Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

The 15 GRE Words of the Day

16. affected (adjective) false, artificial.
80’s radio djs used to speak in an affected british accent. affect (verb), affectation (noun)
17. affinity (noun) A feeling of shared attraction, kinship, a
similarity.
When Christi and I feel in love, we marvled over our affinity for John Cage,
Riot Grrl and our RA.

18. aggrandize (verb) To make bigger or greater; to inflate.
When he was mayor of New York, Ed Kotch was renowned for aggrandizing his
accomplishments and stroling through city events shouting “How’m I doing?” aggrandizement (noun)

19. agitation (noun) A disturbance; a disturbig feeling of upheavel and
excitement.
The campus took away the microphones from the radical groups because they
feared student agitation. agitated (adjective), agitate (verb)

20. alias (noun) An assumed name.
Don’t reveal my identity to the spies! Call me by my alias, “sloshie.”

21. allegiance (noun) Loyalty or devotion shown to one’s government or
to a s person, group or cause.
I pledge allegiance to my christi and to the sidewalk on which she
stands…

22. allocate (verb) to apportion for a specific purpose, to distribute.
If you want to buy a fabcy new RAID array, you’re going to have to
allocate some funds out of your general budget. allocation (noun)

23. amalgamate (verb) to blend thoroughly.
The reason the white south wanted to maintain segregation, especially in
schools, was because they feared amalgamation. Intermarriage would
destroy their very wonderful paleness for future generations. amalgamation (noun)

24. ameliorate (verb) to make something better or more tolerable.
Perhaps we can ameliorate the condition of Vanessa’s Tofu Suprise through
the juditious addition of soy sauce. amelioration (noun)

25. amortize (verb) to pay off or reduce a debt gradually throught
periodic payments.
In the interest rate is low, it might be a good idea to amortize our
morgage instead of paying it off as fast as we can.

26. amplify (verb) to enlarge, expand or increase.
When you asked me to amplify the music, i wrote a second movement, not
knowing you just wanted me to make it louder. oops. amplification (noun)

27. anachronistic (adjective) out of the proper time.
The knight at the ren-faire was wearing keds, which is totally an
anachronism, cuz it’s not like keds were invented yet when there were
knights. of course, somebody running around now dressed in armor is kind
of anachronistic anyway. Maybe he belongs to the society for creative
anachronisms. anachronism (noun)

28. anarchy (noun) abscence of law or order.
anarchists are kind of silly, because they don’t want chaos or actual
anarchy, they want people to form allegiances voluntarily. anarchic (adjective)

29. animosity (noun) hostility, resentment.
Roz could no longer contain her animosity towards Xena and so after a
minute of sniffing noses, she returned to growling obnoxiously.

30. anomaly (noun) something different or irregular.
we noticed an anomoly on the scan, so we’re going to have to do a biopsy
to make sure it’s not cancer. anomalous (adjective)

Esperanto class was bursting at the seams! We are going to move to a bigger classroom. (no, i am not making this up.) But there is still room for you! Yes, there is. Tuesday night 7:30 – 9:30 enhanced with kekstempo – cookie break time! keksoj = cookies. See, now you’ve learned one useful word, there’s no reason not to show up.
Speaking of Esperanto, I’ve been thinking more about Christi’s silent movie idea. Phillip Glass does a lot of movie composing for old movies, but the one’s i’ve seen have all been movies with sound and subtitles. Opera singers sing the lines of the speakers in the movie. so he just plays the movie with the sound turned off. and then I thought of the perfect movie to do that to: Incubus! no, don’t leave! William Shatner, when interviewed about his role in Incubus, consistently describes the script as “operatic.” He says it deals starkly between good and evil – like an opera would. the movie is, as i’m sure you know, the only full-length movie shot entirely in Esperanto. And it doesn’t have much dialog. the dialog it does have is very easy. There are long sequences with pretty pictures where no one speaks. (these are the best part of the film.) those sections could be filled with musical interlude. Also, the movie has very few speaking parts. There’s that guy who only lasts for one scene, Kia, her sister, Marco, his sister and the incubus, and I’m not sure if the incubus even speaks. so we could get away with a mezo-soprano (I don’t like high sopranos so much), an alto and a tenor. Maybe a second male part, maybe not. If we got a second male part, there could be cool chorus-y suff when the evil minons file in at the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, there are problematic elements in the movie. It would take a bit of snipping. For all of it’s operaticness (as perceived by Shatner), it’s still an icky horror movie. There are only two scenes that really ought to go. there’s the one where the evil minions tear off Marco’s sister’s clothes and the incubus lurches in with his bad teeth. (well, it is an icky horror movie and we’re going to cut that scene.) and of course, the scene in the end with the goat. I think we could have Kia and Marco running towards the church and then have her crawl in, harmed, and never explain what happened. Or, we could just have the incubus show up to get her and cut before he turns into a goat. Really, this film does have all the great aspects of opera. Think Don Giovanni with it’s graveyards and people eating corpses and satanic figures rising from the dead. Think of that and thenk really low budjet, with only three singers, no sets aside from a screen and projector and a small pit orchestra. Additionally, this is an act we could take on the road. People would come see it because it might sound interesting, but think of all the esperantists who want to see what on earth an opera based on Incubus would be like. see! this is a great idea!

Today is the first day of Esperanto class. Yes, this means summer is finally over. I left for my mom’s house really early, so I don’t have 15 GRE words for today, but they will resume tomorrow along with the 5 esperanto root words of the day. If I learn 20 new words a day, in two languages, soon i’ll be the best spoken person on earth. (note to self: there must be a more multi-sylabled way to say that…)
I woke up in a bad mood because I couldn’t remeber what “abjure” meant. But now I feel happier.
My mom is popular. Twof reinds came earlier and two more are on the way. That’s all god. She’s also happy. I’m not paying attention to her right now because I am updating my blog. Bad daughter! No bisquit!

Although he appeared to affable, he was in fact, an adversary. Thus it was not an abberation when he attempted to abscond with all my allies. But he was not as adroit as I. He did not abbrade me, I merely hatched a plan to bring my allies back to me and abrogate their allegiance to him. They would abjure their connection to him when they learned that I had the better taste in art! Yes, I am an aesthete. true, he may donate to the opera and he has slowly, through accretion built up something of an art collection, but he will be exposed as a fraud and my allies will return. a while ago, he purchased some sculptures, he thought as an adjunct to the rest of his art collection, which was mostly paintings at that point. but the sculptures were tacky! Tasteless! ugly! The acted to adulterate his collection, not enhance it. I learned that he foolishly planned to have a prty in his new scultpure garden, a party that would surely be abbreviated when the guests caught sight of his ghastly collection. And then, their allegiance to him would be abridged. My allies would return to a true lover of art and music. But what are these allies worth? I foundmyself questioning. Afterall, if their gatherings with me could be held in abeyance due to their loyalty to one so utterly tacky, tasteless boorish, boring and completly un-affable as this adversary, what do I need them for? so I abandoned my plans and set out in search of new freinds.

Boy, give somebody a blog and they look insane. well, not sane people. sane people can have blogs and still look sane. anyway i have a list of the 15 GRE words fo the day. observe:

The 15 GRE Words of the Day

1. abbreviate (verb) to make breifer, to shorten. If all the vocabulary words are this easy, I will be able to abbreviate my study time.
2. abberation (noun) a deviation from what is normal or natural, an abnormality. “Dr” Laura came under fire for calling lesbians a biological abberation. abberant (adjective)
3. abeyance (noun) a temporary lapse in activity; suspension. In the aftermath of 9/11. all normal activites were held in abeyance.
4. abjure (verb) The renounce or reject; to officially disclaim. After the EPA declared global warming to be real, Dubya abjured the document and had the department disolved
5. abrade (verb) To irritate by rubbing; to wear down in spirit. Even though she saved five dollar, Erma abjured her pro-sndpaper underwear stance as it abraded her skin severly abrasion (noun)
6. abridge (verb) To shorten. to reduce. Readers Digest keeps it’s subscribers from being truly well-read by issueing several abridged novels every year, this freeing up readers time to write angry letters to the editor of their local paper.
7. abrogate (verb) To nullify, to abolish. the 14th amendment makes it illegal to abbrogate the rights of American citizens without due process of law. abbrogation (noun)
8. abscond (verb) to make a secret departure, to elope. the CEO of our company absconded to Bermuda with our pension fund
9. accretion (noun) A gradulal build up or enlargement. A accretion of troops continues in the middle east in prepeartion for further slaughter so we can get more cheap oil.
10. adjunct (noun) something added to another thing, but not a part of it; an associate or assistant. the military acts as an adjunct to Halburton and several oil companies, but so far does not receive stock options
11. adroit (adjective) skillfull, adept. Ralph Nader is highly adroit at pointing out the wrongs of the currents system
12. adulterate (verb) To corrupt, to make impure. While some people like milk choclate, purists see dairy products as an adulteration of fine chocolate
13. adversary (verb) an enemy or an oponent. Although many corporations claim to be friends to consumers, one only needs to look at their treatment of workers and their safety records to crrectly cagagorize them into adversarial roles. adverse (adjective)
14. aesthete (noun) someone devoted to beauty and beautiful things. John Cage caused controversy partly because it was controversail whether or not he was even an aesthete. Some folks felt he was not because he intorduced noise into music. Other folks felt he was because he wanted his listeners to percieve the noise as beautiful. aesthetic (adjective)
15. affability (noun) the quality of being easy to talk to and gracious. A good hosts endeavors to be affable

speaking of avoiding my mom…. arg. i picked up micheal moore’s book Stupid White Men and read the whole thing and apparently read really slow cuz it’s 5:00 now. what am i thinking? it’s not like i have extra mom left. oh, i’ll go see her in a couple of months. not going to happen. still, i thought she would be dead by now. i have no idea how to guess how much time she has left. october? no way. i thought. yarg this sucks. this is supossed to happen to other people. i am suppossed to lead a charmed and stress-free life because i am special damnit, and people around me are supppossed to be too. and i’m suppossed to be young forever. and the whole fxcking summer is gone and 2002 is almost over and it sucked and i did nothing useful with my time. i’m a year older with nothing to show for it. i need to stop screwing around. and i learned no GRE words today and wrote no music and only read a stupid book and didn’tr even go see my mom or get a job or do a darn useful thing and i’ve been living my life this way for a whole year. more than a year. 1.5 years of lame-ass slacking. and before that i worked for aol. i suck. i, like all software people both with jobs and without, am a parasite in the intestine of humanity. i’m so fxcking special i don’t need to get a job or go see my mom or even “find myself” (the groovy excuse for directionless young artists) or nothing. sometimes i feel like nothing i do matters and other times i realize it’s because i do nothing. poor little rich girl. fxck.

It occurs to me that I’m being pretty harsh on people. for instance, that poor guy who did the music for the VHS tape of the Shiek. Yeah, the music sucked, but he was probably given $300 and two days to throw it all together. It’s low budjets and tight schedule and they do the music last, almost as an afterthought. And the folks that do that are always independant contractors with home studios (i think i read this in Electronic Muscican magazine or something) working for peanuts. I’m sorry.
and also, the guys on my mailing list. A few days ago I criticized the way the were responding to a list member’s immenent demise. Many of them sent messages saying, “don’t die.” and I felt maybe they could have said something else like, “I’ve always enjoyed your posts and your music, my thoughts are with you.” Well, that still might be better, but it’s not like anything in this culture prepares us to confront death. We celebrate youth and pretend death isn’t there. People don’t die at home so much, they die in hospitals, surrounded by machines and out of our sight. Croos-generational relationships have become more rare, so young folks aren’t hanging around folks who are closer to death and thus we don’t experience that. It’s mysterious and perhaps terrible and to be avoided at all costs and not thoguht about at other times. thinking about death is a sign of mental illness in these times. That’s not right. That’s the fault of our feel-good media and the bad seven corps that run it. It’s not the fault of the guys on my list. I’m sorry.
and i harshed on my mom’s friends. being around my mom is really hard. and jean says that they will realize that they were wrong and then it will be too late. yikes. they should come visit my mom and i should be understanding if they don’t. it’s not like i don’t try to avoid her aosmetimes. so i’m sorry.
blogs can tend to be confessional. now mine is too. bless me somebody for i have sinned. I’m going to go look at getting comment features now.

I just read Christi’s blog and I’m never going skiing with her again. Not that I ever want to subject myself to anything so unpleasant, but my goodness, she lacks adequate self-preservation instincts. “Oooh! a sheer drop over had rock outcroppings with corpses littered everywhere! I think I’ll ski it!” She doesn’t realize that she’s not a Kennedy and has no buisiness killing herself on a ski slope. ou should be rich to die that way.
We just watched the Rudolph Valentino movie the Shiek. It contains elements some would describe as problematic. We’re watching silent films cuz Christi has this idea about doing new music sound tracks for them and then having a little film festival. It’s a good idea. Anyway, whoever did the score for the VHS tape of this movie certainly left a lot of room for improvement. One guy with a DX7 and very few musical skills writting whatever pops into his little head. Maybe it wasn’t like that, but the music was not compelling. It had little to do with the action or the settings or any historical connection to the sort of music that would have been played when the film was shown or even music you would want to listen to now. Bleah. So on the one hand, I think “I could do better than that!” and feel inspired to work on the shiek. On the other hand, I think I better leave this one for somebody of middle eastern descent or I’m just asking for trouble. The movie reflects the ignorances and predjudices of the times it was made, of course. A movie like wouldn’t be made now. Too many of the arabs were sympatheic charecters. The army would get sent in. camels would be killed. We’d make a more problematic movie now. Yes, we are less enlightened than we were in the 20s. History is not progress. Everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
who the heck came up with the idea of hellward-bound transportation via handbaskets? From where does this phrase originate? It is so weird.
christi says that I’ve digressed so much that I have to go to bed now. But I’ve slept all day. I woke up at 7:00 this evening. I squandered my day off. I didn’t even work on music, unless you count watching a silent film, I think I have ruled it out, because the movie is racist and sexist and besides that, I didn’t like it very much. But I think maybe it could at least be entertaining with a better soundtrack. I have no idea where we plan to find silent movies without problematic aspects. we rented another tape called Early Soviet Film that might be better and anyway, might not be copyrighted. All of this silent movie watching tho is interesting because all of them have sound. The Valentino film had all original sound composed by a modern composer. this means that if one really enjoys writing music for silent movies, one could actually do it for movie releases. Of course, I understand the budjet is exceptionally small that gets allocated for the sound. goodness, tho, i don’t get paid for sounds now. this is probably somrthing to worry about after we get some experience. But we’re barking up the wrong tree by only working on movies already out on DVD. Or not. It’s too late at night.