MARCH 15 STATEWIDE ANTI-WAR RALLY IN COLUMBUS, OHIO
WHAT? Statewide solidarity rally and march on the Franklin County Courts building in downtown Columbus
WHEN? Saturday, March 15 – 1:00 PM
WHERE? Blackburn Park (near the Mt. Zion Church on Bryden Rd.) The park is 1.25 miles East of downtown Columbus and is located on the corner of E. Main St. and S. 18th St. MapQuest link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,903609,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-986143.html
Key politicians chided universities on Wednesday for not doing enough to limit peer-to-peer piracy, calling unauthorized copying a federal crime that should be punished appropriately.
Members of the House of Representtives subcommittee that oversees copyright law said at a hearing that peer-to-peer piracy was a crime under a 1997 federal law, but universities continued to treat file-swapping as a minor infraction of campus disciplinary codes.
“If on your campus you had an assault and battery or a murder, you’d go down to the district attorney’s office and deal with it that way,” said Rep. William Jenkins, R-Tenn.
…
i think it’s unconscionable to compare music/software piracy, with violent crime. studies have shown that music downloading has had a negligible effect on record sales, and software piracy by college students isn’t really the cause of the software industries woes (look instead to profit minded pirates overseas). we need to reevaluate our laws when property (and ridiculous electronic intellectual property at that) is valued just as highly as human life.
http://www.salon.com/politics/wire/2003/02/25/poll/index.html
i woke up way to early this morning, but i didn’t have much of a choice, since having left both my bicycles at the legion of doom, i was forced to wake up early to get a ride in to school with my housemates. it was weird, sitting in the back seat as erin navigated the car through the perilous fresh snow to a soundtrack of christian melo-core blaring through the speakers. i don’t know how to feel about that stuff. listening to the lyrics made me cringe a little from ridiculousness, but i could see how they could be meaningful to a certain type of kid.
today was pretty standard. managed to work a little bit at least to try to get ahead of all the expenses that inexplicably keep piling up. classes were ok, and despite the early morning i was able to stay mostly awake. i even got the next day’s homework taken care of early.
the best part of the day was band practice although it was pretty stressful since it was the first full band practice in a week or so. some stuff sounded real good, other stuff sounded sort of flat. personally, i had to deal with banging my head against the wall of my own utter lack of natural musical ability. at least by the time we got to total turri (a hardcore band made up of defiance, ohio – bz + chad on vocals playing songs only about jimmy turri) i was having a lot of fun.
it’s true that i’ve grown to have a certain aversion to people entering my personal “bubble”, though i don’t think it’s as accute as people like to tease me about. i don’t have any inherent dislike of physical contact or intimacy, and it’s not as if i had some traumatic childhood event which makes me shy away from close contact with others, it’s more of an issue of (perhaps ridiculous) personal politics. in most of my young adult life it seemed like overt acts of physical contact between all but the closest of people were always coupled with a notion of possessiveness, neediness, manipulation, or insincerity which has always made me uncomfortable.
driving back from the show was different. cutting across the snowy ohio countryside, the eight of us huddled together for warmth. heads rested on shoulders, bodies draped loosely in unzipped sleeping bags squeezed into the bench seats, arms and legs sprawled comfortably over other arms and legs. our bodies rested against one another in silent, peaceful support, our entagled limbs a child’s game of pickup sticks where one dare not disturb even the smallest piece of the simple balance of the structure lest it come crashing down.
i had planned for this weekend to be a quiet simple one where i could watch some videos and catch up on homework. however, ryan’s return to town and a general return to the hectic business as usual put an end to all that. it wasn’t a bad thing. it was a fun weekend all in all – just not very relaxing. i spent the afternoon going down to the ‘natti with ryan and chad to check out the red square film show. i was a little disappointed with the videos that were shown, but i thought it was a neat event nonetheless. afterwords, we ate some decent indian food and i got to see ryan in his old element and talk a bit with matt, who helped us out with a cinci show on the first defiance, ohio tour, who i think is a nice and interesting guy.
on the drive back, chad dozed and ryan and i had another one of or typical on the road discussions, though it was a bit less antagonistic than usual. we talked a little bit about some of the somewhat disturbing things that had filtered their way down the gossip grapevine. it’s not that they’re neccessarily bad, it’s just that i don’t understand them, and i’m uncomfortable talking to those involved with it directly, and i’m not sure how to talk about things so that they work out for the best for everyone involved. i want to be supportive of my friends, but it’s hard when you’re not sure if they’re doing what they really want to be doing.
last night we did more filming for the rap video. things went smoother than last time. the third rapper was there, and he was pretty down to business in an almost too serious sort of way. there were more people, and no fights, all in all, the atmosphere was much more festive. we got a lot more good looking shots, and i think that we’ll be able to come up with something that makes everyone happy. there weren’t any moments that i’d define as scary this week, but it was still a fairly wild party. high points included:
– mac, a mother of 6 who also might be the most sexually charged individual i’ve ever met, calling colin her “baby daddy” and making reference to wanting to make “mixed babies” with him
– ryan, a little drunk trying desperately to explain to rapper “man” how digital video was great because it meant that more of the production funding for a project could go to support your friends and people you believe in who are involved in the project
– eric luck’s modest, but totally amazing break-dancing footwork. we’re not talking lame frat boy style, this boy’s got rythm!
– johnny handsome showing up still wearing his suit from a wedding earlier in the day and all the women at the party loving it. when we took some still photos to document the night, johnny had a good handful of girls trying to get on his lap during his shot.
unfortunately, shooting the rap video meant that we once again missed derek’s comedy show, which sucks because he’s a funny person and i really want to see the act, and because he’s always been really supportive of band stuff. hopefully i’ll get another chance to see his show soon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/weekinreview/23JLEE.html
WASHINGTON Before the global protests against war in Iraq last weekend,
organizers were already making conference calls and passing out fliers for
their next set of demonstrations, including one scheduled for next Saturday,
outside the White House.
But then, the worldwide protests drew millions of people onto the streets,
from San Francisco to London, and the Bush administration hit some diplomatic
roadblocks. Sensing delay in White House momentum, the organizers themselves
paused and decided to make a strategic move, delaying the demonstrations from
March 1 until March 15. They spread the news the old-fashioned way, through
alternative radio stations and word of mouth, and the instantaneous way,
through Web sites and e-mail messages.
…
tonight started out as a kind of mundane, boring, slightly ill night and spiralled downward into a really awful night, and ended up as a kind of ridiculous night.
so the original plan is that i was going to spend the evening in bed, fighting with my computer graphics lab until midnight when i would go to the greyhound station to pick up ryan on the bus back from bloomington.
all was going acording to plan until around 7:30 when i got a call from the highway patrol dispatcher asking about a friend named mike. i asked for a last name. i had a sneaking suspicion that the dispatcher was referring to my friend mikeal, but i was unsure since i rarely heard references to him using the abreviated form of his name. i was sort of out of it, but what i gathered from the dispatcher was that mikeal was stranded at a rest stop between springfield and columbus and that i had to pick him up. shortly after we parted ways in bloomington and he had expressed his intention of hitchhiking home, i mentioned that if he ran into trouble to call me. he’s pretty independent and doesn’t like imposing on people, so it was pretty surprising to get a call. i guess it made sense that it was him who called, but the cops on his behalf. i later learned that he got picked up walking along the highway and was forced by the cops to get a ride.
so i recruited tim to ride shotgun and we headed out towards springfield. we got to the rest stop, and saw mikeal waiting inside looking a bit guilty and sheepish. he appologized for making us come out, and after a bathroom break, we got in the mutant to drive back to columbus. i was horrified when i turned the key and nothing happened. the engine didn’t even turn over! fuck, i thought this old piece of crap has finally died. i tried again, feebly hoping that the van would magically start. no such luck. we tried waiting a few minutes. no luck. mikeal tried. he insisted that the proximity to columbus was alread having a bad effect.
defeated, we tried to think of who to call. i suggested jen, the girl that tim is kinda-sort of-seeing. tim wasn’t too hot on the idea, but she had a car and i was pretty desperate. after a short phone call from tim, he said that she was on her way. we spent the wait pacing, pouting and cursing our poor luck. jen eventually arrived, and she and tim left to get gas (since i realized that the mutant’s gas guage was non-operational and hoped that the problem was just an empty tank). jen and tim came back with some gas and we spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to pour the gas with the “non spill” spout whose overdesign left me cursing technology. eventually we poured the gas into the tank, but to no avail. defeated, we asked jen to drive us back to columbus. i wondered what ryan would say when he got off the bus and found out that i killed his van. i contemplated calling him, but feared some kind of insane response.
it’s not that ryan’s irrational, or that i’ve ever seen him really flip out over something, it’s just that he really loves the van. he’s been through a lot with it, what with a few cobra kai tours, some memento mori tours and now a handful of fun defiance, ohio shows. hell, the van has a great history even before ryan aquired it. it was once a traveling math classroom and later the tour vehicle for none other than the creed of new rock, the julianna theory! so fearing ryan’s response was one factor in not calling ryan. the other is the fact that years of dealing with my father has engrained a very simple response mechanism when it comes to dealing with fiasco: deal with it yourself and don’t tell anybody if at all possible. i’ll say this. my father does not deal with adversity gracefully. when something would go wrong, he didn’t exactly kill the messenger, but the messenger was certainly the target of blame. as an example of my dad’s less than graceful handling of this kind of thing i offer up the story of bangor, maine.
bangor, maine. i was a preteen and my brother was even younger. it was summer family vacation and we were cutting through new england on the way to nova scotia. since my dad’s a bike geek, the back of the car was laden with bikes to go exploring at various points on our itinerary. my brother’s bike was mounted atop the car. that final detail is really important, but was overlooked by my dad. as we pulled into a hotel in bangor maine, we went below the rain vestibule outside of the main office. of course, it happened to be pretty low, and my brother’s bike colided with the overhang with a resounding thud. if i recall correctly, the bike an d roofrack were ripped from the roof. my dad gets out of the car, inspects the damage and throws his keys to the ground and proceeds to literally hop up and down in anger. he lets loose a minute long string of obscenities that left even the hardened proprieters of the travel lodge cowering in fear. we were cowering too, hoping that no one would notice us and associate us with the maniac carrying on in the parking lot. from that day forward, for my brother and i, and a few of our friends, the words bangor, maine became associated with complete and utter fury and hatred for the world. later in the night, when mikeal was telling ryan how angry i was when the van wouldn’t start, ryan asked “was it like bangor, maine?”
i was happy that ryan was back in town when i saw him disembark from the bus at the bus station, but i was worried about how he’d react to the bad news. i sort of blurted it out to him incoherently. i was surprised when he sort of smiled and asked, “did you put it in neutral to start it.” needless to say, after driving back to the rest stop and applying the “first law of driving the mutant”, ryan was able to drive the van back to columbus without any problems.
when we finally parked the mutant back at my house, i was exhausted, but at least i found an e-mail from abbey in my inbox which made things a little better. it’s always nice to hear from new friends.
i swear the next month of my life will either be the best i’ve had, or it will completely destroy me.
so after reading patrick’s journal for the first time in a while, i realized how bad i have been about writing here other than just notes to myself and bookmarks to things i think are interesting. it sort of sucks.
so, i’m trying to catch back up. maybe it will make me organized. maybe it will give me a chance to vent without feeling that i’m arguing with people, and maybe it will make me feel articulate again.