So, I won't name names but I'm in this local consensus-based collective and I don't know if I should be in it anymore. Just about every week, at every weekly meeting, we have some argument about one thing or another and I'm pretty much always on the one side and everyone else is on the other and I always end up saying "well, I still disagree but I stand aside." I do this because it's never something important enough to block, and yet I always feel like I've given up on some matter of minor principle. Minor, but still a principle, something I firmly believe. And so, the question is, if this keeps happening week after week, does that mean I should leave the collective? I can't leave right away because we're in the middle of doing a lot of work on a big project. And I don't want to leave at all because it's really a subject that is important to me and the collective is responding to the subject in ways I believe in. But it just feels really bothersome and lonely to always always be alone on the other side of a debate every single week. Maybe it's not a sign that the collective is wrong for me but is just my problem and I should talk to my therapist about it. I dunno.
Sigh.

I just posted to Phonophilia mixdown stereo files of a piece I did back in the summer of 2002, a 6-channel, 7 part audio piece performed with 3 sound systems mounted on 3 moving bicycles. Further information is here. That was a fun project.

A new addition to indyblogs, Turtel, in New York, posted a great entry (a while ago, but I guess it showed up on my feedreader now because the blog was just added to indyblogs) about the frequency on TV of depictions of violent acts against women and how that serves to portray those acts as okay.

As Cialdini writes in science-speak, the problem is that

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In this article in the Pasadena Weekly, the author discusses the situation in Juárez and its tip-of-the-iceberg status in the global problem of violence against women. She is the director of a new documentary as well, Beauty Bites Beast, which focuses on efforts to make self-defense skills accessible to women in Juarez and elsewhere and how important that is.

Violence against women, a pandemic as maiming and fatal as any deadly microbe, is not unique to Mexico. It's global. Ironically, Ju

(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy	The Magnetic Fields
Crazy	Patsy Cline
Crazy (Britney Spears)	Richard Cheese
Crazy Baldhead	Bob Marley & The Wailers
Crazy Horse	Stereo Total
Crazy Train	Richard Cheese
So Fucking Crazy	[Metallica & Britney Spears]
Wild And Crazy	Dr. Octagon

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were neccessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I read this within the first 5 minutes of waking up this morning and I was immediately struck by how powerful and perfect an idea it is, and it has proven to be absolutely completely the single overarching uniting idea of this whole day.

(Well, except for the part of the day when I was hacking SQL and PHP code in order to enable website users to enter into a relationship with VJs.)

Oh man, I just have to vent - it really annoys me when announcements of a work meeting are delivered only via an iCal file sent by email as an attachment, with nothing else in the email. no time, no explanation of what the meeting is about or why we need it or what the agenda is. And then you click the attachment and iCal wont let you see the information, just the time, unless you accept the invitation, but if the time is bad and you decline, then you never see any other information. Argh. whatever happened to good old text? just a "hey, let's conference call at 4 on tuesday about the contract?" and then i'll reach over and grab my organizer and a pen and write "4pm - work meeting" on tuesday. is that so hard? Argh.

Did I mention I'm sick?

The Venezuelan legislature is in the process of giving Hugo Chavez "the power to rule by decree for 18 months so that he can impose sweeping economic, social and political change." Wow. How long before he declares himself president-for-life?

Appropriately enough, I just saw an excellent film called Land of the Blind, about a fictional and archetypal country that goes from totalitarian right-wing rule to totalitarian left-wing rule thanx to a palace guard, played by Ray Fiennes, who later regrets his role in the revolution when things are even worse under the new "People's Committee for Justice and Democracy" regime, and is imprisoned for refusing to sign the loyalty oath to the Chairman-for-Life, played by Donald Southerland. It's a really great dystopian absurdist black-comic story, kindred in set design and mood to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, tho not as funny.

This weird fluffy white stuff started falling from the sky last night during a screening of films by Bill Daniel at Dry River that I had set up. I guess this substance is called snow and is very rare in this part of the world. I and other people looked out the window in amazement and some even rushed outside to feel its cold mushyness. I think it's been many years since it last snowed in Tucson. There was even enough to start accumulating and cover up the surface of our Dry River "open" sandwhichboard sign on the sidewalk.

In other news, it was another extremely interesting weekend, but I'm not at liberty to write why here. (If you want to sneak in my house and read my journal you can learn all about it.) Meanwhile, I'm sick, fighting the early stages of a cold. Hopefully I can stop it before it gets any worse. I think i've been staying up too late and riding around in the cold too much.

Snow is sort of exciting, or rather, seeing the excitement over snow of more longtime residents is exciting, but this cold weather is not what i came to Tucson for. I'm going to have to ramp up plans to move further south or something if this keeps up or becomes normal. Last winter was much milder than this one.

Is there somewhere I can ask for my money back? hah...

I can't remember where I first was referred to this, but according to various blogs, there's an amendment to a bill in Congress now, Section 220 of S. 1, though "on hold," that would basically require anyone writing about Congress to register quarterly with Congress. WTF? Insane. Both left and right bloggers and organizations seem to be complaining, but there's not as much chatter about this, or media attention, as I would expect. I looked further and found this on the SF Bay Times site:

Checking the actual text of Section 220, a laborious exercise indeed, I find that the text requires that third parties who pay money in order to engineer what might appear to be a grassroots lobbying effort must declare themselves. I also learn that the tactic, presumably one close to the heart of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, is called

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