April 4th 2003
We were supossed to leave for Portland this morning, but I needed to see the tax guy, since we’re returning on the 15th. the earliest I could get was today at 9:00 AM. So I stayed up last night late making Mitch’s singing quieter on the Aelita soundtrack. He sang La Internationale into my voice mail a few days ago. I got a recording of it (and Xena scratching like crazy) by holding a microphone up to the phone. Anyway, I fixed that, then went to bed late. Then got up to drive to Los Gatod by 9:00 AM. I thought it would take at least 1.5 hours, but it only took one. New freeways in the last ten years.
We went over to my dad’s house to burn a DVD of Aelita. He had no blank media so we went to Elite Computers to buy some blanks. Christi saw a DVD burner there and was surprised by the lowness of the price and bought it. But no software. So we went back to my dad’s house and used his software + burner. iDVD is cool. My dad and I got into a disagreement about the government. I said it was being run by defense contractors. He said it was being run by the media. Later, Christi pointed out that the defense contractors own the media. She said, “It’s rediculous to argue about whether the oil companies or the media or arms dealers are running things. They’re all the same people.”
My dad repeated his oft-stated theory that the US hasn’t won a war since WWII (because 5 years later the places are always worse off than we arrived as far as our interests go) and hasn’t had a government since the 60’s. Presumably, he means since Kennedy was shot. When I was a youngun’, I had no idea what he was talking about. We have a court system, elections, etc. Now I think he means than an elite oligarchy is running the show for it’s own, immediate interests instead of longer range national interests. He says that Rome didn’t have a government either for a while, until Ceaser crossed the Rubicon. Conservatives alwatys like to compare the US to Rome right before Ceaser or the Weimar Republic, that is Germany right before Hitler. During the Clinton years, Rush Limbaugh was always talking about how Clinton was like the last president of the Weimar Republic. Great. So what does that make Bush?
The NRA always fights gun control measures by pointing out that Hitler confiscated handguns. They say that they should be able to all have handguns without any sort of tracking or registration in case a future Hitler comes to power, they would all be armed. But the NRA would have supported Hitler. . ..
After burning a DVD, which is inexplicably titled “South Pacific,” we went home and packed and got the rest of the music together. I needed to put My Mom on an ADAT tape. I’d never used the optical output of my DIGI001 before. All of the final edits and dumps to take took a couple of horus at least. Then, we decided that we needed to get gas. Rather than look up the address of the Richmond Biodiesel station (which Christi insists will only sell biodiesel to boats) or put petroleum in the car, we drove to the 3rd street station in the City at 3:00 in the afternoon. By the time we got back across the Bay Bridge, it was 4:00. We got to Portland at 2:00 AM.
April 5th 2003
I got email from Wesleyan asking if I was going to go to school there. I wrote back and said that I anted to visit first and that I could come anytime after April 15th. Then I looked at my calendar and saw that I had to reply in writing with “yes” or “no” by April 15th. I wrote back explaining that I wouldn’t be home until the 15th and asking what to do. I’m worried that I will be precieved as flaky, but I am flaky, so I guess they would figure it out anyway.
Christi’s mom is sick. I called up my favorite Protland Digital Audio store (no sales tax) and asked about a pro-level minidisc recorder. They told me that they don’t have any with digital outs. I surfed around for a while. The cheapest pro-level sony has digital outs. I called back and asked if they hads them, they said no but the would order it. I’m not sure if they are actually planning on ordering one. Whatever. Minidiscs are cool. They don’t sound quite as good as DATs but are a whole lto cheaper and more robust and portable. My collection of recording gear continues to slowly grow. Yesterday, Elana, our 11 year old neighbor came over and was wandering around while we packed. She said we had too much cool stuff and had spoiled ourselves. prolly.
