Tuesday, December 14, 2004

As sand through the hourglass....

Sunday diversion.
My good friend Joshua, my lovely wife Amy, and I went to check out a potential venue for musical venting. We journeyed to Berkeley, where we experienced the lovely barbecue of Everett & Jones, the exquisite browsability of Moe’s bookstore, and finally an open mic, kind of, at a place that shall remain nameless.

The second act on this kind of open mic (see, it wasn’t really an open mic; performers were there by invitation and backed up the “headliner,” the woman who “produced” the event; I won’t pretend to understand it) was a guy I’ll call Robbie D, not his real name, who sang a song of such generic blandness, it had my wife giggling helplessly in her seat. It was about a rainstorm in the mountains, and contained the line: “It’s like a hurricane blowin’/Lifts me up and sets me free.”

I’m more familiar with tornadoes and earthquakes than hurricanes, but do hurricanes actually lift people up and set them free? I think not. I think rather they lift people up and dash them on rocks. Correct me if I’m wrong.

That the singer had these intense Charles Manson eyes as he sing this hippie paean to the transcendental underpinning of natural disasters, well, it was icing on the cake really.

Unfortunately, someone (I’m not naming names) left the cake out in the rain. Rats. Another venue lost to us.

Monday diversion.
My good friend Joshua is musical director for a new opera (in progress) by our friends O-lan and Kathleen, and a performance of its first scene occurred (once again, in Berkeley – two nights in a row!), involving pretty much every woman singer we know (including my lovely wife). It’s about a nun in the Middle Ages, volunteering to have herself walled up at the local church, and her subsequent path to self-discovery, self-annihilation, and enlightenment. It was quite lovely.

Truly these are the latter days….
From Sunday’s New York Times:

“Imagine rolling up to your favorite fast-food restaurant in the family minivan, kids in the back. As you pull into a parking place, a camera on the roof of the burger joint silently zooms in on your vehicle. By the time you've opened the door, a computer has analyzed the image and, based on previous encounters with vehicles the size and shape of the one you're driving, classified you as a likely consumer of, say, chicken nuggets and fries. The computer then instructs the kitchen -- via flashing computer monitors -- to start preparing your supposed favorite dishes before you walk through the door.”

Why even leave the house? Soon, your front door will be pelted by chicken nuggets, whether you know you want them or not. As a matter of fact, soon we won’t even be necessary for the experience. The chicken nuggets will devour themselves, in a demographically correct manner, and we will be billed accordingly.

Wall yourself up in a church. Now.

The fixed grin of Miss Botox
I thought America was the world’s leader when it comes to incredibly lame “reality” ideas, but the commies in China may soon leave us in the dust.

According to Reuters, this Saturday China is going to host the first Miss Artificial Beauty pageant, in which every contestant has had cosmetic surgery.

I haven’t really perused Karl Marx and Chairman Mao for their thoughts on liposuction, but I’m sure their thoughts will be penetrating, profound, and, uh, ageless.

DVD
If you want to order the Duck’s Breath DVD, comrades, now is the time. Do not indulge in false consciousness! Duck’s Breath is the one true way to world revolution! Go here to order: http://www.drscience.com/store.htm#dvd



By attending a learning center for computers you can get lots of help.

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