaker standing in the shadows of the room.
"Where's Shelia?" I demanded.
A shadow next to the speaker moved suddenly and he collapsed to the ground. shelia stepped out of the shadows.
"What took you so long?" I asked as she took my cuffs off
"I was waiting for you to inquire after me."
I assayed myself, checking for injury. "That's a pretty arbitrary time to come to the rescue."
"I had to make sure they didn't assimilate you. The door is this way."
As I wondered what was going on, she led me out into an utterly arid desert. Fortunately there was a dune buggy parked there, because it would be a long, waterless walk otherwise.
"Can you explain what's going on? just start from the top." I said after we hotwired the buggy and started acorss the sands.
She was driving so she gestured towards her purse. Inside was a document, whose edges were handpainted with intriquite arabesque but whose content was utterly arid. "It's all in there." she said.
I read the whole thing. "My god!" I said, "this sinister plot must be stopped!"
Shelia handed me my revolver.

The 15 GRE Words of the Day

31. antagonism (noun) Hostility, conflict, opposition. Witnesses at Columbine high School spoke of a lingering antagonism between nerds and jocks. antagonistic (adjective), antagonize (verb).
32. antipathy (noun) A long-held feeling of dislike or aversion. Jazz musicians often have an antipathy for country music. Do country musicians have similar feelings about jazz?
33. apprehension (noun) A feeling of fear or foreboding; an arrest. The apprehension was noticiable in the line of students waiting to take the GRE.   I was surprised to turn on Cops and see an apprehension of Jim. Why didn't he get his face fuzzed out? apprehend (verb).
34. arabesque (noun) Intricate decorative patterns involving intertwining lines and sometimes incorporating flowers, animals and fruits. The dominant art-form in the middle east has long been caligraphy and due to prosperity in the region, for a long time, everything was inscribed. So you can go through the British Museum and see mosaics covered with arabesque, surrounding religious quotations.
35. arbitrary (adjective) Based on random or merely personal preference. the highschool dresscode, which banned camoflague patterns and jeans of certain colors, was widely considered by the students to be fully arbitrary
36. archaic (adjective) Old-fashioned, obsolete. For years, macintosh users bragged that their GUI replaced the archaic command-line system used by DOS users. Now they brag about their BSD-based system with it's terminal windows. archaism (noun).
37. ardor (noun) A strong feeling of passion, energy or zeal. The "primative" ardor that Stravinsky poured into Rite of Spring was so strong and unexpected by his contemporaries, that a riot broke out after just the first movement during the first performance. (true story). ardent (adjective)
38. arid (adjective) Very dry; boring and meaningless. Visitors to Death Valley are advised to take a few gallons of water apiece so they can survive the arid conditions.   Only after everyone listening to me excitely talking about the Hundred Years War fell asleep, did I realize that some might find French military history to be an arid subject. aridity (noun)
39. articulate (adjective) To express oneself clearly and effectively. After listening to the republicrats speak, it's exciting to listen to someone as articulate as Nader and that green guy whose running for govenor who everyone should vote for because he's soooo much better than Davis or Simon.
40. asperity (noun) Harshness, severity. Pelican bay prison is built on the insane idea that the way to lower recidivism rates is to treat the prisoners with asperity, instead of preparing them to return to the community.
41. assail (verb) To attack with blows or words. when Ari Fleisher attemtped to state Bush's war plans, he was assailed by thinking people in the audience. assailant (noun).
42. assay (verb) To analyze for particular components; to determine weight, quality, etc We assayed spam and discovered that it does contain meat products, epsecially from the snout region.
43. assimilate (verb) To absorb into a system or culture. A goal of Ellis Island was to convince immigrants to Americanize their names and ideas so they would more quickly assimilate into mainstream culture.
44. assimilated (adjective) The decendants of Irish immigrants have fully assimilated into mainstream white society, but, because of the legacy of slavery and lingering racism, the decendants of African immigrants have not assimilated to the same degree.
45. assuage (verb) To easy, to pacify. Hearing that her brother was fine after surgery did not assuage Katie, only seeing him awake and talking did.

My mission: agitation. I've sworn alliegance to a secret organization, dedicated to anarchy. Using an alias, I travel to strange locations and stir up animosity against the ruling powers. Such animosity is always present, so I just need to amplify it to reolutionary levels. I'm like a modern-Che (or perhaps I'm aggrandizing myself). Fighting the power means bringing about a crisis quickly. Governments want to keep power and they will allocate funds for aid to do that, as little as possible, so they can create the illusion of ameliorating the problem. My pseudo-communist mission may sound like an anachronism to the upper classes, but it is not. the poor have no real affinity for the rich. they pretned to respect you, but it is merely an affectation. Right now, class uprising is thought of, by some, as an anomaly. They are wrong, it is the natural order of things. The mission of my adversaries, such as the world bank, is to prevent that. Thus they offer their loans, wich nations can only amortize while their GDP is eaten alive by debt paid to the first world. Some members of my group want to destroy the rich, others just want to amalgamate them with the rest of the world. some of us believe that the survival skills of the well-heeled are such that both amount to the same thing....

The 15 GRE Words of the Day

16. affected (adjective) false, artificial. 80's radio djs used to speak in an affected british accent. affect (verb), affectation (noun)

17. affinity (noun) A feeling of shared attraction, kinship, a similarity. When Christi and I feel in love, we marvled over our affinity for John Cage, Riot Grrl and our RA.

18. aggrandize (verb) To make bigger or greater; to inflate. When he was mayor of New York, Ed Kotch was renowned for aggrandizing his accomplishments and stroling through city events shouting "How'm I doing?" aggrandizement (noun)

19. agitation (noun) A disturbance; a disturbig feeling of upheavel and excitement. The campus took away the microphones from the radical groups because they feared student agitation. agitated (adjective), agitate (verb)

20. alias (noun) An assumed name. Don't reveal my identity to the spies! Call me by my alias, "sloshie."

21. allegiance (noun) Loyalty or devotion shown to one's government or to a s person, group or cause. I pledge allegiance to my christi and to the sidewalk on which she stands...

22. allocate (verb) to apportion for a specific purpose, to distribute. If you want to buy a fabcy new RAID array, you're going to have to allocate some funds out of your general budget. allocation (noun)

23. amalgamate (verb) to blend thoroughly. The reason the white south wanted to maintain segregation, especially in schools, was because they feared amalgamation. Intermarriage would destroy their very wonderful paleness for future generations. amalgamation (noun)

24. ameliorate (verb) to make something better or more tolerable. Perhaps we can ameliorate the condition of Vanessa's Tofu Suprise through the juditious addition of soy sauce. amelioration (noun)

25. amortize (verb) to pay off or reduce a debt gradually throught periodic payments. In the interest rate is low, it might be a good idea to amortize our morgage instead of paying it off as fast as we can.

26. amplify (verb) to enlarge, expand or increase. When you asked me to amplify the music, i wrote a second movement, not knowing you just wanted me to make it louder. oops. amplification (noun)

27. anachronistic (adjective) out of the proper time. The knight at the ren-faire was wearing keds, which is totally an anachronism, cuz it's not like keds were invented yet when there were knights. of course, somebody running around now dressed in armor is kind of anachronistic anyway. Maybe he belongs to the society for creative anachronisms. anachronism (noun)

28. anarchy (noun) abscence of law or order. anarchists are kind of silly, because they don't want chaos or actual anarchy, they want people to form allegiances voluntarily. anarchic (adjective)

29. animosity (noun) hostility, resentment. Roz could no longer contain her animosity towards Xena and so after a minute of sniffing noses, she returned to growling obnoxiously.

30. anomaly (noun) something different or irregular. we noticed an anomoly on the scan, so we're going to have to do a biopsy to make sure it's not cancer. anomalous (adjective)

Esperanto class was bursting at the seams! We are going to move to a bigger classroom. (no, i am not making this up.) But there is still room for you! Yes, there is. Tuesday night 7:30 - 9:30 enhanced with kekstempo - cookie break time! keksoj = cookies. See, now you've learned one useful word, there's no reason not to show up.
Speaking of Esperanto, I've been thinking more about Christi's silent movie idea. Phillip Glass does a lot of movie composing for old movies, but the one's i've seen have all been movies with sound and subtitles. Opera singers sing the lines of the speakers in the movie. so he just plays the movie with the sound turned off. and then I thought of the perfect movie to do that to: Incubus! no, don't leave! William Shatner, when interviewed about his role in Incubus, consistently describes the script as "operatic." He says it deals starkly between good and evil - like an opera would. the movie is, as i'm sure you know, the only full-length movie shot entirely in Esperanto. And it doesn't have much dialog. the dialog it does have is very easy. There are long sequences with pretty pictures where no one speaks. (these are the best part of the film.) those sections could be filled with musical interlude. Also, the movie has very few speaking parts. There's that guy who only lasts for one scene, Kia, her sister, Marco, his sister and the incubus, and I'm not sure if the incubus even speaks. so we could get away with a mezo-soprano (I don't like high sopranos so much), an alto and a tenor. Maybe a second male part, maybe not. If we got a second male part, there could be cool chorus-y suff when the evil minons file in at the beginning. Don't get me wrong, there are problematic elements in the movie. It would take a bit of snipping. For all of it's operaticness (as perceived by Shatner), it's still an icky horror movie. There are only two scenes that really ought to go. there's the one where the evil minions tear off Marco's sister's clothes and the incubus lurches in with his bad teeth. (well, it is an icky horror movie and we're going to cut that scene.) and of course, the scene in the end with the goat. I think we could have Kia and Marco running towards the church and then have her crawl in, harmed, and never explain what happened. Or, we could just have the incubus show up to get her and cut before he turns into a goat. Really, this film does have all the great aspects of opera. Think Don Giovanni with it's graveyards and people eating corpses and satanic figures rising from the dead. Think of that and thenk really low budjet, with only three singers, no sets aside from a screen and projector and a small pit orchestra. Additionally, this is an act we could take on the road. People would come see it because it might sound interesting, but think of all the esperantists who want to see what on earth an opera based on Incubus would be like. see! this is a great idea!

Today is the first day of Esperanto class. Yes, this means summer is finally over. I left for my mom's house really early, so I don't have 15 GRE words for today, but they will resume tomorrow along with the 5 esperanto root words of the day. If I learn 20 new words a day, in two languages, soon i'll be the best spoken person on earth. (note to self: there must be a more multi-sylabled way to say that...)
I woke up in a bad mood because I couldn't remeber what "abjure" meant. But now I feel happier.
My mom is popular. Twof reinds came earlier and two more are on the way. That's all god. She's also happy. I'm not paying attention to her right now because I am updating my blog. Bad daughter! No bisquit!

Although he appeared to affable, he was in fact, an adversary. Thus it was not an abberation when he attempted to abscond with all my allies. But he was not as adroit as I. He did not abbrade me, I merely hatched a plan to bring my allies back to me and abrogate their allegiance to him. They would abjure their connection to him when they learned that I had the better taste in art! Yes, I am an aesthete. true, he may donate to the opera and he has slowly, through accretion built up something of an art collection, but he will be exposed as a fraud and my allies will return. a while ago, he purchased some sculptures, he thought as an adjunct to the rest of his art collection, which was mostly paintings at that point. but the sculptures were tacky! Tasteless! ugly! The acted to adulterate his collection, not enhance it. I learned that he foolishly planned to have a prty in his new scultpure garden, a party that would surely be abbreviated when the guests caught sight of his ghastly collection. And then, their allegiance to him would be abridged. My allies would return to a true lover of art and music. But what are these allies worth? I foundmyself questioning. Afterall, if their gatherings with me could be held in abeyance due to their loyalty to one so utterly tacky, tasteless boorish, boring and completly un-affable as this adversary, what do I need them for? so I abandoned my plans and set out in search of new freinds.

Boy, give somebody a blog and they look insane. well, not sane people. sane people can have blogs and still look sane. anyway i have a list of the 15 GRE words fo the day. observe:

The 15 GRE Words of the Day

1. abbreviate (verb) to make breifer, to shorten. If all the vocabulary words are this easy, I will be able to abbreviate my study time.

2. abberation (noun) a deviation from what is normal or natural, an abnormality. "Dr" Laura came under fire for calling lesbians a biological abberation. abberant (adjective)

3. abeyance (noun) a temporary lapse in activity; suspension. In the aftermath of 9/11. all normal activites were held in abeyance.

4. abjure (verb) The renounce or reject; to officially disclaim. After the EPA declared global warming to be real, Dubya abjured the document and had the department disolved

5. abrade (verb) To irritate by rubbing; to wear down in spirit. Even though she saved five dollar, Erma abjured her pro-sndpaper underwear stance as it abraded her skin severly abrasion (noun)

6. abridge (verb) To shorten. to reduce. Readers Digest keeps it's subscribers from being truly well-read by issueing several abridged novels every year, this freeing up readers time to write angry letters to the editor of their local paper.

7. abrogate (verb) To nullify, to abolish. the 14th amendment makes it illegal to abbrogate the rights of American citizens without due process of law. abbrogation (noun)

8. abscond (verb) to make a secret departure, to elope. the CEO of our company absconded to Bermuda with our pension fund

9. accretion (noun) A gradulal build up or enlargement. A accretion of troops continues in the middle east in prepeartion for further slaughter so we can get more cheap oil.

10. adjunct (noun) something added to another thing, but not a part of it; an associate or assistant. the military acts as an adjunct to Halburton and several oil companies, but so far does not receive stock options

11. adroit (adjective) skillfull, adept. Ralph Nader is highly adroit at pointing out the wrongs of the currents system

12. adulterate (verb) To corrupt, to make impure. While some people like milk choclate, purists see dairy products as an adulteration of fine chocolate

13. adversary (verb) an enemy or an oponent. Although many corporations claim to be friends to consumers, one only needs to look at their treatment of workers and their safety records to crrectly cagagorize them into adversarial roles. adverse (adjective)

14. aesthete (noun) someone devoted to beauty and beautiful things. John Cage caused controversy partly because it was controversail whether or not he was even an aesthete. Some folks felt he was not because he intorduced noise into music. Other folks felt he was because he wanted his listeners to percieve the noise as beautiful. aesthetic (adjective)

15. affability (noun) the quality of being easy to talk to and gracious. A good hosts endeavors to be affable

speaking of avoiding my mom.... arg. i picked up micheal moore's book Stupid White Men and read the whole thing and apparently read really slow cuz it's 5:00 now. what am i thinking? it's not like i have extra mom left. oh, i'll go see her in a couple of months. not going to happen. still, i thought she would be dead by now. i have no idea how to guess how much time she has left. october? no way. i thought. yarg this sucks. this is supossed to happen to other people. i am suppossed to lead a charmed and stress-free life because i am special damnit, and people around me are supppossed to be too. and i'm suppossed to be young forever. and the whole fxcking summer is gone and 2002 is almost over and it sucked and i did nothing useful with my time. i'm a year older with nothing to show for it. i need to stop screwing around. and i learned no GRE words today and wrote no music and only read a stupid book and didn'tr even go see my mom or get a job or do a darn useful thing and i've been living my life this way for a whole year. more than a year. 1.5 years of lame-ass slacking. and before that i worked for aol. i suck. i, like all software people both with jobs and without, am a parasite in the intestine of humanity. i'm so fxcking special i don't need to get a job or go see my mom or even "find myself" (the groovy excuse for directionless young artists) or nothing. sometimes i feel like nothing i do matters and other times i realize it's because i do nothing. poor little rich girl. fxck.

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/mayday/littledrummer.jpg anti war protest picture....

wow. Dan of esperanto class has a piano to burn. that's so fxcking awesome!

It occurs to me that I'm being pretty harsh on people. for instance, that poor guy who did the music for the VHS tape of the Shiek. Yeah, the music sucked, but he was probably given $300 and two days to throw it all together. It's low budjets and tight schedule and they do the music last, almost as an afterthought. And the folks that do that are always independant contractors with home studios (i think i read this in Electronic Muscican magazine or something) working for peanuts. I'm sorry.

and also, the guys on my mailing list. A few days ago I criticized the way the were responding to a list member's immenent demise. Many of them sent messages saying, "don't die." and I felt maybe they could have said something else like, "I've always enjoyed your posts and your music, my thoughts are with you." Well, that still might be better, but it's not like anything in this culture prepares us to confront death. We celebrate youth and pretend death isn't there. People don't die at home so much, they die in hospitals, surrounded by machines and out of our sight. Croos-generational relationships have become more rare, so young folks aren't hanging around folks who are closer to death and thus we don't experience that. It's mysterious and perhaps terrible and to be avoided at all costs and not thoguht about at other times. thinking about death is a sign of mental illness in these times. That's not right. That's the fault of our feel-good media and the bad seven corps that run it. It's not the fault of the guys on my list. I'm sorry.

and i harshed on my mom's friends. being around my mom is really hard. and jean says that they will realize that they were wrong and then it will be too late. yikes. they should come visit my mom and i should be understanding if they don't. it's not like i don't try to avoid her aosmetimes. so i'm sorry.

blogs can tend to be confessional. now mine is too. bless me somebody for i have sinned. I'm going to go look at getting comment features now.

I just read Christi's blog and I'm never going skiing with her again. Not that I ever want to subject myself to anything so unpleasant, but my goodness, she lacks adequate self-preservation instincts. "Oooh! a sheer drop over had rock outcroppings with corpses littered everywhere! I think I'll ski it!" She doesn't realize that she's not a Kennedy and has no buisiness killing herself on a ski slope. ou should be rich to die that way.

We just watched the Rudolph Valentino movie the Shiek. It contains elements some would describe as problematic. We're watching silent films cuz Christi has this idea about doing new music sound tracks for them and then having a little film festival. It's a good idea. Anyway, whoever did the score for the VHS tape of this movie certainly left a lot of room for improvement. One guy with a DX7 and very few musical skills writting whatever pops into his little head. Maybe it wasn't like that, but the music was not compelling. It had little to do with the action or the settings or any historical connection to the sort of music that would have been played when the film was shown or even music you would want to listen to now. Bleah. So on the one hand, I think "I could do better than that!" and feel inspired to work on the shiek. On the other hand, I think I better leave this one for somebody of middle eastern descent or I'm just asking for trouble. The movie reflects the ignorances and predjudices of the times it was made, of course. A movie like wouldn't be made now. Too many of the arabs were sympatheic charecters. The army would get sent in. camels would be killed. We'd make a more problematic movie now. Yes, we are less enlightened than we were in the 20s. History is not progress. Everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

who the heck came up with the idea of hellward-bound transportation via handbaskets? From where does this phrase originate? It is so weird.

christi says that I've digressed so much that I have to go to bed now. But I've slept all day. I woke up at 7:00 this evening. I squandered my day off. I didn't even work on music, unless you count watching a silent film, I think I have ruled it out, because the movie is racist and sexist and besides that, I didn't like it very much. But I think maybe it could at least be entertaining with a better soundtrack. I have no idea where we plan to find silent movies without problematic aspects. we rented another tape called Early Soviet Film that might be better and anyway, might not be copyrighted. All of this silent movie watching tho is interesting because all of them have sound. The Valentino film had all original sound composed by a modern composer. this means that if one really enjoys writing music for silent movies, one could actually do it for movie releases. Of course, I understand the budjet is exceptionally small that gets allocated for the sound. goodness, tho, i don't get paid for sounds now. this is probably somrthing to worry about after we get some experience. But we're barking up the wrong tree by only working on movies already out on DVD. Or not. It's too late at night.

Christi and I are both sitting in the same room doing our blogs. Hey Christi! I want to watch Dr. Who!

I'm a big liar. My mom was doing terribly today. she spent an hour petting Christi and trying to say "nice doggie."

Everytime I start Internet Explorer, my system preferences are set so that it is my default browser, even though I keep telling I want OmniWeb as my default. And it keeps changing the homepage back to that terrible netscape.com home page for apple users. I hate that page. I like OmniWeb. Something is amiss.

I've been dividing the world into two groups, crazy and not-crazy. Toay I spent time with people who are definitely not-crazy. They're boring. Maybe the world should be divided into crazy and boring. I'd rather be crazy than boring, although there's a lot to be said for being functional.

there's nothing like hanging out with people you went to highschool with to remind you why you hated highschool. Or you could just read the front page San Jose Mercury News coverage of it. Since I graduated eight years ago, three of the teachers who were there while I was there were dismissed for sexual-harrassment related complaints. And that's just the ones I know about. My sophomore religion teacher was suddenly fired. The rumor mill said sexual harassment. At least it wasn't in the paper. Then a few months ago, my freshman english teacher was arrested for alledgedly fondling a student. Now last week, the volleyball coach, who I never had as a teacher is front-page news. Apparently, he commented on student's breast sizes, among his other offenses. I wish I could say that it's not something I could see coming out of a male teacher's mouth.

Saint Francis HS used to be two schools, Holy Cross Girl's HighSchool and Saint Francis Boys. Then they decided to merge the new schools. they sold off the girls school, got rid of the school's identity and fired all the nuns. the boys school legacy is very much stll present at SF. The school's chief rival is still an all-boys school. SF lives and dies by sports and rivalries are extremely important. It shows how much girls athletics mattetred when the glaring abscence of a rivalry is pronounced. Still, apparently they mattered enough to force players with stress-fractures to play anyway. My classes were full of people with shin-splints that were playing through them.

My classes also often had clueless male teachers. SF is a private school, so accreditation is not required. A cultural legacy lingers from the all-boys days and sports are very important, which means a permissive attitude towards misbeahving jocks - especially botys. Add this to a conservative Catholic philosophy and you've got trouble. My sophmore english teacher told my class that it was impossible to graduate from Bellarmine (the boys school who was our sports rival) without being homophobic. He also told us that his cousin's friend's roomate (or some other doubtful chain of people) knew the doctor who removed a gerbil from Richard Gere's butt. My freshman religion teacher, who was also a football coach and may have not been an accreditted teacher, tolf my class that god destroyed soddom and Gemorrah to kill the faires and fags. Yet another religion teacher spoke about aging his sperm properly to get his wife pregnant. He explained that you can't have sex every day, you need to make sure your sperm is mature. He, a white married guy, also claimed to understand discrimination because once somebody on a bus spit on him and called him a faggot.

I wish I could say I remeber a specific sexist comment where a teacher said something about a girl, but I can't. One of the issues was the dress code. Girls had to wear skirts that reacheed their knees. Quite often, girls would wear skirts that did not fully comply with this requirement. This created an atmosphere where the length of girls' skirts were fair game. Teachers would talk about girls in short skirts. They would be on the lookout for dress code violations. We heard rumors of a ritual where girls with skirts that might not be long enough would be asked to kneel to see if their hem touched the floor.

Jokes were made about this. Clearly it's impossible to learn in an enviroment where your skirt is an inch too short. I think it's possible that this issue contributed to an enviroment where male teachers felt it their right and duty to remark upon girls skirts and thus their physical attributes in general. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Certainly the problem I was preoccupied with was homophobia. I do have some stories about substitutes.

My sophomore biology teacher was out sick and a substitute who knew nothing about biology was there. He was showing us slides of the Black Forrest from his vacation in Germany. At some point, he stood behind the most attractive girl in the class and started rubbing her shoulders. She stood, whirled around, and said firmly, "Do not put your hands on me!" Then when class let out, she went to the principal's office and the substitute was promtly sent packing. another time, I had a religion sub who spent most of his time working for Catholic charities. He worked with AIDS aptients. He knew that the highschool had problems with homophobia, so he instructed us not to hate or fear gay people, instead they deserve our sympathy. I remember arguing angrily with him.

The last noteworthy substitute was a borther with the order that ran my highschool. He was just visitting the area and helping substitute. Normally, he taught at our sister school in Columbia. He was probably also a religion substitute. He told us about how in that city there were two Catholic schools. both were free, but one was for poor students and the other, our sister school, was for rich students. He also described how both schools aided the government in helping uncover leftist students and turning them in if they were abscent because of political work. I stopped paying attnetion tohim at some point because I was doign homework for another class and because I was going to argue with him. It was unsurprising to learn that my highschool was partnered with crimes against humanity.

the moral of this story is that religion classes are at best a joke and at worst a scarring experience. the other moral is to avoid schools which have strong sports programs unless you are in dire need of an athletic scholarship. the third is to beward of conservative Catholics and remeber that it's not just priests who should be kept away from teensagers. Any male catholic may have problems with authority over youth.

this reminds me of my old youth group leader, but I'll save that slander for a later time.

In fairness, I should relate a story told by my senior honors english teacher. He had an open-door policy where students could always come to him. Well, one time a girl came to him and said her father (or some adult male in her family) was abusing her. The teacher aided her in reporting this to the authorities and ended up participating in the trial against the abuser. The lawyer for the abuser suggested that because the teacher and the student were alone togther, the teacher had abused the student. What saved the teacher from this charge against him was his habit of always opeining his blinds when he was in the room with someone. So when she came in to talk to him, he opened the blinds. So he couldn't have abused her with people walking right outside. Anyway she said he didn't. So teachers from my high school have been unjustly accused. My senior English teacher was actually an intelligent guy and a goos teacher. But so was my freshman english teacher, who went to jail. I just hope that harassment and abuse was the exception and not the norm. I wonder who else will be arrested, fired suddenly or the subject of front page news.