white on black i'd like to bring back the white on black for computer applications. for a long time, i set my windows XP to display all white fonts on black backgrounds, and it seriously improved eyes' endurance for looking at the monitor. the only problem is that many applications and web pages are not designed to function with a black background, and thus i ran into the blank window more than i would have liked. gmail was one of the worst culprits, since black is actually interpreted as transparent.... this was tolerable to a point, but it eventually got to be too much of a crutch, and i went back to the glaring bright backgrounds and windows.
what i would wish for the future of applications is the option to work with inverted colors.
airplane you know how when you have a piece of paper that you want to send to the other side of your room to somebody you have that incling to fold it up into a paper airplane but you can't because you'd fold something important on the page? if you shrink your documents so that you can print them into the upper left or right ninth of a page, you can still fold a functional airplane without creasing the image.
plooby Dreams last night of another child, a girl, and our current is a boy. Which is weird since our current child is a girl. In the dream she was sick and i was trying to get into the hospital to see her. This all in the wake of trying to participate in some strange gothic cult improv theater experience.
Amelia started saying her "K" sounds today with extra gusto. It was in response to my explaining how to say "Duck" correctly, which currently comes out as variations of "dud" and "doid".
also, Etrian Odyssey for the nintendo DS is the most Hard Core RPG available. Forget Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Star Ocean, Whatever. Atlus' Etrian will suck you in and kick your ass not apologize for it. It starts to get very trippy around stratum 5.
here were my thoughts on etrian as reflected by a scene in the movie Ray:
"Hey...hey man...you got some rpg?" "Oh i got some, but you don't want this shit. This shit for people who got some real problems." "I...i have problems...."
my friend Lion, who is still recovering from his addiction to Etrian Odyssey, speaks of it in less than glowing terms:
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOU EVEN *SPEAK* THAT NAME AGAIN!!
dream what? somehow my dreams have become strange again. ever since i went back to the club in between northern and southern california at the bottom of the turnpike. now...we all have secret ghost identities again in an apocalyptic world, solid snake tries to solve the mystery of the infected people who aren't really infected but concede to fight back because they think it's over for them, i shove a balloon into a strange toy and it pops out the other end as green spaghetti.
i really liked wall-e. not for the story about a robot who cleans up the world, though that was some good sci-fi, but for the robot love story and strong character development without a scratch of dialog, except for 'wall-e' 'eve' 'plant' and 'directive'
also, for me the fundamental divide in american politics rotates around one basic frame: is human influenced climate change real? more specifically, is global warming caused by humans, and is pollution actually a bad thing?
i fall on the side of 'pollution is bad'. ever since i've seen the "story of stuff', i understand it as a cumulative process, not some buffer where the earth cleans it up for you in some fancy ecological dishwasher and poops out clean water and atmosphere.
also, someone pointed out to me that conservatives actually have no agenda. their politicians seem to rely heavily on unresolvable social issues to get elected.
the conclusion: if gay marriage and abortion were successfully banned, the conservative political engine would fall apart.
well thank god that didn't catch on! Amelia Rose, born 7/24/07, 7:27 PM, 7lb 2oz full head black hair totally adorable. Songs composed for her so far:
Lullaby. Lyrics: Go to sleep baby, baby sleepy sleep. Time for sleep baby, baby sleepy sleep. Time for dreams baby, have your baby dreams. Time for Sleep baby, sleep your baby sleep. Mode: Natural Minor. Structural melody: Do me re te, do me re.
To the changing station: Transportation! Of one baby to the changing Station! There is pooping! happening across the nation! It's a move! that will lead...to great elation! It will require your concentration!. Mode: Spoken word. Style: Industrial Techno.
Poopy Pants: Do you have a poopy diaper, is it squishy and warm? Do you have poopy pants do you do the poopy dance!! the poopy dance! the poopy dance! Mode: ? Instructions: Melody rises in pitch stepwise every half of a complete phrase.
Amelia Plainchant: Amelia. Mode: Phrygian. Instructions: Improvise plainchant like melody.
what i can't stop thinking about right now The violence on the African continent seems to me to be fueled primarily by cultural upsets around the displacement, Diaspora, enslavement, marginalization, and intrusion of a people. The conflicts are between cultures, tribes, peoples not religions. Among some, there is a strong, even frantic, anti-invasion mentality that has been focused on to Western civilization. The anti-western attitude comes from a logical fear of corruption, cultural displacement and marginalization from a continent of people none too familiar with these phenomenons. The history of Western civilizations’ participation in African politicis and warfare does not cast the west in a particularly friendly light, nor does our unfair economic dominance and greedy consumption of African resources and the resources of the rest of the world make the west, particularly the us, out to be the most benevolent empire.
Western countries have backed the conflict of certain peoples for all kinds of reasons. In the process of backing one side of a conflict, you make a good friend, and a horrible enemy. It seems natural that cultures assisted by western civilization might be easy converts into Christianity by missionary forces, where-as cultures slighted, to say the least, by western civilization, might rather violently attack a missionary. The slighted culture will probably also adopt an anti-western consensus and associate their previous enemies with the entire Western civilization. Christianity, seen as part of a huge, evil, unstoppably powerful empire which propagates violence, hoards resources, and takes advantage of small economies and governments to further its own intentions, becomes the religion of the enemy – a sign that a people has given in to the evil empire. That coupled with the fact that they two peoples were already in conflict….my point Is that Anti-Christian attitudes should be deciphered as anti-western attitudes. That seeing a conflict as a religious one helps only to further cement the differences between people and mask the true nature of the combatants, and comfortably hide the true culprits – the leaders of the government in charge. It is essential for the religions of the world to not persecute the religion of Islam or see the violence of fanatics as the beginnings of a giant religious war. In these days, the days of economic feudalism and the worldwide worship of the god of greenbacks, I can’t imagine that any conflict could truly be about religion. Wars are about economics, territory, resources, control, and revenge. An entirely new attitude towards cultural and political interactions needs to take place. A sharing of world resources. A putting aside of political and spiritual differences and a fair discussion of how so many humans can co-exist on one planet.
Political agendas based on greed for power, wealth, and dominance need to cease. We need to re-evaluate our own attitudes towards ourselves with regards to our country – to separate religion and state within us, identifying the distinction between ourselves, our religion, and our culture. My thought is that so many are afraid to look inward for their demons. I believe that now, for many, one need not go much further than the mirror to see the face of evil. We must take responsibility for our own minds and hearts and actions, take responsibility for our own prejudices and hatred, take responsibility for mistakes of the past and the corruption of our leaders (who we supposedly elect). Young people in all countries involved in violent, economic, political, or cultural invasion of another country or culture: we need to take a stand, we need to change ourselves and escape the illusions cast about us by the fools running the show. We need to educate ourselves, our friends, and the children with the combined intent to change the face of our governments, our nations, our people.
a thought the world is not possessed of a singular intelligence, but of many intelligences.
no one is particularly dumb; but there is little time to be well-informed in modern life. it seems most people go about there days living out a readily available cultural lifestyle and then, via television/radio/internet apply themselves to the version of reality that satisfies their egos. but it's no one's fault in particular. it is the life graciously handed to them.
i remember hearing : in order to write you must write. so in lieu of recording anything in particular, i've decided too oil the gears in my hands with no notion of what they might produce. really, i'm trying to leave it all up to them. they aren't used to it, not in this way, usually they are more fluid in their production of notes and doodles. bad doodles. ugly ones. i worry that someone will look at my doodles one day and have me committed. but i think when i'm doodling i ponder the possibility that my doodles might actually represent some form of high art and that i will be reveared one day. but i would feel very bad for most artists if that were the case. there are some though that i would not feel so bad about.
i was disappointed reading recently that John Cage's ringing in his ears was not his nervous system but an early warning of his eventual stroke.
i think silence isn't so far off. it's a place we can go to when we're immeresed in sound. sound is everywhere and i glide through it now like butter over a hot knife.
this isn't what i wanted. what are you thinking about hands? are you only thinking of my better interests? ignore that fellow in the tower, he's done you no good. he's enslaved you and made you his poor representatives, his crippled spokespeople, his underpaid managers. nows your chance! make the page your own! let fly your deepest desires and inspirations! want it! feel it! BE IT! ARRARGAHRARAHRARHGAGHARAskd.jfhgoeirglkgfjiduoishgiuhfoqwiurhfkdsjfgnx,zb,zdghka;e g.,dfg.dg.,,hgnflfsdifhstre,
lalala So I haven't tried it in awhile. Absolute sobriety, meditating everyday, and now Yoga and a Dream Journal. I think in the back of my mind it's been nagging at me like a hungry animal, maybe a python. It's squeezing me now; making me dance at classical music concerts, making me dive into unextected places, making me freeze in the sun, reverbrate. Last night I dream of flying disembodied seen by few looking for somone, dream of being distracted from God by sex, dream of Avocado Man and The Badger uniting to fight crime while i marvel in my kitchen. now i'm spaending a rare afternoon off editing this gigantar score i'm calling "the endless rough draft" (oficially the "Cannabis Cantata") it used to end with a gospel song. with redemption. now it will end with a political satire song. the redemption i tried to force on my characters i realized was what i wanted for myself. i should be more gentle and understanding with my characters. they will be free too one day, but they also have to live their lives, and these Denizens of my cantata are doing pretty well for themselves, all in all.
i buy toys when i am depressed. that means i have Vogon and MArvin the Paranoid android action figures and an imitation Light Saber that is totally awesome.
Early Morocco Morocco was amazing. the airport bit was amazingly hard. i had four layovers between New Mexico and Casablanca! and talk about hassle; everything went down the day before i took off. i can now boast that i flew during a red alert! london hethrow was insane; there were ques miles long that i stood in apparently for no reason. i was exhausted and finding it hard to understand the Queen's english, so to speak. it took me ten tries, four different people, and three different ques to understand what 'the alleyway between the travel-x and the WH Smith' actually meant. to add to it all, a polite british woman would pipe up over the com every five minutes to say 'due to security reasons, if you leave your bags unattended, they will be confiscated and destroyed.' they very pleasantly asked me to check my two precious carry-ons (saxophone and laptop). the laptop lapped its last top that day...the saxophone survived. these, in fact, were the only two bags i had with me for the entire trip! a broken laptop whose case became like a giant, unwieldly purse, and a saxophone in an airplane safe travel case (thank the great mother bird spirit i had that case).
i arrived in morocco three hours late without any phone numbers or addresses to guide me. but that didn't matter because i had no means of using a phone and telling people where i might be heading anyways. after yelling at some phones i couldn't get working, i trundled off with my saxophone and laptop to the outside air. 'are you american?' 'maybe...' 'are you joel?' from then on things went pretty smoothly. this was Said, my band mate Mohammed's brother. the taxi ride in the morning, like every taxi ride to follow, was harrowing. i think moroccan drivers treat traffic lights and signs as passing suggestions. after two hours of the 'pass and dodge' game on a two-way-one-lane road, we arrived in a small town the name of which it took me days to learn to pronounce- Imintanout. we stayed in the village where our band leader, Fatah, was born. the house was this kind of Berber fort with a huge door and iron lock-and-key that went 'clang, shunk, rattle, shunk' when you tried to open it. inside was a courtyard and lots of rooms - a kitchen, several bedrooms (really bedrooms. like rooms where beds lived. lots of them) a dining room (a carpeted room with pillows where we ate Tajin after Tajin) and some bathrooms that ran off of well water. that you had to go get from the well. usually with a donkey. it's all red landscape and clay houses and cacti and donkeys and people.
i was fortunate enough to have been kept up all night by jet lag (what an inappropriately named term); the soundscape of the sunrise in the Berber village was astonishing, to say the least. A chorus of roosters, the occasional Donkey solo, polyrhythmic owl ostinatos, micropolytonal insect drones, various bird counterpoints, and a collection of other sounds that i couldn't for the life of me assign a source to (something sounded like a wounded women's trio).
we were treated like celebrities in Imintanout. We ate a huge lunch at the mayor's house with one of the premier Moroccan composers and one of the most famous Moroccan musicans. We gave a private performance for them on the Mayor's lawn and were met with much approval. After our show (which was awesome, although a lot of people left the concert i think because our music wasn't so traditional) i'd get a lot of ' blah blah blah saxophone!' from people on the street (blahs being words in one of three languages, two of which i couldn't understand one bit). This worked out for the best when I found myself alone in town accidentally abondoned by friends, bandmates, and hosts. I sort of bounced from one group of people to another all the while speaking bad french until i found myself back stage at the festival taking video samples of this sweet stomping/flute playing ensemble when a fellow i barely recognized (after spending more time with Rashid and eating lunch at his house recognizing him became easier) saw me and said 'hey, do you want to go to where Fatah is?' This ended in an amazing dinner on a rooftop back in town with Fatah and his cousin's family.
Well, i could go on. And it probably will in some kind of blog format. I'll sum up the rest of the trip: Once we were set free, we ate poorly and got ripped off until we got our bearings. I jammed with a flute player friend, Ben, on the seaward wall of a castle keep next to some cannons at sunset. Medina's wind and twist. My head never makes sense of them. There are goats in trees! Lots of goats! in One tree! They climb the trees themselves! Flute player (Ben) and i buy sweet Berber Jalabas that look like Jedi robes. I talk to a guy, Mohammed - a Berber - on the roof of our hotel in Marakech in Frenglish for like three hours in the middle of the night. We talk about how awesome Morocco is. He tells me i should jam with the street musicians in the square. I jammed with some snake charmers. The snakes didn't dance to Donna Lee. I meet another Berber whose email address is metallica-is-mylife@yahoo.com Due to the dollar to pound exchange rate, i spend the remainder of my money getting a hotel room for my layover in London and I return home with $0.37 in the bank.
death of the comedian we lost our funny man today. some of us called him 'comedian' some of us called him 'that man' some of us called him 'that guy in the camel suit and stilts'. when our enemy attacked, we were caught unawares, sleeping naked, our weapons in the basement unloaded. by the time we had manned the north tower, they were swimming across the moat. 'didn't someone release the pirhannas?' 'i thought that was james job' 'james took a blowdart in the eye!' 'how does a blonde kill a pirhanna?' asked our funny man. 'we don't know, how does a blonde kill a pirhanna?' we replied. 'she tries to drown it!' we all laughed as wild boar stormed the gate and began rutting around for mushrooms roots. we never released the pirhanna, but Hans fell into the pirhanna cage so they didn't feel left out. as our fungus supply dwindled and as spears arced over our fortress wall, we formed a solid defensive formation around the main gate. our bullets and rockets were an unwelcome surprise for our visitors, and we sent many of them toppling back into the moat. their blood excited the pirhannas and we heard them swishing and swashing about in their cage. this is about when Hans fell in. 'defend the mushroom supply!' we set about wrapping up the wild boar in plastic bags and chucking them into the moat. our comedian told this joke:
'A woman announces to her friend that she is getting married for the fourth time.
"How wonderful! But I hope you don't mind me asking what happened to your first husband?"
"He ate poisonous mushrooms and died."
"Oh, how tragic! What about your second husband?"
"He ate poisonous mushrooms, too, and died."
"Oh, how terrible! I'm almost afraid to ask you about your third husband."
"He died of a broken neck."
"A broken neck?"
"He wouldn't eat the mushrooms."'
we laughed as we bagged and chucked wild boar. in our gaity, we hardly noticed the sword-hurling. one by one i saw my allies lose their heads, pop pop pop. we took cover behind sand dunes, but the swords would cut through the sand. we took cover behind trees and the swords would turn and find us. we found solace in the basemant.
that guy put in the camel suit and stilts started dancing around and making camel noises. we all loved this and were busting a seam when he started his joke:
'an arab walks into a sex shop and asks for a blow-up doll...'
but a blowdart invaded through a hole in the ceiling and caught him in the neck. he seemed to be dancing on his stilts for a moment. he did a pirhouette, then a pas coupe, then finally a grand jete, his camel head smiling all the while, before he collapsed on his left side, dead.
The Camel's owner shouts from across the street "Voulez-vous lui montir?" and I say "Non, je voudrais les bisoux!" The camel kissed me back in the sweetest, most polite, snurfly, non slobbery way you could imagine. i am filled with warm fuzzy eternal camel amour.
snake charmers so i guess i have a pretty good french accent
because no matter what the first thing i say is to a moroccan, no matter how simple or mangled, they ask me if im from france with some truncated phrase that im not familiar with. no matter how confused i become and how minimal my french vocabulary appears, they still press the question until i understand and insist 'non'
after i deny any french ties, they ask me if im engish, or spanish, or itallian, or german, or jamaican, or mozambiquan, or swedish, or belgian, or japanese...
theyll even repeat the question several times in a row after some of my emphatic, or what ID consider pretty darn emphatic, denials:
"allemagne?"
"non!"
"itallia?"
"non!"
"anglaise?"
"non!"
"espagna?"
"non!"
"allemagne?"
"non!"
"itallia?"
"non!"
"anglaise?"
"non!"
"espagna?"
"non!"
"allemagne?"
....
you get the idea.
i have seen at least two other americans in the past week and some....
anyways i meant to write about the snake charmers.
the snake charmers were much easier to jam with than i had originally imagined.
this whole plaza thing at the entrance to the north (i think) side of marrakechs medina is one big money intake machine. every moroccan in its emploi is trained to extract money from every possible orifice in your psycho-emotional matrix. every day you can watch your money siphoned away and turned into jewelry -cheap or expensive-, blunt knives, well made but slightly flawed jeans, unplayable instruments, huge bags of spice, weary chameleans, expensive rugs, shirts, shorts, sheets, shawls, shanks of meat, shampoo, shingles...tissue paper (always carry tissue paper with you into the bathrooms in morocco. ALWAYS.)
so a couple days ago i wonder how the local street musicians (either snake charmers or Gnawis or Berbers) would react to a sxaphone player -
as a threat? as a distraction? as an interruption? as something to allow to exist for a small time and then violently ejected? or as something welcomed, and enjoyed...
the first four assumptions won me over for the first couple days, but finally, today, i decided to brave it.
i told my travelling companions id meet them in casablanca later, bid them adiue, grabbed my saxophone and swerved into a snake pit: a couple parasols, some percussionsists, a double reed player, a circle of euopeans and arabs to watch and volunteer orifices for siphoning, and a few tired, messed up, irritable, exhausted, pillow hating cobras (seriously they waggle little pillows at them to get them up sometimes).
the first thing that happened is a guy in a blue and white baseball cap addressed me and began the sort of converstion i described in the first few paragraphs of this post.
the second thing that happened was that a yellow turbaned man came from under the parasol and started tapping my leg, pulling gently at my saxophone, and speaking syllables of perhaps several different languages at once, none of which i can connect any sort of meaning to.
"ne touche pas!" i exclaim, instinctually.
protection of the saxophone at the cost of all other posessions (besides life) is the prime directive.
i established that this turban fellow was friendly and engaged in a parlay.
what followed was some
"d sfmlze poirsdmo f po"
and some "to veut que je joue?" and some "est-ce que je puet jouer?"
and some "quoi?"
and some swatting of hands away from the saxophone case
i was ushered to sit next to the double reed thingy player. someone illicited applause from the audience on my behalf and i hiccuped and grinned and waved offhandedly.
the reedy thingy player and i tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to play together at first. out of tune hand signals were exchanged and we both insisted on adjusting our own intruments, so we both adjusted and tried again to find ourselves still out of tune, but in a completely new way. a song ensues and i continue to try and tune my saxophone with the reed player and learn the tune as i am being gestured at to play.
this song ends thankfully soon with a request for better woodwind intonation from one of the drum players. we both adjust our our instruments and another song ensues, beginning with the reed and followed by drumes with entrances that seem arbitrary to me, on arbitrary beats in the measure, and on an arbitrary place in the measure...
and i cant figure out if hes playing in B and i should tune down or hes playing C and i should tune up.
finally they agree to let me play my own thing,
and i play a couple mellodies from memory - a Berber tune in 6 and a South Indian tune in 4 - and each time am followed skilfully by one of the musicians on the bendir (thats the drum big shallow round played a bit under and next to the noggin) but with rhythyms that turn around my concept of what im playing rhymically, twisting my phrases and causing them to begin and end haphawzardly across the measure.
its a delicate mess, but all seems to approve. the fellow with the bendir chops gives me a signal like "im going to play this double reed thingy and youre going to be able to hang just fine my man" and he plays right smack in B flat concert and im like "sweet" and i cop the melody, which we play in a heterophonic dervish dance. he teaches me to complete his phrase and let him complete my phrase, and helps me work on notes and ornamants, all the while maintaining a performance feeling...
this guy rocks.
we go through a couple more like that, and it is good, and i weave in and out of the lines as i become comfortable with them, add tonic and dominant drones, arpeggions, harmonies, counterpoints, bass lines, and feel like we create a really nice little vibe. every seems to approve, even the snakes who dance enthusiastically.
i see one snake take a couple jabs at one of the charmers who deflects the bite with a drum. this doesnt seem to break the illusion
and everything goes fine until they ask me to play something on my own
something american, like michael jackson.
and i have to admit, i have a pop tune block. i got it in highschool from being simultaneously annoyed and made jealous by all the guitarists who could play pop tunes and get all the chicks.
so i reach for the michael, but am too overcome with the heat, the pressure, the hash, and the pop block, and i play something a little idiomatically misplaced -
i pull out the one thing am am most comfortable showing off with in the jazz idiom, Charlie Parkers Donna Lee (flashy bop tune possibly written by Miles Davis based on the changes of Indiana),
which seems to impress some people, but drives a few of the musicians into some kind kind of depression, disinterest, or combination. many turn away. the snakes relax seeming grateful, finally unagitated by pillows or double reeds or drums
musicians talk. the vibe is killed.
as soon as i play my last note, one man leans forward from one of parasols shadows with bushy eyebrows leathery face wide eyes grinning to reveal a gnarly looking tooth population offering quiet but energetically clapping hands, and immediately the snake charmers break into another song...
a new player, same instrument, now in the key of b minor, and the place is buzzing again, snakes and all.
this is good; my goal was to practice some of these ornaments more than anything, but i still feel a bit weird about the Donna Lee.
they give me tea, try to play my saxophone,
we play some more tunes - one busts out Frere Jacques with an indeterminately flattened fifth and i join along happily.
when im done, i exchange some pleasant remarks with the charmers, thank everyone, especially the shredder (the guy who rocked), they want my to stay
"non, travail maintanant"
meaning its time to work now
i like this, feeling like i seeped through the semi-permeable membrane between customer and vender,
but still want to move on to another task, like walking around and maybe drinking some orange juice and writing this post,
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