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2010-05-23T03:27:00.001-04:00

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Oh, the Sanctimonious Outrage!

2010-01-15T18:05:00.002-05:00

I'm still on moveon.org's mailing list, and I just got an intriguing email from them. Apparently, they are outraged that Visa is collecting their customary 3% fee for Haiti donations:

... when Americans donate to charity with their credit cards, the credit card companies get rich. In some cases they keep 3% of the donation as a "transaction fee," even though that's far more than it costs them to process the donation. It's outrageous and wrong—and it needs to stop.

I completely agree with this sentiment. Where we apparently disagree is that I think it is ALWAYS wrong for people to profit from the infrastructure of our economy. The fact is, Visa (or another credit card) is used as cash by a huge number of people. This means Visa gets a percentage on EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION. This amounts to nothing more than a tax.

It's funny to me that people only get outraged over profit happening around sanctimonious causes, ie, "think of the children" or "relief for the latest disaster." Just because a Haitian needs medical attention because of a hurricane, it's not OK to profit, but if some kid in south Portland gets hit by a car and needs medical attention, then profit is not only accepted and normalized, but encouraged.

Makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Farewell Football

2010-01-02T20:40:00.004-05:00

For a few years now, I have joked that my lingering interest in NFL football is one of the last vestiges of my middle-American upbringing. This might come as a surprise to readers of this blog who don't know me personally, since I almost never write about this facet of my life. The fact is, I really enjoy the game of football. I know the game well, and spend a lot of time reading about my favorite team from my hometown, the Cincinnati Bengals. I grew up a big baseball fan, but my interest in baseball faded after one of the labor strikes many years ago. My interest in football, however, has never wavered. Until now.

I've recently made a decision. This is the last year I will spend following the Bengals in particular, or professional football or sports in general. I want to talk about this decision from two points of view.

First, from a "fan loyalty" point of view for the sports fan. I've been a Bengals fan for more than 30 years, and anyone who knows this team knows that this is truly a feat of loyalty. The Bengals did well in the 1980s, going to the Super Bowl twice. Then the 1990s, and the first few years of this decade, the Bengals decayed into a run of sports futility only rarely seen in professional sports, losing far more games than they won. Despite this run, I remained a fan, watching games as often as possible, and particularly since the advent of the 'net, staying on top of what my team was up to.

For the past few years, since the Bengals hired Marvin Lewis as a coach, this tide has begun to turn. The Bengals have won more games than they lost, and in 2005 made the playoffs for the first time since the early 1990s. That didn't end so well, but it provided hope.

This year seems like a storybook year. It began with the Bengals being featured on Hard Knocks, an HBO reality show that documents training camp for one NFL team. It provided an unprecedented look into my favorite team, and I really enjoyed watching it. The last game of the regular season is tomorrow, and the worst the bengals can finish is 10-6. They have already clinched an AFC North championship and will therefore go to the playoffs.

I remember sitting down to watch the Super Bowl at the end of the 2001 season, when the Patriots played the Rams. The Patriots were heavy underdogs. As the game was starting, I remember turning to a friend of mine and saying: "there is no way the 'Patriots' lose this game after 9/11." Sure enough, the Patriots shocked the world, beat the Rams, became world champs, and launched their "Dynasty".

I have a similar feeling about this Bengals team this year. Fans got a close look at the team in Hard Knocks (which had the highest ratings ever for the show). The Bengals have dealt with adversity, one of the coaches' wives died suddenly, and one of their players, Chris Henry, was killed during the season. None of their players made the Pro Bowl (the allstar game for the NFL). It's a feel-good story, and we'll see what happens. It will be fun to watch.

So, you can't accuse me of not being "loyal" to my team. I've been a loyal fan to one of the worst franchises in professional sports for more than 30 years. My interest and support in my team and the game as a whole has never wavered. Until now. I will finish out this season, see how the Bengals do, and at the end of this season I'm done following football.

Second, the obvious question is, why? It has become clear to me that there are some fundamental philosophical differences I have with participating the spectacle of modern sports. Here are a few of them:

Vicariousness. Every moment I spend watching or reading about what other people do on a practice or playing field is a moment I have not worked on myself, experienced life in a more vivid way, or become a better person.
Distraction. Related to the above, football, and profession sports in general, is a distraction from more important issues of self and society. This reason alone is probably the biggest reason for my decision. I remember Noam Chomsky responding to a question about "sheeple," or why the "average person" (whatever that means) isn't smart enough to be aware of what's happening in the world. He said something like "on the contrary. For evidence of the analytical capability of the average person of the working class, turn on any sports talk radio show. You will see perceptiveness, nuanced opinion, and the like." If people were to stop their interest in sports overnight, and turn their time and attention to more pressing issues (opening their spirits, understanding the frightening political machinations happening, understanding what's happening to our planet, etc.), then things would change much more quickly. Widespread common interest in professional sports, as it stands, is one of the main mechanisms of social control, distracting people from real, vivid, important issues of the day and giving them somewhere to focus their primal, competitive urges where nothing of any importance, personally or socially, is at stake.
Capital and class warfare. NFL players make millions of dollars per year. Team owners make even more. It is a multibillion dollar industry, nearly all of which extracts money from the working class, transferring it to the economic elite.
Glorified violence. Football is perhaps the most violent game in the world. Players suffer horrific injuries, even death, regularly. And of course the players who lose their millions are, like all other members of the working class, spit out and not cared for. For more on this I suggest reading former NFL player Dave Pear's blog, where he documents the plight and declining health of former NFL players.
Polarization. Widespread interest in sports polarizes people into "Us vs. Them" mentalities, making it much easier for the illusion of, for instance, the two-party system in America to survive.

Ultimately, I think this decision has been in the making for many years now. I've known for years that despite any enjoyment I got from being a Bengals fan, it was ultimately a pretty big time sink for me. The fact that there are now many facets of my life that need more of my attention actually made this an easy decision. The fact that I have a hunch that I'll say "Who Dey" for the last time after the Super Bowl this year just makes this decision all the more resonant.

Avatar, Allegory, and Capital

2009-12-30T03:04:00.001-05:00

I just got back from seeing the film Avatar. I enjoyed it greatly, it pretty much instantly propelled itself into one of my favorite films of all time.

Visually, of course, it's stunning, but I'd expect nothing else from the WETA crew in New Zealand. Great eye candy, especially in 3D. I haven't seen a 3D movie in 25 years, since Jaws 3 was out. My, how technology has changed. I think Avatar will be regarded as a revolution in filmmaking similar to the LOTR series earlier this decade. Certainly, the computer animation and stop motion technology recalls Gollum but with another several years of refinement.

But apart from the eye candy, I was interested in the plot. I wasn't really sure what to expect. The main theme, of course, is Soulless Greedy Capitalism vs. Enlightened/Attuned Indigenous Population, or simply an allegory on Colonialism. I wasn't sure what to expect, normally I don't like to be spoon-fed which is what allegory turns into all-too-often. But there were some subtleties that I really appreciated.

SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The Na'vi, who are the indigenous population, exist on Pandora, a stunningly beautiful moon teeming with unbelievable life. This race of humanoids is deeply attuned to the life on the planet, fully aware of their connections to one another, across species, past and present. Their greeting to each other is "I see you," where "see" is something akin to "grok" in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. It is a verbal acknowledgement that the seeing speaker has fully focused their attention and consciousness on the other individual. This reflects a common pattern with indigenous peoples all across planet Earth: these people often have a way-of-seeing that is much deeper than awareness of resources to exploit so common in our western culture.

The Na'vi have a sacred tree, called the Tree of Souls. The scientist characters are intrigued by this tree, apparently it has a network of intermingling roots not unlike a neural net, with a complexity on the scale of, or superior to, a human brain. This network reminded me a lot of the mycelium network that mushrooms create in forests, acting as the "brains" of the forest, and shunting nutrients from one part of the forest to another as needed. The Tree Of Voices also allows the Na'vi to commune-icate with their ancestors, and even to transplant consciousness from one body to another.

Of course, the capitalists don't care about this sacred neural net. They wish to destroy it to intimidate the Na'vi and get them to abandon the Tree, so that they can mine for the (horribly-named) Unobtainium that exists in abundance near the tree.

This is the central part of the conflict in the story: the military/capitalists (mechanized thinking) wanting to exploit the ineffable natural resources the native people have attuned to over thousands of years (organic thinking), all in the name of short-term profit and without regard to the damage this exploitation will cause.

The Na'vi, of course, resist. They are portrayed as the "white-hat good guys" in the story, and the militaristic capitalists are the clear bad guys. The Na'vi have a Mother Goddess called Eywa, and when the protagonist prays to her for help "defeating" the Evil Greedy Capitalist Fuckers, he is told that "the mother doesn't take sides, she protects the balance of life."

This statement got me thinking. Let's assume the Gaia hypothesis for a moment, here on Earth. If this is true, then Gaia will understand that our present system of Capitalist expansion and Colonialism is completely unsustainable; all Gaia must do is wait it out until "victory" occurs and the Capitalist Empire crumbles under its own weight. Once this occurs, in a planetary blink of an eye (a few generations in human terms), the planet will reclaim the earth to Nature.

Of course, this is a Hollywood movie, so the good guys always win. On Pandora, the Colonialists are defeated, despite their superior technology, when Eywa hears Jake's prayer and sends the various denizens of the forest to fight the Capitalist Machine. Apparently in this world, set about 150 years from now, Capital has lost its ability to morph and adapt into a new role able to exploit each situation as it changes and evolves.

Not coincidentally, tonight I got into a "comment discussion" on Facebook with a Democrat. There I said that I believe our current system of government is broken, probably irrevocably, and the only way out is for more people to wake up and abandon capitalism as an ideal.

Hopefully, a few people will get their head cracked open by this film, and begin to see Capital for what it is. Ironically, Capital (and more specifically, James Cameron and the Hollywood MegaCorporations) has already profited $400 million within a week of this film's release.

What was it I said about Capital morphing to profit from any situation it finds itself in?

The Facebook machine

2009-10-09T13:51:00.002-04:00

Apparently, this blog is now being "followed" on Facebook. Thanks to whoever set it up that way. :-)

Obviously, I haven't been posting here as much. I have, incidentally enough, been Facebooking somewhat regularly and posting the occasional burst of neural activity there.

Life pretty much continues as it has; keeping busy with work, building my studio, playing music with my guys as often as our schedules allow, trying to find time to finish our album.

Politically, I remain suspicious of the Obama administration, the bailout package, the War On Terra, etc. etc.

Personally, I have been undergoing a fundamental change. My HealthQuest is a big part of this, stepping up and putting things I've learned over the past few years into regular, disciplined practice. This is already bearing good fruit.

Isn't it interesting?

2009-06-14T15:48:00.002-04:00

How that when it is widely believed that Ahmadinejad stole the election, there is mass protest, chaos in the streets, and hardcore police suppression.

Yet, when it was widely believed that the Bu$hites stole the election in 2000 and 2004, Americans sat in front of their televisions and computer screens, and whined a bit (yes I include myself in this)?

Just sayin'. I find this fascinating.

Obama, 9/11, and US-Muslim relations

2009-06-04T15:39:00.002-04:00

I haven't been writing in this space much as of late. Part of this is because this blog has become largely political; my other writings (such as they are) have gone elsewhere, although the trend of me not writing as much has continued.

While I work, I'm listening to Obama's speech in Cairo. As always, I'm struck by his eloquence, and by how in his speeches, Obama really seems to get it, he seems enlightened. For instance, the assertion that we must speak our truth from our hearts in order to get anywhere, is an obvious truism for me.

However, he turns to America's occupation of Afghanistan, resting squarely on the 9/11 attacks, and the myth of al-Qaeda, as the basis for said occupation. This is unfortunate, because the conspiracy theory that 19 boxcutter-wielding al-Qaeda operatives (most of whom are known to still be alive) is a lie, a myth. Therefore, it is no basis for a foreign policy.

Hope, as we know, is tenacious, and it is my hope and prayer that this myth will be widely seen for what it is: a lie designed to allow very wealthy, powerful people increase their power and wealth. Clearly, my hope in this matter is audacious.

Compromise? Or Fundamental Change?

2009-02-11T21:57:00.002-05:00

He'll achieve these goals the same way he always has: by bringing us together and reminding us how much we share and how alike we really are. You see, Barack doesn't care where you're from or what your background is or what party, if any, you belong to.

With her speech at the Democratic National Convention last year, Michelle Obama announced what the methodology of the Obama administration would be: compromise. Compromise is not inherently a bad thing, obviously. It is necessary for people to coexist with any semblance of peace.

However, the problems we face -- and by this I mean economic problems, because all other problems are rooted in their economic roles -- will not be solved by compromise, where those who have motivation to preserve the status quo are part of the compromise. This will simply keep things the way they are and have been for decades.

We need fundamental over-turning of how our society is fundamentally organized. Presently, the fundamental organizing factor in world society and culture is money. Money is completely abstract, 100% so. It doesn't really exist, it has no value other than the value we all pretend it has.

For me, this is obvious, as long as I stop and think about it for a moment. But then that moment passes, and I revert back to my American reality, wageslaving, buying stuff, and paying off debt. It is more than the default mode of being; it has its own momentum. It is difficult to recognize, much less escape.

I was reading a friend's blog and she is experiencing similar frustrations. This "bailout" package they are talking about is only an attempt to prolong the economic status-quo, and does not recognize the fundamental problem: Capitalism as a concept is flawed, is not indefinitely sustainable, and is near collapse under its own weight. Pretending otherwise is, at best, prolonging the inevitable and at worst, making the inevitable much more unpleasant than it needs to be.

Yet, capitalism is remarkably resilient, as my friend and old teacher has taught me. Injustice, oppression, and suffering are built-in to the very fabric of capitalism and are not escapable. But as capitalism grows and wealth consolidates itself, the amount of injustice and suffering systematically increases, in that more and more are affected. But enough people are left in enough comfort, that they have motivation to preserve the status quo. And sadly, most days I include myself in this group.

Yep, Linux is better....

2009-02-05T22:44:00.003-05:00

Proof here, with commentary from Slashdot:

From install time to GUI efficiency, Ubuntu beats Windows and is often twice as fast. Where Windows 7 is competitive, the difference is something the average user would not notice. The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user.

Where have I heard this before? I'm running Linux Mint on my laptop these days, and it's awesome. Compiz Fusion is really cool, and doesn't seem to cause a performance lag. I can now use Linux with work... everythign I want to use the laptop for just works.

As an experiment....

2009-01-25T22:46:00.004-05:00

Here's a thought experiment I've been bouncing around my head recently:

Every time you hear a politican or journalist utter the word "create jobs," automatically substitute "create slavery" in your mind.

I'm convinced that the present capitalist employment structure of our society is a form of slavery. Many will be outraged by this concept, that slavery not only still exists but is the norm in America, but I am more convinced it is true. And, by "a form of slavery" I do not mean "the form of slavery that existed in the Americas until (theoretically) the end of the Civil War in 1865."

By slavery, I mean something like "A condition of subjection or submission characterized by lack of freedom of action or of will [1913 Webster]." Note that wageslavery meets these conditions. Also note that it doesn't say involuntary subjection or submission, which nulls the "if you don't like your job, quit; you still have free will" argument. Even so, in the end it's always a question of how much subjection or submission the person is willing to endure. The idea that survival without enduring some level of subjection or submission in our society is impossible is constantly reiterated everywhere you look. And, ironically, the self-made entrepreneur remains one of the fundamental archetypes of capitalist culture.

The Tenacity of Hope

2008-11-05T19:51:00.003-05:00

Before we eat dinner together, my family does a blessing each night. Much of the time, we hold hands, center ourselves, and say what we are thankful for in that moment. Tonight, I said I was thankful for the tenacity of hope.

Over the past 2 months since my last post, I've vacillated back and forth between genuine optimism regarding the Obama campaign, to utter pessimism about the state of American politics in general. Both remain valid points of view in my opinion.

Clearly, yesterday's elections were historic moments, and you can feel a palpable sense of relief and optimism, as well as a renewed sense of hope.

As I watched Obama's speech last night at midnight, I got very emotional, with tears strolling down my face. Apparently I was in good company, but I suspect my emotions were quite different from these 2 iconoclast African-Americans.

You see, I so want to believe what Obama is saying, that he really is about change, that he wants to make this world a better place for all people. But as I've written here, the memory of 1992 lingers too fresh in my mind, and I just can't quite force myself to abandon my knowledge of history and cling to a false hope.

But one thing is already different, which is surprising and pleasing. The tone of American political dialogue already has shifted from Bu$hite rhetoric of spending the "political capital" he earned from the American people after stealing his second-term election, of arrogance and aggression, of not listening to the throngs of people protesting in the streets, to one of working together for a common good. A small sampling:

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.... As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.
--Barack Obama
I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.
--John McCain
Last night, I had a warm conversation with President-elect Barack Obama. I congratulated him and Senator Biden on their impressive victory. I told the President-elect he can count on complete cooperation from my administration as he makes the transition to the White House.... It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House. I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have awaited so long.
--George W Bush
This was an exercise in American democracy of which Americans across the political spectrum are justifiably proud. President-Elect Obama was inspirational and I'm certain he will continue to be. The Department of State will do everything that we can, and I personally will do everything that I can, to ensure that this is a smooth transition.... I want to close on a personal note, as an African-American, that I am especially proud."
--Condoleezza Rice
Every American ought to celebrate tonight. It is a hopeful and optimistic thing for our country, and for the world it's a great symbol of what America's all about."
--Karl Rove

This type of dialogue is to be expected at the end of an election, but the shift in tone is palpable.

Ultimately, time will tell. Hope is tenacious inside me, yet I remain cautious. I think things will change, at least a little bit. After the Democrats won the house a few years back, I remember deriding the "wave of optimism" that would no doubt sweep the country. But this feels different. Obama has charisma, there is no doubt about that.

Let's see if he manages to do anything.

What I urge those people carried away by their optimism, hope, and relief to remember is the same thing I've been saying all throughout this campaign season. The sum total of American politics, for the people, does not begin and end on election day. Obama has been elected. Now the real work begins.

DNC = Does Not Compute?

2008-09-01T21:46:00.007-04:00

"Now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation."
--Barack Obama, 2008 Democratic Nomination Acceptance Speech

I've been following the Obama story with great interest, and saw most of the big speeches from the Democratic National Convention. This is unusual for me, because I'd stopped listening to politics for the most part. Obama definitely has charisma, and is a spectacular orator.

And the thing that is throwing me off, is that I actually agree with 8 out of 10 things he says. This is unprecedented. Even when I supported Nader in 2000, it was probably 7 out of 10.

However, past experience (namely Clinton in 1992-1997 or so) tells me that politicians like this, even one as obviously skilled as Obama, are all talk. I remember the euphoria from 1992 when Clinton was elected. I remember thinking, "we won." And yet, by 1996 I was thinking that in his 2nd term, Clinton would actually do things to change the world in his 2nd term, when he didn't have to worry about re-election. But by 2000, things were worse and I was really disillusioned about the American political process.

The point I have to remember is one I've articulated many times on this blog: Democrats and Republicans each serve the power structure in different ways. Republicans push the line as far as they can get away with, and the Democrats hold position, offering a little relief (at least in comparison), until the next Republican president takes office.

The point of American politics is not to actually solve problems, but rather to pacify the American people into idle, comfortable submission and apathy. Therefore, no politician in his right mind will say something that isn't immediately agreeable.

So my biggest problem with all this is that it's just a political system that I don't trust, that I believe is broken, and that I don't see how can be fixed. So why participate in it? On the other hand, the pragmatic argument is that suffering is likely to ease somewhat if Obama ends up president. But who knows.

So even if we assume that the system works, a point that I'm very much NOT prepared to grant, there are still many problems with all this.

One important issue to me is the issue of intellectual property, as readers of this blog doubtlessly know. Joe Biden is on the wrong side of intellectual property debate. This alone makes it difficult to get behind Obama/Biden.
I find it ironic that Obama said that Bill Clinton made "the case for change as only he can make it" during his speech, given how the issue of change was itself precisely the cornerstone of my disillusionment and disappointment during the Clinton administration.
Whatever happened to "war is good for the economy"?
It's extremely interesting that, 8 years after the Nader run in 2000, Obama is using Nader's argument for change. But rather than "there is no difference between Republicrats and Demicans," he's saying "there is no difference between the Bush administration and a possible McCain administration." Perhaps Nader's message has been absorbed more deeply than many realize.
I have a HUGE issue with the Democrat's repeated insistence on clinging to outmoded ideals that "a job is dignity." One's work is one dignity, whether or not one is waged for it. The fact that people must wageslave for 40 hours per week, and still struggle to meet their economic obligations under the system of wageslavery, is criminal. For all his hope, Barack Obama still believes that making sure MORE people participate in this system is the best way to help the American economy.

All these arguments are true, and plain to my eye. However, I still must concede that the pragmatic argument above carries weight in my soul. If Obama becomes President, it is likely that suffering will be reduced compared to a Bush or McCain presidency. Therefore, vote for Obama.

It is because of this argument, and ONLY because of this argument, that as it stands now I will vote for Obama in November. But I will NOT allow my participation in American politics to end there. The system is broken, and needs a serious upgrade.

Good citizenry goes beyond voting once every leap year.

Don't you feel safe?

2008-08-04T03:11:00.003-04:00

For the first time in history, a country has more than 1% of its adult population in prison.

And that country, dear readers, is The United States, as reported by The Correctional News, a trade magazine for the prison industry.

Do you think maybe that there is a trade magazine for the prison industry has anything to do with this fact? Think about it: there are annual trade shows for the prison industry, where they get together to figure out how to increase profits.

No, that can't be related.

Fuel

2008-05-21T01:21:00.002-04:00

I took a nice ride tonight on our scooter, about 60 miles round trip, down Route 35 (mostly) from New Gloucester to Hollis. It's still chilly in Maine, it's been going into the low 40s at night. Tonight it was raining for the second half of the trip.

I've been reading several books by Emma Restall-Orr. I have 3 of her books, all of which approach various subjects from the point of view of druidry. Her newest book is about Pagan ethics, which is a subject near to my heart; there are many overlaps between this book and the book I've had in my head for a while. It's philosophical, but not academic. Another of her books discusses being with your environment, tuning in to what is happening around you. So while it was cold, and wet, it was great fun just whizzing through it at 37 miles per hour.

It was good to clear my head. Since I started working from home a few months ago, I don't get out of our place much. I've been spending lots of time outdoors lately, building garden beds. They're done now, we'll plant this weekend. I've been so busy with everything, I've not had as much time for my normal creative endeavors, mostly music and writing. My creativity has gone into the new job, and into the garden beds.

I'm not bitching, just describing. There is plenty of time for everything.

The warm weather is nearly here. Summer is coming. This is a good thing.

a numbers milestone: 100, 411, and 309.8

2008-04-17T10:56:00.005-04:00

So what is 100 pounds? 200 rolls of toilet paper. 1 cubic foot of topsoil. 6 average car tires. 23 2-liter bottles of soda. 7 Edgars (my daughter's poodle). 3,024 compact discs.

100 pounds is also the amount of weight I have lost from my highest known weight, about 15 years ago.

I once weighed 411 pounds. Very likely, I weighed more than that, as after seeing that unfathomable number on the scale I went for several years without weighing myself.

This morning, I got on the scale, and it read 309.8. For the first time I am below 311, which means I've lost more than 100 pounds.

There are many reasons for the weight loss (walking, eating vegetarian/vegan, shovelgloving, the No-S Diet, t'ai chi, yoga) but my latest round of weight loss has come from the master cleanse fast. I'm presently on day 7 of the fast.

It is possible that when I break the fast I will put some weight back on. I'm already budgeting for this mentally, but I have some ideas about how to stabilize and continue the weight loss. Overall my weight stays pretty steady; I've been at 325 fairly consistently for 2 years now.

Anyway, forgive this moment of exuberance and self-indulgence over personal accomplishment, but GO ME! :-D

fukk da pope!

2008-04-16T23:41:00.002-04:00

Can you believe this nonsense? The pope and George W hanging out like old buddies, with all the pomp and ceremony around it?

And listen to what they're saying: the pope was talking about the sexual abuse scandal among catholic priests in the US, but changed to subject to say: ""What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?"

Yeah, widely-available pr0n is the problem. Not the destructive behavior of sexually-repressed men in positions of spiritual authority. Let's blame the fact that kids might see sex on a screen somewhere. Not those who actually decide to attack and violate these children.

Then to show just how full of cr@p all of this is, George W piped up: "In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred."

Sigh. Where to begin.

But don't worry. Things will be better soon when Obillary is in the White House.

Mmm hmmm.

No, really.

Q&A

2008-03-15T15:08:00.002-04:00

A Seeker's Question: Why do we continue to do things to ourselves that we KNOW are not good for us, that we know will harm us and bring no enduring benefit?

A Shaman's Answer: Because we are not yet good enough at loving ourselves.

1000 True Fans, or, art patronage in the 21st century

2008-03-05T12:30:00.002-05:00

I just came across this fascinating article called 1,000 True Fans. It is basically a manifesto on how, with web/Internet technologies, a creative person can make a sustainable living if they have just 1000 "true fans":

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

The idea here is not new, but it is a nice articulation of a formula that bands have followed for years. For example, Marillion (one of my all-time favorite bands) first began exploring the potential of the Internet in 1997, when their fans (me included) donated money ($50, $10, $100 etc) to get the band to be able to come tour the USA, a venture which would have been cost-prohibitive otherwise. Then in 2000, they again tapped into their fanbase to finance their album, Anoraknophobia.

The challenge, of course, is to find 1000 true fans. Not a simple task.

Speaking of "true fans" (LOL), I wanted to note here that my band, Freakwitch, has finished our new album, Interconnected. If you are a myspace person, you can here 6 of the 8 songs on our myspace page. Or, you can listen to the full album right from your browser by going to our RPM challenge page. Or if you are "old school" net music aficionado you can download the mp3s directly from us (though PLEASE use the other 2 to save bandwidth if you are able).

We took part in the RPM Challenge in February, which is something like the National Novel Writing Month, except that you record an album rather than write a novel in a month. We decided to go for it, partly because we were tired of not getting recordings done, and partly because we wanted to give my new recording rig a test drive. Enjoy it, and if you do please consider becoming one of our 1000 true fans. :-)

Concentration of Power

2008-03-03T23:27:00.004-05:00

Ok, you can make the argument that this post is in response to seeing a headline that Rush Limbaugh is ordering his cult to cross the lines and vote for Hillary in Texas. Sheesh.

Clearly, there was a deal made here somewhere. Some money (or another form of concentrated energy) changed hands somewhere.

And in the matter of Clinton vs. Obama, this is demonstrative of the reason why I cannot endorse Hillary Clinton.

It's not about her shady past, her questionable profiteering, her womanly laundry capability when it comes to stained blue dresses, or anything like that.

It's about her obvious connection to existing power structures. When Rush Limbaugh of all people is openly campaigning for Hillary Clinton, you know that there is a connection there. This is the existing power structure trying to preserve itself. And it says a lot about how much they fear Obama.

Speaking of Obama, let me take you back for a moment.

It's 1991. A young Democrat takes the political world by storm, and convinces people that there may indeed be a way out of the oppressive dominance of the Republicans and back to more compassionate, sane values. He was a breath of fresh air and inspired hope when he spoke. He was intelligent, articulate, and conveyed an honest passion that was refreshing from the usual scope of politician of the day.

He wins the election.

/cue Monty Python/
"And there was much rejoicing." *Yay, hooray*

And from my point of view, not a heck of a lot changed. Capital, (or the corporations, the neocons, whatever you want to call it) expanded its power got wealthier, thousands are people were killed in the name of profit, etc etc. Things did indeed feel better immediately, but I soon realized the rush of euphoria (I can't believe We(tm) actually won!) wore off quickly. The Clinton Years were, in my mind, characterized primarily by a relief that the velocity of destruction and greed seemed to be slowing.

Before you accuse me of believing that there is no difference between Demicans and Republicrats (yes I voted for Nader in 2000, but don't worry, Gore "won" Maine) I concede that, obviously, Bush II is "worse" than Clinton. But this is only because Bush is 8 years further down, and at the opposite polar point of, the same trajectory that Clinton rode for 8 years.

I now am aware of the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The 2000 election taught me that, as I've written before. They each serve the power structure in different ways. Republicans push the line as far as they can while in power, then the Democrats maintain that power until the next Republican is elected. Lather, rinse, repeat. This give and take is now the sum total of American political consciousness, such that anything that exists outside of this power structure is seen as not valid or "not realistic" or other such dismissal. This dance between the two goes back decades. Think about it:

1992-2000, the Clinton years. The golden age. Wealth, prosperity for many. American didn't actually invade and occupy any countries, we just bombed them from afar.
1980-1992, the Reagan/Bush years. Destroyed labor unions, several wars, the rich got richer, etc etc.
1976-2000, the Carter Years. End of Vietnam, the country heals after Watergate with another young fresh breath of trustworthy air.
1968-1976, the Nixon Years. Vietnam. Watergate. All kinds of outrageous scandals, corruption, genocide, standard Republican nonsense.
1963-1968, the Johnson Years. Vietnam, and the empowerment of the Military Industrial Complex. This is a Democrat, no less....
1961-1963, the Kennedy Years. Another golden age, another young politician who charms people, etc etc. This one had people feeling so good they killed him for it.

And so on. Push the envelope, then provide some relief because things don't seem to be plummeting as quickly. Push/pull. Give/take. Take it all together, and over time you see that this energy pattern is a downward spiral.

Anyone who is connected to this energy pattern, this concentration of power, should NOT be voted in to power. Anyone reading this from Ohio (my birth state) or Texas should read this as a suggestion to vote for Obama. There, I've officially done my part to counter Rush Limbaugh's endorsement.

After the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, in general I am not inclined to vote these days. Obama is the only one I would actually vote for, I think. But I know this: I will not limit my participation in American politics to this one event every 4 years.

EDIT: someone pointed out to me that Obama is still very much a part of the system, and I completely agree with this. My point is, at present Obama is less entrenched into the system than Clinton is. Perhaps in 15 years they will be similarly invested. This underscores the point that the problem is with STRUCTURES of power, and not with individual people. This point was brought home by Al Gore; here's a guy who participated in the atrocities of the Clinton years, who votes Bush into power in 2000 when they stole the election for him, etc etc. Now that he is removed from the power structure, he's doing good work with his films and environmental activism.

So yes, I am quite suspicious of concentrations of power, and the reason Obama is so attractive is because he is, for the most part, outside of that structure at present. This is also why I am suspicious that things will change, because if he does win the presidency he will then be assimilated into the power structure.

Yes, I still love Maine in the winter...

2008-02-15T01:06:00.005-05:00

We had a winter storm pass through. We got 12" of snow, then it turned to freezing rain and then rain. Truly a "wintry mix." The snow is piled about 2/3 of the way up our garage at the edge of the driveway. Our power went out for almost 24 hours.

But yes, I still love Maine.

I took some photos, and (finally) started a Flickr account. There are 9 photos in the set. Here are some thumbies to give you something to check out:

Whose side is the RIAA on?

2008-02-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

In case there was any doubt about whose side the RIAA is on, this article clears things up. The public perception they would like to create is that the RIAA is busy fighting for the artists, by suing those artists' biggest fans.

Mmm hmmm.

But now the RIAA is arguing that the artists get paid too much. I mean, getting 8 whole percent of the sale price of a 99 cent digital download, DAMN those artists are greedy. What do they think they do, write, perform, and create the product we're selling or what?

According to papers filed by the RIAA at the Copyright Royalty Board, the labels want the board to reduce the rate to 8% of wholesale revenue. The current rate is about 9 cents per song, but it often is lowered in negotiations with the record companies. That money usually is split 50-50 between the publisher and the songwriter.

So yeah, that 8 per cent royalty rate is actually split between the artist and the publisher. So in actuality, the artists only see 4 percent.

It gets better. They also want to ELIMINATE royalty payments for streaming audio. This is when you click on a link on a webpage somewhere, and the music starts playing on your computer without you having to save a file or download. The RIAA is arguing that this does not constitute a "mechanical" royalty, which is paid whenever someone buys a copy of a song. The fact that streaming technology necessitates transferring a copy of the song from the server to the listener's computer seems to elude the RIAA.

Yet another example of how the RIAA misunderstands the digital age, and its application to outdated business models. Their business model is doomed, and they know it. For 70 years, the RIAA has been nothing more than the gatekeepers between artist and fan, and now there is new technology that makes that position completely moot and irrelevant.

So rather than adapt to the new reality, they grip ever tighter to the old paradigm, to the point where they are suing their best customers and ripping off their artists.

Good plan. Uh-huh. That'll work.

Penultimate Shift

2008-01-27T02:28:00.000-05:00

I just finished my penultimate shift working @ AAA. I've accepted a new job working for RealTraps beginning on Monday. Lots of changes in our reality... good changes.

Lots of details to come, not the least of which is the laptop-wrangling I've done this week. I have a new laptop, and I'll be writing about Liberating it from Vista. I will need XP for my job, and I've worked very hard to get XP up and running on my new laptop. Linux went in much more easily, of course.

Of course.

Anyway, tomorrow is the final shift at AAA. I like the turn of phrase on "penultimate shift" because it reminds me that something new is always around the corner.

Gulf of Tonkin redux? and, Zeitgeist

2008-01-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

Those who pay attention to what is being said in the corporate media understand that they are, by and large, tools of propaganda to shape public opinion. I still keep an eye on cnn.com fairly regularly so that I can continue to see this. I'm particularly interested in what is said about both Iran and Venezuela, since it is likely that these two countries will be future targets of the US Military machine (given that these 2 countries have among the largest oil reserves in the world).

Anyway, on cnn.com today there was another story that reminded me of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that launched the Vietnam War. It was reported that Iranian ships 'harass' U.S. Navy, officials say.

Are they for real? What armed force, anywhere in the world, would knowingly "harass" the US military without provocation? Knowing the technological superiority of the US military, and knowing the US military's unabashed willingness to blow the crap out of anyone they perceive as "enemy," I think anyone who would "harass" the US military would have to be insane. I just don't think it's likely.

Of course, anytime you have boys playing in their war machines, one must account for increased testosterone levels, so who knows. But then again, increased testosterone levels are known to bring about insanity.

On another note, a friend mentioned the Zeitgeist movie in a comment a couple entries down. I've watched the film; it's fantastic. I highly recommend watching it, though I will say that if you are Jewish or a Christian, and unwilling to have your BS (Belief System) challenged by rational argumentation grounded in both history and world myth, don't bother as you are likely to simply be offended. The film does do a great job of showing how religion (and here I mean organized religion, or as my father would say, the "Big-C" church) is little more than a mechanism for social control and domination, teaching people to submit to external, arbitrary authorities and stop thinking. Or as they say in a quote in the movie, to take authority as the truth rather than truth as the authority. Brilliant.

You can watch the video entirely online, it is available on Google video.

Linux Audio

2008-01-06T02:47:00.000-05:00

I was very glad to see this primer on Linux audio: Audio Production Tools for Linux. It looks like audio for Linux is getting closer to ready for prime time.

In general I have the attitude: no matter how many bells and whistles exist in commercial software apps, if I can get the job done with Free software then I should do so. It just so happens that Free software tools have in many places gotten better than what commercial offerings can provide.

In particular, Ardour is growing incredibly, and Hydrogen looks wicked cool as well. Ubuntu Studio is probably what I'll try first, it also has some video features which look intriguing.

The Joys of Home Ownership

2008-01-03T14:25:00.000-05:00

For the most part, I love "owning" my home (though I still have philosophical differences with the notion of "owning" land and homes). It gives me freedom to do whatever I want with the place, and of course the economic benefits are well-known.

But sometimes it's just a pain in the ass. Like, say, the past 18 hours. We have about 18" of snow on the ground, and last night it got down to below zero, BEFORE the wind chill.

So last night I went to make dinner.... no gas. Hmm, I thought. If there's no gas in the stove, then that means..... no furnace.

Indeed, the furnace wasn't working. It was still reasonably warm at this point. So the first thing I did was go out to see if the propane tanks were full. After a fair amount of time digging a path to them (18" of snow and all) I discovered that, indeed, they were all about half full. I called our gas guy and he had some advice for me. I tried what he suggested (cleared off the roof around the furnace chimney, and restarted the gas) and, no luck.

So we all spent the night in our room with the space heater on (Mo, LM, myself, our dog, and my daughter's new gerbils). It was actually warm in there, but of course coming out of the room this morning was no fun.

After another phone call I decided to investigate the regulator at the back of the house. It's just off the back porch; sadly we have no way to get down from the back porch, it's basically a small balcony overlooking the hill and our woods. I could, however, see that the regulator was frozen solid.

I looked up, on the edge of the roof, and sure enough there were a bunch of icicles hanging down above where the regulator is. The exhast vent for the stove is right there; the warm air from the stove melts the snow on the roof, and then the water drips down and lands on the regulator. This is why it was encased in ice. Bad engineering.

So I went around to the back of the house and dug another path through the snow along the edge of the house to the regulator. After some gentle TLC with a hammer and chisel, the regulator was cleared out. I made double-sure the vent was clear; the vent being clogged with ice was the cause of the problem. When this happens the gas flow is designed to shut down.

After that I came back inside, turned on a burner on the stove, and sure enough there was the telltale hissing sound and the smell of propane. Yay!

So I re-lit the pilot lights and we were back in business. In fact the heater just kicked off again a few minutes ago, which means the house is back up to 68 degrees F.

I can't move the regulator easily, so soon I'll build a small shelter to cover the regulator, so any dripping water will be deflected away from it.

Don't wanna have to do this again. Though at least we're warming up now, we're up to 6.8 degrees F. :-)

conspiracy theory? Well, duh....

2007-12-29T18:45:00.000-05:00

I've been very interested in the corporate media reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The headline in my local paper reads "Conspiracy theories arise in wake of Bhutto's death." This is mirrored all over the corporate media, and frankly talk like this burns me up.

"Conspiracy theory" has become a smokescreen phrase; whenever it is applied anywhere -- ESPECIALLY in the mass media -- it is a cue for people to stop thinking, and consider the person to whom this label has been applied as a crackpot nutjob.

Which of course makes no sense at all. The Bhutto assassination, the 9/11 attacks, the Kennedy assassination, etc etc etc are ALL events that were not carried out only by one person (despite the Warren Commission's characterization of a "lone gunman"); therefore, any theory about What Really Happened(tm) must by definition be a "conspiracy theory."

Pretty much anything that happens in politics must also by definition be a conspiracy theory. This obviously included Bhutto's death, the fact that it was a "conspiracy" goes without saying. There was another attempt on her life in October, and witnesses report both bombs and gunshots going off.

I just wish we could get beyond reactionary ostrich-like putting our heads in the sand at certain trigger words. There are many of these; "conspiracy theory" is one. "Freedom" is another.

But then, as I've said many times, there's a reason they call it "television programming."

David Byrne on the music industry

2007-12-19T07:23:00.000-05:00

There are a fascinating pair of articles on Wired involving David Byrne. First, and most interesting to me, is David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars. Byrne does a good job of outlining 6 possible business models for musicians becoming apparent now that the Major-Label music industry is dead. Definitely a good read for people interested in music and how to earn income from it.

Secondly is David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music, which is Byrne interviewing Yorke (of Radiohead), mostly about how they released their most recent album, where they offered it as a free download, giving people the opportunity to pay whatever they think it to be worth.

I find this passage from Byrne's article interesting:

one of Radiohead's managers, Bryce Edge, told me, "The industry reacted like the end was nigh. 'They've devalued music, giving it away for nothing.' Which wasn't true: We asked people to value it, which is very different semantics to me."

Different semantics indeed. This way of thinking ("they've devalued music") is representative of the muddled thinking so often present in corporate/capitalist reality. Whitehead would have called it the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness," which is "mistaking the abstract for the concrete." In other words, it's not music that is being devalued, it is an outmoded form of parasitic economic exploitation, known as The Major Label Music Industry, that is being devalued.

new gigs

2007-12-12T15:02:00.000-05:00

I just realized I haven't posted about this. I have 2 new gigs going on. I'll still be doing weekends at my old gig, so that's remains unchanged. I still have no free weekends except on rare special occasions. :-(

The first is that I am in the process of opening up Crafted Recordings: Quality on-location audio recording in Northern New England. I'm surprised I haven't blogged about this yet, but I've had a separate website going for a while. Hop on over and check it out when you can. My recording rig isn't quite finished, and I've hit some (not insurmountable) snags on the portability end of it. I'll need to get a truck and/or a trailer to haul it around, and I still need to finish building the rack lids so I can safely move them. I have the materials I need, I'm just waiting for the stars to line up with time and good weather so I can do the carpentry. This is very exciting, as it gives me a chance to earn a living doing what I love.

The second is that I’ve entered into a part-time consulting relationship with Realtraps. Realtraps, "the experts in acoustic treatment," is an acoustics company run by Ethan Winer (and his partner Doug Ferrara, as well has a half-dozen-ish employees). Ethan wrote the single best introduction to listening room acoustics that I know of; this article was my point of departure in developing an understanding of how to make rooms sound good. In addition to this (and other) articles, Ethan is more than generous with his expertise on various forums online that I hang out on. We started communicating a while ago via these forums, and we became friends.

So these are exciting developments for me, as both of these mean I will be starting to earn (at least part of) a living through music.

PCLinuxOS

2007-12-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

After all this time, I've finally gotten round to reinstalling Linux, both on the laptop and on the desktop. I tried Ubuntu again, but at this point I am of the opinion that PCLinuxOS completely smokes Ubuntu.

Full featured, easy to install. No hassle. It just works, with all the software you will ever need.

If you are contemplating whether or not to run Vista, just don't. Get PCLinuxOS instead.

Internet Bill Of Rights

2007-11-27T14:25:00.000-05:00

Looks like the Brazilian and Italian governments are getting together to draft an Internet Bill Of Rights. This is a good idea, and it would appear that they are on the right track, since they are discussing

Privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, universal accessibility, network neutrability, interoperability, use of format and open standards, free access to information and knowledge, right to innovation and a fair and competitive market and consumers safeguard.

Among the signees of this resolution are Gilberto Gil, a Brazilian musician who is also the Brazilian Minister for Culture. I have respect for Gil and what he does as a politician. I remember Lawrence Lessig writing about an encounter he had with Gil a couple of years ago:

This was a scene that was astonishing on a million levels. I've seen rallies for free software in many placed around the world. I've never seen anything like this. There were geeks, to be sure. But not many. The mix was broad-based and young. They cheered free software as if it were a candidate for President. But more striking still was just the dynamic of this democracy. Barlow captured the picture at the top, which in a sense captures it all. Here's a Minister of the government, face to face with supporters, and opponents. He speaks, people protest, and he engages their protest. Passionately and directly, he stands at their level. There is no distance. There is no "free speech zone." Or rather, Brazil is the free speech zone. Gil practices zone rules.

Let's hope this sees the light of day; the values contained in this declaration do need to be foregrounded in discussion.

please tell me I don't have to boycott Harry Potter....

2007-11-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

Yes, I happily admit that I'm a Harry Potter fan. I think it's a great series, incredibly imaginative, reasonably well-written, and the movies aren't bad.

It goes without saying that J. K. Rowling has become one of the most famous authors in the world, her books have sold millions in dozens of languages, academics are studying them and writing about them, along with other famous writers firmly established in the western canon. Tolkien comes to mind; they are similarly famous, in related genres, and both have had blockbuster movies made within the past decade.

But, J.K. Rowling has gone over the top. Apparently, she is suing a publisher for having the audacity to publish a reference book about the Harry Potter universe.

Rowling's argument is clear, albeit misguided:

It is not reasonable, or legal, for anybody, fan or otherwise, to take an author's hard work, re-organize their characters and plots, and sell them for their own commercial gain. However much an individual claims to love somebody else's work, it does not become theirs to sell.

If this argument were sound, then there would be no reference books at all for any copyrighted work, apart from reference books published by the original copyright holders of the material.

No Cliffs Notes.

No reference books on Lord of The Rings.

No reference books on Narnia.

No reference books on Star Wars.

No reference books on the His Dark Materials trilogy.

And curiously enough, no Harry Potter reference books, dozens of which have already been published.

I truly hope that J. K. Rowling isn't vain enough to actually believe that she, the richest woman in the UK, richer than even the Queen, should exclusively profit from the hard work of other people, in this case people who compile the reference materials.

If she does, well. It's too late to boycott since my family already owns all 7 books.

Which brings up another point: does Rowling truly believe that people are going to buy these reference books INSTEAD fo the original novels? That there will be ANYONE who buys this reference book who doesn't already own all 7 books, probably in both paperback and hardcover, all the DVDs from the movies made, and at least a dozen tickets to each movie in the theater?

Reality check. J.K. Rowling is often portrayed as a hardworking mom who struck big with an imaginative idea. That may have once been true; but if she really believes this then she is now nothing more than a fabulously wealthy node in the corporate network.

The science is beginning to come in....

2007-11-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

And sure enough, suing your best customers is probably not a good idea.

Now, you have ISPs shutting down websites for hosting copyrighted material.... even though the same people who own the website hold the copyright! It's out of control...

The music industry (defined as a near-monopoly by a few major labels) is doomed. They are panicking. Too bad for them.

living in the woods

2007-10-29T01:44:00.000-04:00

I've lived in the suburbs. I've lived in medium-sized midwestern cities. I've lived in small coastal cities. I've lived along the beach. I've lived on a beautiful hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

But living in the woods is easily my favorite. At least so far.

meta-critiquing The Secret and other New-Wage musings

2007-08-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

I ran across The Wrath of the Secretrons by Connie L Schmidt. In it, she coins the very amusing term "New Wage" movement, which is her term for "the prosperity-obsessed, MLM-loving segment of the New-Age and motivational crowd."

Basically, she dismisses The Secret and its emphasis on the Law Of Attraction in promoting personal wealth, which I agree is a somewhat dubious motivation for spiritual enlightenment.

One of her biggest critiques is that the Law of Attraction "is presented as a scientific law akin to the law of gravity." This reveals her misunderstanding: The Secret, What The Bleep, and all this other stuff is metaphysics, not physics.

Metaphysics cannot be proven one way or another; it either makes sense or it doesn't. They all are theories and cannot be scientifically tested; whereas metaphysics speculates on the whole of the universe and how it operates, scientific theory must rely on isolating variables (ie, cutting off the interesting variable from the rest of the universe and testing it in lab conditions). One cannot do this with metaphysics.

I agree, The Secret and What The Bleep and countless other metaphysical offerings have their problems. But they shouldn't be taken as science. They are more metaphysical in nature; they suggest to us ways of being in the world as opposed to solid, provable, repeatable, and peer-reviewed hypotheses about isolated chunks of existence.

we are all made of stars

2007-08-15T13:21:00.000-04:00

An interesting bit of science:

The Cardiff team suggests that radioactive elements can keep water in liquid form in comet interiors for millions of years, making them potentially ideal "incubators" for early life. They also point out that the billions of comets in our solar system and across the galaxy contain far more clay than the early Earth did. The researchers calculate the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet at one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against (emphasis added).

The technical name for this theory is panspermia, which invites its own lewd metaphorical joke. But maybe Tim Leary was right -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust, from outer space to outer space.

Maine collectibles

2007-07-15T02:37:00.000-04:00

There are lots of junk shops, antique shops, and the like in Maine. It's a big, rural state, with a small economy, where lots of people with money own second homes (which of course drives up the property prices, further repressing Maine's economy).

You can find just about anything in these shops. That's probably where this collectible severed hand was found.

Did you ever....

2007-07-01T02:48:00.000-04:00

....wake up one day, look around, and realize you live in a really amazing place?

That happened to me the other day. And a few times since.

All of our stuff is unpacked now, and I've been quite busy around the house doing lots of fix-it type things. I've built 8 bookshelves (4 quite small, two quite large, and two medium-sized), a new compost bin, and a bench seat for my daughter's loft bed. I've also lowered her loft bed (she can now sit up in bed!!!). I installed a new kitchen faucet, and caulked our bathtub. Whee!

In all seriousness, I really love this kind of work.

Soon now, I will begin turning my attention to the outside. In the short term, I have compost to cook, garden beds to plan and landscape, and a yard to get ready for a party in September. In the medium term, I have a studio to build. In the long term, I'd like to put a screened-in-porch and a deck behind the house.

Fun fun fun. The woods behind our house are very cool. I need to spend more time in them.

We're in....

2007-05-30T01:58:00.000-04:00

We've moved in to our new house, in the sense that all of our belongings are on our property. Many of them are even in the house. A few of them are put away....

Lots of work is ahead, though. Tomorrow's big project is some carpentry. There isn't much storage space in the place, and shelves are needed. This will allow there to be an "away" to "put" many of our belongings.

We also bought a futon today. So we'll have much better crash space than a sleeping bag on a floor....

My to do list is a mile long, and I don't even want to think about how much my credit card debt has increased.

But all in all, it's a very exciting, if exhausting time.

protecting Us(tm) from Terrorism(tm)

2007-05-28T01:18:00.000-04:00

Imagine. A group has, after careful study, concluded that Terrorism is not the focus of the Department of Homeland Security.

Exhibit A:

Of the 814,073 people charged by DHS in immigration courts during the past three years, 12 faced charges of terrorism, TRAC said. Those 12 cases represent 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed.

Exhibit B:

The TRAC analysis also found that DHS filed a minuscule number of what are called "national security" charges against people in the immigration courts. The report stated that 114, or 0.014 percent of the total of roughly 800,000 individuals charged were charged with national security violations.

And what was DHS's response? Nothing but empty rhetoric, stating that the report is "ill-conceived" and that the group "lacked a grasp of the DHS mission."

That's what is so maddening about this. This report looks at what the DHS DOES. The DHS spokesman wants us to focus on what they SAY they do. Big difference.

One can draw two possible conclusions from these facts: either the mission of DHS is not what it is commonly claimed (ie, to protect Us(tm) from Terrorism(tm), or they are just terribly incompetent at what they do. Additionally, it seems fairly obvious that terrorism just isn't the threat that it is made out to be.

Bucking The Trend

2007-05-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

For the first time in human history, right around now is when the World population becomes more urban than rural.

In other news, we have officially bought the house in New Gloucester. We've started moving now; we get the rental truck and take the bulk of our stuff on Monday. Then, we start sleeping there.

I guess they might have to wait another day on that; 3 Mainahs are going from urban to rural....

spring cleaning

2007-05-03T15:12:00.000-04:00

Time for some spring cleaning around here, methinks.

I'm still thinking of moving this site to a WordPress blog. The cool thing about that is that I believe I could import both this blog and my old blog into one giant, mega-site of happy JWL goodness.

Though since Google bought out Blogger and went to Blogger 2.0, there seem to be some issues in importing the content. This page, however, seems to say that it is possible.

Hopefully I'll start working on this soon....

Home is where the paperwork lies

2007-04-12T21:04:00.000-04:00

Well, with some trepidation my wife and I have just reached a verbal agreement with a seller to buy our first house. Details are forthcoming, if you can't hold out and want more info, contact me and I'll hook you up.

sixteen-track mind

2007-03-23T03:13:00.000-04:00

Today was a historical occasion. For the first time, I recorded Freakwitch live, with 16 tracks of recording capability. In the past, we were limited to 10 tracks, which were actually 9 due to some technical details.

We did another round of studio upgrades recently. Everything is installed and running. The new setup means that we can record the entire band playing at once, along with having more than one source for sound for each band member. In other words, we get the sonic benefits of the old overdubbing paradigm, along with the ability to capture the energy of a complete band performance.

Our capability just went up an order of magnitude. This is a very good thing. We have a busy month, lots of recording sessions (including a session at another studio), as well as a gig at Geno's in Portland on 4/4.

In other news, it's spring.

About time....

The Black Spot, severed horse heads, and Suzy Boggus

2007-02-25T12:46:00.000-05:00

Very strange things are afoot, as anyone who pays attention to the world will tell you. Of course that does not differentiate our present age; strange things have always been and always will be afoot.

I think it's just the particular character of the strangeness.

In the middle of our hallway in our apartment building, a Suzy Boggus Greatest Hits CD materialized, and was lying on the ground.

It's still there. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Perhaps it is a sign. Perhaps a Suzy Boggus Greatest Hits CD is the early-21st-century equivalent of The Black Spot or, even worse, a severed horse's head.

After all, what sin could we have committed to be presented with such a ghastly artifact?

another study: RIAA is full of $hit

2007-02-13T10:14:00.000-05:00

They just keep coming:

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.
Entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.
The study looked at time periods when German students were on holiday after demonstrating that P2P use increases at these times. German users collectively are the #2 P2P suppliers, providing "about one out of every six U.S. downloads," according to the study. Yet the effects on American sales were not large enough to be statistically significant. Using this and several other methods, the study's authors could find no meaningful causality. The availability and even increased downloads of music on P2P networks did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales.
"Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero."

After this, I think the RIAA needs a new motto: Have You Sued Your Customer Base Today?

yet another reason...

2007-01-26T02:35:00.000-05:00

...that I love living in Maine. The Maine State Legislature passed a resolution refusing to participate in the Real ID Act.

It's worth reading both of those pages, especially the first as it is far more succinct.

Farewell, Bob

2007-01-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite writers of all time, Robert Anton Wilson, apparently died early this morning.

As long time fans of RAW will know, this is not the first time RAW has died, and he is no doubt highly amused by the whole thing....

sound and brainwave activity

2007-01-10T01:15:00.000-05:00

One of the forums I frequent had a link to a Brainwave Frequency Listing chart that I found fascinating. Particularly the bottom 1/3 of the chart, since those are the frequencies that fall within the audible spectrum.

see, the world IS safer with Dems in Congress....

2007-01-10T01:00:00.001-05:00

In the first few hours of their control of Congress, The House today passed a "9/11 security bill", which "implements some of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission."

Whew. I feel safer.

I've thought for a long time that one should not base governmental policy on fiction, much to the dismay of Christian neocon nutjobs who think the Bible should tell us how to run society. So the Dems are really making a difference. Have they revoked the Patriot Act? Have they sought a true investigation into the events of 9/11 (not that it matters, but it would be nice for SOMEONE in the government to say that the 9/11 Commission report is fiction)?

No.

Instead, they will intrude upon privacy even more, as now every shipping container that enters the US is eligible to be searched without warrant.

On another note, I ran into a christian Bu$hite supporter the other day. This doesn't often happen to me in Maine, in the circles I travel in. Whenever I encounter someone claiming to be both a Christian and a Bush supporter, I ask them this question: Can you name me one single, tangible thing that George W Bush has done in office that is in line with Christ's teachings in the Bible?

Not one of these people has ever come up with one single answer. They always evade my question.

I can't imagine why....

60 degrees in Maine, in January?

2007-01-05T14:20:00.001-05:00

It's true. I'm sitting here in Portland Maine today, and at 2:15pm it is nearly 60 degrees.

Context is everything.

As I'm sitting here next to my wide-open window enjoying this bizarre weather, I read about how ExxonMobil was waging a tobacco-like disinformation campaign on global warming science:

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."

Very much worth reading. At least today "everyone" recognizes that smoking tobacco is harmful to one's health. When will we realize that burning too much oil is harmful to the planet's health?

2 facts about intellectual property

2007-01-01T23:56:00.000-05:00

So I saw 2 interesting things about intellectual property in my news readings today.

First, a blatant example of what happens when you blend draconian Information/IP policies with a neoliberal, globalized economy. From Britain:

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

Hardly surprising, though. Gee. America wants to snoop on you. Go figure.

Second, and this is the fun one, the RIAA is suing a website called AllofMP3 for 1.65 trillion dollars. That's not a misprint:

As part of their claim, the labels are seeking $150,000 USD for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October 2006 from the AllofMP3.com website.
"AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York," an unnamed "senior company official" stated. "This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws."

Interesting question of jurisdiction, no? If Russian companies are subject to American laws, then truly we do live in an age of Empire.

and Global Warming "needs more study". Riiiiiight......

2006-12-30T01:50:00.000-05:00

Apparently, a giant ice shelf has snapped loose in the Arctic:

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said.
The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north.
Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.
Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, travelled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.
"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead," Vincent said today.
In 10 years of working in the region he has never seen such a dramatic loss of sea ice, he said.
The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up tremors from it.
The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometres in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic.

Atually, my favorite quote in the entire article is "the remaining ice shelves are 90 per cent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906." Boggles the mind. Yet more signs....

shifting again

2006-12-06T01:51:00.000-05:00

So tonight I did two things: first, I fixed the laptop power cable (not a complete fix, more like get some more life out of it for a while... but I'm confident I can solder it for a complete fix, after a quick trip to radio shack).

Second, I launched the new freakwitch.net tonight, so I've been hacking WordPress a bit.

Also, the EP is finished, so go check it out. You can get it from the website above, or go to our MySpace page.

I can feel things shifting again....

My Virtual Reality

2006-11-10T00:50:00.000-05:00

OK, I haven't been writing much. Or reading, unless you count musical engineering forums, magazines, and books.

I have had my reality so focused on music recording as of late that my writing and research has come to a virtual standstill. I haven't updated my notebook in almost two months. This blog has only seen 5 entries since around then, too.

My laptop is having a power supply problem. I need a new power cord (which is ridiculously expensive), and my OS install is over a year old. I'm running Firefox 1.0.7 (2.0 just came out).

I can see a shift in my Virtual Reality coming. Fix the laptop, install a new OS. Switch this site over the really amazing WordPress software.

In my abundant free time, of course.

Dental surgery, or, the difference between Democrats and Republicans

2006-11-08T17:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I had some minor dental surgery today. And as I told a friend, a day including dental surgery is not likely to be included in your best days. Everything went fine, thanks for asking.

Last night, I told another friend that "I can't wait to laugh sardonically at the euphoria that will sweep (sleep?) the land when the Dems regain Congress...." Turns out to be true. The Democrats regained the house, have a majority of Governorships, and are presently up 50-49 in the Senate, with only the outcome in Virginia left to decide the balance.

And to top it off, Donald Rumsfeld "resigned."

Whee. Cue the chorus of midgets singing "Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead!"

The most interesting statistic on cnn.com's front page, when counting the number of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in Congress, was that there are ZERO independents on the list. This reminds me of when Nader ran in 2000, and I was convinced that there wasn't a difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Turns out that's not the case. My view back then was not nuanced enough.

I am now convinced that my mistake was in terms of how each party serves the power structure, which generally I prefer to call Empire. I saw clearly that both parties serve Empire as their prime function, and mistook this fact for a complete equivalency among the two parties. That's what my mistake was.

But the difference between them is in how they serve Empire. And in general, I know believe that the function of the Republican is to push the bar of Empire, to seize, consolidate, and concentrate as much power as possible while they are in power. Then, the function of the Democrats is to maintain those newly-drawn lines of power for Empire, helping to normalize them and assimilate them into popular consciousness.

So time will tell. In the coming months, we're going to hear a lot about "partisanism" and "party politics"... and while in general I prefer a government doing nothing because it is in a state of gridlock to the behavior of the BuShites over the past 60 years, I seriously doubt that all of a sudden the US government will become committed to ending its global waging of low-intensity warfare, its commitment to torture, its blatant servitude to corporatism, and its general disregard for the poor of the world.

I need to stop typing, I can feel the novocaine starting to wear off....

cool multimedia psychedelic lectures

2006-11-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

BoingBoing pointed to Media on 'Second Attention' today, a place where there are lots of audio/video files from people like Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, etc.

Their server is being hammered right now because of the link from BoingBoing, so I wanted to mark this for the future. Definitely want to check some of these out....

Bad Magic

2006-11-02T13:55:00.000-05:00

OK, this is what I would call bad magic:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch woman, who had meticulously planned her own funeral after the death of her husband last year, died next to the grave in Amsterdam where she wanted to be buried, a newspaper reported.
The 65-year-old widow probably died of a heart attack while she was visiting the family grave where her name, but no date, was already inscribed, De Telegraaf daily reported Wednesday.
The woman was carrying a bag with her containing her will when she died and had already organized details of her funeral including the music she wanted played, the paper said.

Lately, I've been thinking about the notion of "bad magic" as an extension of Sartre's existentialist notion of "bad faith," as applied to a modern pagan.

Bad faith, in short, is "a philosophical concept first coined by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon wherein one denies one's total freedom, instead choosing to behave as an inert object."

Similarly, bad magic is where one denies one's ability to create one's reality, and acts as if one's actions have no bearing on what happens.

So for this woman, to have obsessed over the details of her death arrangements, brought about (on a metaphysical level... I'm not talking about scientific cause/effect here) her own death under those circumstances.

Another way to put it: be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

A new kind of R&B: Rhythm and Brainhacking

2006-10-25T14:22:00.000-04:00

Scott Adams, the creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, has his voice back.

To explain:

As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis....
My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I’m no brain surgeon.
The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack jumped over the candlestick.
I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.
My brain remapped.
My speech returned.

This is very cool, obviously on a personal level for Adams, but also it is very philosophically interesting to me.

One of my favorite philosophers, Suzanne Langer, theorized that the mind -- more specifically, human consciousness (as differentiated from non-intellectual animal consciousness) -- evolved because of rhythm. The repetitive patterns that we feel in rhythm (think drumming) tend to jumpstart our brain to higher levels of consciousness.

Sounds about right to me....

the view from on high....

2006-09-09T17:38:00.001-04:00

I haven't updated in a while. This seems to be a recurring theme on this blog lately. And that's fine; this blog is what it is and my writing attention has been elsewhere both on my Everyday Systems log and in my other writing projects.

I've been to the top of 3 different mountains in the past couple-three weeks; first I took my sister, my niece, and my daughter to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is one of my absolute favorite views in the entire world. It was a beautiful day, and the drive to the top of the mountain was uneventful.

Then later in the week, I took my daughter and a friend of hers to the much smaller and less-spectacularly-located Bradbury Mountain in Pownal, Maine, about a half-hour drive from Portland. This one does require a climb to the top, and while I was huffing and puffing to the top, it wasn't what I would call overly strenuous. It was fun, though.

Earlier this week, I went camping with my daughter to Camden Hills State Park; we had a wonderful time and saw a pretty spectacular full moon rise over Penobscot Bay from the top of Mount Battie. I learned that there are only 2 places on the entire Eastern seaboard where the mountains meet the sea in this way; Camden is one of them, the other is Mt Desert Island. And truly, these two views are amazing. While a much smaller mountain (800 feet high), the view from Mount Battie is equally spectacular, with the port town of Camden just below.

I think from now on when I am playing "tour guide" I will have to include a trip to the top of Mount Battie as well as Cadillac Mountain.

The moonrise on top of Mount Battie was especially poignant for my daughter and I, as earlier that day we had learned that a dear friend of ours who was 4 months pregnant had lost her baby. I wrote a poem about the experience, and I may post it here.

The War on Nature

2006-08-30T14:00:00.000-04:00

Apparently the Duluth city government are nothing more than UnAmuriCon Damnable Hippie Drug Abusing Terrorists, Every Last One Of Them, And They Should Be Sentenced To Years In Prison Because They Are Criminals, And Not Even Sick.

Or something.

Another possibility, of course, is that Duluth has a courageous and skillful prankster on its hands.

Either way, it proves the utter futility of outlawing certain plants.

y'know, I really love living in Maine...

2006-08-16T19:52:00.000-04:00

... and for a variety of reasons. The sky in Maine is wondrous; a rich shade of deep blue on clear summer days, yet invitingly close at night (the moon and stars seem closer somehow); the beaches, sand and rocky, connect one with the salt-water blood of the earth in a compelling way; the mountains rise majestically from the pine forests; the people are generally friendly and laid back, and will cut you a lot of slack if you're a freak like me.

But mostly, I think it's the foul-smelling, raging evil mutant wolf-beasts from hell that make me feel so at home here.

Just sayin'.

EDIT: this story is still growing....

Balance, and writing

2006-08-08T23:42:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to get my legs under me again, in a metaphorical sense. It seems as if my center -- that sense of stability I experience when I am grounded -- is shifting again. I feel off-balance too much of the time.

I saw the nearly-full moonrise tonight, a beautiful, huge, round eye looking down at me from just above the downtown Portland skyline. I walked home from work and went around the Back Bay. Every time I was given a choice in terms of which way to walk, I followed the moon. She always leads the way well.

I've started writing again. The idea that's been brewing in my head for years now, a large writing project exploring the intersection of paganism with history, politics, metaphysics, and theology is starting to take shape. I'm using a really cool TiddlyWiki page as my nonlinear notebook, as a place to scribble down ideas, useful quotes from sources (think notecards), and do outlines, all from one central location accessible to me from anywhere online.

I think my rediscovery of balance is definitely going to have to include writing.

PCLinuxOS rocks

2006-07-26T11:03:00.000-04:00

I say it again, as much as I want to like ubuntu -- and I do like them/it for many reasons -- PCLinuxOS is pretty hard to argue with. It Just Works(tm), it works elegantly, and there is a TON of software in their repositories.

So once again, we have a desktop machine that can play DVDs, play my music collection, with a bunch of cool 3D games for my daughter.

Geekery can be fun, if a bit expensive at times....

Geekery

2006-07-25T01:02:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm finally getting around to rebuilding the desktop computer. Only took six weeks.... :-/

I had really wanted to install Ubuntu Linux, mostly because they really seem to get what free software is all about. I want to like it, and indeed I use this distribution on my laptop.

But the new release, Dapper Drake, has a bug that prevents it from seeing all the partitions on my 2 hard drives. This, like, sucks. And stuff.

So I put in my LiveCD of PCLinuxOS that I had lying around, and sure enough it works flawlessly on this new hardware. I'm currently listening to headphones of Radiohead playing through amaroK through the LiveCD; this means that PCLinuxOS Just Works(tm). It sees the soundcards, the harddrives, and everything works fine out of the box.

So I'm presently downloading a version of PCLinuxOS that has the nVidia drivers already built-in for my nice videocard, it's 61% done. Once it's fully downloaded, I'll verify the integrity of the disk, burn it, and run it on the desktop.

So hopefully soon this happy new machine will be running PCLinuxOS....

creativity

2006-07-22T22:46:00.000-04:00

Well I seem to be snapping myself out of the funk I was in via brute force. For the most part I've been eating better and exercising more, which always helps.

In addition, my creativity has been increased; I now have acoustic guitar tracks recorded for 9 of the 11 songs going on the Freakwitch album, so things are moving forward there. We also have a gig coming up next weekend, which helps.

I've also been playing with a ccTiddly, which is like an online version of a TiddlyWiki that I can update from any computer... cool.

Not much else to report... life continues pretty much as normal, busy busy busy.

Oh, it looks like my sister and my niece will be visiting Maine for the first time about a month from now... very excited about that. Maine is awesome, and I can't wait to show her around a bit.

Fire in the sky

2006-07-05T14:16:00.000-04:00

Today on Boing Boing I saw this photo:

It's a photo from Los Angeles, taken in the middle of the night in 1955. As you can see, the light is quite bright for the middle of the night. The cause? The US government was conducting nuclear test explosions in Nevada, probably at least 200 miles away. These photos, which are contained at the LA Public Library photo database, show clearly that the night sky was lit up to daylight levels.

Very interesting that this comes up in the wake of North Korea's recent missile testing. The present US government is up in arms (ha) about this, when North Korea is just doing something that the US government did many times over, 50 years ago. And North Korea aren't even exploding nuclear warheads on their own soil.

Funny what retrospect will do to you. Nowadays, anyone paying attention would be horrified if the US government were exploding nukes in Nevada. But at the time, it was seen as a necessary thing. It makes me wonder what the present US government is doing that will be seen in a similar way 50 years hence....

lofty bed photos

2006-06-29T16:47:00.000-04:00

I put up some photos of my daughter's new loft bed. Share and enjoy.

lofty expectations

2006-06-29T01:22:00.000-04:00

Over the past week, I discovered that carpentry definitely counts as geekery. I built a new loft bed for my daughter (thanks to the grandparents for buying most of the lumber). It's a sweet design, if I do say so myself. I just thought, as a kid, what would I have wanted? So I imagined that, and built it. It's a twin mattress on top, with a desk underneath on one end, and a big bookcase on the other end. There is also a ladder to get up top, and a smaller bookshelf at the back of the desk.

The corner posts are hemlock 4x4s, the bed slats and ladder are pine 2x4s, and the shelves are pine 1x8s (desk) and 1x10s (rear bookcase). The desktop is made of MDF, and there is a shelf below the desktop (also made of MDF, with pine 1x6 upright braces). I still have to cut and install the desktop surface, which is a sheet of masonite with a layer of white dry-erase board on one side. I had to get a 4x8 sheet of this, so I'll also use it as the back of the bookcase, which will also provide a dry erase surface behind it (at the foot of the bed).

The loftbed part of it is cool (especially from a kid's perspective... what is it about increased elevation whilst slumbering that is so exciting to a kid?!??), but the best part I think is the desk, with the increased bookshelf space being a close second. But the desk in particular, especially for a homeschooled kid. Space to spread out her work without having to move it by dinner is definitely welcome.

I got the wood last week, and took it out to Starcat and Quester's home and got all the pieces cut that day (there were 58 separate pieces, mostly for the bed slat assembly and the ladder). But when I assembled them, I realized that something didn't quite translate from my 2-D sketch on graph paper to 3-d reality. The bed was too wide overall, though the slats were too wide by 2" less than the rest of the too-wideness. So I had to shorten it, which meant disassembling the frame and cutting all the shelves and the desktop a bit narrower, and trimming a bit off the slats fo good measure. Did that yesterday, and assembled all the pieces using drywall screws.

Once that was done and everything seemed to go together, I went through and, one by one, removed the drywall screws and drilled a 3/8" hole for a bolt.

The unit is modular, and is designed to be held together by 5" and 7" bolts. I started off with carriage bolts, but found that they were ineffective because they kept turning in the wood as I tried to tighten them. So I ran out again and got normal bolts, so I'd have something to grab onto as I tightened the nuts. So now I have about 40 carriage bolts that I need to return, as they cost something on the order of $1 each.

Starcat was wonderfully patient and flexible tonight. We had a walking date scheduled, which we ended up spending in my daughter's bedroom. The room got completely rearranged top to bottom, a task that was basically 8 hours of work for all of us. Whew. I'll have photos of the new loftbed up soon. So thanks to everyone for helping (everyone tonight, plus Quester for his assistance during assembly and cutting, not to mention driving the truck out to our place today, plus Starcat's aunt for the use of her truck).

In other news, Freakwitch gets to play as a 5 piece tomorrow, and then as a 5-piece-minus-a-drummer on Friday. So that's good. Next week is the great acoustic guitar recording session....

I switched departments at work. I used to take road-service calls for AAA, but now I am a dispatcher. The job is more complicated, but it isn't a bad thing at all. It makes the time go faster. So now, instead of talking to grumpy, stressed-out motorists, I talk to tow truck drivers who are grumpy because they have to deal with stressed-out motorists.

I've been moving through a bunch of energy these past couple weeks, part of which have been manifesting as specific ailments in my body. I won't go into detail as everything is fine, but I've spent much of the past fortnight both in a bit of pain, and also afraid that something more serious was wrong with me. Turned out to be OK, though I was certainly moving slowly and gingerly. As a result, I haven't exercised much in almost 2 weeks. Back to it. I feel awake again, as the ailments are all but gone.

Now that the loftbed is done, my next project is to rebuild the home computer. The studio machine seems to be functioning well, so now it's time for some computergeek luuuvv at home as well.

Plus I need to play my guitar every day for a while....

order complete

2006-06-13T13:19:00.000-04:00

I just placed the order for the new computer. I ended up with the Gigabyte GA-K8U-939 Socket 939 ULi M1689 ATX AMD Motherboard, an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 2000MHz HT 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor, and 2 Gigabytes of Corsair XMS RAM. So this machine should be really amazing for the studio computer.

But at least is cool is the fact that I'll bring the current studio motherboard setup home, so I'll now have easily the most powerful computer I've ever had at home. We'll be able to watch DVDs at home again! Plus the increased capabilities of this machine will mean my daughter can play better computer games.... this too is cool.

Lots of money to spend, but I think it will be worth it! 2 computer upgrades for the price of one....

w00t! Google Earth for Linux

2006-06-12T18:21:00.000-04:00

The new Google Earth beta has been released... and there is a Linux version! Wicked cool.... playing with it now....

word to your mother (board)

2006-06-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

We've recently realized that we need to get a new motherboard for our home computer. The one we have was graciously donated by a friend who had upgraded, but this machine just isn't doing what we need it to do. We can't even watch DVDs on it; every time we want to watch a DVD we need to use my laptop, and that's getting kinda old.

In addition, the studio computer is still chugging along. It's a nice motherboard, but it's just not well-suited to serious audio production work. I've managed to make it workable, but it's not ideal.

So we've decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. I'm going to upgrade the motherboard in the studio computer, and then use that motherboard in the home machine, where it will be MORE than adequate (read: by far the most kickass home computer we've ever had).

So now, in order to upgrade, I have to do some serious research on motherboards for a DAW. A friend of mine works for AMD, and also runs Sonar (the same program I use), so I asked him. He recommended that I use Asus motherboards, and to avoid VIA chipsets, so my challenge is to find a model that does not use VIA chipsets, and has the features I need (ie, an AGP slot for the video card I use, onboard USB 2 and Firewire, etc).

The first contender is the Asus K8N. This board, along with a AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 1600MHz HT Socket 754 Processor and 1 GB of Corsair memory would run just under $300. This is a first step; I imagine there will be further updates to this post as I continue investigating.

Also, I'm being somewhat active on both the Sonar forum and on the Tape Op (TOMB) forum. I'm mostly documenting these here for my convenience.

Geek out....

UPDATE: People in audiogeekland are raving about the Gigabyte GA-K8U-939 board as well. Another option.

chakra blockage

2006-06-09T18:53:00.000-04:00

My community often relates physical ailments to the larger metaphysical, energetic picture of health. It's more of a holistic, organic, Eastern approach; negative energy is correlated with dis-ease in the body. And using map metaphors, such as chakras, to describe these energy shifts is an often useful way to understand what is happening in the energy system.

So today I was lying on the floor and I did a spinal twist. I felt a wonderful "thump" as one of my lower vertebrae, between the 2nd and 3rd chakra, cracked into place, in that not-quite-sadistic-chiropracter kind of way. After the pop, I felt the wave of energy move up and down my system, and just groaned with the intensity of the sensation, hovering between pleasure and pain.

It occurs to me that this is yet another example of the correlation. The energies I've been working through lately are indeed between the 2nd and 3rd chakra.

Just sayin.'

Stratification of wealth

2006-06-07T22:57:00.000-04:00

You've heard the expression, "the rich get richer"? Well, check this out:

The total net worth of all Americans in 1989 was $25 trillion (in 2004 dollars). Of that amount, the top 1 percent owned 30 percent, or $7.775 trillion. The bottom half owned 3 percent of the total, or $763 billion.
Fifteen years later, in 2004, the total wealth of all Americans had doubled to $50.25 trillion. The top 1 percent of the population now owns 33.4 percent of the total, or $16.774 trillion. Their percentage share of the total has increased by more than 3 percent in fifteen years. At the same time, the total wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent increased to $1.278 trillion, but its percentage of total wealth declined from 3 percent to 2.5 percent in the same time period.
Thus the wealth of the top 1 percent was ten times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent in 1989. Fifteen years later, the wealth of the top 1 percent was thirteen times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent.

The rest of the article from The Nation is well worth reading. This, to me, is just further evidence that capitalism has grown to be so topheavy as to be unsustainable.

thunder, and the priest

2006-06-03T18:34:00.000-04:00

I miss thunderstorms. I grew up in the midwest, in the Ohio River Valley, and there thunderstorms are a very common occurrence in the summer. Thunderstorms are, to me, a vivid and palpable example of the power of nature. I feel energized when I'm in one, and that energy comes from more than the increased presence of ozone in my lungs.

Thunderstorms are much rarer in Maine. We usually get one or two per year; the other day we had a doozy. Lightning hitting very closeby and an incredibly loud thunderclap right on top of the flash of light. We live at the top of Munjoy Hill in Portland, and it occurred to me that this thunderstorm didn't quite sound the way I was used to hearing them. I thought for a moment and realized what I was hearing was the sound of the thunder echoing over the water on Casco Bay, finally making its way up the hill to my ears. Wow! It sounded amazing. I wish there was a way to capture a sound like that; even my best microphones would miss something if I tried to record that.

Very cool. Now I have yet another reason to love thunderstorms.

On another note, I feel like I've found a new kind of strength lately. It's difficult to describe, but of all my "inner selves" who drive the Jim bus, I usually feel strongest when the "priest" is driving. When I say priest, I mean that part of me who is highly attuned to the energy flows around me, who can skillfully direct the energies at work in my life, in the service of both myself and the greater community. The priest is an edgewalker; his awareness is among the patterns behind what we see in our day-to-day existence.

One danger is that sometimes, the priest (like his ontological cousin, the shaman) often sees things that others don't yet see. And when he tries to communicate these seeings to others, he is sometimes met with resistance. But if these seeings are true, then good, intelligent people will soon see them as well.

I was once told as a child, by a catholic nun, that I was going to make a wonderful priest when I grew up. Little did she know...

save the Internet?

2006-06-03T13:03:00.000-04:00

The big "moveon.org" buzzword these days has been "save the Internet," using stark language:

Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

I have mixed emotions when I say that my readers should not be surprised by this. This is the "virtual commons" being enclosed, something I wrote about in 2003 in an article that has been circulating online:

Yet the free exchange of ideas as mediated by computers and the Internet is in danger. Every revolution has a counter-revolution, and the counter-revolution upon the free exchange of ideas is well underway. The Information Counter-Revolution is an attempt by corporate interests to assert control over the Internet, with the end goal of recasting it in terms of pre-Information Revolution media outlets, which treat information infrastructure as "content delivery systems" controlling what passive viewers may see. The counter-revolution seeks to accomplish these ends through two primary means: expansion of "intellectual property" laws and a re-architecting of the Internet to unilaterally enforce these laws through an infrastructure of centralized control; these are the virtual enclosures.

So, normally I'm not one to say "I told you so," but.... let's just say I'm pretty far from surprised at this. I predicted this several years ago. Not trying to toot my own horn, but this issue is very important and is still not getting the media attention it deserves.

It cannot be stressed enough that one key element of this struggle is that the Internet, as a commons, is an invaluable tool to those who resist the neoliberal world order, the process of corporatization and globalization, not to mention peace activists. It is in danger of being taken away from us.

on masculinity

2006-05-27T12:21:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about masculinity, or more specifically about what it means to be a man in this world we inhabit. This is a difficult thing to do given patriarchy; indeed many, including feminists, have theorized about masculinity in this world. But given that one of my main models for divinity includes a masculine/feminine duality, and that the intermingling dance of these two energy archetypes embody all that exists, I must clarify what I mean when I say "male" or "masculine."

And if we want to imitate the divine, we must be clear about what "masculine" and "feminine" mean.

These meanings are corrupted, I believe, in our society today. For example, look at what femininity means in our society. Pagans often use the "maiden, mother, crone" trinity to refer to the feminine. In our TV society, the maiden is a supermodel with a flat, muscular stomach and large breasts. Mother is busy at work all day cleaning house and cooking a meal, and can only be interrupted to comfort a skinned knee. The Crone is the grandmother of the house, who has no real power in a political sense but who can silence a room with her wisdom and insight.

This is pretty far from a complete picture of femininity.

In the same way, what is often taken for masculinity in this culture -- physical strength, fighting prowess, aggressiveness, etc -- is woefully inadequate. I would in fact go a step further and say that these characteristics should not be associated with men; on the contrary, these are boyish traits that a grounded, self-realized man would have long since overcome and harnessed.

So what is left? What does it mean to be a man -- a grounded, fully-integrated into the tribe/community/family unit, using-his-strength-well man -- in this society?

Central to these questions is strength. Men are strong, right? That is of course a generalization as there are many kinds of strength. But one thing I believe to be true: strength is measured in kinetic energy, not potential energy. Stength is not how much Ahh-nuld can benchpress; rather, strength is what a man (or anyone) does with his abilities.

And if you look to the masculine -- particularly the divine masculine archetypes, I'm thinking of Christ, Odin, Prometheus, etc -- one of the primary attributes is self-sacrifice. The man uses his strength, selflessly, for the greater good. And I'm more and more convinced that this trait of self-sacrifice -- willing, non-begrudging, with a full awareness of the work leading to the greater good for all -- is a primary trait of the masculine half of divinity.

We see glimpses of this ideal in popular culture, though it isn't usually associated with masculinity, but rather of heroism. The man who rushes into a burning building to save the baby in the crib, the knight in shining armor who risks life and limb to save the damsel in distress, the war hero who gives his life by falling on a grenade to protect his fellow troops, even the domestic corporate wageslave who sells his attention for all-too-many hours each week as the "breadwinner" to support his family.

It takes a tremendous amount of strength, in becoming a man, to learn to "lay my sword down at your feet" of one's family, one's community, one's companions, for the greater good of everyone.

And it seems to me that this kind of energy is moving through me now. I am in a situation where I need to practice restraint, to do some deep personal Work for the greater good of my family and my immediate community. And I use this model of masculinity because the nature of this Work is to quieten the fears of my "inner little boy" (heh, how cheesy), and to show some strength, some deep, masculine strength, in trusting that this Work is not only for my own growth and benefit, but also that everyone else involved with this will benefit.

I am nearly 37 years old, and it seems I am still learning how to be a man....

Study finds no marijuana-lung cancer link

2006-05-24T23:33:00.000-04:00

As you know, I occasionally check out corporate media to see what they are talking about. This CNN story is interesting:

Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.
They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.
Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers.

Ahh, guilt-free consciousness transformation. Anyone got a light?

Freakwitch T-shirts

2006-05-21T12:14:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention this: there are Freakwitch t-shirts in production even as we speak. They should be ready within a few weeks, and we will be selling them for $20 (plus shipping if we can't hand one to you) each. The shirts will be black T-shirts, with the Freakwitch logo (at the top of Freakwitch.net at the moment) either centered across the chest, or in a smaller spot on the breast. So you can go big and brash, or small and subtle.

Get 'em while they're hot. You can say you got one of the VERY FIRST Freakwitch T-shirts ever made. If you are interested in ordering a shirt, email me at JWL -at- Freakwitch -dot- net.

recording acoustic guitars

2006-05-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I did a lot of work in the studio. In short, I modified the new ribbon mic, replaced the tubes in the preamps, rearranged the recording space to do acoustic guitar overdubs, and started experimenting with mic techniques. I wrote about it in much more detail over on the Freakwitch forums, so go read it if you want some more advanced audiogeekery. Bottom line: once again I am blown away. These are the best sounding acoustic tracks I've ever recorded. Very very cool. Mixing this album is going to be a treat.

I did kind of get a late start yesterday, which isn't really a problem since I accomplished everything in the studio I'd hoped to anyway. Plus, I got to trade massages and spend the afternoon in a wonderfully squishy, comfortable headspace. Mmmmmm....

I know it's probably getting old to read me saying this, but damn. Life really is good....

Recording, and Love

2006-05-16T18:28:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the sparse blogification as of late. Lots happening. Not the least of which is that we are officially finished editing basic tracks for the Freakwitch album. We have the following tunes ready for acoustic guitar overdubs: Too Bad For You, Seems Like, Tempted, Trouble On The Island, My Own Way, Beauty, Breathe, Tip of My Tongue, Sway, Life's Too Large, and Make It Through. Plus, I'm optimistic that we can nail Phasing and Surprise as a full band soon.

So this Friday, I'm heading to the studio earlier in the day. I'll finally get to complete the ribbon mic mod, install the new tubes in the preamps, strike the drum kit, and set up the space for acoustic guitar recording. I'm really looking forward to getting this ball rolling.

Additionally, Freakwitch now has a lead guitar player. This is a very exciting development; Todd is a good guy who has known Matt longer than I have. His style seems to mesh really well with what Freakwitch does, and it will only get better as he gets more comfortable with the material. The electric guitar has an energy about it that no other instrument has, and it's good to inject the Freakwitch sound with that energy.

So things Freakwitchy continue to move in very exciting directions. This summer things should blossom. We have two goals: finish the album (should be done this summer) and start gigging, regularly. The tentative plan (we have a business meeting this week to hammer out these details) is to pick 4 markets (Portland, Boston, and 2 others) and start regular gigging in those markets. Very exciting stuff.... this band has a LOT of energy, and as we get tighter and Todd gets more comfortable, it's just going to continue to grow. I think once we get this out in front of people, it will get some attention, either "finally!" (if they know us already) or "who the fuck are these guys, and where did they come from!!?" (if they don't know us).

On another note entirely, I've been experiencing and theorizing about the nature of Love as of late. As I wrote to one of my dearest friends recently, "Love is both a verb and a noun. I can easily control love-the-verb. Right action. No problem. But love-the-noun has a life of its own. It's either there, or it isn't." Over the past few weeks, I've been blown away by the amount of love-the-noun in my life, which of course makes me all the more enthusiastic about "doing" love-the-verb. :-)

I say once again: I am surrounded by blessings. Life is good. :-)

A 100% free software-based publisher

2006-05-11T16:01:00.000-04:00

I haven't written about Free software in some time, but I thought it interesting that there is a book publisher in Italy running their operation using 100% free software, including all document production (using Scribus, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc) along with all the "normal" Free software stuff (eCommerce, web serving, etc).

Cool....

Happy Beltane, or, what a difference a year makes

2006-05-06T12:12:00.000-04:00

Happy Beltane to everyone.

It's been an interesting Beltane thus far, especially compared to last year. Last year was about as fiery as it gets for me. I enjoyed the fire, and it was an amazing time, one I will never forget and always treasure. But the fallout was very hard to deal with: heartbreak, sadness, guilt, and a full spectrum of other emotions. Lots of healing and lots of growth have happened since then. It was a very hard year, but ultimately one of the most fruitful of my life. I don't regret what happened, but I do own my part of the hurt from that. To those I hurt, directly or indirectly, this time last year, I bow to you. Namaste. And to you, with whom I explored the highest heights and the lowest depths, I wish you love and happiness. May there always be peace between us, so mote it be.

Having paid attention to the annual solar cycles every year for nearly two decades now, I've noticed a palpable shift in energy each year at this holiday. It remains one of the most powerful pagan holidays of the year for me (along with Samhain), for many reasons. And I still feel a bit burned by last year's fieryness. So this year I've held my Beltane exuberance in check, trying to stay grounded, and stay in the moment.

But, indeed, the energy is still there. And it's still wonderful feeling. And I don't think it's gonna blow up in my face this year. :-)

It truly has been an amazing year. Lots of difficulty, lots of "fertilizer." But the fruits of all this karmic labor are overwhelming to me.

I have never felt more blessed.

Freakwitch community forum

2006-04-29T14:37:00.000-04:00

There is a new community forum on the Freakwitch.net site. There are forums there for both album production as well as Quitchcraft Productions, which is our studio. I think that much of my audiogeek babblage will be located there for a while.

So, if you are interested in Freakwitch, go check out the forum. Register, and speak freely. We're trying to get all this infrastructure-type stuff in place before the album is done sometime this summer.

Also, Freakwitch.com and Freakwitch.org both now redirect to Freakwitch.net. This means that all 3 domains are now under our control.

last audiogeek explosion?

2006-04-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

I ordered the tubes today. Now, I'm done. For a while.

I know many of my readers are bored. I'm thinking about setting up a separate blog just for my audio engineering stuff, as we move through the Freakwitch album production. Or, I could continue to leave it here.

So what do you think? Should I set up a separate blog for this? Or not? Leave a comment.

Anyone?

::crickets chirping::

Bueller? Bueller?

for those keeping score....

2006-04-26T00:27:00.000-04:00

...I've been more or less updating my Everyday Systems log. I'm reasserting exercise -- especially walking -- now that the weather is warmer. It was a bit chilly tonight, but a good walk....

So because everyone is so enthralled

2006-04-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

...I thought I'd explain why I ordered the Shinybox 23 as opposed to the other models.

First of all, there are 2 basic ribbon mic types in this range, the big one (Shinybox 23 et al) and the small one (Shinybox 46, et al). The small one is generally cheaper, and they share the same capsule. However, in the smaller body, the capsule is not symmetrically mounted which means one side of it sounds brighter than the other side. Not good when using the M-S technique.

So the larger chassis it is. The question is then, why the Shinybox, and not the Nady or the Apex or the .... myriad of other rebrandings this mic exists under. Answer: first of all, I like the little guy. Secondly, the Shinybox comes with a groovy case, and is still cheaper than the Nady. Thirdly the guy who runs Shinybox seems to genuinely give a rat's ass about sound quality.

I placed the order yesterday but I haven't heard anything yet. Hopefully soon. The site says I should hear within 48 hours.

audio geekery part 912

2006-04-24T15:31:00.000-04:00

So I decided to order the Shinybox 23. Waiting for the guy to call me back to answer one last question about it.

In addition, I'm thinking about upgrading the tubes in my ART TubePAC preamps. This is a lower-gain tube than what comes stock, which should clean up the sound a bit. This mod will be cheaper though, I'd need 4 tubes so it should be less than $50.

EDIT: there are two cheaper tubes available, that will probably work just as well.

more ribbon

2006-04-22T12:26:00.000-04:00

I found another ribbon mic that is even cheaper than the Shinybox. Marking this for posterity.

EDIT: And another, even cheaper.... These mics are all basically the same mic, rebranded, but there is an interesting article on how to modify the ribbon mic which provides better sound, but makes the mic more fragile.

mmmm, shinybox

2006-04-21T16:37:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to shift my thinking from getting good rhythm tracks (mission accomplished, apart from some light housecleaning type editing ahead of me) toward getting primo acoustic guitar tracks recorded for the Freakwitch album. I have a decent setup now in terms of recording, but one technique that has interested me for a long time is known as mid-side miking. It involves using 2 microphones, one of which has a cardioid (or omni) pickup pattern, the other of which must be a figure-8 pickup pattern. Sadly, none of my mics has a figure-8 pattern so this has remained elusive for me.

In addition, I've been intrigued by ribbon microphones, which have by all accounts a very natural sound, though they come with problems most notably that they are extremely fragile. Ribbon mics have been around for nearly 70 years and are definitely in the "vintage" (read: way too expensive) category. But recently, some manufacturers have begun to sell new units, though they are still probably out of my league cost wise. However, the import market has started to pick them up, and you can now get ribbon mics at reasonable prices.

Most interestingly, ribbon mics inherently have a figure-8 recording pattern, which means I could begin to experiment with Mid-Side miking as well. So I'm thinking about adding a ribbon mic to my mic collection. The one I'm interested in is made by a small company called ShinyBox, which has the added benefit of being slightly cheaper than the Nady, and probably of slightly better quality though they are essentially the same mic. Plus they have a cool name which helps.

So yeah, I have to decide if this is worth doing for the acoustic guitar tracks I'll be recording soon. Hmmm.....

US Detains Al-Gebra Operative

2006-04-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, this is a joke:

Math teacher arrested
Associated Press
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math's instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Gonzales said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'."
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math's instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

recording marathon

2006-04-16T02:01:00.000-04:00

Well, the great Freakwitch recording marathon went well. There are now LOTS of tracks on the hard drive that I have to listen to. There are between 1 and 6 takes each saved of 18 different songs.

Coming into the weekend I wasn't really sure how it was going to go. My guess was that it would take us Thursday to warm up, Friday to start getting good takes, and Saturday would be spent making sure we had everything we needed. That pattern was kinda right, except condense Friday and Saturday into the last 2 sets played saturday night. Thursday, Friday, and the first half of Saturday were spent warming up. After all, we haven't played together much over the past month or two.

But, we stepped up when it counted. Time will tell, the recording marathon now morphs into a listening and editing marathon, so I can make sure I have solid, groovy drum and bass tracks for each song. Once that's done, I get to start overdubbing guitars.

And that's when the REAL fun begins....

But for now, I must sleep. It's amazing how draining it is to focus one's attention on the same thing for 3 days straight.

New Freakwitch logo

2006-04-16T01:06:00.000-04:00

(click to see the huge tiff file)

On Pagan Activism

2006-04-12T03:16:00.000-04:00

I've revised and added to my notes from the talk the other night. The resulting document is called On Pagan Activism and is available in my writings section.

From the desktop of...

2006-04-11T23:47:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this from the desktop machine. Why? Because my laptop is currently booted into Windows, doing a software flash rom update on my guitar.

Huh? A software update on a guitar? Since when...

This is gonna be fun. Look at the videos on that page...

Last night my fever hit 101.2 and I resorted to Ibuprofen. It broke within the hour, and hasn't come back yet. I'm feeling gradually better. This seems to have been a reasonably mild one, though I still have a ways to go.

Spritual Warrior?

2006-04-10T23:52:00.000-04:00

The panel discussion was today. It seemed to go well. I was pleased that pagans were well represented on the panel, there were 2 of us (my wife and I), along with a christian, a buddhist, and a jew. The talk that I gave is in my writings section if anyone is interested.

But, I'm not feeling well, I just took my temperature and it is 100.2. So I think I'm going to rest now. Better now than Thursday, when The Mother Of All Freakwitch Recording Sessions begins....

eee-lectric gee-tar

2006-04-09T16:38:00.000-04:00

So the trade is complete, my balance is paid off, I have the Pod XT Live in my possession (along with a case for it, and the special Variax digital guitar cable), and my Variax 300 (black) guitar is on its way to my local music shop. It's a done deal, I just have to wait for shipping. The guitar should arrive sometime this week, hopefully in time for our mammoth recording session beginning on Thursday.

This guitar is the budget model, and it is available only in the somewhat plain and spartan black or red finish. Kinda ugly, not really my style. The selling point for the guitar, clearly, is the electronics which are state-of-the-art and allow for a huge variety of sound. I had hoped to get the natural finish model 700, but it's cost-prohibitive for me at this point, especially given that the electronics inside are identical to the cheaper model.

Well, I just found out that Warmoth, a company that makes replacement electric guitar parts, is now making replacement parts for the Variax series. I've played warmoth necks before, and they are fantastic. Plus, I could get an unfinished guitar body and give it a clear finish myself.

Bottom line, if I find the cheaper Variax guitar to be unacceptable, I can upgrade it significantly for much less than the cost of the top of the line Variax model.

in other news....

2006-04-08T13:06:00.000-04:00

It was recently pointed out to me that this space has become little more than a log of my acoustics research and experimentation recently. And while the audiogeek in me continues to insist just how endlessly fascinating this topic remains (pffth!), I am aware that it represents a significant departure from the normal content of this channel.

It seems I am boring my readers. Both of them. ;-)

Ah well. I can justify it because this blog is supposed to be a virtual representation of what's on my mind, and it is quite true that acoustics have commanded much of my hyperfocused attention as of late; indeed I have consciously resisted being distracted from this subject in the interest of moving Freakwitch forward as skillfully and rapidly as possible.

But, life goes on. Other things have been happening, I just haven't written much about it. One interesting thing, I was invited to speak in a panel discussion this coming Monday, April 10:

"Spiritual Warriors," featuring speakers from different religious denominations, 4-6 p.m., Woodbury Campus Center Amphitheater, Portland, free and open to the public, 228-8235.

So, come out if you can. I'm not sure what to expect, though it's quite interesting to me that this panel addresses a topic that's been on my mind for several months, namely the intersection of spirituality and politics.

In particular, I plan to talk about what it means, historically and metaphysically, to be a pagan, and why all pagans are activists whether they realize it or not.

Department of Homeland Mathematics

2006-04-08T12:44:00.000-04:00

Apparently the Department of Homeland Mathematics held a meeting that I missed recently, where they decided that 11.5+11.5+11.5+10.5=35.6.

This week, my paycheck was significantly less than it normally is. So I came into work on my day off to investigate, and discovered that the program that keeps track of time (our punch in/punch out timecard system) does math differently than the rest of the universe. All the hours I'd worked were there, it's just that they totalled it incorrectly.

Ah well. Everyone at work was baffled. Supposedly on Monday someone in payroll will cut me a check for the remainder. Somehow I couldn't help Tom Ridge grinning his inane grin at me and telling me this is all for my protection...

audiogeek verbal diarrhea

2006-04-02T12:11:00.000-04:00

Over the past many moons, I've been frequenting several audio and acoustics forums (fora?) to try to learn to educate myself about good acoustics principles. And, I've learned a tremendous amount from reading these forums.

So I decided to write up my recent experiences, to try to give back in some small way. Maybe someone else is in a similar situation and would be helped by my experience.

There is an overall writeup of what I did, and in a different place I posted detailed instructions on the gobos, including a diagram.

Do they make audiogeek pepto bismol?

cue manic Gene Wilder voice: "my creation ... LIVES!"

2006-04-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

Last night I got the studio rewired (mostly -- microphones and speakers work, I still have a bit more to do for everyone's headphones, etc before we record). I'm thrilled that everything is working just as it was; nothing went *poof* and the resolder job I had to do works perfectly. w00t!

So last night, after a couple of minor false starts and everything was rewired (thanks to Matt for climbing behind the desk to plug in the preamps ... several times as it turned out, heh), I arranged the bass traps and the gobos around the desk, and fired up some music.

WOW! What a sound. SO much more focused than it was before. The "sweet spot" -- or, the listener's position at the apex of the equilateral triangle with the speakers -- sounds fantastic. The bass is MUCH tighter, less boomy, I can actually hear what's going on in the low end. The imaging is much more precise, even with my low-end monitors. If it sounds this good with those, then I can't wait to hook up my Dynaudio speakers from home in that room. Regardless, I have plenty of listening to do to familiarize myself with how this room sounds, but as I told Matt last night, we can DEFINITELY mix an album in this space now. Mission accomplished!

After we listened for a while, we moved the gobos out of the way and got out the microphones. We spent some time arranging them into the theoretically correct place as a starting point, put the bass traps and gobos back into place, fired up some headphones, and while Brent was playing I moved mics around one at a time.

I actually recorded a few minutes of drums.... wow! More low end, a tighter sound than ever. Much of this is, of course, due to the new drum heads, but several links in that particular chain have been upgraded lately. I also added another mic to the drums, so now I'm recording 6 channels of drums. So again, Mission Accomplished!

In our recent demos, the only part that sounded "right" in terms of final production was the bass. Now, I'm happy to say, the drums have a similar "finished" sound that should fit nicely into the mix. I can't wait to record my acoustic guitars in this space now, not to mention vocals, not to mention mixing, not to mention mastering, not to mention selling thousands of CDs. :-)

Countdown to our basic tracks recording session: 12 days. Lots to do before then, cleaning, "vibe" detail (making the space comfortable and as aesthetically pleasing as possible, given the proliferation of "construction" scents in there at the moment...bleah), not to mention cleaning up preproduction for all our songs.

Busy, busy, busy.