friendster questions for Miss Manners

How formal or casual is the process of asking an aquaintance to be your friendster? If you exchange a few emails with someone in your friendster network and then meet in person is that adequate or should a more personal connection exist?

My car is fixed

I get it back tomorrow. Then i can rejoin the human race (… the daytona 500??….) and seem less flaky to the natives of CT. I hate driving, but I don’t like bumming rides. But really, it took the scorn of my peers to incite me to repair.

Open Mic

I played at a trendy bobo restaurant. (bobo is a word i just learned. It means bourgeois bohemian. I like this word very much.)

Anyway, so I got on “stage” and my computer wouldn’t start. So I got back off stage and it booted fine. computers like to do things like that on stages. they get stage fright. It’s troubling for them to have to perform on command. So some other guy played and I got up and played three tunes. One was Dance Tune for Marek. The other two don’t have names. One involves dubya. The other doesn’t. All the other open mic players were guitarists/singers, except for Deborah, the host, who played dulcimer and confessed to me that she felt a bit out of genre.
I had been joking that there might be A&R people in the audience. Maybe I would be discovered and signed by Warner Brothers new experimental music label.
while I was playing my last song, some guy came curiously into the room and then made a rock-on hand signal and left. Apparently, he works at the restaurant and is a DJ at WESU radio. He came up afterwards and asked for a CD, so I sent him to my website. I’ll burn him some CD tunes later. Not exactly an A&R guy, but still cool. this would be my first non-pirate radio play in the us.
A while ago, I cast the I-ching and it said there would be advantage in every movement. There are some obvious areas of my life where this is not true, but outside of those areas, it seems to be the case. Things are really going well. I’m meeting with success in a high percentage of my endeavors. sometimes, this success is different than what I envision….
Oh, and last thing, some dood at the open mic said I sounded like a band called “Silver Apples” from the late 60’s. Apparently they did stuff with early analog synths that was really unlike what other people are doing at the time. Which is cool. But it also means one of two things: 1. They are this guy’s only forray into experimental electronic. or else, 2. I still sound like I’m doing analog stuff, even when working on the computer, which would be unfortunate, since analog gear is better for analog sound, but at least the computer is portable and just intoned.

Cars and Marriage

Well, both my headlights are out, which means I can’t drive at night. To locals of Connecticut, this is a way of explaining that I am a complete loser. Yes, a car is as vital and as necessary an accessory as it was in my high school.

So I was telling some story to Heidi (Heidi is the woman who told me I was too tall to date, so now we’re buddies) that involved me getting a ride someplace, and she responded by saying she was going to come help me fix my car. Hopefully, this big ‘L’ will drop off my forehead…

After a lot of labor, I can now say that the bulbs are not blown and the fuse is not out and what’s wrong is anybody’s guess. consumer reports says something about weird electrical problems like the in the 98 bug. I’m calling the dealer tomorrow.
And, in the other news of the subject line, Dubya now supports a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Ok, so things have been pretty clear for a while now that Christi and I did not get married to live happily ever after (yeah, all this “breaking up” stuff….). we really got married in an attempt to destroy the institution of marriage. I can tell that family values are very precarious and need constant vigilance and that the opposite sex marriage of everyone in america could be destroyed, so that’s why we did it. Who knew Bush would catch on? He must be smarter than he looks.
Ok, maybe I wanted to live happily ever after, but failing that, smashing the entire isntution wouldn’t be so bad.

Spring Break!

I will depart Bradley Internation airport (located a mere 45 minutes form the wesleyan campus) on Thursday March 4th at 1:51 pm, which gives me time to provide my ride (whoever he or she may be) with lunch. Or, I could provide my ride with breakfast and spend some time in the airport doing reading for my Mystic Voices class.

I will arrive in Oakland, CA on Thursday March 4th at 7:42 pm. I will be amazed at the warm weather. I will immediately want either mexican food, chinese food or japanese food or good onion rings. in any case, i will be pining for the food offerings of my homeland, which I would certainly share with my ride

While in California, I will visit the beach. I will visit my family members. I will visit the Lexington Club. I will also do reading for my Mystic Voices class.

I would also like to do some gigging. I will have 20 minutes of laptop music. I can open for yer show. I can play at your house party. By the end of the break, I should have a longer set.

I will depart Oakland on sunday March 21 at 6:00 in the morning. Ugh. the tickets were about $70 cheaper. I will take a cab.
I will arrive at Bradley International airport on sunday March 21st at 5:00 pm. I will provide my ride with dinner (at a Middletown Zagat-rated restaurant!!) and a movie.

all i wanna do is sleep

christi missed her flight out here and on the same day got an offer to go do field recordings in China (for which she would get a grant) and to be music director on a movie done by the same person who did Winged Migration. Her star is rising. Specifically it’s rising because she’s far away from me.

I love Gavin Newsom

Ok, so he has problems. But goddamn, this a momentous thing he’s done. February 12th every year should be Gavin Newsom day and events ought to be held to commemorate it. He’s a striahgt guy and he did this. He’s a mainstream democrat straight guy.

a happy couple. I met Hyde and Dawn when I went to the Michigan Women’s music festival a few years ago. That’s also when they met. Dawn moved to California shortly thereafter and I would sometimes see them around. And today they got married.

This is momentous. I wish i was home.