Sushi is a cult

I first became aware that sushi was a cult sometime in the late 90s. It's a cult because people are forever trying to get you to join. Sushi-cult members begin to act strange when you tell them you don't like sushi. Watch them. They go into automatic-recruitment mode.

If you didn't like, say, sandwiches, nobody would look at you and say, "What!? You don't like... Oh my god. All right, that's it - I'm making you a pet project of mine. We are going to go out for sandwiches this weekend. You'll see. This Saturday, after bowling we'll go, we'll all go. You'll see." You can picture them shaking their head at you. "Uh," they'd say as they look heavenward, "I can't believe you don't like sandwiches!"

No, they'd probably go, "Really? You don't like sandwiches? Huh, that's weird. Okay, so we won't go out for sandwiches then."

Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe...

Flying north for a Fall holiday tomorrow.

Maize!

L and I went to the North Georgia Corn Maze on Saturday. The corn maze is some distance from the Nunnery - about an hour and a half by car. We prepared for the trip with some seasonally-appropriate, eerie reading material. Our arrival at the corn maze was welcomed (with open arms!) by a very happy (and terrifying?) orange creature, viz:


This is the entrance to the maze. The stalks I'd guess were about nine feet high, with no way to see over the tops.


L & I were, as far as I could tell, the only people inside the maze using observation, memory, and cleverness to navigate our way around. Everyone else - and I do mean everyone - was looking the whole time at their maps (you get a map before you go inside). They were all looking down at their maps, saying things like "and now we're supposed to go left," and "no, wait, it says to go this way." Like everybody was doing whatever they could to avoid feeling disoriented. In a maze.

Like the primary function of the maze is to give you an opportunity to exercise your map-reading skills.

A view of the north Georgia mountains from the bridge near the exit:


There were seven differently-shaped hole-punches secured to posts throughout the maze. If you hole-punched the paper they gave you with each of the seven, you could register to win a prize in a drawing. We found all seven hole-punches and punched our cards seven times. We did this, again, without resorting to cheating ourselves.

The perimeter of the maze, once you find it, opens out with a view of hills and cows...


cows and hills...


and cows...


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After the maze we walked through a haunted house. This was my first-ever haunted house experience, which probably says something about me and how much I enjoy subjecting myself to abject terror. It was called The House of Burm, and was located a hayride away from the maze. But it was so utterly terrifying that we must agree never to speak of it again.

This time tomorrow we'll be just one day closer

There's no gas in Atlanta.

Two weeks ago Hurricane Ike hit Texas (and Louisiana, and Cuba, and Grand Turk Island, etc.) and it (like Hurricane Gustav before it) damaged some refineries, causing Bedlam's gas supply to suddenly drop. Now filling stations are closed and there's a lot fewer cars on the road. I saw on the news how people now follow gas tankers around to see if/where they're delivering. There are fewer people downtown now, and fewer students at school. L keeps commenting how surreal it all is.

L bought a 2-gallon tank she keeps with her in her car. She fills it up when she sees an open station and I siphon it into my car using some old fishtank tubing. The first time she could only fill it three-quarters of the way because some mean people were yelling at her.

I ran out of gas last Friday, but thanks to L I now have whatever three-quarters of two gallons is. And plus she's coming back tonight with two gallons more. Until things improve, she's been driving me to work in the mornings.

Now playing, the soundtrack to the Mahabharata.

max(a,b) = −min(−a,−b)

A theme of the last two weeks. I've had several conversations with individuals about damage inflicted upon them by people in their past.

Observations.

1. The substance within shitty people is contagious. We all have some degree of immunity to it according to our constitution. Whatever our situation, we can inoculate ourselves against it by making a clear decision.
2. We are capable of mistrusting the benign even while inviting the thief through the front door.
3. It is not uncommon to crave what has cut us.
4. Life is hard.

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Today is the first day of Autumn. And it's also a Monday, which means this year the first day of Autumn coincided with a meeting of the LBC. This alchemical alignment happens only once every um, forty-nine years. ish.

Nice weekend breaking in L's new place.

C3PO was an asshole.

I watched Episode IV: A New Hope yesterday with L. She'd never seen it before. It or any of the other Star Wars films.

Observations:

1. It's true. C3PO was kind of an asshole.

Not in the other films though, only in Episode IV. In the other films he's a verbose-yet-likable coward. A Guildenstern to R2D2's Rosencrantz.

But in Episode IV, he really is, he's sort of an asshole. Especially early on, after he and R2 go their separate ways on Tatooine. If no one else starts a "C3PO was an asshole" club, I may have to.

2. Darth Vader is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the death star. I'd never noticed that before.

It's his decision to let the plucky band of rebels escape the Death Star so he can track the Millennium Falcon to the Rebel base. He lets them escape with R2D2 and with, therefore, the schematic plans of the Death Star's Achilles' heel.

Now, this is a big gamble. Way too big, if you think about what he's risking. And it totally doesn't pay off. In fact, everything goes completely to hell.

But strangely, as we know from the next two films, this will have virtually no effect on Darth's political career. Sound familiar?


3. As Tarkin gives the order to blow up Alderaan, Vader is standing with Princess Leia - he even touches her - but doesn't realize who she is.

4. In the cantina, Greedo says Jabba has put a price on Han's head so high that every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be out looking for him...


but these bounty hunters must not be very good, because it turns out Han was "hiding" at the bar in the largest spaceport ("the most wretched hive of scum and villainy") of Jabba's own home planet.

5. Obi Wan says, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

This sort of thing gets said a lot throughout the series. The Emperor might even say it, I can't remember.

So, but if that's really the way things work, shouldn't their enemies be doing everything they can to keep them alive?

6. Much is made of Mark Hamill's whiny portrayal of Luke ("But I was going to Tashi Station to pick up some power converters! Waa!!"), but watching him this time, I see he does a very good job of broadcasting appropriate emotional cues from moment to moment. While still managing to reference 70's porn-star aesthetic! Hooray!

7. The fight scenes (blasters, x-wings, lightsabers, ...) are entertaining at about the level of (the old) Battlestar Galactica, and are not Lucas's strong suit. So... what are his strengths?

a) the grand overarching scale of the vision.
b) creatures, creatures, creatures. And 'droids.
c) choosing (and working with) John Williams for the score.
d) casting, at least in Episodes IV, V, & VI. Except for the Ewoks, who should be exterminated immediately.

Blue skies for pain

Richard Wright, founding member of Pink Floyd, died today from cancer. I can do no better than quote directly an email from good friend Mr. O:

"The cornerstone band, the reason I picked up the guitar, the psychedelic influence of my whole youth from age 13 on is now minus the humble guy in the band."

Memento Mori

The new office 2: harpsichords

There are two harpsichords (and a piano) in my new office. This is two more harpsichords than I've ever had in any of my offices before. Here are some photos for you.

Harpsichord 1:

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Harpsichord 2:

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The new office 1: the view

I mentioned this earlier, but I've been temporarily relocated to a new working space as my office is being renovated. I've been in this new office a few weeks already. And it has several sweet things going for it, over and above the fact that it's far removed from the chaos and mayhem which is the School of Music administrative nerve-center.

My new office is a corner office, and there's lots of windows and light, which so far is not bothering my slight photophobia. Looking east, I can see the Westin a few blocks away, still badly damaged from the tornado that battered downtown on Saint Patrick's Day weekend.



I'm not sure what this next building is called, but it channels a bit of New York pre-war gothic, don't you think? Louis Sullivan meets... the Dakota? There are too few of these buildings in the south.


An architecture more typical of Bedlam is the Georgia Pacific building. Pink granite? check. Tall (for downtown ATL)? check. Character? Mmm, not so much. I worked in this building for a few months before I went to Dagobah to study the Alexander Technique.


Shortly before leaving Georgia Pacific, there was a heated debate between two opposing groups, the first of which had the charming and creative idea of changing the name of the organization to "Georgia Terrific". The opposing camp was a disorganized mass of stuffy nay-sayers. As I recall, I was the only person belonging to the first group.

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Looking out my north-facing windows and depending on the weather, I sometimes have a view of Kennesaw Mountain, which you can see hazily below. The Georgia Aquarium is also hiding toward the bottom of the picture...


and Atlanta wouldn't be Atlanta without the CNN Center:

Come out come out wherever you are

1. Tuesday I recorded the skeleton of a new piece for markandwanda. Wednesday L brought me to look at a house she's thinking of renting, different from the last one. This one's right. Tonight Mark is visiting to work on music. And tomorrow Rashid is coming over for a dinner party.

2. Music students burn out when they're made to play music they feel no connection with. This happens often.

3. Today I had reason to learn that Google returns zero results on the search "Bank of America makes me sad," which surprised me.

Stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder

1. Chicken Han Solo frozen in carbonite:


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2. Labor Day weekend:

French toast at R Thomas before seeing Transsiberian Saturday night with L. The internet promised us this film was a "Thriller," but I believe we need a new genre to classify this one: Transsiberian is a "Bummer," all claustrophobic and grey. And the redemptive ending is too weak and inconclusive to make up for all the iffy blah stuff which went before. But hey, I like dark film. And we all love gloomy blear, right? I mean... don't we?

Hello?

Anyway, the film happened between two visits to a house L was considering renting half of. The house, which tried to convince us it was the right house, wasn't.

Back to the Nunnery for wine.

Sunday was weird. Strange people behaving strangely, the world misbehaving. A brief Solioonensius.

And so, calling to mind what C3PO tried to tell us even though we weren't really listening to him when he said it, namely that "the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3720 to 1," we did what people have traditionally done in similar situations: we cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, and drove to IKEA. And later slept watching Groundhog Day.

Monday, the holiday, was spent paying attention to the Nunnery. L and I ate bar-b-que and watched Annie Hall. So, yeah, a quiet weekend. And today I was able to catch up on some correspondence I've been meaning to get to.

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3. Listening now to Dairy Queen Empire.

Is that a rabbit in your pocket?

Yesterday was L's birthday and she spent it mostly hanging out with me in my office as I worked.

I took an extended lunch and we walked to Centennial Olympic Park, arriving just in time to see the water fountains dance in sync with three pieces of music:

1. Twist and Shout, the Beatles version, which sometimes puts me in mind of Ferris Bueller, and which is so completely convincing that it sometimes takes an effort to remember that John and Paul didn't write it;
2. Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder sans the second verse; and
3. something which may or may not have been the William Tell Overture.

The tons of fun began on Birthday Eve with a midnight viewing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is seriously hilarious and should be re-released in theaters and seen by everyone immediately.

Other birthday highlights included:

* pink champagne and a bouquet of lilies and sunflowers waiting for her when she got in;
* a celebratory post-lunch shot of tequila;
* tapas and margaritas at Fuego with friends Erin and Matt;
* late night at the Nunnery for Irish creme and good times.

The Opera of the Egg

Good friend Phil flew in from New York to visit for the weekend. We haven't seen each other in more than ten years. A fine time was had by all.

We met in my (new, temporary) office and he hung out reading The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick while I solved students' problems.

There was a lovely dinner party on Friday night. This was the first dinner party to be held at my magnificent new dining room table. A huge success. L is a natural hostess.

The meal went something like this:

* Prolegomenon and mezcal
* sparkling wine
* cheese and crackers
* a house salad, marking the beginning of the dinner proper
* the main course: a delicious stuffed chicken with red potatoes and asparagus
* libations included (but were in no way limited to) my current favorite chiraz, St Hallett Faith 2006
* all capped off with L's naked strawberry-cherry cake, which was to die for.

The Clothing Optional Midnight Tour of Candler Park set out from the Nunnery at 22:14 with all parties fully clothed and more explored the golf course than the park proper. But "Clothing Mandatory Quarterish-Past-Ten Tour of the Candler Park Golf Course" is such a mouthful.

Other highlights:

* the famous Carroll Street Cafe for a brunch served by my current favorite waitress, Alyssa;
* a matinée viewing of The Clone Wars (Sabitathica's official assestimate: you will hear bad things about this film, if only because Lucas's name is attached to it (though only as executive producer) and people tend to falsely ascribe sinister motives to his artistic endeavors, motives involving greed and cynicism - but don't believe the un-hype. It's highly enjoyable. Lucas's universe comes across well in animation and I hope there's more installments to follow);
* polishing off a not-entirely-full bottle of mezcal and eating the "worm", actually a larval scyphophorus acupunctatus. Heh, good times;
* a viewing of the Silly Walk Sketch;
* the famous Carroll Street Cafe for brunch (take two);
* a trip to Borders to get Phil an Atlanta- gift of The Road which has been coming up again these days. I got a copy for myself too;
* a stroll through the Moulin Rouge rooms at Paris on Ponce;
* dinner and margaritas at La Fonda;
* ice cream at Dr. Bombays;
* playing on the swings and the fun rides in the playground by the park.

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This is Week I of Fall classes, 2008. Things have been busy at the office. Everyone needs my time and my attention.