Category: Uncategorized

I’m just going to leave these here

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

– Donald J. Trump, upon learning that Mueller was appointed as the Special Counsel… as quoted in the Mueller report

Dare we hold out any hope that this will come true?

Does it sound like the statement of someone who isn’t guilty? I know this isn’t how our justice system works, but… wow.

“we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes.”

“we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct.”

” The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

” if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.”

“while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

– the Mueller Report

So yeah, this supposed “corrupt rigged witch hunt by Democrats” started with the premise that they were not going to charge Trump with anything.

But the report provides plenty of examples of Trump obstructing justice, and even preemptively shoots down arguments that “it’s not obstruction if guilt is not proven.” And it’s probably as close to saying “wake up, Congress, and smell the impeachment” as they felt they could say.

escape or embrace

I’ve been thinking more about that article I linked to last night, the concepts of “positive liberty” and so forth. Wikipedia — sometimes useful — pointed out that Erich Fromm wrote on the subject well before Isaiah Berlin did.

Based on some quick summaries I think I like Fromm. A political psychologist, a Jew who left Germany as the Nazis came to power, he theorized about why people support authoritarian rule (extremely relevant then and now!), argued that true freedom is defiance of social expectations, was firmly against warmongering and nuclear proliferation, and supported humanistic democratic socialism. One of the reviews I’ve read describes Fromm as the antithesis of Ayn Rand. Sounds good to me!

So I’m definitely going to read some of his work, and I might have a theme for the next album.

I feel like what Fromm was getting at is what got watered down to a vague “be yourself,” meaninglessly repeated by children’s media while I was growing up. A much less strongly reinforced message than all of the entertainment, advertising, news, peers, authority figures, family etc. driving home the lesson that you better not be yourself. And that’s a shame.

lost and found / on mirrors

At the office, above all other things, I like to fidget with magnets. (It was originally BuckyBalls, but those were subject to a recall thanks to the CPSC because it’s dangerous to swallow them. For some reason, safety warnings are deemed sufficient for every other relatively powerful, small magnet on the market, including some produced by the same people, just not the BuckyBalls brand. So you can’t get those anymore.)

From my original set of BuckyBalls, I dropped a few somewhere, could not find them, and assumed they were lost. Several months later when the other business that shared our floor moved out and we raided the stuff they left behind for salvage, I happened to find my missing magnets on their floor. It seemed a stunning coincidence, but hey, I got my magnets back for a while. (Eventually the coating wears off and they get gross and you’re not supposed to handle them anymore.)

At the end of last year I got these Speks magnets as either a birthday or Christmas gift, but managed to lose three of their number within days of bringing them to work. Today, 3-4 months later, I found them sitting on the floor in the middle of my cube, plain as day.

And that’s my creepypasta for the day.

From time to time I’ve contemplated the idea of doing a musical project that is more directly and personal and emotionally intense, less abstract than Shelter In Place was, with no obfuscation. This means it would get political. And thus, mostly angry and frustrated and tired and afraid.

And maybe that’s the way some artists have to operate, but I think I am the opposite. Maybe going abstract is my way of dealing with the world’s crap. It’s not explicit escapism, but almost a case of not wanting that dirt in my sacred space.

I’m thinking about my phrase “paint the mirror” from a couple of years ago:

The title for this track is a clue to something, I’m sure. I was walking around the plaza on a break from work, thinking about art as a reflection of life, and that maybe that goes both directions. I can’t do as much to fix the world as I’d like, but I can make music. The words “paint the mirror” came to me at that moment.

In other words, show the world a better reflection of itself. I’ve said things before about art and magic being types of each other, and the point of them is to change the world. Maybe just a small part of it, just a little — the emotions and thoughts of those who experience the art (or if no one else, the artist themselves!) And then that spreads out in ripples, influencing a wider area in subtle ways.

What I want to bring into the world isn’t more anger and frustration and fear. It is… well, I’ll have to think about it some more, but wonder, weirdness, and acceptance of others’ weirdness seems like a good starting point.

keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle until it comes to a complete stop

We’re still nearly a year away from the first scheduled Democratic caucus for the 2020 primaries. It’s going to be a long haul and a lot of stupid shit is going to fly. I refuse to commit either to or against any candidate this early. I do have some opinions and concerns about most of them — some more than others — but let’s see how things shake out.

A couple of months ago, a progressive organizer (I don’t recall which one) said something along the lines of not worrying so much about who the candidate is, but (A) stopping Trump and (B) applying continuous pressure wherever necessary to get the policies and the justice we want. And that this is a strategy that doesn’t wait until after the convention in mid-July, but has already begun and must continue forever.

Anyway.

I’ve gotten shipping notices for the ER-301 (literally on the very day it was estimated) and 16n Faderbank. The TXb arrived a couple of weeks ago. The new case was estimated to ship from the Netherlands sometime this week, too. I’m not letting the anticipation stop me from making music in the meantime though…

My QPAS arrived last weekend and it’s pretty brilliant. I’ve come to accept that I’m not really a fan of filters as such — but if I think of it as an LPG, a source of tuned percussion, a kind of waveshaper/distortion, a particular type of equalizer, and a rich target for modulation that can add texture and motion and rhythm, rather than as “a filter” then it’s a great… one of those. I suppose “filter” is okay for shorthand though.


stuck?

Two things about the supposedly sticky new song in The Lego Movie 2:

1. What really stuck in my head after the movie was “Everything Is Awesome.”

2. “Baby Shark” fits melodically and rhythmically over the new song just fine, and then takes over your brain completely.

3. When a thing you do goes viral, it’s really hard to follow it up with a second viral thing on purpose.

4. That’s more than two things.

on repeat

I’ll be Quite pleased when the theater on the second floor of my workplace is done with its run of Avenue Q.

They have a TV monitor facing into the atrium that continuously loops a loud 63-second long ad for the show. ” sQueaky clean (loud buzzing noise) Winner of the Tony award for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score (snippet of a chorus for about half a second) …warm and fuzzy neighbors as they face the cold hard realities of modern life…
‘It Sucks to Be Me,’ ‘Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,’ and ‘The Internet is For Porn’ …seats are limited so do it Quickly… it’s furry fun, no strings attached!”

63 seconds. That means, on the trek from the parking garage to the elevator I get to hear more than one complete loop. When I get up to take a break, I hear it again. If I walk around the atrium to stretch my legs and get some pretend exercise, I hear it some more.

Now, I actually like… some musicals. Most of the StarKid ones, for instance. But I’m long past sick of this one and I’ve never seen it. They’ve been promoting it since approximately June of last year and it is the only thing they’ve been promoting for the past five weeks.

It’s playing through March 25, which I know because they keep shouting it at me multiple times every day. On March 26, I will celebrate.

control freak

Another weird dream: an online roleplaying game where parties of four players each try to synchronize their characters’ magic powers and/or kung fu with a 4×4 set of knobs. I was playing it with my Doepfer A-138m Matrix Mixer, and someone else on my team had a Midi Fighter Twister.

Each column of knobs corresponded to a character, and each row a different category of ability (e.g. fire/air/water/earth, or attack/evasion/deception/defense, etc.). Each player mainly had control over their own character, but the closer other players’ knobs in that same column are, the more effective the ability is. (Or in some cases, you’d want the other three players to set their knobs opposite yours — it was complicated.) For maximum effectiveness all four players had to vary their own settings to match the rhythm of the combat or puzzle, and all four players had to coordinate with each other to maintain a defense or to attack as one to exploit an opening, and so on. Trying to have all your knobs turned up all at once would tire your character, and uncoordinated movement would hinder your teammates. And of course the knob settings affected the music too.

It was fiendishly difficult, required a very well-coordinated team and lots of practice, would never catch on and I have no idea how all this could translate in real time to something less abstract in terms of movement and choice making. My subconscious mind is creative, but is not a great game designer.

back to the salt mines

Last night I did not dream of Michelle or Barack, but of my boss.

In the dream he was throwing a party in his magnificent mansion / evil lair. It was built over, and included the entirety of, a former salt mine. Wide, high-ceilinged halls lined with exotic woods, with signs pointing the way to different “galleries” and “villas” within the… let’s face it, the man owned his own underground city. Shafts wide enough to contain a normal-sized house, with staircases wide as a city street, led down to museums, art installations, and stockpiles of building materials and booze.

So much booze. Everyone at the party was given a sizable bottle of Bombay Sapphire and we were downing it like water. There was a storehouse of it below in case the pyramid of bottles in one of the ground floor rooms wasn’t going to be enough. Impressive storehouses of really good rum and whiskey were below. In the waking world I would never choose gin over rum…

He also had his own cult in residence — well, not his cult but he was their benefactor. They had a village in one of the “galleries” with a natural salt floor; they dressed a bit like Mennonites but specialized in performance art and glass blowing. I watched them putting on a play about the misinterpretation of a dying woman’s advice and instructions to her children, who were going to run the village after her passing. The main character was represented by a carefully arranged pile of clothing, which they alternately shuffled around, removed from, and poured water onto to make it sort of sink into the ground as the character let go of life.

…I’m pretty sure IRL, my boss is a teetotaler, fairly well off but not obscenely rich, and doesn’t live in a salt mine or sponsor a cult. But I don’t know him that well; who knows?

super blood wolf moon!

I did not get a good photo of the eclipse. We saw it with our own eyes though, despite the 13 degree weather, and it was really nifty. Not quite Great Solar Eclipse of 2017 awe-inspiring, but still… nifty.

I named a song after it. Of course.

My dad did get some good photos, so maybe one of those will become the cover art for the next album? We’ll see.

Last night was the finale of Steven Universe. Not the end of the series, but the end of the five seasons they originally planned for.

No spoilers, but it moved FAST. We had an intriguing villain, a possible sinister hidden conspiracy, a dire situation, and a kingdom that could have been ripe for revolution. We could have expected a full season, if not more, from the setup we had. Instead, a zillion things all happened at once and wrapped it all up (*) in a big damn hurry. It wasn’t a bad ending, though.

Oh, there are implications — worlds of implications. All kinds of uncertainty about how things are going to proceed from here, and potential drama and turmoil. Quite a few mysteries and loose ends. But it was still a conclusion.

After the episode there’s a teaser (which they’ve already seen, but now there’s more context) for a full-length movie featuring a new villain (about whom there are already fan theories), which has apparently been in the works since 2015 (!). But we won’t see that until next fall. They say there’s going to be at least one more season, too. I feel like it’s going to be a long wait…

vision thing

In dealing with some health insurance garbage — the intentionally and increasingly obtuse system we have to deal with for getting refunds from our employer for a portion of the horribly large deductibles we have been stuck with for the past couple of years — I found some interesting messages in my account:

So is that… visions, as in premonitions of the future? Grand insights, perhaps? Because there’s got to be an upside to this thing…

Also, I was checked for eye in December. The optometrist confirmed that I have eye.

Not very good ones, but they still count.

I figure for all the stupid forms I have to fill out, get rejected, re-submit, appeal and finally get approved, there are four people getting paid a pittance to do the bullshit job of rejecting and/or approving them (who also are submitting their own claims and having them rejected by someone else), a manager to tell them they’re not rejecting enough, investors telling them all they need to be more profitable this quarter, a consultant paid by my employer telling them once in a while that they have to not reject claims so much, and time wasted by my employer’s accountant and president dealing with the consultant and getting their own forms rejected. Medicare For All now, please.

Anyway, I figured out a pretty good option for synth 2.0: synthracks.com makes many different custom cases; and a particular unpowered portable one that will be perfect. The power supply and busboards I put in the rack will be more than adequate. With some luck and perhaps a cheap studio rack box I may even fit all of my synth gear (except the Maschine) on one side of the desk; if not I can still get most of it together and just have the Microbrute on the other side perhaps.

Of course if I had better woodworking skills I could build my own case, but… I’ve seen the stuff I’ve cobbled together. It’s not pretty, or sturdy, or the right size, or lined up correctly, or attached properly or… yeah. The wood semi-frame I built for the back of my rack is attached with wire ties because I split the wood twice trying to put it together. So I’m leaving this to a pro.