to ask about my show coming up on wednesday. Yikes. I’m glad all the music is already written. “My influences include Maggi Payne, Paul de Marinis, and Anthony Braxton.” “One of my pieces uses the voice of a local poet, Jean Siruis.” him: “How do you spell the last name?”
yikes, i say.
Tag: Celesteh
gig recounted plus the weekly crazy mitch story. Have I mentioned that french class is eating my life. Quiz tomorrow. also: way behind on homework. Irregular verbs. New nouns. Going nuts. Got into an argument today with a young republican about GMO food. Did you know that Monsanto just wants to save the world from the evils of hunger, pesticides and herbicides. Waiting to do long-term tests on the safety of things is stupid. We must save the world NOW. I’m sure that if we release a gene into wheat that causes long-term illness or germ cell mutation or something, we can get it back out of the seed population. Also, cloned seeds are great, because we totally know about every single possible blight that could effect wheat and so genetic diversity is totally superfluous. And if you can’t prove something is dangerous, that totally shows that it’s safe and that should be our standard for safeguarding our food supply, because if it gets messed up, we totally have secret reserves.
I can’t wait until I’m fluent enough to get into stupid political arguments in French. Also, i do NOT have time to do any pieces about food or food safety. Attaching electrodes to plants is not something I’m going to do. I will not do any sort of weird mapping of DNA to notes nor will do any sort of weird mapping of the molecular structure of pesticides or herbicides because I do not have time.
Do you think a P5 glove could be modified to fit on the left hand instead of the right without sacrificing functionality?
Tag: Celesteh
I’m at the garden of memory tonight playing laptop (with ellen) and tuba with damon and others). For all but 45 minutes of the day.
Yes, that’s me you see listed at the Hemlock next wednesday. (Yes, I studied with Anthony Braxton. We recorded a duo album together last month.) The show starts at 9:30. The last show in the series did NOT sell out, but as the series itself is gathering momentum and the next show has three acts, it might. So show up early. I don’t know how early. 9:00? You can drink before the show starts. They also sell popcorn. The room theoretically seats 100 people. I know nothing beyond that. I’ve only been to the hemlock twice. I can give you no useful advice. I’ll be playing three text sound pieces on my laptop.
I must go pack up cables. French is eating my life. I don’t have time to blog very much.
Tag: Celesteh
I hate doing french listening labs with a completely unreasonable level of hate. Is it because the narrators are so fucking snotty? It’s not enough that they talk with their mouths full of gravel but their sing song-y delivery of the correct answers seem more taunting than anything. Ils parlent «Tu es stupide!» Go fuck yourselves, you motherfucking narrators. Je deteste vous! DETESTE!!!!! mourez! mourez! mourez!
grrrrrrrrrr
Tag: Celesteh
Mitch did some research and found a page on the berkeley website which discusses the possibility of tsunamis. “Similar to the liquefaction hazard areas, the most susceptible areas of Berkeley is an area
south of University Avenue and west of San Pablo Avenue (see Figure IV-B-2). The
most likely damage is due to tsunamis would be loss of property through flooding, with
very little potential for loss of life.” Uh, ok, so that’s where I live. Mitch computes, “there’s about a 25% chance u will need to go at least 5 blocks up from your house, if a 20′ tsunami is recorded at the gate. u will have about 4 minutes if it’s still going 200 MPH… since the gate is roughly 15 mi from your house.”
I wasn’t the only local to try to save their cats. And 4 minutes is not much time to run 5 blocks. However, it really seems like the cat could just go upstairs. The buildings that survived in Indonesia where the ones with solid foundations, built to survive earthquakes, like my house is built. Since Berkeley says, “The risk of a tsunami hitting
the San Francisco Bay is estimated at 25 percent for a 20-foot wave at the Golden Gate
occurring once every 200 years.” I’m not going to worry about this too much. I think I owe Mitch an apology. Alas.
Speaking of tsunamis, folks hit by the real one last December probably still need donations. Unicef is a very deserving organization.
Tags: Tsunami, Celesteh
There was just a tsunami alert for northern california. Apparently, there was a large earthquake in Humboldt county, and so Crescent city was being evacuated. In the 1960’s in Crescent City, there was a Tsunami so large that one of those giant cement jacks that make up breakwaters was washed onto the highway. A bunch of people died. It was the only time that anyone in the continental US was killed by a tsunami. Nobody has every been killed by one in the San Francisco area. This is background to the insanity that is/are my friendships . . .
These scene is my living room, earlier tonight. Ellen is cooking food. I’m doing French homework. Cola and Mitch are both reading. So, right at the same time, Cola’s phone and Mitch’s phone both ring. Danica is calling Cola about a tsunami alert and Mike is simultaneously calling for the same reason. My house is a stone’s throw from the bay. I think my elevation is approximately 3 feet. I worry sometimes about global warming making the ocean levels rise and what this means for my long-term investment. After the big tsunami in asia last year, I called my dad and asked if I should be worried about them at my house. He said no, the Golden Gate is narrow relative to the size of the bay and that would prevent most of the water from getting in.
Mitch says that this is not actually a factor and he’s heading up to Indian Rock. Indian Rock is a rock outcropping in the Berkeley Hills with an excellent view of the whole Bay Area. It would be well above any water line. So, um, panic ensues. Cola decides that we’ve got to run. Ellen grabs a cat carrier and starts stuffing my very angry cat into it. Cola grabs the dog. Somebody grabbed my tuba and all the laptops in the house and so, with me feeling extremely foolish, we jump into mitch’s car and head for the hills.
Yeah, so all around us, Berkeley life is totally unperturbed. We pass a cafe full of people. Mitch is insisting that Treasure Island is being evacuated. I’m at about the same elevation, so this is all reasonable right. MY cat is yowling her damn head off. We’re driving up hill for about ten minutes when the radio announces that the tsunami alert is officially cancelled. We turn around and head back. YOOOOOWWWWWWWL!
Ok, it was stupid, but I’m very annoyed. I need people to talk me out of panicking à la Chicken Little, not piling me into a car with my cat, dog, laptop and tuba, driving for higher ground. This is like last summer, when I convinced myself that I had tetanus and went to a NYC hospital . . . except this time, I wasn’t the one who started it.
That cat is never speaking to me again. She shredded the hell out of Ellen’s hand.
And that’s why I didn’t finish my french homework.
Tags: Tsunami, Celesteh
Remember “Pigs in Space”? Well, they’re making some room for Pigcasso. There’s a call for works in the International Space Station! Ok, contact micing the space station is too obvious and, I mean, things that make earth-bound humans more aware of the artificiality of their environment are good, but to do that to a long-haul astronaught is just cruel. A proposal could be anything right, I mean, reminders of home are good. But I think it should focus on something about being in space. Something that pings when they fly over a hometown or something. Or something that uses velcro intrinsically. NASA uses velcro all the damn time. Or something that uses weightlessness and the coincidences of brownian motion. Speakers just float in space. … or juxtapositions. Something unexpectedly natural in an artificial space. Some articulation of space-ness. . . . It sounds as if they want something that might also be useful/interesting to us earthbound. Some sort of connection or articulation that is meaningful even at a great distance.
Alas, they’re not going to launch a musician, so I will not do the first tuba solo in space . . . yet . . .
Tag: Celesteh
Comment ça va? L’étudiante favorite du proffeseur de la classe de français est dans ma poche. C’est une petite femme. Tu est d’ou?
Tag: Celesteh
Comment vous applez vous? J m’apelle Celeste. Je vais trés bien. Comment allez-vous? J’est une étudiante. C’est la fenêtre de Xena.
Today was my first french class. I have class every day from 9 – noon, one hour lunch break, and class again from 1 – 2. So (this is fascinating) If I wake up at 7:00, I can walk the dog, eat breakfast, etc, bike to school, go to class, eat a packed lunch, um, hang out for a bit, more class. Home at 2:30. Practice tuba until 3:00. Homework until 6:30. Dinner break (cook et eat) until 8:00. More homework until 8:30 or 9:30. Write music till bed time. Rinse Repeat. Starting tomorrow with the homework and next week with the tuba. I just took my horn to the shop. I won’t see it for a week. Alas!
So, I’ve got no time to rehearse except on weekends. I can play gigs during the week. Free improv right now is about all that looks very doable, but I think I could schedule in one or two groups that require practice, depending on how intense they are. I have folks who want me to play their ensembles, but man, am I going to be crunched for time. C’est la vie.
Some neocon thing just published the list of the most damaging books of the 19th and 20th century. It’s tempting to use as a summer reading list (you know, in my copious free time), but the bastards had to include Mein Kampf. Yeah, one book that’s actually damaging in the list just to make it harder to laugh at. Although Coming of Age in Samoa by Marget Mead made honorable mention, so I think I’ll laugh anyway.
Tag: Celesteh
This year seems to be especially bad for allergies. I’m not suffering (yet), but I’ve been collecting people’s remedies. Sure, you could just take pills for it, but think of what they may or may not be doing to your liver! Here are the remedies I’ve heard of.
| Remedy | Does it work? | How? | Negatives | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eating local honey | I dunno | the bees collect pollen from local plants and use it for honey. somehow this is supposed to help | none, unless you’re allergic to honey, a really hardcore vegan or mistakenly hate carbs. Honey is healthier than refined sugar. | Honey in tea is yummy |
| Taking vitamin C | Anna, Jamilla’s wife, swears by it | got me | Taking too much vitamin C over a long periodof time is supposedly bad for you. But hey, it’s water-soluable and you’ll piss it out. | I’d try it |
| Air purifier | some do | removes allergens from air | Probably incompatible with open windows, increases electricity usage. | this works really well in cars with high-quality air filters installed. |
| Nessie pot: pouring (sea)salt water in one nostril and letting it run out the other. | Seems to | clears gunk like pollen and dander out of your sinuses. A good way to start your day. | Feels like getting water up your nose. Especially annoying the first few times you do it (that burning means it’s working.) Remember to keep your mouth open while you do it. | I’ve done this. It helped |