tuba – Les said, the better II

Laptop and Tuba

This post is taken from the lightening talk I gave at AMRO

Abstract

I have decided to try to solve a problem that I’m sure we’ve all had – it’s very difficult to play a tuba and program a computer at the same time. A tuba can be played one-handed but the form factor makes typing difficult. Of course, it’s also possible to make a tuba into an augmented instrument, but most players can only really cope with two sensors and it’s hard to attach them without changing the acoustics of the instrument.

The solution to this classic conundrum is to unplug the keyboard and ditch the sensors. Use the tuba itself to input code.

Languages

Constructed languages are human languages that were intentionally invented rather than developing via the normal evolutionary processes. One of the most famous constructed languages is Esperanto, but modern Hebrew is also a conlang. One of the early European conlangs is Solresol, invented in 1827 by François Sudre. This is a “whistling language” in that it’s syllables are all musical pitches. They can be expressed as notes, numbers or via solfèdge.

The “universal languages” of the 19th century were invented to allow different people to speak to each other, but previously to that some philosophers also invented languages to try to remove ambiguity from human speech. These attempts were not successful, but in the 20th century, the need to invent unambiguous language re-emerged in computer languages. Programming languages are based off of human languages. This is most commonly English, although many exceptions exist, including Algol which was always multilingual.

Domifare

I decided to build a programming language out of Solresol, as it’s already highly systematised and has an existing vocabulary I can use. This language, Domifare is a live coding language very strongly influenced by ixi lang, which is also written in SuperCollider. Statements are entered by playing tuba into a microphone. These can create and modify objects, all of which are loops.

Creating an object causes the interpreter to start recording immediately. The recording starts to play back as a loop as soon as the recording is complete. Loops can be started, stopped or “shaken”. The loop object contains a list of note onsets, so when it’s shaken, the notes played are re-ordered randomly. A future version may use the onsets to play synthesised drum sounds for percussion loops.

Pitch Detection

Entering code relies on pitch tracking. This is a notoriously error-prone process. Human voices and brass instruments are especially difficult to track because of the overtone content. That is to say, these sounds are extremely rich and have resonances that can confuse pitch trackers. This is especially complicated for the tuba in the low register because the overtones may be significantly louder than the fundamental frequency. This instrument design is useful for human listeners. Our brains can hear the higher frequencies in the sound and use them to identify the fundamental sound even if it’s absent because it’s obscured by another sound. For example, if a loud train partially obscures a cello sound, a listener can still tell what note was played. This also works if the fundamental frequency is lower than humans can physically hear! There are tubists who can play notes below the range of human hearing, but which people perceive through the overtones! This is fantastic for people, but somewhat challenging for most pitch detection algorithms.

I included two pitch detection algorithms, one of which is a time based system I’ve blogged about previously and the other is one built into SuperCollider using a technique called autocorrelation. Much to my surprise, the autocorrelation was the more reliable, although it still makes mistakes the majority of the time.

Other possibilities for pitch detection might include tightly tuned bandpass filters. This is the technique used by David Behrman for his piece On the Other Ocean, and was suggested by my dad (who I’ve recently learned built electronic musical instruments in 1960s or 70s!!) Experimentation is required to see if this would work.

AI

Another possible technique likely to be more reliable is AI. I anticipate this could potentially correctly identify commands more often than not, which would substantially change the experience of performance. Experimentation is needed to see if this would improve the piece or not. Use of this technique would also require pre-training variable names, so a player would have to draw on a set of pre-existing names rather than deciding names on the fly. However, in performance, I’ve had a hard time deciding on variable names on-the-fly anyway and have ended up with random strings.

Learning to play this piece already involves a neural learning process, but a physical one in my brain, as I practice and internalise the methods of the DomifareLoop class. It’s already a good idea for me to pre-decide some variable names and practice them so I have them ready. My current experience of performance is that I’m surprised when a command is recognised and play something weird for the variable name and am caught unawares again when the loop begins immediately recording. I think this experience would be improved for the performer and the listener with more preparation.

Performance Practice

The theme for AMRO, where this piece premiered was “debug”, so I included both pitch detection algorithms and left space to switch between them and adjust parameters instead of launching with the optimal setup. The performance was in Stadtwerkstadt, which is a clubby space and this nuance didn’t seem to come across. It would probably not be compelling for most audiences.

Audience feedback was entirely positive but this is a very friendly crowd, so negative feedback would not be within the community norms. Constructive criticism also may not be offered.

My plan for this piece is to perform it several more times and then record it as part of an album tentatively titled “Laptop and Tuba” which would come out in 2023 on the Other Minds record label. If you would like to book me, please get in touch. I am hoping that there is a recording of the premiere.

It works!

After many very long days, My project Domifare is working. For me. It won’t work for you because there is a bug in TuningLib. I have raised an issue, which the package maintainer will get to shortly. The package maintainer, who is me will fix it shortly. When I get back from Austria. I need to test my fix properly.

Only a subset of specified commands have been implemented, but I can record a loop and re-order the playback of a loop based on detected onsets. Hypothetically, I can also start and stop loops. In practice, pitch detection is terrible and the language is barely usable. Annoyingly, the utility of it depends on how good my tuba playing sounds.

If I want to use this as an actual tool, the way forward is playing the key phrases in as training data to an AI thing.

While writing this project, I raised three issues with the SuperCollider project over documentation and one issue with the LinuxExternals Quark over Pipewire. That will turn into a merge request. I might update the documentation for it.

If you want to hear this thing in progress, I’ll be using it on Friday. You can turn up in person to Linz, Austria or tune into the live stream. This is part of AMRO, who have a helpful schedule.

I feel like a zombie and will say something more coherent later.

Domifare back under active development!

I’m very exciting to be submitting a proposal to do a performance in the tuba-entered live coding language Domifare.

I’ve been wanting to pick this back up for a while and it seems like the main thing that motivates me is a deadline, so now I’ve got a deadline for version 1.0.

The initial specification of the language is quite modest to implement and my teaching term ends next week, so I’m confident this will be playable by the time the gig arrives. It’s always going to be chaotic because tuba pitch tracking, but it will be a joyful chaos!

More here as I get to active developing.

Strategies for using tuba in live solo computer music

I had the idea of live sampling my tuba for an upcoming gig. I’ve had this idea before but never used due to two major factors. The first is the difficulty of controlling a computer and a tuba at the same time. One obvious solution is foot pedals, which I’ve yet to explore and the other idea is a one-handed, freely moving controller such as the wiimote.
The other major issue with doing tuba live-sampling is sound quality. Most dynamic mics (including the SM57, which is the mic I own) make a tuba sound like either bass kazoo or a disturbingly flatulent sound. I did some tests with the zoom H4 positioned inside the bell and it appeared to sound ok, so I was going to do my gig this way and started working on my chops.
Unfortunately, the sound quality turns out not to be consistent. The mic is prone to distortion even when it seems not to be peaking. Low frequencies are especially like to contain distortion or a rattle which seems to be caused by the mic itself vibrating from the tuba.
There are a few possible work arounds. One is to embrace the distortion as an aesthetic choice and possible emphasise it through the use of further distortion fx such as clipping, dropping the bit rate or ring modulation. I did a trial of ring modulating a recorded buffer with another part of the same buffer. This was not successful as it created a sound lurking around the uncanny valley of bad brass sounds, however a more regular waveform may work better.
At the SuperCollider symposium at Wesleyan, I saw a tubist (I seem to recall it was Sam Pluta, but I could be mistaken) deliberately sampling tuba-based rattle. The performer put a cardboard box over the bell of the tuba. Attached to the box was a piezo buzzer in a plastic encasing. The composer put a ball bearing inside the plastic enclosure and attached it to the cardboard box. The vibration of the tuba shook the box which rattled the bearing. The piezo element recorded the bearing’s rattle, which roughly followed the amplitude of the tuba, along with other factors. I thought this was a very interesting way to record a sound caused by the tuba rather than the tuba itself.
Similarly, one could use the tuba signal for feature extraction, recognising that errors in miccing the tuba will be correlated with errors in the feature extraction. Two obvious thing to attempt to extract are pitch and amplitude, the latter being somewhat more error-resistant. I’ve described before an algorithm for time-domain frequency detection for tuba. As this method relies on RMS, it also calculates amplitude. Other interesting features may be findable via FFT-based analysis such as onset detection or spectral centroid, etc using the MLCD UGens. These features could be used to control the playing of pre-prepared sounds or live software synthesis. I have not yet experimented with this method.
Of course, a very obvious solution is to buy a better microphone. It may also be that the poor sound quality stemmed from my speakers, which are a bit small for low frequencies. The advantage of exploring other approaches include cost (although a tuba is not usually cheap either) and that cheaper solutions are often more durable or at least I’d be more willing to take cheaper gear to bar gigs (see previous note about tuba cost). As I have an interest in playing in bars and making my music accessible through ‘gigability,’ a bar-ready solution is most appealing.
Finally, the last obvious solution is to not interact with the tuba’s sounds at all, thus creating a piece for tuba and tape. This has less that can go wrong, but it looses quit a lot of spontaneity and requires a great deal of advance preparation. A related possibility is that the tubist control real-time processes via the wiimote or other controller. This would also require a great deal of advanced preparation – making the wiimote into it’s own instrument requires the performer to learn to play it and the tuba at the same time, which is rather a lot to ask, especially for an avant guarde tubist who is already dealing with more performance parameters (such as voice, etc) than a typical tubist. This approach also abandons the dream of a computer-extended tuba and loses whatever possibilities for integration exist with more interactive methods. However, a controller that can somehow be integrated into the act of tuba playing may work quite well. This could include sensors mounted directly on the horn such that, for example, squeezing something in a convenient location, extra buttons near valves, etc.
I’m bummed that I won’t be playing tuba on thursday, but I will have something that’s 20 minutes long and involves tuba by September

Great moments in tuba performance

During the third part, a piece broke off of my tuba. I managed to reattach it before the 4th part, but when I started playing again, I was about a quarter step out of tune. During the rehearsal, the composer – not a student but a visiting artist, known and respected in California – had worked with me on the tuning, specifically because he didn’t want the fourth part to be out of tune. I tried lipping it up, but my god I was flat. Maybe I was on the wrong note? Maybe I was lost? The ensemble was getting thinner and thinner as the pitch of the piece dropped until it was me, the piano and the basses. I got flustered. My heart raced. I was sitting on stage in front of all of the composers and a good portion of the sonologists. Take deep breaths. My god, I’m having a panic attack on stage and I can;t play my part. Normally, I like playing because I specifically don’t get tweaky, but this is a panic attack in front of everybody while holding a tuba which is being held together by soggy gaffing tape. I stopped playing until the final section. The composer did not smile at me after the piece. I came home and drank.

I’m on a waiting list to see a shrink. Anxiety is treatable. Not with meds, but with talk therapy. Six to eight weeks and it’s gone. this is considerably longer than I’ve been waiting. If they keep me waiting long enough, I can start all over again when I move in the fall.
I can’t decide if the way to deal with tuba problems and stage fright is to take the tuba out busking this weekend or to throw the goddamned thing into a canal;

Day of Homeland Resistance

so after staying up too late last night wasting my time and money and hours of my life, which I will never have back by watching something on a par with Bulletproof Monk, I got up early this morning to go to a protest outside of San Francisco City Hall. I showed up 15 minutes late and there was no one there. the date on my watch is mis-set, so I became convinced I had the wrong day. I started to leave when someone approached me and asked me where the protest was. so we went looking for it and found some other members of the band. We played one song and the sherrifs said that we had to stop since the protest did not have a permit to be near city hall yet. So we marched and played over to where the rest of the protesters were (by the bart station) and then listened to some stock speeches covering all leftist issues in one breath. We need jstice, housing, healthcare, peace equality, and end to evil and more good. Yes.
then we marched back to city hall, but the band did not play, because the protesters wanted to chant. then we listened to more speaches for good and against evil. then we did not play because the protesters wanted to chant. Then everyone was assembling into a freedom for Palestine march to the Isreal consulate. It was a funeral procession. so we figured out some funeral songs to play. But the protesters started chanting again and I decided that I didn’t want to carry a tuba over to a consulate and not play it. And i don’t know as much as I should about the Isreal/Palestine conflict as I should anyway. I bought a Chomsky book on it, but haven’t read it yet. so I took bart over to Christi’s office
I have recordings of all the speeches and one of the two songs that we played. I also have recordings of comments people made to me about the tuba on bart. the best/wort one, “wow, that’s kind of sexual.” thank you. goodbye.

busy busy busy

Today I did not play music. I worked in the Other Minds office, counting all their inventory, then filing and typing in surveys. grunt grunt. My arms and shoulders are sore, but this morning, they weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. After moving boxed of books and CDs off of shelves today, to count them, though, they have become sore. I am going to be so buff!
After werk, we went to look at the Chapel of the Chimes, but it closes at 5:00. So we went to get a copy of the Oakland Tribune. My picture is on the front page, below the fold! If you look very carefully, you can make out the tuba bell and then a silouette of someone playing it. That’s me! about 1/3 of a centimeter high! I’m going to scan it for your benefit, but actually, Christi has to scan it since she has the only copy of photoshop (since the old imac went away yesterday) and Tiffany is asleep in the room with the scanner, so it will have to wait.
Christi was very excited, despite the smallness and showed everyone in Gaylords the picture.
Then we went to micheals to get material to make Tennis Roberts sweatshirts. The raw materials were somewhat more expensive than anticipated, but that’s the price one must pay fo X-treme craftiness. We got white sweatshirts and pink and blue dye for them and puffy paint and glitter paint and ink jet sheets to print patterns on. the good old days of buying iron-on patches of everything are gone. These days Martha Stweard wannabes print their own.
My days are frivolous, but long. I think it’s good running around all the time right before grad school. I’ll get in the habit of it. And my chops will be great. I will be a super player of the bass guitar (with fretless skills, I think I could play a double bass also, if I had some time to figure it out) and of tuba. All my basses will be covered.
I think I want to get sousaphone player buisiness cards made. So when cute actavists tell me they thought the tuba playing was great, I can whip out my card. It should say:
Celeste Hutchins
Sousaphone Player
Protests * Concerts * Parades * Parties
And then an email address or phone number or something. Maybe not. Mostly, I want to be invited to play sousaphone at parties. Just in case.

Sousaphone Protesting

I meant to post first about Tennis Roberts and then talk about the protest that I went to today, but I ended up digressing so much into tuning that I feared Tiffany would just stop reading the post, since she has no patience for rambling about tuning. So I’ve broken it into two posts.
Christi’s uncle came over today to pick up our old imac. Late last night, I reofrmatted the purple imac’s hard drive and put OS9 on it and a few applications. It’s really much happier as an os9 machine. It runs fast and has a ton of hard drive space. But there’s something very sad about about reformatting a computer and not restoring it. It’s soul is gone. even if azll your data is moved over and you finally figured out how to move your bookmarks, it’s still… No two computers are exactly the same. They all have bit rot. But they all have it in different ways. I should light a candle or something for the repose of the soul of the purple imac.
Um, anyway, Christi’s uncle came over and we chatted for a while and then got lunch and then Christi started showing him how to use word. Christi’s uncle, Forrest, works in a dump. He drives the forklift around. Maybe he runs the whole place. Apparently he sees imacs at the dump all the time, but he didn’t know what they were until now. He just fished a plasma cutter out and now has a very nice welding rig. He says that he’s seen every item in our house at the dump. He didn’t know people were like that. What are they thinking about, throwing away their imacs?? Anyway, Christi asked him to fish them out. We could do some cool super-array of imacs runnign supercollider or something. It would be awesome.
So I left them to go play at the Okalnd docks protest. Last month, protesters formed a picket line across the entrance to the docks for APL, a military contracter that ships war materials around. The Oakland police shot at the protesters with “non-leathal” weapons and ended up also hitting some longshoremen and others. This was roundly condemned. I was in Seattle for the first one and missed it (which is ok, since I don’t really want to be shot at). But the BLO was playing this time, so I lugged my sousaphone on to BART. My poor horn is covered with duct tape, which is sealing off several leaks. Many people felt obligated to make duct tape jokes about it. Yes, it is ready for biochemical attack. I just used the tape cuz I like John Ridge. Anyway.
A large croud of people was assembled outside of the West Oakland Bart at 5:00. At the same time, a group of people was protesting outside of the APL building in Seattle. Cool cross-costal actavism. People were handing out flyers and maps and stuff. Other folks were addressing the croud about non-violence and strategy and various important annoucements, whcih I ignored in favor of adding duct tape to the horn. You can’t have too much duct tape.
some body gave a me a free newspaper that had in the mast head linked female signs with fists in them an a hammer and sickle. I was very excited to get the radical, communist, anarchist lesbian newspaper, but I can’t find the queer content in it. Anyway, One of the organizers, named Gopal, decided that the band should lead off the march to the docks. I was darn hot and it’s a long way to the end of the docks. I had to stop and pant several time during songs, none of which I had ever played before. The sax player who was being drum major would give me a quick run-down of the notes in the bass line, which I would promptly forget. But I was getting the hang of it the more we marched. and it was very nice to get a break at the last dock. I laid on the ground next to my horn and was then surrounded by press taking my picture. I guess exhausted sousaphone pkayers are picture-esque. Also, the horn is quite a bit bigger than me. I can see the captions now, “tiny sousaphone player can’t actually play horn.” Anyway, I might be in the Oakland Tribune tomorrow and the Daily Cal.
The rest of the band was coming in a 6:30 shift and was marching up from the bart station, so we decided to march back to gate 3 and meet up with them. The BLO is cool, because it has a strong emphasis on improvisation. We’ll play the head of the song and them maybe a verse or something and then the drum major will point at somebody and they’ll solo over the chord changes of the head. This goes on for a long time. Some of the folks a great solosists. Then we’ll play the bridge section, then maybe the head again and then maybe end the song. Some times we’ll sing the words instead of playing. So we played several songs on the way back to the gate and then played a bunch of songs there. We had just finished playing a very upbeat rendidtion of “We Shall Overcome,” when Gopal announced that we had oversome and had sucessfully stopped work at the docks for the shift.
So we all marched very triumphantly back to the BART station. It was a huge, jubulant crowd. when you see pictures in the news papers of giant crowds of leftist europeans carrying signs and celebrating because they won some thing. It was like that. We played and sang “Le Internationale,” but I only know the Billy Brag words and so couldn’t sing along. During the entire evening, the cops just sat and watched. Some of them bobbed their head a long with the music. They were completely hands-off. A definite improvement.
During the triumphant march back, my back was having no more of it. I had already been playing and carrying the horn non-stop for more than three hours. It’s a heavy horn. So I staggered back to the BART station, without playing anything. I felt vaguely guilty, but it hurt more than I wanted to deal with. Pain while playing music is not a good thing.
It doesn’t make you better, it just makes you hurt. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a reputatiuon for being the whiny new tuba player or something. I’m very embarassed that I couldn’t keep it up the whole time. I ought to be able to handle my horn. I expect that taking the sousaphone back up will get me back into shape though. And I expect that my shoulder is going to be screwed up for several days. All the weight goes on the left shoulder, high up, on the neck paert, right where I gave myself a nastly sunburn on saturday. But it wasn’t bad until the bitter end.
We got back to the bart station and I laid on the ground again. I think more news types may have taken my picture, but I’m not sure. After a while, my shoulder no longer felt like it was on fire and played a couple more songs with the band. Then I staggered towards the BART platform while they were still playing.
So we won! It was awesome! (“awesome” is the word of the day.) And very high energy the whole time. I couldn’t beleive it when I realized it was past 9:00 and I had been marching around for almost 4.5 hours. It’s also great because I don’t like going to things by myself and can’t always find anyone to protest with me. I can’t wait until next time. Maybe I’ll do some pushups between now and then to build some strength.

Bathtubs for tubas

So I spent yesterday trying to get my new sousaphone into working order. It’s not actually new. It’s very very used. It came in a refrigerator box filled with packing peanuts, shredded paper and trash. I emptied out the box looking for the gooseneck. Whoever oppened the box openned it from the bottom, so at the very bottom of the pile, I found a note explaining that the gooseneck was “mislaid.” But it was all worth while, because Tiffany discovered a tuba mouthpiece amid the rubble, which included dirty, used foam, house insulation, bottle caps, used matches, etc all smelling like ashtray. Very odd packing maeterial, but the shipping was hella cheap.
I took the horn outside and started hosing it out. Inside were spiderwebs and spare packing peanuts. Every solder joint leaked water, but that’s ok. If they have bad air leaks, I can either try to resolder them or just duct tape it. Eventually, the odor of the tuba went from nasty-old-tuba smell to odorless, so I left it in the sun to dry and maybe disinfect. I mean, would you want to put your mouth on something you had just hosed spider egg sacks out of, unless it spent some time in the sun first?
Of course, before hosing it out, I pulled out all of the valves. They’re piston valves and they seem to be made out of brass, which is kind of unusual. I wanted to clean them, but I don’t own any brasso, and I didn’t really want to buy any, so I hit the ecology center website looking for some earth-friendly brass cleaning alternative. it suggested katsup. I swear, if some enviro group told me to cure headaches by hitting myself on the head repeatedly, I’d try it. And then, in conversations about headache remedies, I would casually mention it and then add, anecdotally, “but it didn’t work for me.”
So I rubbed katsup on all the vales and then rinsed them several times. Then I hauled the tuba back inside and yanked all the tuning slides out. There’s a trick to this. Loop a dishtowel through the slide and use it to yank it out. You won’t hurt the horn, but if the slide isn’t frozen, it’ll come out. So I pulled the slides out, ran a trombone snake through them a bunch of times and then rubbed the shiny parts of them with katsup. I think Christi and Tiffany think that I’m insane.
The valves move pretty well and the slides will budge if you pull on them. They’re not perfect, but I don’t feel like I should invest the money to take them to a shop. the main body of the horn is still filty, since I coulsn’t submerge it, I didn’t run a snake through it. I’d need a jacuzzi tub. I always thought those were silly and useless. They take a kajillion gallons ot fill up and then they get gradually cold and you have to drain the whole thing and start over next time. I mean, why not just get a hottub? But you can’t wash a tuba in a hottub! Old tuba grease would cause all sort of problems. But you could wash it in jacauzzi tuba! You’d probably want to keep the water jets turned off while doing it. So these giant bathtubs make sense for tuba players. I’m sure that when my parents had one put in, they somehow intuitted that I would one day take up the tuba, and then, in my late twenties, long after I had left home, I would come back to my dear widowed father and ask if I could wash my sousaphone in his bathtub.
As soon as I find a gooseneck, where “find” means “buy,” I can check out how playable the horn is. Hopefully, I can do this tomorrow, since the Brass Liberation Orchestra is playing at a protest outside of Lockheed MArtin in Sunnyvale on Tuesday morning.

Looking for tuba in all the wrong places

londonjack76: hello there
londonjack76: how r u doing???
electrogirls: hi
electrogirls: i’m looking for a sousaphone
electrogirls: do you have one?
londonjack76: what is that ??
londonjack76: please explain
electrogirls: it’s a type of tuba designed for playing while walking or marching
electrogirls: a regular tuba would be ok too, as long as there was a way to walk with it
londonjack76: hehe i am so stoned
londonjack76: and i can barely understant
londonjack76: d
londonjack76: what is a tuba
electrogirls: a tuba is a musical instrument.
electrogirls: it’s very low and usually made out of brass (but someties also plastic)
electrogirls: it sounds like “oompa oompa”
londonjack76: ahh wow i was so confused
londonjack76: i thought is was some sex tool
londonjack76: hehehe
electrogirls: there’s like 3 or 4 feet tall and weigh 60 lbs. you’d need a big bed to have sex with a tuba involved
electrogirls: they’re wide too
londonjack76: escellent
londonjack76: sexcellent
electrogirls: i guss not that much bigger than a really fat fifth grader
londonjack76: tahts good
londonjack76: so sorry no i dont have one
londonjack76: heheh are were you expecting me to have one of those??
electrogirls: maybe you have a friend with one?
londonjack76: comeon now
londonjack76: hehe i dont think so
electrogirls: i’m looking for a cheap one to play during anti-war riots
electrogirls: i don’t want to take my good one out in the street in case it gets clubbed by a cop or hit with a tear gas canister
londonjack76: yeah i agree with you
londonjack76: nopes i dont sorry
electrogirls: it would totally suck if a tear gas canister went in the bell (the bell is then end that sound comes out of, about 4 feet in diameter)
londonjack76: so your going to the riot??
electrogirls: you’d probably never be able to play it again without accidentally gassing people
electrogirls: well, i try to avoid riots
electrogirls: they’re dangerous
londonjack76: i know
londonjack76: are a cute women ??
londonjack76: if you are dont go
electrogirls: but sometimes you can be marching down the street, minding your own vuisiness with a few hundred other people, just blocking traffic and playing tunes
electrogirls: and then suddenly cops with tear gas and clubs are after you
londonjack76: hehe guys will be all after you ( drunk guys )
londonjack76: heheh
electrogirls: the women being arrested in san francisco on thursday were really really vute
electrogirls: cute
electrogirls: after guys started seeing them being arrested, tey went out to be arrested too
londonjack76: heheh i wouldlove to be arrested with a cute women
londonjack76: why dont we get arrested together
londonjack76: 🙂
electrogirls: anti-war protesters are hela cute
electrogirls: hella
electrogirls: (hella means “very”)
electrogirls: well, getting arrested would be fun, but a i need a cheap sousaphone first
londonjack76: ahh
londonjack76: hehe you and the sousaphone
londonjack76: hehe
electrogirls: a sousaphone is a tuba kind of shaped like a hula-hoop
electrogirls: you see them in marching bands
londonjack76: yeah i get it
londonjack76: now i know