Les said, the better II

I just saw on TV an hour ago that the pope was dead. now, according to the internets, the pope is alive again. Apparently, they have done controversial surgery on him, replacing several of his missing and broken parts with machines. he is now robopope!

If this doesn’t work, he’s left a will saying he should be cryogenically frozen. This will make him the world’s first popesicle.
Um, ok, nevermind. I’m just annoyed that the story keeps changing. Let me have my moment of momentous occasion already and then let me start speculating on the new pope. I hope they pick an Italian.
Tag: Pope

Second cup of coffee yesterday morning was not a good idea. i have wiggle room on the written paper, which anyway, i am officially Not Worried About. Worst case: I have to rewrite it over the summer and don’t graduate on time. I understand that the amount of work required for the paper is inversely related to the amount of work done creating the musical opus. I’ve written a few personal library files which ought to count for something, including my fancy panning class, and my set of buffer tools for manipulating recorded speech. It took me many weeks to do my first text piece with bush’s voice. a few weeks to do my ann coulter piece, only days to do rush limbaugh and i banged out medidations for women in a single evening. this plus the hundred or so pages of my previous (gah) thesis project, and i am not worried.

a motu is a device which allows a computer to be able to receive 8 separate lines of audio simultaneously or output 8 separate lines simultaneously. with a motu attached to my computer, i can send out 2 lines to the stero speaks built in to the chapel and 2 smaller speakers that i’m going to use for folks like fred phelps, because running him through the built in chapel speakers puts him just too much on his home turf. my dislike of motu products dates back to driver problems i had in os9. ever single mac midi application except for motu ones used the official oms midi drivers. except for motu. they had their own set. which meant rebooting to run my one piece of motu software and big headaches sorting out my extensions. motu hardware is somewhat more compatible with supercollider. their program performer does a few more things and does not require installed hardware to run it. however, performer is overly complicated and i don’t use the extra features. and motu hardware won’t work with protools. blah blah blah. i got sick of worrying about this and so all of my pieces were designed to be only two channels
what really really annoys me about my advisor is that upon listening to a piece of music, he immediately grasps the point and makes several suggestions to make the concept clearer or to make it work better in the space. infuriatingly, these suggestions are almost always a good idea. ok, it’s not infuriating. it’s just a lot of work. and, of course, this is why i went to music school. i’ve been mostly sitting at home working on stuff and not sharing them, which is illogical and foolish. i HATE asking for help because i have the idea that it makes me look weak. ahem. anyway, last semester, advisor was on sabatical. this semester, we mostly talked about d00med first thesis project. so that’s why i’m getting musical feedback right now.
in case you missed it below my poster, i’m going to paris next year. if you have an idea of a grant that i should apply for, let me know.
for you californians, i will be playing the contents of my thesis concert again in california, in san francisco at the hemlock tavern on the last wednesday in june. it will cost $10 (or less, i’m going to try to bargain the price down) to get in. more details as they become available.

Tag: Celesteh

where the target will never see them

1. MOTUs are a piece of crap. MOTU drivers crash my computer. you can’t even run iChat while running MOTU. I did NOT want to do four channel set up because it is a pain the ass. i will have to haul a bunch of equipment around. i will have to install fucking stupid drivers which fuck everything up. I will have to have redundant laptops because MOTU will cause a laptop crash at least once during concert and i’ll look stupid if i make people wait for a reboot.
2. no, it will not “make my life easier” to add a fucking gui to all my programs. doing a bunch of extra coding really never makes my life easier.
3. gender shifting ann coulter’s voice is a terrible idea. it does not deconstruct her status as a right wing woman pundit, it just reinforces stereotypes and gives weight to ad hominem attacks against her appearance.
4. now is REALLY not a good time to want to change everything around.
5. myabe, you know, my advisor should hear ALL of my pieces before my concert. maybe not. it’s not like i want to change every single one of them.
6. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
7. also, unrelatedly, appletalk has suddenly stopped functioning, which means i need to do an os reinstall or some shit. etf? at least i know it’s not cuz of motu, cuz it happened last night.

also, i hate everyone on earth. except for you. oh and the written portion of my thesis is due in a week and a half, i’ve just learned. today.
Tag: Celesteh

Ignorance is strength

“We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,” said “pastor and parent Ray Mummert, 54” explaining his opposition to Darwin. Uh. Yeah. That sucks when the smart, educated people attack you. Let’s all feel superior for a moment before the full implication of that quote dawns on us and we descend into panic. Of course, all that really matters is unquestioning belief and that’s how these folks vote and the age of reason is over. ok, now panic.

Esperanto Ed in the News

Esperanto Ed is/was my Esperanto teacher. It’s so funny to see that name in print, cuz that’s also how I refer to him. ahahhaa. (Maybe if we learn Esperanto, we can talk to educated, intelligent people in other countries who will help us escape.

Damn good cookies

Try the cookies. Really easy, really tasty recipie.

Culture of Life

The federal government continues to look out for people without brains. Not, not the guy in the first item, I’m talking fetuses who have never had a brain. The US army wants to force women relying on them for healthcare to cary brainless fetuses to term.

Important points in that article

What many people don’t realize, she said, “is that an anencephalic pregnancy could be over a year in gestation. One of the nasty things not many know is that because the brain is not developed, the fetus doesn’t send a signal that it is ready to come out.”

that speaks for itself. And:

In 2003, the government lawyers also cited moral arguments for denying military medical coverage. Prohibiting federal funding of abortions “reflects and effectuates a moral judgment to value all human life, including the life of an anencephalic infant.”

The government’s refusal to fund abortion “furthers the government’s interest in protecting human life in general and promoting respect for life,” the lawyers said in their appeal.

If they care os much about one non-brain-having fetus, imagine how much they care about everyone in Iraq. If they’re so morally clear that they will defend even the most horrible, terminal, fatal, suffering-inducing, unsurvivable congenital birth defects, then the must be 100% absolutely, positively clear in Iraq. It would certainly be a cynical ploy to draw a bright line in a murky area to pretend that everything behind that line is 100% ok, you know, to imply a moral purity where none whatsoever exists.
For those keeping score at home: Lack of brain = good. Poor = bad. third world = really bad.

My concert

8:00 PM tuesday, April 5th in the Chapel on the Wesleyan Campus.
Tag: Celesteh

If I am ever in a coma or a persistent vegetative state and I’m not coming back: take as much time as you need to come to terms with it and then stop keeping me alive. It’s not going to bother me either way if my brain is gone, so this is for you. Don’t prolong having to deal with stuff. It’s a waste of resources. Just OD me on morphine or whatever. Seriously. Faster is better here, too. Better living (and dying) through chemistry.

my dad had better have a living will or something before he goes on his open-ended motorcycle trip. when my mom was dying, i really wanted to help stop her suffering, but my dad was against it and he got final say. i’d fight my brother, though.
Tag: Celesteh

There is a substantial [textbook] buying bloc–namely, school boards in southern states–that follows suit with whatever the state school board of Texas does. These states buy textbooks uniformly, statewide. Most “blue states” buy district to district, so there is no unified bloc per se to counterbalance the southern states where points of politics are concerned. So this bloc of southern school boards has an unrivaled power to influence the choices of the major textbook publishers in the country–of which there are only like four, anyhow. Basically, they don’t publish anything the school board of Texas doesn’t buy.

You can see where this headed, but it’s already shockingly total. Right now, a sex ed textbook that isn’t “abstinence only” cannot be bought in the United States. Not a current one, not from any major publisher. There are inroads against evolution as well, but sex ed has basically been exterminated.

Link (via Boing Boing)

98% of parents in Texas want their kids to get sex ed in school, according to something I read a few months ago, God knows where.
Authors like Joe Conason argue that Republicans have stolen from us the good old days of the Clinton administration. He applauds Clinton’s every move, including the punitive as heck Welfare “Reform.” Conason claims to speak for the left. This is how we got into this mess. Screwing the poor is not leftist. And this textbook mess didn’t start four years ago. It’s been growing under Clinton’s watch. The appeasement pro-business politics of Democrats have failed. They’ve failed a generation of children who will now have to deal with higher rates of disease and unwanted pregnancy. They’ve failed parents. They’re failing the very notion of a secular society.
We have no elected leadership on the left in the Senate. In the house, we’ve got the progressive caucus. Everywhere, we’ve got a bunch of spineless democrats, terrified of republican attack ads and too cowed to actually do something their district would vote them back in over. Instead of standing out, they try not to offend. So our single-party system steamrolls everyone in favor of a few small constituencies: the opium of the masses and business.
If leftist politics of the last 20 years have failed, then we need to find a new way. What happened in 1999 in Seattle was awesome, but it seems to have run out. Only the Daily Show covered the shadow convention in Boston. Everybody covered the anti-RNC protesters, but I understand that what was on TV played out a bit differently than what I saw on the street. In the 1960’s it was street actions that defined the peace movement and were immensely successful, but this doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. Or maybe they were never enough. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the second major boycott against a segregated transit line in the south. you don’t hear about the first one. Protesters drove the bus line out of business. But they didn’t end segregation. Because the Montgomery boycott was couples with legal action. All these attacks need to be multi-pronged. Street action, then, was necessary, but not enough by itself. Legal action with out street action was also insufficient. What does this mean for now?
The other side has learned lessons on how to neutralize our actions. Both sides need to constantly invent. Both sides need to constantly re-analyze the past looking for winning strategies and jettisoning losing strategies. This does not, as perhaps Conason would advocate, mean jettisoning core values.
There’s been some talk lately about going door to door. That works. (These guys think they’ve invented the wheel though. The Lesbian Avengers put this in the organizing guidebook in like 1996 or before, anyway.) But what about artists? Has the leftist art of the last 20 years also failed, because it is part of a failed milieu? Of course, this depends on the role of political art, which is certainly not a settled question. Does it exist to serve art or to serve politics? I feel like anything that gets people to pay attention to non-corporate art (which does not glorify the dominant paradigm – i.e., not blond jesus paintings) is helping resist fascism. But it’s not enough.
Tags: Leftism, Art

Imomus has a really good post, “Relativism swings right”. He argues that the right wing has adopted the victim/identity politics of the 60’s and 70’s.

Two of the core ideas of pomo relativism have become tools in the hands of the new right:

1. The idea that being a victim allows you to act as unreasonably as you like, and
2. The idea that having a culture (in other words, being situated) means never having to say you’re sorry.

Of course, looking at how Bill O’Reilly talks about ‘persecuted’ Christians, this makes perfect sense. And it’s somewhat unsettling. I’ve long been a beleiver in the idea that a persecuted minority owes nothing in particular to the majority who is discriminating against them. Lesbian separatists have a right to refuse to engage straight people and men and have their own space and not be bothered. Christian white men do not have the same right because they run the damn country. Yet Rush Limbuagh and others have been telling them for years that they’re victims: Because of all sorts of “quotas” and whatever, black lesbians now get all the breaks. That’s why they head up such a high percentage of Fortune 500 companies and control the economy and the political realm. (Or maybe they fact that they don’t despite having an overwhelming advantage just shows how unfit for the job that they are. I’d go with this theory upon further reflection.)
So white Christian men no longer owe anything in particular to any other segment of society. The separatism that I’ve embraced is actually what lead to the death of empathy, which I mourn greatly. Communities formed around a large shared identity are problematic because oppressed groups get told to shut up for the good of the whole. Identity communities which disavow participation in a larger shared identity can be tremendously empowering to an oppressed group to allow them to find their own voices, engage in self-determination, and find their own truths. However, as one can clearly now see, the fabric of society gets holes in it when groups keep dropping out. That’s ok, except when the majority starts using these tactics against oppressed groups. But try telling them that they’re not victims. who decides that? If everybody gets to determine their own truth, than how can we go to a big group and say “everybody except for you.” That would foster their misguided sense of victimhood.
this also explains why our country is so divided. Because who is invested in it’s wholeness anymore? (except for mainstream democrats who express this by caving to the right, those bastards.) However, the left has already figured out how to solve this problem (cuz we create ideas, damnit, and not just dumb them down and appropriate them). The answer, I believe, may be the affinity group model that’s been used so successfully in organizing. Affinity groups maintain their individual identities, but affirm their participation in a larger whole. What’s empowering about this model is the need for building bridges and finding commonalities. It’s more more powerful than the universal fabric of the 50’s, which was a sham anyway. Nobody is asked to shut-up. All are asked to participate. And by incorporating the needs and concerns of smaller groups, the solutions found are more universally useful and helpful. so the answer, again, is finding commonalities. Is canvassing. Because we all care about health care, etc. Being on the side of human rights makes it easier to attract people.

Tag: Victim Politics

We are hiring.  We need perl coders, product managers, project managers,
and bizdev.  Options, poss for IPO, signficant backing.  Please let me
know if you know of anyone to recommend.

That’s from my old boss. He’s a pretty good guy to work for. This job is prolly in the south bay. Anyway, if you want to be recommended, drop me your info and I’ll (first ponder whether you’d get along with those folks and then) pass it along. The whole significant backing, possible IPO thing is true, btw, he’s not one to make things up, which is why he’s a good guy to work for.
Tag: Celesteh

Not like oh-how-cute-I-saw-a-snowflake. It’s snowing like a motherfucker. Big, sticky, wet gloppy snow flakes are falling like a motherfucking motherfucker and sticking to the ground to make insta-slush. Really sticky. I got home and there was ice stuck to my entire person from the sloppy wet snowflakes pouring from the sky.

Only a few days ago, I was basking in the bright sun next Lake Merrit, surrounded by birds and flowers and hippie love (I saw the most successful mack ever, but I’ll save it for another time.)
Now I am in the cold, wet, snowing, slushy state of Connecticut. You east coasters talk about how the snow is pretty. Ok, it’s pretty. Pretty enough that I can dive up to Yosemite, spend a little while looking at it, and then come home to flowers and sunshine.
The scary thing is that I know I’ll miss here when I leave.
Tag: Snow