Category: Personal

Afterlife and Bongos

A couple really sketchy tracks laid down tonight with real instruments (mostly) — Afterlife Jam is a dubious attempt to play the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ “Hell” on my ukulele… it’s only got two chords but that was too much for me. I start rambling towards the end. I added a little reverb effect for fun.

Pipes and Bongos is an Apple Loop bongo track with three tracks of me playing a pennywhistle over it in a kind of meandering, random fashion.

I don’t disparage these things cause I don’t like them; if I hated them I wouldn’t put them out in public. I just don’t want anyone to download them expecting anything but me just dorking around. I mentioned to Kev today in instant messenger that maybe I’d lay down a track or two tonight, and I wanted to do so, so I did.

Alternatively, if you’d like to hear an amateur ukulelist who’s put some actual effort and discipline into his work, check out my man Clinton’s burgeoning West Palm Sessions, growing by the day.

Another Voice on Bush at Calvin

From Sara — it’s a little harder to stand up and say “yeah, the Calvin I know really doesn’t stand for all that conservative stuff!” when you know you still, to this day, would not be accepted for who you are there, for fear of offending conservative parents and donors.

For all the support and encouragement I recieved from individuals at Calvin, my closeted time there was almost more than I could handle. From what I hear, it’s only getting worse due to an increase in conservative donors and parents. I would not be welcome as an employee of Calvin in any capacity. A marriage/union announcement of mine would never be printed in the magazine. Queer alumni groups must organize on their own. I couldn’t be a member of any contributing church.

Episcopa Vagans

Huh. Just found out that a friend of mine is now a bishop.

For reasons I’m not even going to begin to explain, she sought ordination as a priest and bishop in the Apostolic Succession from nontraditional sources, and the presiding bishop of the Universal Anglican Church saw fit to grant her request. I’m not sure of the precise line of their apostolic succession but it’s ultimately through one of those Episcopi Vagantes type sources where everybody’s obsessively reconsecrating each other so in order for the consecrations to be invalid three dozen different lines of succession would have to all be invalid.

I saw a copy of the rite of consecration they wrote. It was quite beautiful.

I am told that one of the clergy who came to town to do the rite of consecration was wandering around a local Border’s in vestments and was mistaken for a Sith Lord. :)

Calvin College ad to protest Bush visit

UPDATE: Everyone I know who has blogged about this has received a highly focused comment spam from someone who signs himself “John Calvin” and comes from the IP address 68.77.152.22 (at least he was coming from there when he spammed me). He cut and pastes some large articles about Bush at Calvin and rants things like: “SADDAM and his henchmen inflicted the death and destruction. Bush and the troops liberated 25 million people. Your moral equivalence is disgusting.” He never shows any sign of having read the posts he is “replying” to. The built in spam filter in WordPress 1.5.1 correctly tagged his rants as spam and put them in moderation. He apparently does searches with things like “bush” “calvin” “leave comments.” I wonder if he does this by hand or has a script to do it for him? Anyone know anything more about this dude?

ORIGINAL POST:

College ad to protest Bush visit – The Washington Times: Nation/Politics – May 17, 2005:

One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush’s commencement speech.

“As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort,” the ad will say. “We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.”

The 130 signatories, which include 20 staff members, work at Calvin College. Founded in 1876 as a school for pastors of the Christian Reformed Church, it now is one of the nation’s flagship schools for a Christian liberal-arts education.

I’m so proud of my Alma Mater. :)

Tackhead in the area!

I never thought I’d see it — a live tackhead video on their site. Recently recorded.

“I take donations from all denominations! In any currency, big or small…”

I haven’t heard this song in years. Never heard it live. Wow.

And there’s a new Tackhead song in the “downloads” section too. I never thought I’d use the words “new Tackhead song.”

Wow.

And you can order their first album again for the first time in about a zillion years… shipping to the U.S. from Japan’s a killer though.

I swear this site was not up, none of these things were around, last time I looked for Tackhead stuff. Schweet.

OK, I’m really going to sleep now, I’m even going to save the new Tackhead track to listen to tomorrow.