Tag: celesteh

Happy new year.
I think I have the flu. Bleah. Yesturday, I just thought I was hungover, despite the rarity of being hung over after one beer and one glass of champagne, but you never know. I really doubt two days of hangover could be pinned on that. Luoi told me that there’s a flu going around.
I skipped on resolution mkaing pretty much completely this year. I still remember all my resolutions from last year. I had a plan, I was on track, then things went suddenly awry. I think John Lennon said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. So anyway, I decided “no resolutions.” But that in itself is kind of a resolution and thus self-contradictory, so here’s my list of 2003 resolutions.

2003 Resolutions

  1. Floss my teeth

Hopefully I can keep to it this time. For some reason, when I get stressed, I just stop flossing my teeth. So I’ve decided to start flossing again and not just quit when the going gets rough. Otherwise, I’ll get cavities!
I’ll make more resolutions vis a vis my five year plan after I recover from last year. Anyway, I finally submitted something to the Jack Straw call for scores, so I’m not 100% off track. I called it No No Nonette.
Ok, now I’m going to go back to sleep.

Well, it’s a new year and Oakland’s homicide rate reset to zero at midnight and is probably at least below five right now, definietly in the single digits. A news article yesturday said there were 113 homicides last year, so it’s probably right around there. I imagine if a nunch of people got killed on New Years Eve, it would have been in the paper this morning.
Anyway, I have a solution for this. This isn’t one of those “after the revolution” sort of solutions either. I mean, it’s very easy for liberals to say that people kill each other because they’re stressed and then point at the usual suspects for causing stress. Unemployment, ecenomic stress, lack of health care, etc. Yeah, I could tell you that it’s stressful being fearful that you’ll lose all your savings and end up being homeless if you get sick, because of lost wages and hospitals bills. And then I could tell you that we really need socialized medicine, so folks wouldn’t have to be so worried and so they would have less stress, and if they did get super stressed anyway, they could go to talk to a shrink about it and maybe figure things out and not kill somebody. Yeah, I could sip my latte as a very pious liberal and tell you that. But let’s take a hard-nosed, conservative look at things. Paying for everyone to have decent healthcare is expensive. Funerals are expensive too, but a hundred or so a year is a lot cheaper than insuring all of Oakland. Plus, where’s the profit motive? Nobody gets rich off of resource equality. Only inequality creates unequal wealth and thus richness. This sort of expensive, liberal, non-punative approach is simply not feasable under our current system. Only after the revolution can we . . .
But I promised a solution that would work now and not be dependant on the armed struggle of the proletariat and I have it. Bring in Jessica Fletcher. Her little town of Cabbot Cove had a tremendous muder rate. More than one a week and a population much smaller than Oakland. It’s true that catching those responcible didn’t seem to diminish the murder rate in Cabbot Cove, but police in Oakland beleive that some of the same people might be responsible for several homicides, so in Oakland, it might make a difference. At the very least, it would get the murders off the street once they comitted a crime, which is better than nothing. Only a Hollywood solution can solve complex social problems while maintinging the stus quo, spending no money and being entertaining all at the same time. So a Hollywood situation is obviously what we need.

It doesn’t matter who I’m trying to kid because all the applications are due January 15h and I haven’t taken the GRE yet and I don’t have an appointment and I don’t know any vocabulary or highschool math. And more importantly, I don’t have much of a portfolio, especially in regular composition, which is what I want to study, I think, or not. Maybe I want to be more electronic.
christi keeps telling me to apply to Mills. But all of my academic reccomendations would come from Mils people. How would that work out? and I wasn’t very serious as an undergrad and wasn’t very sauve or polite and there are plenty of peope around who probably still don’t like me or think I’m a trouble maker. the old head of campus computer services thought I was compromising security on the netword and was convinced I was behind every computer misdeed that occurred. (It didn’t help when the Mills Weekly quoted me out of context when I was answering questions about denial of service attacks. It ended up as looking like a how-to manual, which is stupid because even though I know how to do stuff in theory, I have no practical computer cracking skills.) I only caused a minor system disruption once and it was an accident.
Anyway, I’ve already gone to Mills. I’d feel like a loser going to the same college forever. If they’d even want me back.
My plans are all in conflict. I want to stay here. I want to go away. I want to study regular composition. but I don’t know anything aout it, there’s nothing to reccomend me to the program. I want to use my degree to get research appointments. Appointments are for people who do electronic music. I already know how to do electronic music, I don’t need to go to more school. Research locations only want people with advanced degrees. Yarg, if I knew how to do everything they seem to want for me t get in, I wouldn’t need more education. How does that work?
whine whine whine. I’m so privledged. My whines ought to make people want to kick me. A freind of a freind is making lists of people who will be killled in the revolution. I’m probably on hiz list. I don’t think I want hiz revoltuion. (Hiz is a new genderqueer pronoun I just made up even though I’m not genderqueer. Yet another reason to be targetted by that sort of revolution.)
I just reread Ecotopia. I don’t have a single original idea in my whole head.

Jack Straw Productions has a call for scores out for a sort of a nine toy piano jukebox. People coming around put in a quarter and pick out a score and it gets played over nine MIDI-ified toy painos. My thing for this is written but it needs a name. It seems to me like a cute name could make a big difference for how often it gets played. Untiled #47 might not be as enticing as Bongo Slugs or something. As you can tell from that example, I’m terrible with titling things. The thing I wrote started out as a normal, boring, four part choral, but then I started adding 16th notes and then got modified for nine toy panos. It sounds sort of fanfarish to me, but that might be because I’m using a Quicktime MIDI trumpet to listen to it. (that means crappy computer synth trumpet.)
Some of you might wonder what a toy paino is. Well, some of you maye have seen the very baby grand paino in the living room of my abode. It’s the kind of piano Linus plays in the Peanuts specials. A lot of people want to call it a “Linus Piano.” But it doesn’t sound like a real piano either. It’s plinky, high-pitched and out of tune. I’ve just looked at toypiano.com and it’s not a porn site, so I’ll send you over there for more information. somewhere near the bottom there’s a link to pictures and another to sounds.
Sibelius, otherwise the best music notation software ever seen, does not have support for toy pianos built in! How can this be? They have Odnes Martenot built in. How much more obscure is that? Everyone who has seen Peanuts at least has an idea of what a toy piano is. But few people except Messian fans and antique electronic instrument enthusiasts know what an Odnes is. There weren’t very many Messian fans around here until the SF Opera put on Messian’s opera about St. Francis of Assisi. Then there were tons of Messian concerts. People got very excited about the opera. It got rave reviews. I had tickets to go see it, and I kept putting it off, because my mom was sick, so finally I went to see it on the closing night. She died that night, apparently right as I was getting home. The opera wasn’t very good either.

A few days of sun and rain and de-snailing and de-fungussing (is there one or two ‘s’es in fungusing?) improved the state of my xmas tree greatly. It’s in the house dropping needles everywhere, even flinging them across the room. The cats keep trying to explore it, but the dog wants to explore them, so they’re not interacting with it. They probably think it’s a pine scented litterbox. Or is it fir scented? When your father-in-law is a forester, knowing the diference between pine and fir trees can be very important.
I was putting up ornaments yesturday and realized that my mom gave me almost all of them. The last candle that was burning when she was alive burned out yesturday. The holidays suck suck suck. Oh my, do they suck. If you see Santa, please tell him where he can stick his holiday cheer.

We went to see the movie Lord of the Rings last night at the Sony Metreon, a capitalist consumerist mall hell of a movie threatre. Anyway, the line to get into the movie stretched all the way across the length of the entire building, up a flight of stairs, around the entire fourth floor and was starting up towards the fifth, when I got into line one hour before the movie was scheduled to start. The people in Guest Services or whatever were being difficult. They were trying to tell Ian to wait in line, even though it traversed a staircase and he’s in a wheelchair. And there’s only so many wheelchair spots, so it’s not like he’s waiting for general admission seating. Anyway, all of this was moot because as the line was growing behind my towards the next staircase, somebody pulled a fire alarm.
Do they give the movie theatre staff any training on how to respond to an amergency? It seems like no. A bunch of guys came out and quietly told a few people that the building was being evacuated. People sort of milled around, thinking of this as an opportunity to get a better spot in line. Eventually, they cleared off the third floor, and only the third floor. A bunch of people went outside, but the hoardes started streaming back in. I stopped on of them, “What’s going on? Did someone say it was a good idea to come back inside?”
“I dunno.” the guy said, “I’m just following everyone else.”
There was a possibility, however remote, that the building was actually on fire. People were like lemmings, following each other in every direction. It makes it kind of clear how all those people in the second tower all got killed in New York last year. Somebody with a bullhorn says, “Everything’s ok.” and they start being like lemmings. But nobody at the metreon had a bullorn. Nobody knew what was going on. So we went outside. The alarm was false. There were over a thousand people on the second floor, waiting to be readmitted to their movies. Giant, crushing crowds. By the time they got everything figured out, they skipped all the previews for our movie, because it was late. Anyway, it’s a good thing it was a good movie.

I went out to look at the tree again this afternoon. It smells funny. I’m hoping it’s just the orange gaurd anti-bug stuff and we can just wash it off. At least there’s no sign of the snails. I can’t figure out where they might have gone though. The tree is not touching anything and the pot is in a saucer thingee that has a couple of inches of water in it from the last rain. So either the snails are all drowned trying to escape, they jumped for it, or they’re hiding and waiting for their chance at the Coffees of the World gift-pack.
Earlier I described a mushroom as “evil looking.” It’s joined some sort of axis of evil with the snails. The mushroom is two or three inches tall. The stem of it is yellow and textured like a banana slug. The cap is grayish-brownish like American Cheese that’s been sitting in your fridge for too many years with what looks like spots of white mold growing on it. (Can mushrooms mold? Aren’t they already fungus?) No one would go out in the forrest and get confused mistaking this thing for an edible mushroom. Unless it were hallucinegenic or something. (Lord I hope I have not just described myself as growing hallucinegenic mushrooms in my blog.) It just looks poisonous. And dank. And too much in the reality of midwinter festivals like Christmas, but not enough in the spirit.
Christi’s cat is the enemy of all plant life. She chews on everything. We had to put our Poinsettia outside because she was eating the whole thing (and somebody heard a rumor they might be toxic). Would she smiliarly chew on an evil mushroom? And if it were hallucinegenic, would she lead to her death from the highest point in the house, believing she could fly? (I’ve seen anti-drug videos. I know she would have a bad trip or leap to her death if she were tripping.)
If we had a pet Chicken, it would eat all the snails.

The rain around here finally let up, so I decided it was time to drag the Christmas Tree back indoors. It’s a potted tree, now on it’s third year of life with us. Last year we seem to have pushed it too close to a wall, so I discovered all the low limbs on that side are dead and being eaten by snails. It’s covered in snails. Weird little ones. I sprayed the tree with orange oil to get rid of them, but they’re still swarming
(Do snails swarm?). Anyway, it’s weird. Who ever heard of snails attacking a connifer? Maybe banana slugs might. So now the tree is all sticky with orange anti-bug stuff and snail slime of dead and wounded snails (and the little bastards that got away). And I noticed that there is a weird evil-looking mushroom growing on the wall side (henceforth refered to as the dark side) of the tree. I’m all for nature and the slithery slimy poisoness things that lurk in the forrests, each of them playing a major role on in the eco system. I’m even ok with them lurking on my nice patio provided they don’t kill too many of my plants or my dog or anything. But dragging a million snails, bettles, bugs, things that creep in the night and fairy-tale looking evil mushrooms into the house and putting christams presents under there is a differnt story. What if we wake up Christmas morning and gather around the tree only to find the Coffees of the World set I’ve given to Christi is now swarming with slimy snails? Yuck. I’m hoping that the short hours of winter sunlight falling on the now-exposed dark side will chase the slimy creatures away. And another day of rain should wash off the sticky orange oil and perhaps the sticky snail slime. (Can’t you picture this? Precious homemade ornaments in the family for years covered in snail slime because one year the latte liberal of the family decided what we really needed was a live tree complete with live snails!) Arg! This is a disaster! I should spray the tree with my moonshine-sih meade! I used to have a situation with unwanted compost bin inhabitants. Then I had a batch of beer get kind of funny, so I poured the bottles into the compost bin. The microrganisms in the bin were extremely pleased. The creepy crawly things were not. Anyway, all of this explains why the tree has been looking kind of sick all year.

I bottled 40-something bottles of honeymade-ish stuff today. (Today is still Tuesday as far as I’m concerned.) It tastes like moonshine must taste. As far as I can recall, it’s got pears, honey and malted barley in it and maybe some hops. The barley gets to be good after 4 weeks and quits being good after three months. The pears are good after three months and before six months. The honey is good after one year and keeps getting better forever. It’s been about nine months, so all the elements are missing each other. So it looks like beer, tastes like something illicitly distilled. The champagne yeast gives it more alchoholic oomph than normal beer or wine.

I asked Christi what she thought of my break-away-republic manifesto and she avoided answering me directly. I had been drinking some soynog when I wrote it. She seems to think it’s goofy. Here’s my attempt at keeping a pretentious jounral to be reprinted when I am a famous composer and she thinks I’m a bit overly optomistic about how change will come about. Artists are supposed to have goofy politcal views. Anyway, who was it that said, “A reasonable person adapts to fit her environment, whereas an unreasonable person seeks to adapt her environment to fit her. Therefore all change comes from unreasonable people.”