Author: Charles CĂ©leste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

Tennis Roberts and Polly Moller play July 31

Thursday, July 31, 8 pm, $5-10
Polly Moller and Tennis Roberts will be playing (LIVE!) at 21 Grand in
Oakland on Thursday, July 31, 8 pm, tickets $5-10.

21 Grand is located at 449B 23rd St, which you can reach by car or by BART.
Closest BART station is 19th St. Station. More information on how to get
there is at http://www.21grand.org/map.html

Tennis Roberts is an improvisatory/absurdist art band. The band consists of
Chand Bellur on Drums, Celeste Hutchins on Bass, and Mitch Crane and Ed
Kunakemakorn on guitar. ( http://www.tennisroberts.com )

Polly Moller is a performance artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. She
combines avant-garde flute playing with poetry and psychedelic art-rock.
( www.silverwheel.com )

Update

I went to the first night of the SF Electronic Music Festival. It was really groovy. I was going to post a detailed review and then go to all the other nights, but alas. I had a prior engagement the second night. I looked up the third night listings and it included a piece called “Bukkake Clown” for “synthesizer mouth and face.” Ah. So I stayed home. And on the fourth night, sailing went later than planned. such is the nature of sailing. We replaced all the standing rigging on Mitch’s boat. “Standing rigging” means all the steel cables that stay in place and are not changed mid-sail via lever or pulley or any other means. In order to replace all of this rigging, the mast must slowly be lowered. have all the old cables detached, which includes plyering the hell out of some pins, have new cables reattached and then slowly reattach the mast. The mast is long and heavy and several of us were standing on the unbolted side of it, which is like standing downwind or a tree that you’re sawing, except with more cables. It nearly hit Jenny in the head, but disaster was averted. It did not smash down and sink Mitch’s boat or a boat across from Mitch as that slip was vacant.
Then we went on a sunset sail. The wind gets mighty gusty right after the sunsets, creating big waves which splash over you ad then don’t dry out, cuz there’s no sun. Brr.
Then the next day was brunch with nervous family members. Coversation was neutral. The occasion was Christi’s and my engagement, which was only mentioned twice: once during the blessing and the second time in a gag gift from soneone not present. We were given bridal body detergent. “Now eliminates second thoughts!” Some friends were also present. One significant other said she was going to vote for Arriana Huffington. Nevous silence decended. Actually nervous silence decended several times. If I were going to do this over again (next time I get married to Christi . . . ), I’d serve champagne more agressively than the massive amounts of coffee that folks were drinking.
Then band practice, which went well. We’re working on playing five minute long songs instead of two hour long songs so the audience on thursday will feel happier. And then it was already too late for the last night of the SFEMF, so we went to Fogardy’s for dinner.
Today, I went to work with Christi and was unable to get Quicktime Streaming server to stream an mp3. On a mac with a mac client, it refused to stream. arg. Then I saw the Weather Underground movie with Cola and Andra and then we went out to dinner. It’s nice seeing old friends. I wish I had more tie to rekindle friendships before moving away.

You must register to vote! You must vote in the recall election

Ward Connerly’s initiative will also be on the ballot. This guy is the anti-affirmative action guy who is also the UC regent. He is trying to destory all affirmative action in the world, which of course has been disasterous. The UC law school used to be integrated, but last year there were zero African American men in the program. None. He chased them all away. Of course, this looks bad, so he has a solution: quit counting. This initiative ought to be called the Bury our Crimes Initiative. He wants to stop counting race in any government tabulations.

Having a problem with too many black men going to jail? Is it making your justice system look racist? Stop counting! Are police officers stoppiing people for Driving While Black and making your justice system look biased? Stop counting! Are resources being unequally distributed and making your education system look segregated? Stop counting! Is your law school no longer attracting minority candidates because you made them want to aply elsewhere and it’s embarassing? Stop counting!
The NEW Bury our Crimies Initiative can help stop the public from being aware of racial profiling, racism and segregation. It can also make it darn near impossible to fix or redress persistent racial problems! Bring back the good old days and hide the consequences with the Bury our Crimes Initiative!

You must vote against this. Since you’re voting anyway, why not run for governor? It only takes 65 signatures to get on the ballot for the recall election. Anyone who can vote (YOU! If you register!), can run. There is no primary. There is no runoff. Whoever wins, wins. Even if less than 10% of voters approve them. Heck it could be 1%. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. It could be you! Just contact your county registrar of voters for forms.

I will back your campaign!

If you (yes, YOU) run for governor, I personally pledge to help you get signatures to get your name on the ballot. I will help design your website. I will sign any petition to get anyone on the ballot. I encourage you to also sign any petition that you come across. Signing a petition is not an agreement to vote for someone, so you can sign as many petitions as you want, you just have to be registered to vote. Help each other out! Sign your friends’ petitions!
If enlisted in your campaign (I will help out any candidate, even strangers whose platforms I disagree with), I promise to stand in front of fourth street buisinesses with your petition and solicit signatures. All you have to do is be willing to actually go through with it. You must write a blurb for the sample ballot and be willing to have a website and talk to the press or at least issue a statement of some kind.
Seriously.
Really
You should
I’ll help

Register to Vote

Reasons to Register

  1. Vote to Recall/not the recall Gray Davis
  2. Vote in the primaries for your favorite Democrat (note: you must register Democrat to vote for one)
  3. Stop the anti-gay constitutional amendment

How to register

Voter registration forms can be found at the DMV, at the post office, at the library. Next time you buy stamps, why not grab a registration form? Heck, grab a bunch of them and give them to your friends that buy their stamps from their ATM. Or you can Register online! Click that link now! NOW!!
Ok, so you don’t want to get jury duty Who does? On the one hand, if you were on trial, wouldn’t you want smart jurors such as yourself deciding your guilt or innocence? On the other hand, if you throw away your jury summons without opening it, there’s no proof that you ever received it.
Back to the point, even if you don’t care about who governs California and could care less about voting for Kucinich (or whoever), we must stop the anti-gay constitutional amendment.

Stop the Amendment

Certain rightwingers are terrified of Christi and I getting married. They think society will collapse. They want to do anything they can think of to stop us, including ammending the US Constitution. Obviously, Christi and I getting legally married is not going to cause society to collapse. Christi and getting married is a good thing. The proposed amendment is, therefore, a bad thing.

Who Supports it

Bush says there’s no need for an anti-gay ammendment “yet.” Frist initially supported it, but now is echoing Bush. There is a serious danger of it passing.

How to stop it in congress

Ammendments must be sent by congress to the states. That means that it must pass congress. Contact your representatives and tell them that you oppose it. Contact Diane Feinstein. Contact Barbara Boxer. Conact your represenative in the House. Tell them that you support gay marriage and that you oppose the amendment. Tell them also, your address, name and that you are registered to vote. Or if you are not registered tell them that you will register (unless, you can’t because you’re a non-citizen, underage or in jail or on parol for a felony).

How to stop it if it passes congress

Three quarters of states must ratify an amendment for it to be added to the constituion. This can be insurmountable even for good amendments, like the ERA. This means that we can stop it. But we need to be ready to vote it down. We can’t make assumptions, even in “liberal” states like California. An anti-gay marriage bill recently passed in California by more than 60%. Vote turnout was really low then. That means that people like you didn’t vote. The more of us register to vote and show up to vote against this, the less likely it is to pass. You don’t even have to show up. Just apply for an absentee ballot.

How to register

Voter registration forms can be found at the DMV, at the post office, at the library. Next time you buy stamps, why not grab a registration form? Heck, grab a bunch of them and give them to your friends that buy their stamps from their ATM. Or you can Register online! Click that link now! NOW!!

Massachusetts Supreme Court Delays Ruling

Read all about it: http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?2003/07/16/3.

Synopsis

Some gay couples in Massachusetts sued, demanding the right to get married. The court is about to decide whether or not to shoot them down, do a Vermont-style wimp-out, or be as cool as Canada. The court was expected to issue a ruling today, something which caused me to obsessively hit reload on Google news, but they did not and nobody knows when they will. Probably during this summer. Might be two days from now. Might be two months from now.

Analysis

This is exciting because states have to recognize marriages performed in other states. It also strengthens the legal position of those of us who are eloping to Canada. Clinton, the big jerk, signed something called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which stated that the federal government would not recognize same sex marriages (SSM) performed here or abroad and that states need not recognize SSMs done in other states. DOMA doesn’t hold legal water. At least it shouldn’t. Who can predict the rulings of the supreme court of the US? So right-wing assholes (RWA) are running scared and want to ammend the constitution to outlaw SSMs. Ammend the constituion. It’s not true that the constitution has never been amended to take away rights. It has been, during that wonderful and highly successful (note: irony) social experiment called prohibition. And it was repealed. But the constitution has never been ammended to take away rights from a special class of peple before. This is equivalent to responding to Brown vs. the Borad of Education or Loving vs. Virginia by ammending the constitution to re-legalize discrimination.

Going Negative

Dean, highly popular democrat, is opossed to gay marriage. Why? I dunno. Maybe gay people are icky. Maybe he doesn’t want his daughter marrying one. Maybe we just don’t deserve equal rights. Is he in favor of the proposed amendment? Who knows. His stated position certainly agrees with it. Maybe, like Clinton, intern-banging weasel, he would sign on to placate RWAs.

Stumping

Kucinich, however, supports gay marriage rights. He came in number two in MoveOn.org’s primary poll, which had more participation than is expected in the real primaies of several states. Kucinich could win. He should win. “Anybody but Bush” is possibly a nice slogan, but . . . no, it’s a stupid slogan. There’s nothing good about that idea. It means that it would be a good idea to vote for anyone one micron to the left of Bush. Bloated plutocrats are laughing all the way to the bank at the idea. If you have ideals, you should vote those ideals. If you beleive in equal rights, then you should vote for equal rights. If you think that it’s nice that Christi and I are getting married, then you should not vote for someone who wants to take away our marriage liscence and stomp on it. You should vote for Kucinich.

I would vote for Hillary Clinton

I know. Just yesterday I said that I wouldn’t vote for somebody who thought that s/he should have more rights than me. And I would only vote for a progressive. But those Clintons! They’re charismatic! They make you feel all warm and fuzzy when they sign the Defense of Marriage Act and Welfare Reform and NAFTA and the WTO and when they open large pristine tracts of wilderness for oil exploration and they bomb third world countries based on shaky (and ultimately false) “intelligence” reports. Why is it that the left still loves Bill ater he did all those bad things? Why do we love Hillary? Why would I vote for her? It doesn’t make any sense. Yet, for some reason, I would. So would a lot of people. If the election were held tomorrow and she was running against Bush, surveys show that she would win. Maybe she could have Kucinich as her running mate.

No More Politics

A band that I like, The Disposable Heros of Hiphoprisy, have a song where the refrain is a guy singing, “All I ever think about is music and politics.” This song often gets stuck in my head.

My life

In personal news, um, not much has happened. I had band practice today from 1:00 to 6:30. A couple of songs got cut from our Vegas set list cuz I can’t play them. One of them I spent a couple of hours practicing last night. Bleah. It may have the hardest bassline out of all the songs. I still feel sniffly. I read a book about the history of non-synthetic dyes and paints. All those crayola colors make sense now. Sienna was the name of a color manufactured in Sienna, Italy. Burnt Sienna is that same color after heating. Midnight blue used to be called Prussian blue and was invented by some guy in Prussia. Err, you can see that all of the data absorbed into my thick skull and now I can give detailed histories. Or not. It’s what comes of reading while sick.
There used to be codes for “first mourning” and “second mourning.” All this is myserious to me. People are/were suppossed to refrain from certain activities and wearing certain colors while mourning. This knowledge, tucked among tales about how Britian fought a war to get Belize as a colony so they could use logwood to dye fabrics black, has made me feel defensive. One is probably not suppossed to get married less than year after one’s mother passes on. Vince told me that people sepnd up to 75% of their time trying to justify decisions that they’ve already made. So here is my justification: I’ve wanted to marry Christi for many years. In 1998, we went to Hawaii right before the November election so we could get married there in case the Hawaiian supreme court overturned gay marriage bans. There was an amendment on the ballot that would undo this court action. So it could have been the case that the supreme court would have legalized gay marriage and then, only a few days later, Hawaiians would have amended their constitioun to make it illegal again. But the people who got married in between would be married. So we went to Hawaii and sat on the beach and got a newspaper every day. The supreme court backed down and the amendment passed and the window of opportunity never opened. But if it had, we would already be married now.
Well, now, five years later, we can get married. We will get married. (Although the location might change if Massachusetts’ supreme court rules next tuesday to legalize same sex marriage there. We would be in a better legal position if we get married in a US state.) We’ve waited a long time.
I used to worry, five years ago, what to say to my grandmother. You’re supossed to tell your grandma (obviously) if you get married, but I thought she might not understand. But she died. And my cousin died. And my mom died. and the number of family members to be distressed about this marriage things is constantly declining. I’m digressing.
Now might not be the time to get married and throw a big party. It’s past the time I would have picked. Look, I’m about to leave. There’s a lot of folks I might not see for a long while. It seems like the right thing to do. But I dunno. Hamlet said something about the funeral meats coldly furnishing the wedding banquet, but that was a dead spouse, not a dead parent. If people weren’t so biggotted and stupid, Christi and I could have gotten married in 1998 and my mom could have come to the wedding.

Black dye, Belize, Puritans

Puritans wanted black fabric and were willing to pay for it. But dying things a true black is difficult. The old method was to dye a piece of fabric in many shades , dipping it mutiple times, until it came out black. The it was discovered that logwood, a new world import, made a wonderful back, but it faded unless dyed over indigo. So indigo was imported from south east Asia and logwood came from Central America. For a long time, logwood was illegal in Britian (so was indigo, but that’s another story), because the Spanish had a monopoly on it. But then Britian fought a war with the Spanish and got control of Belize (formerly British Honduras). As part of the peace settlements, all the privateers were to stop hassling Spanish trade, so pirates were out of a job. They went to work in the mangrove forests of Belize harvesting logwood and were paid for their effort in rum. so the puritans were financing all sorts of debauchery and things they found morally wrong (like slavery – many current Belizeans are decended from slaves imported to harvest logwood) in order to get acessories to show their piety. America really does still have puritanical culture.

More Politics

The Human Rights Campaign sponsored another presidential forum. It seems like there are a lot of these forums. The HRC is a very mainstream gay rights organization. They fight battles that are “winnable.” This means that for a long time, they were anti-trans (note: trans means “transsexual,” “transgendered,” etc), because trans issues weren’t “winnable” and so they didn’t want to try to win rights for all queers. Maybe they would drop lesbians if mysogony became more popular? I’m cynical about the organization although they seem to have kind of come to their senses on including trans people and I give them small donations now.
Anyway, all the Democrats went to see them and answered questions. Only two democrats, Carol Mosley Braun and Dennis Kucinich support legalizing gay marriage in the US and, therefore, presumably, only those two support recognizing gay marriages performed abroad. This means my marriage. Dean, weasley stated that gay marriage is a matter for states to decide and not the federal government. Funny, the Supeme Court did not agree with that in Loving vs. Virginia. Dean, presumably wants to return to a system where marriages would be valid in one state and not others, something that the Supreme Court clearly ruled as unconstitutional when the struck down bans on interracial marriage. But it’s not surprising that Dean wants to return to such a system, since he backs civil unions, a seperate-but-(un)equal notion.
Lieberman, closet Republican, would not even go that far, saying that marriage was sacred and gays deserve some rights of marriage, but not all of them, he would pick and choose in office. A right here. A right there. Oh, not that tax one. That’s sacred!
Al Sharpton criticized all the weasly, homophobic candidates saying that talking about “gay marriage” this way is like talking about “white marriage” or “black marriage” and implies that queers aren’t just folks like everyone else who just want to get married and live their lives. Go Al!
the HRC, again focussing on what’s “winnable,” gave high marks to all the presidential contenders, even though some of them clearly do not deserve marks as high as others. Kucinich also said that he would appoint a gay, lesbian or trans supreme court justice, provided that he or she would uphold Roe vs Wade. See why I like this guy?
I know all you pro-Dean folks have noble intentions. Maybe you agree with everything he says. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you agree with more progressive views like the Green Party holds or the Kucinich platform. But you’re worried about what’s “winnable,” and want to back somebody with whom you disagree on many issues, but you want to get Bush out. Well, the most “winnable” democrat is Lieberman. He loves blowing things up. He doesn’t like gay people. He likes invasive security measures. Heck, he wants to blow more things up. Are we bombing enough? Boy-oh-boy, is Lieberman “winnable.”
So what? You’re trying to temper “winnablity” against palatablity, is that it? Well a vote for Dean is a vote for Dean’s platform is a vote for second class status for queers. If you don’t agree, with this, why are you encouraging it? Why not vote for the man or woman who most matches your views? Braun and Kucinich aren’t “winnable,” but it doesn’t matter, cuz they’re not going to win. They may even run out of money and drop out before super tuesday. Clearly, Dean is going to be the nominee for 2004. Backing Kucinich now (sadly), will not change who will end up getting the nomination. But it will change the terms of the debate.
the more support the pro-gay marriage, anti-drug war, pro-peace guy gets, the more those issues get discussed and the more the progressive view point is heard and acknowledged. I can hear people thinking, “Middle America is not Progressive.” Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. If it’s not, maybe it’s because progressive voices are being censored. You can’t agree with what you’ve never heard. The progressive message will resonate because it makes sense. It’s logical. It doesn’t use convoluted rhetoric to argue the illogical. Some people might be fooled when Bush says that privatising Medicare will be good for seniors. Most won’t. and if Democrats roll over for corporate donations and agree with him, well, why bother voting at all? The plutocrats clearly own everyone, so why cares who wins. This attitude is deadly to Democrats. Only pro-plutocrat people will bother to vote, and they will vote republican.
Getting the progressive message out will save the Democrats. It will bring back Greens. It will bring back apathetic folks. It will start discussions and debates among non-plutocrats who will realize that corporate-drive neo-liberal policies are not good for the country because they not good for people. These activated people will go to the polls in the general election and vote for a Democrat, because they will have heard the progressive message and it will resonate with them. If you want Progressive ideas to come up during the campaign, you have to back a Progressive for the primaries. Whoever gets the nomination will be forced to adopt a progressive stance, which will be good for everyone.
Of course, like Bush, they could pretend to be a Progressive or a Compassionate Conservative and quickly morph back into a bloated plutocrat the second they’re sworn in, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
Anyway, I’m not voting for anyone who thinks that I deserve fewer rights than they do. Never again.
Kucinich 4 Prez