Internet at Home!

Huzzah!

I still had to go to school today, because I'm playing a piece tomorrow night at the Ikon Gallery, (7:00 PM) and my supervisor wanted me to verify that it would work on the computer that's going to the gig. I left Xena tied in the hallway, in a gesture to the no-dogs-in-studios rule. This failed to appease the studio manager who spoke to me about it while I seethed with unreasonable rage. I showed enough restraint not to drop out of school on the spot.

Why so stressed? I dunno. It sucks that Nicole has left. And I was biking to get my cell phone back from the unlocker when a car came closer to my person than I think I've ever experienced before. Even when the truck hit me last summer, it didn't feel as close. And this was much higher speed. My bike is as big as a motorcycle, so I don't understand why cars don't give me as much room as they'd give a motorcycle. Or maybe they do, which is also alarming. I felt shaken up. I went to a bike shop to get a day-glo safety vest, but they didn't have anything that wasn't hugely gigantic.

they were next to a pet store and I finally have a phone number, so I went to see about getting Xena some tags. The guy at the store told me that dog-theft is rampant in the Midlands! People steal dogs left and right and demand ransom or sell them for vivisection or use them as bait dogs to train pitbulls to attack! I shouldn't leave my dog outside of the supermarket unless I've locked her with a lock! Some of his customers had pets stolen! Somebody once brought in a stolen pet for grooming! The guy behind me in line said his cat had been stolen!

Good fucking god.

So if I don't get flattened by a car, my dog is certainly to be stolen or at least threaten health and safety in the music studios. Girls scream and run away when I walk her. What's up with that? I mean, college women, especially ones displaying cleavage and drunk sort of fall over themselves trying to pet her, but younger ones and ones with higher necklines are terrified.

In other news, My 'installation' is terrible and I'm scrapping it. I wasted like 30 hours on it. I was at school until 11:30 trying to make it less dull. I almost succeeded, but not at all. The only thing that could make it a worse disaster is to spend more time on it. I've got the anti-midas touch right now.

Art is supposed to be some sort of window to the soul or something right. Does it say something that I tried to create something that took patience to appreciate? That started invisibly and crept up on you until it became a short speaker-murdering wail of feedback? I tried it with Pink Noise at first. Then I was walking towards the studios and heard somebody running it! How could this be?! But then I realized that what I heard was a leaking toilet in the men's room. Yeah, so I tried switching the sound source to formant synthesis. And I ended up with something approximating a flock of deranged ducks. Which is not interesting for more than a few seconds at the most. So I switched to a tape loop of Bill OReily talking about falafels. No! Talking about lesbian gangs terrorizing innocent straight men. First, I thought the three minute long segment was laughably silly. The pink pistols are a GAY MEN's self-defense group. Why would lesbians carry pink guns? Sheesh. But then I realized that the "gangs" he was talking about were victims of hate crimes who tried to defend themselves but then got arrested and sent to prison for it. Listening to this 381260421364 times is not happy. Which is why I swore no more of these pundit pieces, right. Anyway, it was still boring, so I quit.

I told the bit about the running toilet to Scott and he agreed that perhaps abandoning it was for the best. He is a really, really, really nice guy. He could tell how pissed I was and offered to dog sit and try talking to people, etc etc etc. He's much too nice to be a supervisor of postgrads. He's doomed to bitterness.

Maybe tomorrow will be fun.

In even further afield news, my brother is moving to Beaverton, Oregon. I have mixed feelings about this. Among them: Hey, only I get to move away from California! The rest of you have to stay there awaiting my return, so when I finally come back, I can pick up right where I left off! I demand that my friends continue to meet in our old hangouts on our old nights and somberly remember me by ordering a pint of cask-pulled ale and pouring it solemnly on the ground in memory of their exiled homie.