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Wednesday, 20 November 2002 (tape hiss makes me happy) 5:04pm Although sometimes I think that Phil Ochs had a point across the board about marching (and The Great Overshadowing certainly proved he had liberals down pat, considering how many otherwise progressive people suddenly started waving the flag), I'm going to a march and vigil tonight for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It seems the right thing to do.
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Tuesday, 19 November 2002 (before top dead center) 10:52am While I have no doubt that it was the biggest shower in years, you couldn't tell by looking, not out here on the Pacific Ocean. There were no clouds, but the nearly full moon setting over the ocean made the 2am sky a light, almost starless blue. It was beautiful in and of itself, but the timing couldn't have been worse. Oh well. It's the second law of naked-eye astronomy in action: if something interesting happens in your area, you won't be to view it. (The first rule is that if something interesting happens, it'll be somewhere else.)
According to The Village Voice, in 8 Mile Eminem actually defends queers. (Yes, I know the movie's fictional. That's what apologists say about his music when
need be, too. Kinda reminds me of the defenses of the Bible. It's all the divine word of Gawd—except, of course, the
parts which aren't supposed to be taken literally. Divine metaphor. How convenient.) Hell, he's probably one of them. I'll bet
he takes it up the ass. Fucking fag.
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Monday, 18 November 2002 (be little with me) 1:49pm Written in my notebook last night: We were at K-Mart the other day (I'm glad I'm (mature? realistic?) enough not to be ashamed to shop there there now and again) when I saw a sign advertising seasonal employment. Boy, the thoughts that went through my head from that one, such as, "Well, Joe Donohoe is a cab driver, surely a much gnarlier and more dangerous job, and look at all the great material he gets out of it." I'm not sure I'm ready to work a K-Mart xmas just for my art, though. Even if it does promise great benefits.There was lots of other stuff, too. 9:30pm Like this, for example, all written while leaning up against the stage: I did eventually see Chupa, as well as getting tacit approval from one of the guys in Stars of the Lid to use their music. At least, when I told him we'd used one of their songs, he didn't seem upset. Although it saddened me a little when he told me the piece in question ("Requiem for Dying Mothers Part 2") has been used quite a bit, in teevee documentaries and such. And here I thought we were being so original. sometime after midnight I had planned on getting a good night's sleep tonight, since I didn't get to bed until after three last night and got up relatively early so i could get my bloodwork done. By all rights, I should be in bed right now. But, no. There has to be a fucking meteor shower, and one of the biggest in years at that. Aren't they always the biggest in years?
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Sunday, 17 November 2002 (suspended in light) 3:30pm Turns out the problem was very much on our end—a $5 dollar line splitter from Radio Shack, which I've probably had since Fresno, is dying. Yikes. Hadn't even crossed my mind. The technician (who didn't show up until quite a bit after 5pm) was very gracious about it, and said he'd write up his report to make it sound like the fault was on their side so we won't be charged. Can't ask for more than that. Especially considering I offered him a soda at one point before realizing we were out (I don't drink 'em, so I don't keep track), which must have seemed like a mean bait and switch. He asked at one point if we were listening to music, and I tried to explain the concept of ambient drone music as best I could. (Troum's Tjukurrpa (Part 2 - Drones), to be precise.) It's not easy. There's something about waiting all day long which can be very draining; unfortunately, as a result, I wasn't quite up to accepting (e)'s offer to go out. At least with the DSL up and running we were able to listen to, as well as watch on RealVideo, Tarantula Hawk at the Beyond the Pale Festival. It's little things like that which make the modern world tolerable. I suppose I should also be grateful for the fact that I don't have to see the new Harry Potter movie if I don't want to. It's nice to have that degree of freedom, even if being unaware of its existence isn't an option. I watched CNN Headline News a few times this week, and couldn't help noticing that they were treating the movie—produced and distributed by Warner Bros—as though it were an actual news item. For that matter, commercials in heavy rotation included ads for Time-Life music collections and AOL. If I were some kind of conspiracy nut, I'd wonder if the fact that AOL Time-Warner owns CNN. Nah. That's just silly. (It would almost be like suggesting that between the Gulf of Tonkin and the fact the government even considered Operation Northwoods, one shouldn't discount the possibility that The Great Overshadowing wasn't a total surprise to the Bush administration, and that maybe, just maybe...)
At least NPR has interesting information; for example,
with a per-unit cost of eighty-four cents and a stated markup of two thousand percent (which is roughly seventeen dollars, though the retail price is
rounded up to the more aesthetically pleasing double sawbuck, twenty dollars), Mattel will have to sell at least twenty thousand units of the disturbingly phallic
Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broom to be in the black on the item. That's about four hundred thousand consumer dollars,
not counting varying state and local taxes and/or potential shipping fees. Somehow, I suspect they'll make it into the black. This is, after all,
the most evil time of the year. My Nimbus 2000 money was spent on my ticket for Beyond the Pale tonight, though. I guess the economy will just
have to roll on without me.
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Friday, 15 November 2002 (invito al cielo) 7:56pm So I finally bit the bullet and dove into Pac Bell's tech support labyrinth. (I do love mixing my metaphors, don't I?) I said that yes, I am Jeffrey Robert Connelly, the owner of the account, and that's "sir" to you. As I painfully learned last time, trying to explain the name change is, well, painful, at least on the tech support level. Once this is all cleared up—assuming it does get cleared up and I don't switch to Earthlink or Raw Bandwidth, the latter of which Timbre suggested—I'll call the billing people and try to get the name business taken care of properly. Which it should have been already, my regular phone bill says Sherilyn and the internet service is part of it, but you know how it is with those damn Cthulhu. One tentacle never knows what the other is doing. Anyway, a technician will be coming out between 8am and 5pm tomorrow (I hope it's closer to 5pm for Maddy's sake) to find out if it's the internal wiring or the modem. Whatever the answer is, it'll be nice to finally have one. What really sucks about not having DSL right now is that I'm missing out on the live broadcasts of Beyond the Pale, on both KFJC and (which I can only get online) and on the DNA's site. At least with dialup I can keep open a window with a jpeg slideshow of the stage. Because I'm that pathetic. There was a possibility that Chupa was going to be able to put me on her guestlist for at least tonight, but she's not getting a guestlist during the festival. Plus, though she's working at the DNA all four nights of Beyond the Pale (Thursday through Sunday), she'll be working the private back bar where the artists booze it up, so I probably won't even get to see her when I go to the show on Sunday. Oh well. That's life, such as it is.
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Thursday, 14 November 2002 (colder still) 8:10am I'm learning to really hate Pac Bell. It seems like we were online for a grand total of ten minutes yesterday, and only five minutes of it was DSL. It works for an average of about thirty seconds before the "ready" light starts flashing, which of course means that we're not connected. I am loath to call their tech support because, well, I loathe them. It'll just be the same as before—they'll tell me to move the modem three feet off the ground and at least as far from the computer (done, with no effect), and otherwise that everything's fine and I shouldn't be having any problems whatsoever and would I like to upgrade my service to something twice as expensive and with that whole name change thing am I going, like, all the way? Since the internet service is probably still under my old name (I've never quite figured out how to change it), I suppose I can use the fact that I still get called "sir" on the phone to my advantage and not mention anything. And we're paying way too much for service which is this bad, so I have to do something. I wish there was some way to tell if it's actually Pac Bell or if it's a problem with the modem itself, but when I ask around about such things only the crickets respond. Ugh. Maddy's getting a root canal this afternoon, and has been prescribed valium. I'm jealous of the second part, but not the first so much.
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