Tag: celesteh

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 And it was repealed.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

Calling in Sick

I’ve been sick since last thursday. Christi has been sick forever. Tiffany is sick. I think one of the cats may be unwell. We all sit around and sniffle and nap frequently. I’ve done nothing of value the last week. Christi has though. First, she accidentally deleted all the work she’s been trying to do while sick. And then today, she created a blog for the dog. She’s also writing a letter to NAACP to complain about their misplaced condemnation of Kucinich. He, along with two other Democrats, skipped the NAACP presidential forum. The other two dems were off sipping caviar and dining with ruch plutocrats or had some other lame excuses. But Kucinich was busy voting on against privatizing Medicare, which passed the House by one vote (and had Lieberman decided to stay in DC, he could have voted against it too, but he was busy drinking champagne with whoever he pals around with during his free time).
Medicare Privatization passed the House by one vote. Was this a newspaper headline I missed while napping? The sky is falling! The sky is falling! This is exactly what sick people over 65 need: crappier healthcare. when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she was over 65 but was still using her private policy because all the forms for medicare were not filled out yet. Her private policy denied coverage for chemotherapy that Medicare would have covered. Anyone would have covered it. And eventually her insurance did cover it, but only after my dad hired a lawyer and threatened to sue.
Hiring a lawyer is often too difficult for sick people. What would have happened to my mom if she had no kids and her partner didn’t know to contact a lawyer?? She would have died a slow, lingering death in October, but with a better quality of life leading up to it. But in principle, this would be very very bad. It seems that “profit,” “healthcare” and “elderly” don’t belong in a sentence together unless one is talking about the evils of imperialism. This is evil evil evil.
So it seems *cough* misleading to condemn Kucinich for taking such a moral stand against evil. So Christi is writing a letter. And I’m going to go take a nap.

Getting Political

I’m registered Green. I did that because economic and enviromental justice are important to me. I’m tired of Democrats, like Al Gore, Gray Davis and Joe Lieberman who are owned by corporate interests and about as inspiring as shower mold. They talk about the same issues as republicans and often offer solution barely differing from republican solution. this is logical since, as I learned in high school civics, the major political parties are not ideologically based. People calling each other “rinos” aside, the major parties exist just to get themselves elected and not to push any particular agendas except what will them support of voters and donors.
the donors are clearly winning. They’re winning by such a large margin that hardly anyone bothers to vote anymore. Do you really beleive that a Gore Lieberman administration would be any less war-like when you consider that Lieberman has criticized Bush for not bombing enough and that he drew up plans for a new government office that was appropriated by Bush to become the office of homeland security. No wonder progressives have switched to the Green party. But we would come back for somebody compelling who had values that weren’t owned by McDonalds, McDonald-Douglas and Clorox.

Dennis Kucinich is da man

Dennis Kucinich could bring back alienated greens, progressives and leftists. His proposals are actually logical and make sense. He wants to quit throwing all of our effort, culture and money at war. He wants to use the “peace dividend” to pay for education and social services. Remember social services? There used to be a radical idea that our taxes should somehow benefit people who need it, rather than going to subsidise gigantic, already-rich corporations. Kucinich wants to resurrect the New Deal and expand it Canada-like to include universal health care. And he supports civil liberties and equal rights for queers. What’s not to love? He wants to end our culture of fear (that Moore documented in Bowling for Columbine).

Random Anecdote

One of my highschool band teachers, Kristen Strom, plays with with a Saxaphone Orchestra called The Nuclear Whales. Early in the Democratic primary season before the 1992 election, they heard that one of the unknown candidates was a saxaphone player. So they contacted his campaign and offered to play at some rallies for him. The campaign took them up on it and the candidate met them and was eager to try out the contra-bass saxaphone, so they got back some pictures of them hanging around with him around while he tried to play it. Then, when he went on to win the white house, they got to be “Friends of Bill” and were invited to the inaguration. Pretty exciting, huh? So I contacted the Kucinich campaign and said that Tennis Roberts could play at rallies and fundraising parties. I hope he gets elected.

Doctor Doctor

So I called up a doctors office in Cupertino yesterday and got an appointment for today. The local Berkeley clininc told me that I would have to wait weeks and that it would cost an arm and a leg. The Cupertino place was entirely reasonable. And, surprisingly, not homophobic.
Lesbians have higher cancer death rates that straight women and are less likely to see doctors, especially gynocologists. It doesn’t require a huge study to figure out why. Being hassled at checkups does not usually result in quality medical care or a desire to return any time soon. My experiences with the south bay have been such that it was a pleasent surprise not to be hassled or lectured about my poor birth control habits (so far 100% successful) and the many other things doctors have found it in their hearts to misunderstand and condemn.
But I still hate doctors’ offices with their ugly faux-sterility and their false promises of health and cures. The fasting for blood tests doesn’t help matters. So when I got my signed paperwork for school, I was out the door and on the road before it occurred to me that I was supossed to get preventative stuff against the sort of ear blockage that Christi had. (Caused by the type of ear plugs that we both wear and apparently very common in ear-plug wearing rock musicians.) Ooops. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t go back. Even very nice doctors are still doctors.
I can only imagine what my mom, who worked for many years as a medical technologist, would think of my anti-healthcare attitude.

Dear Bossy

Dear Bossy,

some lesbians I know are about to get married in Canada. Should I respond by talking about how Canada is about to split apart like the Balkands and fall into war, disarray, terrosrism and famine?
confused in Cupertino

Dear Confused,

No. Grit your teeth and say, “congratualtions.”

Dear Bossy,

On the subject of lesbian marriage: when I talk to lesbians who are planning on getting legally married overseas, should I just avoid the issue by not bringing it up? I don’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them that they’re damned to hell.
Silent in Silicon Valley

Dear Silent,

No, most certainly do not tell them that they will buring in hell. They’ve obviously heard it before and it hasn’t changed their mind. The problem is that if you say nothing at all, they will assume that you think that they’re hellward bound and you’ve hurt their feelings anyway. Grit your teeth and say “Congratulations.”

Dear Bossy

I’ve been invited to the reception of a lesbian wedding. I have nothing against sodomites personally, but I beleive that marriage is only for people who aren’t disgusting perverts. These sodomites are friends of mine. Do I have to go?
Disgusted in Daly City

Dear Disgusted,

Your responsibility ends with saying, “congratulations.” You are free to skip the reception. Say that you will be in the Balkands or Canada and can’t make it. Be sure to respond to the RSVP, though. You can also skip sending a gift (in fact, your friends may not want gifts…). If you are especially close, you might send a card.

Going to the Chapel and We’re Going to get Married!

First things first: the party!

More formal invitations will be forthcoming, but since I need a headcount for food and I don’t still have postal addresses for everyone I want to invite (especially Mills folks, but anyone who has moved in the last few years, I may not have a current address for), I have created an Evite “save the date”: http://www.evite.com/celesteh@casaninja.com/aug2. If you are reading this, you are invited! (unless, like, you’re a complete stranger who has stumbled upon this blog or you once murdered my cat out of spite or something…) Please please RSVP!

Not going to Niagra Falls

Ok, so we’re going to kind of elope, since the USA is not very nice and won’t let us get married, we have to go to Canada. Earlier, we talked of going to Niagra Falls, but same sex couples can’t get married there. Technically, it’s legal, but the churches there are resisting on moral grounds (which is their right under Canadian law) and justices of the peace quit doing marriages there several years ago for some reason. So no honeymoon in Niagra Falls. We’re going to go to Toronto instead, while moving the car and the dog across the country. So the party will actually predate the wedding. We’ll probably get married on August 16th. There is a Vegas-type gay wedding chapel just opened where folks can be walked down the aisle by an Elvis impersonator. Some folks might call this “tacky,” but they aren’t very open-minded. We have no plans actually set, though. Like Vegas, you can go to Toronto and get all the paperword together in an afternoon.
I hope we can get Xena into Canada!. Anyway, the good news is that Toronto was just declared SARS-free! yay! Plans may change again if gay marriage is legalized in some east coast state, where the state supreme court is supossed to issue a ruling in a week or so. Not that we don’t love Canada (what’s not to love?), but we’d be coming from a stronger legal position (i think) if we got married in the US. Since any legal recognition of our marriage will require litigation, we’ll go with the best strategic advantage.

Oh Canada!

did you know that Canada has the only fishery in the world that is not over-fished? Perhaps the most civilized country in the world, Canada also has socialized medicine, unlike the US. In the US, for example, if your college required you to have a checkup and be declared SARS-free by July 15th, you might have to go to an urgent-care center just to get a stupid checkup if you don’t have insurance and pay more than $300. And have no idea how to track down your vaccination records from the first year of your life, even though your mom saved them someplace, cuz she can’t find them for you now and your dad wouldn’t even begin to know things like that. *cough* So I think I might go to the Cupertino walk-in clinic tomorrow, if it still exists, cuz it’s walk-in and because they might have my records someplace. It’s a long drive (and a long-shot on the records), but any walk-in clininc I can think of in the Oakland/Berkeley area is a bit more chaotic. I need the boring burbs. Or something. Maybe I should just stay home from school, as this is too much trouble.

I need to have less stuff

I’ll still have the party of course. Miss Manners says it’s impolite for about-to-be-married folks to mention gifts around a wedding, but note that is not the reason that there is no registry. Dyke Action Machine used to have these kind of anti gay marriage ads that said, “I became boring for a blender!” I was already boring. And, conviently, I already have a blender. I have a fondue pot (despite being vegan). I have a toaster. I have an electric mixer. I’m about to move across the country to a small apartment that will Christi will also be living in 2/3 of the time. Anyone who comes bearing a kitchen appliance will be beaten with it and have to take it and one other used appliance home with them.

Born on the Fourth of July

History

My cat, Roz, was born on the fourth of July. Christi says that the cat is six years old. Where have all those years gone? It seems like yesterday that she escaped from the carboard box I brought her home in, to under the seat of my truck. I think I had to take the seat out of my truck to retrieve her. Or maybe this story grows with the telling. But somehow, I had the idea that the cat would be a cat for Christi and not for me. When I got home, she disabused me and thus the cat was mine. I don’t know what practical effects this has had, except that ourn cats are listed seperately at the vet and that I’m expected to take Roz with me to Connecticut, but not right away.

thursday

So Thursday was flute band practice. We spent a couple of hours trying out an acoustic guitarist who revealed at the end of his audition that he couldn’t make the gig. If you know an acoustic guitarist, or better yet, you are an acoustic guitarist, I’ve got a gig for you!

Friday

And speaking of gigs, on Friday, we drove to the fourth of July party that Tennis Roberts was booked to play at. The original word was that it was in Santa Cruz and that there would be a large, permitted fireworks display. Then it was revealed that the party was near Gilroy, but a lot of Santa Cruz people would be there. So Mitch, Ed, Christi, Tiffany and I drove and drove and drove and got lost and got unlost and finally met up with Chand. when we showed up, everyone there was wearing black wifebeaters (note to my grown up relatives: this is a type of tank top shirt) covered with white images of bones, skulls and bats (mammals, not baseball). The men had shaved heads and tatoo “sleeves” up their arms and were muscular. The women also had tatoos, but fewer of them and were not so muscular. Many of the shirts said, “South Bay Hardcore.”
Hardcore is a genre of music somewhat related to Norweigan Black Metal. It is charecterized by loudness, speed, virtuosic drumming, practically abusively fast and hard guitar strumming and sometimes also bass strumming. The guitar chords are typically dissonant and may include notes like the 6th. I know this because somebody in my History of Music Past 1850 class did a report on hardcore. I can’t remember a darn thing about what constitutes a reciciative or what the fuge form looks like, but hardcore I got. Anyway, hardcore lyrics are usually angry and often mysogonistic and the followers like to be tough all the time. It’s very hardcore.
Tennis Roberts is not hardcore. We’re wusses. Ack hardcore fans! They’re going to hate us! They’re going to assault us! So we started drinking beer and the organizer started hosing down the hillside of dry grass, in between his eucalyptus groves, so that fires would not start from his fireworks. The first band began to set up. Fortunately, it turned out that all the hardcore people were in the band, Sad Boy Sinister. They started playing as it was getting dark and people at the party started setting off explosions. I put in my earplugs, more for the bombs than the band and was happy that I didn’t bring Xena, since she would have run all the way to Hollister. The band was ok. The singer explained that they were back together after a breakup, which made sence cuz some of their songs were kind of rough. During one song, he stopped the band and said, “I f—ed up, let’s start over.” So the band started the song over again and the singer sang it exactly the same way the second time and then said at the end “I f–ed it up again.” Most of there songs contained the word “bitch.” One of them was titled “The Bitches are Getting Me Down,” apparently complaining about their girlfriends who were sitting up front cheering enthusiastically. Another song had the refrain, “Die bitch, die!” Around that time, somebody launched a firework up over the crowd, but not towards the wet hillside. It landed in the Eucalyptus trees that were next to the long driveway and started a fire. It looked to be about campfire size. A large number of people got up and started running around, trying to figure out what to do because the hose was way too short to reach the fire. I asked Christi, “How do you put out a fire with a shovel?” She became very alarmed (how many people really know how to put out forest fires?) and ran towards the fire. I was looking for a shovel, but couldn’t find one because someone had already grabbed all of them and dragged them to the fire. It was extinguished. The band on stage was confused, “What’s going on?” they asked, and then, “Should we stop or keep playing?” The sound guy told them to keep playing and they did, but apoligizing because the next song in there set was entitiled “Now it’s Time for You to Die.”
Later it was overheard that “had permits for fireworks” meant that the sherrif’s wife was at the party and thus the sherrif wasn’t going to arrest us. Also, apparently, there was a seperate party going on down in the strip mine bellow where folks were watching our fireworks.
So our band was on next. During the setup, there was a massive explosion up on the grassy hill. Apparently whoever had brought the fireworks decided that launching them up into the air might be dangerous, so he had ignited them pointed at the ground. Fortunately, that was the last of them, I think. This was our first gig with amentiies like monitor speakers. Hearing your sound at high volume coming at you is way different than practicing in a basement. The levels were screwy, not because the sound guy wasn’t great, but because we weren’t sure what to tell him. Next time, I think I’ll ask for the monitors to have same mix as the audience hears. I mean, it’s not like there are acoustics dums sounds that we could rely on. It was nice to hear Ed turned up to high volume. Whenever we would play loud dissonant angry things, the hardcore folks would cheer. Halfway through our set, half the audience got up and left. It turned out that they were in the next band. Just about everyone at the party was in a band or came with a band. But it was cool
the soundguy played in the third band. I started making up for my relative sobriety. But, we wanted to go home because it was late and long drive, but we stayed to hear several songs, since we may split a future engagement at 21 Grand with them. They played some coveres and some original tunes. Their songs had some intense, complicated parts that must have taken a lot of practice. They were pretty good.

Saturday

finally got to bed around 3:00 AM. Chand called at 9:30, very chipper, saying, “Hi! I just got home! I could totally do the gas station gig!” So I got out of bed at 9:30 and started trying to call Yakayo Biofuels. There is a new biodiesel buy-at-the-pump gas station open in Fairfax. Yakayo sais they were going to have some sort of party (originally a bbq, but changed for obvious reasons) at the gas station on the opening day to celebrate, but they didn’t get very much advance notice and put out a call at the last possible second for music, in the form of a stereo and some summertime tunes. I had volunteered the band to play, but the Chand said he couldn’t do it, but now he could, so I was awake and on the phone. When I finally reached everyone that I needed to reach, the gas station guy said that nobody had shown up so far, so we probably shouldn’t bother. But I was already awake. bleah. So we drove down to palo alto. Christi explained that she was unable to hear through her left ear.
We picked up Mitch and went to starving Musician. Ever since Peter told me that professional bassist don’t play out of combo amps, I’ve been feeling sheepish about my bass amp. The bassists in the other two bands had large, much more powerful looking bass rigs. Mine was too little and didn’t sound good. So I tried out bass heads and speaker cabinets, finally settling on a peavy 160 watt head and and 300 watt cabinet. The cabinet gives me room to grow… There were two identical cabinets, both the same brand and both 300 watt. they sounded the same. I wanted to get the bigger one, but Christi said it would be too hard to move, and she one. Size does matter, though, you know.
Bought more stuff in the south bay. Then went to dinner with my dad at a vegitarian restaurant in Palo Alto, named after the place in ancient Greece where the philosphers used to gather and discuss, uh.. philosophy.” our waiter helpfullly explained in quiet yet enthusiastic tones. The food was ok, but not great. Christi and my dad report that the non vegan dishes were very very good. You’d think that a veggie restaurant would have more than one vegan thing on the menu. But it was ok. My dad seemed to be doing ok. Apparently, he never wrote any haiku, which is too bad.

sunday

Got home late. And then up the next morning again to go watch a soccer match at Mitch’s house. Christi still can’t hear though her left ear and her throat is sore. But she wants to go out anyway, so we do. I have no idea who won the soccer matches. We brought paper and crayons so folks could draw drawing which will be the inserts to go with CDs that we’re going to sell one off. We have many drawings now. And we learned that Chand fell asleep right after calling me on Saturday and slept for the rest of the day.
Juraj was making apricot dumplings. They seemed pretty complicated. The dough was made out of taters and wheat flour and soft, german cheese and eggs and other things. then it had to be rolled out and then stuffed with apricots that had been halved, stuffed with a sugar cube abd some things. The whole thing had to be sealed, water-tight and then boiled until it floated. He made a ton of these things, switching to strawberries when he ran out of apricots. I didn’t try one cuz they weren’t vegan, but everyone who had one said they were really good. Juraj explained that he wouldn’t normally make so many of them, but there were a lot of people over. For some reason, people responded to this by making fun of him and calling him gay for the rest of the day. Euphamistically, of course. Apparently cooking desserts for your friends isn’t masculine enough? I don’t understand het boys at all.
Then many of us went for food, then I offered Mitch unwanted advice, put my foot in my mouth and made him feel bad. Ooops. So I stole my DX7 back and went home. This morning, Christi awoke with a full-scale cold, which explains her hearing problems and stuff. She’s in bed right now, a place she normally avoid when she’s sick. She’d rather run around until she gets pnemonia, than sit still for a minute to get over a minor cold.

My Growing Collection of Rejection Letters

So I got a rejection from Bowling Green in my email yesterday. It’s not surprising, since the piece,a woodwind dectet, had some problems. For starters, part of it was in three, but is written in four. I need to fix it. I would have fixed it before sending it, but the deadline was looming and I had already put a lot of time into it. I probably should have sent a tape instead, but I thought they would be more willing to play a score rather than a tape. The key things is that the score has to be up to snuff.
Of course, I learned my lesson about doing things at the last minute. I check the email with the rejection letter even as I was rushingly re-mixing a piece for Sonic Circuits (due date: yesterday) that I had recorded the night before. Ok, so I didn’t learn my lesson. Even a little bit. the Sonic Circuit piece is boring and sounds completely different on headphones versus speakers. I delayed buying monitor speakers cuz they’re expensive, but clearly, I need them. But I went ahead and mailed my boring, sparse, flat sounding tape off to Sonic Circuits anyway, priority mail, since I wasn’t sure if yesterday was a receipt deadline or a postmark deadline. Costs of postage plus media was about $6. so it will be a $6 rejection. Not counting the cost of computer, synthesizer, headphones (but not monitor speakers) needed to make the boring CD-r.
So my real estate agent in Connecticut has yet to dig anything up. I wonder how long I should wait before becoming concerned.
Speaking of more profitable skills, the Just Intionation Calculator now opens Scala files, but it approximates cents as fractins, since this is the Just intonation calculator.
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