up. date.

1. Had my first voice lesson in 5 or so years yesterday, and I have a long road ahead of me. The instrument is pretty well thrashed, thanks to gastroesophogeal reflux disease and the technical grotesqueries I've aqcuired in order to sing around the resulting vocal polyp. Probably not hopeless, but I'm digging in my heels for the long haul. It'd be nice if I could deal with it non-surgically, so that's the goal right now. My new teacher is awesome, totally knows her shit, and had to overcome some even more hideous vocal health issues herself, so it's nice to be studying with someone with that much empathy.

2. Governor Schwarzenegger's budget cuts mean that my school district is laying off a sizeable chunk of the faculty. I don't talk about work stuff here, so I'll fill in the peeps via email as I know more.

3. I'm gonna reapply to PhD programs next year, I think. Apparently there were some departmental political issues involved with my application, which to me is insane. I did the conservatory thing, and in that environment they only care about three things: if you can play, if you can afford it (or be good enough to warrant financial aid), and if you're gonna work. So the whole ivory tower political bullshit is definitely a turnoff. Still, I can write and think that scholarship is what I need to be doing, so I'll apply again next year, and not bank everything on one university this time.

4. Despite the dour notes struck in the preceding paragraphs, I'm doing really well. I'm constantly amazed at the sheer number of stellar people in my life.

An Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton

TO: Senator Hillary Clinton

FROM: The Bone 2008 Presidential Campaign

Dear Senator Clinton,

Much ado has been made over the past week of your musings that your fellow Senator, Barack Obama, might very well be an ideal running mate for you should you become the Democratic Party's Presidential nominee. This was an excellent strategy on the part of your campaign, despite the fact that, given Senator Obama's impressive lead in the delegate count, it may be perhaps a bit premature.

It is in this spirit that I would like to suggest that a Bone/Clinton presidential ticket would be nigh-unstoppable, and formally invite you to join my campaign as my running mate.

After several meetings with my advisors we've realized that, although my leftist platform will play well on the West Coast, I will need a more conservative voice on the ticket in order to win in the South. And you, honorable Senator, are the ideal candidate to provide that balance. The evidence. I feel confident that together, your conservatism and my vision (and awesomeness) will unite this country, build a bridge to the 22nd century, keep America safe, blah blah blah. You know the drill. We can totally take McCain... I mean, he may have been tough when he was a Corinthian POW during the Peloponnesian War or whatever, but have you seen the dude lately?

Anyway, should you accept please feel free to bring some of that sweet drug company campaign cash with you. My chief campaign advisor looked at our financials today and suggested that I buy Dodd's and Huckabee's buttons and T-shirts at a discount, cross their names off and write in my own as a money-saving gesture, and it'd be kind of rad to not have to resort to those measures. To quote from Amélie, these are hard times for dreamers.

I await your reply.

Sincerely,

The Bone

Blergh

Well, I didn't get into grad school.

Back to the drawing board.

Stupor Tuesday

I've been so busy bringing the Smooth Talk Express to campaign events at bars all across Los Feliz that I totally neglected the "netroots." Therefore, here's my obligatory blog post: Write in The Bone tomorrow if your state is voting. Or hell, even if it isn't; just go to your local school/church/park, set up a fake voting booth and freak out the normals.

I'm still working on my platform with my top and bottom advisors, and while we're waiting to roll out the final version here's a sampling:

- End the War on Drugs, initiate the War on Dougs;

- Honorary citizenship for Slavoj Žižek, George Galloway and, posthumously, Heath Ledger (unless he was already a citizen, in which case, I say, "Well done, Heath, and Godspeed");

- Inauguration to take place on January 20, 2009, at 4:20 PM Eastern time.

I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night...

... because every year I do, this is all I hear:

Light posting lately, I know. I turned 35 this past week (more on that in a few days), and am trying to finish up a class I need to complete by the end of the month in order to clear my teaching credential.

But none of that is why I'm writing today.

The intersection of my 35th birthday and the most fractious political season in recent memory seems to me to be almost divinely ordained. With the Republican party in complete shambles, and the Democratic party choosing between pro-corporate, center-right candidates whose squabbles are threatening to irreparably tarnish the candidate who eventually wins the nomination, the country desperately needs someone with vision. A person who can, through content-devoid platitudes, unify this country, make this election about the American people and the future, and build a bridge to the 21st century. And I believe that I am that person.

Therefore, I am formally entering the 2008 election as your candidate for President of the United States.

This decision was not unconsidered. I have had an exploratory committee in place for days now, and the unanimous opinion was that there is no good reason for me to not run. These fine men and women are like America in small, and their support has convinced me that running for President is simply the right thing to do, and the way in which I can best serve my country. Oh, and I also consulted God, or something. She (yes, She. Wanna make something of it?) also said "Sure, go for it."

I don't really have a platform yet, but it's gonna be awesome. I felt that it was more important to get this announcement out there prior to Super-Duper Tuesday. Anyway, you should totally write me in tomorrow when you go to the polls. Trust me... I stand for all of the stuff you like. And stand against everything you hate. For instance, immigration is a big issue this season, right? I guarantee that I'm the only candidate who not only endorses a liberal immigration policy with amnesty for people who are already here and working hard for America, but who will, if elected, actually give Texas back to Mexico. Except maybe Austin. But yeah, the rest of those guys? Fuck 'em! Texas out of Mexico in '08!

Watch for my campaign bus Honda--the "Smooth Talk Express"--at baby-kissing events near you.

EDITED: Someone notified me that I'm-Super-Thanks-For-Asking Tuesday is not tomorrow, but rather February 5th. She also took pains to imply that my typo demonstrated a Fred Thompson-esque lack of committment to the campaign process. I disavow any connection to the typo; one of my aides clearly entered the incorrect information by accident, and my press team will be more vigilant about these matters going forward. But really, is this what we want this election to be about? Typo-related mudslinging? First of all, if that's the only thing with which my honorable opponents can slander me, then this bodes well for my potential performance in the upcoming general election. And more importantly, this episode serves to show us the need for us to rise about this partisan "he typed, she typed" bickering that is holding us back from creating a better America. I call upon my opponents to refocus their attention on the issues and not these petty matters. Bone in '08!

MySpace/Facebook Face-off

MySpace or Facebook? It's one of those questions that endures, like "paper or plastic." There are interesting socioeconomic issues involved (danah boyd explores these in her essay "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace," which, interestingly, isn't written in all lowercase letters as one might assume from her idiosyncratic non-capitalization of her name), especially among younger internet users. As a thirtysomething guy who uses these sites alternately as a communication medium and procrastination technique, I'm more concerned with functionality, design, and whether or not a given social networking site is making the world a worse place (hint: in the case of both these sites, the ultimate answer is "yes;" check out tribe.net for evil-free social networking). I've been on MySpace for almost three years now, and Facebook for long enough to get a feel for the place, so here are my first impressions regarding how the two match up.

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OVERALL LOOK AND FEEL:
 
MYSPACE:  The site has a notoriously shitty infrastructure.  It's slower than Mike Huckabee's reasoning process and goes down more often than Larry Craig at a public lavatory manufacturer's convention.  And I like the whole Web 2.0 aesthetic, which MySpace lacks.

FACEBOOK:   Has the whole Web 2.0 aesthetic.  It looks great and always runs.  Shiny!  ADVANTAGE: FACEBOOK
 
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PROFILES:
 
MYSPACE:  MySpace's decision to let end users fool around with CSS on profiles should be prosecuted as aggressively as a war crime.  I mean, to each their own: you may like a browser-crashing spectacle of a page with a Blink-182 jpg. background, the Comic Sans font, three songs blaring simultaneously and so forth, but the rest of us hate you for it.  Seriously, I've asked around.  I have seen maybe three customized MySpace pages that looked somewhat clean, and even then the effect is somewhat assy because of garish banner ads.  Tom needs to stand trial in the Hague for this.
 
FACEBOOK:  The pages are super-clean and look great.  Only problem: the widget-y "applications" one can add to their profile.  My God, the applications.  Too many, and no can find anything on your page.  They are really addictive to add, too; Nani wrote to me, "You've only been here for a week, and you have more applications than me.  Should I be worried?" Yeah, Nani, probably.  The effect of the widgets on a profile's layout is annoying, but not as bad as a "Jamie Lynn Spears's Fetus"-themed Myspace page.  ADVANTAGE: FACEBOOK, despite the fact that the "Super Wall" is super-lame.
 
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BULLETINS:

FACEBOOK:  You can see you friend's updates (called "stories;" more about this in the bit on Terms of Service below) on your own page.  This is useful if you need to know that "Unnamed Person just burnt her nipple on a hot pie pan" or "Other Unnamed Person is going to attack, with a hammer, the next person who spams her with Super Wall" (which is a totally defensible action).  Otherwise, it's a little unnerving and kinda useless.

MYSPACE:  The whole bulletin deal can be annoying... witness the people who use them as defacto blog posts to tell me about the cheese sandwich they just ate (folks who do that repeatedly get summarily axed from my friends list), or the former student who was sending out Ron Paul spam (for reals, if that dude is your candidate, don't talk to me for a while).  But all in all, it's fairly useful in terms of knowing about band shows and album releases, as well as finding out what my favorite Hollywood club's Friday night theme will be so I can be appropriately fabulous.  ADVANTAGE: MYSPACE

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RELATIONSHIPS:

MYSPACE:  Only has the categories "Single," "Divorced," "In A Relationship," "Married" and "Swinger."  And you have to choose one.  In a way, this is good... some douchebag therefore can't conveniently leave it unfilled, do the player thing, and then use the plausible deniability BS on aggrieved parties by saying, "Hey... my profile never said I was single, did it?"  But it is limiting, in ways that may seem strange to those of you who live in places other than free-wheelin' California.  And that's all I have to say on the matter.

FACEBOOK:  More categories, and you can leave it off altogether.  This can be, and no doubt has been, abused.  But the categories themselves are pretty good... you can put, for instance, "It's Complicated" as your status, which some people seem to find effective.  ADVANTAGE: NEITHER (MySpace wins on ethics, Facebook on adaptability.)

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THE REPUBLICAN CONNECTION:
 
FACEBOOK:  OK, we may be getting into tinfoil hat territory here... but this site has put together the connection between Facebook's venture capital, the CIA and DARPA (that link may also put some of you off Facebook for good).  If Facebook is a data-mining effort on behalf of the US government (and I'm not totally convinced this is the case), it is as brilliant as it is insidious and evil.
 
MYSPACE:  After that, media bastard Rupert Murdoch's 2005 purchase of MySpace seems perfectly benign.  ADVANTAGE: MYSPACE
 
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MUSIC:
 
MYSPACE:  This is the best reason to use MySpace.  Any band worth knowing has a page with tour info and audio.  There are a lot of bands not worth knowing, and they've all tried to spam me at one time or another, but overall this is a great feature.
 
FACEBOOK:  They're just starting a music feature, and the band they've chosen to highlight in promoting the feature is the motherhumping Dave Matthews Band, which I quite dislike (apologies to Nani and Summer).  ADVANTAGE: MYSPACE times one thousand.
 
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TERMS OF SERVICE:
 
MYSPACE:  Crappy.
 
FACEBOOK:  Shitty.  For instance, they claim the exclusive right to "create derivative works" from facebook activity.  Might this be why updates are called "stories?" ADVANTAGE: PEOPLE WHO GO OUTSIDE ONCE IN A WHILE

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So there you have it. Facebook is pretty (and great for networking), and the Super Poke application is hella fun. MySpace has good support for musicians and has become the point of contact for a frillion bands. And they both totally suck to a pretty much equal extent. I'd say "fuck them both," but I need to log in to see if anyone has posted on my "wall."

I'm on Facebook now. If you want to add me and don't know my real name, ask and ye shall receive.

I have a couple of real blog posts in me, and they'll probably go up in the next week or so. At the moment I'm suffering through holiday concerts and the like.

Rolling the dice

Holy shit.

I just submitted my online application to [Top Choice University] for admission to their Ph.D. program in Musicology.

Last night I stayed up until 1 or so rewriting the John Cage paper. It was kind of a mess, a bunch of good ideas sewn together in Frankensteinian fashion which shambled along but didn't really show the argument in the best or clearest light. After editing, it worked. It's not necessarily graduate student quality, but hell... I'm not a graduate student yet, am I? The paper's better than anything I wrote as an undergrad though, and I think it'll be impressive enough that I'm grappling with some cultural theory despite a background in performance. And the Arvo Pärt paper is pretty motherfucking solid.

Tomorrow after work, I'm driving over to the aforementioned university (I will not leave this to the tender mercies of the USPS) and dropping off two writing samples, transcripts (my GPA from the last four semesters of music school was higher than I remembered), a statement of purpose in which I make a solid case for my admission to the department, and the all-important fellowship application. My recommenders have assured me that their letters will be postmarked by Saturday, the deadline for applications to this department.

It's probably not that big a deal. Several friends and one relative are either current Ph.D. students in the humanities, applying to programs now as well, or already hold doctorates. But I had totally written off the idea of graduate school. Totally.

And now, it seems attainable.

Um, I'm signing off now. I think I have something in my eye.

The month, in numbers

Number of days worked: 16/22 (projected)
Number of graduate school documents written: 3 (statement of purpose and two research papers)
Number of pages: 20
Number of books read in preparation for said documents: 7
Number of birthday parties missed: 2
Number of nights spent clubbing: 3
Number of tango classes: 4
Number of times I've stepped on a tango partner's foot: 13
Number of doctor's visits: 2, totaling $625.00
Number of early music ensembles founded: 1 (seriously)
[mrghgh]: mnlyaaaa³
Number of blog posts I will now end, because I'm totally procrastinating: 1

Wherein The Bone writes back to people who have reached this site today via internet searches

1. To the person who arrived via the following ask.com search string: when you lose your virginity is it normal to be late on your period a few days?

Normal? No. I mean, I don't think it happens that way as a matter of course. (Hopefully my XX-chromosomed friends will jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong.) If you're worried, take an OTC pregnancy test, see a doctor or go to Planned Parenthood. The latter would probably be a better place to find the answer to this question than a shitty blog written by a male bachelor in his 30s.

2. To the multiple people who have arrived here via the following Yahoo search string: gunter glieben glauchen globen translation

Jesus One-Armed-Drumming Christ. It was a joke, and one I fucked up anyway... the real phrase is "gunter glieben glauten globen." Please go away.

3. To the person who showed up here by Googling: "extremely large member"

It's all true, baby. A/S/L?

Plus and minus

(this conceit shamelessly stolen from bridgesyoucross on LJ)

[+] Writing samples are done.

[-] The John Cage paper is kind of a mess, and I have no idea what to do with it. A couple of friends are gonna give me some feedback, so hopefully it won't suck for long.

[+] The Arvo Pärt paper is rad. I may spruce it up a bit and submit it to the Choral Journal.

[+] The Magnetic Fields are playing LA at the beginning of March.

[-] Voice is still hosed. Better at the moment--I can actually talk and sing a bit--but yeesh. It's gonna be a while before I'm back up to speed. Like, a couple of years.

[+] [insert awesome gutteral noise here]

SF was the bomb.

Happy birthday to Kurt Vonnegut.

Two years ago this weekend, I spent the long Veterans Day holiday in San Francisco with my then-partner, and it was an amazing trip. For most of 2006, I was planning and saving money for an elaborate little scheme (the codename was Operation: Certain Things) which would involve a return trip up to the Bay over the same holiday weekend, and the popping of The Question. We broke up at the end of August though, and instead of getting engaged I ended up spending that weekend moving for the fifth time in two-and-a-half months. Sigh.

So, hanging out in SF this weekend would seem to be a ballsy move... and yet, that's what I'm doing. I'll be chilling at Amber tonight, mostly because it'll be my only shot for a while to meet this dude and this chick (both longtime internet friends who will be visiting SF from the UK and Canada, respectively). I'll be back Monday evening at which time I have dinner plans with ShanaKarinina, kaiserin and probably some colleagues, so an update will go up on Tuesday.

(In other news: I'm taking the entire next week off of work in order to rest my voice and plow through grad school application stuff. The writing seems to be going well so far.)

Saturday Night Linkfest

For KC/DC: The 2007 Douchebag Awards

For Chord and m: Amazing animation for John Coltrane's "Giant Steps", A musicologist analyzes every fucking Beatles song

For Natalie: A Soviet Poster A Day

For nietzscheswife: Banksy Shop, Brandon Bird

For kaiserin: Social Security Denies Gergor Samsa's Disability Claim

Discourse (fragments)

after Barthes

1. I am waiting for a telephone call, and this waiting makes me more anxious than usual. I pick up and put down three books, skimming over a few pages in each and not quite remembering what I read soon after. I click through websites and chatter away on instant messenger, with one foot out the door in each conversation, as it were, in the event that the phone should ring (a remote chance by this point in the evening to be sure). I walk back and forth in my room, and the various objects have become incorporeal, consumed as I am by my anxiety: it is as though I do not even walk, but rather drift about my room like a mildly hungry ghost, like mist.

2. I am waiting for a sign. And since this is a tale inspired by Barthes, somone who is paying attention might fairly ask, "Is he talking about a sign in the semiotic sense?" It would be a fair question, and the answer is "no." And just as someone might read the word "sign" and impose a semiotics-related signified where there may very well be none, I too overthink, metacogitate, carry out robust internal dialogues about the meaning/non-meaning of an unreturned call. Like a dog I chase my tail, and then, like Ouroboros, devour it.

3. When Barthes wrote A Lover's Discourse, he spoke of the tyranny of the phone when one must be away from it while hoping from a call from the other. He forbids himself to go to the market, the toilet, even to use the telephone for fear of closing off the line when the other finally calls. But almost thirty years have passed, and I needn't share the same concerns: call-waiting, caller ID, the portability of my cellular phone itself--all of these things, one thinks, would alleviate this angst a little bit.

Not so. For when I think of the phone in my pocket, I experience a strange sort of différance where I am more aware of the phone in its state of non-ringing. I reach into my pocket for my keys or wallet, my hand brushes up against the telephone, and my first thought is no call yet. It rings, and when the caller ID displays the name of someone who is not the other, I grow fractionally more resigned... the only thing that causes my anxiety to taper off by degrees is the growing knowledge that I may never receive the call I most desire. It inspires a sort of communicative thanatos, where I realize that I've grown calmer as I realize that the other is quite possibly lost to me. Still, the cellphone is as heavy in my pocket as my heart is within my chest... more "cell" than "phone."

4. I hesitate to unfurl my words toward the other in the way Whitman's spider spins the filaments of its web: "Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them." Like this spider I too am noiseless, patient.

Okay. I had my doctor's appointment on Tuesday. I've given myself a few days to be miserable. And now, it's time to beat this thing.

I'm taking medication. Scheduling lessons with a voice teacher who works with students with damaged voices. Completely rethinking my teaching technique to eliminate singing and minimize talking (which is a fun challenge, in a sick way; I feel like I kind of have the teaching gig down, so this will certainly help keep it interesting).

I'm still really sad, and have been pretty weepy and emo for a bit now. This has sparked a huge existential crisis: because so much of my self-concept is wrapped up in my musicianship, then what am I doing here if I can't sing? There was a time in my life when I could sing anything, and that's probably over, regardless of the outcome here.

But people can recover from vocal health issues (two of my colleagues have beaten nodules), and I'm pretty good at getting things I want. I've had to reinvent my entire life three times in the last three-and-a-half years (and am doing so again as I work to get grad school apps done) and have dealt with other traumatic health issues, so I categorically refuse to accept a lifetime of not singing as a foregone conclusion. Seriously, fuck that.

Sigh

Damnit. Reinke's edema/vocal polyp.

In other news, "polyp" is an inherently ugly word, and has now overtaken "yogurt" as my third least-favorite word (however, it's still better than "panties" [great concept, horrible word] and my nemesis "moist").

Eternal Truths, vol. 497

From the zany culture that has brought us such terms as Schadenfreude, Weltschmerz and Angst (leave it to the Germans to have a rich and well-differentiated vocabulary for existential pain), comes this remarkable saying:

Man kann niemanden zu seinem Glück zwingen.

(One can coerce nobody into their own happiness.)

Tonight I rolled up my sleeves, cracked my knuckles, and attacked Jacques Derrida. ^[wiki]

The martial language is no accident. I've dug reading Žižek and Baudrillard, and while I find Foucault somewhat difficult I can take things away from his writing to some extent. But over and over again, I've heard people talk about Derrida's impenetrability, and it's always intimidating. The impression I've always had of Derrida is that his work is something with which one contends. In Aporias he poses the question "Is my death possible?", and I was fully prepared to write "I guess so, motherfucker, and if you weren't dead I'd fucking kill you."

But much to my surprise, I kind of got it. Kind of. I mean, I was reading essays and not Of Grammatology, but I was surprised at how much I understood, and even enjoyed. A friend who is writing a dissertation in which Derrida's notions of the archive are prominently featured told me that she found it was best to read Derrida as though one is on drugs--to not worry about understanding every little thing, but to pick up what you can and trust that rereading will fill in the gaps. Which is the strategy I tried... I didn't read the books so much as let them wash over me, and had a cool little evening as a result.

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The most humbling conversation that I've had in a while (over IM, with nietzscheswife):

BONE: I'm stressed about the foreign language requirement... they expect you to have a reading knowledge of two foreign languages by the time you're done. I did Italian in college, but it was years ago and I really sucked at it then. I'll have to do German, since there's a lot of scholarship in the musicology field in that language, and because I'll be studying medieval music I should probably learn Latin. That freaks me out more than the German.

NIETZSCHESWIFE: Well, I can still help you with Italian and French and Spanish and German if you like. And I could help you with Latin and Greek too. :D Pronunciation would be a bit difficult but linguistic transcriptions would help. There are also wonderful texts and websites in which pronunciation may be heard.

BONE: Seven languages. Life is so not fair. :)