Life is filled with suffering and woe

and not everything is going to go my way. Many things will not go my way. But I still think I'm really lucky as far as things go. I mean, things could be much worse. Reagan could have actually started a nuclear war and I could be living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. That would be lots worse. Immeasurably worse.

Still, things have not been going as well as they could be. And I don't want to complain too much. The order of the universe is controlled by entropy, you know. It causes life, but it also causes death. It brings people together, but it tears them back apart. It's just the way things are. There's no point in complaining about it. So a bunch of things aren't going my way. C'est la vie. A bunch of other things are going my way or have gone my way in the past. You know, it's groovy that all the people who are leaving my life were ever in it. So really, I feel woe cuz I've been lucky.

Just the same, I feel like I've been smacked around kind of a lot in recent months. I don't want to have any kind of sense of entitlement, but I would like to encourage some amelioration of some kind. And since you're reading . . .

I really want to be able to compile supercollider routines as jMAX externals. Either that, or be able to drop jMax windows into supercollider. Because MAX (and jMAX) are really good at MIDI. And they're great at quick and dirty, especially quick and dirty GUIs. Whereas, SuperCollider is really good at synthesis, scalability and data-handling. If you want somrthing to have lists or to have states and to synthesize sounds, SuperCollider is for you. If you want something that reads MIDI, that has an easy, decent GUI and can draw your waveform right on the screen and read your MIDI sliders as you wiggle the loop points until they look and sound right, why, jMax is your thing. If you want both, well, you either need to figure out SuperCollider's somewhat obscure, but Java-like GUI libraries and weird MIDI classes or you need to deal with byzantine graphical connections and oddball order-of-operations schemes in MAX. There are some Java-based music programming libraries which are nice and are probably the best of both worlds, but they cost money and I'm cheap. Futhermore, I already know MAX and SuperCollider and don't want to learn another audio language. I just want Max and SuperCollider to be seamlessly integrated in some way. And for people to stop dying. Is that so much to ask?

Funeral

So on Friday, my cousin's body is going to arrive at the Carondelet Center in LA at 1:00-something. Then there's a "vigil" with prolly rosaries and eulogizing at 4:00. The choir practices after that. Then I get to practice my part. Then food. Then the funeral mass is at 7:00 pm or so. Then, she's being buried the next morning around 10:00.

Apparently, Catherine's will says that she wants me to do the first reading which is Ephesians 3:16 -21. I dunno why she picked that, but first readings are, I think, always stuff from Saint Paul. So the first reading can't be by the Dali Lama or something, which maybe she would have prefered.

I used to read in church quite often when I was still a Catholic. I also played trumpet in mass every Saturday evening for years. The trick to reading in church is go really really slow, cuz they're echo-y as hell. Go so slow you sound like a parody to yerself and then slow down 5% more. Even if yer clear to the people in the front, the people in the back can't hear you unless you slow down. And enunciate. Oh, and don't cry. Yeah, reading at funerals sucks. Don't sniffle. Keep it together.

Sister Mary Elizabeth wanted me to know that Catherine (She calls her Mary tho, Everybody calls her Mary. Walk into a convent cafeteria and yell "hey sister mary!" and they'll all turn to look at you. They all had different names before they joined up, but now they're all Mary except to their families... Sistery Mary Elizabeth. Sister Mary Magdelena. Sister Mary Leahy. anyway.) always spoke highly of me. ok.

She was so frail for so long. I remember being a child and my mom warning me to not get to close to Catherine if I had a cold, cuz she was old and frail and might get it and then get pnemonia and die and it would all be my fault. (guilt much? geez.) But Catherine went and outlived everyone of her generation and my mom too.

So back in my youth, the comic strip For Better or For Worse had a sequence where Micheal's friend Lawrence came out. Micheal is the same age as me. and he has a kid! geez. Anyway, When Lawrence came out, I clipped all of the strips related to that and put them on my wall. Catherine was visiting and was in my room and looked at the comic strips and then looked at me with an expression that just said, "oh." And then started sending me stuff. She sent me a newsletter for gay monks. She sent me two books written about why gay catholics should come out and why they should stay in the church. She clipped articles from religious publications. Obviously, she wa sinvested in Catholicism and wanted me to stay in the church. She had disagreed with poltical stances of the church before. I remember once I saw her she was all annoyed because a letter had been published in the LA Times or the New York Times saying the church should be pro-choice and hundreds of nuns had signed it. But nobody had thought to send it to her! There it was in the paper, missing her signature!

MY mom, however, was not pro-choice and was not ok with me baing gay and wanted to tell me that frequently and was on my case about it and thought i was going to hell and wanted to prevent that. But then Catherine and Brother Bob both started talking to her and sending her books and articles and reassuring her and eventually their campaign (plus how much my mom liked Christi) paid off. Catherine was massively helpful to my mom and thus to me.

bah. must talk to dad about plane tickets and hotel and car rental.

The Leahys

When I was a kid, my grandma (on my mom's side) had three first cousins, Tom & Catherine and Cyrill. They were all siblings and grew up in San Francisco, which made them cool. They were from the Sunset District, iirc, and Catherine used to steal her mom's ironing board and take it surfing. They were irish. thier mother was the church organist. I don't know much about their dad. Catherine told me that he used to sing while washing the dishes when her mother had organ rehersal once a week. For Catherine's birthday and/or Christmas, her parents would pay for her to attend classes at a school for young women on various academic subjects. She and Tom loved learning. Cyrill was more adventerous.

Tom went off the seminary and then Catherine went off to the convent and finally Cyrill also went off to the seminary. I don't know where Tom and Cyrill went, but Catherine went to St. Mary's in Los Angeles. She spent ten years teaching grade school, which must have drove her nuts. She joined the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Tom became a Jesuit.

Cyrill

Cyrill eventually left the seminary without becoming a priest and moved back to San Francisco, where he was a patron of the arts and rode his motorcycle and drank like the irishman he was. He died when I was pretty young, so I don't that much about him. He and his roomate were great friends and went everywhere together and rode their motorcycles together. One time Herb Cain saw them on their bikes in tuxes on the way to the symphony and mentioned it in his column. In the 60's, my mom, my grandma and Tom & Catherine and Cyrill went to Europe a couple of times. There's pictures of them all standing in front of the Eiffel tower. Eventually, late in life, Cyrill met Bobby and married her.

Tom

Tom went to the ivy league where he got advanced degrees in semetic languages. He could speak a bunch of languages, including French, which was useful on their european trips. He may have been stationed in europe at the time, which could have promted these trips. One time, he tried to order dessert and a fish came instead. when the group went to the vatican, he went off to talk to a priest there for a while (in italian or latin) and returned to say that they had an audience with the Pope. My mom was very excited, but it turned out to be one of those thigns where throngs of people stand out in the square and the pope comes out on his balcony and gives a short speech and a blessing.

Tom was one of the translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls and was at the Berkeley Theological Institute for many years. He was published in the Jerome Bible companion. Apparently, he was quite the procrastinator, or perhaps he was just very thorough in his un-speedy research. He had an acient Hebrew typewriter. His work put him in many inter-faith efforts. As a Berkeley-ite, he volunteered feeding hungry people in People's Park. One time, he was serving rolls and a guy asked him if they had unbleached flour. His friends joked that in Berkeley beggars could be choosers.

He was an avid bicyclist. Folks were surprised when he had to get a quadruple bypass surgery, since he exercized so much. He came out ok, though. I remember going to the huge dinner in celebration of 40 years as a priest. It was at an East Bay Restuarant called His Lordships. Tom and Catherine were very close and were often mentioned together. they gave the best Christmas presents. Always something fascinating and educational. They were both highly esteemed in the family for being so brilliant.

Catherine

Catherine was a biologist who specialized in parasites. She invented something called the Leahy Petri Plate Method and discovered the existance of parasites in ticks. She's done work on six continents in more than 40 countries. In the 60's, she was sent to Prague. She couldn't wear the habit (somethign she wasn't so keen on anyway) or tell anyone that she was a nun. She was always oppositional to authority and quickly joined the Catholic Underground. She had her first massive stroke there. Her order told her that she could and should come home, but she refused, saying she didn't want to abandon her graduate students. Her research also took her to Africa. When she came to visit me in Oakland, I think for graduation, I took her and my family to an Ethiopian Restaurant. She was confused by this idea. The food in Ethiopia was so boring when she was there!

She used to travel with her ticks. When she came to visit my grandma in Cupertino (California), she kept her vials of ticks in her bed, where they would keep warm. Apparently, she would also feed them. One time, when I was visitting her in LA, some of her former students were reminiscing about being asked to volunteer to let ticks bite them, to feed the ticks. One of the nuns was explaining that it takes a special type of community before you can get people to volunteer to feed ticks.

She was staunchly leftist, a Catholic Democrat in the old tradition. Unfortunately, my grandma's branch of the family tree defected to the Republican Party. One time Catherine scandalized my grandma by comparing three prominent Democrats to the Blessed Trinity. I can't remember who was involved, except that Jesse Jackson was the Holy Spirit. During the Reagan administration, US-backed death squads were running amok in Central and South America. US backed forces murdered six nuns. Hundreds of religious people went to the local federal building to protest. Catherine was arrested while praying and singing, blocking the entrance to the building. She brought her plastic crowd control handcuffs with her to the family holiday dinner and spoke impassionedly about how beautiful it was to stand in solidarity with so many people and to stand against injustice. I remember examining the handcuffs, inspired by her story and her civil disobediance.

She was adventerous and would try anything. I remember at one family dinner, probably Easter, we were talking about edible flowers, so she took one of the roses from the centerpiece and put the petals on her salad. My mom was always applying chemicals to the roses in her battle with aphids. I got my mom's attention, asking loudly down the table, "Mom, are the roses sprayed? Catherine's eating them!" Years later, my mom would still giggle madly, remembering my grandmother's shocked expression. I wonder if Catherine really shocked my grandma as much as I remember her doing?

My mom wanted me to grow up just like Tom and Catherine, but not too much like Catherine and maybe without the becoming a nun part. The leftism, she was deinfitely not ok with. the academic achievement and intellectualism, she encouraged as much as she could. My mom used to use Catherine as a warning to be careful. Catherine in her travels picked up many weird parasites, including a dissentary which she was sick with for years. I should be careful where I went, or I too could catch such a thing. A few years ago, while discussing possibilities of third world travel, I mentioned these risks to Christi and then it struck me that Catherine was the happiest person that I knew and if she had been sick, she certainly wasn't emotionally suffering. So I endeavored to be less cautious than I was raised to be.

Catherine told my dad that the reason she retired from being a researcher was the politics involved in getting funding. She was posted in a convent in Oakland and her job was to visit sick people in hospitals. She made many friends this way. Those nuns there were all super-busy. Nobody had time to cook. They used to go eat at the happy hour in a local bar.

And then...

Around the time that my grandma died, about 11 years ago, Tom began to have problems with his sort term memory. He was moved from Berkeley to the Seminary in Los Gatos, which also had care for elderly priests. His health slowly but steadily declined. I remember visitting him there several times. Catherine was sick with worry about him. Everytime his health got worse, hers did too. She had minor strokes when he lost a function or became more ill. Finally, she needed more help than she could get at the Oakland convent and was sent to Los Angeles. She was not pleased about this. She came up to visit as often as she could. She couldn't travel alone, so her friend John would take her. Finally, she had to travel with a nurse, so a nurse would come with her. The nurse was an ex-army nurse who had gotten Gulf War Syndrome. Catherine had twice as much energy as she did and would occasionally go running off without her.

As Tom got more ill, so did Catherine. I remember after his funeral at Santa Clara University, family members glumly worrying about whether she would last much longer without him. thankfully, she was relieved of worry and her health improved a lot. However, she was still very old. Eventually, when her superiors told her she could make a visit to the Bay Area, she would get so excited that she would have warning signs of strokes, so they quit letting her travel. I went down to see her in Los Angeles many times. Several of those times, I stayed at the convent. They lock the doors early in the convent and there's not so much to do. Catherine went to sleep around 6:00 or 7:00 (maybe 8:00) then. I remember when I had just gotten back from Europe in 2001, Christi and I went to see her. I went to a bookstore in Santa Monica and picked a book on Joan of Arc, who I had decided to study and a copy of Teach Yourself Esperanto. So I started my first studies of Esperanto.

Catherine was surrounded by friends at the LA Convent. Her former teachers, classmates and students were around her. I was struck by how similar it was to dorm life and imagined what it would be like to be 80 and in a dorm with all the people who lived in my dorm when I was 18. Most of the nuns were eccentric in their own way. Meal conversations there were fascinating and entertaining. Catherine was slowly losing her sight due to glacoma and strokes. She finally only had about 10% of her field of vison left. The other nuns there took turns reading to her. She had them reading philosophy by Ken Wilbur, teaching by the Dali Lama, the meditations of Eckhardt Tolle. They laughed about the difficulty of the books she wanted them to read. One time, I was standing in her room and one of her neighbors hear us talking. "Who is the Dali Lama?" she asked. Catherine struggled a minute to come up with a succint reply to convey his holiness and greatness. "He's a saint!" she exclaimed.

Even though she couldn't see well, she still wanted to go look at art. I took her to the Getty Museum in her first outing with a white cane. She couldn't see at all on her left hand side, but had some vision on her right. And she was having a heck of a time with the cane. Apparently, it takes a lot of skill to use one. finally, she got frustrated and was just carrying it, but she couldn't see it was sticking out on one side and she smacked a wall and maybe a person with it. Fortunately, she also couldn't see folks staring at her misuse of it. She finally gave up on the cane, which was too bad, as one of her favorite things to do then was walk and she needed help to go at a fast pace, which she liked to do. So when Christi and I would come see her, Christi would take one of her hands and I would take the other, and we would walk at a quick pace around the convent grounds.

I went to see her before I went to school. I went by myself that time. Christi didn't want to go. I almost never went alone. I was sitting with her and reading to her about bunker busters from the Journal of the Atomic Scientist and we were complaing about George Bush and I said something about warfare and a short rant about capitalism. Catherine smiled a big smile and said, "I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to hear you talk like that!"

The last time I saw her, she couldn't really talk and kept dozing off. But when I said "goodbye, Catherine." and toched her arm I could tell from her smile that she knew it was me. She's been an inspiration to me since I was a child. she was a role model and a hero. She was the happiest person I knew. Even in her physical decline, she found serentiy. I want to be just like her. She was my last female relative. She told me last August that she talked to our dead family members. She knew they were in heaven and they were happy. They were waiting for her, but she liked being alive and wanted to do it for as long as she could. I know she died happy and I know she's whever everybody else is now. I'll miss her so much

PROTEST TO DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE END TO THE INVESTIGATION OF STEVE KURTZ AND THE CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

from email-land. art is not terrorism. this would be a good protest to go to. Recall that Steve Kurtz was the installation artist charged with bioterror for posessing some lab equipment he was going to use in an art project about genetically modifying food.

Friends,

Here is the call for the solidarity protest on June 15 here on the West Coast (SF). Please circulate to people on the West Coast. This protest will happen in solidarity with protests in Buffalo, NY, London, Paris, and Amsterdam.

Trevor

---

PROTEST TO DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE END TO THE INVESTIGATION OF STEVE KURTZ AND THE CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

WHEN: 9 AM, June 15, 2004

WHERE:

San Francisco Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue, between Larkin and Polk
San Francisco, CA

PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS CALL AS WIDELY AS YOU CAN.
Check http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html for updates.

For background, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/overview.html and http://caedefensefund.org/press.html. For PDFs of signs that you can print out, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html#signs For information on June 15 protests in Amsterdam, San Francisco, London and Paris, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html#world

SUPPORT FREE SPEECH AND FREEDOM OF KNOWLEDGE

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of internationally recognized artists who work in public, educational, academic and art contexts. For the past few years, their principal aim has been to help the general public to understand biotechnology. By making scientific research accessible to laypeople through participatory performance experiences, CAE aims to demystify what is safe and clarify what is dangerous about today's biotech industry.

For the rest of the information about stuff and why the CAE deserves your support, go see http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html. Ok, and so the protest is early on a school morning, but hey, it's a good cause. And I know many of you reading this don't have a job that you need to be at at 9:00. I'll go protest if you go protest. If these guys get convicted for violating the patriot act for making art explaining what's hazardous about biotech, well, we're doomed.

gmail invite

I got one left. It could be yours.

Catherine (Sr. Mary) Leahy passed on with God into her new life about 3:45 this Saturday morning. The nursing staff had checked her at 3:30 and she was resting peacefully, when they checked again 15 minutes later, she had slipped away - just the way she would have wanted to.

Her Vigil and Funeral Services are pending - possibly on Friday with burial on Saturday or on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of the next week. I will email you when they are finalized today or tomorrow.

update on my cousin

from an email:

As of this afternoon, Thursday, about 3 p.m., Mary (Catherine) is still with us but just barely. She has steadily declined since you visited with her and now she seems to be just waiting quietly within herself and seems calm and peaceful. Her breathing is shallow and her heart beat weak so the end of her present journey seems to be very near its end but we can't be sure.

AC Transit Cuts

California's new, um, governor ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Yay low taxes. We can all keep the money we would have paid to register our new Hummers. Yay. Um, but there's a bit of a problem. No money left for everything. So we'll cut public transportation. Only poor people don't have cars and they don't vote. Or they can take advantage of the new low car registration fees and buy themselves Hummers! It's like having your own bus.

My girlfriend, though, is not happy about this as she is one of those carless types. Yes, one of the things that I like about San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley is that you don't need a car to get around. Cola does not even have a driver's liscence. Somehow, though, she knows more about car engines and how they work than I do. Anyway. The AC Transit Press Release thingee has a sample letter to send to the Governor and a link to find your local assembly member. Click on "find my district" on the left. Even if you are not a Californian, you can contact the governor. The smog from California's cars warms the whole globe. Cutting public transit is penny wise and pound foolish. Less transit means more cars on the road. This means more air pollution, which means global enviromental catastrophe, higher rates of asthma, which increase public health costs, greater wear and tear on the roads, which inscreases road repair costs, and it creates difficulty for low income people or carless people getting to and from work, which increases the unemplyment rate, which increases public assitance costs. Really, the smartest economic choice for California would be to hike car registeration fees tremendously and make all public transit free while extending it's reach and hours. This would cut pollution, cut traffic and make it easier for people to get to work. Every hour that somebody spends commuting is a non-monotized, zero-production work hour. It's a tax on the worker and on the economy. So then the economy of California would rebound from the recession. Asthma rates would decline. The state would suddenly be awash in funds again. Maybe we could use them to fix the schools or fund the arts or something.

Here's the Sample Letter:

MMDD, 2004
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

I am writing to urge you to exempt AC Transit from the ERAF shift you proposed in the May budget revision. 230,000 East Bay residents rely on AC Transit every day to get to school, work, retail and recreation sites and medical appointments. Many of these people have no other transportation alternatives. AC Transit provides essential service to our East Bay community.

Your proposal places a disproportionate amount of the burden of the statewide ERAF shift (9%) on the shoulders of Bay Area transit riders.

AC Transit has faced severe budget cuts over the past three years and has taken prudent measures to respond to the economic challenges. It has made significant reductions in expenditures and personnel, deferred capital expenditures and increased fares. AC Transit has already cut 10% of its service in response to the current budget crisis. The additional revenue reductions that you have proposed via an ERAF shift - $20 million for AC Transit - will result in further personnel layoffs and service reductions, decimating critical services by forcing the elimination of routes, many of which are essential for school children, senior citizens, and workers.

As a consequence of your proposal AC Transit would lose 8% of its budget and have to cut the equivalent of all of its weekend or all of its school service (AC Transit carries 60,000 school children daily).

I urge you to reconsider the burden you have placed on AC Transit and all of those who depend on AC Transit every day, and to continue to exempt transit districts from the ERAF shift.

Sincerely,
 
cc: Legislative Delegation:
Senator Liz Figueroa
Senator Don Perata
Senator Tom Torlakson
Assembly Member Joe Canciamilla
Assembly Member Wilma Chan
Assembly Member Ellen Corbett
Assembly Member John Dutra
Assembly Member Loni Hancock

update

I just wanted to note that the bay area voted overwhelmingly against the recall and did not vote for the governator, which might be why East Bay transit is facing disproportionate budget cuts. Just an aside.

gmail invite

what would you do for a gmail invite?

Dirty Bombs, Dirty Tricks

The government just released some of the henious plot by Jose Padilla, US Citizen arrested and held extra-constitutionally for months, accused of being in al-Qaida. He was denied many constitutional rights and has yet to be charged. But, recall, we was accused of trying to build a dirty bomb. Today the feds said that he was giong to explode a dirty bomb made out of uranium. To which several nuclear scientists said, "oh no! not uranium! It might, um, not hurt anything at all." One reported that he uses a brick of uranium as a door stop.

Yes, it's radioactive. If you get a whole mess of uranium, you can start a chain reaction where it will all explode and create a huge of a mess and cause highly dangerous radioactive waste to go everywhere. That kind of device is called a nuclear bomb. If you just take some uranium and attach it to some dynamite to make a dirty bomb, well, it's not so bad. The radioactive waves emitted from uranium won't even penetrate your skin. You can stand around in the same room with it an not be harmed. Simply, it's not dangerous unless you eat it or inhale it. that's why using oodles of depleted uranium in warfare is dastardly, because it gets blown up into a fine dust which people breathe. And it's why exploding a small amount of it in an urban area is kind of lame. It could be cleaned up by folks with protection from eating it or breathing it.

Also, spent fuel rods are dangerous to handle, dangerous to transport and would kill anyone who handled them in a dirty bomb plot. But once exploded with dynamite? Not so dangerous at all. Dirty bombs are interesting to al-Qaida only because they are scary to people. And why are they scary? Because the Bush administration, instead of preventing the populace from coming to harm by arming it with information, has decided to increase risks, play up fear and cause panic. But hey, any city big enough to merit a dirty bomb probably votes democrat anyone, so who cares, right?

It would be nice to see the Bush administration follow the law and respect the rights of Padilla. I mean, he's a citizen, even. What's up with the FBI and federal law enforcement anyway? Do they have no ability to back off when they have no case. Remember Wen Ho Lee, Los Almos lab guy who had his reputation smeared for months while they claimed he was spying for China. They finally had to give up when it turned out the only thing he was guilty of was being of the same race as the government of China. There's defeinitely a spy-like connection there. Or not. And the latest? The FBI just arrested an installation artist who had some lab equipment in his house for an installation he was working of for Mass MoCA. It should be obvious by now that Steve Kurtz isn't guilty of anyhting more than being an artist, but he and two others have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against them. There's a defense fund set up to help the artists involved in this: http://www.caedefensefund.org/ and you can read some media accounts of it at: http://www.appliedautonomy.com/cae/, An AP story, Editorial in the Buffalo News, and The Washington Post.

Ding Dong Reagan's Dead

The blogosphere reacts. Actually, that's my girlfriend reacting, but she's smart. But she leaves an important question unanswered:

What circle of hell has Reagan been sent to?

This requires some thought. How much did he know. Was he smart enough and present enough to understand his evil actions? Was he lightly dozing or unable to recall? Or was he activelty participating? (The structure of Hell) What levels are good canidates? I'll create a handy guide, skipping levels which are totally unsuitable, such as "unbaptized infants"

Level	Sub level	sin	Pro	Con	eternal punishment
Vestibule of Hell		The neutral; uncommitted	Reagan wasn't all that aware. perhaps he was a neutral non-participant	His talk wasn't at all neutral. Also, I think he merrits more than the vestibule	Stung by insects; running after banners
Circle 4		avarice (extreme greed)	Chomsky described Reagan as "throwing a party for the rich." He defunded social services while cutting taxes.	Supporting reaigns of terror seem to be about more than just greed. And the punishment, while ironic is kind of light.	Condemned to useless labor
Circle 7	Round 1	Violent against neighbors and fellow men: murderers, war makers, homicides	Well, cutting social services to the point where mentally ill people are dying in the streets is really a form of structural violence. It's also directly violent to attack Nicaragua and support genocide in Guatemala.	He didn't recall anything about the Iran/Contra thing. Maybe nobody bothered to tell him about it.	Submerged in hot blood and Guarded by centaurs, who shoot any soul which attempts to rise
Circle 9 - Cocytus - Realm of Compound Fraud	Round 2 Antenora	Traitors to country	Well, he was the worst president we ever had and he really screwed the majority of the people in the country. He appointed people to comissions who dismanteled those commissions, such as Clarence Thomas to the Equal Opportunity Commission which did not persue one claim under the Thomas tenure.	Was his intense patriotism real or a sign of his extrme deviousness?	Gripped by ice
Circle 9 - Cocytus - Realm of Compound Fraud	Round 3 Judecca	The Ultimate Destroyer	Lots and lots of nukes. Was the world going to end?	Didn't actually bring about nuclear war.	Lucifer's three wings send forth freezing blasts of impotence, ignorance and hatred. Also, he chews three guys in his maw, including Judas.

Conclusion

I think Reagan is probably in Circle 7, but might be in 9.

Corporate Power

(Read previous post about corporations)

• The Profit Motive
• What to do
• How to do it
• Obstacles

The Profit Motive

The purpose of a corporation is to make money and only to make money. In fact, they are legally obligated to make as much money as possible. And legally obligated to make said money in the short term. If a corporation fails to make as much money as possible, they can be sued by their stockholders who would argue that the corp had not done enough to increase the stockholders' wealth. Corporation must always think of the short term financial interests of their stockholders first and everything else second.

This means that if they can figure out a way to make money, they must do it. For example: tobacco companies. They sell cigarettes to children in the third world. They park logo-decorated vans outside of elementary schools and tell kids that American kids smoke their brand. And they have to do it. If company X stopped doing that while all the other companies still did it, they could be sued by their shareholders. Tobacco companies have to lobby against laws designed to protect people from second hand smoke. They have to fight public health measures against them. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs on earth. More so than heroin. And smoking-related deaths are a major problem around the world. Tobacco companies are shortening lives and hurting quality of life around the world. Yet the US government blocks any efforts to outlaw smoking in other countries. Even ones that really cannot afford the additional health costs brought about by smoking (life long smoking, starting from elementary school). Countries that try to create minimum smoking age laws are bullied by the Us government. Why? Because the tobacco industry has super-good lobbyists. They have to. It maximized profits. It's the law.

Ok, now take an example of a company that produces 7 tons of dioxin every year. This is a fictitious example. (However, dioxin is an extremely common pollutant, produced ad a byproduct of many process, including burning diesel and bleaching paper. It's also one of the most carcinogenic chemicals on earth and was a major "inactive" component of agent orange and currently lurks in Monsanto product Roundup.) Let's say the dump all 7 tons into the San Francisco Bay. Right now, it is illegal to dump dioxin into the bay. (And in fact, most dioxin pollution in the bay is no longer from industrial dumping, but comes from things like folks burning dino-diesel in semi-trucks.) Let's say it would cost $100 million to alter their production lines so they produce 75% less dioxin. Lets' say it would cost $2 million to dispose of the dioxin in a legally allowable manner. Let's say the fines for dumping dioxin in the bay are $3 million and 4 inspectors work in the entire Bay Area and only visited the factory once in the last two years. All these numbers are made up. So, on average, if the inspectors only come every other year, the fines for illegally dumping dioxin would be $1.5 million per year. And if they only produce dioxin on Tuesdays and the inspectors do not time their visits accordingly, the cost of dumping dioxin in the bay is $300,000 per year. That means, that it's cheaper to pay on average $300,000 in fines for dumping carcinogenic toxins in the bay than disposing of it legally. That's the behavior that would maximize short term profit for stockholders. That's a cost of doing business. That's what capitalism is all about. And they'll lobby against higher fines with their vast wealth. And they'll lobby against being mandated to install equipment to reduce dioxin. And they'll hire a team of extremely good lawyers when people sue saying they've gotten cancer. So the only way to make them reduce output is if a concerned public hounds government with the same tenacity as the corporate lobbyists or if they threat of lawsuits becomes strong enough that they feel they can best protect their assets by taking action now to prevent future losses.

This is how the system has been legally and socially structured to work. Corporate structures limit financial liability. They also function to limit moral liability. It's a bunch of people just doing their jobs. Who do you point at and say, "that's a bad guy!"?? Chomsky says, in the movie The Corporation (I highly recommend this film), that the system is monstrous. Individuals in the system may be great people, but the system itself is evil. The system itself must be radically altered. Either the character of corporations must be entirely rethought, or they must be come much less powerful and forced to look at the interests of society. Because when the most powerful institutions in society are working against the interests of society, there is a huge problem.

What to do

Reducing corporate power! It's the answer.

Revoking Charters

Recall that corporations are chartered in a particular state. If they keep violating the laws of that state, they can have their charter revoked. They cease to exist. However, this is like putting out spot fires. It's a good idea to give regulatory agencies more teeth for sure. Our fictitious dioxin-producing company would be more likely to follow the law if they could be de-chartered for breaking it. But you still would have to challenge every corporation separately while the still lobbied against you and donated money to all politicians involved. In California, citizens cannot sue to revoke a charter. Only the attorney general (an elected position) can.

Ending Corporate Personhood

As I've said before, clearly corporations are not people. I mean, what if a real person was only concerned with making as much money as possible and saw hurting people and paying fines for breaking the law as just part of that quest. We'd say they were nuts. A sociopath, even. The legal "decision" giving corporations the rights of people must be overturned. I've put "decision" in quotes because no written decision exists. Before the Supreme Court was set to heart oral arguments in SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the chief justice just announced that the whole court agreed that corporations deserved the rights of people and didn't want to hear arguments about it. And thus it became law in that once sentence. No public debate. No legal reasoning.

How to do it

In the past, the court has made decisions that were ultimately overturned. For example, the same court that decided that corporations deserved equal protection later decided (with only one dissenting vote) that African Americans did not. That decision was overturned in Brown vs The Board of Education. The Bauer decision, which said it was ok to make sodomy illegal was overturned last summer. Roe Vs. Wade is currently under attack and may be overturned. These fights seem to have some elements in common.

Activism

People were in the streets protesting against anti-sodomy laws. Protesting against Jim Crow and now protesting against abortion rights. Activism increases public awareness, gets attention, lets the other side know that you're serious. The Montgomery Bus Boycott ended segregation on public transit. It was a court case and direct action. Both elements were needed.

Legal Action

there is now a huge mass of precedent saying corporations are people. That precedent must be challenged. A body of anti-corporate people arguments must be produced. This means getting think-tank-types: law students, professors, interested professionals, together to start writing stuff. It also means getting lawyers to start arguing stuff in courts. We need law students and some law professors to get on board. Labor Law is probably a good recruitment area.

Other Actions

I was surprised to see a note in The Corporation that two cities had passed ordinances saying they would not consider corporations people. This sounds like something Berkeley could get on board with. These ordinances may not have much legal power, but they have huge symbolic values. They show that people care about the issue and are engaged in government and politics. They show that voters care. Which can affect court appointments.

Obstacles

I think this is something that could happen and something that's worth working on. However, right now corporations have way more resources than us and have more rights than us. They will fight this any way that they can. Heck, they have to. It will not be easy. But something must be done. Our system is unsustainable an cannot be fixed without radically changing the dominant institutions. Institutions that control resources must be publicly accountable. We cannot put essential life-sustaining resources in the hands of organizations that only look for short term-profits. It's suicide. We can do this. We must do this.

Lyrics

The American Composers Forum is sponsoring a Christmas Carol Contest. They're looking for music for choral groups, SATB (Sopranao, Alto, Tenor, Bass). Lyrics can have a winter or a Christmas theme and must either be public domain or have written permission of the author.

So I'm having a contest too. Write lyrics! I'm looking for mostly winter or Solstice themed, but feel free to submit Christmas lyrics too. One lucky person will have their lyrics set to music and submitted to this contest. Woot. Also, I will endeavor to find a performance of the work in another venue in the case that it doesn't win the contest... You will receive a copy of the sheet music, a recording of whatever performance I can put together, all the benefits of being a lyracist, um, and other fun things, like, um, dinner.

The deadline for turning in the music is September, but obviously, I need lyrics well in advance of that. Send as many sets of words as you want. Thenk you

I am in Los Angeles

I came to visit my cousin. She is 86 years old, owing to her actually being my grandmother's first cousin and my first cousin twice removed. She lives in a convent in Brentwood, as she is a nun. She is my sole remaining female relatives. How many relatives have I watched slowly die? I sat at my grandmothers' bedsides. I sat at my mother's. Now, at my cousin's. She hasn't eaten anything in three days and barely takes liquid. She nearly died a few weeks ago. She had an anti-biotic resistant infection in her blood. The nuns called my dad saying that they didn't think she would live through the weekend, but then she did. My dad didn't tell me, because I was so far away. I've been complaining about this to other people and not him, but actually, I'm not mad. You can't undo the past. And I'm kind of glad I didn't know.

It's been nearly a year since I last came to see her. Last July or August I came by myself. Normally, I came every time with Christi. Now I'm here with my dad. She didn't open her eyes to recognize me. I'm not sure if she was asleep or awake when I held her hand and talked to her about grad school. I can hear her voice so clearly in my head, being excited when I told her I was going away to school. But now she's nearly mute. Sister Jeanne said that she can be more talkative around lunchtime.

I didn't come over fall break or thanksgiving or winter break or spring break. Now, I'm finally here. And she. like everyone I love, will die or leave. I expect to be back here soon.

Corporate "People"

Our country is currently controlled by moneied interests who donate vast sums to both major parties. Corporate money now has greater voting power than humans in the United States. Legal systems have been set up that make this situation difficult to combat. This is a bit about how they work and where they're vunerable

• What is a Corporation? - Definitions
• Corporations are People too
• What does it mean for corporations to have human rights?
• Corporations have too many rights
• Things are bad, but we can undo them

What is a Corporation? - Definitions

The Daytrader's Glossary defines a corporation as a "form of business organization characterized by a state charter or articles of incorporation enabling certain rights separate from its owners. Common features of a corporation include limited liability of the owners, issuance of stock in evidence of ownership, election of directors and officers by vote of shareholders and taxation of the corporation separate to that of the owners." Ok, so what that means is that a corporation is a type of buisiness organization with many owners. The corporation is considered a legally seperate entitiy from it's owners. It is a thing that exists in the world, seperate from it's owners. Corporations limit liability of the owners. What this means is that the owners are not personally responcible for the debts of the corporation. If the company runs out of money and owes many debts, the company can go bankrupt, but the owners are not responcible for the debt. So if Mitch and I own a corporation that owes $50,000 to Sophie, and the corporation only has $20,000 in assets, Mitch and I personally don't owe the remaining $30,000 and too bad for Sophie.

Corporations issue stock. A stock is a share of ownership in the corporation. A person who owns one or more stocks (also called "shares") is a stockholder. The percentage of the corporation owned by any stockholder is the number of shares owned divided by the total number of shares issued. Stockholders get to vote on resolutions and on the directors and officers of the corporation. One share is one vote (except in special cases, like the Google IPO). So if you own 50 shares, you get 50 votes. Corporations also, as a seperate legal entity have tax liability. The organization owes taxes, but since liability is seperated, the owners do not owe those taxes.

Corporations are chartered. This means that some state causes them to come into existance. People who want to start a corporation file paperwork in some state and pay some fees and then they have a corporation. The state could, at some point, decide to revoke the charter of a corporation and then it would cease to legally exist.

Ok, so corporations are collectively owned and the owners have no liability. They are chartered in some state. Under law, corporations exist as things in the world. what sort of things?

Corporations are People too

In 1886, the supreme court of the Unites States decided that corporations were legally people. There was a case about corporate taxation before them. SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886) And they decided that the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection applied to corporations, as they were legally people. An excellent explination what what this means and how it came about. This is called a "legal fiction." So when corporations are in court, judges employ a fiction and pretend that corporations are people. This means that corporations, as people, get all the rights that people get. Free speech. The right to bear arms. Protections against unlawful search and seizure. The whole bill of rights and every other constitutional right too. All the rights that were written for actual, real-life, non-fictional people.

But corporations have limitted liability. You can't send a corporation to jail, obviously. And the owners can't lose more than their stock. So coporations are super-people. They have all the same rights that you and I do, plus they don't get sick, fall and break their arm, go to jail, die of old age, or have any human frailties. The only bad things that can happen to corporations s that they can run out of money or they can have their charter revoked.

What does it mean for corporations to have human rights?

The idea that corporation deserve human rights, and, in fact, deserve more rights than humans is deeply troubling. One of the "rights" they have is freedom of speech. This means that a corporation can officially say whatever the heck it wants, just like a person can. Nike argued that this meant the have the right to lie about whether or not their shoes are made with sweatshop labor. It also means that corporations have the right to political speech, such as trying to influence the outcome of a poltical contest. Donating money to a politician is cirrently viewed as a type of "speech," so corporations have the right to give money to candidates that they agree with. Many coporations have way more resources than individuals. This means, practically, they have more freedom of speech than us lowly humans. And they're basically feudal. Corporations are heirachical. your boss tells you what to do. You, as an employee don't get to elect leadership or have any influence in anything aside from worrying whether or not you're going to get fired. Yeah, some employees own stock, but in their role as an employee they do not have any rights in influencing the direction of the corporation aside from what the corporation chooses to grant them. Which means that a textile company which employees 1000 people at minimum wage and 100 highly paid managers and who has 100 rich stockholders can use it's wealth to lobby to have the minimum wage reduced. It can publish ads in newspapers saying the minimum wage is too high. It can give sums of money to politicians that want to elmininate minimum wage entirely. It can put posters on the walls telling emplyees that minimum wages are a bad idea and unions are evil. It can make them watch videos saying that. So there would exist a company where 200 people controlled the wealth generated by 1000 (or 1100) people and decide in what political direction the money should be thrown. The 1000 workers could all decide to vote in favor of minimum wage increases, but they proabbly don't have much money to give to politicians, and the corporation does. A politician in favor of minimum wage increases would be at a financial disadvantage. And many the company gives equal sums to both major parties as long as they keep wages down. Then the workers can either vote Green or it doesn't matter who they vote for, because the company, working against their interests, bought the major parties.

Corporations have too many rights

and they keep getting new ones all the time. All these weird trade organizations, like the WTO have secret ruling councils that periodically decide that corporations should have more and more rights. Ones that humans don't get. As citizens, you and I can't vote about the WTO. So we work for feudal institutions who are given extra rights by pseudo-government bodies made up of the same people who own the corporations. Oh, and your pension fund? It's invested in those same corporations. The fund managers want the stock of the companies to go up. So they vote to lobby for lower wages. What this means is that your own retirement fund money is controlled by a financial manger who is activelly lobyying to lower your wages. You own money is being used as a weapon against you. when coporations have too many rights, we are serfs. The product of our labor is being sued to harm us. Our own prpoerty is a weapon against us. And our laws can be overtuned by super-national bodies, like the WTO, which we get absolutely no say in.

Things are bad, but we can undo them

The proplem is this stupid legal fiction. Corporations exist to make money for their owners. That's not a person! First of all, people can't own each other! What should happen is that SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO should be overturned. Stupid descisions have been overtunred before. The will of the people does influence the court. So step one is letting people know about this. Human people. And human people need to let their voices be heard, corporate personhood was a bad idea and needs to stop now.

No more yahoo personals

Way back in January or February, I put an ad up on Yahoo personals. Today, I cancelled it. They asked me why. I said something about having a girlfriend and the Connecticut lesbian dating scene being unfathomable. But they asked me again to take a survey.

What did you like most about your Yahoo! Personals service?

um, honestly, mocking the ads of the other users.  

What did you like least about your Yahoo! Personals service?

 going to coffee shops to meet women with mullets who think /i'm/ weird

What changes would you suggest we make to the service that would improve the experience?

This is a large problem which requires a multi-facetted approach. First of all, personal ads are still viewed with suspicion by members of the lesbian community, especially in New England. It might be a good idea to advertise in MetroLine, a gay publication that seems to be popular. This would make people less embarrassed when their lurker friends found their ad and would increase the size of the population placing ads.

Secondly, many people have poor written communication skills, which makes their ads subliterate or causes misunderstanding in their ad-realted correspondence. You may want to lobby for better writing programs in highschools. The whole on-line industry depends on the reading and writing skills on the general populace, so it's in your best interests to improve education.

Um, I really don't know what you can do about the over-representation of TV-addicted women with mullets. Maybe start offering free haircuts with a subscription?

But gos, that makes me sound like an asshole. And while I'm not really into northeastern suburban lesbian hair fashions, it's not so auful as I make it out. And while I really had little in common with the women I met, they were actually nice people and some I would like to keep around as friends. Maybe I bare some blame for the oddness of my internet-dating experiences.

Her: what popular bands do you like?

me: i don't listen to popular music

her: oh, um, what tv shows do you watch?

me: i don't watch tv

her: what kind of car do you drive?

me: i prefer bicycling due to the general unavilability of vegetable-based fuels in this area

her: uh.... ok... so what do you study?

me: I compose experimental electronic music with my laptop.

Phillip K dick wrote in Radio Free Abelmouth that once you become a Berkeley radical, you can never leave. Thishas happened to me. I can really never leave Berkeley. I can go to visit other places anywhere in the world, but always as a foreigner. They sell t-shirts on Telegraph Ave that say "The People's Republic of Berkeley." I could never decide if I wanted one or they were too touristy and deserved to be mocked. I think I might get one for East Coast wearing.

Art Installation

So a few weeks ago, I went to a music festival and symposium at Wesleyan, called the For a Long Time festival. One of the symposium speakers was Michael Schumacher, who runs the Diapason Gallery in New York City. This gallery specializes in sound installations. One of their current projects is sound installations for people's homes. People who really like such things pay a fee and get an installation put into their homes. Depending on the amount of money they put in, they get a certain number and quality of speakers put up around their house. So somebody might pay a few thousand dollars and get a killer sound system and some pieces to play on it. The deal, though, is that it's an installation. It's self-directing art. The customer does not controll the art. Meaning, they don't know what they're getting ahead of time. Furthermore, there is no volume control. It plays what it plays when it plays it, which might be just on the full moon or something, who knows. If you don't like the installation, you can turn it off, but you can't turn it down. Schumacher told us of an early customer who said that it completely changed her life. I bet it would.

Personally, I wouldn't want an installation in my home, because I work in my home. It would be hard to write stuff for my own installation if there was one already going. But if I were not a composer and I really loved sound art, I could totally see getting one. Fortunately, Cola has an installation in her apartment of the same sort by accident. Her intercomm is freaking out. (Read her account of it.) Sometimes it plays street sounds into her apartment. No volume control. It's even more hardcore than Diapason's venture, since there's no off switch. I kind of liked it as it reminded me of this project. But sometimes, randomly, it will switch and play sounds from the apartment to the street. This is a bit more distressing because, well, few people would want all the sounds from their studio apartment to be played out of a speaker on the stoop. No. Not good.

Cola, however, is a good sport and while she was upset about this (I would be upset too), she is willing to let me take advantage of this situation. The stoop speaker masks everything with a bad 60hz hum. A bad hum. Something is clearly ungrounded. Well, I mean, obviously the wiring is screwed up or this wouldn't be going on. So anyway, what we did was duct-tape a speaker over the intercom and then set my computer to play out of the speaker. It's playing my tuning ratios but retuned to be overtones of 60hz, the same frequency as the hum. The effect is subtle. (Maybe a bit too subtle, but when it was louder, it ended up alarming the other tennants.... anyway, I turned it down.) It's kind of nice. However, I was unwilling to sacrifice my laptop during the day, so it's not going when I'm not there. What I clearly need is a second laptop that can run osx so I can leave this up 24/7 until the intercom is fixed. Really. heh. I am too pleased with myself about this.

casaninja?

This post killed.

I am keeping casaninja.com as is.

Media Machine

I got some audio of Ann Coulter from MediaMatters.org and I was struck by how everybody kept talking on top of each other so you can't even tell what's going on. You get bombarded with bombasticness and somehow, at the end, feel like information has been communicated, but none has. It's fake news. It's a media machine trying to pass itself off as the news story. "Hey, look at me!" the media says. So I thought, what if this got layered more and more of the same stuff on top? And not having much more ranting handy as I don't have cable, I just layered the same clip. And I think it sounds like a machine after several layers. How Ironic! What do you think?

http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/wesleyan/media-machine.mp3

say hi

That is a picture of Cola aka Nicole, whose apartment I've frequently been lurking in. Cola is nifty. I know her from my undergrad days. She's a geek. Was a history major and a CS minor, now works at the seond largest toy company in the US programming toys and also takes nifty pictures. She is also my new girlfriend. Say hi.

fixed comments?

anon commenting should be working now...

Creative Commons Liscence

Ok, let's talk copyright. Anything that you say or do that gets recorded somehow is copyrighted. So recording or writing down a new song is copyrighted. Making up a new songs and singing it in front of 500000 people is not copyrighted unless it's recorded. So copyright is somewhat stupid. Furthermore, all of your blog ranting is copyrighted. It belongs to you you you and nobody else. Which means that nobody can rip off your woe over Krispy Kreme's Atkins Woes and set it to music without having to first secure your permission and possibly pay you. This is somewhat stupid. Why is my ranting that I do over the telephone not copyrighted, so that anybody could overhear, find it amusing, later it somewhat to fit in meter and make it into a song, but my web ranting in a different class? Because of stupid copyright laws. Let's face it, most blog posts do not deserve copyright protection. They're on the order of found writing. So why give it copyright protection? Why not do a less restrictive copyright so other people can do stuff with it if they feel somehow inspired?
All text on this website, with the exception of poetry and song lyrics, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Check it out!

New Template

Yes, my blog looks different. I wanted to take advantage of new blogger features and unfortunately, the easiest way to do that was to pick a new look. My old look was also designed by blogger, but, i dunno, this one feels so corporate to me. i tweaked the colors, but it's still dull. oh well. the content is what matters, right?

Music as Social Change

Jesse wrote a really good comment to my last post and I'm going to post it here cuz it's very good

1. install guerilla public sound art pieces that undermine corporate branding of public spaces, drive folks away from malls the day after thanksgiving, or dovetail with a local activist campaign's goals.
2. arrange to show interactive sound artworks in middle schools and highschools that engage with political themes and are both rewarding to and demanding of particpants.
3. maybe not supercollider so much as protools, but create documentary radio artworks, audio tours, and sound installations on political issues.
4. record rallies, teach-ins, other political events, and create online sound archives. use the sound material for sound collages and interactive audio artworks at future political events.
5. use experimental music concerts, sound installations, cds, etc., esp. when related to a political event, as fundraising opportunities, or as chances to encourage attendees to participate in upcoming actions. at the very least, set up laptops so folks can sign online petitions, send e-faxes, or whatever.

these are all concrete political actions. less explicitly political stuff, through encouraging critical thinking, introspection, and empathy, might also be an important part of a big social change strategy, but that's much sketchier... that's what my interview and survey research project is about.

some of this stuff is difficult because of equipment or money issues. also, experimental music, b/c of its high cultural capital, and demographic, academic, and elitist associations, has some disadvantages as far as being a tool for social change, but it also has unique advantages: it's technological focus, it's critique of dichotomies, it's embrace of radical contexts for sound, it's ability to be something new to people.

Leftism

I see all these bumper stickers that say "Peace Through Music." Ok. Sounds good. Sign me up. How does this work exactly? Periodically, Anthony Braxton will try to fire us up to go create change "not just in happy theory land" but also on the physical plane. Change throught music. Peace through music. All horribly short on specifics. Could someone tell me how I can use supercollider to end capitalism and facism and bring about the worker's state? Seriously, now. I think it would be a good idea.

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near misses

bass book buying

Yah, so I went biking up Shattuck to go buy a book for my bass lessons. Totally for got where Bancroft was and rode way too far before turning back. Got to sheet music shop and went to lock the loverly borrowed bike. The lock was being stubborn, so I gave the key one hard jerk and got the lock to engage and then saw that I had badly bent the key and it was torn. Alas! So I went into the music shop and asked the guy behind the counter where I could get the key dubplicated. He gave me advice and told me that he spent years playign the tuba and had recently decided to take up playing upright bass. me too! He has a quartet called the "Tuba Dudes" and they're looking for another bass tuba player, so I gave him my email adress. Then I walked to hardware store to get my key copied, but they were closed. All the hadrware stores were closing. It was late. I was miles from home. The bike lock is not good enough to leave a bike out overnight in berkeley. bah. so I bought a lot of bike grease and then covered the lock with it. It came open at the same moment that the key snapped in two. Seriously. And then today I noticed that I bought book two of the bass method instead of book one. bah.

computers

A shot glass full of lemoncello landed directly on top of Cola's laptop. I blinked at it for a while and told it to run software shut down. then my brain rebooted and she pulled out the battery and unplugged it. We shook it out and pulled off the keyboard and virtually no booze got inside the case. I called my amused little brother who told me to wash the gooey parts (or maybe the GUI parts?) with distilled water and let it dry for several days and then reassemble it and it will be fine.

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Changes

Yes, a so a few days ago, I mentioned how my friends from my undergrad days, who I hadn't seen much in the last few years, had changed. Everyone wants to know how they, in particular changed. Well, lemme tell you. Everyone is, understandably, more mature, which is good given that years have passed. People's positive points have all become more evident. Several folks' annoying habits (I am not going to provide any particulars here about anyone) have receeded or disappeared entirely. There is less smack talking. Yah, I dunno. Everyone seems to have gone and had some life experience and acquired some additional thoughtfulness and charecter. I mean, these were always good folks, right, but now they're good folks a few years older. so yes, I don't want to relive my undergrad days, no way, but it's nice to have friends from then.

I am being very lazy. I've been back a week and I haven't done anything except finish and turn in my paper, get my bass (and exchange the french bow for a german one) and have a lesson. all the rest of the stuff on my todo list is festering. bah, somebody hand me stuff on a silver platter. how about a rehersal space for Tennis Roberts? Nobody in the band has a garage and my practice space has been taken over by a long string instrument. ..... must... rouse... self.....

bah. need some clothes. i haven't bought summer clothes since 2000 or earlier. need to fix bike flat. need to buy bass method book. tomorrow is bike to work day.

Old Comments for this Post

zzzz... huh?

hm, I seem ot have been asleep for the lst two hours and thus not done any of my errands. bah. oh well. Yesterday, I rented a bass from Best music. Today I had my first bass lesson. I need to swap my french-type bow for a german type bow, but looks like that won't happen until tommorrow. bah, I have no work ethic, I just want to nap. At some point, I will have recovered my sleep deficit from last semester and be running a sleep surplus. that will be weird.

Yesterday, I also went to the memorial service of Margret Lyon. She is the former head of the Mills Music department and was the person who brought the San Francisco Tape Music Center to Mills as the Center for Contemporary Music. She was personally a musicologist who wrote her PhD dissertation on a Renissance English composer, but she recognized that New Music would be the next big thng and turned Mills into a center for it. She's made a huge difference for music at Mills and by extension music in the Bay Area and music in general. One of the Kronos Quartet violinists got up and told a story about how Lyon saved the quartet from doom. They were in residence at Mills for a while. She invited Terry Reiley to teach at Mills and said fine when he said he wanted to bring Pandit Pran Nath, so shared Terry Reiley. Both Kronos and Reiley played some tunes.

The memorial service was not well publicized as the family wanted to make sure that random people didn't show up. I would have felt like a random person, except a Mills faculty member told me about it and because I'm a Mills alum and stuff. I directly benefitted from the wisdom of Margret Lyon. So I felt half-random. Surprisingly, college President Jan Holmgren did not show up, even though the entire music department faculty was there. During her graduation speech, she mentioned deceased proferssor emeriti and said stuff about mourning their loss. I don't want to speculate on why she wasn't there, but given that the drama department was just killed, it does make me a bit nervous. Picture of a tiny drama-protest from gaduation:

I must now go get Cola from work. yay.

Marek rules

Letter to the RNC

Yes, I'm home

I've been around since wednesday, but I've been offline and kind of hiding in Cola's apartment. I did go see Sophie graduate from mills with her BA (it's about time...). I have pictures, which I will post later. Saw her mother. It was nice to see her again. Sophie and her mom are so cute. Danica and T also came. It's funny seeing how people have and have not changed. When I saw folks over spring break, I thought "wow, they have not changed a bit!" and thought it was odd that they could be frozen in time. But, of course, they have changed. Subtly and not so subtly. Danica, for example, is on testosterone and has acquired a certain gravitas and air of responcibility. However, still managed to run out of gas on the way to the Berkeley biodiesel station. That biodiesel station is conviently located directly behind my building, but my pickup runs on gas. oh well.

Yesterday, Cola and I went out on Mitch's boat with Mitch and Humanchu and two French women. Every time I've been out on that boat, there's a small craft advisory, but yesterday was definitely the most choppy trip I've been on ever. We bounced and got wet a lot. Mitch has a new boat stereo, which is very nifty. After boating, we went to Mitch's new house. He lives in a scary townhouse development. But it has a little pool and a hottub, so we went and sat in the hottub, which was very nice. And Mitch's household lent me a bike. yay! It needs new innertubes, which I will go get later today, after I get done lounging.

I like Cola. She makes me hapeeeee.

If you want to hang out, you can reach me by calling my cell phone 860-301-2508, which is a connecticut number or by calling my berkeley home phone, which has not changed. my berkeley abode is in a cell dead spot, so trying both numbers can be a good idea, or just call berkeley if you're in california without "free" long distance. i'm here till august. I am currently jobless (if you see anything, esp part time or audio -related, drop me a line!) so have lots of time to hang w/ you, although I must write mad amounts of music and spent 2 hours a day practcing double bass. I'm about to go rent one. yay.

Old Comments for this Post

There's no place like home

I'm home. I'm in california. I have finished my last paper. I am free and clear. I am here for weeks! weeks! months! for the summer! If you want to hand out with me, you should email or call. I have my cell phone, with it's connecticut number 860-301-2508. My old berkeley home number still works as well. Yes I want to hang out with you. Yes we should get drinks / get dinner / jam / play some gigs / talk about old times / whatever.

East coasters take heart, you can fly from hartford or from jfk to oakland international round trip for $200, which is really not bad at all.

gig information will be forthcoming as soon as i figure some out. I want to play out here, i do. I want you to play out here too.

So I trimmed my old concluding paragraph

If she did, indeed, chose death rather than change clothes, then her clothing represents a highly developed technique of self. She was strongly invested in her sense of selfhood. Her gender performance, repressed and questioned, had become fully internally ingrained. The dialog she had with her judges and her voices lead her to value her nonheteronormative gender performance more than her life. If it was so central to her selfhood, then she was queerly self-aware. Her identity was evident to herself as queer. It was not just a place of opposition, it was a place of opposition that she was aware of and invested in. She "came out" as genderqueer, proclaiming it fundamental to her sense of self. She embodied a category that did not yet exist, by enduring repression and questioning in a process analogous to current queers. She lived and died the queer experience. She was so fucking queer. If she were alive right now, she'd have gotten married in san francisco earlier this term. she'd be hanging out at lesbian bars in paris. she'd be a contributer to stone butch blues. she'd inspire a generation of bulldykes to adopt page-boy haircuts. she'd be so fucking awesome. man, i would date her. she'd be the lead singer in her own punk rock band. she'd wear badass jeans with a big leather belt. she'd have big stomping boots. nobody would mess with her. she'd take the chunnel to england to go raise hell in london. she would tell english tourists to get the hell out of france and leave her alone. she'd have like 700 girlfriends and break all of thier hearts cuz she was like 19 and 19 year olds are wont to do that. 700 broken hearted exes and a line a mile long to snag her after her shows. people who were older and should know better would fall for her. older guys in the buisiness would respect her, they wouldn't even see her as a piece of ass, they'd think she was an equal. and man, she'd get action. she told her judges, "as for where she lodged or slept at night, she usually had a woman with her; when she was fighting, she would lie fully dressed and armed, if there was no woman to be found. In respect of the end of the article, she refers herself to God." (Barrett 217) yah, all those chicks refer to god too. "ooohhhh god!" she'd be like cara crash, "i've got a crush on cara crash. her fast fingers make me trash . . .. ejaculate when i hear the sound of her playing." (Breedlove) she'd fucking rule. so fucking punk rock, but with really fancy clothes, cuz she was into the bling. and man, anybody smart would stay the hell away from her. she's going to burn out and die young. but her heart won't burn, oh no. they have to toss that into the seine. leaving a trail of bodies behind her, her heart unburned, she'd flame so spectacularly, they'd be talking about it for like another 600 years. man, and every young dyke would fucking want her, but ever more, they'd want to be her. be her major ass kicking badass girl-getting never sleeps alone self. and what about her? the bourgeois of paris would be as perplexed now as he was then. "what it was god only knows" he'd still be talking about exposing her body like you could tell something about what the hell she was by looking at her naked corpse. he just wants to feel better about things. say, yah, it's just a girl after all. still. lifeless. dead. not so inexplicable. not so awesome. just weird. she's a fucking heretic. things are better this way. we're going to win cuz god is on our side. but god is not on his side. god is with her. she's taking over even from after death. what she started isn't going to stop when she does. it's bigger than a signle charismatic figure. her guys are going all the way. your sorry ass is going to be kissing theirs. you don't mess with her, cuz she'll kick your ass, even if you think you won. you'll just make a martyr out of her. you'll just turn the crowds against you. just do what she says, man, it's easier. you can't mess with her, she's inspired. she's guided by voices. she is SO FUCKING QUEER. so back off motherfuckah. this is not your spritzhead girlfriend this is hothead fucking joan of fuck arc paisan, yeah. FUCK YOU

But seriously folks

Please give me feedback. Paper: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf and bibliography: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer-bib.rtf .   Feedback pretty please? Especially the end paragraphs, cuz, um, I stayed up way too late. but i can sleep on the plane. and maybe nap before my flight after i finish all my chores i have to do.

Status update

My TA stuff is under control. My gear is returned to the lab. I'm waiting till fall to ship Christi's stuff, even though this means shipping it to france, which will be much more expensive. My hosue is still a disaster. I have 8 pages left to write. The paper in progress is continually being updated at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf

Todo:

• Pack to go home (augh, still don't have big suitcase - i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
• Buy more dogfood
• get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
• clean room. do non-essential laundry. don't want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don't. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea....
• completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
• return the 30 or so library books i have out

If it's not on this list, I've forgotten about it and need to be reminded.

So how is that paper going, anyway?

You can read my paper in progress at http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/acad/wes/joan-queer.rtf . Feedback is always welcome, at least, it is before Friday as that is the final due date. I'll be periodically re-publishing my paper to that url as I work on it.

and, alas there is more on my todo list:

• Pack and ship things to christi's parents, including CDs, books, dished and vinyl records
• Go get images from the lab for documentation, including any unphotographedhardware and screen shots from lab specific software, like the MOTU interface thingee
• Pack to go home (augh, still don't have big suitcase - i should go check out thrift stores, but alas, i bet other students have already cleaned them out)
• Buy more dogfood
• get two sets of key copies made for folks that will be around my wes house over the summer
• clean room. do non-essential laundry. don't want ot come home to a festering pile of months old dirty underwear, no i don't. anymore than folks luring around my house in the summer would like the idea....
• completely empty the refrigerator. all the way empty. i do not want to repeat spring break fiasco.
• return the 30 or so library books i have out
• return equipment to the lab

bah. there's probably more. I must have all of this done by 2:00 wednesday.

temptest in a teapot

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago there was a student-organized composer's concert. I had a piece in the firts one of these. The first concert was a small test run with only a few composers willing to try something new, meaning that, on the whole, it was a lot better than the second one. I don't likie to post negative reviews, so I usually don't, but the second concert had a high level of suckage. Most of the pieces by undergrads. Many had a tendency to go on way too long. At least twice as long as they should. Hello, we have compositon faculty who would love to help you edit (read: shorten and modify) your work. Also, it would be really helpful to consider such elements as a structure. And having at least one rehersal might be a good idea. And the reason I don't say these things is because I know the composers of these works and I don't want to hurt their feelings. And they're students. Student works are supposed to be exploratory and not necessarily materpieces. One unrehearsed piece that went on far too long was written by a very talented young composer. The piece had good elements in it that I hope are developed more in future pieces. I look forward to seeing the composer mature and find a voice. Great things ahead. Part of being a community means going to concerts full of works that are not going to be fabulous so you can see what your comrades are working on. It means, obviously, not critizing the hell out of something, unless you're making a specific helpful point. And really, unless you're good friends, a TA or a prof, you might want to hold off on making these points. I mean, if you gave a concert and your piece had a great ending point 5 minutes before the actual end and you missed five notes at the beginning, would you want every signle member of the sudience to tell you "great piece, but . . .." So as a community, we support each other. We go to each other's concerts. We offer criticisms when it's appropriate or when we are asked for feedback. We offer encouragement.

I played in the second composer's concert in the opening piece by my housemate. It was an unsual piece in which all the players dropped marbles in unison down clear plastic pipes, which fell to the concert hall stage floor. the parts indicated how long players should wait until picking up the marble. The interesting thing about the piece, more than the sounds of marbles hitting the floor in-semi unison, was the theatrical aspect of watching people pick up marbles at different times. The parts were distributed at random. The timing markers in the piece were non exact. So what looked to me like count 4 & 1/2, might have been 3 or 4 or 5 to somebody else. And there were a bunch of lines in the score. So on count 2, for example, a cluster of people on the right might grab their marbles. Then, the next time, on count 5, some folks in the corners, might bend down. An interesting idea. I can't critique it too much, cuz i was in it, not watching it.

another person who failed to watch this theatre piece, apparently felt like he should not only offer criticism, but write a letter to the newspaper ciriticising all wes composers and the audience for clapping. Hey kid: you're wrong. You missed the piece, you missed the point and you don't understand community. And what the hell with invoking Hilter?? Um, I know that The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is not required reading or anything, but as a rule, and in that specific case, right wing governments are also against new art. Wrong analogy. Wrong side of wrong analogy. I hope nobody takes this kid too seriously on this article and some teacher or good friend or TA gives him some criticism on how to better formulate his ideas.

Terror, Trafficing in Evil

I've already posted twice about the NYTimes article that said we should "traffic in evil" to win the war on terror, which the author defined in such a way as to be unwinnable. Well, looks like we've been following that advice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, this has completely defanged all the terrorist organizations that hate our government and caused the Middle East to love us and fear us. Rush Limbaugh calls it a "thoughtful" approach. Those of us who have not falled off the wagon (he must be back on drugs), are somewhat appalled. However, this is exactly what the NYTimes seems to think is a good idea. this is exactly what has been suggested. And it's what we've been doing, according to the Red Cross and other groups, for more than two years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? the justified war? Where prisoners have now been held in inhumane conditions for two years with no access to legal counsel and without being charged with any crime. Remember how we were bring freedom to Afghanistan, quoth Bush, "once ruled by the brutal Taliban regime." Now ruled by the brutal american regime.

Human Rights Watch articulates the problems with the reasoning behing the nytimes article,

But imagine for a moment that you're an interrogator, and that you have in front of you a person who has information about an imminent attack on the United States. What would you do to get that information?

That is the classic "ticking bomb" scenario that proponents of torture always bring forward ... But what we've found is that it puts you on a slippery slope that leads to extensive torture. If you can use torture against somebody who today you believe knows where the ticking bomb is, why not use torture on the person who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where the ticking bomb is going to be in two weeks?

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/07/iraq8562.htm

and this reasoning leads directly to the kind of abuse that has been photodocumented in Iraq. I mean, these prisoners might know something, even if they haven't done anything wrong themselves, right?

The Times suggested that we torture suspects for information. Not people convicted of something. Not even people who are charged with something, necessarily. People who might know stuff. The abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan are what happens when that reasoning is followed. And if this is not enough to convince you, if you think maybe these soldiers are not systematically "softening up" inmates, maybe they're "blowing off some stream" (says Rush) or it's not worse than Frat Hazing (say many people who are apparently unaware that frat boys volunteer for hazing and anyway it's illegal at many schools), or maybe it is actually systematic, but who cares these guys are all foreigners, or whatever. If you want to excuse it: the NYTimes thinks we should start this sort of thing at home. That's not just foreigners, in that case. That's your neighbor. That's your kid. That's you. You, even as an upright Republican voter, have a duty to protect yourself by standing up against this at home and abroad.

and

Obviously, I'm procrastinating on my paper. This abuse thing is very very bad. but I must write my paper. I wonder if I have any "upright republican" readers.

shoutouts

thank you to David for recording, webcasting and photodocumenting thursday cocnert.

thank you to tim for organizing thursday concert.

thank you to dan for promoting thursday concert.

thank you to tim, dan and charlie for playing in thursday concert.

thank you to aaron for providing beer, seating, hospitality, mixing board and monitor speakers for thursday concert.

thank you to people who came/listened on the web to thursday concert.

thank you to sophie for offering a ride from airpot on wednesday.

thank you to david for offering a ride to the airport on wednesday.

thank you to angela for taking xena for the summer.

thank you to cola for offering me temporary lodging (while CN was to be unavilable)

thank you to mitch and to jean's friend sarah for offering me bicycles (I will take one of you up on the offer)

thank you to ellen for offering me summer lodging

oh my, I am quite lucky to have had so many people be nice and helpful. I must now go back to working on my paper.

more pictures

pictures by david

woot

I have republished my photo library. Concert pictures start on Page 12 or Page 13, depending on how you count.

There were a lot of people here last night. Every chair in the house was used. People were sitting on the coffee table. People were sitting on the floor. People were standing in the back. I didn't count. But I was very nervous. I get very scared when I play, which is why I don't do it very often and is why I should do it more often. I kept grabbing the wrong cord. And my hands were actually shaking, so it was hard to plug them in. When I play with my modular, I keep all the cords around my neck, so easy access. So eberytime I move, there's the sound of cable ends clacking against each other. Something I didn't think about. Normally, I just take a line out and don't play in front of people, you know, so the cable sounds don't exist. Weird playing in front of people. I have no idea how long I played or what I did. I started with a chaos patch. That's when you take three oscillators and take the ouput of one of them and use it to control the frequency of the next one. So if the first one is a very low frequency and the next one is higher, it sounds like a siren as the first oscilator frequency modulates the second one. If you turn the first oscillator up into the audible range, you can't hear the siren anymore, because the frequency modulation [fm] is too fast. So It makes a very complex wave form. In a chao patch, you take the output of the second oscillator and plug it into the FM jack of a third one. Then you take the output of the third one, and plug it into the FM of the first one,s o they're all cascading down a line. This is chaotic. Then take the ouput of any one of them, chnage the base pitch of any of the other ones, and un predictable things happen. It's complex. It tweaks in interesting ways. It's a good foundation. I feel like if I play again, I need to start with a different base. Good thing I'm not playing again for a while. The downside of starting with a choas patch is that it uses all three of my main oscillators. I have a few more, including three below-audio-range LFOs (low frequency oscilalators - synths are full of TLAs) and two more audio range oscialltors. But those and two of the LFOs and in a tiny little adjunct synth, which I don't know as well (and for which I have too few cables!). I want another oscillator. I know exactly which one I want. Alas, hardware is expensive, which is why I've been all laptop recently as it's portable and software is free. I actually need a mixing board way more than I need a new oscillator and new filter and a new MIDI->CV (cv = control voltage) converter and more more more stuff. A new row of modules! After I win the lottery. But I'm happy I played and I think I will do it again, Cuz actually, my synth does have a pretty good performance aspect for experimental music. ooooh, Wiard makes a very nifty controller. It's two joysticks, each of which gives you an X axis voltage and a Y axis voltage and a couple of buttons which can function as gates. somebody should sign me for a record deal and give me a huge advance which I can blow on modules and controllers. This is why analog synths were a great hobby during the dot com years and laptop music is a better plan for the immediate future.

Ok, yes, where was I? A ton of people showed up and then all quickly dispersed. Among the people who did not exit immediately, reviews were positive. Two professors came, including my advisor. If you missed it, there is a recording some place on the internet world wide web (as david calls it), but David has not told me where the recording exists. I want to listen. Will post when I know.

Webcast

Check tommorrow at 8:00 EDT: http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/stream.html. That's 5:00 PM on the west coast, btw. The stream will be archived for posterity, btw.

It's just me jamming on my modular. People are more excited about seeing the synth than anything else, I think. I've never played it in front of anyone before. I use it for tape music. Because it takes up a long time to set up a patch and then it's just one sound. Normally, I'll spend half an hour setting up a patch and the record it for 10 minutes and repeat the process 8 times to make a 5-10 minute piece. It's a nice way to work, building up layers, doing sections. By the time I have everything recorded, I usually know what the mix will be, so it takes me another 20 minutes or so to mix. then I have a new piece of tape music. Woot. In this case however, I need to set up faster, I guess, and come up with a patch that is interesting by itself. I've been practicing a bit. I dunno how much I can plan in advance. I know I'm going to build up a chaos patch and use that, cuz they're interesting. After that? Hopefully people will dig it.

Wine, Women and Song

Yesterday was the last day of classes. Today was something called Spring Filng. Outdoor concert with 21934325146723 undergrads swarming like ants. Stopped by for a minute. I've been drinking and whatnot since the afternoon. woot. So I've started my summer in the wine dept. Tommorrow night is song. And my still lurking Joan of Arc paper will have to do for women. I need to get that dern thing written. Or hell, maybe I'll get groupies from my synth gig. heh.