Category: Uncategorised

snow noun – Frozen preceiptiation in a six sided crystal shape. Myth has it that no two of them look alike, but they do strongly resemble those flat six spined sprinkles that you see on cupcakes.
verb this shit is falling on my head!

Two beers should not get me this drunk. I am a light weight. I bought some soynog and brandy today, apparently just in time for the weather, but i haven’t drunk any yet. Porter is good for the winter. Coffee porter is good for being energetic and drunk. Just two pints, tho. For peets sake. one of those pints was an anchor steam liberty ale, which is cheep but not very good. better than pbr or budwiper, mind you. aparently it has something to it. or i’ve lost too much weight. one or the other. i think i should just go to sleep.

Sleet – noun rain that falls in below freezing weather, so that some of the rain drops turn to ice as the fall. others are parially frozen.
verb to shower sleet.

The best thing about somebody dying is that you can make anything up about them that you want. Did you know that Reagan was a peace maker? And that Arafat was responcible for the massacre of Palestian refugees in Lebanon? It’s true! I read it in the Chronicle.

I heard a rumor that some Chronicle witer found a scrap of paper by accident that said that wasn’t true. He started to doubt Big Brother. But then he got re-educated and everything is fine now. Because you can burn the past without shredding documents or burning them if nobody ever bothers to look. Just keep watching TV. Everything’s fine.

Two Tanks Arrived at an Anti-War Protest in LA. The protestors did not start chanting “this is what democracy looks like” or any variant, but broke out with a long chorus of “bring the troops home now.” The tanks hung around for about ten minutes and then one of the soldiers yelled “go home” at the protestors and they drove off. This all gleamed from watching the video.

1. Isn’t it illegal to use the armed forces for domestic police actions?
2. Why isn’t this story on the front of the LA Times

Protests with big speakers where people with signs stand around in the dark chanting while cops circle meancingly around really really suck. And then they sent tanks. That protest needed a band or some singing. Aside from The Little Red Song Book is there a good source of protest songs? Is anybody writing them? There needs to be an internet site dedicated to lyrics and sheet music for peace hymns and protest songs and also band arrnagements of said songs, like Down by the Riverside and La Internationale. If this is going to be a police state that sends marines to peaceful demonstrations, the demonstrations should at least be fun.

10 Steps to Making the World Suck Less. Worth implementing. Think globally, act locally.

I’ve been more than a little frustrated by the president’s handling of this war in the past year; but we have to draw a line under that now. The past is the past. And George W. Bush is our president. He deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again . . .

http://www.salon.com/opinion/right_hook/2004/11/09/onefingered_salute/index1.html

If I do not stop obsessing about political news, I will never write a piece of music again. I’ve written two this semester: One is a tiny voal piece talking about black clad anarchists objecting to non-fairtrade coffe. “In more FairTrade news, Marks and Spencer just switched to selling nothing but Fair Trade coffee.

Maybe if Starbucks switched over, those black clad anarchists would stop breaking thier windows” And the other is my Ann Coulter piece which everyone on earth has heard. Actually, it’s been played on two coasts and in two countries, so I’m kind of proud of that, but I need to move on. I’m working on something with Rush Limbaugh talking about prisoner abuse in Iraq, but Paul De Marinis did a piece with exactly the same process more than ten years ago and his sounds nicer than mine was going to. Alvin told me to write the piece anyway. He also said that if I wanted something to sound beautiful, I shouldn’t use Limbaugh. “Garbage in, garbage out” he said. It’s also hanging my computer.
We’ve been talking in class about using text in music, for the last couple of weeks. Leticia Sonami is coming in a couple of weeks from today, so maybe we can talk about her piece Conversations With a Lightbulb as that has got a lot of spoken text in it. This week we listened to Copland’s Lincoln Portait or Portrait of Lincoln or whatever it’s called. The text does have some kind of pretentious constructs, but I mean, you can’t fault him for sounding like his time period, as some folks seem to want to do. His stuff is incredibly beautiful.
George Bush deserves a fresh start because he’s incumbent?? That quote was written by a swing voter before the election! So, What: He’s fucked up, let’s give him another shot???? Oh yeah, that’s why we have elections, to keep fuckup assholes in office! It all makes sense now! This is why we need term limits! Because we’re fucking idiots! People don’t deserve another shot at fucking up just because they’ve been fucking up!! How could anyone think that? What is wrong with people? What the hell kind of logic is that? “I disagree with everything he’s done, but he did get into office illegitamtely and so deserves another term.” WHAT?? What is the matter with people? Are the public schools really this bad? Does anyone do critical thinking anymore? Have all the “swing voters” lost their mind? How can people think somebody is a giant fuckup and then vote for them anyway? (gratuitiously: fuck fuck fuckity fucking fuck fuckjob fucktastic fuckup fucknaught fucker fucked fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckfuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck)
I nee dot back slowly away from the politics. One day at a time. One step at a time. Ok, I admit I have a problem. I just got a nice sample library. Maybe I’ll write a nice piece about train sounds. If we had decent transportation policy in this country, I could just walk downtown and record the sounds of passenger trains, but nooooo, we must have massive auto industry handouts so we can keep using as much oil as possible so Bush’s buddies can keep making money and we can keep invading countries in the middle east, which is good, because the bible says there has to be a massive war in the middle east before there can be the second coming. Of course, before that, the anti-christ must appear who will try to stop the war, so watch out for people who want peace, they’re EVIL. This is a great way to run a country. godfuckingdamn it
Um, but seriously, I understand that some people write music that is not political. How is that even possible?

no sleep makes me feel like i’m going to cry. when i wake up, i’m going to write polly a reccomendation letter, go to post office and prioroty mail it, prepare for 1:00 class and create lecture notes for tomorrow night. i think i might have a voice + percussion piece due tuesday as well.

starting to feel panic about thesis. housemate has already scheduled concert. was i supposed to have done that by now? i still haven’t filed paperwork for a class that i took last spring. i’m too old to pull all nighters. sad that cola is gone. I’ve been up since 2:30 this morning. it’s going to freeze tonight and be in the low 20’s. beautiful weather for cola, but gone away with her. my upstairs neighbors do nothing but run water all day and all night. and move furniture and jump up and down. i want to throw them out of their windows. i want to go to sleep, but the sun has come up. makes me feel so sad.

WESU may become an NPR affiliate. Hey, I’ve got a fun idea! Let’s re-do all the battles of the 60’s but have the conservatives win this time! We can start by replacing student radio with corporate drivel! Take that, free speech movement!

The Unitarian minister who presided over my marriage told me that he fled the US under the Regan administration and that he’d never regretted moving to Canada. He kept talking about how much saner it was. How *is* the music program at McGill? Also, Unitarians are cool.
Yes, I just called NPR corporate drivel. If you can tell the difference between an NPR news boradcast and a corporate radio news boradcast, it’s only because real corporations ahve gotten so much worse. NPR is sliding to their level with a five year delay. (Why am I talking about news, because certian unnamed lame-ass NPR affiliates in San Francisco don’t play anything but news. The ones that play music often play boring, conservative music. If you put KQED and KDFC together, you get a normal NPR affiliate. bah) There already exists a NPR affiliate in the middle of Connecticut, with a wide broadcast radius that reaches every place that WESU reaches and already has the NPR audience. But even if they were talking about making WESU a Pacifica affliate, I would still be opposed, because the idea is coming from the top down and being imposed on the Wesleyan radio station against the will of the people who are actually doing it. Say goodbye to freeform student radio. Say hello to hegemony. This idea is coming from the college president, Douglas Bennet. why not drop him a line and tell him what you thing about college radio staying in the hands of students:

Dougals Bennet
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT 06459
dbennet at wesleyan.edu
 
current mood: depressed about politics

Salon is reporting that there was not voter fraud. If any media outlet would be all over it, it would be Salon. Which means, also that The Daily Mirror asks a serious question. Salon is also reporting on how it’s very easy to immigrate to Canada. Apparently it’s easier if you have a lawyer, because I didn’t score so well on the self-assessment. So many things in life are easier with lawyers. I don’t understand why people hate them so much. After about five years of living in Canada and jumping through hurtles, you can become a citizen. Now in five years, who knows who will be in power, but when you hear that Clinton, that great liberal who dems looove so much, was urging Kerry to pick up votes by verybally bashing queers, he gets a lot less likeable. Most Canadians favor gay marriage, which is already legal in two provinces and soon will be legal throughout the country. So, you could also Marry Your Way into Candian Citizenship even if you’re queer and looking for true love. Canada seems to have a fair amount of arts funding, including a lot set aside for Canadians. The downside is that nobody outside of Canada has ever heard of any Canadian composers. But having healthcare would be nice.

My plan: Germany. I’m putting off PhD/DMA most likely just to be an expat for a while. Maybe a long while.

The future of political discourse. They really do want to kill us all. This is my cue to leave.