Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Sunday Comic. (If you see this monday, hit the “previous comic” arrow) The Salvation Army is a religious Organization. they used to have a contract with the city of San Francisco to deliver meals to AIDS patients. But they lost that contract when the city passed a rule saying all contractors must provide domestic pertnership benefits. Because the Salvation Army thinks being gay is a big sin. So for years, I guess they dilvered those meals with a friendly, “here’s dinner, you sinning fag.” or what? So when the salvation army santa in the comic says, “I want to see an end to intolerance, injustice and prejudice.” He means, against some people, but not all people. Some predjudice is a-ok. Boycott the salvation army. Give your money to a group that’s really against prejudice instead. (Like the National Coalition for the Homeless or Food Not Bombs. Or a church that doesn’t discriminate.)

SuperCollider does not reliably convert floats to integers even when you ask nicely. sure, it rounds for you. but does the type change? nooooo. can you use it as an array index? noooo. does this cause my code to fail in impossible to fix ways? yes. does it cause unreasonable levels of frustration? you bet. Has this been fixed in between the version where i noticed the bug (from september) and yesterday’s version? nooooo.

grrrrrrrrr
update work around: when you do float.floor or float.ceil, put an asInt at the end: float.floor.asInt float.ceil.asInt .

I have just finished reading Lynne Chenney’s terrifically auful pulp novel Sisters. Yes this is the “lesbian” romance that you’ve read about. I don’t want to blow the whole thing for you, but there are no lesbians. Only sexless female victims. And one very male-dentified female lead. I could identify with her, maybe, [spolier!! skip to next paragraph if you don’t want to know the ending] except for her over willingness to marry a xenophobic, poor-person-hating, vigilante-justice-(against poor folks for being poor)-supporting profiteer (who is male). But if her agreed with her on everything, that would be so boring. ahem. yes.

I did not find my copy of sisters on amazon.com. Nor on ebay. Not even at the Middletown library used book sale. I downloaded it from the internets and you can too: word document or PDF. Be forewarned that there’s no hot juicy sex and it has all the pulp novel crap you would expect from V. C. Andrews. On the one hand. On the other hand, the heroine is 100% blue state, which is kind of interesting. She’s even multi-racial, although how that ends up being treated by the end is . . . um . . . proplematic. The alien other is just not bound by conventional sexual mores, is she? too bad jazz music hadn’t been invented in the time period of the book, or she could have listened to it.
bah
well-written review from the democratic underground

Mobilize to stop Operation Rescue!  This far-right, fundamentalist anti-abortion group has had the nerve to announce a march in San Francisco on January 22, 2005 — the anniversary of Roe v. Wade!  Join Radical Women and feminists of all stripes to organize in our own defense against an emboldened rightwing that wants to smash reproductive rights and keep women as second-class citizens.  We say NO!  Call 415-864-1278 or email rwbayarea@yahoo.com for coalition meeting times and to get involved. 

I remembered reading about a very effective method of screwing up anti-choice protests, and thanks to the internet, I found it here. Scroll down to the “eat a queer fetus for jesus” picture for the protest part. the idea is not as radical now as it was when that newsletter was first published, as more groups have started to use it. It’s the same idea as billionares for bush. Dress up like your enemy. act like your enemy. mangle their message. So if you showed up with a copy of one of the Church of Euthenasia’s Pedophile Priests for Life signs, there is still a smidgen of a chance you could start marching with Operation Rescue and sew confusion. At the very least, you might offend somebody. (i’m offended.) It might be nice if Billionares for Bush planned to join the march. Do they still exist?
Of course, on the other hand, Operation Rescue has lost a lot of ground since they branched out into homophobia and violence and just desperately want some attention again. The more we respond to them, the more attention they get. Which seems to mean that confusing their message is the best idea.

I submitted 2 proposals to Kent State, which are the two previous posts. Jesse also submitted a paper proposal. I like his better than mine, because it’s more concrete and I like knowing what action to take. I think our papers might go well together, actually. Here’s how to do it. Here’s how to keep Nike from stealing it. (“The revolution will not be televised. Buy this sweatshop shoe.”)
I have a final exam in conducting on monday. I’m d00med. alas. But then, I just have a few more days of class and two concert and I’m done. Except for the million more concerts I must record. Speaking of concerts, I played tuba last night for an hour and got paid $10. w00t. I think that’s a living wage in CT. Except that there’s no way in hell i could play tuba for 8 hours a day in performance and i don’t think anybody would want me to. Actually, I’m not in it for the money, which I was surprised by. My plan to blow it all on Krispy Kremes was thrawrted. I’ve turned into a New Englander insofar as like donuts goes. But I think I liked them before. I used to go to Colonial Donuts in Oakland. You can tell they’re colonial pecause the powdered sugar donuts are opressing the chocolate donuts
As I was falling into a sweet, blissful, i’m-so-tired sleep last night, I decided that I’m currently the happiest I’ve been since my undergrad days. I clearly like school a lot. I deal with what I’m interested in. I get a lot of creative freedom. People care about what I’m doing. I get instutional support. I can spend all day thinking about whatever issue is currently on my mind and transform it into music somehow. I spend so little time goofing off. Well, I think I’m goofing off, but then whatever I’m goofing off doing turns into something. Sometimes a bit slower than it should, but whatever.

Performance Proposal

I propose a program of politically themed electronic music pieces interspersed with just intoned pieces, similar to those on the accompanying CD. The work is realized in real time, and is somewhat different at each performance. I use right wing pundits and political figures as source material for text-sound composition both to explore the sounds of the human voice and to highlight the words and meanings in political speech. I focus on the right wing so as to create pieces that are a form of protest music. The text-based pieces consist of one or more samples and a computer program that I have written to manipulate them. Processes include granular synthesis and tone generation. The non-text-based pieces use just intonation, a form of natural tuning where all the notes are perfectly in tune with each other. I like mixing pundits with just intonation, because the meditative nature of the just tuning counteracts the stress of listening to lying weasel pundits.

Instrumentation: Laptop Computer. I will supply my own.

Time: 30 – 60 minutes. (Length of performance can be tailored to available time)

Technical requirements: stereo speaker arrangement.

Paper Proposal

The 20th century produced many politically active leftist composers. In the early part of the century, some, like Aaron Copland and Woody Guthrie achieved mainstream success and reached large audiences. However, in the years since, the meaning of their pieces has been changed. Thus Aaron Copeland, a gay communist who was too radical to be allowed to play one of his symphonies at Eisenhower’s inauguration, came to be the theme music for recruitment ads for the Armed Services. Woody Guthrie’s song This Land is Your Land was changed, with the omission of a few key lines, from a call for communist collectivization, to a ditty about manifest destiny, suitable for third graders. Their work has been co-opted by those to their right politically and used against their intentions.

This paper will explore strategies used by composers in the latter half of the 20th Century to create serious leftist works that resist co-option. For example, after the tape recorder was invented, composers invented a new genre called tape music, where the finished product is the recording. Therefore, if a piece of tape music has words, they cannot be altered, edited or deleted. Some composers, especially text sound poets, used tape music to create pieces with fixed words and meanings. The anti-Vietnam War text sound poem The Glorious Desertion by Sten Hanson is unlikely ever to be turned against his intentions. This paper will look at a number of experimental composers including Steve Reich, Sten Hanson, Paul De Marinis, and Christian Wolff and how they created politically themed works that resist co-option.

I’ve been asked if there will be an internet stream of today’s concert.
I have no idea at this point, but if we can find a connection in the
chapel it’s looking pretty likely. Check out this page:

http://cooper.wesleyan.edu/~david/composer-concert.html

Concert starts at 4 EST (1:00 PST), if it’s being streamed you will see it there.

My solo glockenspiel piece Variations on Two Anthems will be performed. Along with work by all of the other graduate composers (except Walter) and David and Will.

It’s no surprise to many that Bush’s “re”-election was shortly followed by a dizzying drop of the value of the dollar. Look next for the dollar being dropped as a reserve currency. Other countries have as reserves, instead of gold or silver, US dollars. This props up their currency, but with the dollar falling, it’s propping up our currency. As we got dropped, well, our currency becomes more volitaile. It used to be, before Reagan, that it was fine to pillage other countries in the south, but our own had to be kept fairly stable. Then Reagan decided to throw a party for the rich and with our own stolen election in 2000, it became clear that we were now playing by the same rules imposed by us upon the third world. Patriotism is put on by politicians as a sham while they let de-nationalized elite and multi-national corporations pillage our resources for the benefit of a very few.

Which is why the buisiness community did not oppose Bush. Half did. Half did not. The half that supported Bush are on the side of third-worlding the US. They don’t care what happens here. They want cheap labor and cheap materials. Or, they want to draw up policy to benefit them and nobody else. Take for example, Lockheed. The New York Times is reporting that “[I]n the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation’s military policies, too.” Lockheed has taken over many of the functions of government, “It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic.” Lockheed is not a public company, although it is publically held. As in, it is not a utilitiy. It is controlled by it’s stockholders, not by government. It carries out government functions and sets policies and in exchange, gets your tax money. “Nearly 80 percent of its revenue comes from the United States government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking weapons and setting policies.” Lockheed it not accountable to anyone but it’s stock holders. By law, any corporation which issues shares must put short term quarter-by-quarter earnings as it’s number one priority. We’re waging wars so that lockhhed can show a fourth quarter profit. “‘It’s impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins,’ said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts.” And the stockholders who are receiving our tax monies have reason to be happy. “The company’s stock has tripled in the last four years, to just under $60.” That’s, of course, during Bush’s tenure.
Our foreign policy is being dictated by these stock holders. And our domestic policy. “Does the Department of Homeland Security have the best tools to protect the nation? Lockheed has a host of military and intelligence technologies to offer. ‘What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for the police in downtown Reno,’ said Jondavid Black of the company’s Horizontal Integration Vision division.” When what you’ve got to offer is strength, then you sell strength as the answer to every problem. And this is how a police state comes about. Lockheed has clout. They have weapons. They can order the government to buy these weapons because they are the government.
When the government is run by a heirarchical system where those under it have no say and those owning it do no work, well, in the past, we’ve called that feudalism. When a police state is run for the benefit of corporations, in the past, we’ve called that fascism. I don’t think there are any kind words to describe this fundamentally anti-democratic system. And, of course, how votes are counted is now a trade secret. Not of Lockheed (yet), but of other corporations.
The point of the system is the military industrial complex. Racism, homophobia, mysogony, fear, pseudo-theocracy are just side effects. They are fixtures that fit well with the system, which requires scapegoating and dividing and conquering to maintain power. Most of us would rather have nationalized health care than to purchase “robot soldiers and neural software – ‘intelligent agents'” to kill our “enemies” in the third world. We are becoming the third world. The victims of our warfare-based society are the natural allies of the American non elites. Just as we are scapegoated, they are scapegoated. Fear of “them” over there is fear of “them” over here. Any alien other can fill in when needed. We are all the alien others. However, if we weren’t being run by “a warfare company,” we wouldn’t need so much warfare. We would not require fear. We would not need to be constantly aware of how the other is plotting against us. At home and abroad. Fear of others abroad automatically leads to fear of others at home, which works out well when you are trying to see robot soldiers and spy sattilites to Reno Nevada.
Does Lockheed care if the dollar goes to nothing? Maybe. Maybe not. They have to put their first quarter profits first and those would be higher under Bush, so bush gets their vote, I surmise. They dictate policy and they, by law, cannnot look long term. Those with the power to make descisions at Lockheed must think short-term. They can’t think about their children. And they are an enormously large corporation, which means, psychologically, anyone who works in large system don’t personally take on blame for what their system is doing. They’re just doing their job. Yeah, it’s fucked up (maybe), but they’re just one person. If they don’t do it, somebody else will. Meaning that absolutely nobody is accountable. Most stocks are held by pension funds and whatnot. The people shoe money is invested get no say in how it is invested. The fund managers have to go for whatever stock is doing well or they lose their jobs. They might not agree with the system either (despite the wealth they accumulate), but they’re just doing their jobs, investing pensions so grandma can eat. You don’t want grandma to starve, do you? Even the sotckholders aren’t accountable. Thousands upon thousands of peopel are participating in a system that they likely do not want to. Only a few people profit. Only a few people are indoctorinated enough to think that robot soldiers in Syria would be good for our country.
A general strike could stop the system in it’s tracks, at least until they offshored all the production jobs. What irony to have our very important national security robots manufactured by our “enemy” China! Undoubtedly, war production jobs will move overseas. Can we stop lockheed?

I’m thankful my dad is here and I’m thankful I’m at Wesleyan and I’m thankful for Cola and for Xena and for writing music and my old friends and my new friends and for my health and it’s easy to see ways in which my life is good and I’m thankful for all of them.