Steve's Weblog



March 03, 2004 Welcome to my Web log. I am not really sure what I'm going to write here. But I can assure you, it will be much different than the articles I write for the old-time herald. The tone will be more like a monologue; indeed, it is a monologue, because I'm using voice-activated software to write this. There'll be almost no personal information about me. I don't care to share that type of information with the entire world. This log will contain mostly opinions, observations, sometimes works in progress such as short stories, photographs (mostly taken by my wife), first person (by definition) reports of things that I'm doing which may or may not be of any interest to anybody...the typical thing you find in blogs. I hope this log is entertaining, but I'm going to make no effort to make reading it an enlightening experience. My teaching days are over. I'm off-duty. And I really don't care if anybody agrees with me about anything anymore. So if you have questions about the real nature of the pharmaceutical industry, I have no comment, even though I spent all my adult life working for Glaxo SmithKline. If you want to know the secrets about playing music, about all I can tell you is that I'm a crummy teacher, even though I've been studying and playing music all my life. And if you need practical advice about anything, check the World Wide Web. I am not sure my life experience would be very useful to many people.

March 04, 2004 I just finished the final mix down of a new composition. It's called Hope. Actually, it's more of a sound collage. It does contain fragments from some of my recent compositions. Since I work mostly with XG patches instead of Gigasamples, I don't particularly like to imitate real instruments, since I've never been able to find a combination of XG patches that sounds anything like wind or string instruments, with the possible exception of the bassoon. However, keyboards are a totally different story. There are some nice piano patches, and I've been able to put together some very realistic sounding pipe organ patches, once I recorded them on CoolEdit, re-equalized and added some reverb. So, the musical fragments are from Serenade for Winds, Percussion, and Organ, and a completely electronic composition called Epitaphium-I, which was generated using the algorithmic composition application Musinum. (Funny thing, it's very easy to imitate Colin McPhee imitating the sound of a gamelan orchestra with the use of this application!) I put the fragments in collage with some electronic sounds as well as adult and pre-adolescent child speaking voices reading the poem by Emily Dickinson that starts "Hope is the thing with feathers..." I also mixed in pieces of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech and some reflections on living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by Stephen Hawking. For Dr. Hawking, I put his printed words through a speech synthesizer. I used a lot of spatial effects, a lot of reverb, and fragmented the content spoken by the voices pretty effectively. The composition is supposed to evoke the world as experienced by somebody living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, as am I. The Philadelphia-based ALS Hope Foundation asked me to compose the piece for their fund-raising concert this April. I guess that's every composer's dream; to get premiered at the Kimmel center. Musically, in the tonal and harmonic arena, I seem to be most influenced by Paul Hindemith. In terms of texture, Warren Benson, and in terms of philosophy, John Cage, Alvin Lucier (think of She Was a Visitor and other things that will totally rot your mind), and Olivier Messiaen. It's not very pretty music. The climax has a group of children repeating fragments from the Emily Dickinson poem while some pounding electronic sounds fill the space and a trumpet section roars A Mighty Fortress is Our God. I hope Benson doesn't mind that I sampled a few seconds of his composition The Leaves are Falling. It's for educational purposes, anyway.

March 05, 2004 A good friend of mine, who is a gourmet cook and veteran of the high-end foodservice industry, lamented that all American tastes (not in the sense of good taste and bad taste, but in the sense of stimulus on your tastebuds) are proceeding to two foci: Heath Bar and Ranch. I also heard speculation that the word "restaurant" will eventually be dropped from the English language to be replaced by the expression "Taco Bell" when the universal foodservice contract is awarded to the company that runs all of the nation's restaurants after an infinite number of corporate mergers. Will the extreme limitation of options made available to the American palette lead to a decrease of appreciation of the large variety of gustatory stimuli available in the world? Possibly... I guess it's analogous to the limitation of perception that occurs in people who don't have sufficient vocabulary to formulate thoughts, of course, through no fault of their own. Limited access to quality instruction in language skills is, in my opinion, getting to be a serious problem. I swear, I've heard conversations in which a significant part of the words exchanged are derived from advertising slogans (of course, not among my friends!) When your ability to describe the taste of the beer is limited to "great" or "filling" or "less", the beer company could provide you with piss and you would not have sufficient vocabulary to protest, nor could you formulate the required perception to know you're being provided with piss. Indeed, the character O'Brien in George Orwell's novel 1984 bragged that Newspeak was the first language designed specifically to limit people's perception and comprehension. However, the limitation of perception and comprehension afforded by the limitations of a severely circumscribed language may have no effect on a person's day-to-day life. Many years ago, when I was a graduate student, a friend of mine and I tried to construct a language that had an entire vocabulary of two words, namely, "fuck" and "you". We attempted to spend 24 hours communicating with ourselves and other people using only hand gestures and the two word vocabulary characteristic of our language, which we called "fuck youish" for linguistic classification purposes. My girlfriend was an English major, and I figure my sensitivity with respect to the needs and academic requirements of the linguistic classification community helped me get laid alot. Since Paul and I were graduate students in the Department of Chemistry, we found "fuck youish" to be sufficient to meet all of our needs.

March 06, 2004 Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ is stirring up a lot of controversy. I have no intention of viewing the movie. Although I am nominally Jewish, I'm really anti-religious and a confirmed atheist. Nevertheless, I'm going to throw my 2 cents into the hat. The central point of the controversy appears to be whether or not the movie is overtly or covertly anti-Semitic. I don't think that's a really useful question. I think a more useful question is, "why do many Jewish people think this movie is anti-Semitic, and many Christian people do not?" Gibson states that his movie is a very strictly accurate account of the last days of Christ. Unfortunately, it is impossible to construct a very strictly accurate account of last days of Christ because the necessary documentation and physical evidence simply doesn't exist. The "veracity" of the passion of Christ is an article of Christian faith, and thus not open to confirmation, denial, or verification. It is however, open to belief or disbelief, as is any article of faith of any religion. In contrast, the persecution and murder of Jews by Christians is an historic occurrence, and is therefore open to confirmation or denial by the use of standard historical and scientific research methods. Unfortunately, (and here is my point, sorry to be so long-winded) there is a blind spot in the intellectual apparatus of devout believers in any religion. It is the tendency to confuse articles of faith with historic occurrence. The extent to which devout believers confuse articles of faith (the so-called "blood libel" that appears somewhere in the book of Matthew) with historic occurrences (which were poorly documented 2000 years ago) can arguably determine who gets hurt and how badly. In the case of Christians, there is a demonstrable 2000 year history of using articles of faith, either unconsciously or by calculation, to cause unmitigated terror among members of Jewish faith. This history scares the hell out of Jews, especially in the current political and social climate. If Gibson wants to use the most powerful medium known to the human race to hammer home his absolutist, literalist, true believer's message, he is essentially juggling with atomic bombs, and is going to scare the shit out of some people. Feets, don't fail me now. Hopefully, it won't come to that, but my family has a lot of experience with that sort of thing. Interestingly, after 2000 years of anti-Semitic persecution in Christian Europe, the Vatican took only 20 years to issue an edict declaring that Jews were not individually or collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. I guess after the Holocaust, the Vatican actually moved 100 times faster than it did previously.

March 08, 2004 My wife is an avid gardener and photographer. The following pictures were taken last summer.



March 11, 2004 My mother was a talented artist. She trained in the 1930s at Pratt Institute in New York City, Cooper Union, and the Art Students League. When she lived in Washington D.C., she hung around with people like Morris Louis, and exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery. Peggy Guggenheim bought one of her paintings... I think it might be in Bilbao, but I'm not sure. When we lived in Cleveland, she regularly got into the May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and exhibited at the Butler Institute in Youngstown. She also taught at Karamu. She organized several Gallery groups and had one-man and multi-artist shows all over Cleveland. She used to spend summers at Johnson State College in Vermont. She also studied in Taos NM and Oxford University at the Ashmolean. Her work is in private collections all over the Northeast and Midwest. You might describe her work as abstract impressionist, but she worked in so many different styles and media that it's almost impossible to characterize her work. She worked instinctively, and confessed to having no idea what she was doing, although she was highly proficient technically, very extensively trained, and unbelievably well versed in art history, color psychology, industrial design, photography, and architecture. Understanding the philosophic and historic underpinnings of the various movements in 20th-century art was very important her. She was a self-directed student of intellectual and social history, especially from the period 1920 to 1960. These studies were not limited to art, but also ranged to music, politics, science, and technology. She was incredibly well traveled, and had been to every major art museum in North America, Mexico, and Western Europe. Unfortunately, she never got to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg nor the Pushkin in Moscow but was very familiar with their collections. She had an extensive library, and worked with absolutely the best equipment. She would very often improvise new techniques using found objects, and sometimes found objects became art work in their own right. Her lifestyle was very unconventional, and she was viewed by all who met her as charming and exotic. She was just beginning to get into the use of computers as an artistic tool when she passed away. Growing up with her was like living in a nut house. Don't try this at home. Here's one of her paintings. The dimensional distortions are caused by the camera angle. I don't know the name or history of this painting, but it comes from a phase when she was making a lot of multi-panel compositions and using acrylics. Possibly the mid-1970s. Some paintings from this period were representations of places, such as the Cleveland flats, Pittsburgh (I believe her work was exhibited at the Mellon Gallery at one time), or locations in the Cleveland Metropolitan Parks. Others were, I'm pretty sure, internal landscapes.



March 17, 2004 I'm amazed by the razor-sharp demographic characteristics that the advertising industry and the mass media industry place around their products. It seems that each product pitch is designed to appeal to a smaller and smaller and more tightly defined demographic group, for example, girls age 13.2 to 13.5, Caucasian, member of a family in which the primary breadwinner's salary range is $57,200 $58,000 per annum in which preferences for certain citrus flavored soft drinks can be cross-linked to a level of consumption of bottled water per week. I have a much better idea. I would like to call it "permanent access personal marketing". I think this should be the next direction taken by the music industry. I propose to establish a research organization that will tailor musical programming to specific individuals. The individual in question can apply free of charge to my organization to obtain the playlist of the top 40 radio station he or she was probably listening to during the day, evening, and morning after the individual got laid for the first time in their college dorm room. My organization will provide this individual with all of the musical selections played by the radio station during these times on a microchip that can be implanted in his or her brain. The subject will also be provided with a sizable lifetime stipend. The chip will then inject the music into the proper part of the brain, continuously and permanently. Removal of this chip will not be possible without incurring severe brain damage. Remote access to unused channels on the chip will be sold to advertisers wishing to pitch products to this particular person during pauses between the musical selections. The subject will really have to hope for the best. I remember a New York City disc jockey named Cousin Brucie on 77 W. A. B. C. who played Jerry Samuels' "They're Coming to Take Me Away" all day, possibly some time in the summer of 1962. Now, wouldn't that be a great way to increase Thorazine sales?

March 26, 2004 The first iteration of "Hope" was rejected by the committee. It was way too dark. The idea is to get the audience to contribute money, not to scare the shit out of them. Luckily, I had several versions of the composition in the can. Instead of sounding like Paul Hindemith crossed with Olivier Messiaen and John Cage when no one was taking their Prozac, I made it more accessible. I used many of the same vocal elements (without fragmentation and repetition) and mixed them with a keyboard/synthetic woodwind arrangement of the old fiddle tune Dubuque that had been filtered through several de-evolutionary algorithms. It's kind of pretty though, sort of like George Winston trying to find his way home. I united the whole composition thematically with the use of bird songs. I managed to get some Messiaen in there, but nobody will really know. Will I stand behind it artistically? Yeah. I'm just composing on specification. When you're a musician, no matter how you slice it, you are really just the hired help. The sooner you realize that, the less energy you expend bitching about it. (I used to infuriate my highly educated scientific colleagues by informing them that despite our many learned degrees, we were all just waitresses in the eyes of our employer.) Does this compromise my artistic integrity? No. The composition doesn't say exactly what I want to say, but I don't think anybody really wants to hear what the fuck I want to say about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That's probably a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say.

April 08, 2004 The Lancet published a Swedish study that showed that employees of rapidly growing successful corporations appeared to have an elevated incidince of illness when compared to employees of stable corporations. This can be related to job stress. Similar findings have been noted in corporations that are undergoing restructuring, or other processes that appeared to be destabilizing to the employees. For what it is worth, I am going to quote part of this editorial:

This week's Lancet Editorial (p 1173) comments on the unexpected finding from Westerlund and colleagues' research, commenting: 'Perhaps the terminology that characterises 21st-century work can provide some clues. According to Richard Sennett, author of a tellingly titled book, The corrosion of character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism (New York: Norton, 1998), today's employees are expected to be flexible, open to change, take risks, do more with less, tolerate ambiguity, view instability as normal, and accept that a long-term relationship with an employer can no longer be expected, nor that they will benefit from long-term social networks established through shared experience in the same workplace. A young American worker with 2 years of college education, for example, can expect to change jobs at least 11 times during his or her working life, a period of time that is also being compressed because of prejudice against older workers. And job security? A concept that belongs to a former era.' The editorial concludes: 'What's the solution? Value people over profits? Recognise human capital as paramount? These answers are obvious. But given the high-handed, soulless treatment doled out today by many employers, it's a start. If appeals to integrity and character fail, there's always the bottom line: depressed and anxious personnel are unlikely to be productive, and absence from work costs employers and society money. The re-engineering of work ought to perpetuate fulfilment and productivity in employees, not illness and disability.'

Fascinating stuff! I imagine this sort of work-induced illness thing occurred to coal miners, textile workers, migratory agricultural workers, factory workers... especially coal miners, but their work-induced illness turned out to be death a lot of times. I'll bet you this process has been occurring to workers since the start of the industrial a revolution! I guess now the white-collar folks are getting it up the ass. At least the health benefits are good, so if your body falls apart you don't get thrown out on the street, which is what happened to industrial workers in the Western world until the last half of the 20th century. I worked in corporate America for 20 years. My health gave out. I don't think corporate America really had anything to do with that. In my case, that process started shortly after I was born. However, the benefits I accrued are keeping me off the street. What is the moral? Don't sell yourself cheap. Shut up and play your guitar. Normally, I don't like singer-songwriters. But I seem to remember a song sung by Lui Collins that had a line in it something like "the only way out is through". I can't remember if she wrote it. Most of her music irritates me because it seems to be aimed at white-collar folks who like acoustic music instead of football, but are turned off by the hand made music of coal miners, textile workers, migratory agricultural workers, factory workers... Utah Phillips once said "how many seas must a white dove sail before she can sleep in the sand " has a much different aesthetic than "hard times, cotton mill girls"...


April 28, 2004 I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that comedy is no longer necessary. It is possible to experience your surroundings without employing the efforts of a comedic artist and obtain all the cognitive dissonance and surrealism required for great humor. This first became apparent to me as a young boy in living Cleveland. I realized that I lived in a city on a lake that was Erie and had an architectural landmark, a tower that was Terminal. Things have certainly gotten stranger. Here are some examples I gleaned over the past few days.

I saw a bumper sticker that said "Chastity is for Lovers".

This is a quote from the Washington Post concerning civil disorder in Thailand: Nimu Magajae, deputy chairman of Yala Islamic Council, said he was told the attackers were drug addicts. "This is the first time in my life that I have seen so many Muslim youths killed in one day. But if they were drug addicts we do not regard them as religious followers," he told The Associated Press. "If they were really drug addicts and had the intention of killing police and the police defended themselves, it is an appropriate act." Mr Nimu demanded that the authorities hand over the dead bodies to the relatives so that their burial could be performed within 24 hours, in accordance with Islamic custom.

When you think about it, this statement is really funny. If you construe it otherwise, you might as well cry.

During the controversy generated by Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" film, I saw an entertainment news item that had the following headline: "Flesh Eating Zombies Knock Jesus Out of Top Box Office Spot". The article went on to describe how a newly released movie was now grossing more than Gibson's movie.

It seems to be common practice to drop syllables from words when speaking. I have heard the word "computer" truncated to "puter", and the word "cigar" truncated to "gar". (The cigar truncation was found on a cigar afficinado web site, which has detailed evaluations of the sensory experience of inhaling cigars made by different manufacturers. The extreme seriousness and use of extensive metaphor in these reviews are humorous in themselves.) It occurred to me that it should be possible to generate highly truncated English speech by syllabic destruction. This would sound especially funny if the subject material was derived from sports journalism or other commercial speech. Here is an example:

Complete English: Pressed to explain the defeat and a costly unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against him, Winslow Jr. launched into a profane recitation in which he called himself "a soldier" and compared the game to being at war. He later apologized.

Syllabic Destruction: Pressed to lain the feat and a tly manlike duct alty gainst him, W Low Jr. launched into a fane tion in which he called self "a dier" and pared the game to being at war. He later gized.

I am now going to scream "Eagles" for a while until I bleed from the nose. Or maybe from my ass.


May 01, 2004 This is from the editorial page of today's New York Times: ...sexual marketplaces are a rapidly expanding feature of society, and they are becoming more distinct from marriage marketplaces. Furthermore, as the sex markets become bigger and more efficient, people have less incentive to get married. As the scholars Yoosik Youm and Anthony Paik write, "Opportunities in the sex market act as constraints in the marriage market."

This is absolutely convulsively funny. Have we gotten to the point in contemporary intellectual discourse where everything is viewed as some sort of a market-driven transaction? Has free enterprise become a religion as absolutist and restrictive as some of the more far out, extreme forms of nut job Christianity and Islam? What if the novel "Moby Dick" began, "Call me Ishmael, but then again, contact my broker first. You may get a better deal if you call me on your cell phone during your free night and weekend minutes."


May 15, 2004 Sorry. I never got around to telling you how the Hope Foundation concert went. It went very, very well. There was some trepidation because the feature performance was that of a classical accordion orchestra. I have no idea why the accordion gets such a bad rap. I love the sound of free reed instruments, and that evening was no exception. Some of the performers were truly virtuosi. I felt very honored to have my composition presented in the first half of the program, and very honored to be given the opportunity to make a short speech. Here is the text of the speech:

Good evening. My name is Steve Senderoff. I am living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a very greedy disease. It took away my twenty-year career as a research chemist with one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. But it couldn't take away my proud memories and sense of accomplishment as a scientist, nor the knowledge that my work made a difference in people's lives. It took away my ability to play more than a dozen of my musical instruments. But I'm still a musician. It took away my knife, my fork, my plate and my wineglass; it left me with a spoon, a bowl, a plastic cup, and a straw. But it couldn't take away my appetite, and you all can see that I eat very well. I need help getting dressed, but I think I look great tonight in my tuxedo. But there was a time when amyotrophic lateral sclerosis tried to take my hope. It was succeeding, until the people of the MDA/ALS Center of Hope helped me fight back. We won. And we forced ALS to give back the hope that it had taken. This is why the work of the Hope Foundation is so important. People like me, our loved ones, our caregivers, and everybody affected by this disease win a major battle every day due to the efforts of the Hope Foundation. We use the beacon of hope to light our away through what otherwise would be a dark and frightening journey. As a scientist, I can tell you "hope is _not_ on the horizon"! It has risen above the horizon. Very soon, it will be at high noon. Much sooner than anyone of us thinks, this terrible disease will be defeated. When that day comes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis will never take anything from anybody ever again. The composition you are about to hear is a sound collage consisting of the voices of my extended family reading a poem about hope by Emily Dickinson, the voice of Stephen Hawking, one of our greatest scientists, reflecting on his experience living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the voice of Lou Gehrig, and the songs of birds. These elements blend with an arrangement of a traditional piece of music that is many centuries old. This piece of music reached me by way of a long, unbroken chain of people who passed it hand-to-hand through time. They had hope for the future, and wanted to share something beautiful with people yet unborn.

Lou Gehrig's disease really sucks. But one benefit of living with this disease is that you realize that very few things really suck.


May 18, 2004 Today on Reuters: The withdrawal by the heir of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty -- India's equivalent of America's Kennedys -- had earlier triggered anguished scenes outside her New Delhi home as hundreds of supporters rallied to press her to change her mind. One man stood on the roof of a car, held a home-made gun to his head and waved a stick to deter people trying to calm him. "Call Sonia Gandhi! Tell her I will kill myself if she doesn't become prime minister!" he said before being disarmed.

Democracy in action.

May 21, 2004 From the Elderly website: FENDER STRATOCASTER (1957) VGC, sunburst finish, body dated 3-57 in spring cavity, maple neck dated 3-57, all original hardware, pickups and pots are intact except volume pot was replaced in '59, now things get interesting, at some point the guitar was in a fire, it does not look like a burned hotdog but, the finish has a crispy look and the plastic parts are all a bit discolored and disfigured but all in all it does not look bad and it plays and sounds great

May 27, 2004 Recent exchange of postings in the folk music group on Usenet:

In 1967 I heard a wonderful folk singer sing a great rendition of Malaguena in a downtown Houston Holiday Inn. Some people have suggested it was Sharon Maris Cohen. Does anyone know of her music or if it was another artist? Thanks in advance.

It took you 37 years to start your search?

It took you how many minutes to think up this genius remark? :-)) Was the web available in 1967? Think!!!! I've been trying to re-locate this singer for years.

It is nice to know that after several million years of human evolution and exponential growth in the power of technology during the 20th-century that I am a single mouse click away from the lyrics to "surfin' bird" by a band called the Trashmen, a surf band from Minnesota.

May 28, 2004 I am fascinated by the resurgence of the cigar and martini culture of the early 1950s among young people. This part of our popular cultural history in my opinion is truly odious and stupid, and why it should become retro chic is beyond me. (Then again, I spend a major part of my life assimilating a musical tradition that is essentially dead and has many racist and disagreeable overtones.) I heard somewhere that the entire cigar culture was brought to the public consciousness by a single magazine called Cigar Aficionado, in which glossy photographs of powerful, influential people with huge, expensive, and sometimes illegally imported cigars sticking out of various holes in their bodies were juxtaposed with articles about how you can be powerful and influential. These milestones of journalistic excellence were interspersed with fawning, self-aggrandizing reviews of ultra rug-joint restaurants that sell artery-clogging concoctions (filet mignon mit schmaltz und schlag gelossen...) guaranteed to appeal to people with more money than gustatory sense. The martini culture genesis seems to be more obscure.

The last time I was driving on Interstate 40 in North Carolina, I kept on seeing advertisements for a tobacco superstore called JR's. Mostly, they sold odd lot shit to bored motorists and people who think that a porcelain casting of a frog taking a piss into the mouth of a wood nymph is high art. Of greater interest, this place had the biggest collection of tobacco products I had ever seen. One entire room was a humidor containing nothing but cigars, floor-to-ceiling. I walked over to the proprietor, and said, "I'm interested in cigars." He said, "Well, you're in the right place. Are you interested in ridiculously expensive, stupidly ostentatious, irritating cigars, or truly shitty, sickeningly cheap cigars that will make you a pariah?" I was somewhat taken aback by his brutal honesty, and I replied, "I am looking for a cigar that I may insert interchangeably in my ass or ear." The proprieter replied, "We have many calls for such a cigar. Perhaps you might like to sample the Antonia y Cleopatra Cohiba muy,muy Grande Puneta Manos." I thanked him, and observed a life size wood carving of an Indian standing on a sign that said "Authentic Early Pennsylvania Dutch Stogies". I ended up buying a bumper sticker that said "We Support Our Troops", although which troops we support was not clear to me.


May 31, 2004 from the AP: NEW YORK - Martha Stewart will seek to lighten her jail term by spending up to 20 hours a week teaching poor women how to start their own businesses, according to Newsweek magazine. After meeting privately with Stewart, Otero wrote a three-page letter to U.S. Judge Miriam Cedarbaum about how the domestic doyenne's know-how could benefit underprivileged women, Newsweek said. "Can you imagine if we had graduates of the Martha Stewart cleaning program bidding for contracts cleaning Hilton Hotels?" Otero told Newsweek.

stop it, yer killin' me...


June 16, 2004 Blind Blake, one of the greatest ragtime blues fingerpickers asked a question of great importance by plaintively singing "won't somebody tell me what the diddy-wa-diddy mean?" The only answer he got appeared in the mid-60s, namely in an issue of Zap Comix. R Crumb had Mr. Natural inform us that "if you don't know by now lady, don't mess with it". I think that there has been a tragic lack of research into the true meaning of "noises" made by jug bands and hokum blues singers. Usually, these vocalizations are dismissed as meaningless "scat" meta-lyrics. It should be possible, using modern cryptographic analytical techniques to discern the true meaning of these fascinating yet obscure vocalizations. Consider, for example:

Boodle am boodle am boodle am boodle am now
skoodleam skoodle am skoodleam skoodleam now
Gagalag Gagalag Gagalag Gagalag too
Skagalag Skagalag Skagalag Skagalag do

Through the judicious use of matrix algebra and other techniques of discrete and combinatorial mathematics, coding, and information theory with applications in cryptography, I have been able to determine that the above excerpt from the "Boodle am Shake" is really an intricate encryption of the following well-known passage:

One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something-a gift-after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl-Tricia, the 6-year old-named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.

This finding was indeed shocking to me. This proves that the famous "Checkers Speech" was plagiarized from earlier sources.


June 24, 2004 From the Associated Press: WASHINGTON - Medicare is planning a lottery later this year for people with cancer, multiple sclerosis and several other diseases. For the 50,000 winners, the government will start helping pay for their medicine, but more than 450,000 others must wait until 2006.

It is nice to know that attitudes towards the provision of access to health care in America have shifted from "if you don't have a job in corporate America, or a job with a well-connected enough employer, or happen to be independently wealthy, go fuck yourself" to "step right up and spin the Wheel of Fortune, and if you lose, go fuck yourself." Maybe someday, we'll feel that access to health care is a right, as opposed to a privilege. Until that day, people who disagree with me about this issue can go fuck themselves.


June 25, 2004 More important news from the Associated Press: The Parents Television Council logged an average of 14.5 examples of bad language or sexual content an hour on unscripted shows. That's 53 percent more than when the PTC last studied it three years ago, and beats the average of 10.7 examples an hour on scripted shows.

OK, here are some fractional obscenities: fuc= 0.65, sh= 0.55.


June 28, 2004 One of my guilty pleasure is reading small town newspapers. It is possible to find truly moronic incidents reported and unbelievably closed-minded attitudes described in such publications. The Wilmington News-Journal is no exception. You may not think Wilmington, Delaware is a small town, but this is one of the most insular, provincial, bush-league places I have ever lived. The city clears out when the major corporation and bank workers go home, cultural events (which are surprisingly of high-quality) receive little support and thus very rarely become cultural event series, most of the editorials and letters to the editor in the local newspaper concern religious issues, and it is impossible to get good New York City style delicatessen food anywhere, although there are a few good restaurants. Surprisingly, there is a very strong community of aficionados and performers of traditional Appalachian and bluegrass music, but I believe most of these people lived somewhere else before they got here. Also surprisingly, this area has one of the highest concentration of people holding advanced degrees in the country, due to the preponderance of the chemical and banking industry among its roster of major employers.

The News-Journal used to be an extension of the Du Pont corporate communication department. It must be admitted that nowadays, the newspaper has some degree of journalistic independence. But since essentially everybody in the state of Delaware is in bed with everybody else in one form or another, everything printed in this paper has to be taken with a grain of salt at best, or simply ignored.

Here is a really interesting incident reported in today's issue:

The 49th annual Blue-Gold All-Star High School Football Game has raised more than $4 million in its 49-year history for Delawareans with cognitive disabilities. Saturday's attendance was 13,232, one of the best in All-Star history.

A melee on the field allegedly started when Blue player Mike Schmidt was punched by an unidentified Gold player just as the postgame handshakes between players and coaches concluded, several coaches said. At least two other altercations broke out.

The fighting lasted for at least 10 minutes before several Delaware State Police troopers rushed on to the field and restored order.

Bryan Robinson of Caesar Rodney High School was forced to the ground by state police and taken off the field with his hands in plastic handcuffs. Robinson was charged with second-degree assault on a police officer, a felony. His father, Jackie Robinson, was charged with attempting to remove a firearm from a police officer, a felony, and misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest, offensive touching of a police officer and disorderly conduct, according to state police.

The game set a record for penalty yards. The teams combined for 210 yards on 21 penalties. Four of those were 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalties. The Gold was penalized 11 times for 135 yards. Gold coach Weiner and Blue coach Kosanovich said there was some trash talking going on between the teams during the week. They also confirmed there was an incident between a Blue player and a Gold player on Wednesday night in the recreation room of the dormitory where both teams were staying on the University of Delaware campus.

"What happened was horrendous," said coach Jeff Weiner of Smyrna, who also is a member of the All-Star Football committee. "After the game I think a lot of people lost focus on what this game is about. It's a charity game, a fun, family event, to benefit kids with cognitive problems. It's been good for 48 years, but this ruined a lot of things that we strive for. It's real embarrassing." But one thing that Tony Glenn, executive director of the Delaware Foundation for Retarded Children, said will not be discussed is the possibility of ending the game. He said preparations for the 50th anniversary game in June 2005 will continue.

I am sure that the irony of this incident is not lost on the astute reader; in fact, I find it hilarious that people who probably have rubber cement for brains are engaged in an activity raising money for people who are described as "cognitively impaired". Nevertheless, I feel that the real issue involves the propagation of a truly ugly and destructive "sports culture" in urban and suburban America. I'll write more on this later.


July 8, 2004 From today's Financial Times: For Eric Eden, a former Enron computer draftsman, Mr Lay remains "a great leader" whose unflagging enthusiasm for new ideas inspired entrepreneurs throughout the company and prompted Mr Eden to invent a lawn sprinkler when he was laid off.

Now if he'll invent a manure spreader...


July 16, 2004 From today's Associated Press feed: Defense lawyer Robert Morvillo had asked the judge for a sentence of merely probation and community service working with poor women. He said Stewart "knows she's not perfect" and deserved mercy. "She has brought a measure of beauty to our everyday world with refined color schemes, floral arrangements, and culinary delights," he said. "She has stood for the values of quality and making products as perfect as possible."

Do you detect a pattern here? A former Enron employee is laid off, praises his boss (who is responsible for destroying his company and putting his life savings into the toilet), and then uses his newly found spare time to design a lawn sprinkler... an appeal for Martha Stewart is mounted by citing her efforts to bring refined color schemes, floral arrangements, and culinary delights into this world... I think we are finally witnessing the ascent of a concept first enunciated by visionary musician Frank Zappa: the "Consumer Amoeba".


July 20, 2004 In the wake of the terrorist attacks upon America, there has been an agonizing re-evaluation of the way the government does business. One of the constant themes uncovered in this re-evaluation is the presence of unresponsive, uncoordinated, and amateurish bureaucratic entities hindering the completion of simple tasks. Of course, such bureaucratic entities are not confined to American government. Just recently, there was yet another coal mining disaster in the Ukraine. A brief scan of Russian news media reveals that the following agencies are involved the aftermath:

Commission for Dealing with the Consequences of the Disaster
State Labor Safety Inspectorate
Labor and Social Policies Ministry
Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry
Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Ministry
Ukrainian State Labor Protection Supervisory Committee
Russian Ministry for Emergencies
State Rescue Service
State Commission on Investigating Reasons for the Blast in the Mine

I am sure that this list is incomplete.


September 23, 2004
GONAIVES, Haiti - Jeanne's rain-laden system proved deadly in Haiti, where more than 98 percent of the land is deforested and torrents of water and mudslides smashed down denuded hills and into the city. Floodwater lines on buildings went up to 10 feet high.

Hungry, thirsty and increasingly desperate residents burned tires in protest and attacked each other in a panic to get scarce food and water Thursday as workers struggled to bury hundreds of victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne.

More than 1,100 were killed, 1,250 were missing and the toll was still rising Thursday, nearly a week after the storm hit.

Hundreds pushed through a wooden barrier to get into the sole working clinic for treatment, but only one doctor was there Thursday morning. Some residents had grown so desperate to get rid of putrefying corpses they were burying them in their backyards.

NEW YORK - It looks like the U.S. billionaire's club isn't quite as exclusive as it once was. There are now 313 billionaires in the country, the largest number ever and a huge jump over the 262 counted last year, according to Forbes magazine, which Thursday released its annual ranking of the 400 richest Americans.

The combined net worth of the 400 rose $45 billion and reached $1 trillion this year for the first time since 2000, before the dot-com bust wiped out billions of dollars in wealth.

...oh man, bummer...can't they, like, do something...